Reserved for the Cat

church-mouse. She had assumed she could buy him, as she had bought everything else she wanted, including the best of tutors in her magic. It must have come as a tremendous shock to her when she discovered he had fled. I waited for her at the top of the stairs, he continued, reliving that night. And when she stepped out of her room, and was not looking, I ran between her ankles and tripped her. It was a new hotel, in the latest fashion they called Art Nouveau. There were terrible stairs in that place; very steep, beautiful marble with sinuously curving iron railings, and treacherous. She broke her damned neck exactly as I intended she should. I was glad I did it and I would do it again.

Another long pause. “But . . . you lost the chance to have the transformation reversed—”

Which she swore that she would never do, Thomas said bitterly. In fact, her last words to me as she sealed the spell were “I hope you enjoy mice, for you will be living on them from now on.” At a stroke she doomed my poor Marie and Ninette to starvation or worse, and me to a miserable existence either running from her, or as her captive. My only regret is that she did not suffer as poor Marie and Ninette suffered. I did what I could for them, but I was limited by . . . well, real life. I stole purses and left them where Marie would find them, but I had to be careful, and I had to make sure it was nothing too generous nor too often. Marie herself would have started to question where they came from, and if she started looking too prosperous, the gendarmes would start to ask questions to which she would have no answers. How well he remembered his horror when Marie decided that Ninette would have to become a courtesan! And to see his lovely wife trading her favors among the artists for the sake of a few sausages . . .

It made him angry, ashamed, and vengeful, all at the same time. It still did.

“I—see,” Jonathon said, slowly. “I mean, I do see. I’d have felt the same in your place . . .”

I hated it. And Marie—trained Ninette to think that she must find a rich protector. I hate that even worse, if that were possible. Thomas paused to get a grip on himself. But Ninette is a good dancer, and I was sure she would be able to make her way without needing to find a—protector. In fact, I had planned to help her rise in the ranks as soon as there was an opportunity. Figaro praised her! That is no small matter in Paris! And when she found herself ejected from the Opera Ballet . . . I did not want her to find a rich protector elsewhere. I still do not. His mental voice turned fierce. I want her to never need any such thing. So I waited until she was desperate and dizzy enough with hunger that she would accept such a thing as a talking cat, and set my plan in motion. And you must never, ever tell her who and what I am.

“I gave you my word,” pledged Jonathon. “And I give it again.”

Good. Now, I think we must part. I am going to serve as nightwatch. And you must go and try to discover who it is that wants my child dead.

And with that, Thomas stood up, flicked his tail twice, and leapt off into the shadows.

Jonathon Hightower had had a fair number of unpleasant surprises in his life, but this evening certainly should be posted near the top of the list. First, there was the arrival of the cat and his frantic call for help. Then the discovery of just what the young ladies had caught. Then Ninette’s confession—

Ninette. He had to admit the name suited her much better than Nina . . .

And now this. It was as implausible a tale as anything in a shilling novel about rags-to-riches newsboys, or American cowboys and savage rustlers. Yesterday he would have called such a story sheer lunacy.

But that was before; now, well . . .

It was the spare, unembroidered way in which Thomas had told his tale that made it the more plausible. He had to admit that his blood had run a little cold when the cat had described so matter-of-factly how he had murdered his tormentor. But then again . . . she deserved it. He remembered stories his uncle and some of the other Elemental Masters in that circle shared over beer or brandies. Helen Waring was not remembered with anything other than distaste—and curses, and the general opinion that it was to be hoped that “she got what was coming to her.” Not that anyone suspected she had been murdered . . . she had just gone to the continent, and rumors had returned that she had died. But no one ever was quite sure about Helen Waring, and for all anyone knew, she could appear again without warning. It would be a profound relief to some people in magical circles to learn that she really had gone on to whatever “reward” she had earned.

And he certainly didn’t blame Thomas for doing his best to keep his child from prostituting herself. In Thomas’s shoes—or fur—he’d have done the same. From the tone of the cat’s mental voice, it had been agony to watch Marie training the girl for such a position, knowing he could do nothing about it.

But then, there was the deception. He hated being lied to above all things.

He walked back to the flat in a sort of smoldering temper, which was rather the worse for the fact that he could not really fault her very much for doing so. It was not as if she had somehow cheated them; she had worked damned hard for them all, in fact. It was not as if she didn’t have talent, for she certainly did. In fact, he had no real reason to be angry with her . . .

Are you angry with her because she lied about her identity, or because you just learned she has been raised to be a courtesan, and she is unlikely to give up that plan?

He gritted his teeth. Well, at least he had an ally in hating that idea. The cat Thomas was entirely of the same mind about that . . .

And neither of you will have anything left to fret about if you don’t put your mind to discovering who it is that wants to be rid of her and why! the logical part of his mind protested. Really, you had better set your priorities . . .

He stopped, then; looked up and blinked in shock. No wonder the pavement had felt somehow familiar—

He had gotten from where he left Thomas all the way to the building that contained Nigel’s flat without having any memory of the intervening space.

15

“WELL,” said Nigel, over breakfast. “What are we going to do about this situation?”

No one had to ask “What situation?” since none of them had slept particularly well last night. After many attempts to trace the homunculus back to its source, both Nigel and Arthur had to admit defeat. Jonathon had not even tried; “Fire,” he had said distinctly, “is not an element conducive to bloodhound work.” Nigel had hoped that the Air Elementals might have a memory of the creature’s passage, but evidently it had not come out into the open until it reached the building that housed Ninette’s flat.

“Guards, for one thing,” Jonathon said, slowly chewing a mouthful of toast. “Wards, for another, since I am not sure we can rely on Air Elementals to remember they are supposed to guard her.”

Nigel groaned. “Wards. Do you know how much that is going to attract attention to her? We might as well set a beacon on the top of her building! Better yet, why don’t we simply just send invitations to every dark mage we know of, and let them all appear at once?”

“Oh come now, Nigel, it isn’t that bad,” Wolf said, leaning down over Arthur’s shoulder and helping himself to a generous bite of Arthur’s scone. “After all, I wrote an entire opera that revealed I was an Elemental Master, and look how long it took the dark ones to puzzle it out!” He held the bite in one claw and ate neatly, as Arthur gazed ruefully at the place where all the jam had been until Wolf took it. “Poor Salieri. He went quite mad after that. Convinced himself that he was the one that killed me.”

“Wolf—it was a disease homunculus that did you in, wasn’t it?” Nigel cast the parrot a sharp glance. “I don’t suppose it would be the same mage—”

“After all this time?” Wolf made a sound like a snort. “I think not. Besides, the creature was clearly after our dancer, not me.”

Nigel sighed, and went back to contemplating his kipper. “Well, nothing is simple, is it?”

“We could set a trap . . .” Wolf continued, wiping his jam-sticky beak on Arthur’s dressing-gown, much to the latter’s exasperation. “Not anything that would actually catch the next creature that attacks her, but something that would allow us to trace it back?”

Jonathon shook his head. “If we were the same power, yes, but for an unlike and an antagonist power? It would take us years to work out how.”

“I would rather know why,” Nigel said thoughtfully. “The girl seems so inoffensive. It doesn’t make any sense.”

“Then it has to tie back to her father somehow.” Jonathon pursed his lips. “I believe I will send some