Reserved for the Cat (24 page)

Nina still thought that burning down the theater was the best plan. The question was, how to do so without showing her magical nature. Her second attempt was more straightforward in execution but devious in planning.

Taking on the look of one of the ruffians she had absorbed, she went in search of the sort of pub where unsavory deals could be made. Then, once she found such a pub, she let it be known that her employer had a building she wanted removed from the property it was on.

It was not long before she was sharing drinks with someone who thought that might be arranged. He was a little surprised to discover the building in question, but it was just a brief flash, and then he was all business. Nina was relieved to discover that he did not
want
to know why the theater needed to be burned. She did not offer said explanation. She merely paid him what he asked, and settled back in her suite to await the results.

But the results were disappointing. There was no fire on the stipulated date, and the next day the sensation of the morning paper was that a known arsonist had been caught red-handed, and he was expected to be spending the rest of his life in prison.

Credit for the discovery was given to a young police constable, but Nina cursed, knowing in her heart it must have been that wretched Fire Master.

She made one more attempt, but her heart wasn’t in it; like the first try, she used an animal to try and carry fire into the building. This time it was the starlings that nested in the top. She gave them matches and twists of oiled paper which they carried up to the roof and tucked into their nests; she intended to do just a tiny bit of magic to ignite the matches themselves. That failed as the first had; one of the wretched birds dropped its burden on a passer-by, and the next thing Nina knew, the building was being scoured and the poor starlings lost all the nests they had started.

She also looked for ways to lure the imposter out away from anyone else; if she ever managed that, the result would be that the imposter would be absorbed, and Nina would change into her clothing and take her place. At least for a little bit—just long enough to have a great row with the theater owner and flounce out.

But the girl wouldn’t accept invitations of that sort. No “I have something that might be to your advantage,” no supper invitations from handsome young men, no—nothing.

In fact, the girl led a life so cloistered that it gave Nina pause. Not the work—Nina herself did the work of a dancer, and a good one too—but the sacrifice, that was unprecedented. No little téte-a-téte dinner parties with select gentlemen. No afternoons off for a picnic. No afternoons off shopping! That was what truly astonished Nina; every other dancer she had ever known was an inveterate shopper!

It was a pity too, since shopping would have been the ideal way to take her. Become a helpful shop girl, suggest there were better things in a back room. Take her there—and become her. No one the wiser.

There would be a complication of course, because it was possible that she might just decide to stay here. That impresario in Germany . . . she could cancel the appearances . . . but then she would have to eliminate him, too, or return his money. If she didn’t he would probably sue for breach of contract.

All right. It was time to play to her strong suit. Use her own Element.

Ninette limbered herself backstage at afternoon rehearsal. She had taken the ball, hoop, and ribbon dances out, and had put in two pure ballet solos. Both, had she been asked, were blatant copies of two of Anna Pavlova’s dances—“Waterlily” was a copy of her “California Poppy,” complete with bringing the petals of her skirt up around her at the finale when the stage went dark, and “Fairy,” which was a copy of Pavlova’s “Dragonfly.” But Anna Pavlova was far away and unlikely to ever get to Blackpool, and people were actually coming to Blackpool for their holidays to see
her!

Of course most of that was due to her miraculous “rescue” that spring. But still. . . .

“Those dances are rather good,” Jonathon said from behind her.

She shrugged, and bent over to touch her forehead to her knees and hold the position for a moment. “I copied them from Pavlova,” she said frankly.

“I know,” came the surprising reply. “I saw ‘California Poppy’ and ‘Dragonfly’ in Monte Carlo.”

She straightened so fast she almost hurt herself. “What? And you said nothing to Nigel?”

It was his turn to shrug. “He wouldn’t care. I know I don’t. A dance isn’t like a magic trick. I don’t think you can ever say ‘that’s mine’ once you’ve done it in public.”

“I suppose so,” she said, dubiously. She hesitated, but anything she was going to tell him was lost as the trained dog act suddenly saw Thomas, and idiotically forgot all of their tricks. Thomas headed straight for the dressing room with the pack in full cry behind him and the frantic trainer right behind them. Ninette let them all run—she knew very well that Thomas was more than a match for a hundred dogs—but Jonathon swore and raced after them all. Perhaps he was concerned for the dogs.

But that was the moment when things began to thaw between them.

N
INETTE was keeping her muscles warm in the wings when the female half of the dog-training act dashed up to her, face white. “Have you seen Nigel?” she asked, breathlessly. Ninette stared at her, perplexed and alarmed, all at once, and pointed to stage left, where Nigel’s sleeve was just barely visible behind a piece of scenery.

