Reserved for the Cat

Table of Contents

Title Page

Copyright Page

Dedication

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Chapter 8

Chapter 9

Chapter 10

Chapter 11

Chapter 12

Chapter 13

Chapter 14

Chapter 15

Chapter 16

Chapter 17

Chapter 18

Chapter 19

Chapter 20

Chapter 21

Chapter 22

Chapter 23

Chapter 24

EPILOGUE

Raves for Reserved for the Cat:

“The fifth in the series involving the mysterious Elemental Masters, this story of a resourceful young dancer also delivers a new version of a classic fairy tale. Richly detailed historic backgrounds add flavor and richness to an already strong series that belongs in most fantasy collections. Highly recommended.”

—Library Journal

“The Paris of Degas, turn-of-the-century Blackpool, and the desperation of young girls without family or other protection come to life in a story that should interest a broad readership.”

—Booklist

“This most recent entry in Lackey’s series is a nicely paced, pleasant read. Nina is a sympathetic protagonist readers will root for, and the story holds together well.”

—Romantic Times

“A fantastic cat-and-mouse game among a shape-changing troll, Elemental Masters and a gifted dancer in Victorian England makes Lackey’s latest Elemental Masters installment a charmer. This is Lackey at her best, mixing whimsy and magic with a fast-paced plot.”

—Publishers Weekly

RESERVED

FOR THE

CAT

NOVELS BY MERCEDES LACKEY

available from DAW Books:

THE HERALDS OF

VALDEMAR

ARROWS OF THE QUEEN

ARROW’S FLIGHT

ARROW’S FALL

THE LAST HERALD-MAGE

MAGIC’S PAWN

MAGIC’S PROMISE

MAGIC’S PRICE

THE MAGE WINDS

WINDS OF FATE

WINDS OF CHANGE

WINDS OF FURY

THE MAGE STORMS

STORM WARNING

STORM RISING

STORM BREAKING

VOWS AND HONOR

THE OATHBOUND

OATHBREAKERS

OATHBLOOD

THE COLLEGIUM

CHRONICLES

FOUNDATION

BY THE SWORD

BRIGHTLY BURNING

TAKE A THIEF

EXILE’S HONOR

EXILE’S VALOR

VALDEMAR

ANTHOLOGIES:

SWORD OF ICE

SUN IN GLORY

CROSSROADS

MOVING TARGETS

Written with LARRY DIXON:

THE MAGE WARS

THE BLACK GRYPHON

THE WHITE GRYPHON

THE SILVER GRYPHON

DARIAN’S TALE

OWLFLIGHT

OWLSIGHT

OWLKNIGHT

OTHER NOVELS:

THE BLACK SWAN

THE DRAGON JOUSTERS

JOUST

ALTA

SANCTUARY

AERIE

THE ELEMENTAL

MASTERS

THE SERPENT’S SHADOW

THE GATES OF SLEEP

PHOENIX AND ASHES

THE WIZARD OF LONDON

RESERVED FOR THE CAT

And don’t miss: THE VALDEMAR COMPANION Edited by John Helfers and Denise Little

Copyright 2007 by Mercedes R. Lackey.

All rights reserved.

DAW Books Collectors No. 1417.

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First Paperback Printing, October 2008

DAW TRADEMARK REGISTERED

U.S. PAT. AND TM. OFF. AND FOREIGN COUNTRIES

—MARCA REGISTRADA

HECHO EN U.S.A.

eISBN : 978-1-101-14373-5

S.A.

http://us.penguingroup.com

To the volunteers of the Emergency Animal

Rescue Service (EARS)

who are selflesslty going into disaster areas to

save our best friends.

http://www.uan.org

1

NINETTE Dupond lined the toes of her pointe shoes with lambswool carefully, making sure there were no little bits of grit or near-invisible lumps that would make themselves known in the middle of the performance. Then she took surgical tape and bound her toes, so that if the inevitable blisters did break and bleed, the blood wouldn’t seep through and stain the pink silk of the shoes. It did not do for a pretty little sylph to have bleeding feet. It spoiled the illusion.

She had already spent half an hour pounding on the toes of her shoes with a hammer to break up the glue just so. Old shoes for practice, new shoes for performance. It was a mantra, like so many other mantras of a ballet dancer. Ninette was only a sujet, a soloist, and a new-made one at that—one step up from the coryphées, and two from the quadrilles of the chorus, but not yet to the exalted status of the premier danseurs and as far from the etoiles as she was from the stars in the sky. Coryphées did not often have new shoes; one could see them backstage at rehearsal covering their old shoes with new silk, reblocking and reglueing the toes. A soloist, yes, as a soloist she got a pair of new shoes for every new production.

Ninette did not get the sort of pampering that the etoiles got. But as a soloist, she could, at last, do what she was here to do in the first place.

Not to become a star performer, oh no. Her goal was more oblique. To catch the eye of a rich old gentleman.

Her mother Marie Dupond had made no bones about it when she had enrolled her daughter in the ballet school of the Paris Opera. There were not many options open to a pretty little girl like Ninette, alone with her mother in Montmartre. She could become a washer-woman and starve, and possibly marry some poor workingman who would overlook the fact that she had no father, and bear a dozen children, bury most of them, and die young. She could work for the painters, as her mother did, and also starve. With them she would have no reputation, and go to bed with them because at least they had beds and food most of the time, and were always generous if improvident. She could simply become a whore, because no respectable man of any means would marry a girl with no father. Never mind that her mother had a marriage license and all; such things could be faked and when there was no live father and no grave—

And even if one accepted the license, well, the man had deserted the woman. Likely he had a dozen wives or more, which would make Ninette a bastard. Not many respectable men with good positions would take the chance on marrying a pretty girl whose background—or relatives—might come back to haunt him.

So Ninette could marry a poor man, who would not have such concerns. Or she could put herself where rich men would see her and become something better than a mere whore. She could become a courtesan.

One of the places to be seen by men with money was on the stage, preferably the opera or ballet, though the Folies were marginally acceptable. And it was clear to Marie Dupond, when she saw her flower-like child dancing almost before she could walk, that the place for her was the Paris Opera Ballet. Many rich old men in large fur coats took mistresses from among the little ballerinas. And if the girls were clever, they kept their rich old men very happy and were given a tidy little something as a parting gift when another little ballerina took their place. By then they were known at Maxim’s and on the boulevards and another rich old man would quickly take the place of the former one.

If they were not clever, of course, they ended up drinking absinthe to excess and showing their legs at the Moulin Rouge or even less desirable places, and ended up as washerwomen and starved. But along with ballet lessons, little Ninette received lessons in being clever from a very young age.

And the very first one, repeated so often that Ninette thought if one were to take off her skull it would be engraved on her brain, was this:

Never fall in love.

Maman had fallen in love. She had fallen in love with an Englishman, and they had even married—she truly did have the license to prove it—and set up housekeeping in a little garret apartment and, Ninette supposed, had been very happy. Then one day shortly after Ninette was born, when she was wailing away in her cradle and Maman had been at her wits’ end to soothe her, Papa had gone out.

And he had never come back again.

And that was all Ninette knew of her Papa. There had, most certainly, been no trace of him whatsoever. No bodies had turned up, no one even remembered seeing him in their street. He was just—gone. And there was Maman, with no money and a tiny baby and no idea how to keep them from starving except to take in washing and take off her clothes for the artists in their quarter. So she did both. And Ninette grew up in an atmosphere where the smell of harsh soap and paint drying meant comfort. Meager comfort, but nevertheless, comfort, for soap and paint meant cabbage, beans, bread, and cheese, and perhaps even sausages sometimes.

The artists were kinder than the people who sent them laundry to clean. The artists bounced her on their knees when she was quiet to make her laugh, sang out-of-tune songs with questionable lyrics to soothe her to sleep, and sometimes had musician friends who played music that made her dance. The artists were more generous too, which was strange considering that the people who sent them laundry had far more money than the artists did.

Learning to dance was hard work. Dancing was even harder. Ninette had liked making up her own dances and not having to do them teetering on her burning toes, with her calves and arches aching. Ballet hurt. She ended every performance—and she had been performing since she was twelve—with cramped and blistered feet, with aching ankles and knees. She ended every rehearsal wishing she could have been anywhere else. She was not one of those few for whom the stage was a fairy-tale place where nothing bad could ever touch them. The stage for her was one thing: a show window, where she would somehow manage to catch the eye of someone with a great deal of money while, at the same time, keeping the etoiles and the premier danseurs from noticing that she had done so.

As she wedged her feet carefully into her pink satin shoes and bound the pink ribbons just so around her ankles, the scent of the ballet filled her nostrils—rosin and sweat, chalk-dust and flowers, perfume and gaslights, the heavy makeup they all wore, the pomade on their hair to hold it in place. All the sylph-girls wore their hair in stiff little buns with wreaths of white artificial flowers around them; the Scottish girls all had the same stiff little buns but wore Scottish bonnets over them, so they didn’t need as much pomade.

The orchestra was tuning up on the other side of the red velvet curtain, and the house was filling. She could hear the murmur of voices out there, a kind of dull rumble in which individual voices were submerged into an oddly slumberous whole.

Ninette, of course, was a Sylph. This was a very long ballet, and it often seemed to Ninette that it got longer every year, with more and more solos, duets, trios, pas de quatres and Variations added to satisfy—

Who?

Presumably the rich old men in fur coats in the boxes, who delighted in seeing their kept darlings flitting across the stage. Each of them watched with proprietary pride, knowing—or at least thinking—that their pretty little thing was being ogled by all, but like the white doe in the legend was not to be touched by any save the one whose collar they wore so prettily.

Well, Ninette was going to be one of those kept darlings, and when she was, she was going to stop dancing. Or at least, she was going to dance only what and as she wanted to. Perhaps . . . she thought longingly . . . perhaps in the style of La Belle Isadora, Isadora Duncan, with her bare feet and little Greek tunics, bare arms and freedom . . . perhaps like Loie Fuller, who had only to swirl enormous draperies around in colored lights.

But that day was not yet, and this day was another skirmish in the war to win what her mother never had.

She missed her mother; every night going home to the now-empty apartment, every Sunday visiting the unmarked pauper’s grave, she missed Maman dreadfully. That might seem strange to someone who only saw the Maria Dupond who lectured and scolded her daughter, always pushing, pushing her. But Ninette knew the desperation that had been behind the scolding, and felt that same desperation watching the pleasant spring and languid summer march towards fall, towards winter, when the little garret would have little or no heat and the wind would whistle through the cracks till the water would freeze solid in the pitcher and washbasin. It had been hard enough to sustain life with both Marie’s income and hers. With the meager salary of a soloist . . .

Ninette rose to her feet and began her warming up exercises. She never put these off. She had seen far too many girls hurt because they scanted their warm-ups—and an injured dancer is not a dancer at all, and there were plenty more waiting to take her place if she faltered and fell.

Stretches first; toe-touches, plies in all five positions, back and leg stretches along the backstage barre followed by similar exercises en pointe, and limbering exercises for the arches—

This was only a matinee, and the audience would mostly be children and their governesses, old people who could not afford the evening prices—but some of those rich old men still liked to fill the box stalls even at a matinee. For some, the reason was because the matinee was where the fresh, young talent was trotted out and seasoned, like young horses running local races before attempting the Grand Prix. For others, it was because their constitutions no longer permitted the late hours of a long production. And who knew? There might even be some ballet lovers among them, as opposed to lovers of little ballerinas.

Since it was only a matinee, Ninette had not even thought much about the fact that the Sylphide herself, Mademoiselle Jeanmarie Augustine, was nowhere to be seen. The etoile was possessed by one of those rich old men, performed her warm-ups in the privacy of her own little ballet studio in her luxurious flat, and was rushed to the theater in her paramour’s own motorcar. But an uncharacteristic stir backstage caught her attention, as did the sound of raised voices signaling something was wrong, and she looked up from her stretching among all the other little sylphs to see the ballet master, the wardrobe mistress, and the company manager hurrying towards her own little knot of girls carrying, respectively, a wreath of artificial orange blossoms of the sort that winter brides wore, the slightly larger and more elaborate wings of La Sylphide herself, and a sheaf of papers. . . .

And they were looking straight at her.

A thrill of excitement together with a chill of anxiety sent blood rushing to her cheeks and gooseflesh to crawl on her arms. Something must have happened to La Augustine. But surely they weren’t—

They were.

The other girls scampered awkwardly out of the way as the three approached, the portly, be-suited manager, with his little fringe of hair combed hopelessly over his bald pate, looking particularly red-faced and out-of-sorts. When they reached hearing distance, they all started talking at once.

“Of all the wretched inconveniences—”

“Ma belle, we haven’t time to change—”

“Petite, I know you can—”

“Enough!” roared the company manager, getting complete silence. “Look here, girl—” he scanned the papers in his hand. “Ninette. La Augustine managed to trip on the curb and sprained her ankle. Her understudy didn’t come in.” The look on his face told what he thought was the reason—a man, too much wine, and a big head after. “The second understudy is already in the harness—”

The harness. Of course, the harness that attached to the ropes that would make the Sylphide fly through the air to tease James. There were really two Sylphides, a dancing one and a flying one. The harness was built into a costume that was impossible to actually dance in. The dancing Sylphide would flit offstage and the flying one would be pulled by three strong men out of the wings and through the air, only to have the dancing one take her place again to flit with James in pursuit. It was one of the tricks that made this ballet so popular.

“That leaves you. Pierre says you can dance it—”

The ancient ballet master, gray-haired, tall, and leonine, smiled encouragingly. She wrapped her arms around herself, suddenly elated and terrified all at once. “Mais oui, I have studied the part, rehearsed it, but—”

“I have seen you in rehearsal after rehearsal, cherie, and you will be admirable.” The ballet master patted her shoulder. “Do not think. Just dance.”

“It’s only a matinee,” the company manager growled. “The balletomanes are always after us to put new young dancers on the stage—”

“Ah, but you know why we have the etoiles dance even the matinees,” the ballet-master interjected. “The balletomanes are few, and the public many, and the Parisian audience is loyal to a fault. They wish to see their etoiles, and barring accident—”

“Yes, yes, yes, I know,” the manager growled. “Well, there was an accident. Get those wings on her!” he barked at the inoffensive wardrobe mistress. Unflappable as ever, the competent old woman in her eternal, rusty-black dress was already taking the smaller wings of a soloist off the small of Ninette’s back. “Thank all the Saints the costumes are so alike; we’d never have time for you to change.” The ballet master plucked the smaller, scanter wreath from Ninette’s head and pinned the Sylphide’s wreath in its place.

The stage manager, evidently already apprised of the situation, was mustering the chorus. Anton Deauville, the rather aging etoile in the part of James, was arranging himself in the armchair onstage. The orchestra had finished tuning and was falling silent. So was the babble of sound from the other side of the curtain. The company manager gave Ninette a despairing look and stalked off to stage center front, to part the curtains and walk through.

“Ladies and gentlemen.” She heard his voice, muffled first by the heavy velvet, then the fire curtains. “Due to an accident, the part of La Sylphide will be danced this afternoon by Mademoiselle Ninette Dupond. Thank you.”

She went cold. She had been in the theater so many times when it was someone else’s name announced in place of the etoile. There had been restlessness, murmurs of discontent—after all one had paid to see the etoile, and one should get what one had paid for! Sometimes there were whistles and catcalls, more often cross murmurs as the members of the audience searched in their playbills for the unfamiliar name. Once in a great while, people walked out.

Were they walking out right now?

“Places!” called the stage-manager, as the wardrobe mistress got the wings securely in place.

And Ninette had a moment of panic. Do I enter stage left, or stage right?

She froze. But the ballet master had been anticipating this reaction. He steered her to her mark.

And then it was too late to panic. The curtain was rising. She heard her cue, lurched up onto pointe, and blindly made her entrance into the glare of the stage lights.

The performance was a blur, punctuated by moments of brilliant clarity. Anton, his face made into an almost immovable mask with stage makeup, looking encouragement at her with his expressive eyes. A moment of fleeting ecstasy as a lift went so flawlessly it felt as if she were in the harness and flying. Another of joy as she finished a piece of excruciating footwork so beautifully that the audience broke into spontaneous applause. Feeling sweat run down her back, having to keep it all look magical, effortless.

And through it all, Maman’s orders. Pick one side or the other, left or right, it doesn’t matter, so long as you keep looking to that same side during the whole performance. Look to the boxes. In a moment of rest, smile there, pretend you can see past the footlights. I know you can’t and you know you can’t, but those rich old men up there don’t know that, and every one of them will be certain you are smiling at him.

Finally, James cast the poisoned scarf around her, and her wings fell off, and she “died.” The other sylphs came and took her up, and carried her offstage, and onstage, the flying sylphs rose into the “sky” with a life-sized sylph doll in their arms. Her part was, at last, done. She was “done” before that, though; this was the one section where, as in Giselle’s mad scene, there was a lot of room for interpretation. La Augustine made a long process of the dying, often forcing the conductor to signal the orchestra to repeat bars of music as she staggered about the stage. Ninette was too drained. The moment that her wings came off, she came down off-pointe, stared at James blankly, made a feeble motion of entreaty, and dropped like a shot bird. It was her fellow sylphs that followed the music then, gathering around her, carrying her off.

Exhaustion struck her like a blow, and once they put her down offstage, she just sat there, breathing hard. Onstage, James wept, watched as the wedding procession of his betrothed Effie and her former suitor Gurn went by, railed at the witch Madge, tried to kill her, and was killed in his turn. Madge did a little pantomime of triumph and the curtain came down. Offstage, Ninette finally got to her feet.

Applause. There was applause at least. So she had not driven anyone out. There were no hoots or whistles. She must have done well enough.

First the Scots coryphées and quadrilles took their curtain calls, then the sylphs. Then the sujets. Then—first Madge, then Effie’s mother, then Effie and Gurn, and then—

Then Anton was taking her hand and drawing her onto the stage, and the applause rose, and there were shouts of approval; she made the bow she had practiced ever since she was a tiny tot, deep and appreciative, and smiled at the box seats on both sides of the stage.

And there were flowers, bouquets brought on stage by the little pages. She remembered to take a rose from hers and give it prettily to Anton. Then the continuing applause reminded her to make another bow; and wave graciously to the rest of the company and bow to them, then they all came forward and bowed, and the curtain came down, then rose again—

This went on two more times before the applause finally died down. And she went back to the dressing room in a daze, and sat in her little seat in the crowded room shared by all the sujets and stared at herself in the mirror and didn’t know if she was glad or disappointed that the evening’s performance was not La Sylphide, but Giselle, and La Augustine’s understudy for that was certainly pounding on the toes of her new shoes at that very moment in a fever of excitement.

