666 Park Avenue

by Gabriella Pierce

  Unable to have a meaningful conversation and momentarily distracted, Jane glanced around idly at the newcomers. Coral is back in, she noted, and woven-leather bags. A year and a half behind Paris, as usual. She couldn’t help but feel a little smug until a perfect blowout in the far corner of the elevator caught her eye. Its owner was wearing the head-to-toe black of a salesperson, and Jane had a nagging feeling she’d seen those glossy chestnut tresses before. Then the mystery employee raised a hand to rake her scarlet-nailed fingers through her hair, and Jane was sure.

  Madison.

  Luckily for Jane’s composure, Malcolm’s ex never turned around. When the elevator reached the fine-china floor, Jane grabbed the red hem of Dee’s coat, cautioning her to stay put. As long as there were enough people in the elevator to camouflage them, she felt a reckless desire to follow Madison. She had expected the girl to exit on the seventh floor, where the personal-shopping department was based, but Madison and three other shoppers stayed on until the very last stop. FRED’S AT BARNEYS, the lit-up button announced, and Jane realized that she was tailing Malcolm’s ex on her lunch break.

  Kind of stalkerish, Jane admitted, but the curious, envious part of her brain hushed the thought. And anyway, wouldn’t a restaurant be as good a place as any to practice magic?

  The restaurant boasted a pleasant milk-chocolate-colored wood motif, and a massive stone fireplace sat in one corner. When the hostess led her and Dee to their table, Jane plunked down in a chair with a sigh, picked up her menu, and glanced around it the way that she had seen people do in spy movies. The ploy felt awkward and the menu made it hard to see, so she gave up, dropped it on the table, and leveled with Dee. “That walking tanning-bed ad on the elevator with us used to date Malcolm,” she whispered. “Do you see her anywhere?”

  Dee nodded. “Two tables back, to your right, with some guy,” she confirmed, barely moving her lips. Dresses like a witch, spies like a spy, Jane thought wryly. She’s like the Swiss Army knife of friends. Dee leaned out into the aisle subtly before returning with her assessment. “Kind of hunky, but if Malcolm looks anything like his photos, you win. Listen to her.”

  “I’ll never be able to hear what she’s saying over this din,” Jane pointed out. “I could probably muss up her blowout a little, though. That could be fun.”

  Dee rolled her eyes. “I meant listen to her thoughts.”

  “Oh, right.” Jane put both hands on the table to anchor herself and took a deep breath. She then closed her eyes and focused until the voices around her diminished into white noise. She cast her mind out like a net, touching, probing, until she found a mind that felt familiar.

  But it wasn’t words that occupied Madison’s mind right then. Instead, she had a fairly detailed, full-color fantasy going on, in which she crashed Jane’s wedding with her lunch date—who, in Madison’s view at least, was considerably better-looking than Dee had implied. Of course, in the fantasy, Jane’s hair was so peroxided that it was falling out in clumps, so Jane decided to take the details with a grain of salt.

  The vision-Madison was wearing a skintight white dress (which she currently had on hold on the seventh floor), and Malcolm turned from his overweight straw-haired bride to see his radiant, model-thin, tropically tanned ex with her handsome oil-heir date. Predictably, Malcolm shoved Jane out of the way so he could beg Madison to marry him right away, in front of all of these witnesses, because he had never stopped loving her.

  Jane gagged theatrically and reported her findings to Dee. “Nice work,” Dee said, her amber eyes glittering. “Now spill something on her.”

  Jane obediently reached her mind out again toward Madison, this time looking for something inanimate. The last couple of weeks of practice had obviously yielded results; it felt as though she were running her fingers over the table behind her.

  “Concentrate,” Dee whispered, and Jane almost snapped that that was harder to do with her friend talking at her, but then her mental fingers found the cold, brittle edge of a water glass, and she pressed her mouth shut and pulled. A squeal from somewhere behind her confirmed her success, and a waiter ran frantically past their table.

