Reserved for the Cat (31 page)

“Truer words,” Wolf grumbled.

They were all sitting in Ninette’s dressing room, waiting for Ailse to escort her to the theater. It had been agreed that she was not to go anywhere alone from now on. Not that she had done so very much before, but it was even more imperative now. Jonathon had already set the Fire Wards around her flat; Nigel was setting the Air Wards now.

At that moment, the subject of their concern arrived, along with the little Scots maid. And Ailse had a very determined expression on her face that made Jonathon’s eyebrow rise. His curiosity was further aroused by the expression of excitement on Ninette’s face.

He wasn’t the only one to notice. “Do I sense a conspiracy?” Wolf exclaimed, standing up straighter on his perch on the back of a folding chair.

“Summat,” Ailse said shortly, and turned to Jonathon. “I’m thinkin’ sir, that ye’ll be havin’ more sense than Master Nigel and Master Arthur. You too, Master Wolf, Master Thomas.”

“Sense about what, exactly?” Jonathon asked warily.

“She wants to teach me to shoot!” Ninette burst out, her cheeks very pink now. “I think this would be a very good idea!”

“Shoot?” Jonathon exclaimed, startled. “You mean, a firearm?”

Ailse glared at him “No, a knittin’ needle, ye gurt booby!” she snapped, clearly having lost her temper. “Of course I mean a firearm!” She opened her purse and removed one of the biggest handguns that Jonathon had ever seen, wielding it with all the calm of an expert. “This lad, t’ be precise, or one like it. Me ald father taught me afore I left home,” she added with pride. “And me brother brought me this from America, aye. But ’twas me granny as told them t’teach me. ‘There’s nothin’ dark and fearsome can stand against Cold Iron, Silver or Blessed Lead,’ she said, and Father allowed she was right.” To Jonathon’s dumbfounded astonishment, she expertly broke the revolver and spilled six cartridges into her hand. “Two each,” she said with pride. “There be the Cold Iron.” She held up one with a business-end of a dull black. “Tricksy, those. I mun be sure they dinna rust i’ the revolver, an’ this near t’ sea, that isna an easy thing. Here be the Silver—” This time the bullets she held up were as shiny as a proud housewife’s best cutlery. “An’ those I mun be polishin’ every day too. An’ this is th’ Blessed Lead.” These looked ordinary enough at first. “Cast from the lead from the roof of our own kirk, with pastor’s own blessin’ on ’em, and look—” She turned the bullet to face Jonathon and he saw that the soft nose of it had been cut and cut again “—Saint Andrew’s own blessed cross on it, d’ye ken.”

Jonathon knew a little about firearms, as did most stage magicians, and he knew about the practice of cutting a cross into the nose of a bullet to make the soft lead spread more when it hit a target. He blinked. “Saint Andrew’s own blessed cross” was likely to be hell on earth for anything those bullets struck . . .

“She’s very good!” Ninette said, her eyes shining. “Really! I would feel ever so much safer if I knew how to shoot and had a gun!”

Jonathon considered this, carefully, and it wasn’t only supernatural entities that he was thinking about when he considered the dancer with a revolver in her hands. Earth Magic was also the magic of animal instincts. If
he
was an Earth Master, and
he
wanted to eliminate a pretty young dancer, one with many admirers . . .

“I am going to argue in your favor,” he said carefully, “if you both promise me one thing.” He turned first to Ailse. “I want you to make sure that she is deadly with this thing. She cannot afford to miss and she cannot afford to have it taken from her. Do you understand me?”

The Scots girl pursed her lips grimly. “Aye,” she replied. “An’ that I can do, if ’tis in her t’ be a shot.”

“And you—” He rounded on Ninette. “You
must
be ready to shoot to kill, without pause, without hesitation, if you ever have to take that thing out. There will be no time for second thoughts, no squeamishness. Whoever this is might well use someone—” He thought for a moment, then decided that being blunt was the only answer. “—might well use one of those men that throng your dressing room as an instrument. If that happens, there will be no question of guilt or innocence, no mercy. You will have to kill, or be killed. Or . . . worse,” he added with conviction. “The object might be to carry you off to much worse than simply death. And I do not mean mere rape.” Ailse went scarlet with embarrassment at the word, but he went ruthlessly on. “I mean dissolution. Terror. Horror, such as you cannot imagine. These magics that we use are primal forces and as such, they have all the raw power of the tempest, the volcano, the earthquake.”

He hoped—in fact, he prayed—that Ninette, child of Montmarte as she was, was near enough to the violence that could be in those streets that she would truly
understand
what he meant, and would be willing, able, to be just as violent to ensure her own safety.

Her eyes became very thoughtful, and a bit distant. He sensed she was looking deep into her memory. Her expression darkened, and he felt hope.

“I am no hothouse flower, M’sieur,” she said, quietly. “I am the—the cabbage grown on the windowsill of a garret, so that one might eat. There were Apache-gangs in my street. I have sometimes had to run home very fast to avoid the absinthe-drinkers, the hashish-smokers, the procurers with knives. I know how evil can wear a friendly, even a familiar face. Yes, M’sieur Jonathon. I can shoot to kill.”

The cat, silent until now, growled a little.
A few of those limped home when I got done savaging their ankles,
he added.
I may not be a mastiff, but I can probably give her a moment or two more to aim.

