Reserved for the Cat

was no dog. It said it was changing form—into what?

She lost the next bit of exchange as she fought the urge to turn and run. Thomas was still in there, still frightened, and she could not leave him. She would not leave him. Help would be coming soon, she still had her revolver. Jonathon and Nigel could find her by that, for they had handled it, and could track her by it. “Then you have never fallen off a ship in winter,” the woman said, when the growls faded and the air quaked a few more times. Ninette blinked. What form had she taken?

The whole conversation had an unreal air to it, the same chaotic, disjointed air of a nightmare.

I will take your word for it. Can you become a bird?

“Of course. But—I do not care to do so for long. There is only so much thinking so little a head can do. So, why is it you have come to me, cat? Have you no loyalty to your mistress?”

Why was he talking to her?

For a moment, there was doubt. Then her own good sense told her why. Thomas had thought to spy on this . . . creature. Whatever she was. And she had caught him. He was buying time, trying to find a way out of his predicament by getting her to talk.

I am a cat. When is a cat loyal to anything but his own best interest?

“Ha! Well said. And you wish to be on the winning side in this?”

She felt his revulsion. That alone told her that he was trying to bluff his way out.

Let us say that I know where my own best interest lies.

“And what is it that you can do for me, cat? I have servants. In fact, I have more than I need. You do not have hands, you cannot even do what they do.”

Ninette frowned. An Earth Elemental? Had servants? That made no sense—Elementals did not have servants. Did they?

But I can go where they cannot.

At that moment she felt a surge of excitement from him, excitement and recognition. He knew she was here!

Say you want to know what your lover is saying about you when you are on stage. I can creep under the seats, or into the private boxes and listen. I can spy on him, or anyone else, as they sleep. I can find out the secrets of your rivals, I can learn anything you wish to have found out. A cat can go almost anywhere.

She laughed. “So you say. But I can become a cat too, or better still, a rat or a mouse. You say that a cat can go anywhere, but if I need to learn something all that badly, I can go where even a cat cannot, between the walls where no one would even suspect my existence.”

Oh, come now! Thomas reproved. All these other things you have turned yourself into were quite large. It is one thing to make yourself into something human-sized or larger. But to make yourself into a mouse? I believe you are telling me a tale.

She sensed something from him that she could not read. She concentrated. What was he getting at? And— how could anyone turn into a mouse?

Don’t question it, she scolded herself, feeling the air of danger behind the words. Just listen, and be prepared to act!

“You doubt my abilities?”

Oh, I am sure you can make yourself into the form of a mouse, but it would have to be a mouse the size of a tiger. It takes real skill in magic to be able to shrink yourself that way, and I have never actually seen anyone that could do that—outside of a spirit, since they don’t have any material body to begin with and can look like whatever they like.

“You think I don’t have the skill?” The words were shouted, and angry. Thomas was getting her angry, maybe to keep her from thinking. A mouse, a mouse—had she somehow forgotten that he was a cat? “I will show you, skill, cat! I will show you skill such as you have never seen!”

If the magic before had made an air-quake, this made a kind of reality-quake. Ninette closed her eyes, tried to make herself one with the wall behind her, as the world took itself apart and put itself back together again, all in a moment. And then did it all over again. And again.

She was finding it hard to breathe, Whatever was going on in there, it was like nothing she had ever experienced before.

Terror closed in all around her. She went, hot, then cold, and she wanted nothing more to do than to flee in a panic. Death was all around her, and she could feel it breathing down her neck. She had never, in all her life, been so certain that in the next moment, she might very well die.

She fought the terror, and slowly, with infinite care, pulled the gun from her pocket and cocked the trigger. Thomas was counting on her. She could not let him down.

Finally, with a whuff of displaced air, it stopped. The air cleared a trifle. Ninette sucked in the first full breath in several minutes.

I told you, a new mental voice said, smugly.

And at that moment, Ninette knew what Thomas had been trying for. Yes, he had wanted the woman to become a mouse, if she could. He had thought he could trick her, then kill her.

But she, even in her anger, had called him “cat.”

She had not forgotten what he was!

Ninette stifled the warning shriek in her throat and whipped around the corner of the door, shoving it open with her shoulder, revolver at the ready as she had been taught.

She saw Thomas in mid-leap on what seemed to be a helpless mouse.

Except the mouse wasn’t so helpless. And whatever it really was had been expecting him to do just that.

There was another silent explosion of energies, and Thomas was caught by the neck by something strange, dough-like, smelling of rotting loam.

And Ninette did not even think. As she had been taught, she squeezed off the trigger in quick succession, aiming for the center of—whatever it was.

Six explosions shattered the air in the room. Six bullets, just as she and Ailse had loaded them. Blessed Lead. Cold Iron. Silver.

The gun bucked in her hand, but she brought it back to the target each time, each bullet impacting the thing in front of her, a mere eight feet from her, with a force that drove it back a little. Six bullets. Blessed Lead. Cold Iron. Silver.

It dropped Thomas, who wheezed as he scrambled out of the way, and then scuttled behind her. And— whatever it was—began to scream and dissolve. She couldn’t tell which of her bullets had that effect, but when the gun was empty, she backed up as far as she could, and fumbled more bullets out of her pocket, inserting them into the mechanism without taking her eyes off the thing. The reek of gunpowder filled the room, and a waft of smoke made her eyes water.

It was trying to change shape, only it couldn’t settle on one—horribly, the mass was producing an arm, three legs, half a woman’s face in one spot, a man’s eyes in another. And several mouths, all of them open, all of them screaming—

Keep shooting! Thomas shrieked, terror filling him, filling her—as if she wasn’t panicked enough on her own! But her hands knew what to do, even if her mind was gibbering in inchoate fear. She got the bullets into the chamber, dropping two. She raised the gun. She took aim and squeezed the trigger, and six more explosions shattered the gurgling screams. Blessed Lead. Cold Iron. Silver.

“Where’s the head?” she screamed herself, as her hands fumbled more bullets into the hot chambers. “Where’s the heart?”

There—there! Thomas exclaimed, somehow forcing her to see where he was looking. The spot was between two of the mouths, where the dirt-colored skin seemed thicker and smoother. She took aim. Fired.

Five of the six hit; the sixth went wild as the thing convulsed, and the room somehow rocked without moving at all. A thick wave of fetid air hit her in the chest, and knocked her backwards through the door and into the wall of the hallway, Thomas with her. The thing somehow—