Reserved for the Cat (47 page)

The second thing that occurred to him was to run.

Unfortunately, he discovered that he could not.

The whole house was bespelled. Things could get in easily, but once inside, the only way to get out was to be let out. He had slipped blithely inside, following his quarry, only to discover that he was trapped.

All right, put a good face on it.
Since he could not go back, he decided to go forward. He followed the man, who whimpered a little as he stumbled along the passageway and up the stairs, heading for the next floor. The entire scene was surreal; outwardly, this was the entry, hall, and staircase of a very well-appointed, moderately luxurious, and utterly respectable home. It had all the right touches, from the scenic photographs and paintings on the walls, to the Turkey carpet on the floor, from the elaborately carved balustrade to the latest in electrical lighting. But the aura of dark corruption that hung over everything, and the tortured face of the man climbing the stairs as if he was ascending the Matterhorn, made it feel more like something out of a nightmare.

Thomas followed, knowing that there was no way he could have escaped detection, even if the master of this place hadn’t done anything about him yet. So he acted as if he had intended to be in this position all along.
When all else fails, try a bluff.
Mind, that particular philosophy had not worked all that well for him in the past.

Then again, that could mean the odds were good for it finally working. Right?

The man paused at an open doorway. Then Thomas got a second shock, when the voice that called out to them was female.

“Come in,” said the voice, and paused. “Both of you.”

The man shambled in. Thomas followed.

And got the third shock, although part of his mind was saying, smugly,
This should have occurred to you, you know.
He knew the woman lounging like an odalisque on her sumptuous chaise.

It was the real Nina Tchereslavsky.

Or rather, a Troll wearing her shape.

The Troll made a contemptuous gesture at him, and he found himself frozen in place. Which was not quite as bad as it could have been, however, because the Troll’s primary attention was on the man.

“You have failed me,” the Troll said, looking down her pert nose at the man. “You stupid ass. What sort of an idiot attacks someone in broad daylight? With witnesses? Within reach of help?”

The man’s mouth worked, but no sound came out. The Troll’s words, curiously enough, were in good English, with a slightly upper-class accent. Thomas wondered how that came about, if she was supposed to be Russian.

Then again, she was a Troll, and magic was a part of them. He supposed . . .

But wait. There was something else wrong here. Where, exactly, was this creature’s Master?

“Never mind that, I will tell you,” the woman continued with contempt. “A brainless, over-educated, under-schooled fool, who has been certain all of his life that he is
entitled
to the finer things, yet has never worked to achieve them.”

This did not sound like any Troll that Thomas had ever heard of. Most of them could scarcely manage more than a grunt.

“So, given that you are a brainless, over-educated, under-schooled fool who has just ruined any chance he had of getting
near
that imposter, what do you think I should do with you?” she continued.

The man stared at her dumbly, and tried to mouth words, but nothing came out.

“Fortunately for all of us, your
dear
mother does not know you are here. In fact, she does not even know you have left the house. No one knows you are here—” she looked down at Thomas “—except this cat. And I doubt he will be able to go running to the police, or anyone else. So, really, there is nothing to prevent me from doing exactly as I please with you.” She smiled. It was a smile that made Thomas’s tail brush out again.

That was when she changed into her normal form. Yes, she was, indeed, a Troll . . .

Her head brushed the ceiling; she looked now like a crude doll made of gray clay, and she smelled like a combination of sour earth and rotting flesh. She reached forward and embraced the man. It would have been funny, if his face had not been contorted into a silent scream of anguish.

Then came the horrible part. When he had been human and a magician, Thomas had read about Trolls doing this, but he had never thought he was going to see the
absorption
process up close. Certainly not this close.

With the victim paralyzed and able to move only his eyes, the Troll pressed him into her chest.
Into
it. Little by little, he sank into the clay, and in a way it was a relief that his face went in first, because at least Thomas didn’t have to look at his expression anymore.

And this could have been still worse, really; in some accounts, a Troll would dismember and partly eat a victim, rather than merely absorbing him. It was said that they grew to like the taste.

Thomas curled his tail tightly around his feet, and pretended to watch with interest, all the while trying to detect a human,
any
human, anywhere in this house. Well other than the victim.

Nothing.

No,
he thought, aghast. But the conclusion was inescapable.

There was no Elemental Master here. There was only—this thing. A horror, a blasphemy, something that should never have been. An Elemental that had been given form and substance on the Material Plane and gotten loose. A creature that did not belong here, turned loose and left to work its will on humans. Any humans.

He thought he knew now where it had gotten its relatively high intelligence and cunning. It must have begun absorbing humans right away, and with that had come more wit, more ability to think. With that, too, had come enough memory to tell her of the dangers of living among humans. So now there was a Troll that could
think,
plan, and carry out those plans. A Troll that could keep its identity hidden. A Troll with patience.

