Lionel blinked at him. “I—didn’t know that—” he said slowly.
Jack laughed. “Why do you think old Alderscroft has that bloody White Lodge of his? It’s not just for going after the big things. It’s for bending luck the way he wants it to bend. Which, largely, is to keep ordinary folk from finding out we exist, but sometimes he bends it to help someone out, or bring about something that’s good for mages in general. One of his cronies told me. Almsley, I think he called himself.” He thought back to his encounter with Almsley . . . must have been Almsley Senior, the man had been older than Jack. And a Duke, to boot. There’d been a little something he’d wanted help with and only a Fire Mage would do. Jack had been a bit young to help, so he never found out what it was. Almsley’d been a damned fine chap, nothing high and mighty about him, polite as you please to Jack’s Pa, and no ordering anybody about. The sort of fellow that made you want to help him because he was a good man.
“Heard of him. Never met him. Well . . .” Lionel took out his handkerchief again and mopped his forehead with it. Jack felt sorry for him, this heat was really punishing the Air Mage. “All right, there’s this. The gel’s seen her Elementals. They’re not going to let her unsee them again, no matter how much she tries to tell herself they came from a knock on the head. So we need to be ready for when she gets her second encounter.”
“Fire Elementals are an impatient lot,” Jack observed, grateful that at this moment there was no one trying to get in or out of the stage door, so no one to overhear them. “They won’t put up with being ignored for long. I’m a little surprised they waited this long.”
“Probably the minute she’s alone, then.” Lionel gave Jack a look. Jack sighed, knowing what the look meant.
“All right, I’ll hang about outside her boarding house in case it’s tonight,” he promised. His leg was going to hate him for this.
8
BY the time the evening show was over, Katie was feeling almost as happy as she had been yesterday afternoon, when she and Jack had been out watching the sea and drinking lemonades. The show went well, Jack had not been offended by her nonsense, and his little trick of dealing with the heat had actually left her feeling more refreshed than tired when they took their final bows and all trotted off to their various dressing rooms.
She waved off Jack’s offer of taking her to supper; she was well aware that his purse wasn’t all that much heavier than hers, and he’d already treated her to lemonades yesterday. “I’ve paid for Mrs. Baird’s supper, thank you, Jack,” she said cheerfully. “Given I’ve paid for it, I’d rather eat it!”
“Can’t argue with that logic,” he replied, and turned to deal with a drunk who wanted in the stage door to meet with a “Dorrie.” Katie saw his kind every night, men with enough in them that they convinced themselves one of the girls in the show had been making eyes at him and him alone for the whole night.
As was her usual habit, she waited at the corner until she joined with a knot of girls going on their way in her general direction, trying to look as if she was part of the group. When they drifted off in a different direction from the one she wanted, she joined a family group of a husband and wife and several older daughters. And when they made a turn in the direction of some family boarding houses, she was within sight of Mrs. Baird’s and felt safe in hurrying the remaining distance on her own.
The soup tonight was a lovely spinach soup, and as usual, there was Mrs. Baird’s perfect bread to go with it. Some of the other girls were acrobats from another of the music halls, and when she ventured a comment on something one of them had said about how to best execute a tumble across a smaller stage than they were used to, they accepted her immediately into their conversation. It was like being back at that first circus again, the one that had been so much friendlier than Andy Ball’s.
She didn’t miss Suzie much at all. It was a pity these girls would be gone in another few weeks, but at least until then, she had someone she could compare notes with. When she finished washing up and went upstairs, it was in a singularly contented frame of mind.
Which meant that, when she had closed and locked her door behind her, and turned to light the lamp, the surprise of finding that the lamp already was lit—and, apparently, by the fiery little bird inside it—was a cruel shock indeed.
Even more of a shock was to turn and see a trio of glowing lizards winding in and around the logs in the unlit fireplace.
Before she could react, one of them leapt right out of the fireplace, ran up her arm, and sat on her shoulder, staring into her eyes with its own glowing, white orbs.
She froze; even her thoughts came to a standstill.
It flickered out a flame-tongue at her, caressing her cheek with it. It should have burned her. Instead, it felt like a cool breeze.
It stared deeply into her eyes. “Remember . . .” it hissed. “Remember . . .”
Images flashed across her memory—the ones from that horrible night. The caravan, already fully engulfed in flame, as if someone had doused it in paraffin oil before setting it ablaze. The absolute lack of cries from inside. Herself, rushing for the wagon, up the stairs, and pounding on the door with both hands, calling her parents’ names. The fires licking around her, and creatures exactly like this, twining around her, protecting her from the inferno. A larger bird, springing up out of the flames, actually pushing her away from the door, as she screamed and tried to get past it, tried to reach for a door handle that was white-hot.
No!
She didn’t want to see. Didn’t want to know. Didn’t want to understand that by the time she saw the caravan in flames, her parents must have already been dead, or she would have heard them inside.
And she did not want to see these hallucinations, these creatures out of her own mind, right here in her room. They must be hallucinations! Because if they weren’t—
If they weren’t, then it might have been that she could have controlled the fire and saved her parents. And for some reason, she had not.
