Agnes Aubert's Mystical Cat Shelter

Agnes Aubert, a 35-year-old widow, runs Les Amis des Chats, a small cat rescue charity in Montréal. When a magical duel blasts a hole in her shelter on Rue Sainte-Roseline, Agnes must find a new location before winter. In this world, magicians are rare individuals who draw power from a mysterious otherworld and bind it into physical objects called Artefacts, the trade of which is illegal. Agnes co-founded the shelter with her late husband Robin, who died of a sudden heart defect two years earlier. She is assisted by her younger sister Élise, who also serves as campaign manager for Élise's husband Gabriel, a city councillor.

After repeated rejections from landlords unwilling to house cats, Agnes wanders into Rue des Hirondelles, a street she has been inexplicably drawn to in recent weeks. She rents a vacant shop from Yannick Abrams, a nervous young man acting as the landlord's representative. The spacious building contains a mysterious stone oven and a trapdoor in the back room. Despite the eerily low rent and the shop's unsettling, watchful quality, Agnes accepts, having no alternatives for her 48 cats. Among her charges are His Majesty, an enormous black-and-white feral who had been Robin's favourite; Banshee, a nearly round, perpetually silent tabby; and Thoreau, a gentle senior who has lived at the shelter the longest.

Agnes, Élise, and their sole volunteer Mina move the cats to the new location. The shelter sees early success, but Agnes notices finely dressed visitors descending through the trapdoor and suspects the shop is an illegal magic shop. Detective Laurent Rouzet visits under the guise of welcoming a new business but asks pointed questions about the absent landlord. Oksana, the bookshop owner next door, confirms the landlord is a magician.

On the night of the first snowfall, Valérie Renard breaks into the shelter demanding to see her brother, whom she identifies as Havelock Renard, the Witch King, the most feared magician alive. When Valérie tears the building apart with magic, a monstrous figure of shadow and flame erupts from the trapdoor. Havelock then appears in human form, barefoot and in pyjamas, his rings and earrings all serving as Artefacts. The siblings duel: Valérie hurls lightning that Havelock catches in his palm; she summons a crystalline dragon that swallows him, but he destroys it from within and blasts her out through the window.

Havelock explains that Valérie wants a legendary Artefact: a book created by Alice Vortigern, history's greatest magician, which allows travel to the past. With it, Valérie could raid Vortigern's library before it burned in the 1680s, claiming spells of immense power. Havelock insists he does not have the book. He casts a spell that wrenches the entire shop to Rue Sainte-Sophie. When police investigate, Agnes improvises a story while invisible Havelock whispers instructions in her ear. After the officers leave, Havelock departs through a door into the Rivenwood, a dark, ancient forest world that is the source of all magic, transforming into his spectral shadow-form as he crosses the threshold.

Havelock returns and restores the shelter to Rue des Hirondelles, leaving Rue Sainte-Sophie as a functional second location. Élise urges Agnes to leave, arguing that Havelock almost caused an apocalypse three years earlier, but Agnes refuses to abandon the cats. Yannick, Havelock's apprentice, reports that Valérie's apprentices have arrived in the city, transforming a locomotive into winged horses at the train station. Agnes descends into Havelock's basement workshop, a vast space crammed with Artefacts, and finds him injured, his left leg flickering between human and spectral form. He reveals that a tracking spell from the earlier duel drew Agnes to Rue des Hirondelles and led Valérie to him. He explains that magicians who linger in the Rivenwood lose their humanity and become spectres, mindless shadow-creatures, and that he is losing pieces of himself.

Agnes proposes a bargain: She will organize Havelock's collection and search for Vortigern's book in exchange for his enchanting a few cats with harmless charms to drive adoptions. He reluctantly agrees and gives Agnes an enchanted pen that reveals the spell stored in any Artefact. The shelter's popularity surges as rumours of mystical cats spread. Agnes discovers the oven produces pastry at midnight because Havelock burned an Artefact inside it containing a spell for granting one's heart's desire. Over late-night conversations, Havelock confides that Valérie stole his apocalypse spell, which he created at 19, and unleashed it recklessly. After a stranger stole Vortigern's lantern, an Artefact that absorbs magic, Havelock traveled to the Fourth Fathom of the Rivenwood, the fourth of its five increasingly dangerous depths. He sacrificed much of his humanity to create a spell powerful enough to reverse the disaster. Agnes impulsively kisses Havelock after he rids the shelter of fleas, then immediately flees upstairs.

The Daily Gazette runs a story about the shelter being investigated for trafficking in enchanted cats, triggering a stampede that empties both locations. Valérie launches a full assault, having trapped Havelock in the Rivenwood and put Yannick to sleep. Havelock escapes and battles the apprentices, but Valérie seizes His Majesty and flees through a magical door. Agnes is devastated; losing Robin's cat reopens her grief. Laurent, who had invited Agnes to the winter festival, arrests her there, revealing that he is himself a magician and that the police know about Havelock's shop. He confiscates her enchanted pen and warns that new legislation will grant police sweeping powers to search for Artefacts.

Valérie bypasses Havelock's wards through a passage between the basement and the neighbouring bookshop's collapsed cellar, a gap His Majesty discovered. Her apprentices arm themselves with Havelock's most dangerous Artefacts using Agnes's catalogue. Agnes realizes the book is inside the baker's oven, where Banshee has been napping. She and Élise find a small, singed volume with empty pages whose magic has leaked into the brickwork. The nightly pastry works by turning back time to when the baker was present, the same mechanism that powers the time-travel spell.

Agnes speaks the incantation and transports herself and Élise three years into the past, to the second night of the apocalypse. They emerge during the world's ending: unnatural darkness and chaotic storms. Agnes rescues a small black kitten with a deformed front leg. On Mount Royal, they find Havelock battling magicians who believe killing him will end the crisis. Agnes convinces him to hand over the lantern by telling him it will not work against his spell, that he must travel to the Fourth Fathom and create a partition spell, information she knows because he told her in the future. On the walk back, Agnes encounters Robin, alive and smiling. She kisses him and forces herself to walk away, unable to change the past.

Agnes and Élise return to the present, led by the kitten through a gap in the spell, and Agnes thrusts the lantern into Havelock's hands. He casts Vortigern's enchantment: A cold, dark wave sweeps through the workshop, absorbing all magic and stripping Valérie's apprentices of their innate gift. Valérie collapses; Havelock whispers an apology. Banshee, who has never made a sound beyond purring, drives His Majesty away with bared fangs when the larger cat attacks Havelock. Valérie slips out through the passage with His Majesty.

Crowds gather in support of Les Amis des Chats and of Havelock after coverage frames him as defending the neighbourhood. The city council defers the bylaw granting police sweeping search powers. Laurent apologizes and adopts Ambulance, the shelter's loudest cat. Agnes adopts Thoreau and names the rescued kitten Cataclysm. She glimpses Valérie with His Majesty draped over her shoulder and accepts she cannot take him back. Havelock enchants the shelter with an illusion of tropical birds and reveals he has attached the attic to a Montmartre rooftop via a portal spell. He nervously attempts to ask Agnes to coffee. Amused, she suggests a café in Paris, and when Havelock clambers out the window to make arrangements, Agnes sets aside her evening checklist and follows him into the new city.