Reserved for the Cat

The cat sighed. He hated letting these secrets go. He had hoped to carry them to the grave. I was as human as you are, and no, I am not reincarnated in cat form, as Wolf claims to have been. I was an Earth Master, and this is a permanent transformation. I lost a magician’s duel, and my opponent froze me in the last shape I took. Not surprising, really; she was a truly vindictive and jealous wench, and she never forgave me for running away from her—and even less was she inclined to forgive me when she tracked me down and discovered I had married someone else. He still remembered the look on Helen’s face when he told her. The fury—it had been enough to make him take a step back at the time. And if he had thought for a moment that he might be able to run away from her again, that expression had utterly disabused him of the notion. They say hell hath no fury like a woman scorned . . . I am inclined to think they are right. Kipling also says that the female is more deadly than the male. I am in a position to corroborate that.

He could almost see the thoughts running through Jonathon’s head as the Fire Master ran through all of the Earth Masters in the last forty or so years he had ever heard of that came from hereabouts—sorted out all the ones that had gone missing or that could not possibly have known his uncle or clapped eyes on himself as a baby—then eliminated all those too young to be the one in question—

Thomas recognized the moment when Jonathon put all the clues together. His jaw dropped.

“Thomas Dupond?” the mage gasped incredulously.

The cat sighed. The same.

“But—” another clue floated to the surface, and Jonathon almost reeled. “But—you must be Ninette’s missing father!”

Now you know why I did what I did. The cat’s tail lashed angrily. I did not abandon my wife and child! I was ambushed, and they were threatened. Helen Waring tracked me to Paris, sent a private detective to find me, and confronted me literally no more than a block from my home. She threatened to make life unendurable for Marie and Ninette, and you know very well that she could have, and would have, and she would never have had to use a bit of magic to do so. The only way I could distract her was to call her out in a magician’s duel. Which, as you must have deduced, I lost.

“But now we know who the magician that is trying to kill Ninette is!” Jonathon crowed. Thomas sighed.

You are leaping to far too many conclusions, the cat told him. No, in this case, you are quite wrong. Helen Waring is not the Earth Master we are looking for.

“Why do you say that?” Jonathon demanded.

Because she is dead, Thomas said flatly.

Silence for a moment. “How can you be sure?” Jonathon asked, after a pause.

Because I killed her.

More silence. Then Jonathon cleared his throat awkwardly. “Ah . . . how did that come about?”