“All right,” Jonathon said, with a slow nod. “I will make sure Nigel and Arthur have no objections. And I myself will go out and get you a revolver.” He eyed the monster in Ailse’s hands. “But not quite that big. You don’t have the wrists for it, Ninette. I won’t get you a ridiculous little lady’s gun, but I will get you something you can handle.”

“An’ the bullets!” Ailse said, instantly. “Cold Iron, Silver, and Blessed Lead.”

He raised his eyebrow again, and Ailse blushed. “I
am
an Elemental Master,” he reminded her. “I think I can manage. Even in so seemingly hardheaded and ordinary a city as Blackpool.”

It took relatively little effort to get the Silver and Cold Iron bullets. It was the Blessed Lead that proved to be the sticking point. There were not many churches, even in wicked Blackpool, that were willing to part with a bit of their lead roofing material when someone looking like Jonathon turned up and asked for it. Three times he tried, under various pretenses, and three times he was turned away with varying degrees of suspicion and hostility. And there was no helpful padre, well versed in the ways of Elemental mages, anywhere within the city limits.

He’d have used Ailse’s bullets, except that he had already determined that Ninette could not possibly shoot the monster pistol that Ailse wielded with such dexterity. Her attempts at dry-firing the gun would have put bullets into the sky or the ground at her feet, but never in an assailant. And besides, as the afternoon wore on, he became more determined that he
would
solve this difficulty. He had the gunsmith who would help them choose a weapon for Ninette and was willing to cast him bullets of the size needed in whatever material he chose to present. While not a mage himself, he knew mages, and ghost-hunters, and a variety of arcane folk; odd requests like this were routine for him. All he needed was the Blessed Lead.

Finally at wits end, he resorted to chicanery. He found a church with a roof badly in need of repair, hired an urchin to shinny up a drainpipe and steal him some, then salved his conscience with a generous donation in the “Repair Fund” box.

By then it was time to rush back to the theater for the evening performance, something which, in the light of what else was going on, had a distinct edge of unreality to it.

He found himself in the wings during Ninette’s turns, and not at all by accident. He watched her closely in the light of his new information, but he could find nothing whatsoever lacking in her skill. If anything, she was better now than she had been when she first started dancing here. That was, undoubtedly, partly practice. But there was something else, too. There was—a sense of joy in her dancing that had not been there before, a feeling that she was
giving
this performance to her audience, generously and unstintingly.

And the audience was giving back to her.

There was absolutely no doubt of this; if he could not actually see the energies, he could sense their effect on the energies of his own magics. It was not a parasitic relationship; it was a symbiotic one. The audience poured over her their pleasure, their appreciation, their support. She gave back to them happiness, exuberance, joy. It was, perhaps, the most remarkable thing he had ever seen on a stage.

There’s her magic,
the cat said, from his feet, startling him.
There’s dozens would give their souls for that sort of power.

“I can imagine,” he murmured. “If she chose . . . if she learns how to reach an entire hall, how to do this when she isn’t dancing—”

“Terrifying, when you think about it,” Jonathon said darkly.

But she’ll never use it that way,
the cat countered firmly.
I know my girl. None of that would make people happy.

Jonathon snorted. “Once she figures out that she can use this to get even better presents out of those fools that come backstage—”

The cat’s words made him glance down incredulously. “Bosh!”

“But—why?” Jonathon managed.

Jonathon shook his head. He wasn’t quite sure what to make of this bit of information. He turned and left the wings before she finished the dance, going back to his dressing room, shared with the patter-comic and the male half of the sentimental-ballad singers, and stared at his own reflection in the dressing-table mirror for a while.

Finally he shook himself out of his reverie and began carefully applying his makeup. Why should he care what she did or did not do with the presents those idiots pressed on her? Although he had to admit, given everything that was going on now, it was a wise decision on her part. He didn’t
think,
now that they were all on the alert, that anyone could slip anything magically dangerous past them and into Ninette’s hands, but you never knew. And gems and gold were the provenance of an Earth mage, too. If anyone could exploit such a thing, it would be an Earth mage.

Well if she had hit on that dangerous spot for a potential breech in their defenses, good for her.

He ignored the fact that he felt like gloating. Or rather, he ignored it until the moment that it was appropriate for his evil stage-self to gloat and smirk over his captive. He didn’t quite realize
how
much he was enjoying himself until she whispered, as she was being locked into the cabinet, “If you cackle, I swear I will not be able to keep from laughing at you.”

After a single glance of outrage, he slammed the door shut with a bit more force than was strictly necessary, and locked it up. He wasn’t
that
bad, was he?

Yes, it turned out, he was. Nigel intercepted him on his way back to the dressing room. “Just a word. A bit less of the villainy, would you? That’s all right for the pantos, but if you do that too often here, they’ll start laughing and shouting, ‘Look behind you!”’

Chagrined, he savagely wiped his makeup off and headed for the stage door. Or at least, that was his intention.

But his feet had a mind of their own, and took him to the door of Ninette’s dressing room. As usual, it was thronged with Lotharios. As he had seen before, they slipped little velvet boxes into her hand or onto the dressing table.

But this time, he caught the by-play with a sense of astonishment, as Ailse collected each box and discreetly gave it back to the giver with a whispered, “Mademoiselle cannot possibly accept this.”

Only once did she make an exception to this. The giver was a little girl, who solemnly presented her with a tinsel ring she must have gotten out of a cracker. With equal solemnity, Ninette accepted it, put it on, admired it, and directed the attention of everyone else in the room to it. Nor did she put it aside when the child had been taken off to an overdue bedtime.