This was not going well. She had only one advantage at this point: that the Elemental Masters did not know that the real Nina Tchereslavsky and the Earth Master that was plaguing them were the same person. They did not yet know who she was nor what she was, and her location was still secure. But that could all change in a moment.
Briefly it occurred to her that the safest thing to do would be to abandon this project and go back. She had not yet ruined her reputation as a dancer with that single canceled contract. There were a thousand excuses she could plead; she could manufacture a plausible, even sympathetic reason for why she had not honored it. Or she could simply remain silent on the subject and allow people to gossip; humans being what they were, they would probably assume she was giving birth to a child out of wedlock.
And for a moment she toyed with that idea. She could even admit to it, and carry out the plan she’d been intending to execute here. She could purchase an infant virtually anywhere, call it hers, and bring it back to her home. It was not as perfect as the plan she had made for taking over this girl’s place. There would be no marriage, which meant there would be scandal of course, but that hardly mattered to her. It wasn’t as if she was hoping to make a good marriage! On the contrary, the more would-be lovers she had vying for her, the better.
Meanwhile she could carry out the rest of the plan. Display the brat at regular intervals. Absorb it when it was big enough that she could counterfeit it, and then play the dual role of mother and child. She would then be her own heir, and “Nina Tchereslavsky” could disappear in some manner.
It could work. It could easily work. All she had to do would be to pack her things and simply leave.
Then the thought of that wretched girl and her meddlesome friends enraged her all over again. She would not leave this battle! The wretched girl would have to pay for what she had done! Once again her hands clenched and unclenched, and the fingernails grew just a little longer, a little pointier, a little sharper.
Besides, now that the Masters knew that she was out there, she could not imagine that they would rest until they identified her. And when they did that—
Her mind shied away from the thought, but she could not escape it. It was the one scenario that actually frightened her. The Masters simply could not permit something like her to exist. An Elemental creature, as powerful as any of them, who could and did walk among them, wielding magic in their world with a skill the equal to any of them? To them she was an abomination, a blasphemy, and they would not rest until she was not just banished, but destroyed.
It was sheer folly to think that they would leave the hunt once they had started it. She had inflicted too much damage on them already, and they would not rest until they had gotten revenge.
It was time to end this, end it while she still had all the advantages. The imposter would die, but her friends would precede her.
By the time Jonathon, Alan, and Thomas returned to the theater, Ninette had awakened from her rest, and was in a better state to tell them what had happened. Thanks to Arthur, the incident had lost its immediacy, and she was able to recite those details that she remembered calmly.
None of them knew what to make of it. “All I can tell you is that he hated me with a terrible passion,” she said rubbing the bridge of her nose as the memory made her head ache a little. “I cannot tell you why, and I do not ever recall having seen him before.”
“Maybe we should see if the mad-house is missing an inmate,” Nigel said, half in jest. But Ninette and Arthur both turned to look at him thoughtfully,
“That might be no bad idea,” Ninette replied slowly. “The strength of that hate, the lack of anything but hate—it indeed felt like that of a madman.”
Nigel regarded both of them soberly, as Arthur nodded. “I suppose there is no harm in making sure,” he said, finally. “Very well then. I’ll send to the police and ask them to make inquiries.”
As the humans discussed just how much it would be prudent to tell the police, Thomas slipped out. There were a few advantages to being trapped in the body of a cat, and this was one. He might not have the nose of a hound, but he could follow a scent-trail, even one as muddled as this one was likely to be. He felt a distinct sense of urgency in this. He could not imagine that this was some random madman who had somehow fixated on Ninette. No, this was linked to the other attacks, and the only way to find out how it was linked was to find the attacker.
Fortunately, the attacker had been kind enough to leave a blood-trail. Faint, but it was there. And it was just as fortunate that he had elected to stagger back to whatever place he deemed safe on foot.
Since his trail took him down back streets and through alleys, Thomas presumed that whatever injuries he had gotten impacting the brick wall had been obvious enough that he did not want to show his damaged self in public.
But this was two long treks across Blackpool in one day, and he was getting very tired indeed by the time the trail ended at the back entrance of a little house with pretensions of grandeur where Thomas’s sharp ears picked up the sound of a woman’s voice raised in a plaintive tone that was not quite a whine.
Thomas quickly leapt the wall and positioned himself where he could hear every word.
“. . . dear, I wish you would go tell the police about those footpads!” said the woman. “Look at your poor face! You might have been—”
“Enough, Mother!” The male voice that answered her was rough with anger. “I am not going to the police, and that is an end to it!” The scent that wafted from the window matched the one Thomas had been following, washed over with the scent of disinfectant. “There is nothing I can tell them; I never saw those ruffians’ faces, they simply manhandled me into a wall and fled when they heard someone coming. I am not inclined to open myself to ridicule because I allowed myself to be caught off-guard by a couple of rough laborers!”