A thin, rangy, tabby-striped tomcat surveyed the departing audience from his perch on the overhead scaffolding with satisfaction. That went well.

The little brownie that kept the sujets’ dressing-room reasonably clean raised a skeptical eyebrow. You really are an evil creature. Tripping a ballerina! La Augustine is furious.

La Augustine’s patron will buy her an emerald bracelet and take her to Maxim’s. Everyone there will make much of her and she’ll have enough champagne sent to her table to bathe in it. She won’t do badly out of this, and if she is wise enough to do all of the exercises she can, she won’t lose anything. Just a few performances. The tabby cat’s tail twitched. She might even end up with a new patron.

The brownie smirked. And so might Ninette. Get a patron in the first place, that is, not get a new one.

The only betrayal of the tomcat’s sudden anger was the increased twitching of his tail. She won’t need a patron after this.

The brownie snorted. She’ll get one. Like it or not, she’ll get one. She certainly wants one, and this performance should net her one. And as for her not needing one, don’t count your chickens before the eggs have hatched. She’s not an etoile yet.

She will be. The tomcat said it with passion. She will be.

The next morning at class, as always, everyone from the coryphées to the etoiles had their noses in the papers, looking for a mention in the reviews. The instructor had not yet arrived and girls were doing their warm-ups over spread-out newsprint, chattering like a flock of sparrows. The papers went from hand to hand, Ninette was certainly not immune, and discovered that in most of them, the matinee reports were mostly full of La Augustine’s injury, and her performance rated only “Sujet Ninette Dupond was called upon to replace the etoile and managed a creditable, if sometimes naïve, interpretation.”

“You are damned with faint praise, Ninette,” laughed Jeanne LaCroix, another of the sujets. It was not a nice laugh, but Jeanne was not a very nice person. “By hook or by crook” seemed to be her motto for getting ahead. One expected a certain amount of that backstage, but Jeanne seemed to take delight in it. She never let an opportunity pass to make another feel small if she could help it.

“Oh!” cried Madeline Clenceau from the other side of the room. “Listen to this! It’s the reviewer for Le Figaro!” Now everyone took notice, for Le Figaro was universally thought to be the newspaper for artists and thinkers. “The matinee performance of La Sylphide was notable for the substitution of the sujet Ninette Dupond for a suddenly injured La Augustine, and one can only applaud the stroke of fate. Mademoiselle Dupond is far lighter on her feet than La Augustine, and brought to the part the proper air of fragility and otherworldliness that La Augustine lacks. Her Sylphide is innocent and unworldly as a butterfly, she entreats the earth-bound James to come play on the wind with her; La Augustine’s Sylphide seems about to invite him to a Montmarte bistro for wine and sausages. Of particular note is the death scene. La Augustine is well known for drawing this out until one is tempted to rise from the audience and give the Sylphide a mercy stroke to put her out of her misery. Mademoiselle Dupond, however, made the scene heartbreakingly brief. One moment, she is borne on the wings of the zephyr; the next, the cursed scarf has worked its sinister magic, her wings fall away, and she is stricken, and drops lifeless to the ground before we, or James, have quite realized that anything is wrong. The pathos then is all the clearer; like a naughty boy with his first bow and arrow, James has shot at a bird and brought it cold and dead to the earth, destroying with his clumsy touch what he had only wanted to cherish. This is not to say that La Augustine is a poor dancer, but let her be confined to the parts where sensuality is an asset—La Fille Mal Gardee, for instance, or Corsair. And let us hope that this will not be the last time Mademoiselle Dupond graces the stage as the tragic Sylph.”

The chatter in the rehearsal room had stopped dead. Ninette bit her lip. The first thing that struck her was how very wrong the critic had been—he had mistaken her own exhaustion for deliberate art!

But the second thing was this. La Augustine was probably reading the review at this very moment.

And she was not going to be pleased about it.

2

LA Augustine was furious.

Ninette was in hiding; one of the sympathetic teachers, Isabella Rota, a former premier danseur herself, had hidden Ninette in a tiny closet when La Augustine came storming through the ballet school, limping heavily and in the sort of rage where she would snatch objects up and throw them—not actually at anyone, or at least not yet, but certainly doing some damage to walls and the objects themselves.

La Augustine was very popular with the audience. The critic at Le Figaro undoubtedly knew this. He also knew his review would provoke angry letters, and angry letters sell newspapers. The ballet company of the Paris Opera was an established organization, and Le Figaro took the position that anything that had been established for more than a handful of years deserved skewering on a regular basis. The critics of Le Figaro, considered themselves far more intelligent than the general run of an audience, and, being mostly poor, were openly contemptuous of the balletomanes, the rich old men in the private boxes.

But the critic in Le Figaro would probably never have to face the wrath of La Augustine himself. He probably submitted his work under a nom de plume, and thus was secure from retribution by means of the blanket of anonymity. The only one who was going to suffer in this instance was Ninette, and she had known from the moment when La Augustine began her rampage through the studios and classrooms that if a head had to go beneath the guillotine, that head would not belong to the managers or the ballet master.

As she huddled in the small, stuffy black closet among old rehearsal costumes, brooms, a mop and a bucket, she tried to plan how she should deal with the managers. Should she weep? That might be good. After all, she had done nothing wrong and none of this was her fault! She expected to be demoted to the coryphées again. And that would be hard. She did not know how she could keep the little garret apartment on the salary of a coryphée without augmenting it somehow. She might have to call upon her mother’s artist friends and model for them. And somehow manage to stay out of their beds. If she could keep her head, perhaps she could somehow fit in dancing elsewhere. Perhaps—perhaps she should find another place to live; a smaller room, a cellar instead of a garret, although the idea of the mice and rats and black beetles gave her horrors. Maybe she should . . .

But all these plans came crashing down when Madame Rota came for her. Ninette emerged, blinking in the light, from the closet. The old woman’s face told her that it was worse than she had dreamed. But even she could not have guessed what she had done—until Madame Rota told her.

“Oh, petite, you have done the unthinkable,” Madame Rota said sadly, patting her hand. “La Augustine’s patron was in the boxes, for he was entertaining friends and, once his paramour was safely bestowed on her maids, saw no reason why he should not continue to do so.” She shook her white head in its little black lace cap. “You smiled at him, cherie. And worse, he was taken with you. And worse still—he said as much to La Augustine.” Madame Rota let go of her hand and sighed. “I am sorry, little one,” was all she said. “In the managers’ eyes, the good review would balance La Augustine’s anger at the insults to her in that same review. After all, you scarcely put the critic up to it, and not even she could claim that. But when her patron expresses his admiration—that is never to be forgiven, and not even the director of the company can save you.”

Numb now, Ninette followed the old woman to the office of the director of the company. It was the first time she had entered those august precincts; the office was a jewel box of red velvet and gilt, much like the expensive private boxes in the theater itself. It was as well that she was numb, for the blow was a cruel one, and a final one.

She was fired. Turned out. Ordered to collect her belongings and go.

Not quite thrown out on her ear . . . but the whispers followed her as she changed out of her rehearsal dress and into her street clothes, and the looks followed her too, some pitying, some smug. And at three o’clock in the afternoon she found herself outside the building, as the music from the rehearsal rooms rang out over the street, a mishmash of five or six pianos all playing different pieces at once.

And she hadn’t the least idea of what to do.

Despair gave way to tears; she hung her head to hide them and slowly made her way through the narrow streets to her building, then up the three flights of stairs to her little apartment. Very soon not to be hers at all, for the rent was due and she had no salary to pay it with. Three days was all she had, three days in which to find work. If she could.

A good review of a ballet matinee performance, it seemed, meant nothing whatsoever to the managers of the Folies Bergere, the Moulin Rouge, the Comedie Francais. Patiently or impatiently, the company managers gave her the cold facts; she learned that such a thing could have been a fluke, her one good performance of a lifetime. Or it could merely have been spite on the part of the critic, who used her as a vehicle to lambaste La Augustine. Oh, she could audition—but there were no openings. Not for a mere chorus dancer. And at any rate, this was not ballet, it was a very different style of dance. Had she danced in such performances before? No? Thank you, mademoiselle, but your services will not be required.

The artists were sympathetic, but penniless. No one was buying paintings. The Philistines were on the ascendant. They could not pay her to sit.

At the end of the third day of fruitlessly hunting for a position, she returned to the garret knowing there was only one course left to her . . .

She would go back to the Folies. She had just enough time to alter her one good dress; tighten the bodice, drop the neckline. She would go, not to the stage, but to the bar, and she would linger and flirt, sidle up to anyone who did not already have a grisette and hope . . .

She dropped her face into her hands and cried. What a ghastly thing to hope for! That some ordinary, uncultured man would hand her enough money to pay the rent for another few days so he could take her into his bed! And then she would have to do it all again the next night, and the next—possibly even more than once in the same night!

It had been one thing to hope for a rich old man, well mannered, dignified, who would take care of her. That would not have been so bad, it might not have been bad at all. It would certainly have been no worse than an arranged marriage. She had seen some of the patrons and they seemed kind, they often gave the little girls sweets and nosegays of violets. There was some dignity to the idea, courtesans were established, they had a kind of respect—and if the arrangement was not forever, or the man was careless or cruel, well, that was not so bad as being tied in a lifelong loveless bond of drudgery to some old man for whom one was unpaid cook, nurse, housekeeper. A poor man, a legal spouse, could be just as cruel and abusive as a rich one. More, actually; the only people a poor man could take his frustrations and anger out on were his wife and children. A courtesan at least had a gilded cage, servants, luxuries. Good food, a soft bed and fine wine, beautiful clothes and jewels would make up for a very great deal indeed.

But this! This was—sordid. And once she started on this path—how could she ever hope to rise higher? Many were the tales of courtesans who fell to the streets but few of those who managed the journey in reverse.

But what choice did she have? Tomorrow she would be in the street, and even more vulnerable, unless she got money tonight.

Ninette—Ninette, please do not cry!

A voice—

Startled, she choked off her sobs and looked wildly about the little room. The golden light of the descending sun, filtered through the Parisian smoke, filled the garret. And there was no one there. No one and nothing, except for the rangy tomcat, a brown tabby, who sat on the windowsill. He was no one’s cat, but he had been around and about for as long as Ninette could remember—him, or at least, one just like him. In good times he got their scraps, and in bad, at least he was a warm companion in bed. Maria would never have allowed that, but the cat had always insinuated himself inside somehow, and out again before the morning fires were lit. And as he never had fleas, Ninette had been happy to share her blankets.

So now she was hearing things . . .

You are not hearing things. You are hearing me, the voice said.

Again, she looked wildly about. “Who is there?” she demanded, her despair fueling her anger at this unasked for invasion. “Show yourself!”

You are looking at me, Ninette. The tomcat jumped down off the sill and strolled up to her. It is the cat. Call me Thomas if you like.

Her mouth dropped open as the cat jumped up onto the little table and sat down again, curling his tail neatly about his feet. She shook her head a little wildly. “No, no, this is impossible—”

Clearly not, since you can hear me speaking to you. So do not cry, Ninette. I will make things right for you. I should have spoken to you when Maria died, but I was afraid you would never believe—I have watched over you all your life.

She stared into the cat’s unblinking eyes. “Oh? And so fine a job you have made of it!”

Did you ever starve? Was there always money to pay the rent? the cat retorted. Do you remember the sausages, the cheese, the fish that were left on the table that you thought were from your artist friends? The little purses Maria just “found” in the street when the rent came due? Maria would never have believed in any of the other things I could have done. I had to confine myself to what she would believe in.

Ninette bit her lip, her mind a whirl. She felt as if her entire existence had been turned upside down. Talking cats! Talking cats that claimed to have been taking care of them! And yet . . .

And yet there had been those mysterious gifts of food when they needed them the most. Maria was incredibly lucky when it came to finding windfalls on the street. Even the artists had remarked on it, saying that she must have a good fairy looking out for her.

A good fairy. . . .

Not exactly, the cat said wryly. But close enough. Ninette, will you trust me? Will you put yourself in my hands?

“Paws,” she corrected absently, still feeling her mind reeling. If this was madness then—so be it. She might as well be mad. What did she have to lose? If she was truly mad, then none of this was happening, and someone would find her wandering about and take her to an asylum where she would continue to live in her fancy. Or she would fall into the Seine and drown, and all her problems would be solved in that way.

All right then. You have to say it out loud. That’s the way these things work. It’s like a contract. The end of the cat’s tail twitched, restlessly.

“I trust you. So go and do whatever you want. I won’t go to the Folies just yet, I will give you your chance—”

Stay right here, the cat said, fiercely. Pack a small bag with anything you do not want to leave behind. Change into your good gown. I will be right back.

Abruptly, he stood up and whisked out of the window so quickly he might have been enchanted. She was left staring at the spot on the table where he had been sitting.

Pack a bag. With anything she did not want to leave behind.

She bit her lip and stared out at the evening sky. What in the name of God could this all mean?

As sunset turned to l’heure bleu and became dusk, then dark, she waited. Through her open window she could hear the sounds of the street—artists arguing at the little café, someone with a guitar, children, released from whatever job they did during the day, finding a little energy to play. Through the window came cooking smells; cabbage, the eternal cabbage, the staple of the poor. Sausages frying. Her stomach growled, and she finally got up, lit a stub of a candle, and rummaged the last of her bread from beneath the bowl where she had put it to keep it safe from mice, chopped up the last of her cabbage and made a thin cabbage soup, and ate it, slowly, dipping the hard bread into the broth. There was nothing more in the flat. Which did not matter, because if she had been imagining the talking cat, she would be in the street tomorrow anyway, and if she hadn’t she would—

Where would she be? Why would a cat tell her to pack a bag?

The last of the soup a memory, the last crumb of bread gone, she finally got up from the table, and did pack that bag, an ancient carpetbag, worn to the weft. She put it on the bed and when she was done it was scarcely half full. There was not much to put in it. A few bits of clothing, Maman’s marriage license, a little jewelry not even the pawnshop would take. Everything they had ever had of value had long since been pawned, except for the furniture, and she could not, in any event, strap a bed to her back and carry it off. She packed her ballet shoes, her rehearsal costume. She put on her good dress, as instructed, tied her shawl about her waist, and sat down to wait. The candle slowly burned down to a small puddle of wax, until it was just a bit of wick sporting a tiny flame.

Finally, as she began to doze at the table, there was a thump at the window, and a second as the cat leapt from the floor to the top of the table.

He had a square piece of pasteboard in his mouth.

Take it, he said insistently, and dumbfounded, she did. I will be right back, he said before she could ask any questions, and leapt away, and out the window, like the Spirit of the Rose in the ballet sketch.

She held it sideways to the light to see what it was. To her astonishment, it was a railway ticket, Paris to Calais, common carriage.

The boat-train. What on—

There was another thump and the cat returned, this time with a purse in his mouth, which he dropped at her feet. Put that in your pocket, he said. Then get your bag. We haven’t much time to get to the train. He wandered over to the old, worn carpetbag and swatted at it with a paw. Ah good, there will be room in there for me. That will make things easier.

She picked up the purse. It was an ordinary little thing of leather, and she felt and heard coins in it. She opened the mouth and poured the money out into her hand. It held twenty-three francs, a 50-centime piece, four 20-centime pieces, seven 10-centime pieces, three fives, and nine single centimes, which was nineteen francs more than she had seen of late, and much more than her mother had ever had at one time. There was nothing to identify the owner.

She looked up to see the cat insinuating himself into the bag. “You stole this!” she said, aghast. “The purse, the ticket—”

And what if I did? It was from no one who would be terribly harmed by the loss. Now hurry up! You can buy dinner on the train or at a station. You will have to catch the Metro and then the train!

“But why are we going to Calais?” she asked. There was no answer.

The cat’s tail disappeared into the bag. With a feeling that things had spun completely out of control, Ninette picked up the bag, now made heavier by the addition of the cat, and hesitated again.

She looked around, with the odd feeling that this would be the last time she ever saw this apartment. This was where she had mostly grown up; she had scarcely known any other home.

Yet when she left, no one would really miss her. The rest of the dancers had probably forgotten her already. As kind-hearted as the artists were, they were very much of the sort to put everything but their painting right out of their minds. If she had been sitting for any of them—if she vanished, whoever she was sitting for would have been angry of course. But as she wasn’t, well, she was just another forgettable little dancer and model who went away somewhere, and they would not trouble themselves too much over where that was, so long as none of them were called to identify a sad little corpse at the morgue.

The place was clean, but threadbare and rather dreary. Despite having so many artists in and out, the only pictures on the wall were those cut out from discarded magazines and framed with little bits of wood from old crates. Even those tended to go for kindling in the winter. The bed didn’t even have proper blankets, just rag-blankets made of skirts too stained, worn, or torn to ever be worn again by anyone. There was nothing in this room that had not been used and discarded by someone else.

Even me . . .

The Metro, girl!

The candle guttered out. She took that as a sign. She stole down the dark stairs and into the night, leaving nothing of herself behind.

The Metro was crowded, but not so overcrowded that she had to stand. She had to run to catch the boat-train however, and by that time the bread and cabbage had worn very thin. She was, in fact, desperate for some food. The bag was heavy, she was tired, and her mind was in a dazed state where all she could think about was her growling stomach and the ticket in her hands.

She took a seat, the bag at her feet, and as the train pulled out of the station, and the conductor began his journey through the car, collecting tickets, she had a moment of panic. What if he knew the ticket was stolen? What if it wasn’t a real ticket at all? What if—

But he looked at it, collected it, and moved on without a second glance. She sighed, and when a vendor came along the aisle selling sweets and cones of nuts, she fumbled in the stolen purse for coins and bought some. Then she tucked back into the shadows of her seat and ate, slowly, savoring each bite. She had not had sweets or nuts since one of the patrons had brought some for all the girls. And here she had a cone of nuts and a whole bar of chocolate to herself.

The cat in the bag at her feet was quiet, but warm; her shoes were so thin she could feel his warmth and the vibration of his purr. She had never been on a train in her life; the carriage seemed very grand, with its scarlet upholstery and its brass fittings. There were lovely lamps at intervals all along the car, fitted in between the windows. The windows were tightly closed, but there was a smell of soot in the air; some smoke from the engine escaped into the car.

She peered through the windows, hoping to see something. She had never been outside of Paris either. But it was too dark to see; the best she got were glimpses of an occasional, dim light in the distance from some farm or other, the vague shapes of the towns the train passed through, and the lit platforms they occasionally stopped at.

Despite the clattering, soot-scented, noisy reality of this journey, Ninette could not believe in it. It had an air of unreality for her, as surreal as any of the wildest canvases of the artists of Montmartre. She, Ninette Dupond, could not be doing this, sitting in a boat-train on the way to Calais. This must be a dream, a curiously vivid dream. . . .

