Of course, all of them were athletic, and as she was completely unhindered by skirts, Ninette scampered down the crude path as nimbly as a monkey.
The end of the beach, most often used for targets, was a stack of flat-topped boulders, thoroughly pock-marked and decorated with splashes of lead. Glass shards and pottery fragments showed what figured most often as the targets, although three or four bullet-ridden, rusted tin cans showed that there were others who preferred targets that did not break when your bullets struck them.
Jonathon had come prepared with a sort of easel and some sturdy pasteboards with the crude outline of a man on them. These he proceeded to set up without a word, then came to join the two women at the opposite end of the “shooting gallery.”
He carefully explained the peculiarities of this pistol, then left it up to Ailse to get down to the particulars. Since there was no further call on his services, he turned his attention and his mind back to the question of just who Ninette’s enemy might be.
Thus far, they’d had a singular lack of success in finding an Earth Master. The few that he or Nigel had found were all too old to come live in a theater in Blackpool, and even if they were so inclined, they couldn’t have borne the psychic stench of the city for very long.
He expected Ninette to be fearful, and she certainly screwed up her face and jumped the first few times that Ailse fired the gun. But then she stepped bravely up, took the pistol in steady hands, and patiently let Ailse position her and show her how to squeeze off shots.
They went wide of the mark, of course. That was what he had expected. But what he had not expected was how quickly she began to sight in on the target. By the time they were halfway through the box of cartridges, she was hitting the target more often than not. By the time the box was empty, she was confidently firing and hitting almost every time.
Jonathon was honestly astonished. “You’re certain you’ve never done anything like this before—” he ventured.
Ninette looked at him with a twist of her lips. “I think that if I had, I would surely remember,” she said wryly. “But recall what I am. Dancers must have very good control of their bodies. Well, stand up—”
He did so, wondering what on earth she could be thinking. She stood quite close to him for a moment, measuring him with her eyes. It was a very calculating look, and he couldn’t imagine what she was going to do. That she was about to do something, he had no doubt. He had seen that look in her eyes before.
She settled her feet in their stout little walking shoes a moment, and then, like lightning, she made a tremendous jump and high kick, higher than he had ever seen her make before. The sole of her foot flashed within a hair of his nose, and hit the brim of his hat, knocking it cleanly off his head.
He stared at her. She shrugged. “A cabaret trick,” she said calmly. “The can-can dancers and washerwomen at the Moulin Rouge do it all the time. Usually when the gentleman is drunk; the gentleman gets a look up her skirts and she keeps his hat until he ransoms it back. But be sure, if I had wanted to kick your nose and not the brim of your hat, I could have.”
He looked at her soberly, without anger. “Better still?” he suggested, “Aim for the chin. You could break a man’s neck that way. At the worst, you would knock him flat.”
She blinked. “Mais oui? That is something to remember, then.”
He licked his lips, considering. “Practice it,” he suggested. “It’s better than the pistol. We can’t explain away a bullet, we can explain away an unfortunate fall.”
She nodded, and for a moment, the sun seemed to fade. Then they all shook off the mood, and scrambled back up the rocks to the auto.
This time, Ninette sat up front with him as he drove back to the theater. “I am thinking you like me a little better now,” she said, over the noise of the motor.
“I was disposed to be very angry with you when you told us how you had lied to us,” Jonathon replied, after a long moment of thought.
“But?” she persisted.
He answered honestly, but reluctantly. “Well. You are a good dancer, a very good dancer. There is no doubt that you are very popular with the audiences. And there is also no doubt that you work as hard as any of us. I don’t think anyone gives a hang whether you’re Russian or Red Indian, the point is you give them good entertainment. But still, you lied to us . . . I don’t like being lied to.”
“Mais ouis. But . . .” She looked out the windscreen, her mouth in a small pout of melancholy. “Would any of you have listened to me, let me audition for you, if I had not come with this story, this lie?”
Jonathon grimaced. “To be honest, no.”
“Then I should have starved. Or jumped into the river. Or gone into many men’s beds.” The matter of fact way she said it made him flush uncomfortably. “I did not want to do any of these things. And actually, I think I really did not know I wanted so badly to dance, either, until the people began to pay attention to me.”
“It’s a drug,” he said quietly. “That admiration. It’s a drug like any other, as bad as absinthe. You want it. You can’t do without it. And once you’ve had it, you’d rather die than give it up. At least—” he added honestly “—it’s that way for some.”
“It could be for me, I think,” she admitted. “I am taking care, I hope. You understand me? I am trying not to believe that I am so wonderful. But I feel something, out there—”
He debated a moment. “It’s magic. You have a touch of it,” he told her, deciding to make a clean breast of it. “You’re not like me, or even Arthur—you’re more like Wolf. You’ll never have more than that touch of it, never work spells, but this much is yours. When you dance, when you give yourself to the audience, when you forget about everything and try to please them, you feed them. You make them happy. Your magic makes them forget that the tinsel isn’t gold, that the props and scenery are only painted canvas and wood. And when you feed them, they feed you. Don’t you always feel stronger and better when you come off stage?”
“Oui!” she exclaimed. “And I could not understand it! I never used to feel this way when I danced! I was exhausted! And then, after a while, here, I began to feel so full of energy when I came off the stage! Sometimes I need to settle and quiet myself, for otherwise I could not sleep! And you say this is my magic?”
He nodded. “It’s you feeding them, feeding them something to take their minds out of themselves for a little while, and then they feed you. It wouldn’t be enough to keep you going for hours and hours,” he warned. “But I think that all the dancing that Nigel has planned for you in his big production will ultimately be no problem for you.”
But with that, she laughed. “Poo! You have not seen a great ballet, then! The prima is onstage for almost all of it! Swan Lake, sacre bleu, nearly every scene! It would have been no problem without this magic . . .”
But then she smiled. “Still!” she added cheerfully, “With it, things will be very good indeed.”
But as he wound his way through the streets to the theater, something occurred to him. What if this was what her unknown enemy wanted, this rare “performance” magic?