Reserved for the Cat

by Mercedes Lackey

  All that took less than a week to set up. And meanwhile she was carefully watching the progress of her toy, Terrance Kendal.

  He had come away from the failed assignation in a rage, but rage cooled too quickly, especially in a bloodless thing like him. He had, in all of his life, never sustained anything like passion for very long. Passion required commitment to something other than one’s own self, because it required being focused on the object of passion, rather than one’s own self. She needed to engender more than rage, she needed him to tip over the edge of sanity into obsession. If she had been forced to wait for it to happen naturally, she might have been waiting long. However, she had a number of resources she could use to manipulate his mind.

  To begin with, dreams.

  Dreams were very useful. They existed outside of logic, outside of normal behavior, and cut straight into emotion and instinct. Mortals did and experienced things in dreams that they would never think of doing, much less actually do, when awake.

  Now to give a human dreams was not as easy as it might seem. The ordinary sort of human, without any magic to speak of, was singularly resistant to the any touch of the arcane. The sheer power of his disbelief was astonishing to someone who had never come up against it; the inability to See the creatures of other planes and other realms only reinforced that. This disbelief created a wall between a human mind and anything that might try to force it via magic. What a Mage had to do in order to infiltrate a human’s mind—rather than just cracking it open, which was rather damaging and not at all subtle—was to find out just what it was he did believe in.

  Fortunately, in the case of Terrance . . . he believed in God and the Church. Not, of course, the kind of honest and open-hearted belief that would also have protected him . . . no, indeed. He believed in the comfortable, dozing-in-the-pew sort of orthodoxy that promised him Heaven in return for the weekly offering and an occasional high tea for the clergy. He liked his clergymen modern—that is, a fellow who would talk to him about hunting and dogs and fishing, and not about uncomfortable things like the state of the poor and the exploitation of the mill-worker, or abstract things like morals and conscience. He certainly was not comfortable with those who took too close an interest in the state of his soul, but preferred those who reassured him without actually saying anything that his soul was in good repair and a place waited for him in Heaven—a Heaven populated by Cambridge men who would see his worth at a glance and give him the respect and deference he was simply was not getting here on earth. That this Heaven would also include plebeians who would fawn over his every word and beg to serve him went without saying.

  So Nina put on one of her male guises and went to visit him dressed in the clerical dog collar.

  She appeared round about tea-time, knowing that if a clergyman presented himself at that hour, it was a given that he would be invited to share it by Terrance’s mother.

  And so it was. Within two minutes of sending in a card, “Father Martin” was seated on the best horsehair sofa across from Mrs. Kendal and a rather bored-looking Terrance, nibbling on a watercress sandwich and drinking rather insipid tea. It was such a typical example of a stolid, middle-class sitting room that it could have been photographed and framed as a representative of its kind. The wallpaper was mauve, with great cabbage-roses climbing all over it. The woodwork was dark and shining with wax. The furniture was covered in mauve plush; there were small tables crowded with “curiosities” everywhere a table could be put, hand-embroidered firescreens, hand-embroidered cushions, hand-embroidered footstools—evidently Mrs. Kendal had a great deal of time on her hands and from the paucity of books in the room, did not care to pass it in reading. Mrs. Kendal was one of those blonde women who looked like roses in their youth, but faded rather quickly, like a printed chintz that has been washed too many times. She was thin—Nina rather suspected she lived on tea and toast and the occasional bowl of broth—her hair was now an indeterminate shade between silver and straw, her eyes were the pale blue of a sky with a thin haze of high cloud over it, and her voice was scarcely louder than a whisper.

  Even her gown seemed a faded black, rather than the uncompromising color of full mourning. If there had been any less of her, she would have been a ghost herself.