When the train pulled into the station, she picked up the bag and the cat and drifted out onto the platform still wrapped in that unreality.

The cat slipped out of the bag and stood beside her on the platform, looking about alertly. Go and sit over there, he directed, with a nod of his head. Don’t move. I’ll be back.

She looked down at him askance, but got no further word from him. The fact of his talking, however, only reinforced her feeling that this was all a dream, that in a moment she would waken in her bed back in Paris, and try to think of some prospect she had not yet considered as the means of paying the rent.

But, because it seemed the right thing to do in a dream, she went and sat as directed, and watched people stream by on their way to and from the ferries. And thought about food. The chocolate and nuts were long gone. Dared she see if there was a café somewhere near here?

Just as she was thinking about looking for one, she felt a nudge at her ankle.

It was the cat, with a thick pasteboard rectangle held daintily in his teeth. She knew, without even looking at it, what it must be.

A ferry ticket.

She could not even manage to protest that she didn’t want to go to England, because by this time, aside from her hunger, this was all too absurd to be real. And in a way her hunger only enforced the absurdity; if she were lying somewhere, mad or delirious, and dreaming all this, well she would be hungry, wouldn’t she?

So she just reached down and took the ticket, wordlessly. The cat climbed into the bag again, and she joined the stream of passengers heading towards the boat.

Finally, once aboard, she found real food; inside the ferry, someone was selling sandwiches wrapped in paper, and hot tea from a window. She bought both, carried them away to the warmest bench she could find, and sat there eating in tiny bites. She heard some complaints around her about the bread being stale, the cheese inferior, but she thought she had not tasted anything so good in a long time.

With a lurch, the ferry pulled away from the dock and began the nearly three-hour trip to Dover.

Ninette got another sandwich.

The crossing was smooth; preternaturally smooth, according to the comments. As late as it was, there was not much to see. Ninette amused herself by observing the passengers and trying to guess which of them was smuggling liquor into England to avoid the duties. The man with the tall hat? He could easily fit a bottle of brandy in there.

And that made her think suddenly that there would be a Customs man examining her bag in Dover. The cat! He would discover the cat, and surely one was not allowed to bring a cat into England!

But then in the next moment, she laughed at herself for being so absurd. She had by now convinced herself that this was all an illusion, a dream built of hunger and maybe fever or madness. It wouldn’t matter. There wouldn’t be a Customs man, or the cat would turn himself into a hairbrush or something. . . .

In fact, when the ferry docked and she joined the long crocodile of people leaving, she realized that her bag was much lighter. The cat had vanished. And when she reached the examining counters, the Customs man poked through her meager belongings with utter indifference before waving her on.

And then she found herself staring at the trains waiting to take on passengers without the slightest idea of what to do next. Where was she to go? Was she supposed to catch another train? Find some place to stay in Dover? She only had French money; where was she to get English money?

She felt herself on the verge of crying, when there was a warm brush against her ankles and she looked down to see the cat—once again with a pasteboard rectangle in his teeth—poking his head from under her skirt. She reached down and took it; he got into the bag as she placed it on the ground. Clearly her next act would be to get on the train. So, lacking anything better to do, she followed his directions, still somehow coming into her mind, to the one he wanted her to get on. It looked very different from the French train: less stylish, more purposeful. She got on and took a seat in the farthest, darkest corner of the compartment.

At this point, she was moving in a fog of exhaustion, and as the sun came up and pierced the windows of her railway car, she stopped thinking altogether. They arrived at an enormous train station, full of noise and smoke and bustle, full of the sound of foreign words in foreign voices. She got off and followed the cat when he jumped down out of the bag. She sat on a bench at his command, until he returned with first a new purse containing strange-looking money, and then another railway ticket. She followed him to the new train, let him get into the bag, and boarded.

It had all the characteristics of a dream. She got off the train in a new city, one that, she quickly realized from the scent of the ocean and the chill, damp wind, was a seaside city. The cat eeled out of the bag and looked up at her. It’s not far now, she heard him say. Just stay with me. Trust me.

Well, why not? She had trusted him this far. She followed the cat into a shabby-genteel neighborhood of small shops and tiny boarding houses. The cat led her to one that displayed a French flag in the window.

The woman here is from Lyon. She is a widow and takes in holiday guests. Tell her you are here to visit your sister who married an Englishman, the cat said, brusquely. Give her one of the small gold coins. She will take you to a room, and there you can sleep. I will tell you what to do when you awaken.

Numbly, she did as the cat said. At this point, the dream had gone far beyond madness into something else. The woman who answered her knock was thin, worn, tired-looking, but at least she spoke tolerable French. She asked few questions when Ninette timidly handed her the coin. Instead, she merely led Ninette up a set of very narrow stairs to an equally narrow—but clean—room.

“I serve breakfast at six, which you are too late for,” the woman said, “Luncheon is served at noon, and from the look of you, you will probably sleep through that. So I will make an exception for you, and serve you a good tea, which I normally do not serve—unless you also sleep through tea-time, in which case you may join us for supper at seven.”

Ninette nodded, and set her bag down. The woman took this as the signal to leave, and did.

Ninette managed to get her dress off and climb under the blankets. For a moment she was very cold, and thought that this surely was a sign that she was about to wake up.

But then a warm, soft body slipped into the bed with her, sliding his way up to nestle against her stomach where he began purring. A moment later she was warm.

I cannot be falling asleep if I am already asleep. Or does this mean when I fall asleep I am going to wake up? Or am I never going to wake up, and that is why I am dreaming of falling asleep . . . The questions circled around and around until she couldn’t sort them out anymore. A moment after that, she truly was asleep.

3

NINETTE woke to the sounds of voices and footsteps running up the stairs. Normally that would not have woken her, but somewhere in the back of her dreams, she realized that they were speaking a foreign tongue—

Except, somehow, she could understand them. Imperfectly, but . . . she could understand them.

She came a little more awake, clutched the bedclothes with her eyes still closed, and listened to the young women trudge up the stairs to their rooms and chatter about their shop-jobs, the horrid customers. By the voices, there were five, two of whom had French accents, and who seemed to be working for a perfumer and a milliner. How can I understand them? she thought, baffled.

And then she truly woke up. She was in a strange room, in a strange bed—a room and a bed much, much nicer than any she had ever had before. The smells were all wrong; pleasant, but wrong. There was the faint scent of lavender, the fainter scent of the sea, and just a hint of baking bread. The sounds were all wrong also; the staircase was solid, not creaky, the voices in the street outside were nothing like as loud as in Montmartre, and were neither raised in argument nor song. And it was raining. This was not France.

It had not been a fever dream. She was, truly was, in England. And how was it she could understand those young women?

Because I gave you the language.

The warm place at the small of her back moved, and the cat insinuated himself out from under the bedclothes and sat on the pillow, looking down at her.

“How?” she whispered haltingly.

I put it into your head by magic.

But she didn’t believe in—

You are speaking to a cat. If you do not believe this is magic, what do you think it is?

She blinked. And blinked again. She was awake, in England, possessed of two purses of money, and speaking to a cat. There really was no explanation other than madness, and if she was mad . . . then she wasn’t here at all, and it all certainly felt real.

But the whole situation was so . . . impossible. . . .

If you get up and get dressed, you will be able to get supper with the rest. Trust me. I know what I am doing. I will help you make your fortune.

Her stomach growled, and that decided for her. This might be madness, this might be impossible, but there was food down there, and she had missed too many meals already in her life. At the moment, she did not care about fortunes, she cared about a good dinner.

She spent a good long time brushing out her skirt and jacket, then washing up in the basin on the dresser and combing out her hair. Unlike some of the other ballet girls, her hair was not down to her waist; it was only just long enough to be put up into the proper, stiff little bun. She pinned it up tidily, donned her clothing, and when she heard a bell ring and the sounds of footsteps and voices in the hall and on the stairs, she joined the others.

The other young women glanced at her curiously, but all were clearly hungry and in a great hurry to get to the table. Nor did she blame them. The savory aromas nearly made her faint.

She followed the others to a dining room; in the manner of the rest of the house it was very clean, very neat, but nothing in it was new. A huge, plain table with a white tablecloth could easily seat ten. There were eight plain, ladder-backed chairs around it now. A little maidservant was bringing in the last of a set of platters, this one holding a loaf of bread already sliced. Gaslights illuminated the table in the growing dusk.

It was all she could do to remember her manners, remember that she was not supposed to be a starving little dancer, nor a Montmartre refugee, but a respectable girl visiting her married sister. She waited until the others were seated, then took the only vacant chair. She bowed her head over her clasped hands while Madame spoke a brief blessing. She looked up as Madame finished; despite longing to reach for the nearest plate, she kept her hands in her lap.

“This is Miss Ninette Dupond,” Madame said gravely. “She will be staying with us for a few days while she visits her sister, before returning to the Continent. I trust you will make her welcome.”

Madame had a very strong accent, but so far as Ninette could tell, her English was quite correct. The others murmured welcomes, and then the passing of dishes from hand to hand began.

The main course was a cassoulet of white beans, with pork and mutton and a bit of bacon. There was of course, far less pork and mutton than there were beans, but this was several steps above what Ninette had been eating of late, and there was plenty to go around. With this were plenty of boiled potatoes and cabbage, and that wonderful, big, crusty loaf of bread. Ninette ruled herself at that meal with a will of iron. She did not grab, she did not fill her dish to overflowing. She did not take the last of anything. She ate slowly, with small bites. She did not pour half the sugar in the bowl into her tea.

She knew, as she ate, that she could not possibly be mad. Not even in madness could she have imagined eating enough at a meal that she was actually full. Madame was not stingy with her guests, though it was very clear that she made the most economical meals possible. But she also made them well, and filling.

Mostly the other girls were involved in chatter about each other. Quiet, well-mannered chatter, but nonetheless, it was simple gossip. Madame did not join in, but neither did she make any gestures of disapproval. Now and again, one of the girls remembered her manners and thought to ask Ninette something about the supposed sister. The questions were infrequent enough that Ninette was able to concoct a plausible sounding story by the end of the meal. Her sister had met the man who was to be her husband when he traveled to Paris as a salesman of steel cutlery; she had been working in a shop at the time. They were married in Paris. On becoming a husband and father-to-be he had taken another job with his firm as a clerk, so that he did not have to travel. This was their first child. It had gone well, but Maria needed her sister’s company. The flat was too small for a visitor to stay in.

This was all accepted without anything other than a nod or two. Madame enquired as to whether she would be taking luncheon at the house. Ninette told her “yes.” “I do not want to be a burden on them,” she said, in her new, broken English. “They must watch their pennies.”

Madame nodded with approval and attention moved on to the new playbill at the Alhambra music hall, which seemed, from what Ninette could gather, to be pretty much like the old playbill. The comedian was said to be a little funnier, the magician not so good as the last. There were ragtime singers from America in place of Rose and Violet and Three Young Men. There were jugglers instead of acrobats, and dogs instead of the sketch comic. The young ladies voiced their discontent.

Ninette concentrated on her dinner. But it occurred to her at that moment that she might, just might, be able to leverage her cachet as a French dancer into a position at one of these music halls. Respectable shop girls and respectable boarding house owners went to these performances; while not the Paris Opera in terms of artistic quality, these places were at least attracting something other than the bohemians, the grisettes, the whores and apaches. They might even have their own versions of the old men in fur coats, who liked to make the lives of little ballet girls more comfortable.

She could not continue to live here, of course. She was rather sure that the salary of a dancer would not extend to a place like this, and even if it would, she doubted that Madame would permit someone like a dancer to live among her shop girls. But perhaps the cat could find her a place that catered to entertainers.

Not an impossible idea. . . .

Dinner ended with something that Madame called “treacle pudding,” which Ninette regarded with a dubious expression, and which was rather more sticky sweet than she was used to. Still, it was a luxury. The last day had been full of luxuries. She had actually had enough to eat for the first time in ... well, certainly since Maman had died. She had sat in a railway carriage and then in a ferry, she had slept in a bed between sheets that were not tearing apart with age and gray with washings, beneath warm, whole blankets. It was like a miracle.

But it was not, thank le bon Dieu, perfection. She would have suspected perfection immediately. Perfection would have meant that she was lying delirious in a ditch somewhere, or mad, or even dead or at least dying. But no, this was reality. The cassoulet was just a bit scorched on the bottom, the mutton and pork in it were thrifty re-use of leftovers, for she tasted a memory of mint on the mutton and of rosemary on the pork. The treacle pudding was something she had never tasted or even heard of before, and surely she could not have invented anything like it in her own mind.

So once again this was brought home to her: she was in England, and a talking cat had brought her here. She had paid for lodgings for a week. So, for a week at least, she would live like a decently paid shop girl.

At the moment, that was more than enough.

The other girls began to push away from the table, thanking Madame, as the little maidservant came to clear away the last of the plates. Some went into the drawing room; pleading the long journey, Ninette excused herself and went back up to her room. When she entered the room, it was empty. When she turned back from closing the door behind herself, the cat was on her bed.

Turn out the purse, he said, imperiously. The English one, not the French one.

Obediently, she did so. The cat delicately separated the coins into neat little piles.

This is a sovereign, he said, pointing to the pile of the largest of the coins. These are worth the most. They are also called pounds. You had two, you gave Madam one, and she returned you the change. These are shillings. Twenty of these make a pound. You have seven now. These are pennies, or pence. There are twelve of them in a shilling and you have fifteen. These two here are three penny pieces, and you have two, they are also called thruppence. These four are six penny pieces, called six-pence. You have eleven of these half-penny pieces, called ha’pence, and eighteen of these little fellows, each worth one fourth of a penny, called farthings. Your rent and meals, with the maid to do your laundry, for one week, came to fifteen shillings. So, I am going to drill you in this money, and then I am going to drill you in how much is reasonable to pay for something.

“But why—” she began.

Because you need a few more items of clothing right now, and because I am going to make it possible for you to live here and live well, and I should be very much obliged if you didn’t allow yourself to be cheated. Now. What is this? An imperious paw tapped one of the piles of coins.

It was a very good thing that she had gotten that sleep, because her eyes were weary and sore by the time the cat allowed her to scoop the coins back into the purse, change into her threadbare little spare shift, blow out her candle, and go back to sleep. By this time, she was well aware that she was possessed of more money than she’d ever had in her life. She knew exactly how much she should expect to pay for the pieces of clothing the cat insisted she get tomorrow. But one of the expected purchases very much puzzled her. She understood going to a second-hand shop for most of it. . . .

But why would she be going to a ragman for a dress?

She went out early the next day, ostensibly to visit her mythical sister. It was still wet—not raining, but a kind of heavy mist. She headed purposefully down the street, her shawl about her shoulders, her hat pinned firmly on her head and her hair in the same tight little bun she wore when performing. She looked as if she knew exactly where she was going. In fact, she was following the cat.

Tall, narrow houses mixed with shops along a street heavy with traffic. Horse cabs, omnibuses, wagons, the occasional motor truck or motor car moved along slowly but steadily; this was nothing like her street in Montmartre. There, little cafes put their tables out on the sidewalk, produce shops racked their wares in front to entice buyers, street peddlers bawled out encouragement to buy from their carts, and everywhere there were the bohemians, sitting on steps, on balconies, hanging out of the windows. Dancing to a street organ, making music of their own. Arguing, brawling, making love in public. Here, there was none of that, only the stiff rows of houses and shops, and the stiff people moving purposefully to their destinations.

It will change with the holiday season. Then, you will see. This is the off-season, when it is hard to let rooms and hard to fill theater seats.

The cat turned down a side street. Then another. And another. They grew progressively narrower with less traffic, until at last, at long last, she found herself in a neighborhood that did remind her of home.

Not that there were artists and musicians thronging the place. But this was not a place where those good little shop girls would come to buy. Safe enough now, it was not a place where she would care to be after dark. There were no houses here, only buildings full of cheap flats that must have been home to enormous families. There was another accent in these streets; not being a native speaker, she couldn’t place it, but there was a veritable horde of red-haired children running about. And though there may not have been artists and musicians, there was music, of drum and fiddle and tin whistle, coming from a public house that was already open.

But the cat paused at a doorway and twitched his tail at her. She pulled the door open to the ringing of a little bell, and the cat slipped inside, under her skirt.

It was a used clothing shop. But the clothing here was more than a mere cut above the neighborhood; it was remarkably good. Some of the gowns she sorted through were several social strata above the shop girls at the boarding house.

She confined herself at first, however, to the merely “good” clothing, buying a skirt and jacket that were identical in color and style to her own but of much better materials and repair, and three shirtwaists. But then, at the cat’s urging, she bought beautiful under-things of the sort she had only seen on the kept etoiles. She asked for, and got, permission to change into these things in a stall at the back of the shop, discarding her old clothing. She scarcely felt like herself in the soft, delicate bloomers, the finely crafted corset, the dainty corset-cover and petticoat, the silk stockings that were tea-stained, but not where anyone would see them. And the new outer clothing . . . it was strange, very strange, because it looked the same but—it was unmended and only a little worn. It felt more substantial.

And, at the cat’s prodding, she bought a sturdy umbrella. You will need it, he told her laconically. There are only two sorts of weather in Blackpool. Raining and about to rain.

Finally, as a girl came in with a bundle while she was looking at cloaks, it dawned on her what this was. Often part of a maidservant’s wages was the cast-off clothing of her mistress. This was where the superior maidservants came to sell their windfalls.

So it was with a little surprise, as she waited for the shopkeeper to bundle up the items she wasn’t wearing, that she heard the cat say from under her skirt, Ask about the cut-up dress!

Too surprised, in fact, to do anything other than stammer, “And would you have a ruined day gown, velvet perhaps, or silk twill, that has been cut up badly?”

The shopkeeper looked at her in astonishment, pausing for a moment, before answering, “Why . . . as a matter of fact . . . I do. But why do you need such a thing?”

Fancywork, hissed the cat. Shoes. You are covering shoes.

“I am re-covering dancing slippers,” she said, and the man nodded with understanding, and pulled a basket from beneath the counter.

There were three gowns in there, but the cat was only interested in the blue velvet one. They were all in rags; it looked as if someone had taken a knife to them and slashed them up.

“The girl works for the most mean-spirited woman I have ever heard of,” the shopkeeper said, shaking his head over the ruins of what had once been a magnificent gown. “Rather than let her maids have her old clothes, because she can’t bear the idea of someone of lower rank than she wearing what she once wore, she slashes the things to rags before throwing them out. The girl brings them here anyway; I generally sell them to the rag and bone man—”

“My great fortune then, that you had not yet,” smiled Ninette as he added that to her purchases. He did them all up in a brown paper parcel, which she carried out, wearing her new clothing and new cloak. The cat led her onwards, back to better neighborhoods, where he directed her purchases of other small items, and then it was time to return to the boarding house for luncheon.

