“Jane Boyle, what do you think you’re doing?” Lynne’s tirade ended in a shout, and she knocked the bagel out of Jane’s hands.
Jane’s heart started pounding and she nearly jumped out of her chair in shock. This is it, she thought wildly, looking for something, anything, she might be able to use to defend herself. Her eyes landed on a butter knife and she gripped it rigidly in her left hand.
But Lynne was oblivious to Jane’s sudden battle-readiness, busily digging into the bagel half with a teaspoon. When there was nothing left but an empty crust, she handed it back to Jane with a bright smile. “It’s a neat little trick, if you have trouble controlling what you eat,” she said, her strange, dark eyes examining Jane’s waist. “Our last dress fitting is less than a month away, dear!”
Officially the worst prospective mother-in-law ever, Jane decided, using her would-be weapon to spread fat-free cream cheese on her bagel shell. “Thanks,” she mumbled, trying to not glare too obviously at the unappetizing result.
“You weren’t raised in New York,” Lynne declared, her voice back to its snake-charmer purr, “so I know it’s hard for you to understand. But this wedding is extremely important, right down to the commas in the invitation. We have a position in this city and every move we make is scrutinized and judged and dragged through the press in case anyone important missed the live version. Our every move must be calculated, precise. We cannot afford the slightest mistake.”
Jane shuddered in spite of herself. This woman was unbelievable: she was willing to commit murder in order to procure a magical heir, yet she was worried about the pomp and circumstance that went along with being one of the city’s preeminent families. The amazing thing was, Lynne could have instructed Malcolm to elope with Jane in France and get her pregnant without ever raising her suspicions. But her desire to throw the wedding of the century and to show everyone in Manhattan that her son was respectably married before impregnating his wife had led to the very thing Lynne had wanted so desperately to avoid: Jane catching wind of her plan.
“You seem distracted,” Lynne observed as she sliced her egg whites into perfectly even rectangles. “I hope you’re not too upset about Malcolm leaving again. I can’t imagine what could possibly be considered ‘urgent’ in the art-dealing world.”
Phrasing aside, it was clearly a question—and perhaps even a test. Malcolm had sent an e-mail to the entire family from the airport, claiming that urgent business had called him away but assuring them that he’d be back in time for the wedding.
Chewing her bagel slowly, Jane thought through every angle before she answered. In Lynne’s perfect world, Malcolm would be uninterested in Jane, but Jane would be blindingly, head-over-heels in love with Malcolm. So smitten and clueless, in fact, that she wouldn’t bat an eye at his sudden departure just one month before their happy day. Her toes curled at how well she’d unwittingly conformed to that insipid role for the past month.
“I’m not worried at all,” she answered, forcing a bright note into her voice. “I love that he takes his work so seriously.” To her own ears, she sounded positively moronic, but Lynne beamed approvingly.
Then her peach mouth rearranged itself into a stern expression, and she leaned forward a little. Jane’s impulse was to lean away, but she swallowed her revulsion and stayed put. “Did he happen to mention to you where he was going?”
Jane shivered in spite of herself. She felt like a mouse facing a snake at feeding time, but Malcolm had assured her that her mind was like a locked vault to Lynne, so she met Lynne’s eyes and plastered on her most vapid smile. “Um, Spain I think?” she lied.
“Ugh. I hate Spain.” Lynne sniffed. “It’s so hot in the summer, and that rioja stuff could strip paint.”
Jane, who loved rioja second only to French wines, resisted the urge to point out that it was still January. Instead, she took an aggressive bite of her unsatisfying bagel shell while Lynne sipped her tea. The older woman’s glance fell on a glossy, gold-embossed folder in the wedding-planning stack and she fluidly snapped back into gear. “Our head-count has gone up again, so I’ll have to fax the caterer. But the bakery didn’t have a fax, as I recall”—she flipped through the folder in frustration—“so perhaps you could call.”
The bakery. A pair of wide-set amber eyes swam in front of Jane. Diana. Dee, who thought magic was genetic. Not as certain a source of help as Harris would have been, but a much, much safer one, given that Lynne had no clue who Dee was. “I was planning on shopping in SoHo anyway,” she improvised. “I’ll just stop by.”