  Nina had long experience of reading mortals, and with the thoughts of those she absorbed, and it was easy to categorize this woman. Very pretty, by nature docile, she had been taught that was all she had to be in order to achieve the acme of all possible goals, a Good Marriage. She had been schooled and catechized within an inch of her life in the most rigid form of religion, and frightened by a nanny and teachers and clergymen into a petrified fear of ever “being naughty.” And because of this, she made a modest social success of herself. Her looks eclipsed her timidity, and her fear of practically everything was interpreted as shyness and an attractive modesty. She went where she was led, did what she was told, probably responded to her suitor’s proposal of marriage with “All right.” Once married, she was bullied by husband, parents, siblings, teachers, and son, and probably by her own servants.

  She was as afraid of a social faux pas as she was of a sin, and to feel anything at all strongly, to break the surface serenity of the household, was the worst of all social faux pas. Every household book, every tome on proper wifely duties, preached this. This was at least partly where Terrance got his own cold-bloodedness; she had never had a passion in her life, or at least, she had never dared to allow herself to feel one. And life escaped her because she had never dared to grasp any of it; not youth, not joy, not love or romance. The only thing she had felt strongly enough about to try to hold it was her son, and she clung to him like a strangling vine, which made him all the more determined to shove her aside. This, of course, she refused to see. In her world of sentimental ballads and mottoes, the few tomes of what passed for fiction that she got from the lending library, this was how it was. Terrance was her “darling boy” who must, of course, be devoted to his invalid mother. He would never do anything to upset her. She had, after all, devoted her life to him, delicate as she was. She had no idea that every time she spoke those words, she increased his distaste for her company.

  This was not helped by her pathetic conversation; the small gossip of the ladies of her charity-sewing group, timidly ventured opinions on the state of the world that she immediately discarded if Terrance frowned, complaints about all the “foreigners” in Blackpool, tales of woe about the servants.

  As Nina listened to her nervous chatter, she thought to herself that there must be hundreds of women like her in Blackpool alone, and that they would be absurdly easy to exploit and devour. A little kindness, a bit of attention, and the right word at the right time would turn women like her into devoted slaves, who would passionately defend their chosen idol against anyone that criticized him or even failed to worship at his altar. It would have to be a man that attracted their devotion, of course. That sort of interest in another woman was “unhealthy” and highly suspicious, for no real woman could be so strong as to deserve the slavish devotion of others of her sex.

  Like the orphanage, Nina filed that away in the back of her mind as another rich source of sustenance. The disadvantage would be that she would have to be a clergyman, of course.

  But a few complaints about the indifference of Mrs. Kendal’s doctors made her revise that. A doctor . . . that had a number of advantages. A doctor with a new scheme for invalid women—something pleasant, rather than extreme, like vegetarianism, or cold water baths, or cereal flakes for every meal. Something involving a great deal of tea. And sweets. And perhaps opium-laced cordials . . .

  But for right now, her attention was on Terrance. With patience and skill, she insinuated into Mrs. Kendal’s mind the idea that “the men” had important things to talk about, things that she was neither clever enough to understand, nor worldly enough to bear. Yet at the same time, Nina managed to insinuate that Father Martin did not feel these things, though her son might; Father Martin only f
eared that these matters were too weighty for a creature as delicate as she, and actually considered her to be the wisest and most gracious of women.

  So, when it was clear that there would be no more afternoon visitors for tea, Mrs. Kendal pled her fragile health and left them alone. That was when Father Martin heaved a sigh, and leaned forward towards Terrance in a confidential manner, his expression turning earnest and grave.

  “I would not for all the world have wanted your dear mother to hear this,” “he” said quietly, “But I must ask you something, man to man. What do you know of that dancing woman, the Russian? The one all the papers had stories about—the one in that shipwreck. You know of whom I am speaking, I know.”

  “Nina Tchereslavsky,” Terrance said automatically, flushing. “Nothing much, I’ve seen her act at the music hall a few times. I read the stories in the papers. She’s accounted to be a handsome enough woman, I suppose, but certainly—really, Father Martin, she is a dancer in a music-hall who shows her limbs to anyone with tuppance, when it all comes down to it. Our paths are scarcely likely to cross, and if they did, I should hope she would know her place. Why?”