She slipped carefully up the stairs, keeping her parcel hidden as best she could in her cloak. It wouldn’t do for Madame to suspect she had been doing anything other than dutifully visiting the supposed sister. She quickly unwrapped her new things and put them away in her bag, putting the brown paper into the fireplace where it burned nicely. She made very certain that the ruined dress was hidden under the rest of her clothing, and sat for a moment in quiet contemplation of her new “wealth.” Not since she was a little girl had she had a nightdress; she and her mother had simply gone to sleep in their underthings in summer, or fully clothed in the winter when you needed everything to keep warm. She touched the soft linen, the bit of lace, with wondering fingers. And as for the dress and jacket she was wearing, perhaps they were plain by the standards of the woman who had discarded them, but . . . they were scarcely worn. The skirt had never been turned. The hems had not been taken up or let down. There were no patches, no darns, no mended seams. For the very first time in her life, she had an almost-new gown. To be sure, she was very glad it had been gaslit night when she went down to dinner; those girls would have known her for an imposter if they had clearly seen her clothing.

Finally, she closed the bag and left the window open for the cat to come in. Then she went down to the much-diminished group for luncheon.

When she arrived at the table, there were only three other girls here. One of them was a dark-haired, studious-looking girl with very short hair and gold-rimmed spectacles. Madame was not in evidence, but luncheon was. Tea, bread and butter, currant jam, cucumber sandwiches. Clearly there was only one sandwich apiece, but as much bread and butter as a girl would want. The two who were sitting together, still wearing shop-girls’ aprons, gave Ninette a friendly nod, but did not stop their gossip, which was entirely in French. They must have known she could understand them, but since it was inconsequential stuff about other girls in the shop, she ignored them. The dark-haired one was engrossed in a book that did not look at all like a novel; that left Ninette alone with her meal. This, she did not at all mind. Plain as it might be, she savored it, at the same time trying not to let on she was very nearly in transports of joy over the fact that she was eating real butter and a piece of fresh bread she had herself just cut from the loaf, and not salted lard or the grease carefully saved from cooking scraped thin over the top of old, stale bread sold cheap at the corner bakery.

The two girls together—Marie and Jeanne—ate quickly and were as quickly gone; likely their time for luncheon was very short, and allowed only because the English tended to scant luncheon and eat a large tea, which meant they would be there to serve customers at an hour when the other girls would be gone. The bookish girl ate slowly, absently, and methodically, as if she were a steam engine and food was only fuel. Ninette was done before she was, took her plates to the serving hatch as the others had, and left them there.

Then, because she was supposed to be going back to this nonexistent sister, she went out again. The cat went with her, of course. She felt far less conspicuous in her “new” clothing; she no longer looked like the scullery maid, but as if she belonged on this street. Frankly, she had to wonder if Madame would have turned her away if she had spoken English instead of French.

But perhaps the gold sovereign had done the speaking for her.

For some time, she just followed where the cat led. Finally he turned around and looked at her over his shoulder. Where do you want to go? he asked, sounding a bit baffled.

She thought about that. It wasn’t raining, so there was no reason to seek shelter inside a shop or some public building. Finally, after making sure there was no one near enough to hear her talking to a cat, she replied. “Actually, just somewhere we can talk. I want to know just what you plan. I know you are planning something, but I can’t keep living at that house, pretending to visit a sister that does not exist. And are you going to keep stealing purses?”

She stopped then, because someone opened the shop door just behind her. The cat flicked his tail and moved off.

Follow me, was all he said, and so she did.

He led her to a pretty little park, where there were young mothers with toddlers and babies in prams. That is, she assumed that the women were the children’s actual mothers. This neighborhood did not look as if the people living here could afford nursemaids for their children. Like Madame, they probably had a cook and a maid-of-all-work, but looked after their children themselves.

The grisettes of Bohemia and the Left Bank, of Montmartre and garret or basement flats did not have servants at all, and were unburdened with children. Or if they had children, they were left at the door of an orphanage, or the grisette abandoned her Bohemian life to find some way to keep them.

Little ballet girls did not have children either. But that was because, illegal as it was, there were still ways to be rid of a child before it interfered with one’s dancing.

Perhaps that was why the artists had all made a pet of her. She was a rare thing in their lives. They would probably have made even more of a pet of her if she had ever been able to sit still long enough for them to paint her.

The cat found her a relatively secluded bench. There he sat down at her feet—on her feet, actually, and regarded the pigeons with a meditative expression.

I intend to make you an etoile, he said. Here. In the music halls. It will not be like the ballet; they are more like the Follies.

“I should not mind that at all,” she said instantly. “But I don’t see how you are to do that. If they have a steady chorus of dancers, I might rise to be the soloist, but I would never be an etoile. In a place like that, one must have an act, costumes, even scenery sometimes. I have one pair of shoes and one rehearsal costume. And no act.”

Or, he replied, one must have a Name. A Reputation.

She rolled her eyes. “Which I also do not have. As I was told many times, one good review in La Figaro does not a reputation make.”

I did not say we would use your name.

She stared down at him, but he did not meet her eyes. His were fixed on the pigeons. “Whose name, precisely, did you intend to use? And how do you expect me to get away with this impersonation?”

How far from their companies do most dancers ever travel? He countered with a question. Ballet dancers, I mean, and not the sort that have no company, like Isadora and Loie Fuller. You do not want that sort of life. You will need a setting; a theater where you are the resident etoile. Not your own theater, having one’s own theater is foolishness and a waste of money. You need an impresario who will set productions around you, so that you are the etoile of that company. And—more than just ordinary dancers, how many etoiles ever travel?

“None at all, really,” she replied after a moment. “Unless the company goes on tour. But that is very expensive to mount, and unless the Company has a sensational reputation, like Ballet Russe, it is really folly to go on tour. And the etoiles are almost never allowed to dance for other companies.”

So, we will borrow the name of someone unlikely to ever hear about your impersonation, the cat said calmly.

“So I am to walk up to an impresario, and without any way of proving it, nor worldly goods to back my claim, tell him I am a great etoile from some far away place and expect him to believe me!” She laughed. “You are a very clever cat, but you have a woeful understanding of humans.”

I have a rather better idea than that, the cat replied. But for now, I should like you to go to the Imperial and see what it is you are going to be joining.

Once again, the cat led the way. It was not a long walk, as Ninette was used to. The Imperial Music Hall was right on the seaside, and it offered a “continuous” show of the sort where one could purchase a ticket, walk in at any point, and leave when the act you had first seen came on again. The cat hid himself under her skirt, Ninette purchased the cheapest possible ticket, and both of them ascended to the fourth balcony.

The place was . . . rather fantastic. She was used to the grandness of the theater, but the Paris Opera, though grand, was old, and showing its age a bit. This was new, and opulent. Even the least expensive balcony was lush with velvet and gilding. At this hour, it was mostly empty and she had her choice of seats. Not at all averse to heights—after all she had spent a good many hours of her young life suspended by wires above the stage of the Paris Opera—she took a seat near the middle of the first row and leaned over the railing.

The act at the moment was a tableaux vivants, which at the Follies would have consisted of several young ladies clothed in not very much at all posing as a classical painting. Botticelli’s Venus was always a favorite. In this case, however, the tableaux consisted of a herd of wretched little children in costume posing as a classical painting. The ones at the back fidgeted. The ones at the front seemed frozen with boredom rather than discipline. The orchestra played, the audience was supposed to note how perfect the imitation was, and then the lights came down, only to come up again on another tableaux. Needless to say, none of these were Botticelli’s Venus.

Three of these, and the way was cleared for the next act, performing dogs, with one poor monkey in a jockey uniform.

After that, a young lady in a man’s suit sang a song. The audience seemed to know most of the words and sang along; Ninette got the impression it was called “Champagne Charlie.” She sang two more, then made way for the “ballet.”

This at least was interesting for Ninette, although even the soloist would have been relegated to the front of the coryphées at the Paris Opera Ballet. It was definitely true that she could out-dance these girls. The question was if she would be allowed to prove it. And how was she to become an etoile in such a place as this? There was no underlying story to these performances, no unifying whole. There was no single principal performer who was brought out again and again to show some new variation on her skill. This was something like the Moulin Rouge or the Follies; a variety performance. And yes, Loie Fuller performed at such places and only needed to do her “act” once at each performance, but that was not the sort of thing that Ninette was good at. La Loie had novelty and effect; Ninette had skill and grace and two feet. Nor, did she think, something like the can-can would make an etoile of her.

Still, the cat had said to study the acts and the theater, so study them she did.

She spent the rest of the afternoon there in the balcony, watching, studying. This was where she supposed she aspired to be, this stage or one like it.

The only question was, how was she to get there?

You must listen to me and do exactly as I say, with no questions, the cat said from his place under her skirt, curled warmly around her ankles. Have I not brought you this far? It will be hard, it will take all your wits, and the beginning of it, at least, will be very uncomfortable for you. Can you do that?

“I don’t see that I have a choice,” she whispered under cover of the orchestra playing.

You could go and be a shop-girl.

“I don’t know how to be a shop-girl. And someone would find out that I don’t belong here.” She thought a moment, and firmed her chin, stubbornly. “And besides, I want to be an etoile. I want to be made much of. I want my own dressing room, and flowers and champagne and chocolates in it. I want young men to send me flowers and old men to send me jewelry. I want a dresser and an apartment and a maid. I want to find a wealthy man who will—”

Then listen to me and you will have all those things, the cat said, interrupting her. Now, study this place. A hall like this will soon be the place of your triumph; study it, study the acts, and above all, study the audience. It is, after all, they you must win.

4

FOR the next four days, Ninette and the cat went out in the morning and returned in the evening. Every moment of those days she spent studying the music hall; on the whole she was rather glad that she was doing that, for the cat was correct, it seemed to rain at least part of the day, every day. First, she watched the acts and as much of the action behind scenes as she could see from the front of the house, and then, by cunningly pretending to have been sent to deliver things, or otherwise slipping in backstage, she studied the acts, and the way that things were run, from backstage. It wasn’t hard; she knew where to go and how not to be noticed backstage in almost any theater. She would bustle about, head down, carrying a bundle of cloth from one place to another. Everyone assumed she was someone else’s dresser. She would sit in a corner and pretend to sew; everyone assumed she was someone else’s costume girl. The one thing that would have made even these pretenses difficult at the Ballet, where everyone knew everyone else and what their business was, made it easy here. No one really knew anything much about any of the other acts. They rotated among the houses, making the music hall circuit, never spending more than a week at any one place. Half the people here were going on together, into London to make the rounds of several music halls called one “Empire” or another, which were all owned by the same man. But the rest were scattering to the four winds, every direction but East. All but the girl who sang “Champagne Charlie”; she was going on to something called the “Panto” as a “Principal Boy,” whatever that was.

Things were run in a very different fashion in this place, where the acts never remained for more than two weeks. The orchestra had to learn new music with each new act; the acts had to rehearse on a new stage with new stagehands every time they migrated to a new booking. It was, Ninette thought, distinctly inferior to what she was used to—a setting where the performances changed, but the players, the supporting members, and the orchestra remained the same. It was even distinctly different from the music halls of Paris, where there was a resident company of dancers who performed pieces that framed the performances of artists who would remain for long bookings, six weeks to even a year or more. The orchestra had no feeling of loyalty to the performers; after all, they would be gone in a week. As a consequence, they also had no particular interest in supporting them past the absolute minimum required. The first morning rehearsals, known as “band calls,” could be terrible things, taking far longer than they needed to. Performers supplied their own sheet music, and this was often a cause for acrimony, as the performers were not inclined to buy new music until they absolutely had to, which meant musicians were often forced to deal with music that was just barely readable. And when the performer was not in their favor, well. . . .

Morning rehearsals could end up in shouting matches, with both sides appealing to the stage manager, and often threatening to escalate to the theater owner.

The only time this did not happen was in the case of the very popular performers, the equivalent of the etoiles. They might supply music fully as old as the most down-at-heels and outdated comic, the most woefully inadequate singer, but the most the musicians dared to do was grumble, and send up the orchestra leader to the performer—or more likely the performer’s assistant—to urge that this time, really, he should buy some new music.

For these very prominent performers did not attend the morning walk-throughs themselves, oh no. They had assistants to do this for them. And they might not put in more than a cursory appearance at the rehearsals just after lunch, unless they were practicing a new “turn.” This baffled Ninette; no matter how lofty the etoile, he or she was there at every rehearsal. Warm-ups might be done in the luxury of one’s little studio in one’s grand flat, but rehearsals? Rehearsals were sacred. You did not go all out in them, of course; that would be absurd, you would exhaust and possibly injure yourself to no purpose. But you came and you practiced, and you had better make sure that the ballet master did not get the impression that you were losing form . . .

But Ninette watched and made mental notes. She could not at all see how the cat was going to make her an etoile at this point. Possibly under the Paris system, yes. If the theater owner, the ballet master, the stage manager could all somehow be persuaded that she was this mysterious dancer she was supposed to impersonate . . . yes. It could be done. Even if she came with nothing but the clothes on her back, it could be done.

But here? She had no assistants, no scenery, no music... and even if she somehow conjured these things up, like Cinderella’s fairy godmother, out of backstage mice, how could she survive the “booking circuit”? She had no agent, she knew no one and nothing, had no idea what the next city was, let alone how to get to it, find a place to stay, and begin all over again.

That cat only said, Wait and see. She counted the money left in her purse, and tried not to think too hard about the number of days it would last.

A barrage of thunder startled her awake, and she sat straight up in bed, her heart pounding. She stared at the window, clutching her blankets up to her throat, seeing the cat sitting there, silhouetted intermittently by the flashes of lightning.

It was a hideous storm. She could not recall ever having seen one this bad in Paris. A violent wind lashed the windowpanes with rain, and thunder grumbled in the distance or crashed near at hand. Perhaps it was that the sea was so near; certainly all the operas and ballets she had been a part of over the years linked dreadful storms with the sea.

This, said the cat, could not be better. Satisfaction permeated every word.

“Why?” she asked.

You’ll see. The cat could be absolutely maddening sometimes. But at the moment . . . silhouetted black against the lightning-filled sky, with that sure tone to his words . . . she felt her irritation slipping away, replaced by a kind of superstitious fear. What was he, anyway? This beast that spoke in her head, that controlled her like a puppeteer, that had taken her away to a strange land? What did he want from her? True, he had been kind so far but—he couldn’t want her body. Could he be after her soul? Les Contes d’Hoffman, in which she had danced the part of one of Guillietta’s attendants, immediately sprang to her mind. Could this cat, this creature, be a servant of the Devil?

Oh, don’t be silly, the cat said, calmly. Whatever would I do with your soul? I don’t want it.

“Then why are you doing all this?” she whispered.

Because I am interested in you. Because I take pleasure in clever tricks. But above all, it might just be only because I am a cat. She could almost hear him laughing. That alone is reason enough. Now go back to sleep. I will be waking you about dawn.

Well that was unlikely to bring her any sleep.

Wake up, Ninette.

The voice penetrated the soft, dreamless dark. She tried to bat it away, like an annoying fly, but it persisted.

Wake up. It is time.

It couldn’t possibly be time for anything important.

Four sharp needles pierced her big toe and her slumbers. With a gasp of outrage and pain, she sat straight up in bed, now quite well awake.

“You bit me!” she hissed indignantly at the dark shape at the foot of the bed.

I scarcely broke the skin, the cat replied. You weren’t moving, and we have very little time. Get up.

“Time for what?” she demanded, but the cat wasn’t answering.

Put on that cut-up dress over your best underthings, he told her. And your cloak over all. Don’t bother taking anything else. We’re going out.

In the darkness, she gaped at him. “But—”

When this has all settled you can send someone for your things or come for them yourself. But right now, all you need is that dress and your cloak.

“It’s still raining!” she protested. Outside, the storm had turned into a steady, slow rain without any thunder or lightning, but she had no doubt that it was terribly cold out there—and why was she going out in a gown slashed to ribbons?

I know. I told you I was waiting for something. This was it. The storm. Now come on!

Maybe if she hadn’t been half-muzzy with sleep, or if she wasn’t more than half convinced this was just a surreal dream, she might have protested more. Instead, she did as she was told, and stole down the stairs, letting herself out at the kitchen door, following the silent cat.

Of course, the face full of wind and cold rain that she got woke her up thoroughly, but by then it was too late. And the cat was pushing against her ankles, herding her down into the street.

“What is this all about?” she gasped.

You are about to become the victim of a dreadful shipwreck. Can it be a shipwreck if it is only a yacht? A yacht-wreck doesn’t sound quite right. The cat ran on ahead, pausing in a circle of lamplight to look back at her.

“A what?”

A shipwreck. Remember I told you that we were going to borrow someone else’s reputation? You will be Nina Tchereslavsky, Russian prima donna. She has never performed further west than Berlin. You look enough like her photographs to pass. She speaks French almost exclusively outside of Russia, although she does know some English, and I will arrange for you to learn Russian in the same way I arranged for you to learn English.

“But how does this—”

Let me finish. You—that is, Nina—decided to come to England on holiday, possibly to arrange a tour as well. Possibly to stay. You are certain there is no dancer half so good as you here. A friend with a yacht arranged to bring you. In last night’s storm, the boat was wrecked, your friend is presumably drowned, and you have lost all of your possessions.

“But I cannot see—”

I will arrange the rest. You have only to remember your name and the storm and the wreck and act dazed. Speak French. I will take care of the rest. The cat herded her quickly down the street to the seashore. By that time, her hair was soaked, the rags of her gown and her cloak were soaked, and with her hair straggling into her eyes she was certainly going to present a convincing imitation of a shipwreck victim. As she staggered along the sand, the sky was just starting to lighten in the east, and the piers of the boardwalk loomed darkly above her head. She had not yet been down to the boardwalk, although she gathered that there were all manner of places of amusement built on it. Out of the holiday season though, most of them were fairly desolate.

Here, the cat said, finally. Wait here. Try and keep warm. When you hear me tell you to, lie face-down on the sand. Remember, you are Nina Tchereslavsky. Nothing else is of consequence.

And then the cat whisked away, leaving her at the foot of the piers, shivering, in the dark.

Was this scheme mad enough to actually work? Well she had no choice now.

The automobile chugged and rattled, the headlights doing little to illuminate the cobblestone-paved street ahead. Fortunately the streetlamps were still well lit, extravagant electrical things that they were. Nigel Barrett gripped the steering wheel and was grateful that this was an enclosed auto. And cursed the fact that the storm had chosen last night to break over their heads.

“Why you insisted on dragging us out this early in the morning, Nigel, I do not know.” Since this was roughly the tenth time Nigel Barrett’s traveling companion Wolf had voiced this particular complaint, Nigel did not bother to repeat his answer.

