Reserved for the Cat (40 page)

All this was running through her mind as she arrived at the solicitor’s office for her meeting with the newspaper man. She had put forth a great deal of effort to look her best, and at the same time, to look every inch the
prima.
There must be no doubt in this man’s mind that he was in the presence of a great dancer, even if he had never heard of her nor had any ideas about ballet.

The man in question was sitting in the solicitor’s office when she arrived. He took his time about getting to his feet, eyeing her with an insolence that made her seethe. If she had not needed him, she would have slapped that expression from his face, then ambushed him in the night and absorbed him. Perhaps she would anyway, when she no longer needed him. He was a very unprepossessing man, no longer young, yet holding himself as if he felt he were much younger than his actual years. His suit was slightly rumpled, and though hardly of the best quality, was definitely of the most modern cut. Most gentlemen would have considered it a touch too loud. He did not remove his hat, of the type known as a derby, in her presence, a fact that she resented. Perhaps he was ashamed to; his mousey brown hair looked rather thin, and needed a trim badly. His face wore what looked to be a perpetual smirk, as if he considered himself ever so much more intelligent than most of the people he encountered. His complexion was starting to show the effects of hard drinking, and his eyes, narrow and shrewd, were just a little bloodshot.

She allowed him, reluctantly, to shake her hand, then took a seat. Immediately he began going over the papers in her file, one by one, asking her pointed and detailed questions about all of them. Some of his questions were impertinent, and she felt her temper rising. He seemed to be amused by this, and the more amused he became, the more she was determined to give him the punishment he so richly deserved when she no longer needed him.

Finally he shoved her portfolio of papers aside. “I like this story,” he said, bluntly. “I’ll take it on.”

He would not be pinned down to how soon he intended to publish the story—or rather, what would probably be the first of several stories. “This will be a fight,” he warned. “They are not simply going to say, ‘Oh dear, you caught us, it’s a fair cop,’ and reveal the girl’s true name. They are going to demand proof. What you have here—” he tapped the portfolio “—is good, but hardly conclusive; it could all be fabricated and I expect them to point that out. But I’ll think of something you can do, I am sure.”

He was so arrogant! Assuming that she would not be able to think of anything for herself! And how on earth was he remaining proof against her magic-enhanced charm? That baffled her as much as his attitude infuriated her.

She would kill him. She would not merely absorb him as she did with most of her victims, taking them unaware and rendering them unconscious first; she would do it while he was aware and conscious and she would do it slowly.

Oh how she wished she did not need him!

She parted company with him and with the solicitor, once again leaving the portfolio, this time in the reporter’s possession. She was stiffly correct, and as she shook hands coldly with the man, he dared to grin at her. “You don’t care for me, miss,” he said baldly. “Well, I don’t care much for you. I expect you’re accustomed to men dancing attendance on you, and being your lap-dogs. You’re told what a tremendous artist you are, and all of that tommy-rot. Well, to me you’re the same as that girl that you say is using your name, and you’re both of you no better and no worse than the can-can dancer on the boardwalk. All three of you pull up your skirts and kick and show your legs—you and that girl just pretend it’s more refined, which, to my mind, makes the can-can dancer the more honest of the three of you. But I know a story when I see one, and this one is worth chasing after. You need me, and I need you, so you may glare all you like, and I’ll sneer all I like, but the story will still get printed, and we’ll see what kind of a dust-up we can start.”

Rigid with anger, she left, the solicitor at her elbow, apologizing for the reporter, babbling almost, about how his manner was rough, but he was the best in the city, how dogged he was in pursuing facts, and how fair he was in laying them out. The solicitor kept up this babble all the way to the street, where he hailed a taxi for her. As he handed her into it, Nina finally spoke.

“If this were Saint Petersburg,” she said wrathfully, “I would horsewhip him until he bled from a hundred cuts. He is an ignorant peasant. But he has a peasant’s cunning, and I believe you when you say he will write the stories to expose this imposter. But keep him from me.
You
deal with him. I would rather feed pigs with my own hands than speak with him again.”

Notions of increased fees doubtlessly dancing in his head, the solicitor hastily agreed, and she directed the taxi back to her flat.

The first thing she did when the door was shut and locked tightly behind her was to transform to her true form with a roar of rage. Her garments did not so much tear as burst asunder with the sound of shredding silk. Her servants already knew what to do; they had surely felt her anger for the last hour at least.

They performed exactly as she expected them to. They had clearly prepared for her, and now they fled before her, and opened the door to the cellar with cringing deference. She stood on the top step as they closed the door behind her, and listened to the whimpering of terror from below.

The Troll bared her teeth in a parody of a smile. Her servants had chosen well. Not one, but three victims cowered in the corners of the cellar, trying to somehow become one with the rough brick walls. Her eyes adjusted to the darkness, and she assessed the two slatternly women and the man awaiting her pleasure. By the tattered finery and the display of cleavage, by the too-loud, cheap suit and the air of a bully who finds himself in the power of someone unexpectedly stronger than he, she had a good notion of who her servants had plucked off the street for her. Two prostitutes, and she supposed the man was their procurer.

