Reserved for the Cat

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.”