But his other traveling companion, Arthur Gilbert, did so for him. “Because if we are going to get to Manchester in time to see this singer at the matinee, we have to leave now, Wolf. Nigel’s only told you so a dozen times.”

“Nine,” Wolf replied, with immense dignity, from the rear seat of the enclosed motorcar. “And I don’t know why I had to come along.”

“Because you are the one writing the music for this extravaganza,” Nigel replied, carefully negotiating the narrow street in the semi-darkness. Once again, he asked himself why he lived in this part of Blackpool, where every time he wanted to take the motorcar out, he had to negotiate a maze of medieval lanes. “You have the final word on whether I hire her or not.”

“Arthur knows what I like,” Wolf said tartly.

“Arthur is only the conductor of the orchestra,” Arthur himself replied. “And you know your best work comes when you’re inspired by a particular singer or dancer. I can’t possibly tell whether or not you’d be inspired.” He reached around over the seat and gave the wool-shrouded cage a pat. “Don’t worry, we won’t let you get into a draft.”

“I would be much more inspired if you’d let me write an opera,” Wolfgang Amadeus said fretfully. “I am tired of those ridiculous tinkly ballads you like so much. Sweep! Scale! A challenge! That’s what I need!” The African Grey Parrot pulled the wool covering of his cage aside with his beak, and one beady black eye peered out at them accusingly.

“And opera isn’t going to fill the seats, Wolf, you know that,” Nigel responded without taking his eyes off the street. “And with these moving pictures coming on, pretty soon variety won’t either. Don’t worry, you’ll get spectacle and sweep to fill with music. I’ve seen the future of the stage, and its name is The Ziegfield Follies. Shows with a theme, a regular bill of stars you can count on seeing, that’s what will keep the seats full, even when motion pictures take over the music halls.”

“I know you keep saying that, Nigel, but you haven’t really explained yourself.” Arthur Gilbert, a slight, fair-haired man with the build of a whippet and nerves of steel, raised an eyebrow at his employer. “I should think people would get tired of seeing the same thing night after night.”

“Do people get tired of seeing William Gillette as Sherlock Holmes?” Nigel demanded. “Or Henry Irving as Hamlet? Or Ellen Terry as Portia? And what about Maude Adams as Peter Pan?”

“Well . . . but those are plays!” Arthur replied, tucking the woolen blanket in around the cage again. “And that’s in London!”

Wolf snorted. Or made a sound like a snort.

“And that’s the genius of the thing,” Nigel said with enthusiasm. “We take everything that people like best about a play—that is, a nice, light story—we add in the kind of music they like, which is where Wolf comes in, but without turning the damned thing into an opera, because last of all, we fit in the best sorts of acts from music hall. We rehearse it all and open it in the slow season, and that’s when all the locals will come. When they get tired of it, we’ll be in holidays, and the holiday-makers will pack the hall. By the time they leave, the locals will be ready to see it again, and when they’re gone, it will be time for the Christmas pantos. That’s when we put together the next show, start rehearsals, and open again after the end of panto season. It’s brilliant!”

“I don’t know, Nigel—” Arthur began doubtfully, when something dark and fast and seemingly as big as a panther dashed into the street in front of them.

Arthur swore, Nigel swore and jerked the steering wheel, narrowly missing the animal, and Wolf swore in German as he was knocked to the bottom of his cage. The brakes shrieked as the motorcar slid to a stop. And the thing leapt onto the hood of the car, every hair bristling, eyes like saucers full of fire.

Help! Help! the creature “shouted” into their minds. My mistress is dying! You must come save her!

Which Nigel, because he was an Elemental Master, Arthur, because he was an Elemental Magician, and Wolfgang, because he was Wolfgang, all heard with perfect clarity.

“Where?” Nigel shouted across the windscreen.

The shore! Follow me! replied the cat. It leapt down to the ground again, and raced down the street. Nigel fed gas to the motor, which fortunately had not stalled, and raced after it.

They broke out of the maze of streets to the broader roads and followed the cat at last to the Promenade that paralleled the seashore as the sun rose dimly behind the clouds and the rain slacked off to a thin drizzle. The cat dashed across the Promenade and down one of the wooden staircases that led from the boardwalk to the sands. Nigel slid the motorcar roughly to a halt and threw open the door, dashing after it, with Arthur closely behind him.

Hurry! the cat screamed into their minds. For a moment, Nigel couldn’t see where the creature was. But then he caught sight of a dark shape just under the pier at the waterline and he raced towards it, grateful that the sand was wet and packed solid enough to run on. The closer he got, the clearer that shape became—a woman, hair down and dark with seawater, sprawled under what was left of a cloak as if she had crawled up on the sand, exhausted, a rough piece of broken timber a little way away from her.

He dropped down beside her and turned her over; she was as cold as ice, pale, and her eyes fluttered open and looked at him, dazedly.

“Miss! Can you speak?” he asked urgently, patting her cheek with one hand to revive her a little.

She answered him in French, which he spoke tolerably well. “Where—”

“Blackpool. England. Who are you?” Arthur asked, as he pulled off his coat to wrap around her. Her velvet gown was in tatters.

“Nina. Nina Tchereslavsky,” she murmured. “The yacht—my friend—” Then her eyelids fluttered closed again.

She is a dancer. A great dancer. A genius, the cat said, dancing with anxiety. She wanted to emigrate to England; I tried to dissuade her, but she thought she could be a greater star than she already is once she performed on your stage. She sold everything and persuaded a friend with a yacht to bring her here. You must save her! Her father was an Elemental Master, he charged me with protecting her when he died—

Ah, that explained it then. This was no cat, it was an Elemental Spirit in feline form. “Don’t worry, we’ll take care of her,” Nigel said, lifting the slight girl in his arms. Well, she was certainly built like a dancer. She weighed hardly anything. A dancer. And Russian. . . .

She was cold, certainly, and exhausted, and probably everything she owned had gone down with that ship . . . but if he was any judge of such things, and as an Air Master he was rather good at telling how healthy someone was, she was in no danger of dying any time soon. Dancers in his experience were robust, hardy. They had to be; life for a dancer was anything but easy. As he carried her to the motorcar, already his mind was racing.

Russian dancers were very much in vogue ever since Diaghilev had brought them to London in his Ballet Russes troupe. This young woman would certainly be grateful to her rescuers. And now she was stranded here with nothing. . . .

“What’s happening?” Wolf was shouting from the back seat as he approached the motorcar with his burden. “What’s happening?”

“We seem to have rescued a young dancer, Wolfgang,” Arthur replied, pulling a warm lap-robe out of the boot and wrapping it around the girl in place of his coat as Nigel set her carefully down on the back seat, and the cat jumped in beside her. “And I think that we won’t need to go to Manchester today after all.”

Ninette had not needed to feign confusion and weakness. She had lain so long on the sand that all of the heat had leeched out of her body. At first she had shivered and shook and her teeth had chattered so hard she thought they were going to break, but then a kind of lethargy overtook her and she actually started to feel warm. And sleepy.

Dimly she knew that this was a bad sign, but she just couldn’t bring herself to care at that point. Fortunately that was the moment when she felt herself being turned over and something warm being wrapped around her. When she managed to open her eyes, she saw a blurred face, a man’s face, looming over her. She had just enough wit to remember her story and her new name, to gasp out that name and a few more words, and then the effort just became too much and she let her eyes fall shut again.

When she next came to herself, she was in a huge bed, engulfed in it, in fact, lying on what must have been a feather mattress and covered in eiderdowns, with hot bricks all around her and the cat sitting smugly on a pillow next to her.

“Ah, she is awake,” said a voice in English, and another man, this one an old one, in a dark suit, with a full white beard and moustache, loomed over her. “Drink this,” he ordered, putting a glass to her lips as he raised her head with the other hand.

It proved to be hot brandy rather than some nasty medicine; she sipped it cautiously, then blinked at him as it went almost straight to her head. “You’ll do,” the man said with satisfaction, and looked off to a part of the room she could not see without sitting up. “It is a good thing she is a dancer,” he said in that direction. “They may look fragile, but in my experience, they’re strong as horses. I doubt anyone without that kind of strength could have survived a wreck in that storm last night. But with some rest and good food, she’ll be as right as rain in a few days.”

“Glad to hear it, Doctor Lambert,” said the voice she remembered from the sand. And a moment later, the man who owned the voice, face no longer a blur, came to the side of the bed. “Do you know where you are?” he asked in French.

“Somewhere in England?” she replied.

“You said your name was Nina,” he prompted.

“Nina Tchereslavsky, yes. I am a dancer, a ballet dancer. So many Russian dancers have had great success in the West, and I am tired of the snow of St. Petersburg. I asked my friend Nikolas—” it was the only Russian name she could think of “—if he would take me on his pretty little boat to England. I thought I could find a good company here. My reputation—” here she raised her chin a little, in haughty imitation of La Augustine “—should more than suffice.” Now she faltered. “But there was a terrible storm. A terrible storm. The boat began to break apart. We went into the water and I lost Nikolas—”

Unbidden, the memory of her Maman lying, slowly dying, wasting away with fever in the cold of the garret came to her mind, and she burst into tears.

The man, an earnest fellow with brown hair and eager eyes in a round face, patted her hand awkwardly. “Now don’t give up hope yet!” he said, even though his face told her that he didn’t have any hope at all that the imaginary Nikolas would have survived. “A tiny thing like you survived, there’s plenty of hope for him.”

“But I am all alone!” she wailed. “All alone, and I have nothing and no one—”

All of that was true enough, and gave force to her fear and grief. “That will be enough of that for now, Mr. Barrett,” the doctor said with authority. “Let her sleep. The powder I put into her brandy should be working any moment now.”

And indeed, even as she raised her hand to wipe the tears away with a corner of the soft, soft sheet she lay under, the room did a kind of spin, and she found her eyes closing all by themselves.

Nigel Barrett was in his element, reporters clustered about him, shouting questions at him. This was a good setting for him too, the opulent sitting room of his apartment, fitted out in the latest and most expensive style. He beamed at them all, impartially. Not only were reporters from the Blackpool, Liverpool, and Manchester papers here, there was even a man come up from London. London! There was nothing, nothing that he could have concocted that could have produced this windfall of publicity!

Knowing a good yarn when he heard one, Nigel had rung up the papers once he knew the little dancer was going to be all right. The story of the wreck and its lovely survivor had spread rapidly thanks to the telegraph and the telephone. Everyone wanted to hear the story first hand. Nigel and Arthur had concocted something that they thought would suit—be romantic enough and plausible enough to pass muster. Because certainly they couldn’t tell the truth. . . .

Instead, the cat, Thomas, had been, much to his disgust, imbued with all the qualities of the most devoted of dogs. Some of the reporters were even considering having their papers give him a lifesaving medal. At least one probably would.

Now the story ran that the cat had run up to them as they paused the auto for a moment near the piers to wait for someone to cross the street. Never mind that their real route would have taken them nowhere near the piers; Nigel had conveniently not mentioned why they were out at that hour in the first place. The cat supposedly had jumped onto the hood of the motor, and when Nigel had gotten out to chase him off, had jumped down and grabbed Nigel’s trouser-leg in his teeth. Then, doglike, he had tugged until Nigel followed them, leading them to the girl. No, the cat hadn’t then been the girl’s pet—all of them had reckoned that having a cat swim to shore from a sinking yacht would be rather too much to be believed. Yes, she was adopting her savior—that was to forestall any newspaper scheme of having the cat adopted by a reader lottery. Yes, he was watching over her now, it was immensely touching—that, of course, was to strike the proper note of sentiment. Yes, they intended to offer Miss Tchereslavsky their hospitality until she was well enough to decide what she wanted to do—true enough on all counts.

Finally when he thought they had all heard enough, he ushered the reporters out with orders to his butler to make sure they all got a good brandy before they left “to ward off the cold.”

Only then did he return to his sitting room where Arthur and Wolf were waiting for him.

“Did it pass muster?” Arthur asked anxiously, as he closed the door behind him.

“No reason why it shouldn’t,” Nigel replied, settling into his favorite armchair and propping his feet on the fire grate. He accepted a brandy from Arthur with a sigh of satisfaction. “Good gad, old man, Americans couldn’t have manufactured something this sensational! Wolf, do you think you can write music for a dancer instead of a singer?”

The parrot snorted, and took a dainty bite out of a hothouse grape. “At least it will be slightly more of a challenge than writing music to fit: “Charlie, my Charlie, oh do tell me true / Am I still your sweetheart, your dear Alice Blue? / Will you take me to church, will you take me to town / In my dear little Alice-blue, Alice-blue gown?”

“That was a hit!” Nigel reminded him, and the parrot groaned. “The costermongers and newsboys were whistling it in the street!” he continued. “You must have sold thousands of copies of the sheet music!”

“A bit, a bit,” Arthur said complacently. “Kept you in fresh peas, Wolf.”

But already nebulous plans were unfolding in Nigel’s fertile imagination. He remembered a production of Shakespeare—The Tempest it was—and the sensational effects managed on the stage as the curtain rose. He could do that. They could do that. “We’ll have to manage to get a shipwreck into the plot,” Nigel said aloud, causing both of them to stare at him.

“Whyever for?” Arthur said after a moment. “That would be a dreadfully expensive set to create.”

“Because we’re going to have the dancer that was saved from a shipwreck as our star turn!” Nigel shook his head at their surprise. Couldn’t they see it? It was a fine thing to capitalize on saving her in the first place, but better to remind the public of the great story in two or three months and capitalize on it all over again. “Half of our publicity is already done for us, and the locals and the holiday people alike will fill the stalls to see the ‘shipwreck girl’ saved all over again.”

“You don’t even know that she’ll stay with us,” Arthur protested mildly. “Nor that she will be in the least interested in performing in a mere musical show.”

“This is a ballet dancer, Nigel,” the parrot said, drawing himself up with great dignity and looking down his beak at the music-hall entrepreneur. “And a prima donna to boot. An artiste. She’ll be looking for a ballet company, mark my words—”

“You mark mine. First, she’s indebted to us. Second, she’s the daughter of an Elemental Master—where else would she go for people who won’t think she’s balmy for talking to a cat? Third—” he grinned. “Ballet dancers like money too. Loie Fuller wasn’t too high-nosed to appear at the Moulin Rouge. She’ll make a lot more money with us than with some ballet company.” He stood up and began to pace. “Elemental Master—that gives me an idea. We need a story with magic in it. That way we can hire old Jonathon, who has the Kung Chow act—always good to have another of the company about—”

“Kung Chow?” Wolf said in dismay. “I am not going to substitute for one of his wretched doves again! Really, Nigel, this is going too far—”

“No one is asking you to substitute for a dove, Wolf,” Nigel said, pacing faster. “We should make this a real Arabian Nights story. Shipwreck our girl in Arabia, have her taken to a harem, that way we can bring in all the variety acts as things to entertain the sultan! And have an excuse to put her in as little as we can convince her to wear. And there are plenty of girls in our chorus who wouldn’t blanch at doing a harem dance. Have her escape with the Court Magician’s help—”

“Oh good lord, why don’t you just steal the plot and music from my Abduction from the Seraglio and have done with it?” Wolf said in disgust.

“Why don’t I—Wolf! That’s brilliant!” Nigel turned towards the parrot and conductor with a smile lighting up his face. “Perfect! You adapt the music for our show, we can tout it as ‘Based on Abduction from the Seraglio by Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart.’ Make the print just large enough that the punters won’t notice and the high-minded will. The punters will get their nautch dances, and the high-toned will tell each other how fine it is to listen to classical music while they gawk at the nautch dances from behind their pince-nezes. It’s brilliant! I love you!” As Wolf growled in startlement, Nigel swooped him up, kissed his beak, and put him back down on his stand again.

“Brilliant! Brilliant! I’m going to go look up the libretto of this opera of yours and see what I can keep out of it. Arthur, help Wolf with some catchy lyrics. We’ll need at least one love song, of course, and one song about being homesick. And one from the sultan about making the beauty his slave for all time—” Nigel strode off, heading for the music library.

Behind him, Wolf sighed. “Well,” the parrot said in resignation. “At least I won’t have to make up any little tinkly tunes this time.”

5

NINETTE sat up in the bed, curled her arms around her knees, and listened in astonishment to the cat. Thomas posed on the foot of the bed, looking precisely as if he had always belonged there. Somehow over the last few hours he had transformed without essentially changing, from the rakish alley-prowler to a creature of great elegance.

And he had been listening to her hosts while she had been sleeping, then come back to report to her what was transpiring. “They are planning the production around me? But—but—but they have not yet seen me dance!”

You have seen what passes for a dancer in these music halls, the cat said, with a touch of arrogance. Did you not say yourself that you would make the best of them look like a pony doing tricks?

“Well, yes, but—” But these girls weren’t dancers, not really. Oh, they might have taken some lessons, but they clearly had not been trained as Ninette had been trained. Ballroom dancers with a few tricks and high kicks, and one or two of them could teeter about on their toes, but they were not trained dancers as she knew training.

And you know all of the applause-garnering turns, the passages that make people leap to their feet, yes?

Ninette considered that. Yes, she did. The thirty-two fouette-pirouettes from the Black Swan pas de deux, Kitri’s exuberant solo, full of leaps where her heel touches the back of her head from Don Quixote, the mad scene from Giselle, the character solos from Sleeping Beauty, Le Corsair, Swan Lake, all of these things. She had rehearsed them over and over again, against the day when she might actually be called upon to dance them. These were the sorts of pieces that the great dancers dismissed as “tricks” or cursed the need to perform, but that audiences adored.

I very much doubt that they will have a choreographer as such. So you will be making up your own dances. I would advise you to make them as showy as possible and steal liberally from anyone you think audiences would like. Loie Fuller, for instance. The cat sniffed derisively. By now so many have stolen from her that one more will not matter, and everyone loves seeing yards of fabric being tossed about under colored lights.

And by now, everyone in the dance world knew how Fuller manipulated her lights and silks, despite her attempts to keep such thing secret. There was even a kind of name for it, the “serpentine dance,” or “skirt dance” by which such things were advertised on playbills. That gave Ninette some ideas . . . the best thing she could do, if she was going to have a show built around her, would be to manage pieces that looked very impressive but involved short passages of flashy footwork interspersed with a great deal of stage effects. A skirt-dance would certainly fit that bill. Now, she had seen some Swiss and Finnish girls in France performing a kind of dancing-gymnastics with long ribbons, balls, hoops and clubs. She could certainly do a piece with a ribbon, and perhaps another with a hoop or a ball.

The rest she could certainly lift whole from the ballets she had learned. “If they are going to create a show around me—” she began eagerly.