“Mistress,” one of the servants said through the door, “we brought the women here. The man followed; he broke in and threatened us, and demanded money.” She smiled. Good. She would take him first.

And she would make him last a long, long time. This was going to be no simple absorption. Tonight she was going to
feed.

N
INETTE was summoned in the middle of her exercises to Nigel’s office; puzzled, because she could not imagine what could have warranted such an interruption, she quickly toweled herself off and threw on her dress without bothering to tidy her hair or take off her rehearsal tights and demi-pointe shoes.

There she found Nigel, Arthur, Wolf, and Jonathon, all bent over something on Nigel’s desk, and the humans, at least, looking rather grim.

“What is amiss?” she asked, feeling uneasy, as they all turned to look at her.

“We have an unexpected problem,” Arthur replied, stabbing his finger down at what was now revealed to be a folded-back section of a newspaper. There were several more like it on the desk; Arthur picked this one up and handed it to her.

The first thing she saw was her own publicity photograph, taken in her costume of the Tudor Rose dance.
Dancer Revealed A Fraud!
shouted the headline.

Her heart in her mouth, she skimmed through the article as best she could, wrestling with the English. Quickly she got the gist of the matter. The real Nina Tchereslavsky had turned up—and how had that happened?—and the reporter was trumpeting the fact that Ninette was an imposter. He did not quite go so far as to claim her shipwreck story was the fabrication they all knew it was, but it would not take much for people to wonder about that, too.

At the bottom of the article was the photograph of the real Nina Tchereslavsky, in a costume of the Rose Fairy from
Sleeping Beauty.
Ninette stared at it, numbly.

“All right. What are we going to do?” Nigel demanded. “It is not exactly a front page matter at the moment, but if there is a day that has not got a lot of news in it, the story very well could soon be there. Should we—”

You are going to brazen it out,
said Thomas the cat, strolling into the room in a leisurely manner, eyeing the top of the desk for a moment, before leaping up to it in a lithe bound.
Take a look at those photographs. Do you think I chose that particular dancer at random for Ninette to impersonate?

Five heads bent over the newspapers, all of them analyzing the two pictures. As Ninette’s panic started to ebb, she looked over the two, side by side, and after a moment, she nodded. She looked up to see the same conclusion in the faces of the rest.

“All things considered, there is not a great deal of difference between the two of them,” Nigel admitted.

All ballerinas tend to look a great deal alike,
the cat pointed out.
That’s out of necessity. They have to be petite, light boned, thin. They tend to have very large eyes, and stage makeup exaggerates that. That newspaper man made a grave mistake in choosing to echo Ninette’s Rose costume with the other woman’s; the pictures could easily be of the same dancer in different costumes. So the obvious course here is to make the counter-claim that this woman is the imposter.

Nigel stared at the cat. “You’re not joking, are you?”

“What possible motive could she have for impersonating Ninette? I mean Nina?” Arthur ran his hands through his hair. “This is very confusing. . . .”

The cat raised his chin.
Ninette is very successful here. She is one of the main attractions to this theater, and when your new musical play is finally performed, that popularity will only increase. Now remember if you will that people are insular. It does not matter to a Londoner that a performer is popular in New York. He might go once to see the man, but unless all London decides he is good, the average Londoner will not go a second time.

“What are you saying?” Arthur asked, puzzled.

“I see what you are saying,” Nigel replied slowly. “Blackpool thinks that what Blackpool says and does and has opinions about is of the first importance in the world.”

The cat nodded with satisfaction.
Precisely. So when we go and speak to your friends in the newspapers here, we must be firm in saying that our Nina is the real one, and that this imposter’s attempt to take her place is motivated by the greed for the position Ninette has achieved here. What dancer would not wish to be in that position? That any sensible person from outside Blackpool or knowledgeable about ballet would find this laughable has no bearing. This will not even be a ripple in the London papers, but it might well move into greater importance here. Perhaps, as you yourself pointed out, even a front page story if there are no accidents, fires, murders, or notorious robberies. No, I think that the best thing we can do is respond with affronted dignity and a touch of scorn.
The cat licked a paw thoughtfully.
And one never knows with dancers. They often become hysterical over absolute nonsense. She might indeed decide for herself that what you are building for Ninette is of the primary importance to her.

“Hysterical over nonsense?” Ninette looked incensed—and then, flushed. “Ah,
mais oui.
The review in
La Figaro—“

And who knows?
Somehow the cat managed to shrug.
We do not know how her reputation is faring on the Continent. It might be sinking. She cannot be young. It might be that to become the star of a music hall in Blackpool has become the height of desire for her. In any event, we very much need to make use of every chink in her armor. Including that.
The cat looked up at them all.
This does have the potential to do us a great deal of good, if we can keep our heads about us, and Ninette can be kind and gracious and say very little about what her life in Russia was like.