Sofia bustled into the kitchen to check on the boiling water, then quietly left again.
“Fine.” Lynne passed Jane the folder and cleared her throat significantly. “Now, are you sure we need to invite that redheaded friend of yours to the wedding? If she gets drunk enough to lunge into traffic on a regular weeknight, just imagine the scene she would make at the wedding!”
The words slammed into Jane with the force of that speeding taxi. She crushed the remnants of her bagel crust in her fist. “She wasn’t drunk,” Jane hissed, seething.
“I’m sorry, dear, but I saw the whole thing,” Lynne replied mildly. “Now I’m not saying what happened wasn’t horrible, but really. New York is a dangerous place—she should be more careful.”
Rage and electricity spiked hotly through Jane’s limbs and the kettle let out a low whine that rose quickly toward a shriek. For a delicious moment, Jane fantasized about having enough power to lift the copper vessel from the stove and bash it into Lynne’s smug smile. This bitch so needed to be taken down. But then Sofia rushed in, and Jane was brought back to her senses. Someday Lynne will get hers, but right now I have to keep my head.
“You know what? You’re right. Disinvite her—and the brother,” Jane said briskly, making a snap decision. “We need to make sure that everything goes smoothly.”
Lynne beamed, and Jane tried hard not to grind her teeth together. She hated to even pretend to be disloyal, but the only way to keep the Montagues safe was to make Lynne think they weren’t a threat.
The decision made, she shoved her chair back and grabbed the folder, exiting the kitchen to the impossibly domestic noise of Sofia pouring another cup of tea for Lynne.
Chapter Thirty
Hattie’s bustling presence in the bakery prevented Jane from having any meaningful type of conversation with Dee. Luckily, a crème-fleurette crisis had given Jane just enough time to secure an invitation to that evening’s meeting of Dee’s coven before she had hastily retreated to fill out her “shopping” cover story. By the time it was late enough to head to Brooklyn for the gathering, Jane had collected an impressive assortment of bags, an activity that had the added advantage of preventing her from thinking too hard about what she was about to do. Two months ago, she hadn’t known witches existed, and now she was joining a coven, for God’s sake.
When she exited the subway in Park Slope, she felt as though she’d arrived in an entirely different city. Quaint little shops lined the streets and no building was taller than four floors. One grocery store even had a street-level parking lot, unheard-of in Manhattan—or Paris, for that matter.
Though it was only seven, the sidewalks and streets were nearly empty. A dark town car turned the corner, and an old woman pushed a grocery cart down a side street. Despite the relative calm, Jane couldn’t quite shake the feeling that someone was watching her. Stop being paranoid, she told herself sharply, but she hugged her heavy purse close to her chest. She would never again leave the house without her passport, French debit card, and a copy of Malcolm’s AmEx—just in case. With another surreptitious glance around, she hurried down Berkeley Place, past a school playground, until she reached Dee’s stoop.
A cheerful Dee ushered her inside her one-bedroom. The tiny living room had an accent wall in brilliant red, and a threadbare Oriental carpet reached from corner to corner. There was no couch; instead, a pile of cushions in silk and velvet dotted the carpet. A wrought-iron chandel
ier boasted four fat, lit candles, and seven more candles sat on a rough-hewn wood bench pushed against the red wall. It looked like something out of a CW show about trendy twentysomething witches—albeit a low-budget one—but Jane reminded herself to keep an open mind. This might be her only avenue to learning more about her abilities.
Five other women were crammed into the room. Dee wove among them, trying not to trip over her own furniture, a plate of warm chocolate-chip cookies in hand. Jane, eager for an excuse not to try to make small talk, snatched one up. It tasted, in a word, magical. “Oh my God, you made these? Would you switch my wedding cake for a giant one of these? I’ll take all the blame.”
Dee giggled, her amber eyes glittering. “Glad you like it, but the wedding cookie’s a no-go. Your about-to-be mother-in-law locked the order, so you’re stuck with vanilla-and-orange-blossom sponge cake with cognac buttercream and all the fondant doves we can roll in one kitchen. And, of course, ‘absolutely nothing that looks in any way like a cake-topper,’ ” she added, doing such a flawless impression of Lynne that Jane flinched.