That was what she didn’t want to face, most of all.
With a tiny cry of despair, she brushed the lizard from her, wrenched open the door, and raced headlong down the stairs, and out into the street.
The room that had been a shelter to her was a shelter no more, and all she wanted was darkness and a place to hide.
• • •
A little salamander popped out of the bowl of Jack’s pipe as he stood on the corner, quietly smoking. The door to the boarding house flew open, and, warned by the appearance of his own Elemental, Jack was not surprised to see Katie, eyes streaming tears, running blindly down the stairs and into the street.
And, fortunately, right toward him. Fortunately, because as fast as she was moving, he didn’t think he had a prayer of catching up with her.
She didn’t even see him and he was able to reach out and catch her as she stumbled past him. “Gently, Katie!” he said, before she could lash out at him. “It’s me, Jack . . .”
She didn’t fight him, which was a mercy. She didn’t go limp, either, or fling herself at him. Instead, she just stood there, looking as if she was so caught up in what was going on in her own head that she was oblivious to everything around her.
They had to get somewhere safe. He had to bring her out of this, and make her understand and accept what was going on with her. Frantically, he tried to think of somewhere he could take her where they could talk and be private. Some place she would feel secure. Not, good gad, his own rooms at his little flat. Not the parlor there either, nor Mrs. Baird’s parlor. It was too late and too far to go to Lionel’s—
The music hall . . . He had the keys. He could take her to Lionel’s dressing room. She’d feel safe there.
“Come on, Katie,” he said. “I know somewhere we can go.”
• • •
It must have been well after midnight when
he finally got some sense into her and out of her; Jack had not bothered to take out his watch to check the time, for fear that she would interpret the gesture as being he was tired of dealing with her. He was tired, but not of dealing with her . . . exhausted, really, but so was she.
But finally he got through to her. He convinced her she wasn’t insane. He showed her everything he knew how to do, from requesting Elementals to come to them—and fortunately they were more than anxious enough to oblige—to creating fire in his hand, lighting a lamp, shielding them both within a dome of fire-energy—
Every trick he knew, really. And then, somehow, he coaxed her to try a little. Just the usual; make a flame dance on the tip of one finger, coax a salamander into her hand.
Finally, he heard the full story of that terrible night when her parents had died from her own lips. He didn’t know if he would ever be able to convince her that there had been nothing she could do to save her parents, but at least he was sure of one thing.
Whatever the cause, it hadn’t been her doing.
Both of them exhausted, he walked her back to her boarding house. Mrs. Baird was not the sort to render judgment on the girls that lived there, not as long as they didn’t actually bring men to their rooms. So as he suspected, the kitchen door had been left off the latch, and she could slip inside and make her way back up to her room without anyone the wiser.
And as for him, well, no one cared at what hour a man came home.
• • •
Katie woke up to find herself lying fully clothed atop the bedclothes . . . and with a curious glowing lizard nose to nose with her.
If there was ever any chance that she was likely to wake up doubting what Jack had shown her last night, having a salamander lying on one’s chest like a friendly cat was the one thing that would explode all possible doubts.
She started to sit up, and the salamander scampered down her body and up onto the bedpost, where it sat like some sort of brass ornament, watching her.
“Good morning,” she croaked hoarsely.
The creature bobbed its head to her.
It continued to watch her as she changed her clothing and washed herself. Doing so didn’t make her feel less exhausted, but at least it made her feel less sticky.
When she opened the door, the lizard vanished in a poof of sparks; she knew now that it would come back when it chose to, and sometimes, when she asked it to. It occurred to her as she made her way slowly down the steep staircase that she had never had a pet before. Which led to a new question, among . . . hundreds, really. But the one foremost in her mind was a rather simple one. Were these Elemental creatures more like pets, or more like companions?
So many questions, and she was not sure if it was right to ask about them. Was she supposed to find these things out for herself? Jack hadn’t said anything last night about what she was to do about all of this. Was someone supposed to teach her? Were there books? I don’t read very well . . . In fact, she could just about blunder her way through a basic primer. How could she be expected to read a complicated book?
If this was something that supposedly you just knew how to deal with then . . . well, she didn’t. No instructions had turned up in her sleep last night.
She was so absorbed in thinking about everything that had happened that she paid almost no attention to what she was eating and was as quiet as the proverbial church-mouse. The other girls didn’t notice at first, but finally one of the acrobats stopped chattering to her mates and took a good look at her.
“Are you sickening for something?” the young woman asked in alarm. “You look terrible. Like you didn’t sleep a wink.”
“I didn’t, or mostly not,” Katie confessed. “I had horrible nightmares.” That was safe to say, everyone had nightmares from time to time. And this was almost true. Her own memories were worse than nightmares.
“Well at least you weren’t screaming,” said one of the others. “Blackpool, one of the girls in our house was an awful screamer when she got the horrors. So thanks for that, and sorry you didn’t sleep.”
