Reserved for the Cat

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.

But where was the Troll’s master?

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.