  Father Martin heaved a great sigh. “Because, Mr. Kendal, the woman is a Jezebel, and I have reason to believe she is interested in you.”

  Terrance’s eyes lit up, and his brow grew moist, but he probably thought he had schooled his features into indifference. He shrugged. “Me? I don’t believe I have been to the music-hall more than twice or thrice in my lifetime. Whatever do you mean?”

  He did not ask what a less self-centered man would have asked, which was “How do you know that?” He did not ask what a cleverer man would have asked, which was “Why should someone like that be interested in a man who has never so much as sent his card backstage?” And he did not ask what practically anyone else would have asked, which was “What business is it of yours?” He did not ask these things because he was under the impression that the comings and goings and doings of Terrance Kendal were naturally the interest of all the world. He had a fine appreciation of himself, and took it for granted that everyone else should. If anything, he took this as the signal that the world was finally paying him the sort of attention that it should.

  Father Martin made a tsking sound. “I make it my business to keep an eye on the creature, since she ruined a good young man of my parish. I have learned her sordid history on the Continent.”

  Terrance made a kind of shrug that said, without words, “Well! The Continent! What would you expect?”

  Father Martin nodded at the shrug. “You would think that someone as fairy-like as she would have a kind heart, a sweet nature, but no. She is steeped in black evil.”

  Terrance laughed, a bit uncomfortably, and wiped his brow with his handkerchief. “Oh, come now, padre, I think that is coming a bit strong for what must be the paltry sins of a young lady no better than she should be.”

  “Oh no. I use the phrase with full knowledge,” Father Martin assured him. “She makes it her business to find good young men of fine breeding, like yourself. She smiles at them from the stage, lures them into coming to her dressing-room, first in the crowd, and then alone. She makes them fall in love with her, she exploits them for every blessed penny they have, and when they have exhausted their resources and are one step away from the workhouse, she casts them off.”

  “Oh surely not—” Terrance replied, looking guilty and sweating more heavily.

  “I have the proof,” “Father Martin replied. “She has left a trail of tragedy behind her from Russia to Blackpool; madness, suicide, poverty. I attend her every performance now, and I noted her interest in you. I came to warn you. Shun her! She will devour any young man that comes into contact with her as the spider devours a fly.”

  To Terrance’s fascinated ears, Nina poured out a wealth of tales of “the dancing Jezebel.” The more she told him, the more his anger grew, especially as she waxed eloquent on the material possessions the dancer had seduced out of her suitors. He said nothing, but she read him like a book. Now he knew why she had never answered his note! Somehow she had discovered that he was not the possessor of such wealth as she required, and had spurned his advances. She deemed him not worthy of her attention, the hussy! The brazen slut!

  When Nina was certain that the fish had taken the bait and the hook was well and truly set, she took her leave. She had what she needed; the entrée into his mind.

  Now for the dreams.

  She left Terrance with his rage newly roused. He would go to bed tonight in a fever of indignation made stronger by the fact that he had no one to speak to about this. If he’d had a friend, they could have commiserated over brandy in the library, or even over a pint at the pub . . . but he had no one, and as a result, he would stew over this and fall asleep after tossing and turning for at least an hour.

  Nina had come away with something from that house: Terrance’s handkerchief, which he had patted across his flushing brow and left on the table. Now she had the link to him she needed, as well as the way into his mind.

  So she waited until well after midnight, and then set up her preparations; small ones, so as not to cause any great ripples in the currents of magic. Just the handkerchief, a mirror, and herself, full to repletion of power siphoned from another round of vagrants. As before, she worked without shields or containment circles, putting out no more ripples to the currents of power than some serving-maid trying inexpertly to create a love-charm. In fact, that was the genesis of this spell, an Earth-magic love-charm.