“It must have been the heat,” Mrs. Baird said, coming in from her office. “Hold still, lamb—”
The landlady put her wrist against Katie’s forehead before Katie could say anything. “Well, you aren’t fevered. It was probably the heat, and I swear the air don’t move in this house at all at night. You’ll be all right. I don’t suppose a bad night ever killed one of us entertainers.”
“It hasn’t killed me yet,” Katie said, with a hollow laugh. “It was just nightmares, you know how it is, you start up out of them and don’t want to go back to sleep for fear they’ll come again, worse. I’ll come straight back from the evening show, have a wash-up, and go to bed. That’ll set me right.”
“And we’ll be having something cooling tonight for supper, instead of soup,” Mrs. Baird promised, looking about at the rest of the girls. “Cucumber and cress sandwiches, perhaps?”
“Oh yes, please!” begged the girl who had noticed that Katie looked exhausted. Katie tried not to smile. Cress sandwiches might mean “high class” and “high tea” for girls in a city, but they had been the court of last resort for her family in the summer, when she and her parents were short of the ready. Cress might be a luxury in town, but cress could be found wild growing near streams, and if you cut your bread thin enough, you could make it go a long way . . .
But Mrs. Baird wouldn’t be cutting paper-thin slices of bread, and there would be plenty of butter on those sandwiches. Cress and cucumber would be a welcome change for everyone, even Katie.
“This summer heat is only going to get worse, I fear,” the bearded woman said, shaking her head. “I had better go talk to my greengrocer, and the fishmonger, and we’ll start eating cooler things, not so heavy. Fruit and tomatoes and toast, perhaps, instead of oatmeal. Cooler suppers. If it’s soup, it’ll be a cold soup. I can’t have you girls having nightmares over my food.”
Now, Katie hadn’t said a word about that, but it seemed their landlady was perfectly capable of deciding that somehow she—or rather, the supper she had served—was responsible for a night of bad dreams.
Well, no harm done, even if it wasn’t the truth. Katie had to admit that food that wasn’t so heavy would be a welcome change, since the city was baking this summer.
The landlady let her go off with a word of admonishment that if she felt faint she was not to let her master badger her into anything other than “having a nice lay-down.” “Suzie told me you work harder than anyone, dear,” Mrs. Baird told her before she let Katie escape out the door. “There is no point in you fainting on stage. And you let him know I said as much.”
But when she got to the theater, and onto the stage for the usual rehearsal, the last thing she expected was Lionel waiting for her just inside the door. “Come with me,” he said, before Jack had a chance to say anything more than a simple “good morning.” He grinned and crooked his finger at her. “You know the act now as well as Suzie ever did, so this morning, you and I are going to go plan our next act.”
She looked at him, confused, as others pushed past them on the way to their own tasks. “But—”
“But the acts change in the fall, and while I normally would just make some slight alterations in this one—since at this season, the odds that anyone outside this theater would even know that mine is the only act that doesn’t change are very slim indeed—you are exactly the sort of assistant I have been needing for quite some time, and I want to put an entirely new routine together. I’ve been working on some new illusions, and it is time to invent another persona and retire an old one for a while. Down to the basement, Katie. I have everything we need down there.” Lionel turned and headed for the little spiral staircase, and Katie really had no choice except to go.
Not that she minded. The basement was the coolest place in the building, and right now, an
y place that was cool was on the top of her list for places to be.
The basement, besides being the home of the Wardrobe Mistress, was the site of storage room after storage room, and even a couple of workshops. One of them—the largest, as Katie later came to find out—belonged to Lionel. There were some distinct advantages to being the only performer who remained with the theater year round, it seemed.
“Here we are,” he said, opening a door on a room lit by windows up near the ceiling. “This is where I store my large-scale apparatus, and where I construct new apparatus. Two of the scenery carpenters and I have a very good arrangement in that way. Anything I can draw out in neat plans, they can make.” He brought her to a shabby willow armchair and sat her down in it. “Now, Jack tells me that he had a long and serious discussion with you last night. I hope I am not going to have to try and talk you out of that delusion that you were having hallucinations. Magic is real, my dear, and I make my living based on that fact.”
Despite being told multiple times last night by the doorman that Lionel, too, was one of these . . . magicians . . . and that he, too, had odd little creatures about him, Katie hadn’t quite believed it. And she still might not have believed it, if at that very moment, she had not seen a tiny, mostly-naked winged lady flit down through one of the open windows above and hover above Lionel’s head, looking interested. She was gorgeous, like a little bit of animated jewelry, and quite as shameless as Eve.
Katie managed not to shriek. But she did gasp “What is that?” and point at the tiny thing.
Lionel tilted his head up; his eyes lit and he smiled, for once showing a bit of his age as the skin around his eyes crinkled. “Oh, that is a sylph. She’s an Air Elemental, just as the salamanders and firebirds and phoenixes are Fire Elementals. I get sylphs, mostly, some pixies, a zephyr or two. The Air Elementals that I seem to attract are all very like the illustrations of a fairy tale book, except that they are quite without shame. Their idea of suitable garments is not to wear any at all, so get used to it, no point in being shocked. They simply don’t understand why the rest of us bother with clothing.”
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