Stop right there, the cat commanded, fixing her with his gaze. You are doing precisely the wrong thing. You must not be the eager one. Think of La Augustine! Would she fling herself at someone who was creating a show around her? Of course not. She would be amused. Perhaps condescending—this is only music hall, after all. Then, perhaps, she would allow herself to be interested. She would let herself be coaxed and courted and only gradually would she be persuaded. Once persuaded, of course, she would fling herself into it. La Augustine is nothing if not a professional. But she would never give the impression that it was she who was the eager one.

Ninette nodded, slowly. The cat was right, of course. As long as they believed she was what she said she was—and there was no reason not to—the coaxing should come from them. She shivered a little; this was heady stuff, and she was not at all sure she was going to be able to deal with it.

That is why you have me. The cat curled the tip of his tail around his feet and looked smug. I shall be your impresario. I brought you this far, did I not?

That was certainly true. And “this far” was impressive indeed. She thought about her last few hours since waking after a refreshing sleep. First there had been the long hot bath, attended by a maid who washed, dried, and put up her hair for her, before tucking her attentively back into bed. Now she looked about herself, at the opulently appointed guestroom, at finest bed she had ever seen, at the gorgeous embroidered and rib-boned and laced nightdress that the maid had helped her into, at the remains of the wonderful breakfast on the tray beside the bed. Three kinds of eggs, ham, sausage, grilled tomatoes, beans, toast, oatmeal . . . enough for three people. She had left a great deal of it, though it troubled her to do so. She hoped it wouldn’t go to waste.

“All right, then I should be—”

Distressed. Your imaginary friend with his mythical yacht is still missing. You must ask after him, first thing, any time anyone comes in here. I doubt very much that they will trouble you for a few days. When it is clear that “all is lost” you must be sorrowful. But not too sorrowful. You must not let them think this imaginary fellow was more that just a casual friend. Tell them you need to work to get your mind off it, and allow them to find you a rehearsal pianist and a studio space. Then work. They plan to ask you if you wish to stay here, in Blackpool. They mean here for now, although, trust me, in a very short time propriety will ensure they get you an apartment of your own. Say yes, immediately, and burst into tears and say that you are all alone in the world and how kind they are.

That wouldn’t be difficult. They were kind and she was all alone except for the cat.

Eventually, about the same time that they will think you should be in your own establishment, they will broach the subject of working for them. I will be right with you; I will tell you what to say.

She frowned a little at that, because she rather thought she would not need the cat to put words in her mouth, but let it pass. So for right now, she should simply lie back and be pampered. That would not be bad. She thought fleetingly of her belongings at the boarding house, inventoried them in her mind, and reluctantly, decided they were not worth going back for. Though poor Madame would wonder what had become of her . . .

I will get your keepsakes, the cat promised. She nodded. That would do. There wasn’t a great deal she wanted; a little left of her mother’s “jewelry” consisting of a jet rosary, a jet bangle, and a silver locket, a few letters and her mother’s marriage license.

I can get those. Leave it to me. You will have to find a place to hide them, though.

That was easy enough; it would be even easier once she had a private place of her own, but for now, thanks to any number of overheard conversations and the plots of any number of sensational operas and plays. “I will ask for a Bible and paste the papers inside the cover,” she said. The jewelry would probably escape notice. The marriage license, however, would give her age away. Fortunately dancers tended to look ageless so long as they did not put on weight. She should be able to pass, easily, for being ten years older than her real age. Old enough to be the real Russian dancer.

“How did you manage to talk to these men?” she asked, finally. “I thought you could only talk to me.”

The cat grew tense. That . . . is an excellent question.

She waited, but the cat remained silent. “Well you ought to answer it then,” she said impatiently.

I am thinking. The cat washed an ear with one paw. You believe in magic by now. Yes?

It was her turn to hesitate. Did she? Real magic, not stage magic? The thing of fairy tales? How else could she be talking to a cat?

“I . . . suppose . . .”

The two gentlemen that “rescued” you are magicians. That is why I can talk to them too. There is no need to go into much detail, but talking cats are the least of the astonishing things in their world.

She stared at the cat, who began washing his other ear. “But I’m not a magician!” she protested. “Am I?”

True, you are not. But your father was. He . . . charged me with taking care of you, you know. And some things, like being able to talk to magical creatures, come with the blood.

“But I never did before!” For some reason, she felt indignant, as if this sudden ability was an imposition. “Why is it that I have not been talking to magical creatures all my life?”

They would have had to be willing to show themselves and talk to you first. Could a cat smirk? It sounded like he was smirking. They don’t display themselves before just anyone. If you are a magician, you can coax or coerce them, but if all the power you have is to speak to them, they are likely to stay in hiding. Except for the ones you would not have wanted to see. Those, I kept away.

That gave her pause, and she bit back the irritated retort about snobbery she had been about to deliver. “There are bad creatures?”

So bad, you would have spent all your life in terror.

In that case she certainly did not want to see them. “So these men are magicians?” She thought about that. The cat certainly had known, well in advance, what he was doing. He’d gotten her onto the ferry, across the Channel,. And across England to this specific town. “Did you plan for this all along?”

I have planned for this for months, among other plans. The cat hesitated a moment. I have been planning for your future for most of your life. I had hoped you would become an etoile at the Paris Opera, but as that plan fell to pieces, this was my second. Clearly this one is riskier, resting as it does on deception, and my ability to cozen these magicians. If this had fallen to pieces, I had a third, and a fourth, although neither of those were as desirable, and they did not make as much use of your dancing. I am more familiar with Britain than I am with France, so when the first plan fell apart, it was here that we needed to come.

“Did you come to France with my father?” she asked, now very interested.

In a sense. That is not important now. I am engaged in a deception with these men. It will not hold forever. I am certain that at some point they will learn the truth, but at that point you will be their great star and it will not matter. They are showmen, first and foremost; it is the show that matters. Do you take my meaning?

Ninette nodded. That was always true to a greater or lesser extent in the theater. The great stars were as much publicity and showmanship as talent, with the exception, maybe, of amazing talents like the Divine Sarah Bernhardt and Eleanor Duse. Even then . . . would they have been quite so acclaimed if they had not been so eccentric?

“Do I need to be eccentric?” she asked.

Hmm. A good question. Let me think about that. The cat hunched down over his forepaws, eyes half closed. I think, eccentric in simplicity. Elegant simplicity, not all bare feet and scarves like Isadora. But we will have plenty of time to work on that. First, let me drill you on your mythical yacht-person.

Needless to say, Ninette knew nothing about yachts. But she did know a great deal about the rich old men in fur coats who would be expected to own a yacht. Together she and Thomas concocted a plausible story for the apocryphal Nikolas. He could not be too rich, or one would expect a hue and cry about his missing state. He could not be titled either, for the same reason. So it was to be a very small yacht, something a bourgeoisie merchant would have bought to impress young dancers and singers. And Nikolas would have been Nina’s friend, but not her particular friend. She would have been ready to accept favors, but not yet ready to let him into her bed.

Over the course of the day her two rescuers found many excuses to check on her progress. Soon, she was calling the two of them by their first names.

And the cat drilled her mercilessly on her story in between times. So when they finally asked her questions, she was able to weep and cry, “Poor Nikolas! Poor old man!” in a way that left no doubt in the minds of her benefactors that she had very little emotional investment in “Nikolas,” and that in all probability he had offered this trip in order to impress her enough that she would take him as her protector.

This cheered both of them up immensely, even as they tried to comfort the weeping “Nina.” This was understandable; a dead lover was a terrible complication, but she would probably be able to put Nikolas behind her in fairly short order if he was only a “friend” from whom she had perhaps accepted a few gifts.

In the late afternoon someone from the Royal Lifeboat Service arrived, resplendent in a uniform, to talk to her about the sinking. She almost panicked, but the cat soothed her, and quietly coached her on what to say. As she sat between her two benefactors, wrapped in an elegant dressing gown, the officer remained standing, looking acutely uncomfortable.

It was not difficult at all to seem upset, because she was upset, but her visible efforts to calm herself seemed to earn her some respect from the Lifesaving Officer.

“We are trying to learn where the ship might have gone down, miss,” the officer said in English.

She blinked at him. “My Eenglish, not so good,” she said, and gestured to him gracefully. “Parlez-vous francais?”

“I do,” Arthur spoke up, and turned to the officer. “I’ll be translating; sir, it’s not uncommon for Russians artists to know French, but not English.”

The officer grumbled a little about “foreigners,” but nodded. “All right then, how many were on this yacht?”

“Myself, and Nikolas, and five others,” she said carefully, coached by the cat. “It was a motor yacht. Two of the men took it in turns to steer it. There was one man who was Nikolas’ servant, and the other two did things, took care of the pretty boat, cooked, cleaned. Nikolas had just bought this yacht, and he did not know much about these things, I could tell, but he pretended that he did. I wanted to go to London, but he said, no, no, we must sail all around England that you can see all of it and then decide.”

The officer groaned. “Gentleman yachtsmen. Does she have any idea if he registered at any ports?”

When Arthur translated, she shook her head.

“Probably not then.” The officer sighed. “The name of this vessel then?”

“Yvgenia,” she replied promptly. “Nikolas was alone in the world,” she added, as the cat prompted her. “He did something with speculation . . .” She shrugged. “I never could understand it. He laughed and said that Yvgenia was the name of his mother, who was always happy to see him leave.”

“And how is it that the young lady came to shore?” Now that was a dangerous question and one that Ninette had been hoping would not be asked. She would have to tread very carefully here—

Drop your head, the cat ordered. Don’t look them in the eyes and speak very slowly. You don’t remember a great deal.

She repeated that verbatim in a hesitant voice.

The storm came up suddenly, the cat continued. You were asleep. One of the crew came to wake you, and tell you to get dressed. You had never been on a boat before and you were afraid of the violence of the storm. You tried to make your way to the deck, when there was a great crash and you were thrown into the water. Fortunately you are a strong swimmer, but you could see nothing in the storm. You found a plank to cling to for a while, and you thought you saw lights and began to swim towards them. You were determined to live and that was all you could think of. You remember crawling onto the sand, and that is all.

“She must have wrecked just off the North Pier,” the officer said, and shook his head. “Though why we weren’t alerted—”

“A yacht that small? In a storm like that? With an inexperienced owner?” Arthur exclaimed. “The Lifeboat Service is hardly to blame, sir. No telling if she was even storm-worthy.”

“Well that does account for some flotsam that came ashore,” the officer muttered.

“Really, I cannot imagine anyone holding the Lifeboat Service to account for this. You’ll have to notify the Russian Ambassador of course.” Nigel nodded sagely. “Miss, do you remember the names of the crew?”

“Nikolas Petrov Vladisky,” murmured Ninette, as the cat dictated. “One pilot was Sasha, I do not know his last name. The other was Ivan Bolodenka. Nikolas’s man’s name was Borya Fedorovich. I never knew what the rest were called except their first names, Dimitri and Yuri.”

Now cry, the cat ordered. She was so nervous about being found out that it wasn’t at all hard to do as he ordered and start to sob.

Alarmed, the officer patted her hand clumsily. “There, there, now, miss, you’re a good, brave girl. I’ll let the embassy know these people were lost.”

She looked up, impulsively, and he flinched.

“Let the maid take you back to bed,” Nigel said, beckoning the servant over. She waved the maid away; the girl curtsied and left the room. “No, I shall be all right. Is there any sign of—” She looked up again at the Lifesaving Officer, and he winced.

“Tell her that we probably can’t hold out any hope at this point,” the officer said. “If they wrecked off the North Pier, we probably won’t even find bodies; they’ll be taken out to sea by the tide and turn up in Ireland, if at all.”

Arthur translated the first part of that, but not the last. She dropped her eyes.

“Thank you, miss,” the officer said ponderously. “Merci, mademoiselle.” He coughed. “I’ll be on my way, then. I doubt very much I will need to trouble the young lady any more, she’s been most helpful.”

“You expect to hear anything from the Russians?” Nigel asked in a low voice.

The officer shook his head. “One bourgeois speculator, related to no one, and a handful of sailors who might or might not have been no better than they should be? Probably not. And this young lady might be a good dancer, but I misdoubt anyone from the Embassy will care unless she was the Empress’s particular pet. I’m afraid you’ll have her on your hands unless you find someone else to hand her off to.”

“Hand off my golden goose? Not likely.” Nigel winked, as the cat curled up around Ninette’s feet and purred. “I’ll show you out, then, sir. Care for a brandy against the cold?”

“Shouldn’t drink on duty—”

“Nonsense, it’s medicinal—” The two left the room as Ninette wiped her eyes with a handkerchief.

As soon as they were out of earshot, though, she turned to Arthur, holding tightly to the scrap of cloth and lace. “And how is it,” she demanded in French, “that you can hear my cat?”

“HA! I warned you!” came a third voice, one she thought she remembered from the auto, although she jumped when she heard it. “Didn’t I warn you? I told you she would be a clever little thing, all the dancers I ever knew were!”

“Yes, Wolf, you told us,” Arthur said with resignation.

“Who is that?” Ninette asked, heart still in her mouth, looking back over her shoulder and seeing nothing but a parrot in a cage, sitting on a swing.

Then the parrot reached over to the bars of the cage, and to her astonishment, unlatched the door and flew over to the back of the couch. “I am Wolfgang Amadeus, who for my sins has found himself stuck in the body of a bird,” the parrot said mournfully. “It probably has something to do with The Magic Flute. I was warned not to write a Masonic opera. I, who once visited the courts of Europe and wrote music for Emperors, am now reduced to sitting in a cage, begging for green peas, and writing tinkly little melodies for music hall performances.” He sighed, and tilted his head down, eyeing Thomas evilly. “And don’t get any clever notions, cat. You might be an Elemental Creature, but my beak can still make an impression on your nose.”

I wouldn’t dream of it, the cat said with immense dignity. Just what do you take me for?

“Hungry,” said the parrot, and fluffed out all his feathers. Ninette stared at him, and then looked at Arthur.

“Is he really—?”

Arthur shrugged. “He’s my Elemental Familiar, so only heaven knows. I’m only a magician, not a Master, so I can’t tell these things.”

“Even the Master cannot tell if Wolf is telling the truth or making up grand tales,” said Nigel, returning to the room. “All I can say is that those ‘tinkly little melodies’ he hates are quite popular, so I say it doesn’t matter. But you, my dear, are not a mage yourself—”

But her father was, and he left me in charge of her, the cat replied. Tartly. Ninette eyed him in surprise. I told you that already. Really, if you are going to make me repeat things . . .

“I beg your pardon, Monsieur Chat, most heartily,” Nigel said with a bow. “Well, I expect we’ll have to look out for you now, Miss Tchereslavsky, since those of us Elemental magicians that actually get along without fighting each other tend to be a close-knit group here in Britain.”

“Mind, there are far more who don’t get along than those who do, idiot lot that they are,” the parrot added sardonically. “Imagine! There are a goodly number that refuse to even speak with me just because I’m a bird!”

Intolerable, the cat drawled. The Philistines!

Wolf glared at him.

“I am afraid I have nothing,” Ninette said, looking down at her hands. “All my fortune was in my jewels, and those are at the bottom of the sea.”

“Don’t worry about that for now,” Nigel replied, leaning down to pat her hand. “You just think about getting your strength back so you can dance. You’ll soon be on your feet again once that happens. And I’m sure we can find a way to make that happen. Right, fellows?”

He winked at her, but she didn’t miss the glance that passed between him and Arthur. She glanced down at the cat, who looked as smug as, well, he deserved to be.

What did I tell you? the cat asked. Just do as I say, and you’ll be so successful that La Augustine will read about you in the papers and envy you!

6

THERE was something comforting and universal about a rehearsal room.

Always the same. Broad expanses of glass on two walls—windows on one, mirrors on the opposite. Practice barre stretching out along the mirrored wall. Piano in one corner. Dust always hanging in the air, rosin dust, and dust shaken out of cracks in the wooden floor by the pounding of countless feet. Depending on the time of day, and whether or not it was raining again, sunlight might or not be streaming in through the window, filled with that dust, which would then sparkle like fairy dust.

Rehearsal pianists were always thin, always earnest, always homely, usually bespectacled. They always wore dusty black. This one was thin, earnest, homely, bespectacled, and female, her hair put up in a tight little arrangement of braids wrapped around her angular head. She also spoke French, an asset.

For the first time in her life, Ninette had a rehearsal room to herself. For the first time in her life, she was not being put through her drills by an instructor or a ballet master. She had to remember it all herself.

She punctuated her requests for tempi with s’il vous plais and merci. After all, rehearsal pianists might utterly forgettable and generally ignored as a kind of extension of the piano itself, but they were still human beings. But in between the please and thank you she concentrated on getting her body back into something capable of a performance.

Despite all the exercise of walking she had done, she had not been doing any dancing since she had left France, and her muscles told her so. Everything had to be taken slowly. Each group of muscles must be warmed up, stretched, and tested. Then the entire body had to go through the same procedure. Only then was she prepared to try a solo, and a not very demanding one, either.

She wished she had a partner. She wondered what the odds were of finding one.

“La Sylphide, first solo, merci,” she said, and proceeded to work through that first piece, where the mischievous Sylph first invades James’ home and finds him sleeping in front of the fire. She interrupted herself often, asking the patient pianist to repeat a phrase, drilling herself mercilessly until her forgetful body got it right again. Oddly enough, there was peace in this. She might have been in Paris; this might have been what she would have been doing had she been lifted to etoile status. Outside this room there were talking cats and men who claimed they were magicians, a stolen name, a life that was not hers, and a fabrication she had to maintain. In here, there was only the music, the relentless tyranny of the choreography, and the discipline of shaping a reluctant body into the graceful movements of the dance, without pause, without faltering.

How strange that the one thing that she had thought she would like to escape was the thing she now fled to for comfort.

“Nigel.”

Nigel looked up from his desk. This was the first day since they had rescued Nina that he had spent a normal morning, and there was a lot of work piled up at his desk here at the Imperial Music Hall. None of it was an emergency, or someone would have made sure a messenger got to him at his flat, but it took up all of his morning and looked as if it was going to stretch well into the afternoon.

He’d gotten so deep into it that he had lost all track of time until that familiar voice at his door took him out of his trance of work as he dealt with letters from booking agents, descriptions of acts, complaints from the stagehands, requests for materials . . .

He looked up, and blinked at Arthur. “Band-call over already?”

“Yes, and you should get some luncheon inside you,” the parrot said from his perch on Arthur’s shoulder. “We’ve made arrangements for Miss Tchereslavsky. We checked around at the performers’ lodgings and found a full flat open over at Breckenridge’s.”

Nigel brightened up at that. Alfie Breckenridge owed him a favor, and a big one. Nigel had loaned him the collateral to buy the set of lodgings in the first place, when Alfie had retired from the stage. His wife Sarah was a sharp one, and they wouldn’t give him the flat, but—

“What’s the terms?” he asked.

