Reserved for the Cat

“I will put back the ball, ribbon, and ring dances,” she said instantly. It was not as if they were great effort to perform. Not like the Black Swan pas-de-deux. Not like Giselle’s Mad Scene. Not like the Corsair solos. They were, in fact, full of little pauses, rests, where she could catch her breath before going on to the next difficult passage. And they were done on demi-pointe rather than full pointe. She would have to change her shoes, but that was no great difficulty, and if worst came to worst and the ribbons wouldn’t unknot, she could cut them off and Ailse could put new ribbons on while she danced en pointe.

Nigel nodded with relief and gratitude. “I’ll be in my office; I should have a replacement act by tomorrow.”

She shrugged. “So long as the audience is not bored with me, I can dance the extra solos for as long as you need me to.”

He just said something that sounded like “You’re a brick,” and dashed off to his office. She was left shaking her head. It was going to be a long and strenuous night.

She went looking for her ball, ring, and ribbon music. At least the band knew it. And at least the hole she would be filling was in the middle of the bill. She’d be well rested by the time her skirt dance came up.

By band call the third day after Harrigan broke his legs, if Nigel had been any other impresario, he would have been tearing his hair out. Because by that time, it was beginning to look as if the Fates had targeted him for disaster.

This was a very desirable venue for most performers; a six-week engagement at minimum meant it was possible to relax, unpack, mend things, take in the local sights. It was, after all, the audience that changed during the season in Blackpool; virtually a new audience twice a week. Nigel usually had far more acts auditioning than he had slots for them.

But now . . . first Harrigan, who had fallen into a hole that his wife swore literally “opened up in front of them” and broken both his legs. It was a good thing for both of them that Nigel knew a doctor who was also an Elemental magician, though not a master. He did not care to think of what a butcher’s job an ordinary doctor would make of such a patient. So Harrigan was now splinted and resting comfortably surrounded by wife and dogs, a stone’s throw from the doctor’s office. Nigel was keeping him on wages, partly because it seemed the right thing to do, and partly because he wanted the Hounds for the big show, and when Harrigan was well again, he would certainly feel a debt of gratitude to Nigel.

But the next day brought another unpleasant surprise.

Three of the acts just . . . quit, with four more weeks to run on their contracts. They wouldn’t tell him why, nor would their agents, but he suspected that a rumored Australian impresario with a supposed “golden tour” was to blame. On the one hand, he viciously wished all of them to perdition. On the other... he knew how most of these things turned out—with performers stranded in the middle of nowhere with no money and no prospects of getting any, sick with heat and tropical disease and bitterly regretting the decision that had brought them to that pass. He had already made up his mind that he was not going to ask these acts to stick for the big show, but still, he needed them now. He was not going to ask Nina to put in another turn, and anyway, she could hardly make up for half the show missing.

As it happened, though, Nigel was the rare sort who always assumed some disaster was going to overtake his shows, his theater, or the season, and planned accordingly.

He regularly made forays into the countryside and as far as Liverpool, looking for people with talent who had not yet “caught on.” Two fast trips in his motorcar yielded him a perky little singer with a genuine gift for comic timing and a “novelty” juggler and his partner, a fellow who impersonated a drunken “toff” with an impertinent maid who kept piling things into his arms when he came home after a night on the tiles. He rushed them to the theater in time for a quick rehearsal; to fill the last slot, Jonathon put in an act he seldom performed anymore, a Hindoo fire-eater. It was all real magic, of course, and as such it was something of a risk. If there was an untrained Elemental mage in the audience, Jonathon’s performance might “wake him up.” And there were those who hunted Masters as well, though usually feuds were of a personal nature.

Jonathon, however, swore that there were precautions he could take, shields he could set up. Nigel was disposed to believe him, but he wanted the act safely tucked away as soon as possible. He simply did not want to take any chances when there might be someone hunting for Nina—why give a hunter an opening for an attack?