A girl with spiky brown hair and a long batik tunic laughed. “Man, I hope the guy’s worth it.”
“I don’t think they make guys worth that,” a tall blonde with a lip-ring teased, slipping an arm around the spiky-haired girl’s shoulders. “But to each her own.” She grinned at Jane. “I’m Kara, and this is Brooke, and feel free to ignore me if it’s true love and all that.”
Jane smiled faintly, but didn’t quite know what to say. “The wedding is just a charade so we can flee the country” was hardly an ice-breaker, but it was difficult to summon a genuine-seeming rush of enthusiasm for her upcoming nuptials.
Fortunately, at that moment Dee called them all over to the circle of cushions, and Jane hovered uncertainly at its edge. “Come on, Jane,” Dee urged. “It’s just a meditation, nothing scary.”
“I don’t want to intrude,” Jane mumbled, perching tentatively on a red silk pillow with faintly Indian-looking embroidery. Or blow the fuses, or die of boredom, or anything else obnoxiously conspicuous. But the faces of the other women were uniformly welcoming and pleasant. She smiled back at them shyly.
“We’ve been looking everywhere for a seventh person,” Kara whispered from a cushion beside Jane’s. “It’s a magic number.” She winked, her lip-ring glinting in the candlelight.
“Everyone, please close your eyes,” Dee intoned, and Kara clamped her lips together and shut her eyes in exaggerated compliance.
Jane obeyed as well, and inhaled deeply. The smoky flower-and-ashes scent of the incense scratched her throat and made her feel light-headed.
“The Circle is gathered; the Circle is cleansed.” Dee’s voice was so husky Jane didn’t recognize it at first. “We call on the guardians of the Watchtower of the North, and we bring an offering of Earth to the Circle to remind ourselves of the life that flourishes beneath our feet. We call on the guardians of the Watchtower of the West, and we bring an offering of Water to the Circle to remind ourselves that blessings come to us from every source. We call on the guardians of the Watchtower of the South, and we bring an offering of Fire to the Circle to remind ourselves of the passion that brings warmth and destruction in equal measure. We call on the guardians of the Watchtower of the East, and we bring an offering of Air to the Circle to remind ourselves that we are connected even when we do not touch.”
Jane’s conscious mind registered skepticism at the words, but the rhythm of Dee’s invocation relaxed her muscles and slowed her breathing. At the very least, a relaxing evening’s meditation would do her some good.
“We meet in the presence of the Horned God and the Moon Goddess,” Dee went on. “She who exists as the Maiden, the Mother, and the Crone. We take her into ourselves as we pass through these stages, and become complete in ourselves. We begin as daughters but carry on as sisters, and we are each the greatest blessing to the others as we move along the paths of our lives. Please join hands as we begin our meditation.”
Jane reached out blindly, but had no trouble finding the outstretched hands on either side of her. A faint current seemed to run through them when they touched, as if a circuit had been closed. The lightheaded feeling intensified, almost as though she was floating above her pillow.
“We begin in a meadow, just as the sun is setting,” Dee crooned, and Jane found that she could see the meadow clearly behind her closed eyes. Waist-high grass rippled in a light breeze, and Queen Anne’s lace and yellow dandelions competed with the green stalks for sunlight. “The stars become clearer and clearer as darkness rolls across the sky. The sliver of the new moon rises above the horizon: tonight is a time of new beginnings, of refreshed spirits, of renewed power. Tonight is the Storm Moon, the sign that light is returning to balance with the darkness, and that the world is reawakening around us. Tonight we begin again, journeying far . . .”
Dee led Jane past a lake covered with waxy lily pads, along a field of wild violets, then through a thick redwood forest where the ground was spongy with moss. The other women were there with her, too, examining mushrooms and oohing at breathtaking waterfalls. The experience was much more affecting than Jane had expected. A more ordinary sort of magic.
“Now I’ll start us off on our evening chant,” Dee announced, “and then we will continue silently together to seal our ritual.”
