Page 1 of Of Socialites and Prizefights

CHAPTER ONE

IN WHICH DEEPA PATEL IS THE UNWILLING RECIPIENT OF A CURSE AND A NEW BODY

Deepa Patel was not the daughter of a great maharaja, no matter what she told people. She had never seen the Taj Mahal, never mind set foot inside it, and she did not have a stable of elephants or curly-eared horses to ride, nor a menagerie of tigers and leopards in jewelled collars. Her bed did not have silk sheets, and she didn’t keep peacocks in her courtyard. She didn’t even have a courtyard.

What Deepa Patel had in that precise moment was a curse.

It hit her like a slap to the face and she reared back, affronted, to glare at the man who had cast it. Phillip Etonborough was a smarmy-faced toad of a specimen, with apologies to the toads of the world, and, apparently, worse at taking rejection than she had anticipated.

The night was mild and breezy in early June, and they were sharing a back corner of The Songbird, a jazzy nightclub known for its girls as much as for its drinks. Deepa had tucked them away where there was as much privacy as was possible to findwithout going to the toilets or the girls’ dressing room, in order to let him down gently. But apparently, Phillip was keen to take advantage of the dark mood-lighting and the way everyone else was fixated on the dancing girls with their short skirts and big feathered fans in order to do something more nefarious than simply express outrage at his dismissal.

“What did you do?” she demanded.

She could feel the curse sinking into her, getting under her skin to settle in her bones, but she had no idea what it was meant to achieve. Her dress was enchanted with a multitude of charms and glamours, but it offered no protection against such things. Curses were very much illegal, which of course didn't mean no one ever dealt in them, but she’d never had one directed her way.

“You think you’re better than everyone else,” said Phillip, “playing the field and flirting with every man you see. You can't recognise a good thing when it's right in front of you. You think you can do better than me? Go ahead and try. No one is going to touch you now that they can see you for what you really are. A wild thing that came loping in from the jungle, unfit for polite company.”

The insults were nothing she hadn’t heard before, though she never gave anyone the chance to utter them twice. But Phillip’s insults were attached unmistakably to the wrigglingly-unpleasant sensation of curse-magic, which was most worrying. Without waiting to hear whether Phillip had any more monologue to deliver, Deepa whirled away to find the club’s toilets, where she pressed both hands against the porcelain edge of the sink and leaned in close to look at herself in the mirror.

She seemed unchanged. The relief was instant and overwhelming. Her livelihood depended on her good looks, in which she took no small amount of pride. The threat in Phillip’s tone, the insinuation that he had somehow altered her appearance — she didn’t know what she would have done if thatwere true. But she looked as she always did: her dusky skin unblemished, her plaited hair and doe eyes as dark and shining as ever; even her dress and jewellery were as she’d left them.

Phillip was waiting for her when she emerged. Being reassured of her continued beauty, Deepa was now in a better position to deal with him.

“I doubt I was the first woman to ever say no to you, and with your attitude, I'm certainly not going to be the last,” she informed him. “You act like an entitled child. It’s unappealing. And I don't know what you were trying to do back there, but whatever it was, it didn’t take.”

Though he was flushed red, going on purple with anger, Phillip barked out an ugly laugh. “Oh, it took, all right. And I know women like you don’t believe in love, so good luck getting rid of it.”

“What’s love got to do with anything?” Deepa asked, annoyed.

“I thought it was fitting. The old classic: to break your curse, you need true love’s kiss. And I don't believe you’re ever going to get it, shallow-hearted bint that you are.”

Before she could snap back at him, he turned and flounced off to his regular table by the stage, his nose in the air. Deepa stared after him, incredulous and seething at his audacity. He wasn’t even leaving the club!

More unsettled than she would care to admit, Deepa reluctantly gave up the rest of her plans for the night. Normally, she kept nocturnal hours, rarely seeing her bed before three in the morning. The Songbird kept her occupied most nights, luring men close to the stage like a siren and baiting them into spending money on her. They swam in her wake like schools of fish, falling over themselves for a smile or a kiss.

She had no intention of marrying any of them, or at least, not anytime soon. Husbands rarely showered their wives in gifts the way they showered less-available women.

It was an early eleven-thirty when Deepa retired; by any standard the night was young and fruitful; but Phillip’s threats still rattled in her head, and something sat uneasily in her chest, a lurking sense of something bad awaiting her.

Shaking it off, she took herself through the back of the club and up the stairs at a brisk pace, her little strap heels clicking boldly with each step. The Songbird was a sweet club, older than it looked, trying its hardest to be stylish. It was a little shabby around the edges, a little varnished in places if one examined them too closely, but it was reliable, and it was home. Deepa shared the tiny flat above it with a dancer named Cherie, the two of them living out of each other's pockets as they both dreamed of something bigger and richer for themselves.

It was far too early for bed, but that sense of wrongness was growing stronger by the minute. The thought of going back downstairs to socialise for another few hours made her stomach turn. Better to have an early night, go to bed with a book or some such, and start fresh the next day, she decided.

In the loo, she undid her long plait, brushing it out until her hair fell in thick, glossy waves down her back. Piece by piece, she removed her jewellery, all of it gifted from various suitors, gold and diamonds and rubies glittering softly in the dim lamplight. Her piercings went first, earrings and septum ring carefully taken out and cleaned. Next were her necklaces, bracelets, and rings, set in a dish on the countertop like a treasure trove, each piece bringing her one step closer to the life of comfort and luxury of which she dreamed.

At one minute to midnight, she removed her gold sequined dress, shimmering with dozens of enchantments and good-luck charms designed to attract attention and make her the star of every event. She had all her dresses specially tailored by a friend who was as skilled with that sort of magic as she was with needleand thread. Deepa considered her dresses a solid investment towards her future, and worth every penny.

She had just folded the dress neatly over the towel rack and was about to roll down her stockings when Friday night ticked over to Saturday morning, and she turned into a great cat.

The transformation took her by surprise, but it wasn’t immediate. A wave of vertigo crashed over her, buckling her knees. As her vision blotched out around the edges, Deepa caught herself against the sink before crumpling to the floor with a startled gasp. The room swam around her and it was all she could do to sit there, clinging to the under-sink cabinets, trying to keep from being sick from her stomach’s sudden swooping.

Just as abruptly, the nausea disappeared, though the dizziness remained, and the strangest sensation rolled over her. She felt like a child being tucked into bed under an impossibly heavy blanket, or possibly like a parakeet in a cage with a sheet being drawn over the bars, or maybe even like herself, slipping into a fur coat, with the silk lining whispering against her skin. It wasn’t an unpleasant sensation so much as it was disorienting, made more so by the fact that her vision had blacked out entirely, and she was dizzy enough that standing was impossible.

A distant part of her brain that wasn’t entirely preoccupied with her physical goings-on suggested that she should try pounding on the floor to attract the attention of someone downstairs, because she was clearly having some kind of unprecedented medical episode.

And then, exactly one minute into the smallest hours of Saturday morning, it was all over.

The vertigo receded, her mind cleared, and she opened her eyes to find herself on all fours on the bathroom tiles, exactly where she’d left herself, with one noticeable difference.

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