The following Sunday, Shade had planned to visit the Mental Sanatorium with the Doctor to look for someone who could be used to create a Mind Crystal, but the renovations at 6 Saint Derain Square had been completed and required his personal inspection.
The inspection process, along with having the workers move the basement furniture upstairs and arrange it, took up the entire morning. By the time all the workers had left, it was nearly one in the afternoon, and Shade departed the house with Mia.
He first locked the door and put the key in his pocket, then, smiling, took it back out and unlocked the door.
Though he did not need a key to open the door, it was a matter of ritual now.
He pulled open the door and entered with the cat. Turning around, he shut it, took a deep breath as he faced the staircase before him, and said:
"Look, Mia, it's all ours!"
He laughed as well, placed the key in the biscuit tin atop the shoe cabinet, then carried the curious cat, who kept poking her head around without knowing what she wanted to do, into the basement behind the stairs.
He reached out and turned the gas lamp switch on the wall, bright light illuminating the space before him. The basement walls had been painted, and a small amount of construction material, such as metal pipes and stone bricks, was now piled there. Several wooden racks that Shade had asked the carpenter to make stood against the wall. When he turned this place into an underground Alchemy Workshop or potion laboratory in the future, both the stone bricks and shelves would come in handy.
"This is really nice."
He said, then brought the cat back to the 1st Floor.
Unlike the floors