Reserved for the Cat em-6

by Mercedes Lackey

  A hotel.

  “Oh curse it!” he said , annoyed, knowing exactly what Alan was thinking. “I don’t suppose—”

  “With over a hundred people coming and going from there every day?” Alan shook his head. “There is not a chance I could sort through all of that. Besides, I much doubt that the magician confined his work to a single room. He more than likely expanded it to the whole hotel. I would have.”

  Jonathon nodded. “All right then, we are not completely helpless. I can get a listing of all the people registered to that hotel on that day, as well as the servants and employees. That will narrow our search down from the entire city to at most two hundred people. I call that progress.”

  Alan reluctantly agreed.

  “Now, you may not need to hurry, but I have an act to perform,” Jonathon continued firmly. “So right at this moment, we need nothing more magical than the ability to get a cab in front of a fine hotel.”

  Ninette stepped out of the cab in front of the theater and immediately had the sense that she was being watched.

  Or to be precise, she had the sense that there were two sorts of watchers. The first sort were those who were watching her with admiration, varying degrees of recognition, and varying degrees of intent to find out if she could be enticed into a bed. There was a warmth to that which was friendly, even with those who dreamed of her being in their beds. Not even the ones who wanted her in that way had any intention of doing anything other than making her, and themselves, happy. And for the rest, she was something to be admired, like a sunset, or a lovely hat.

  This she did not in the least mind. It was the same sort of thing she got when she performed. Even on stage, there were those who thought of her in their beds, and that only made sense, since her legs were clearly on display, though her bosom was not exactly as generous as those of the lady that sang “Champagne Charlie.” For the rest, again, she was like a fairy, a magical little creature that they watched flit about the stage so lightly they were sometimes afraid to breathe lest she break.

  That was the good sort of being watched.

  No, it was another sort of watcher, a single one, that startled her and sent a chill of fear down her back. How she knew this, she could not tell. Maybe Thomas could; maybe it was simply being around so much magic that it was rubbing off on her. But she knew, absolutely, that someone in front of the theater wished her only ill. That person, whoever and wherever it was, watched her with loathing.

  Was this their enemy? Was this the magician who had sent all those terrible things to plague them? Had Jonathon and Alan gone in search of him only to have him come here?

  And which person in the crowd at the theater entrance was it? Her eyes flitted over the crowd, lined up to buy tickets for the evening performances. They were all sold out these days, and even the standing-room sections in the backs of the galleries had plenty of occupants.

  She simply could not tell who it was; no one looked angry, or affronted, or even more annoyed than one could be with standing in a line on a warm evening. There was nothing to give her so much as a clue, only that aura of hate, so with a shiver, she hurried towards the stage door. Nigel was in there, and so were Arthur and Wolf. They would know what to do. They would be able to tell if the person she sensed was the magician that they were all looking for. She tried to look as if she was hurrying only because she was a little late, and not because she knew he was there. If he knew that—there was no saying what he might do. Once inside that door she would be—

  She had only a breath of warning before he was on her, the feeling of rage and triumph, the sound of a footstep in the alley behind her and the sense of presence looming behind her. But that warning was enough.

  Not enough warning to fumble the revolver out of her purse—but she did have enough to react as a dancer would, sure of foot and aware as if her skin had eyes, knowing exactly where she was, and where he was, and where he was going. There was just enough time to side-step, turn quickly, and as the man sailed past her, arms outstretched, to kick him as hard as she could in the back of his trousers.

  He had clearly expected to grab her, was off-balance to begin with, and the hard kick of a dancer, a well-fed, well-trained, and thoroughly healthy dancer, sent him crashing into the brick wall of the building opposite the theater. He managed to get his arms up in time to protect his head, but that was all. She didn’t hesitate for a second as he hit the bricks.

  Screaming for help, she picked up her skirts over her knees and ran, her mind on fire with fear as the loathing and hate and rage washed over her, so thick it was a bitter taste in her mouth and a lash to her back, with terror putting wings on her feet.

