Page 57 of Of Socialites and Prizefights

Deepa returned to The Songbird. There, she donned her shortest dress with the heaviest enchantments and took to the stage, transforming herself into a siren luring men to dash against her rocks. As she warmed up in front of the microphone, humming lonely tune fragments and song verses, her thoughts continually took her back to Roz.

Roz had spoken of pride; Deepa was proud, too. Grasping for money and material goods with both hands was one thing, but to chase after someone who had walked out on her smacked of something pathetic.

At The Songbird, surrounded by her adoring, hapless suitors, Deepa was a study in contradictions. She had to be aloof, yet warm enough to keep them close. Charming and interesting, but never smarter than the men trying to impress her. She reliedon every gift they gave her and every meal they bought, yet she could never appear too grateful, or let on that she depended on their charity. She hadn’t been scraping by in years, having saved up a modest nest egg of cash, to say nothing of her jewellery’s worth, but it wasn’t yet the sort of money that would let her rest easy.

Above all else, she had to be beautiful: the kind of intoxicating, exotic beauty they could never see in their English wives, even if those wives were Indian themselves. She had to be otherworldly, but only untouchable up to a certain point, lest they grow bored with her temptations. Being tempted was only fun if they thought they were getting something out of it in the end.

Roz made things simpler. There was less artifice involved with her. Going out for supper together, for drinks, for a walk, Deepa hadn’t felt entirely like a construct. Roz didn't look at her like a doll to be dressed up, nor an automaton into which gifts could be inserted in exchange for certain favours. She didn’t look at her like something wild to be tamed and put in a jewelled collar. With Roz, Deepa felt like an entire human being with a depth of desire and opinion. She had felt, for a short while, almost capable of love.

There was no love like that in The Songbird. Even if Roz wasn’t the true love needed to break Deepa’s curse, that love had been truer than anything Deepa offered her men. She thought that meant something, but apparently, it didn’t amount to anything at all.

She sang, she danced, she flirted and charmed, but her heart wasn't in any of it that night. The men couldn't tell. They flocked to her like vapid butterflies clamouring for a Venus flytrap, begging her to devour them whole. Normally, she would be sizing them up, licking her chops in anticipation of a good meal. In Roz’s wake, she was disinterested, barely able to pretendotherwise. The men's bright butterfly colours bored her; all she can think about was the silver and grey of Roz's hair and eyes.

She stayed late at the club, weaving through the sparse crowds until it was near midnight, tempting fate, as if to show Phillip — who wasn't even present — that she wasn't afraid of her curse, and she was through with letting it dictate the patterns of her life.

At five minutes to the hour, she whisked herself upstairs, shutting herself in the privacy of her bedroom to transform without a sound.

For the first time, she faced her night alone. Cherie was out, untethered by anything so tedious as a curse, making the most of her time in good company, or at least, profitable company. Deepa hadn't said anything to her other friends about her argument with Roz, because she didn’t want their advice. And she still hadn't found the courage to explain the situation to her mother. No one else in the world knew of her predicament. There was no other soul in whom she could confide, and certainly no one with whom she could share her secret now that it was past midnight.

She paced her too-small room, imagining different ways their argument could have gone. Half the time, she imagined what she could have said to make Roz stay, defusing the situation as easily as she defused the jealous spats that arose so often in the club. The other half, she lived out the fantasy of convincing Roz to set aside her pride and accept the necessity of sometimes doing distasteful things in order to get by.

There was no escaping that, in London. Wealthy men might be able to do whatever they liked with their pride intact, but people like them — women, immigrants, the working class, and the queers, if Deepa had the right to claim the latter — inevitably had to sacrifice some ethics to survive.

To believe otherwise was unforgivably naïve, and Roz was too old and sensible to be accused of such ignorance. Whether it was throwing a fight or marrying a rich man, none of it had to mean anything. It needn’t define a woman, and it certainly wasn’t a betrayal of anyone. When next they met, Deepa would make her see that. Even if Roz had already spoken to her manager, refused his deal, even fired him outright — even if she really believed Deepa would rather marry some man than be with her, and didn’t want to see her again — she had to concede that her sense of morals was unrealistic compared to Deepa's ruthless pragmatism.

But it would have to wait until dawn. Frustrated, Deepa beat her tail against the walls, flexing her claws in and out to scour the floorboards. Dawn was hours away, and there was no one to help her pass the time. She was wound too tense to sleep, imaginary arguments filling her head and keeping her from rest.