“They’ll let her have it—knowing it’s you that’s paying for it for now—at a quarter the going rate until the show is in production and she can pay for it herself.” Arthur looked understandably pleased at that. “Alfie told me it’s too dear for most of our performers anyway, and it went vacant half the time, so he won’t be losing that much by it. He was thinking of cutting it up into rooms, but if our scheme works, Nina will be there in permanent residence. Care to walk over and cast an eye on it after we eat?”

“Anything to get from behind this desk.” Nigel gratefully cleaned his pen and pushed his chair away. Arthur tucked Wolf away inside his coat with the parrot’s head sticking out under his chin, and off they went.

“You should get a secretary to take care of that,” Arthur observed, as they left the building via the stage door, turned up their collars against the drizzle, and headed in the direction of the Dial, which was the name of the Imperial Music Hall version of the pub that sprang up in the vicinity of every theater Nigel had ever seen. Not for the benefit of theater patrons, no. For the benefit of the entertainers. It generally would take a great deal of effort on the part of a casual theatergoer to find these pubs, tucked in as they were in backstreet corners, generally behind the theaters themselves.

And always no more than a few yards from the stage door. They pushed open the doors to a place that had not significantly changed in decades, except for electric lighting instead of gas. A fire burned on the hearth, and the air smelled of tobacco smoke, woodsmoke and bacon. Wolf popped out of Arthur’s coat and took his usual place on Arthur’s shoulder.

Yellowing playbills and fading autographed photos adorned the walls of pubs such as this. The bill of fare was plain, cheap, and always available. It was clean, but it had seen better days . . . probably its better days had been about a century ago. It was generally run by someone who had once been in the theatrical trade himself—seldom long enough to have garnered a name of his own, but long enough to have gotten a fair notion of what players and acts and musicians needed—or would put up with.

In the case of the Dial, the proprietor was a benevolent sort. The food was decent, the service prompt, the prices reasonable, and people tended to look the other way if your trained animal came in with you as long as it was well-behaved. Champagne was available, something you didn’t find in many pubs, because theatrical folks had a taste for it.

The place was full, since morning band-call was over and everyone that didn’t have another place to go had crowded in here to get a bite between band-call and afternoon rehearsal. Most of the people in here were the stagehands, who greeted Nigel, Arthur and Wolf with genial respect. Wolf generally took care to act like a bird around them, and confined himself only to the very occasional clever comment audible to the room. Nigel knew that Arthur’s companion had an ongoing prank though; at quiet moments the bird would lean down and mutter something in Arthur’s ear to try and get him to laugh.

Not today, though. There was only so much time until the early afternoon rehearsals started; Arthur was needed there and Nigel liked to watch the acts for signs of trouble. Performers were kittle cattle; some were reliable, stable, and would go on until they dropped, giving one solid performance after another. But most weren’t. There was always the ongoing curse of the showman to contend with; the life of a performer, gypsy-like as it was, was not a good one for making and keeping friends or lovers. Performers’ egos being what they were . . .

And then there was that ongoing curse of the showman, the bottle. Performers being performers, none of this would show when the time came for the curtain to go up. But cracks would appear at afternoon rehearsals, particularly if they weren’t going well. Nigel liked to slip into the back of a box—never the same twice—and watch. Especially now, when he had his prize, his leading lady, for this new kind of music hall idea. Now he wanted to get a solid lot of acts to fit into this show, and he needed to know he would be able to depend on them for most of a year. That meant no missed performances for being drunk, no replacement of partners for infidelity, no screaming fights backstage, no trouble. They would have to comport themselves like the big theatrical and operatic companies did in Europe, where everyone was permanent, you knew who the stars were, and everyone had to get along, at least marginally. Music hall performers were hard workers, but they weren’t used to that.

Nigel and Arthur ate quickly, but quietly, with Wolf helping himself to what he liked off both their plates. Most of the stagehands were finishing up just as they did, and there was a little awkwardness at the door, quickly settled as Arthur stepped aside so Wolf could climb back into his coat.

Like most music halls—except, perhaps, in London—this one was also surrounded by buildings given over to theatrical lodgings. These were, as might be expected, of variable quality. Some were actual boarding houses, where the lodgers could expect at least two and sometimes three meals along with their room. Some provided little more than a cheerless, shabby furnished room. Some had actual flats that included rudimentary kitchens. The one thing they all had in common was that the landlords expected the tenants to be there for no less than the week of their engagement, but not much more, and anticipated they would have nothing more with them than would fit in a suitcase and prop-trunk.

Alfie Breckenridge was unusual in that he and his wife had both been in the theater before retiring to run a theatrical lodging. Most of the house was a classical boarding-house. Sarah kept a good table and their rooms were always full. Breckenridge was able to pick and choose his lodgers, and as a consequence, there were usually no unpleasant folks in his house.

Two houses, really; he and Sarah had done so well they had purchased the building next to theirs, put in a passage between them, and converted the second from flats to suites of two and three rooms.

Arthur rang the bell of the first house; Alfie must have been expecting them, since the door flew open, and it was Alfie himself standing there rather than the maid. “Gents! Glad you could make it before rehearsals started! Nige, Sarah’s been asking after you, wonderin’ when you were comin’ for a good dinner. She don’t half fret about that cook of yours.”

“She’s the one who recommended Mrs. Graves, you know,” Nigel said with a grin. “Surely she doesn’t think so poorly of her own judgment.”

“Oh you know, Sarah, always second-guessing herself.” Alfie chuckled. “Made her a good partner for my comic-patter though. Well, right, let’s show you these rooms an’ we’ll see if you think they’re good enough for your bally-dancer wench.”

He led the way through the communal sitting-room to the passage that had been cut in the wall between the two houses. “When we got the place, I had the notion I wanted to set things up for them as wanted a bit more privacy and a bit more space. House was four flats, I sectioned it up into bed-sitters with one or two bedrooms, so people that had an act with family could lodge together and couples—” here Alfie winked, and Nigel smiled, since he knew Alfie was not in the least concerned if the “couples” in question were married or not “—could have a bit more privacy. But we left the flat at the top alone, thinkin’ mebbe we could let it out to them as stay longer than just a week or so.” He shook his head, leading the way up the stairs. “Happen you didn’t book a lot of those, and it’s a bit of a journey from here to, say, the Opera House. I was just about to call in the carpenters and give the orders to cut it up too, when Arthur rang me up. And here we are!”

He stopped at the top landing, took out a key with a flourish, and opened the door.

Nigel stepped inside and looked around. He nodded with approval. The rose-papered sitting room had clearly been furnished by a woman, Sarah probably. Light, airy, and comfortable. Plain, but good furniture upholstered in dark rose. Small fireplace with a wooden mantel, and a mirror over the mantelpiece. Electric lighting, which was far safer than gas. Not as ostentatious as his own flat, but he was, after all, the theater owner. “Let’s see the rest of it.”

“Got a small kitchen here, bit of a pantry, but Sarah an’ me are figuring your gel will want us to cater her,” Alfie explained, throwing up the door on a doll’s kitchen, with a tiny stove and oven. “This’s enough for her maid to cook her up an egg and a bit of toast and the like, or keep dinner warm in the oven for her. That’s what everyone else in this flat has done, sent down to us for real meals and all. Some of them even come down to eat around the big table with the rest.” He opened the next door. “This’d be the maid’s room, I reckon. Last person that let the place was a family act, they had their daughter in here.”

A small, neat, plain white bedroom with a thick blue coverlet and blanket on the bed, blue china washbasin and pitcher on the stand, with a blue-curtained window looking out on the backyard seemed adequate enough to Nigel. It didn’t have a fire, but maids’ rooms seldom did, and it did share the wall with the kitchen, which should keep it warm enough.

And then he got a glimpse of something, out of the corner of his eye. A small, clever-faced little gnome with a kindly sparkle to his eyes.

An Earth-Elemental, one of the benevolent ones. A brownie. Interesting. Had it been here all along, or had it come in response to the movement through the invisible workings of the Elementals themselves who said Nina was coming here?

He would have liked to question the creature, but obviously he couldn’t, not with Alfie there. It saw him looking at it, gave him a saucy wink, and vanished.

Pity. As an Air Master he couldn’t actually call the Earth creatures; they would only talk to him if they felt like it.

“An’ here’d be the gel’s little nest,” Alfie said, opening the final door. Again, it was an airy, bright room, this time with a big four-post bed of the old fashioned sort with curtains around it. Not a bad thing, when the winter winds came roaring off the sea, and to drive off the damp from the ubiquitous rain. There was a good fireplace here, and it was as clean and neat as anyone could want. Walls papered in cream, rose, and brown, coverlets, curtains, and furnishings to match. The room was warm without feeling stuffy. “Nice little dressing-room and bath through there,” Alfie continued, pointing at a door in the far wall. “Hot water up from a boiler in the basement, modern as you please. Maid can use the bath on the second floor, or this one if her mistress ain’t particular. Even put a telephone in. Reckon this’ll suit?”

“If she’s got any sense, she’ll think she’s in cream, Alfie,” Nigel replied with satisfaction. They concluded the bargain, Nigel sealed it with the first month’s rent, and he and Arthur and Wolf headed back to the theater. The street was quieter now, people settling back into their businesses after the rush about for lunch.

“Nigel,” Wolf said, with uncharacteristic seriousness, as they made their way on foot through the back streets, “I have a concern.”

Nigel glanced down at the little gray head peering out from Arthur’s coat. “Then I would like to hear it.”

“Do either of you have any attraction to this girl? Are you likely to?” Wolf’s shiny black eyes looked at him piercingly. “You know very well she is quite likely to have some sort of attraction to you, one or both, if only the attraction of a young woman to a man of means. She’s in shock now, but when she gets over it, she does not strike me as the sort to go without a gentleman for very long.”

Nigel laughed. “She’ll have plenty of those—”

“You know what I mean,” Wolf said severely. Arthur sighed.

“The bird has a good point, Nigel,” he said reluctantly. “We rescued her, after all. That tends to make a young lady look at you in a different sort of way. It could be a complication unless we are careful about how we treat her.”

“Hmm. Then the sooner we get her established in her own rooms, the better.” Nigel found the dancer attractive enough, and had she been anyone other than one of his performers, he would have had no qualms about pursuing whatever seemed appropriate . . .

But she was one of his performers, and he had always had a strict rule for himself about that. That is, his female performers were not under any circumstances to be socialized with in that way. Invite them to parties, yes. Have them at dinners, yes. But only in a party with other performers and nothing outside of the same sort of thing that he would offer to his male performers. It was just too much of a risk. He’d seen this happen to owners in the past; let a star performer become something more, and the next thing you knew, they thought they could dictate the running of the theater to you. He was going to showcase this girl as his star turn. He was not going to allow her to turn it into “her” theater.

Wolf made the sound of a sigh of relief. “Good. As long as you keep that in mind.”

“Oh, I will,” Nigel said fervently. “Business and pleasure shouldn’t be mixed. Ever.” Besides the other considerations, the last thing he needed or wanted was an entanglement at a time when he wanted to have the upper hand in negotiating with this young woman.

He would give her a fair offer, but he was not about to treat her on the level of someone who could fill entire concert halls just on the basis of their name on a playbill. She was an unknown here. To an extent he could use her European reputation, but English audiences would make up their own minds about her. And he could certainly use the romantic circumstances of her shipwreck. But none of these things were going to compensate for an outrageous salary, especially not in the beginning. He was taking a risk, and he knew it, on this new sort of musical performance. What worked so brilliantly in America might not work here.

By this time they had reached the Music Hall, and Nigel made up his mind at that moment that he was going to do something a bit different today. “You and Wolf keep an eye on the rehearsals, would you please?”

“You have something in mind?” asked Arthur.

Nigel nodded. “I think it’s time that I talked to Jonathon Hightower.”

“Kung Chow?” Arthur nodded. “The plot I have outlined for this production makes very heavy use of him. I can’t think of a stage magician better suited to this.”

“Just as long as he doesn’t want me in his act,” Wolf added, with a shudder. “Really, I don’t like bird acts at all. Filthy things, and no conversation. Now, Jonathon, however . . . he is excellent company. Good taste in music too.”

Nigel repressed a smile. Wolf would think that; Jonathon was a great aficionado of Mozart.

“I can’t think of an Elemental Mage I would rather have here,” Nigel responded, thoughtfully. “Something just occurred to me, you see. What if that storm and the yacht sinking weren’t an accident?”

Arthur paused just outside the Stage Door, and two heads, his and Wolf’s, swiveled to look at Nigel. “You think someone was trying to stop her from coming here?”

“Or merely was getting revenge on her father,” Nigel replied, and opened the door for them. “He created that cat as a guardian for her. You would assume he had a reason to think she would need one.”

Arthur let Wolf out of his coat. The parrot clambered up to his shoulder. “In that case, there might be more such attacks,” Wolf pointed out, as Arthur nodded agreement.

The three of them paused for a moment in the area just past the backstage porter, where the mail was left for performers. There was no one here at the moment, although the sounds of the orchestra warming up for rehearsal were just beginning, and from one of the practice studios came the sound of a piano.

“If the sinking wasn’t an accident, yes. I want Jonathon here. There is nothing like a Fire Master to discourage meddlers.” Nigel shrugged. “I could be alarmist. But I had rather not find out that I wasn’t when the scenery collapses atop someone. Or a rope snaps and a sandbag breaks our star dancer’s neck.”

Arthur shuddered. “Touch wood that you are being alarmist. But Jonathon can certainly tell us. I think it is probably time for you to find him the fastest way possible.”

Nigel grinned. “I was hoping you’d say that.”

Nigel locked the door to his office—another reason not to have a secretary—and flexed his fingers. The “fastest way possible” was very fast indeed for an Elemental Master. Whereas an ordinary theater manager would have to rely on a call to Hightower’s booking agent, and then a telegram to whatever theater the magician was playing at, Nigel could be a great deal more direct.

He opened the eastern window to his office, rolled back the Persian rug laid over the carpet, and exposed the very special design woven into the flatter carpet beneath.

It was an Invocation Circle, for Air, specifically. Every Elemental Master had his own way of calling his Elementals; Nigel just happened to have one that was uniquely suited to his profession, and the reason why he and Arthur had met in the first place.

In fact, it was probably the reason why the Grey Parrot that claimed he was the incarnation of Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart had flown in this same window ten years ago.

From a locked drawer in his desk, Nigel removed a glass flute.

From the time he was a boy, Nigel had used music to call and communicate with his Elementals. The patterns of the notes just seemed to fit the patterning of the magic. He was not a brilliant musician, not in the way that Arthur was; Arthur could play virtually ever instrument in the orchestra, and do it well enough to fill in any vacant position if he had to. Nigel had never been good enough to pretend to being a professional musician, but he was more than good enough to master something like the flute. For a long time he’d used a metal instrument, but that hadn’t quite gotten the effect he had wanted. Finally, on a whim, he had asked a glass-blower to make him a glass flute, and the results had been everything he could have hoped for.

Even better had been when Wolf had arrived in their midst. The parrot had volunteered to write little melodies for virtually every summoning purpose that the three of them had been able to think of.

This time, when he raised the flute to his lips and felt the first stirrings of his magic in the tingling of his fingers, he began the melody that Wolf called “The Messenger.”

The first soft, breathy notes broke the silence of the office. He felt power swirl around him in a cool, crisp whirlwind of pale blue energies. He hadn’t played more than three bars when the curtains billowed inward, and the transparent, laughing face of a sexless child winked at him once from the zephyr that circled him, riding the waves of power.

With a smile he put down the flute, and the elemental spun into shape, a fluttering, translucent bird-child with big eyes and a knowing smile. It waited for his request.

“Please go to Jonathon Hightower,” Nigel told it, giving it, as he spoke, the kind of mental “signature” of the Fire Master. “Tell him that I want to speak with him immediately.”

And to reward it, he reached for the energies of the air and conjured up a sparkling, dancing, animated spark, a kind of elemental toy that would last as long as the Elemental he gave it to had interest in it. With a crow of delight, the creature seized the offering, and with a shake of wings, sped off through the window, and out into the sun.

Nigel closed the window, rolled his rug back and went back to his desk. Nothing now but to wait, so he might as well get some work done while he did.

7

NIGEL had not gotten a reply by the time the curtain rose on the first performance, and by the time the curtain fell on the last act, he was alternating between concern and irritation. After all, Masters never used Elementals as messengers frivolously, and Hightower of all people ought to know that if Nigel had done so it meant there was some urgency to the request.

Wolf, who was always backstage during performances, flew down from his perch in the flies and landed on Nigel’s shoulder as the latter cursed the Fire Master mentally.

“There could be a dozen reasons why Hightower hasn’t contacted you, Nigel,” the bird said quietly into his ear. “Chief of which is that he is a performer, with his own act to rehearse and perform. Unlike you, he does not have the luxury of a private office in which to conduct rites.”

“There’s nothing out of the ordinary about sending a telegram,” Nigel replied, with irritation. “Nothing that difficult. Step around the corner to the post office and—”

“But why should I do that, when I can come here in person?” said Jonathon Hightower, stepping around a gaggle of little chorus dancers. He grinned, and they tittered nervously; Jonathon looked very much like a caricature of Satan, minus the horns, and he played on the resemblance by cultivating a slim moustache and goatee, and wearing a scarlet-lined black evening cape and top hat whenever possible.

Amazingly this seemingly Satanic appearance translated seamlessly into his stage persona of the mysterious Chinese magician, Kung Chow. Very few people outside the theatrical world connected the flamboyant Hightower with the secretive Kung Chow, and that was the way Hightower liked it.

“Jonathon, you wretch—” Nigel exclaimed.

Hightower laughed. “Now how could I resist coming here myself, after all the newspaper stories about the beautiful Russian dancer you rescued from the briny deep?” He lifted an eyebrow significantly. “Had to come see her for myself, don’t you know.”

Nigel looked at him with exasperation. “Come back to the flat with me, and you can meet her yourself.”

“Oh, really?” Jonathon grinned. Nigel gritted his teeth.

“Obviously she had nowhere else to go, Jonathon,” he said. “She’ll be moving into her own establishment shortly.”

Jonathon kept grinning as Nigel passed Wolf over to Arthur and made his round of the backstage before leading him out the stage door. But once outside and away from anyone likely to overhear them, he rounded on his friend.

“First of all, there is nothing going on with that young woman,” he said fiercely, as they walked to where he had left his auto parked, moving from patch of gaslight to patch of gaslight. “I have a new sort of musical theater I am planning, I intend to make her the central figure in it, and the last thing in the world I am ever going to do is mix my personal pleasures with the business of my theater!”