  She stared into the mirror, holding the handkerchief, and sent a tendril of magic across the city from herself to Terrance. When she saw his image in the mirror, sleeping fitfully in his stuffy bedroom, she knew she had him.

  With a smile of satisfaction, she began weaving her dreams, sending them into his sleeping mind. Image piled upon fevered image, all of them reaching deep into his mind, past all of the conventions, the manners, the morals and into the deepest, most primitive parts of his mind.

  In them, the dancer featured, tantalizing, tempting, seductive. The dream-Nina did more than seem to smile at him from the stage; she beckoned, winked, quirked an eyebrow. This time, Terrance went backstage, where the dancer, no more than half clothed, whispered promises, and allowed him certain liberties.

  She did not go too far into the realms of sex, because she was quite sure Terrance was still a virgin. But she certainly made the dream-Nina exercise all of her wiles on the dream-Terrance—in his dreams, he grew heated, restless, and aroused. Yet the dream-Nina never got beyond promises and poses, while the dream-Terrance sweated and lusted.

  And then, the rejection. And worse, the laughter.

  The rejection took place at a grand party. Dream-Terrance was treated with contempt and denied entrance to a gathering to which he had an invitation. The invitation said “fancy dress” and yet everyone else was in evening dress, further increasing his humiliation. To hide his discomfiture, he kept his domino-mask on. He pushed past the servants at the entrance, who turned up their noses at him, to find Nina in a ballroom, surrounded by attentive males. They were all laughing uproariously about something. As he neared them, all too conscious of his inappropriate garments, the stares of the other party-goers, he overheard something. His name, followed by a roar of laughter.

  “And so I told him ‘fancy dress!’ ” she crowed. “And look! There he is, the pathetic fool! What a guy it is!”

  Then dream-Nina turned, and looked at him fearlessly. “You are useless to me, little dog,” she said mockingly. “You are of less use to me than a pet monkey. The monkey, at least, is amusing. You have no money, though you pretend to it. You have no breeding, though you would like us all to think you are loftier than the Prince of Persia. You are stupid, and never did more than middling well in any of your schools. Your head is stuffed with commonplaces. You don’t know music, you don’t know anything about art, and you don’t understand more than half of what is going on around you. You are a bore, with your mid
dle-class ways and middle-class morals! Shoo! Find someone else to put to sleep! You cease to amuse.”

  And with that, she turned away, leaving him the center of a circle of people pointing at him and howling with laughter.

  In the mirror, he woke up in a cold sweat. And Nina smiled. She was rather fond of that dream, and he would continue to have it once a night from this moment on.

  If that didn’t tilt him over the edge, nothing would.

  18

  NINETTE sat sidesaddle on a chair and hooked her chin over the back of it, her hands resting just underneath her chin. She watched Jonathon as he sat on the hearth-rug of her bedroom, carefully crafted a working circle and summoned the shields, all without using anything other than a candle and his index finger. And she could not see a thing.

  Well, perhaps a little. A kind of vague heat-shimmer in the air. Maybe. Assuming that wasn’t her eyes being very tired after a long morning rehearsal, a short after-lunch revision of choreography, and a matinee and two evening performances.

  These “Bank-Holiday” things were terrible. Everyone got a holiday, it seemed, except the poor performers and entertainers.

  “Are there supposed to be flames?” she asked, doubtfully.

  “Not really, no,” Jonathon replied absently. “It is more the abstraction of Fire, the energy that is the Plane of Fire, represented here—” He looked up at her, and smiled suddenly. “I am boring you to sleep, aren’t I?”

  “No, I am only dreadfully tired,” she replied, and eyed Jonathon’s work with longing. “Please tell me you will be done soon?”

  “Very soon,” he promised. “But good shields take time, and I have learned a trick or two over the years. I don’t think a creature of any Element will be able to pass these if it’s one of the nasty sort.”