This was something she had sorely missed. It was one thing to dance a sequence from one of the many ballets that you had memorized, or a sequence that you tried to make up in your head to try and stretch your abilities and all the while watch yourself in the mirror for any flaws. It was quite another to dance a sequence as it was called out by the teacher, and to rely on the teacher to watch for flaws while you concentrated on the dancing.
He ran her through several such sequences, at varied tempi, his long face growing more and more thoughtful. Finally he waved her to the barre. “Mademoiselle,” he said heavily, “I am only an old man from Milano, with two bad knees and some ability to teach little English chorus girls to stagger about on their toes and not disgrace themselves. You are better than anyone I have ever taught. You are better than anyone I have ever danced with. You may be better than anyone I have ever seen. There is nothing I can teach you.”
Ninette listened to this with growing astonishment. True, in the past several weeks she had completely forgotten about captivating rich old men and had concentrated on her dancing as never before. But surely that had not made that much of an improvement! Surely he was mistaken. Or flattering her. Or—
Perhaps testing her. She raised her head. “Monsieur, whether or not any of that is true, a dancer never stops learning. You have learned at one school, I at another. Another technique is always worth learning. And you choreograph, which is something I have never done. True?”
“True,” he admitted.
She smiled. “Well then, pray help me with this first of my dances for this production, for I confess I can think of nothing to make it particularly interesting.” She fetched the hoop from the corner. “It is to combine ballet with the hoop-exercises of the Swiss girls—”
“Ah yes!” he exclaimed with recognition. “I saw them. Well, then, let us begin.”
By the end of the afternoon, he had turned a rather lackluster little piece into something amusing and interesting. It was true that he was no Petipa, but he had a good eye and a sound instinct. Being able to make clear improvements in her dance raised his spirits as well; by the end of the afternoon, he was issuing orders and tapping out the tempo with his instruction wand, and using it too, to reposition a foot or a knee—
He was one of those teachers who used a long wand, nearly as tall as he was, to point out problems with the feet and legs. She had only had one such teacher, at the Paris Opera, and he had been prone to using it to thwack little ballerinas across the back of the calf when he did not like what they were doing. Perhaps Ciccolini was naturally more gentle than that, or perhaps he simply deemed her too old for such correction—or maybe he feared that in a temper she would snatch his wand and break it over his head! At any rate, he did no such thing to her.
It was a relief to think about something besides magic, to concentrate entirely on her dance. It was very odd to think that a few weeks ago, she would have been perfectly happy to find herself
Dancing was better. But—there was something lacking even with her dancing.
But she needed something more. She needed—
“Mademoiselle,” the instructor began, breaking her out of her reverie. “This looks very fine in this room. But to judge whether or not it will serve on the stage, you must take it
She thought about that for a moment, and realized what it was that she had been feeling the lack of.
An audience. She had not, until that moment, realized just how much she had missed that aspect of dancing. The audience! Not just potential suitors, but all of them, from the little girls at their first ballet to the old balletomanes. She wanted to hear applause, feel their presence, drink in their attention.
It was very strange . . . when she had danced the
“I quite agree with you, Monsieur,” she said with a nod. “I will speak with the director. There is no reason why I should not start performing. Same time tomorrow, then?”
He nodded. “I fear my mornings will be filled with teaching people who have perfect figures and an imperfect sense of where to put their feet or how to execute a few steps. In other words, I will be instructing the chorus.”
“Very good, Monsieur,” she replied—the old man bowed to her, and took his leave. The pianist began packing her music away, and Ninette retired to the little changing room just off the rehearsal room. She changed into her street clothing, and went straight to Nigel’s office.
He looked up as she tapped on the doorframe, for the door itself was open. “Mademoiselle?” he said, looking worried. “That Italian chap not to your liking? I’ll find you another teacher if you must—”
“No,” she said swiftly. “No, he is excellent!” She took a deep breath. “However, I grow uneasy that you support me and I do nothing.”
Nigel laughed. “You are in rehearsal. You are earning your salary—”
She shook her head. “I have never performed before an English audience. I need to see what they are like. Now is the time to try some of my dances, to see if they respond to me. Sir, I would like to perform in your show. Not the one we are creating. This ‘music hall’ that you are presenting.”
The look of surprise on his face made her smile.
“If you’re certain,” he said, finally, “I’m sure we can fit a dance or two in.”
“I am certain,” she said, firmly. “And Monsieur Ciccolini believes this is a good idea too.”
“In that case, I would be the last person to argue,” Nigel replied, giving in with good grace. “We’ll start you next week, on the new playbill.”
She smiled and thanked him. The conviction that this was exactly what she needed remained with her all the way back to her flat.
9
NINA Tchereslavsky regarded the dead old man in her bed with a remote regret. Regret, because he had, after all, offered so little sustenance, and now she would have to find another admirer with a great deal of money, but it was tempered with the knowledge that she really did look very chic in black. It was a great pity, but he had to be devoured. He had been getting restless, eyes beginning to rove—which was how she had gotten him in the first place. But Nina left nothing for any other female creature, human or otherwise, when she was finished with a man. That little pale-haired girl in the back of the chorus would just have to go hunting elsewhere.
So farewell to Herr Klaus Obervelten, the farm-tractor tycoon.
But it would not do for him to be found here.
With a twist of her mind, she summoned a herd of the kobolds that were as much slaves to the power she granted them as they were her allies. Being very much part of the material world, they came scampering through her open bedroom window rather than manifesting in any other way.
“Take that to its home,” she said, pointing a languid finger at the corpse and wrapping her silk-velvet robe more tightly around herself. “Put it in its bed.” With another twist of her mind, she showed them where her benefactor’s home was, and where his bedroom was in that house. Without a word, the little mob of kobolds had hoisted the body onto their backs, and a moment later, were scampering out the window with it. They would go over the rooftops, of course; it was night, and the sun wouldn’t hurt their eyes. It certainly would not do for a policeman to see a dead, rather naked body being carried through the streets by things invisible to his eyes.
That would be unfortunate.
Nina closed the window and stretched. That was that, sadly. No more presents, and the heirs would likely very soon cut off the monthly rental payments for this very expensive flat.
No matter. She had enough to live on for a while until she found another so-called “protector.” It would not take long. The magic and energy she took from her old men was sufficient to allow her to keep this form as it was when she had devoured it and moved into the girl’s life. She looked not quite twenty, in that ageless way of ballerinas everywhere.
She had chosen her victims very carefully, not at all at random. The original Nina had been well on the way to becoming a great dancer, and had attracted a great many followers at the point where the creature that became