Jane exhaled softly as Dee slowly chanted a Latin-sounding phrase, then tapered off into silence. The syllables echoed in Jane’s mind, taking root as if the words had been there all along.
After two more cycles of the chant, she realized she was no longer hearing the memory of Dee’s voice. Instead, she was hearing a collection of voices, all chanting more or less together, creating an almost melodic harmony. Like the wind through the attic at the Dorans’, Jane thought.
Just then, one of the voices faltered, and Jane’s eyes snapped open. The girl with spiky brown hair—Brooke—was staring at her from across the circle, her eyes wild. Brooke released the hands on either side of her and fumbled to her feet. Jane instinctively did the same. Curious eyes opened as the disturbance spread around the circle. The chanting noise stopped entirely, and then six pairs of terrified eyes were fixed on Jane.
“Did I do something wrong?” she stammered, trying to figure out why they were all staring at her, but no one moved. Not staring at me, exactly, she realized with a start: it was as if they were looking through her. She turned, and then she was staring, too, because all of the candles on the wood bench behind her were floating. She jerked at the sight, and the candles tumbled to the ground as if they had suddenly been released. One rolled toward a cushion near Dee, who bent slowly, as if she were under water, to extinguish it.
“Um . . .” A girl whose arms were covered entirely with colorful tattoos grabbed her purse. “I forgot I had this . . . um thing? So I’m just gonna . . .” She jumped up and all but ran to the door, followed closely by two of the other women. As if a spell had quite literally been broken, everyone rose to their feet and pushed toward the exit.
“Sorry,” Kara said, quirking an apologetic smile at Dee. “Too weird for my blood.” She circled an arm around Brooke’s shoulder and guided the shell-shocked girl gently toward the door.
Within seconds, Jane and Dee were alone in the apartment, and Jane couldn’t bring herself to look anywhere but the floor. “I’m so sorry,” she mumbled. “This was a mistake. Please just forget—”
“Are you kidding me?”
Jane glanced up, startled. Dee’s eyes were wide, her smile even wider. Her skin shone and sheaves of tangled dark hair fell around her face. “You’re one of them, aren’t you? I was babbling away in the store that day, and this whole time you were one of them?”
Jane’s mouth opened, but no sound came out. She felt trapped. She had unwittingly jumped in with both feet and given herself away in front of six strangers. Now, she realized abruptly, there was nothing to do but ask for the help she had come for. “You’re right,” she forced h
er voice to say. “It is genetic.”
Dee grinned and shoved a cushion at her. “Nifty. Now would you sit the hell back down already?” Her amber eyes sparkled wickedly. “Let’s find out how it works.”
Chapter Thirty-one
Jane’s iPhone informed her that Harris had called her seven times in twelve hours. The first time was to make sure that she was still alive, the second to tell her that Maeve had woken up briefly, the third was to remind her that she should probably get rid of her phone if she was on the run, and the last four just said, “Call me. Please.” When the phone rang again for the eighth time, Jane decided to bite the bullet and answered.
Which was how, that Saturday, Harris came to be seated next to her at a triangular table at Book and Bell, Dee’s favorite occult bookstore-slash-reading room on the Lower East Side. The furniture looked like leftovers from a public school, and the worn red carpet had a similar surplus feel. But the walls were covered with books, and the owner (all flowing skirts and frizzy blond hair) had discreetly returned to the front room, leaving them alone.
“Okay,” Dee announced in the tone of someone formally calling a meeting to order. “Now this place is pretty good, but I’ve also brought some resources from home.” She tapped a heavy-looking military-style backpack beside her wooden chair. Then she turned to Jane expectantly, and Harris followed suit.
After a moment’s uncomfortable silence, Jane slammed her unevenly glazed mug of tea on the scarred table. “You two are supposed to help me. If I knew where to start I wouldn’t be so pathetically screwed right now.”
Dee smirked. “Well, we could start by voting in a club president, but I’m afraid Jane just shot herself in the foot. It’d be down to the two of us, Harris, and I’d hate to see you get beat by a girl.”
“Touché,” he said with a sly grin of his own.
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