With a smile he put down the flute, and the elemental spun into shape, a fluttering, translucent bird-child with big eyes and a knowing smile. It waited for his request.
“Please go to Jonathon Hightower,” Nigel told it, giving it, as he spoke, the kind of mental “signature” of the Fire Master. “Tell him that I want to speak with him immediately.”
And to reward it, he reached for the energies of the air and conjured up a sparkling, dancing, animated spark, a kind of elemental toy that would last as long as the Elemental he gave it to had interest in it. With a crow of delight, the creature seized the offering, and with a shake of wings, sped off through the window, and out into the sun.
Nigel closed the window, rolled his rug back and went back to his desk. Nothing now but to wait, so he might as well get some work done while he did.
7
NIGEL had not gotten a reply by the time the curtain rose on the first performance, and by the time the curtain fell on the last act, he was alternating between concern and irritation. After all, Masters never used Elementals as messengers frivolously, and Hightower of all people ought to know that if Nigel had done so it meant there was some urgency to the request.
Wolf, who was always backstage during performances, flew down from his perch in the flies and landed on Nigel’s shoulder as the latter cursed the Fire Master mentally.
“There could be a dozen reasons why Hightower hasn’t contacted you, Nigel,” the bird said quietly into his ear. “Chief of which is that he is a performer, with his own act to rehearse and perform. Unlike you, he does not have the luxury of a private office in which to conduct rites.”
“There’s nothing out of the ordinary about sending a telegram,” Nigel replied, with irritation. “Nothing that difficult. Step around the corner to the post office and—”
“But why should I do that, when I can come here in person?” said Jonathon Hightower, stepping around a gaggle of little chorus dancers. He grinned, and they tittered nervously; Jonathon looked very much like a caricature of Satan, minus the horns, and he played on the resemblance by cultivating a slim moustache and goatee, and wearing a scarlet-lined black evening cape and top hat whenever possible.
Amazingly this seemingly Satanic appearance translated seamlessly into his stage persona of the mysterious Chinese magician, Kung Chow. Very few people outside the theatrical world connected the flamboyant Hightower with the secretive Kung Chow, and that was the way Hightower liked it.
“Jonathon, you wretch—” Nigel exclaimed.
Hightower laughed. “Now how could I resist coming here myself, after all the newspaper stories about the beautiful Russian dancer you rescued from the briny deep?” He lifted an eyebrow significantly. “Had to come see her for myself, don’t you know.”
Nigel looked at him with exasperation. “Come back to the flat with me, and you can meet her yourself.”
“Oh, really?” Jonathon grinned. Nigel gritted his teeth.
“Obviously she had nowhere else to go, Jonathon,” he said. “She’ll be moving into her own establishment shortly.”
Jonathon kept grinning as Nigel passed Wolf over to Arthur and made his round of the backstage before leading him out the stage door. But once outside and away from anyone likely to overhear them, he rounded on his friend.
“First of all, there is nothing going on with that young woman,” he said fiercely, as they walked to where he had left his auto parked, moving from patch of gaslight to patch of gaslight. “I have a new sort of musical theater I am planning, I intend to make her the central figure in it, and the last thing in the world I am ever going to do is mix my personal pleasures with the business of my theater!”
Jonathon sobered immediately. “Look, old man, I—”
“And secondly,” Nigel went on, without losing a bit of his heat, “The girl is one of us, or at least her father was. Enough of a mage that he was able to create a protector for her. What else was I to do but take her in? For heaven’s sake, it was her cat that summoned us to aid her!”
By that point, they had reached the auto; Jonathon got in, silently, and remained quiet while Nigel went through the complicated little ritual that the auto demanded to get it started. Only when they were well down the street did he speak again.
“Well, I feel a right fool.”
“You should,” Nigel snapped. “Now the reasons I asked you to contact me in the first place are part of all that. I want to engage you for a full year at the least, and I want to make you the other star attraction of this production. Now here is what I have in mind—”
He explained his plans for the new sort of musical theater as the auto chugged down the street. Jonathon said nothing, only nodded from time to time, but Nigel could tell that he was interested.
“Well,” Jonathon said, as Nigel pulled his auto into the carriage house that now served it as its garage, “I’m equally torn by two questions, one mundane, the other arcane. The mundane one is rather simple; would you rather cast me as the villain of the piece, or sympathetic?”
“Well, I suppose that would depend on how sophisticated we think the audience will be, wouldn’t it?” Nigel closed up and prudently locked the carriage house doors. That was the grand thing about having an auto; no horse to feed or stalls to clean out. One could talk all one wanted about the romance of horseflesh, but the amount of cleaning up and caring for—he had far rather pay the mechanic once in a while to fix the motorcar than keep a stableman day in, day out.
“If we thought they would be capable of it, we could write something that casts you as the villain but redeems you in the end,” Nigel suggested, as they made their way into the foyer of the building, brightly lit in the newest fashion with fine electric fixtures. “Say . . . your character has a change of heart and helps the girl escape, staying to face the wrath of the sultan?” Nigel’s flat was on the third floor of this rather posh establishment, reached by a modern, brass-caged elevator, although stairs were available. It was self-operated, although the owners of the other two flats in the building generally had their servants do the operating.
“I must say, I like that idea,” Jonathon mused, as they both strolled into the anteroom of Nigel’s flat, to be met by a servant who took their coats. “By the way, I took the liberty of sending my things here . . .”
“I do have more than one guest room, you know,” Nigel pointed out. He turned to his manservant, who was bringing drinks for both of them, knowing, as he did, what Jonathon’s preference was. “Asher, I am perishing. Could something be arranged?”
“I anticipated your requirement, sir, and took the liberty of having a late supper prepared for you and Mr. Hightower.” The manservant nodded in the direction of the dining room, and Nigel and his guest lost no time in settling themselves in there.
Discussion of plots continued over the Welsh rarebit, eggs, bacon, crumpets and broiled tomatoes, Nigel secretly gloating the entire time. For all that Jonathon could be an irritating fellow, he was also entertaining and the best illusionist that Nigel had ever seen. And he had a good sense of storytelling. All his suggestions were sound ones.
“Am I missing something, or have you neglected to cast a romantic male lead in this venture?” Jonathon asked, as they moved their discussion and their whiskeys back into the library, where they each took one of the comfortable Windsor chairs.