Reserved for the Cat (22 page)

She also learned that the imposter had so thoroughly ingratiated herself with the theater management that an enormous production was being planned solely around
her.
So there would be no hope in disenchanting the management with her, either. . . .

Nina would have to think of an entirely different plan of attack.

With that in mind, she left the bottles of champagne with their surprised and gratified recipients, and returned to her hotel. Once there, she got the boxes from where she had hidden them, then applied at the service entrance for admission to her own suite. The room was rung for permission, the maid gave it, and Nina took herself back up to her quarters and assumed her rightful form.

Once there, she paced like a caged lion, restlessly, trying to think of a way to undermine the girl. She could not do so on the basis of talent, that much was clear. The girl had made far too many friends in that theater to do so there, too. Why could she not have been a scheming, vituperative shrew? Why hadn’t she been arrogant, cold, heartless? Why had she spent time and money distributing little favors to the stagehands? Why hadn’t she had furious arguments with the orchestra?

Furthermore, there were not even rival lovers to set against each other, nor was there a hint of scandal to excite the interest of the press and outrage the public! Why hadn’t the girl had the decency to take up with a married man as his lover? That sort of thing was shrugged at on the Continent, even expected, but it could have brought her down completely in so-proper England!

Well there was no use in lamenting what had not happened. Nina needed to think of something that could.

Well . . . there was the possibility of creating a scandal out of nothing. She could find someone utterly unsuitable who
wanted
to be the girl’s lover, make him think that the girl reciprocated his feelings, then inform the wife . . . that would take time, however. And a great deal of effort.

Well it would certainly do to at least start that project. She could begin by finding such a man. One of the imposter’s many admirers, who crowded her dressing room, no doubt, was of the proper stuff to turn into a man obsessed.

But in the meantime . . .

She shook her head. She was famished, and not for mortal food. She had not drained anyone since that street urchin, and he had been relatively unsatisfactory. There had not been a great deal of life in him; it had gotten beaten and starved out of him by the streets. There were two kinds of people that provided her with a satisfactory repast. First and foremost were those rich old men, who were fat with abundant living and experiences. All those memories, all the things they had accomplished—it was like a multi-course meal created by the finest of chefs.

And then there were the young men, full of passion, dreams, hopes, and desires. Everything about them was sharp, new, flavored with high emotion. She could not have said which were her favorites. . . .

But tonight, on such short notice, it would be much, much easier to find a young man.

She summoned her manservant. Tonight she would be taking another long walk.

T
HE show was coming together. In fact, it had progressed far enough that the entire score was complete, and Arthur was rehearsing the orchestra in their parts, Maestro Ciccolini and Ninette had finished their choreography and Ninette was rehearsing her numbers, as well as dancing in the evening. At first, Ninette had been worried that her act would get stale—music hall audiences were used to seeing a different bill every week, after all. But Nigel assured her that Blackpool, at least in holiday season, was very different. The audience changed every week, so to them, the revue was entirely new. And he was right.

Ninette’s admirers had gone from a handful to a young army. None of them were what she was looking for, but then, she was no longer looking very hard. It seemed that the more she danced, and the more audience acclaim she had, the more she craved the applause. It was no longer thinkable that if she ever
did
find a protector, she would give up dancing. She might have felt alarm at this, except that she came off the stage every night feeling invigorated rather than drained.

Not that any of the gentlemen who filled her dressing room with flowers were the sort to offer the kind of arrangement that suited her. Still, some pleasant things came from all these admirers. Not just flowers, which were delightful and kept her flat scented sweetly—there were some more permanent presents. Nothing spectacular, nothing so enormously expensive that accepting it would have implied certain expectations that would have to be fulfilled . . . no, these were pretty, but more modest tokens. A pair of garnet and tortoiseshell combs, a handsome set of enameled gold necklace, bracelet and earrings in the Egyptian style, any number of less remarkable pieces of jewelry, pairs of gloves, fans, lace handkerchiefs—all tokens of esteem, mute pleas for preference, but not demands for attention. The one time a rather remarkable sapphire bracelet had appeared on her dressing table, it had been very firmly given back to the one who had proffered it.

There were also many pleasant suppers, and a few parties—all of them in the company of other members of the company, of course. Usually Nigel came along, in fact. And if she was not the first to leave these affairs, she was certainly never the last.

