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I’m not proud of what I did next. But I had to keep Havelock from enchanting me, though I had no power over him, no spells I could throw his way.

So, I threw the cat.

The black kitten gave a yowl as I launched her at Havelock. He began to yowl, too, flailing his arms as the cat’s claws made contact with his face, before his shouts became a strangled sort of sneezing fit. He tripped over a root and landed hard on his back.

I was at Élise’s side in an instant. To my immense relief, she was still breathing, and her eyelids flickered. “Élise,” I said, shaking her. “Élise!”

“So tired,” she mumbled. “Agnes, run…That bastard…”

The rest was half-intelligible cursing. Élise tried to push herself up, but she only fell back, head lolling. Had Havelock placed a sleep spell on her, as he’d once threatened to do to me?

Behind me, Havelock let out a groan. He’d shoved himself up on one hand and had the other pressed to his cheek, which seemed to be bleeding. I couldn’t see where the cat had gone.

“Havelock, it’s me,” I pleaded. It was nonsensical; Havelock didn’t know me yet. But I couldn’t stop myself.

He looked at me—we were only a few feet from each other. A flicker of recognition passed over his face, and he stilled. He said, very quietly, “Vortigern?”

I stared at him. He stared back at me.

Then I burst out laughing.

I laughed so long my throat ached and I began to cough. When I finally caught my breath, Havelock was glaring at me. He didn’t look otherworldly anymore—he looked like his familiar, awkward self.

“I don’t see why that’s a ridiculous question,” he said, and even in the dark, I could see his face was red. “You’re cloaked in Vortigern’s magic. Not every magician could sense it, but I can. And she was said to be half mad, which would explain why you were wandering around in the woods with a cat down your sweater.”

“I’m Agnes,” I said. “Sorry to disappoint you.”

“Agnes,” he repeated doubtfully. “Not Alice?”

I could see he still thought I could be the great Vortigern, and it threatened to send me over the edge again. I wondered why he couldn’t tell that I wasn’t a magician—but then, I realized, given the darkness, it was no longer obvious that he was, now that he wasn’t being swept along by impossible winds or hurling spells at people. I’d been able to defeat him, even if it had been with a cat rather than an enchantment, which no other living magician should have been capable of, and if Vortigern’s magic still clung to me from the time-travel spell, it wasn’t an illogical conclusion for him to draw, I supposed.

I suppressed another half-hysterical snort.

Havelock was examining my face as if trying to read an antiquated book. “I do know you, don’t I? Have we met before?”

A shiver ran through me. Did time not work the same way for magicians as it did for humans? Did Havelock possess some gift of foresight beyond my ability to comprehend? Or was it the spell I’d used, Vortigern’s Artefact, that had made this moment echo through time like a carillon?

And then, fast on the heels of that thought: Havelock knew me. Not now, in this moment—three years from now.

I saw our first meeting unfold again before me—what I had thought was our first meeting, back in the shelter on Rue des Hirondelles. Valérie’s attack, which had only happened because I was there; Havelock in his nightclothes, casting her out. How he’d come towards me, the strange look on his face.

Agnes, he’d said. You’re here.

I hadn’t understood, at the time, the look of recognition in his eyes. He’d known me, because he’d met me before—here, on the second night of the world’s ending.

And then, I supposed, he’d spent the next three years wondering if he’d met the great Alice Vortigern. How disappointed he must have been when we met again on Rue des Hirondelles, to find I was not the greatest magician who ever lived, but the exceptionally ordinary proprietress of a cat shelter.

“Yes, you know me,” I told him. How much could I say, I wondered, without opening some vast fissure in time? “Though it seems impossible that you would remember. That shouldn’t be how memory works.”

“This is precisely what I was hoping for,” he said. “A mysterious stranger to burden me with riddles. As if I don’t have enough to do tonight.” His voice had an undercurrent of laughter that bordered on unhinged and he looked wearier than I’d ever seen him, the hollows under his eyes even more heavily shadowed than usual. He seemed relieved to rest there on the forest floor, dabbing at the scratch on his face.

“I don’t see that you have any right to complain about that, given that you talk in riddles fully half the time,” I said.

“And you would know, would you?” Havelock said. “Very well, you ridiculous person. What is it you want?”

“The lantern,” I said. “You must give it to me, Havelock. If you don’t, a great many people will die.”

I was thinking of the cats when I said this—the cats and Havelock, my Havelock. Perhaps a loose definition of people, but I will make no apologies for that. And who knew how many other lives would be at risk if Valérie wasn’t stopped?