Reserved for the Cat (13 page)

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.

N
IGEL 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.