With snarl, she leapt from the bed and threw her full weight against the closed door, which shuddered on its hinges and swung open under her force. She was wholly sick of her confinement, sick of her tiny flat with its thin walls closing her in, and above all, sick of allowing Phillip’s curse to control what she could or couldn't do with her own nights. The man had forced her into the guise of a wild animal, and it was past time he dealt with the consequences.

Rippling with fury, Deepa stuck to the shadows as she crept downstairs and out the back of the club into the little alley below her bedroom window. For the first time, she focused on Phillip’s magic, clinging to her and altering her form. It was everywhere, from her skin to the marrow of her bones, cloying like an overpowering perfume. She’d been doing her best to ignore it, but now, she used it to track Phillip's path through the city like a huntress following the scent of her prey.

No matter the hour, London bustled with activity, and that night was no different. Despite the risk of witnesses, she did not for an instant entertain the thought of turning back. She'd had enough; it was time to confront that pig and make him put things right. As long as she was careful, anyone who caught a glimpse of her in the shadows would assume their eyes were playing tricks on them, and she must simply be a stray dog rather than an oversized jungle cat.

But her frustration made her careless, and she was scarcely out of her own neighbourhood before she turned a corner too quickly and ran smack into a young couple of drunken revellers.

She pulled up short with a startled hiss, but the damage was already done. Their tipsy apologies at tripping over someone quickly turned to shouts of alarm, the two youths grabbing hold of each other and stumbling over their own feet in their haste to back away.

“Tiger! It’s a tiger!” the first one yelped, clinging to his companion as he dragged them both backwards.

“It’s got no stripes, idiot!” the second protested, no less panicked for his pedantry. “That's a cheetah!”

“I don’t care what it bloody is! Look at the size of its teeth!”

Deepa bolted.

If she had her wits about her, she should have ducked into the nearest dark alley, made her way to the rooftops via the fire escapes, and tiptoed back to her flat to wait for morning. Colliding with that pair had startled her badly, and that, combined with her initial recklessness in leaving the flat, urged her towards her destination with even more speed than before. She’d set out to find Phillip and make him fix her, and that was the only thing left in her mind.

It was only as she went streaking down the street in full view of every late-night bar patron and neighbour looking out their window to take note of the commotion that she realised howbadly she had misjudged her situation. Cringing, she flattened her ears against her head, ducking away from the incredulous stares and shouts that greeted her, and raced with all the speed of the cheetah she wasn't towards Phillip's location. His curse-magic guided her unerringly, the one decent thing it had done for her.

Deepa didn’t for a minute actually believe Phillip lived in the flat where she found him. The place was too small, too out of the way, on the edge of the city far from all the attention on which he thrived. All her sources suggested that, following her curse, he had removed himself from the public eye, intending to hide until her fury blew over. This flat, she assumed, was borrowed from some friend or parent. No matter. She’d found him, and no amount of hiding could save him from her now.

Furious at her lack of opposable thumbs, Deepa scratched at the front door until the pretty blue paint chipped away, leaving a horrible mess of gouge-marks in her wake. The noise was enough to wake any nearby sleepers, though she rather doubted Phillip had any close neighbours who liked him enough to be concerned for his well-being. But she couldn’t claw the door to ribbons and gain entry that way, so, not being content with mere vandalism, she prowled to one of the two ground-level windows. First, she braced one shoulder against it, testing its strength. Then, when she had a sense of the force needed to break it, she turned away, shifted all her weight onto her forepaws, and aimed a mighty kick at the glass with her hind legs.

Her first blow achieved little, the second cracked it, and the third shattered it completely, the glass cascading down in a musical cacophony that pleased her greatly. As a human, she would have hesitated before breaking a window and pulled her punch, afraid of getting hurt. As a leopard, she had no such nerves, and besides, her fur protected her from the worst of the glass. From inside, there was a commotion like someone fallingout of bed, then a lamp lit the darkness. Leaping through the open window, Deepa landed with a soft thump on the rug within, and quickly stole to the side of the room, pressing herself to the wall to avoid detection as Phillip emerged from his bedroom, carrying a fire poker and switching on lights as he advanced.

For a moment, she watched him in seething silence, studying his movements. He looked wary, but she wanted more from him than that. She wanted him terrified, begging for his life.

She’d never hated anyone before. She’d certainly never physically fought anyone before, and even if Roz had taught her to box, those skills wouldn't have been particularly relevant. However, as a leopard, she had no doubt that between her and Phillip, the cat would be the one coming out on top.

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