Reserved for the Cat

“I told you it would be strong, and I told you that you would be all right,” Jonathon said with a smug look of self-satisfaction about him. “Maybe you’ll believe me next time.”

The Brownie snorted, and vanished into the kitchen. Jonathon stood up, brushed off his trousers, then picked up the candle and blew it out. “There,” he said. “That should take care of any magical intruders. You may take your rest, Mademoiselle.” He bowed a little from the waist, and she giggled a little tiredly.

“And if they are not magical?” she asked, in all seriousness.

“Then you may summon a policeman by screaming out a window,” the magician said carelessly.

“And if they are magical and still pass your boundaries?” she demanded.

“That,” he replied, already on his way out the door, “is why you have the pistol.”

It had been a very good day. Jonathon had gotten a very tricky piece of stage magic equipment that he had bought from an old and retiring performer to work properly at last. Of course, he’d been forced to replace every spring in the wretched thing, and then work out what tension they should be set at, but it had been worth it, in the end. The panels popped closed so fast that even if you were looking for it, you wouldn’t see it happen, and the noise was easily covered by the band playing a crescendo. People weren’t used to seeing mechanical things accomplish anything fast, and in the uncertain stage-light he would have for this business and a burst of a flash-pot, they’d never realize what had happened even though they looked straight at it. Which they wouldn’t, of course. He’d have his distraction going. Though he had cursed himself many times for buying the wretched thing in the first place in the end, it was worth it. The audience would see a young lady vanish before their eyes, and reappear across the stage, and all without use of a trap-door in the stage. He hated trap-doors anyway. Unreliable things, they were always sticking, and you had to depend on stage hands to be sure the mattresses were in place under them, and even then it was possible to fall wrong and break an ankle. During his apprenticeship to a fine old stage magician, the fellow’s young nephew had done just that, and had gone on and walked his way through the rest of the act on an ankle that was months in healing. And of course, you weren’t just depending on the trap door to work, you had to hope the lift at the other end was also working . . .

Not to mention what a disaster it would be for Ninette to break an ankle.

No, this was better, and now it was working. He could hardly wait to try it out. Magicians’ assistants were always on the small and lean side. But Ninette was exceptionally small and lean even by those standards. And agile. He was so excited by the whole prospect it was all he could do to set the trick aside and not demand she cut short her morning lesson with Maestro Ciccolini to try it out.

He pondered what he should do to fill his time.

For a moment, he toyed with the idea of calling up a few Elementals and sending them out on a search for the person that had sent the homunculus after Ninette. But—he’d done that several times already, and they had been unable to find a trace of the magician. They still hadn’t found an Earth-Master, who could do that sort of thing—where the blazes were they all, anyway? Was there some sort of official Earth Master holiday going on? He had woken up this morning in a particularly frustrated state of mind for just that reason.

But Nigel had had an idea over breakfast. As the maid dished them up eggs and sausages and broiled tomatoes, he had looked rather smug.

“Much longer and you’ll be licking the cream off your whiskers,” Arthur had said, finally. “What is it that has set your brains afire, old chap? Is it another idea for the musical production? No? A new act you’ve hired? Not that either? Well, what, then?”

“I have a nephew of an old chum who’s a Water-Master who’s going to join us,” he’d said. “And I’m Air and Jonathon, you’re Fire.”

“Go on,” Jonathon had urged. “You’re stating the obvious and being obtuse, old man. Don’t torture us any more, I beg you, or we’ll be forced to fling buns at your delicate cranium.”

“Well look, with three of the four Elements all inside one Work, what we can do, is we can pool our resources and look for places our magic is excluded from. That’s where we’ll find Earth-based power operating.” He looked at them all in triumph. “It will probably be shields that we see, but that’s fine. We’ll know where he is, then.”

Jonathon had sat there blinking for a moment, and Nigel had gotten worried. “What is it?” the impresario finally asked. “What is it that I am missing?”

“Only that I thought I was supposed to be the clever one,” he’d said, full of admiration. It was a beautiful plan, and had all the virtues of simplicity. If they hadn’t been needed for band-call, they probably would have still been at the table turning ideas over and over to see what the undersides looked like.