Certain members of the circle of admirers remained, men who lived and worked in Blackpool. Others appeared, only to vanish: those who were not residents. The two sorts were easy to tell apart, and Ninette and Ailse had a little game between them, of how long it would take for these birds-of-passage to understand that money could not necessarily purchase everything their hearts desired. She wasn’t worried; the one and only time a “gentleman” had gotten a little too demanding, she’d broken his instep for him. Ballet dancers might look fragile, but dancing built muscles.

He had been the exception though, and she had felt so little threatened at the time that she did not even bother to tell Nigel and have him barred from the theater. In the first place, his broken foot was going to keep him safely confined to his hotel until it was time for him to depart back to whatever grim industrial town had spawned him. For another, he had learned his lesson rather sharply. No need to get Nigel involved.

But Thomas the cat was not happy. And neither was the magician, Jonathon Hightower, but Thomas was someone she could actually
talk
to. The magician would only look annoyed, sullen, or angry, and tell her to leave the magical business in his hands.

“What on earth is wrong?” she finally asked the cat, after his prowling and peering out of windows on what should have been a quiet evening finally got on her nerves. “We had a delightful supper, the house was almost full, tomorrow the theater is dark and we have that dinner party—and I have not seen a sign of this inimical, invisible enemy you think I have.”

She didn’t add
an enemy that you made up in the first place,
because Ailse was in the room, but her brief glare at Thomas said it for her.

But the cat had other ideas.
There
is
something out there, and it is no friend to you. I just cannot figure out who or what it is, nor what it wants.

She blinked a little in surprise. So this wasn’t part of his elaborate ruse?

“I can’t imagine why—” she began.

That’s the problem. Neither can I.
He sighed gustily.
I suppose I will have to investigate this. Jonathon—

She frowned. “I would not take anything Master Hightower says to be an indication of anything at all other than his overactive imagination. He sees a bit of rope and sees a serpent, a shadow and thinks it is a spirit.”

She flung up her hands. “Have it your own way then! Is there any reason why this mysterious something you both sense must be planning on me as its victim? What about Nigel? Arthur? Wolf? You? Even Jonathon? All of you are far more likely to have collected magical enemies than I!”

The cat hesitated.
I suppose that is possible . . .

“I would say it was far more likely.” She sniffed. “The only enemy
I
am likely to have would be the sort that would put ground glass in the toes of my shoes, or cut the shoulder-straps of my costumes.” She surprised herself with a yawn. “I am going to bed. You may stay up and watch all night if you please.”

Hmm,
was all Thomas would say.

After a great deal of thought, and a great many discarded plans, Nina decided to attack obliquely by attacking not the girl herself, but the theater. If the physical building was gone, she would have no place to perform. If she had no place to perform, she would be cast out on her own, without a salary, and be easier to get at. At this point Nina had decided that she
would
absorb the girl. Not just out of revenge, but because it could be useful to have a second identity ready and waiting to step into which provided such fruitful rewards for her kind.

So that was her plan. Attack the theater, destroy it, and flush the quarry.

As for how that was to be done . . . although fire obviously was not Nina’s Element, fire was the easiest, and that was what she would try first.

Jonathon Hightower watched the Salamander twine around the fingers of his left hand, and frowned. Strictly speaking, Elementals could not see the future, not as a human clairvoyant could, at any rate. But they could sense when something was going to happen a short time before it actually did, and they reacted to that.

This one was agitated. Very agitated. Enough to make it come to Jonathon without being invoked, which was something Fire Elementals rarely did. All he could discern from it was the sense of danger, danger and destruction, coming soon.

Wait—
No, he sensed something more. The danger had to do with fire.

Fire was always a theatrical nightmare. Everything about a theater was a fire hazard. The scenery, made of canvas painted with oils, the curtains, the dry wood . . . it was worse in the days of limelight and gaslight of course. There were terrible stories of performers getting too close to the lights and going up in flames. That was why there were buckets of sand, and sometimes water, tucked unobtrusively away everywhere in the wings.

Finally, the Salamander grew frantic, and he decided he was going to take a walk.

His present lodgings were, in fact, the guest bedroom that the dancer had just vacated. Nigel saw no reason for him to take his own lodgings, and every reason why he should
not.
Here, among Nigel’s trained servants, accustomed to mages and magic, he could do whatever he chose to do and not so much as a raised eyebrow would occur. Outside of these walls, however, was a land of nosy landladies, curious fellow tenants, and a wealth of horror stories about what had happened when an ordinary person stumbled into someone working magic. And truth to tell, for all his apparent misanthropy, Jonathon liked the company of others well enough if his companions were intelligent.