Jonathon sobered immediately. “Look, old man, I—”

“And secondly,” Nigel went on, without losing a bit of his heat, “The girl is one of us, or at least her father was. Enough of a mage that he was able to create a protector for her. What else was I to do but take her in? For heaven’s sake, it was her cat that summoned us to aid her!”

By that point, they had reached the auto; Jonathon got in, silently, and remained quiet while Nigel went through the complicated little ritual that the auto demanded to get it started. Only when they were well down the street did he speak again.

“Well, I feel a right fool.”

“You should,” Nigel snapped. “Now the reasons I asked you to contact me in the first place are part of all that. I want to engage you for a full year at the least, and I want to make you the other star attraction of this production. Now here is what I have in mind—”

He explained his plans for the new sort of musical theater as the auto chugged down the street. Jonathon said nothing, only nodded from time to time, but Nigel could tell that he was interested.

“Well,” Jonathon said, as Nigel pulled his auto into the carriage house that now served it as its garage, “I’m equally torn by two questions, one mundane, the other arcane. The mundane one is rather simple; would you rather cast me as the villain of the piece, or sympathetic?”

“Well, I suppose that would depend on how sophisticated we think the audience will be, wouldn’t it?” Nigel closed up and prudently locked the carriage house doors. That was the grand thing about having an auto; no horse to feed or stalls to clean out. One could talk all one wanted about the romance of horseflesh, but the amount of cleaning up and caring for—he had far rather pay the mechanic once in a while to fix the motorcar than keep a stableman day in, day out.

“If we thought they would be capable of it, we could write something that casts you as the villain but redeems you in the end,” Nigel suggested, as they made their way into the foyer of the building, brightly lit in the newest fashion with fine electric fixtures. “Say . . . your character has a change of heart and helps the girl escape, staying to face the wrath of the sultan?” Nigel’s flat was on the third floor of this rather posh establishment, reached by a modern, brass-caged elevator, although stairs were available. It was self-operated, although the owners of the other two flats in the building generally had their servants do the operating.

“I must say, I like that idea,” Jonathon mused, as they both strolled into the anteroom of Nigel’s flat, to be met by a servant who took their coats. “By the way, I took the liberty of sending my things here . . .”

“I do have more than one guest room, you know,” Nigel pointed out. He turned to his manservant, who was bringing drinks for both of them, knowing, as he did, what Jonathon’s preference was. “Asher, I am perishing. Could something be arranged?”

“I anticipated your requirement, sir, and took the liberty of having a late supper prepared for you and Mr. Hightower.” The manservant nodded in the direction of the dining room, and Nigel and his guest lost no time in settling themselves in there.

Discussion of plots continued over the Welsh rarebit, eggs, bacon, crumpets and broiled tomatoes, Nigel secretly gloating the entire time. For all that Jonathon could be an irritating fellow, he was also entertaining and the best illusionist that Nigel had ever seen. And he had a good sense of storytelling. All his suggestions were sound ones.

“Am I missing something, or have you neglected to cast a romantic male lead in this venture?” Jonathon asked, as they moved their discussion and their whiskeys back into the library, where they each took one of the comfortable Windsor chairs.

“You are not missing anything; I haven’t. I am not sure that I want to.” Nigel tapped the side of his glass thoughtfully. “There is the inevitable problem of finding a dancing partner for her if we do. How many male dancers do you know that are in variety that were trained in ballet?”

Jonathon shook his head.

“Whereas if she doesn’t have a male romantic lead as such, we can just have some of the fellows do the lifts, and maybe assist in her turns. Lads trained in the usual sort of stage dance can do that,” Nigel pointed out.

Jonathon laughed. “I can do that,” he replied.

“Well, then, I’m not at all sure we need a romantic lead for her. Might be more interesting if your magician character starts out being a villain, and then gets won over and sacrifices himself so she can get away.” He pondered. “Or at least it looks that way. You’ve always wanted to do a spectacular escape trick; how about if the Sultan takes the magician prisoner and he makes a showy escape?”

Jonathon got a wicked gleam in his eye. “Can I make the palace collapse on the Sultan and all his evil minions? Or set it on fire?”

“If you can do it under budget.” That was Arthur, being shown in by the manservant, a whiskey already in his hand.

“I’ll set it on fire. That will sell a lot of tickets,” Jonathon decided. “Besides leaving the ambiguity that maybe the magician was secretly something like Mephistopheles all along, and sent to bring his master the soul of the Sultan.”

“Good idea!” Wolf exclaimed from Arthur’s shoulder. “Makes the whole thing less sticky-sweet. I could even write music for that—”

“No arias!” All three of the humans exclaimed at once. Wolf fluffed his feathers in indignation.

“All right, that takes care of that. I think we have a pretty strong book for this, and once we know what acts we’ll be putting into it, and how often our star can perform over the course of it, we’ll know exactly what music we need.” Nigel tossed back the last of his drink and refilled it from the decanter himself. “Now, as for the other reason why you in particular are here, Jonathon, let me tell you what we know about the young lady.”

“And her cat,” Wolf added sourly. “Let’s not forget the cat. He certainly won’t let you.”

“Cat?” Jonathon looked at them all quizzically.

“Let me start at the beginning,” Nigel replied with a laugh, and did so.

When he was done, Jonathon was unexpectedly silent. After waiting for some sort of reaction, and getting nothing, Nigel finally asked, “What are you thinking?”

“That it is certainly interesting. I’m not at all familiar with the Russian Masters. Actually, I don’t think much of anyone is; we have a lot of contact with the French and Italian ones, a little less with the Spanish, but . . .” He shrugged. “It does sound as if her father must have come to an untimely end, probably at the hands of another Master. And if he left such a guardian for his daughter, that suggests he expected whoever his enemy was would come after her as well.”

“It wouldn’t be the first time,” Arthur said quietly. Both Nigel and Jonathon grimaced a little. Arthur’s grandfather had run afoul of a bad-tempered Scottish Master, who had pursued not only the old man, but the man’s son and grandson. It was only at the death of the Scottish magician that the persecution had ceased.

“Russians are notorious for temper.” Jonathon tossed back his own drink. “On the other hand, I am not exactly weak. And Fire magic is rather well suited to combat. Unlike Air, and no slur intended, Nigel.”

“No offense taken. Air is the weakest, offensively and defensively. But when it comes to gaining information—” He shrugged. “Short of finding a way to live without breathing, you can’t shut Air Elementals out.”

“Well, don’t underestimate your ability to add to my power. Air feeds Fire and never forget it.” Jonathon set his glass down and steepled his fingers together. “Whatever might come after this young woman, I think we will be prepared for it.”

“And that is exactly why I wanted you here,” Nigel said with satisfaction. Well, there it was. The tacit agreement to make all of this a reality, and to protect Nina from whatever it was that threatened her. If Jonathon had not actually come out and said he was going to help out with this enterprise, it was certainly written between the lines. And he would not say, not yet, for a magician’s words were binding. He wanted to be sure, and Nigel could hardly blame him.

“But I want to meet her before I make any decisions,” Jonathon continued, and measured Nigel with a stern look. “No offense, Nigel, but your weakness has always been a damsel in distress. I’m not so easily gulled, and my stock-in-trade is illusion. I want to see her and this cat of hers. I want your promise that you will hold by my decision as well. Do I have it?”

Nigel shrugged. He knew Jonathon was right, and although he liked Nina Tchereslavsky quite a bit, well . . . he had to face the fact that if she was pulling some sort of deception, there were other singers and dancers he could base his endeavor around. And he had to keep reminding himself of that. She might appear to need rescue, he might want to rescue her, but there was always the possibility that it was all part of some grand confidence game. Not everyone was worth rescuing.

They are talking about you, said the cat. He sat near the door of Ninette’s room, with his head cocked to one side. She put her book down in her lap and regarded him thoughtfully.

“They? Nigel and Arthur and Wolf?” She had heard them come in, but had thought it better not to intrude, since it sounded as if they were having a discussion of business.

And someone new. Another Elemental Master. The cat was very still, staring at the door with his tail curled around his feet. A Fire Master. I think I know him, or at least, his reputation.

Another magician? “Why is he here?” she asked.

I gather Nigel asked him to come. Hmm. Well, it seems he is not only a Magician, he is an illusionist as well. Nigel wishes him for this theatrical production. He is suspicious of you. I suspect he is a very sharp gentleman.

She bit her lip. That was the last thing she needed. “What if he finds out—”

The cat shook his head. He won’t. Or at least, he will not until it no longer matters. What he expects is that you have some purpose other than dancing, perhaps that you intend to get Nigel to marry you.

She giggled. Nigel was not the sort of “rich” she expected for a protector. He was very careful with his money, and when she found someone to keep her, she wanted it to be a gentleman who liked to show his appreciation lavishly. “But could he find out I am not who I say I am?”

He is hardly an expert on either ballet or Russians. He admitted the latter, and as for the former, he seemed to be under the impression that just any ballroom dancer could partner with you for lifts and turns.

She snorted. If that was what he thought . . .

“Should I go out?” she wondered. “Face them now?”

It would be a good idea. They are not expecting you. They think you are asleep.

She got up from the chair in which she had been sitting, reading . . . she did not read easily—it was not deemed necessary for the little ballerinas to be very proficient in ordinary school lessons—but she enjoyed it, even if it was very hard work. For some reason, Nigel had a large collection of French novels, and she was making her slow way through them when she was not practicing.

She set the book aside and smoothed down her skirt with a feeling of great satisfaction. Nigel had been more than generous in the way of clothing. Since she had none, he had arranged for the costume mistress of the theater to take her measurements and get her a good wardrobe. Ninette doubted that the woman had sewn these garments herself, but she undoubtedly had friends or relatives that were seamstresses themselves and could use the work. And the work was very fine. Not the equivalent of a boulevard atelier, much less a great fashion modiste of the sort that someone like Nina Tchereslavsky would patronize, but it was finer than anything Ninette had even seen, much less worn. Even the underthings were exquisite, with lace and ribbons and embroidery. Nor had the wardrobe mistress limited herself to Ninette’s ordinary clothing. Her practice skirts and tights were of silk tulle and knitted silk. Her pointe shoes were of the sort that the etoiles wore.

In short, ever since the cat had come into her life, things had taken such a turn for the better that she still woke up thinking it was all a dream. And she did not want to lose this. So if the cat said to face them, then face them she would.

She raised her chin, put on the mask of the great prima, and sailed out into the hallway. She followed the sound of voices to Nigel’s library. The door was ajar, which she interpreted as meaning they did not mind being disturbed. She took a deep breath, looked down at the cat at her feet, and pushed it open all the way.

Nigel, who had clearly been just about to say something, looked at her with a startled expression, his mouth hanging open for a moment. He swiftly recovered though, and stood up.

“Mademoiselle Nina, were we disturbing you?” he asked, in French.

She shook her head. “Not in the least,” she replied in the same language, and then smiled. “I ’ave been studying zee English, but it marches better when I am hearing it.” She looked around the room as if she were the one that owned this flat, and not Nigel. “You ’ave brought a friend from the theater, oui?”

“This is Jonathon Hightower, a great illusionist,” Nigel said hastily. “Hightower, this is Mademoiselle Nina Tchereslavsky.”

The stranger rose, took her hand, and bowed over it. She accepted the accolade with pleasure, but also with an air that it was only to be expected. Exactly as La Augustine would have.

And what am I, an old boot?

“And this is the cat, Thomas,” Nigel added hastily.

Hightower, who looked altogether like a modern version of Mephistopheles from the Faust opera, looked down at the cat, who had sat down regally just to Ninette’s left.

“Maybe you should make him disappear,” Wolf put in, turning one evil yellow eye on the cat.

Really now, what have I done to deserve that suggestion? The cat glared right back. That’s rather rude.

“Well, you might stop looking at me as if you were deciding how many meals you were going to get out of me,” Wolf retorted.

I am a cat. I have certain instincts. If you will insist on fluttering and setting off those instincts, you have only yourself to blame. While the parrot fluffed his feathers angrily and glared, the cat turned his attention back to the newcomer. Greetings, Fire Master. Am I to presume you are not here by chance?

“Possibly. My friend Nigel had a business proposition he wished to discuss with me.” Hightower’s expression was as bland as could be. Or rather, he had no expression whatsoever that Ninette could make out. His faintly sinister, yet decidedly handsome face made an excellent mask for whatever it was he was thinking. Ninette had seen many opera singers with superb stage presence who used their faces in exactly that way. In fact, they were never really off-stage whenever they might be seen in public.

“Perhaps it ees about zis oh-so-mysterious theatrical venture he has hinted about?” she replied archly. She took a seat, remembering to do so as if she was center stage, with all eyes on her.

“Perhaps. You seem very much recovered from your tragedy, Mademoiselle.” The abrupt change of subject might have startled her if she had not already been wary of him.

She hesitated, then sighed. “You will think very badly of me, I suppose,” she said, slowly, as if the words were being drawn from her reluctantly. “And I feel very badly for poor Nikolas. But I did not know him perhaps as well as you presume I knew him. He was an admirer, yes. And he wished to be more, yes. But many gentlemen are my admirers, and many wish to be more. I have not had—” she hesitated “—I have not had a particular friend for many months now. I wished to go to England, where the winters are not so cold as Russia, and not France, where there are dancers in plenty, nor Italy, where the audiences prefer opera. I said as much where several of my admirers would hear me, and Nikolas had his new yacht, and I allowed him to persuade me to let him take me here. But I did not allow him to persuade me to do anything else. I wished to see if his company would be something other than tedious.” She sighed, and looked down at her hands, and stole directly from La Augustine. “I am an artist. My friends are artists. When they gather in my salon, the talk is not of stocks and bonds and commodities. I have had my fill of particular friends who cannot or will not understand this talk, and demand that I give up my friends and my gatherings because such talk makes them feel stupid. I did not know that poor Nikolas was such a man. I did not know that he was not one. So taking this journey in his company was to discover if he was or was not, because I would be overjoyed never to face another angry confrontation with a man who could not see the value in things he himself did not appreciate.” She made the corners of her mouth turn down. “For many of my admirers I am exactly like a painting. If it is famous, and if others will admire it, and admire the owner for having it, then it is worth collecting. But they do not think that I am not like a painting, that I have a mind, and friends, and I do not particularly wish to be collected and put on display to excite envy in others.”

She looked up, with a melancholy little smile. “I hope that does not make me less in your eyes.”

The illusionist was unfazed. “Well, Mademoiselle, it does puzzle me that you should come from this wreck des—”

“Destitute?” She gave a bitter little laugh. “Monsieur Illusionist, you will think me foolish perhaps, but one does not trust Russian banks if one can help it. All my life I have kept my fortune with me, in the form of jewels and gold. I take it with me wherever I go. And now it has all sunk down to the bottom of the sea.”

The cat had been drilling her in this role until there were times when she wasn’t sure which of her was the real one, Nina or Ninette. She sometimes wondered if he was putting memories into her head the way he was putting languages, because she could swear she had mental images of buildings in Russia, the Imperial Palace, Theater Street, the stage of the Imperial Ballet . . . she had never even, to her knowledge, seen a sketch or a photograph of these places, and yet they were as real to her as the Eiffel Tower and the Paris Opera.

For that matter, was he slipping Russian language into her mind too? Only today, she had mis-stepped in practice and nearly twisted her ankle, and had sworn, not sacre bleu! as she had thought she would, but blin!

At any rate, with these things, these images and thoughts at the front of her mind, it was a great deal easier to “be” Nina.

The illusionist shook his head. “Tell me that you will not be doing that anymore,” he half-scolded. “It was only a matter of time before something or someone robbed you of your fortune.”

She hesitated. “It was not . . . a very big fortune,” she said after a moment, and laughed ruefully. “I am too fond of pretty gowns, jewelry, champagne, and caviar, and I am not so very famous that merchants will give these things to me in hopes that I will tell others where I got such-and-so. It is bad of me, I know but . . .”

“But there will always be another particular friend, who will buy you these things, hmm?” The illusionist raised an eyebrow and she flushed, but raised her chin defiantly. It was Nina and Ninette together who answered him.

“And who does that harm?” she asked rhetorically, speaking of her imagined old man in a fur coat. “I make my friends happy, they make me happy. I deceive no one and no one is deceived by me. I do not pretend to love, monsieur. Love is not for my kind, and I make sure my friends understand this.”

The illusionist unexpectedly softened his voice, and a hint of understanding, faintly shadowed with cynicism, colored his words. “Then you are wise beyond your years, mademoiselle, and I am glad to hear your honesty. I believe you. So. Have you any notion just who or what your father sought to protect you from by giving you this guardian?” He nodded at the cat.

With true bewilderment she could only shake her head. “Thomas has advised me and guided me, and seldom has his advice miscarried. It was he who urged the move to England upon me.”

There was another prima ballerina at the company, the cat said, “speaking up” unexpectedly. Nina attracted attention from the wrong quarters. Shall we say, Imperial attention? Rather than end up with more than just an artistic rivalry, I advised her to remove herself to somewhere far enough away that the lady’s hand could not scratch her.

All three men chuckled, and even Wolf snorted.

“Our own prince has generated trouble of that sort himself,” Nigel said, with a shake of his head. “But that wasn’t why your Master created you.”

No, it isn’t. There was no specific threat at the time. Only the need to provide his daughter with guidance he would not be there to give.

“So whoever did this to him—”

Did not survive the spellcasting, the cat said, abruptly, so there is no immediate threat. This is not to say that there may not be one in the future, but there is not one now.

Ninette looked from Nigel to the illusionist and back again, and bit her lip to keep from saying anything. The cat, it seemed, had surprised them both. That was interesting to say the least.

“Well, in that case,” Nigel said carefully, with a glance at both the other men, “I think we are in a position to speak with you—and your advisor—about a prolonged theatrical engagement.”

Ninette closed the door to the guest room quietly, but once alone, could hardly restrain her joy. “Thomas!” she whispered, taking a few dancing steps, then whirling around in a pirouette, “I am an etoile! I am a prima! Prima ballerina assoluta! Think of it! The production to be built around me! My own apartment and a maid! And fifty pounds a week!”

You should have gotten double that, Thomas grumbled.

“That is more than La Augustine—”

But not more than Nina Tchereslavsky. Ah well. When the receipts start coming in, we will re-negotiate. And you knew all of this before. I told you. Well, not the apartment, but that was only to be expected.

“You told me, but I did not believe it, not really.” She sat down on the bed, and examined the hem of her gown with deep satisfaction. Lace three inches deep, and there would be more, many more, gowns like this to come. “I did not believe it until Nigel himself said it, and there were contract papers to sign.”

This will be hard work, the cat warned.

“And what I have done up until now has not been?” She sniffed. “The difference between then and now will be that I will not have to rehearse on an empty stomach, nor go home to a garret with no heat.”