That last might have been the worst.

Thomas thought quickly, because in a few more moments, the Troll was going to finish absorbing her prey, and then she was going to turn her attention to him.

He cleared his throat as the last of her victim vanished, with a little dry cough of the sort that sometimes preceded a hairball.
Very good,
he said gravely. He couldn’t manage approval, but at least he could sound serious.
No point in wasting him, but no point in allowing him to continue wasting air either.

The Troll reverted to the form of the dancer. Had there even been a real Nina Tchereslavsky? Probably, but judging by the Troll’s looks, she hadn’t been very old when she fell afoul of the creature.

For a moment, she looked puzzled. Then her lips curved in a cruel smile. “Wasting air. I like that. You seem very calm for someone who has just discovered that what he walked into, he cannot again walk out of.”

But what if I don’t want to walk out?
Thomas asked, calmly.
What if I intended to meet and speak with you?

The Troll’s mouth gaped. “Speak with me? Why?”

Thomas sniffed.
I should think that would be obvious. You are clearly more clever than the theater people. You are obviously stronger. You know who they are, but they still do not know where you are, much less what.

“So you—”

“But you would be deserting your mistress, her friends—”

I am a cat,
Thomas replied, hoping against hope that the creature would not look past his words.
Cats are by nature selfish.

Because if the troll had any inkling that he was something more than he seemed. . . .

“A good point,” the troll replied, thoughtfully. “So, you think to join the winning side?”

I know the winning side when I see it,
Thomas replied.

Fortunately, walking around Blackpool so much had given Ninette a good sense of the city, so she didn’t walk blindly into trouble-spots. Those were not
just
places where hooligans and thieves lurked, hoping for some drunken toff that could stagger by, be coshed on the head and robbed. And what would happen to a lone girl would be worse still.

She took cabs where she could, ran where she couldn’t, until her sense of
danger/fear/danger
brought her to a rather posh neighborhood indeed. No flats here, these were all fine townhouses, all built of identical stone, all with identical front façades. From the street, in fact, it could look like one long building, exactly like the front of a government building, for instance. Only when one looked closely could one see the narrow passages dividing building from building.

Her sense of trouble took her to the third from the corner. After a quick look up and down the street, she slipped around to the back, and tried her hand at the door.

It opened at her touch.

Saying a silent prayer that Ailse had returned home at last, that the Brownie had told her that Ninette had gone after Thomas, that Ailse had in turn gone for the men, Ninette slipped inside.

She waited while her eyes adjusted to the light. This
should
be a kitchen area—and at this time of night, there should be no one in it.

After a moment, she saw that she was right on both counts. That was a relief.

She fumbled the revolver out of her pocket. She had not dared to take it out in public or in the street; she was fairly certain she would have gotten into immense amounts of trouble if anyone had seen it.

She crept across the floor, revolver in hand, and peered through the doorway, while allowing the emotions to come to her. Thomas was definitely here—upstairs somewhere, and afraid for his life. But there were other things too, things that had the same
sense
to them that the little homunculus had had—not quite living, in fact, with less actual life in them than a house-sparrow, and nothing in the way of emotions—and one
thing
that actually did have thoughts, feelings, emotions. Very strong ones too, and all . . .nasty. Just brushing against them made her want to throw up.

Thomas was in the same room with the thing.

I must say,
Thomas said, looking up at the thing that was calling itself Nina Tchereslavsky,
I have heard about you Earth Elementals, but I never heard of one as powerful or as clever as you.

He considered that he was very lucky that cats had no expressions to read. And that the Troll could not actually read thoughts either. “Nor will you,” the Troll said, puffing up a little. “I am unique!”

I can see that. Is it true that you can change shape? I mean, change it to something other than your native form and this one? I had heard that some of the most powerful of Elementals can do that, but I have never seen it.
He paused.
Truly, I was thinking it must be some kind of myth.

“I can take any form I care to, as long as I have absorbed the original,” the Troll boasted, straightening, the pride evident in its voice. “Watch.”

In truth, Thomas would rather
not
have watched, but he didn’t have much choice. Watching the Troll shift forms was a very uncomfortable experience. Its body rippled in a stomach-churning manner, and the way the skin and hair seemed to crawl—it was entirely unnerving, and Thomas would have sworn until now that he had unshakeable nerves.

The Troll went through the forms of a dozen different people, all of whom must have been its victims, before Thomas shook his head in mock-admiration. He wasn’t admiring her, of course. What he was doing, after he got a grip on his own discomfort and mastered it, was studying her. When she changed shapes, she changed the clothing as well. So the clothing was a part of her. If you ripped it, would she bleed? Feel pain? He could see how she could counterfeit the living flesh, but how had she managed to learn to duplicate the clothing? Did she
always
wear this sort of “clothing,” or did she make use of an ordinary person’s wardrobe as well?