  She didn’t remember reaching the stage door, only that she found herself babbling to the doorman and a crowd of people who had run to the door at the sound of her screams. She thought she was saying something about a man attacking her, but her mind was so filled with fear that she scarcely could put two sensible words together. The doorman in his turn left her in the care of the wardrobe mistress and summoned four stagehands, leading them out in a wrath-filled group into the alley while the wardrobe mistress plied her with brandy and water and sent one of the boys for Nigel. The wardrobe mistress, under any other circumstances a crusty old dame with a formidable temper, put an arm around her shoulders as motherly as her own Maman could have been. “Here, sweetheart,” she soothed, “now drink this down. Did he hurt ye? Hit ye? Thank God it wasn’t dark out there—”

  She shook her head and gulped down brandy that tasted salty from her own tears. “He wanted—he wanted—to kill me—” she babbled, as the terror slowly, slowly ebbed.

  “I misdoubt it was killing he was after,” the woman murmured blackly, but at that point Nigel and Arthur came pounding up, with Wolf clinging like a limpet to Arthur’s shoulder. Without a word, Nigel scooped her up, as Arthur gave the wardrobe mistress orders that sent her scurrying determinedly away on some errand.

  Things blurred for a moment, and she found herself on the couch in Nigel’s office, with Arthur peering into her eyes, Wolf still clinging to his shoulder and peering at her first with one eye, then the other. “Definitely psychic shock,” he pronounced, as she gazed up at him in bewilderment. “Honestly it is amazing she didn’t just freeze there in the alley and let him do—whatever it was he was going to do. Whoever he was.”

  “He got away?” she gasped, panic rising in her again. “He got away?”

  “Ninette!” Wolf barked, and flew down and bit her little finger, hard.

  The physical pain snapped the panic, and the fear ran out of her like water from a cracked pot. She clasped her injured finger to her chest and stared at them all, unable to think, benumbed.

  Arthur put his hands on her shoulders and shook her gently. “Ninette, it’s all right. At least it is for now. Whoever he is, he can’t get in here to harm you. Now tell us what happened.”

  She gulped, reached for the glass of brandy that Nigel held out wordlessly to her and in halting tones, told what little she knew. “I cannot understand—” she faltered. “The horror—the fear—”

  Nigel patted her hand, and Wolf rubbed his head apologetically along her wrist, but it was Arthur that answered. “Ninette, there is magic, and then there are the powers of the mind itself. It seems you have something of the latter.” He smiled encouragingly. “I do, too. I am about half magician and half mentalist. Tell me, have you been able to tell what the audience feels about you? As if you were feeling what they feel?”

  She nodded slowly. “Mais oui. Since I came here to England, certainly. I am not sure about before—” But now that she thought about it, it did seem to her that she had always had a sense for who was friendly, who was not, and who might even be dangerous. She had just never thought about it very much.

  Arthur nodded. “Probably talking with Thomas as you do has made all this stronger. And this man, whoever he is, has a similar ability. I don’t know why he hates you so much, but for you it was like someone with a
megaphone shouting at you right into your ear. All you could feel was the hate and anger.”

  “Oui,” she said slowly. “It felt like—like a blow.”

  “It was a blow,” Arthur replied, and tapped her between her eyebrows on her forehead. “To your mind.”

  “My head feels bruised inside,” she said, feeling dazed in a way that mere brandy could not account for.

  “I am not surprised. Fortunately I have a remedy for that.” He smiled down at her. “You are going to take a refreshing little nap, and when you wake up, you will feel quite yourself again.” She felt his palm resting on her forehead, and suddenly her eyelids were too heavy to keep open. With a sigh, she surrendered to his will. After all, this was Arthur, and she had nothing to fear from him.

  Nothing at all.

  Nigel stared down at the sleeping dancer. “I never want to hear you denigrate your powers ever again, my friend,” he said soberly. “I certainly could not have done that, just now.”

