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“Telling you,” Élise said. “I’m. Lighter.”

“Oh, why don’t we take turns, then?” I said. “You can carry me for a bit. Let’s test who’s been eating the most chocolatines.”

Élise gave an especially noisy snort, and we were lost again.

At last we came to Rue de Violette, which was only a block from the shelter—or, in its current iteration, bakery.

“The magic must be attached to the oven after it leaked out of the book,” I said. I was repeating myself, seeking reassurance from my own words. “We can go back there, and I’ll say the enchantment again, and we’ll return to our time.”

Élise’s disbelieving grunt did not require clarification. It seemed a plausible enough theory, but what did I know? I didn’t want to think about the very real possibility that we would be trapped here, potentially unravelling our own histories in the process.

I settled Élise on a bench. It had begun to snow again, but there was no help for that. “I’ll go make sure the baker went back to bed,” I said, setting the lantern beside her. “Then I’ll return for you. Wait here.”

Élise said something that sounded like What else do you expect me to do, but that was a guess. It seemed more difficult for her to fight Havelock’s enchantment when she wasn’t standing. I bunched up my scarf and put it beneath her head, and she began to snore lightly. I motioned to the cat, and she hopped onto Élise’s chest and burrowed beneath her coat, until all that was visible was a small wriggling lump and a tuft of tail.

I made my way to the bakery, and was relieved to find that the lights were off. Unfortunately, the baker had locked the door we’d left open, which meant we’d have to break in—but how?

I was just rounding the corner to return to Élise, full of anxious thoughts, when I heard a familiar voice. “Agnes!”

My instinctive reaction was relief. It was a voice I associated with safety—the voice of someone who would make all of this easier, because he made everything easier. Then I felt as if I had been turned to stone.

Robin was strolling towards me, hands shoved in his pockets and an umbrella tucked under his arm. He looked a little dishevelled by the weather, but otherwise exactly as I remembered him, only more handsome. He could not have always been this handsome, and I didn’t remember his smile being so bright. If it had been, surely I would have appreciated it more.

“What are you doing out here?” he said, his smile growing as he approached me. I was overwhelmed by his presence—it was too much, and for a moment I wanted to run. I knew I could not survive this.

Then he leaned forward and kissed me, and the world righted itself. Some fundamental pattern had been askew, but now it had been corrected. I was no longer a ghost in this time, but myself, as if I’d stepped back into my body.

“I—I thought I’d walk out to meet you,” I replied, smiling back at him. I was astonished at how easy it was to talk to him, as if we’d never stopped. “I guessed you’d take Rue des Hirondelles—it’s such a pretty street. How is your aunt?”

Because of course I knew where he’d been—in this time, his aunt lived only a few blocks to the east; he’d gone to visit her daily after Havelock’s enchantment had been unleashed upon the world. A shudder ran through me, remembering that the old woman would die only a few months from now. And with that, I was a ghost again.

“Better, I think,” he said. “I brought her groceries and helped her with the washing up—it’s why I’m so late.”

I nodded distantly. I wasn’t listening to the words at all, but the timbre of his voice.

“Something’s the matter,” he said, frowning as he examined me closely. A lock of hair had fallen onto his forehead. Robin had dark hair—about as dark as Havelock’s, but with more red in it. His face was paler, his eyes hooded in a way that made him look attractively languid, I’d always thought, as well as slightly amused, from the permanent creases at the corners. “What is it? You don’t normally come looking for me.”

“I—” I shook myself, then said simply, “Nothing is normal these days. I couldn’t sleep.”

“Go home,” he said, kissing me again. “Go to bed. I promised Thérèse I would look for those kittens she saw under the bridge—knowing her eyesight, it’s equally likely they were raccoons.”

“They were opossums the last time,” I said. I found I couldn’t stop smiling at him, even as I felt as if I were drowning, cold pressing in on me on all sides.

He nodded mock-seriously. “And as I said then, there’s no reason we can’t expand the charity. I quite like opossums.”

“You like everything,” I said. “You go home. I’ll look for kittens.” If he got home and found me in bed—where no doubt a version of me was, at this moment—he would only assume I’d changed my mind, and taken a shortcut. I couldn’t remember him ever mentioning this meeting of ours by Rue des Hirondelles—but then, why would he? He would have had no need to remind me of something he assumed I’d experienced myself.

I kissed him again. I wished I could never stop kissing him. “Give Ariel my love.”

“Of course,” he said, seeing nothing strange about this, because he knew I hated to be away from Ariel, an elderly shelter resident who had been with us for several months before passing away, never having found a home, but having found much love with us.

“I’m sure he’s curled up by the woodstove now,” Robin continued, “dreaming of his mouse, not even aware we’re gone.”

I gave a quiet laugh. That mouse had been the only one Ariel ever caught while he lived at the shelter, his final triumph. Whenever the old cat twitched his paws in his sleep, Robin and I would joke that he was dreaming of his mouse, and when I admonished the cat for sharpening his claws on the floorboards, Robin would say he was only keeping himself in fighting form should the mouse return. The joke was as familiar as a groove worn in a stair by my own feet.

“I missed you,” I said, gripping his arms with a sudden, painful desperation, because it was impossible to think of letting him go. It didn’t matter if the world ended before my eyes or time came apart.

But I didn’t want to frighten him. So I forced myself to smile, as if I’d meant it half in jest. “I always miss you.”