“But, dear—”
“I have made my decision, Mother! Kindly do not fret me with it any further! Now, I am going out. Thank you for your ministrations, and do not trouble yourself to wait up for me.”
For one brief moment, Thomas panicked when he realized that the man was going to be opening the door only a scant foot or two away from his hiding place.
But then he shook his head, because he knew this fellow wasn’t going to do anything except shy a stone at him, perhaps. He was a cat! If a cat could look at a king, then it could certainly lurk with impunity in the shrubbery.
The man opened his own front door, and stalked stiffly out into the street. Thomas gave him a few paces, then followed. But it was with a powerful internal struggle. When he saw the marks on the man’s face that so clearly told that he had slammed into the wall, Thomas had no doubt at all that this was his quarry. And it had taken every bit of his self control to keep from leaping on the man in a fury and making a total ruin of his head with teeth and claws.
He hoped that he would gain some clue as to why the man had attacked Ninette, but all the fellow did was to go to a second-class club and proceed to get drunk. He went at it methodically, as Thomas could tell by watching from the vantage point of a hiding place under a sofa, and he went about it silently. He was scarcely popular, that much was painfully clear. No one greeted him, and he greeted no one. Eventually, he passed out in a stupor, empty glass falling to the rug beside him. One of the club servants picked up the glass but left him where he was. Evidently he was no favorite with them, either.
Finally Thomas left, and made his way back to the theater, stealing rides on the backs of cabs; now that it was dark he could do so without fear of being chased off or exciting any comment. He was experiencing very mixed feelings at the moment, but uppermost was unease. This man was a prig, a buffoon and a fool, but he was not mad. Nor did he correspond to the enraged creature that had attacked Ninette. Yet the scent was the same. There must be more, much more, than met the eye here. He thought about it all the way across town, but could come to no conclusions even as he slipped into the theater and arriv
ed just in time to see the end of Jonathon’s act.
Ninette performed flawlessly; certainly no one out there in the audience had an inkling that she had been attacked earlier that day. He sensed something more from her as well: an awareness of her relationship with the audience that had not been there before. That awareness seemed to spur her to overcome what had happened that afternoon, to transcend it, to perform a kind of alchemy that turned the experience into something good that she could give them. She wasn’t quite managing that—but she was trying, and for that alone she more than deserved the hearty applause she got. Thomas felt irrationally proud.
When she came off the stage, some of the performers and stagehands that knew about the afternoon’s attack came up to her to tell her she had done well; unspoken were the words are you all right? She must have known this, for she thanked them and took the time to make sure they saw her looking completely normal. Thomas gave her extra scrutiny during this. She seemed to be fine; in fact, he sensed that from being frightened she had gone to being angry. This was good; anger was a potent weapon, and by now, she should have learned something of control. He would, of course, make sure of that.
He followed her back to her dressing room, and sensed at that moment a hesitation and a weariness in her when she saw the usual crowd waiting. But he watched as she straightened her back, put on a smile and went in to deal with her admirers.
But she did not have to deal with them for long.
It could not have been a quarter hour later that one of the boys came with a summons from Nigel. Since even her admirers could not take precedence over the theater owner, they let her go with reluctance and cries of protest, and she made a graceful exit. Thomas followed.
He was debating whether he should say something to Nigel about his discovery, but—something stopped him from doing so. That made him pause, and sit for a moment with his tail wrapped around his paws while he considered his reaction, as the rest of the group in their turn discussed their own results. Jonathon had his list of hotel guests on the date in question, and had already compared that to the current register. He already planned to investigate those that were still in residence as well as the employees, and see what his two imps could find out about those who were gone. Very methodical, but this also seemed to Thomas to be perilously slow.
Nigel was tracking down appropriately powerful Earth Masters. He already had the addresses and letters of introduction to three of them. Also productive—and also slow.
He regarded them all through slitted eyes, and took some careful thought as he weighed them in his mind.
That was when it occurred to him: while they all took this seriously, none of the men, not even Nigel, regarded this as a contest they might lose.
None of them has ever lost before, he thought. Nigel and Jonathon I know have faced very perilous creatures, but they have never lost. It has never occurred to them that they can. In their world, the good and chivalrous man always prevails.
Looking at Ninette’s sober face, however, he knew that she, at least, was quite well aware that things could go horribly wrong. Probably Ailse was too. Both of them had come from very different backgrounds than any of the men. Both had been poor, and in Ninette’s case, she was quite well aware, always, that had things gone otherwise she might well have ended up worse than dead, in a terrible existence as a Parisian prostitute.
But the men had all gone to public schools, university, and if their parents had not been wealthy, they had at least been comfortable. By their own efforts, they had achieved respect and prosperity, and no one had ever seriously given them many moments of concern. When Nigel had faced down the worst of the magical creatures he’d dealt with in the past, it had been when he was much younger, and young men are always viscerally convinced of their own immortality.