  Arthur shrugged. “Well, now we know what it is that she has that holds an audience,” he said pragmatically. “And it’s not a bad thing.”

  “Not at all, you’ll just have to teach her control. And ethics.” Nigel turned away and paced towards the window.

  “That’s hardly relevant at the moment. Who in bloody blazes attacked her?” Arthur picked up Wolf and replaced the bird on his shoulder. “Was it the Earth Master?”

  Nigel shook his head. “No. The Sylphs are absolutely certain there is not a breath of Earth Magic, inimical or otherwise, around this building. Whoever it was has those mental powers, and nothing else, and for some reason he wants Ninette dead.” He turned away from the window, as a knock came at the office door. It was the chief of the stagehands, cap twisted between his hands, looking hangdog.

  “Sorry, Mister Nigel, sir,” he said unhappily. “We lost him. He must’ve been faster as a ferret an’ twice as twisty.”

  “That’s all right, Bob,” Nigel replied, though the man winced at the frustration in his voice. “It’s hardly your fault. Just tell the lads to be on the watch for him.”

  “We will, sir,” the stagehand replied, and hastily made his escape. Nigel turned back to face Arthur, running his hand through his hair with agitation.

  “First the Earth-Mage, then the other dancer, and now this,” he said with a touch of anger. “What next?”

  Arthur could only shake his head.

  22

  NOT needing corsets, Nina never wore them if she could help it. So while the women all around her looked like marble monuments, she was able to undulate rather than walk, and lounge luxuriously rather than sit. This, apparently, was either very attractive to men, or made them acutely uncomfortable. Sometimes both.

  The reporter had turned up at her flat—fortunately after she had awakened. Last night had been relatively good, despite the idiocy of her tool. She had decided that she would deal with him later, she had fed, though it was not what she would call a gourmet repast, and she was looking forward to unleashing another round of harassment via the newspapers in the next few days. She received her visitor leaning comfortably back in her velvet chaise, leaving him to take the uncomfortable chair with the itchy horsehair upholstery. She waved him languidly to it, and waited for him to tell her what the next barrage from him against the imposter would be.

  But the reporter put paid to that idea.

  “You lost it?” Nina said, incredulously, sitting bolt upright with shock. “You lost it?”

  The reporter looked uncomfortable and indignant at the same time. “More like it was stolen,” he protested. “Along with a lot of my other papers, everything in my desk but my bills, things I was looking into for other stories. It took me this long to get my place cleaned up to figure out exactly what was taken. The thieves tore the whole flat apart looking for something, and it looks like in the end they settled for taking every scrap of paper that looked important.” He shrugged. “There are some stories I am pursuing that could cause scandal, perhaps even divorce. I expect that was what the thieves were looking for. They’ll most likely look through what they took and burn what they don’t want.”

  “Why didn’t you keep these things locked away?” she snarled, her hands clenching and unclenching as she strove to control herself. “Are you so completely a fool? Why were they not in a safe?”

  Now he looked angry. “Do I look like the sort of man that can afford a safe?” he snapped. “And even if I could, the landlord is so cheese-paring it would probably fall through the floor! Besides, what does it matter? You can send for more—probably better—bona-fides.” He gave her a superior look. “I told you that we needed those anyway. This time, get something I can actually use. Something a bit more convincing than photographs and impersonal letters.” His eyes glittered. “Letters from admirers would be the best. Especially things on letterhead with a crest. You can’t forge that.”

  She glared at him. Give him letters from admirers now? And if she had been human, that would have been playing right into his hands. The opportunity for blackmail would be just too tempting—if, in fact, he wasn’t already planning on using what she gave him for blackmail.

