Reserved for the Cat

knuckles of his right hand were scraped and a little bloody. “Damn genius mechanics to perdition!” he swore bitterly. “Give me an honest craftsman who isn’t too concerned with being clever!” He offered his right hand to Alan. “Forgive my shabby appearance, but I have been wrestling with someone else’s Muse.”

The Muse almost won, the cat remarked. I was beginning to think Bob was going to have to use that fire-ax after all.

“If I hadn’t got the catch to turn, I would have been the one using the ax,” Jonathon replied.

“All is well as ends well, n’est ce pas?” Ninette said calmly. “You have discovered the trick of it, and I was able to abuse you most amusingly and you could not touch me!”

Jonathon shook his fist at her and scowled fiercely and she laughed. “You frighten me not at all, magician! Where else would you find an assistant of my sort? But we should not waste this good young man’s time with our silliness,” she added. “Pardon. Now, you are the Water Master, yes? And good Nigel has told you of the plague I have brought upon his house?”

“I am and he has,” Alan nodded, and Ninette smiled warmly on him. “And I have some ideas I would like to share with you all—because this will need you all before we are through.”

“Then say on,” said Wolf, bobbing his head rapidly. “You will never have a more attentive audience.”

19

NINA reflected slyly that one of the many, many advantages of being what she was, and not a human dancer, was that she never had to trouble herself with the tedious work of classes and rehearsal if she didn’t care to. Of course, when she was dancing with a ballet company, she had to attend the company rehearsals. It would have looked odd had she not. She had not gotten as far as she had by slipping up in so careless a manner. She faithfully attended all company rehearsals and all rehearsals with her partners, but her mornings, given by mortal girls to round after round of endless classes and exercises and the solitary practice of tricky parts in the ballets then being performed, were entirely free. Ostensibly, as the great prima, she was taking very private lessons and doing her exercises in her own comfortable studio, well lit, well ventilated, warmed by good stoves in the winter and catching cooling breezes through opened windows in the summer. And of course, she always took care to have such a studio, with a gramophone in place of a pianist. All very grand. But of course, she never used it.

And now, thanks to the fact that she was not a frail little mortal, she was able to devote all of her time to the battle with the imposter, when a human would have been forced to continue those classes and lessons in order to stay at the top of her form.

But all Nina had to do in order to restore muscle strength, tone, and flexibility was to assume the form she had stored in her memory, of the ballet dancer she had taken when the girl was at the peak of her abilities and in the best of health. In fact, once, on a lark, when the season had concluded and other dancers were taking concert venues and tours, she had decided to truly indulge herself. After all, she had been between benefactors, and she had never yet tried the so-called “sin” of gluttony. So during the glorious month of June, she had spent the time getting enormously fat, eating every good thing she ever cared to try. And of course, when the company gathered together again, she was back instantly to her slim, trim self, with never a hint that she had ever so indulged. Gluttony, she thought, was overrated. These things were pleasant to eat, but they gave nothing like the rush of feeling and power when she absorbed a victim.

So it was without the need to dance or to attend rehearsals that Nina assumed the schedule she preferred; sleeping until noon, rising late, and going out to pursue her various tasks and needs by night.

She had chosen her dwelling with an eye to being able to get in and out without any of the neighbors noticing, especially at night. In a way, this was turning out to be one of the most comfortable times of her life, in all truth. She was able to hunt and consume whenever she wanted—which was nightly—without worrying about a protector catching her away from the luxurious flat he was keeping her in. Or worse, catching her at her feast. She had no performances to concern herself with, so she could hunt from sundown to sunup if she chose. She had the wherewithal for the luxuries she had grown fond of, and the leisure to enjoy them without rehearsals taking up her time, or protectors hovering over her. This was, in many ways, a glorious life of freedom that she was actually enjoying. It occurred to her more than once that the girl had actually done her a favor, waking her up, shaking her out of herself, reminding her of what she truly was. It was so easy to get immersed in a human life, to think of it as the be-all and end-all, rather than the means to an end. Sometimes she too was very foolish.

And the truth was, if the imposter had not stolen her identity, she might well have had done with “Nina Tchereslavsky” in the not too distant future. Human life-spans were very short, and the practical life of a dancer shorter still. What injuries or illness did not cut short, simple old age generally did. She had already begun attracting a few comments, mostly spiteful and from those who wished to take her place in the limelight, about how well preserved she was. It was very likely that within the next two or three years, she would have been forced into counterfeiting her own death as she had so many times in the past, and assuming a new persona.

That was the awkward part of this; curse it. She did not age, naturally, but mortals did. The first and best way to be noticed in an unpleasant fashion was to seem not to age. She had always been able to find a way to transfer her accumulated wealth and goods to the new persona before but—

Well, this time it was going to be awkward. She was well known; if she died and left her possessions to someone no one had ever heard of, there would be questions. Worse, if she died and the bulk of what she had owned turned up missing, there would be even more questions. She had been looking into the fabrication of a distant relative—

But now she would not have to. No one knew her here in this country. For all they knew, she was no older than the twenty years she appeared to be, rather than the forty that Nina would have been if she were actually alive.

Furthermore, she had two strings to this bow. If she could manage to get the girl alone, for just long enough, she could simply assume her appearance and identity. That was the riskier of the two, because the Masters protecting her might be able to tell the difference before she killed them. Or, she could do what she had come here to do in the first place: expose the imposter for what she was, and use the notoriety to engineer herself a brand new career in England, where no one knew her history, and where she could go on dancing and attracting wealthy old men for at least twenty or thirty more years. By then, she could establish a “daughter,” and in due course the “daughter” would inherit her famous “mother’s” estate.

A shy, retiring daughter . . . plain, studious, the sort that attracted no male attention of her own. The sort that preferred to remain closeted up with her books and not be seen too often. Short-sighted, with enormous glasses. Calf-clumsy, and ill at ease in company. No one would wonder why she was so seldom seen.

There would have to be a husband, of course; that was easily arranged. And the husband’s tragic death soon after the “birth.”

How to arrange a baby . . . buy one, of course. A fat bribe to an orphanage, a false name, and it would be done. No need for messy things like a human birth. Then absorb it once the fiction had been established; no one of any consequence wanted to see babies or infants. They were messy, noisy, unregulated creatures best left to the attentions of wetnurses and nannies. That would hold things for at least three or four years, until the child would be presumed presentable for brief moments of time to adults. At intervals, then, she would get one of those workhouse children, trot it out for inspection, and absorb it when she no longer needed it. A teenager she could counterfeit herself—and easy enough to arrange rare appearances when her mother was supposed to be sleeping, or dressing, or otherwise not immediately available for company . . . in fact, the whole art would be to find a way to present herself that would not arouse sympathy, but would, at the same time, make it clear just why her putative child was never seen in polite society. Rabbity little red eyes, she decided. Big, thick glasses, and rabbity little red- rimmed eyes. She would say that the light bothered her always and gave her headaches. No, not say it. She would whine it.

For a few moments more, she found herself so immersed in the details of her next life that she forgot there were the details of this one to sort out before she could move onwards. It was only when the maid-creature brought in the morning mail, which included a large, flattish box postmarked from her flat that she gave herself a mental shake and attended to the present.

The contents of this package were going to provide her with the makings of the last distraction. And it would