So there it was, the reason why Thomas’s own instincts were telling him to keep his information to himself for now. There was certainly more to this extraordinarily sane madman than met the eye. If he was dangerous, Thomas wanted to find out in a way that would threaten none of them. Even if he could convince all of them that direct confrontation was a very bad idea, they would still want to spy on the man, and they were simply not going to be very successful at that. Humans were large, and none of these friends was skilled at being unobtrusive. A cat could go anywhere.
Tonight the men put Ninette and Ailse into a cab for the short trip home, and made it clear that Ninette was to take taxis anywhere she needed to go if Nigel was not available to drive her in his motor.
Sensible precaution, and Ninette took it so. Then again, her energy was starting to run low; Thomas could tell from the way she was starting to droop, just a little. He jumped up inside and settled at her feet, and again, the silence between her and Ailse told him a very great deal. She was exhausted, and that was hardly surprising.
It was only when she was tucked into bed and Ailse was out of the room that Thomas jumped up and sat on the foot of it to speak with her. She was trying to read a book, and making heavy going of it, at one and the same time too tired in body and too active in mind to stay focused.
I found your attacker, he said without preamble.
She sat straight up. “You did? But—”
Shh. I did not want to tell the others. There is something exceedingly odd about him. I need to investigate this further, which means I will be out all night. You will be all right, yes?
For answer, she reached under the corner of her mattress and pulled out her revolver.
Good. I very much doubt that anything will happen, but I need to know you are prepared to defend yourself. I intend to share everything I learn with you, Ninette. I do not believe that allowing you to remain ignorant will make you any safer.
She nodded, her expression grimly determined.
I am going to try to find out why he is so deathly enraged with you, why he is obsessed with you, and once we know these things, we can formulate a plan to deal with him.
“That seems a great deal wiser than stalking up to him and asking him why he attacked me,” she said dryly. “I never really saw his face, so I cannot even be a witness as to who it is.”
Police would take a dim view of a witness that never saw her attacker’s face, he agreed. Very well then. Lock the doors and windows, and when I return, I will simply find a comfortable place to wait downstairs until you awaken. A cat, after all, can sleep virtually anywhere. And our landlords know I belong to you and will give me a handsome breakfast of kippers. He jumped down off her bed and up onto the windowsill, and from there out onto the roof. He waited until he saw she had locked the window as he asked, then flicked his tail once in the moonlight.
Au revior, cherie, he said, and began making his way back to street level. He had a taxi—several taxis—to catch.
23
THE way that the club’s servants treated the man that Thomas was following said volumes about his unusual behavior. Servants could be dismissed on the basis of a single complaint. Very often the level of their personal comfort depended on the generosity of the patrons at holidays or when special requests were supplied.
So to be bundled into the cheapest possible cab, with no concern for his dignity and comfort, to have his pockets gone through and used to pay the hack driver in advance, argued for someone who had sunk so low that the servants expected nothing out of him and treated him accordingly. It also argued that even the ruling members of his own club would take the word of a servant over his.
Rather pathetic. And it made his attack on Ninette all the more puzzling. It was as if this was a real-life Doctor Jekyll, though one without the fictional doctor’s better qualities.
Thomas got himself a ride easily enough. The man didn’t even notice a cat getting in with him. Thomas tucked himself up as small as he could though, because the jolting of the poorly sprung cab was slowly knocking him out of his stupor. By the time the cab arrived at his home, he was conscious enough to clamber out, curse the driver, and stagger up to his door. Th
omas followed a prudent distance behind and watched to see which lights came on upstairs. He noted, as he had expected, the lights—gaslight, he thought, by the way it increased rather than coming on—in the front upstairs bedroom. The back would overlook the tiny scrap of paved yard suitable only for the maid to do the laundry in, and other similar household chores; neither the lady of the house nor the master would care to have that view out their window. The maid—or maids, if there was more than one—would have the attic. It appeared that the man occupied the room of choice, leaving his mother to climb two sets of stairs instead of one. How chivalrous.
Thomas noted with pleasure that the passage from ground to windowsill was an easy one for a cat. Plenty of places to climb led to a faux-balcony below the windows, and the night was warm enough that—
There. The maid opened the window for the man, her expression of weary resignation clear from here. All Thomas needed to do was to wait.
Wait he did, as the lights were turned down and then off, as the neighborhood quieted further, until he was fairly certain the man was asleep. Then he scrambled nimbly up to the balcony, squeezed through the railing, and leapt up to the windowsill.
And there he was. Thomas expected sottish snoring, but the sound that came from the man made all the hair on his back stand up and his tail puff out like a bottle-brush.
He was whimpering . . . pleading. Then in the next moment, the pleading turned to an animalistic growling so full of hate that Thomas very nearly leaped down to the street again.
Thomas could not make out exactly what the man was saying, but there was something about it that sounded like half of a conversation. And he would dearly, dearly like to have heard the other half.
Then something else put up the hair on his back. The faint scent of magic. But not just any magic. This was not the magic of an Elemental Master. No, oh indeed not. This was the raw, half-tamed power of an Elemental itself.
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