The dog trainer—Ninette strained to remember her name since the act went by the name of “Harrigan’s Amazing Hounds”—rushed across the stage in a blatant violation of all the rules of performance.
Thou shalt not cross the stage during someone else’s act in rehearsal
—dress rehearsal, of course, not band-call.

The act she ran through was, thank heavens, that of the character-comic, who was a good-natured old fellow, even if he did partake of the bottle a bit more than he should have. He kept right on, like a trouper, even as the female trainer seized Nigel—literally!—and began an urgent speech that started off quietly but very, very rapidly ascended into the hysterical.

She spoke too rapidly for Ninette to understand her, given that for Ninette, English was still very hard to comprehend unless people spoke in a leisurely manner. She got a few words here and there—
accident
and
broken legs.

She rushed back across the stage again, her agitation visible, her eyes seeing nothing but the way out. Ninette kept warming up. No matter what, the show went on. It always went on. Only the death of a monarch would close down a show.

But in just exactly the time it took for someone to cross from stage left to stage right through the backstage area, Nigel appeared at her elbow. “Harrigan somehow fell into a hole in the street and broke both legs,” he said grimly. “I hate to ask you to—”

“I will put back the ball, ribbon, and ring dances,” she said instantly. It was not as if they were great effort to perform. Not like the
Black Swan
pas-de-deux. Not like
Giselle’s
Mad Scene. Not like the
Corsair
solos. They were, in fact, full of little pauses, rests, where she could catch her breath before going on to the next difficult passage. And they were done on
demi-pointe
rather than full
pointe.
She would have to change her shoes, but that was no great difficulty, and if worst came to worst and the ribbons wouldn’t unknot, she could cut them off and Ailse could put new ribbons on while she danced
en pointe.

Nigel nodded with relief and gratitude. “I’ll be in my office; I should have a replacement act by tomorrow.”

She shrugged. “So long as the audience is not bored with me, I can dance the extra solos for as long as you need me to.”

He just said something that sounded like “You’re a brick,” and dashed off to his office. She was left shaking her head. It was going to be a long and strenuous night.

She went looking for her ball, ring, and ribbon music. At least the band knew it. And at least the hole she would be filling was in the middle of the bill. She’d be well rested by the time her skirt dance came up.

By band call the third day after Harrigan broke his legs, if Nigel had been any other impresario, he would have been tearing his hair out. Because by that time, it was beginning to look as if the Fates had targeted him for disaster.

This was a very desirable venue for most performers; a six-week engagement at minimum meant it was possible to relax, unpack, mend things, take in the local sights. It was, after all, the audience that changed during the season in Blackpool; virtually a new audience twice a week. Nigel usually had far more acts auditioning than he had slots for them.

But now . . . first Harrigan, who had fallen into a hole that his wife swore literally “opened up in front of them” and broken both his legs. It was a good thing for both of them that Nigel knew a doctor who was also an Elemental magician, though not a master. He did not care to think of what a butcher’s job an ordinary doctor would make of such a patient. So Harrigan was now splinted and resting comfortably surrounded by wife and dogs, a stone’s throw from the doctor’s office. Nigel was keeping him on wages, partly because it seemed the right thing to do, and partly because he wanted the Hounds for the big show, and when Harrigan was well again, he would certainly feel a debt of gratitude to Nigel.

But the next day brought another unpleasant surprise.

Three of the acts just . . . quit, with four more weeks to run on their contracts. They wouldn’t tell him why, nor would their agents, but he suspected that a rumored Australian impresario with a supposed “golden tour” was to blame. On the one hand, he viciously wished all of them to perdition. On the other... he knew how most of these things turned out—with performers stranded in the middle of nowhere with no money and no prospects of getting any, sick with heat and tropical disease and bitterly regretting the decision that had brought them to that pass. He had already made up his mind that he was not going to ask these acts to stick for the big show, but still, he needed them
now.
He was not going to ask Nina to put in another turn, and anyway, she could hardly make up for half the show missing.

As it happened, though, Nigel was the rare sort who always assumed some disaster was going to overtake his shows, his theater, or the season, and planned accordingly.

He regularly made forays into the countryside and as far as Liverpool, looking for people with talent who had not yet “caught on.” Two fast trips in his motorcar yielded him a perky little singer with a genuine gift for comic timing and a “novelty” juggler and his partner, a fellow who impersonated a drunken “toff” with an impertinent maid who kept piling things into his arms when he came home after a night on the tiles. He rushed them to the theater in time for a quick rehearsal; to fill the last slot, Jonathon put in an act he seldom performed anymore, a Hindoo fire-eater. It was all
real
magic, of course, and as such it was something of a risk. If there was an untrained Elemental mage in the audience, Jonathon’s performance might “wake him up.” And there were those who hunted Masters as well, though usually feuds were of a personal nature.