Reserved for the Cat

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—”

She could have the world at her feet. Or at least, London. She could fill a lecture hall on whatever subject she wanted, and get people to rush out and support it. She could probably even get elected to Parliament. It’s a dangerous power.

“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—”

She’s giving the presents back.

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

I’m telling you. Just you drop by and watch. She’s been giving the presents back, keeping only the flowers. See for yourself.

“But—why?” Jonathon managed.

’S’truth. I don’t care about her keeping the presents so long as she doesn’t end up in the bed of some blackguard—but she started handing ’em back about the same time as she discovered this magic of hers.

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.

Jonathon slipped away before she could notice him.

16

NINA had her fool, and an excellent choice he was, too.

Terrance Kendal had the acute misfortune of having ambitions that far, far outstripped his abilities, and an ego to match. He had been the only child of a deliberately “invalid” mother who doted on him, and a distant father who worked himself to death, leaving Terrance and said mother just enough money for pretensions of gentility, but none of the substance, like the protagonists in a satirical story by Saki. He had been given airs, but no graces. If he’d had wit, he might have found a place as a hanger-on in the circles to which he aspired, but sadly for him he had none.

Terrance was sent away to school, but alas, it was not Eton or Harrow, or even a second-tier school, a fact which was to cause him embarrassment for the rest of his life. He was encouraged by his mother to believe he was a budding genius, and it came as an embittering experience for him to discover that no one else had this impression. He was large enough and coordinated enough that he was not bullied, but he was no one’s friend, either. He was good enough at sports to survive, but not good enough to prosper. He thought too highly of himself, and made no effort to hide the fact that he felt himself to be the social superior of the entire school. To his face, he was mockingly called “Your Lordship” and behind his back rather less flattering names. He left school as alone as he had arrived.

University proved as great a disappointment. His credentials were lackluster, his antecedents plebian, his wealth nonexistent, his personality composed of nothing but affectation. He managed to get into a college that housed members of the classes he thought he belonged in, and he immediately set to work proving himself a nuisance. He hung about trying to get himself invited to parties, and when he could not, whenever the chance arose, he invited himself. He tried to drink, and he hadn’t the head for it; tried to gamble and hadn’t the wealth. He couldn’t afford a horse or a motorcar, and the only possibly route to the affections of those to whose ranks he longed to aspire, that is, the road of sport, was a closed book to him. He played neither cricket nor football well enough to make the teams, and he could not even pull a decent oar. The true wealthy and titled students were unimpressed with his scribblings and poetry; those who had the wit and learning recognized it for the pathetic dross it was, and the rest laughed to scorn the notion that a “real man” could find any interest in such nonsense when there were things to shoot and things to ride, things to play and things to cheer on, things to acquire and things to display.

Thus disappointed, Terrance returned to the maternal bosom in Blackpool to sulk on what he increasingly viewed as a “pittance.”

He had never felt affection for anyone, not even his adoring mother. His love-sonnets were as flat as uncorked champagne. So when Nina began her work on him, it was to persuade him not that he was violently in love with the dancer, but that she was violently in love with him.

Nina began her campaign with excellent box-seat tickets to the performance, and although under any other circumstance he would have scorned such entertainment as “too common,” this time he was persuaded. Partly because the tickets were sent, ostensibly, as a belated birthday gift from one of the few Cambridge men who had not utterly scorned him, and partly because of a rumor—entirely untrue—that the hall was going to be graced that night with the presence of the Crown Prince.

So he went, and seated in the next box, Nina went to work. She took care to work her magic in a very subtle manner. He was one of those sorts that could not go to a performance of any kind without nibbling and drinking throughout it, and before his (fashionably late) arrival, she had gotten into his private box and carefully laid out a little buffet in miniature for his pleasure, all of it bearing the magic she intended to become a part of him.

The magic she wove was compounded of half lust and half hallucination. It was easy enough to incite the lust; the hallucination was subtle. Terrance was made to believe that the dancer spent the greater part of her performances looking at him, winking at him, smiling at him, gazing coyly at him. By the