Reserved for the Cat

Certain members of the circle of admirers remained, men who lived and worked in Blackpool. Others appeared, only to vanish: those who were not residents. The two sorts were easy to tell apart, and Ninette and Ailse had a little game between them, of how long it would take for these birds-of-passage to understand that money could not necessarily purchase everything their hearts desired. She wasn’t worried; the one and only time a “gentleman” had gotten a little too demanding, she’d broken his instep for him. Ballet dancers might look fragile, but dancing built muscles.

He had been the exception though, and she had felt so little threatened at the time that she did not even bother to tell Nigel and have him barred from the theater. In the first place, his broken foot was going to keep him safely confined to his hotel until it was time for him to depart back to whatever grim industrial town had spawned him. For another, he had learned his lesson rather sharply. No need to get Nigel involved.

But Thomas the cat was not happy. And neither was the magician, Jonathon Hightower, but Thomas was someone she could actually talk to. The magician would only look annoyed, sullen, or angry, and tell her to leave the magical business in his hands.

“What on earth is wrong?” she finally asked the cat, after his prowling and peering out of windows on what should have been a quiet evening finally got on her nerves. “We had a delightful supper, the house was almost full, tomorrow the theater is dark and we have that dinner party—and I have not seen a sign of this inimical, invisible enemy you think I have.”

She didn’t add an enemy that you made up in the first place, because Ailse was in the room, but her brief glare at Thomas said it for her.

But the cat had other ideas. There is something out there, and it is no friend to you. I just cannot figure out who or what it is, nor what it wants.

She blinked a little in surprise. So this wasn’t part of his elaborate ruse?

“I can’t imagine why—” she began.

That’s the problem. Neither can I. He sighed gustily. I suppose I will have to investigate this. Jonathon—

She frowned. “I would not take anything Master Hightower says to be an indication of anything at all other than his overactive imagination. He sees a bit of rope and sees a serpent, a shadow and thinks it is a spirit.”

He has reasons to. Sometimes a rope is a serpent in disguise.

She flung up her hands. “Have it your own way then! Is there any reason why this mysterious something you both sense must be planning on me as its victim? What about Nigel? Arthur? Wolf? You? Even Jonathon? All of you are far more likely to have collected magical enemies than I!”

The cat hesitated. I suppose that is possible . . .

“I would say it was far more likely.” She sniffed. “The only enemy I am likely to have would be the sort that would put ground glass in the toes of my shoes, or cut the shoulder-straps of my costumes.” She surprised herself with a yawn. “I am going to bed. You may stay up and watch all night if you please.”

Hmm, was all Thomas would say.

After a great deal of thought, and a great many discarded plans, Nina decided to attack obliquely by attacking not the girl herself, but the theater. If the physical building was gone, she would have no place to perform. If she had no place to perform, she would be cast out on her own, without a salary, and be easier to get at. At this point Nina had decided that she would absorb the girl. Not just out of revenge, but because it could be useful to have a second identity ready and waiting to step into which provided such fruitful rewards for her kind.

So that was her plan. Attack the theater, destroy it, and flush the quarry.

As for how that was to be done . . . although fire obviously was not Nina’s Element, fire was the easiest, and that was what she would try first.

Jonathon Hightower watched the Salamander twine around the fingers of his left hand, and frowned. Strictly speaking, Elementals could not see the future, not as a human clairvoyant could, at any rate. But they could sense when something was going to happen a short time before it actually did, and they reacted to that.

This one was agitated. Very agitated. Enough to make it come to Jonathon without being invoked, which was something Fire Elementals rarely did. All he could discern from it was the sense of danger, danger and destruction, coming soon.

Wait— No, he sensed something more. The danger had to do with fire.