  She could easily send for things of a more personal nature, of course. But that would take time, and in that time, her enemies might come closer to unmasking her. One thing had already gone wrong with these far-off affairs. Her witness had vanished; he was supposed to be on the train now, but her servant had arrived in Paris without him. She assumed he had been shrewder and more crooked than she had suspected; he had taken her money and disappeared with it halfway between Prague and Paris. It was so maddening, having to rely on her servants so many miles away! They seemed to get more thickheaded with every month.

  That was a setback, but, she had told herself, it was a minor one. This was only a skirmish, a feint, not the real battle. She could continue without a witness—and after all, it had always been an uncertain thing whether a working-class foreigner who had to speak through a translator would be believed.

  Last night had been more serious. Her stupid tool had taken matters into his own hands and attacked the girl in broad daylight. Now the question was, would this be connected to her? She thought not, and the fool had gotten away, but—if they did, then her position became much more precarious. With the addition of a Water Master, the Elemental Masters had enough accumulated magic to effectively prevent her creatures from getting into their homes, and the theater, and if they tracked down an Earth Master strong enough to hunt her out—

  Last night she had convinced herself these were only minor setbacks. There had been no sign that the magicians actually had linked the attack to her.

  But now, to hear this—

  Was it common thieves, after all? She listened, tight-lipped, to the description of how his flat had looked, and to him swearing he had locked the door securely before going out. It sounded as if it must have been common thieves—she didn’t think any of the theater people would have been likely to ransack the place so crudely. The stage magician could easily have picked the locks of course, and relocked them too, but she very much doubted that any of them would have torn open cushions and the mattress. No, that sounded like stupid, petty criminals. But still! Her pictures and other proofs of her identity were gone!

  She realized at that moment, that despite her own self confidence, in short, things were not going at all well, and she needed to take it out on something, before her temper snapped altogether and she did something stupid and irrevocable in public.

  And then she eyed the man before her, who had gone from being self-defensive to bullying. Every word he spoke, every line of his body, said the same thing. He was a man, she was a woman, he would therefore always know the right way to handle her story. She should be properly grateful for his advice. She should do as she was told, and keep that temper of hers to herself.

  He was more and more infuriating by the moment. He had been injudicious enough, this reporter, and bald-faced enough, to come t
o her flat. He had been stupid enough to come alone.

  And she had no further use for him.

  She nodded once to her servant, who took the silent order, and left, closing and locking the door behind her. The man heard the click of the lock, and at first, it did not register with him. Then he turned to see that they were alone, turned back to her, smirking, anticipating, no doubt, that she had finally realized what a masterful man he was, and was going to yield to him in more ways than one.

  She smiled sweetly at him. Then she shifted to her true and proper form. The smirk froze into a rictus of incredulity and fear when he saw what was facing him. His eyes bulged, and he made a little mewling sound.

  “I have no further need of your services,” said the Troll, and slapped him to the floor with a single blow of her hand.

  She made him last for a good long time, after first choking off his voice by the simple expedient of stuffing his mouth full of clay. He could still breathe through his nose. Her neighbors were awake and about, and it would be awkward to have to explain the screams. She absorbed him a little at a time, taking time out to actually, physically, feed on his flesh, just for the taste and the sensations it aroused in her and in him. She did not, of course, detach the limbs that she fed on. She wanted him to feel it, feel the horror as he watched her feed, and was helpless to do anything about it. Not a drop of blood was wasted; she absorbed it as it dripped from the ruined flesh, as she absorbed his energy, little by little. She savored all the complex flavors of his fear, spiced with despair and hopeless-ness. Finally, when she could wring nothing more from him, when he was semi-conscious at best, numbed, his mind hiding away from her, from the horror of what she was doing to him, she came to the point where it was time to end the game. She killed him and absorbed the rest of his body. When she was finished there was nothing left but a few bloody rags.

  She reverted and signaled to her servants to return and clean up the mess. She was not sated, but her temper had been appeased. Now her mind was clear enough to think. She flung herself down on the chaise again, and allowed her servant to clean the blood out from under her fingernails before it dried there.