  Jane opened her eyes and grinned at Dee, who was flashing a wide, white grin of her own. Suddenly the idea of a “real-world” practice session seemed absolutely brilliant all over again.

  Chapter Thirty-six

  “And then she started shrieking at the waiter for bumping into her table, and it turns out there was a guy from Star there, and the whole thing turned into a huge mess,” Dee gloated. Jane grinned. Her friend was so giddy that she was practically dancing in her chair to the club’s thumping techno beat.

  Harris cheered obediently and congratulated them both before disappearing to order another round of drinks. It was true that Jane wasn’t comfortable working magic with him anymore—and, in fairness, it wasn’t like he’d asked her to, either, since the awkward disaster in the hospital. But she had been so flushed with her victory over Madison at Barneys that when Dee had suggested calling Harris to celebrate with them, Jane hadn’t objected one bit.

  Her confidence had wavered just a little when he arrived. He seemed somehow taller than she remembered and he smelled like rain and mulled spices. His dancing green eyes had hit hers like a spotlight, and her head had spun in a way that it was far too early to blame on the chardonnay. Really? the rational part of her brain demanded sternly. Two weeks of work and all it takes to spin your head is a pretty pair of eyes? She focused on a couple of three-part breaths, and began to feel a little bit more grounded.

  “Jane’s getting really good on her own,” Dee went on seamlessly when Harris returned from the bar. “It makes me wonder what she could do with us forming her Circle again, like we did in Book and Bell. Too bad you’ve been so busy,” she concluded with a pout that could melt stone.

  Jane choked a little on her wine, but passed it off as a cough. She had spent the last two weeks fabricating all kinds of ironclad excuses for Harris’s continued absence from their practices, but she hadn’t thought ahead to when Dee might mention them to him. It was technically true that he did have Maeve to worry about, plus a job, a family, and presumably some other friends, too. But Jane had embellished and invented for all she was worth to convince Dee that he was booked around the clock . . . and, naturally, she hadn’t troubled Harris with the details of her increasingly elaborate lies. Or even with actual invitations to their near-daily meetings, in point of fact. She shot him a sideways glance to see if he would give her away.

  But he was nodding along amiably. “Sometimes things just get completely crazy. I’ve been wanting to get away, but it’s been just impossible. I’m glad I haven’t held you girls up, though. Cheers to Jane’s progress!”

  Jane drank gratefully at his cue. His cover-up had been flawlessly bland: convincingly sincere but without a single unneeded detail to conflict with Jane’s version of events. He’s such a gentleman, she thought with a near-swoon, and set her glass down firmly. Clearly it was never too early to pace her drinking.

  “So?” Dee swiveled on her chair to face Jane squarely. “Show him what you’ve got.”

  This time it was Harris who choked on his drink. Dee patted his back solicitously before turning back to Jane. “Can you do anything about the stupid spotlight that’s right in my eyes?”

  Oh, right. Magic. Harris looked as sheepish as Jane felt, although her emotions took a slightly different turn when she noticed that Dee’s hand was lingering on Harris’s smoothly muscled back. A hot ball of jealousy congealed in the pit of her stomach, and she felt a familiar rushing electricity in her blood. “I think I can,” she managed to say around her clenched jaw.

  Calm down, she told herself frantically as the jealousy began to melt into an angry, sparking mass of magic. Don’t get sloppy over a pointless, meaningless crush, of all things. Just do what you’ve been practicing. Nevertheless, the spotlight that she attempted to swivel actually fell from its perch, clattering dangerously through the ra
fters until it reached the end of its cord. It was still a good foot or two above the heads of the super-chic twentysomethings grinding on the club’s dance floor, but Jane felt as guilty as if she actually had brained one of them.

  “It’s a good start,” Dee told her encouragingly, but her amber eyes were troubled. In their no-boys-allowed practices, Jane had had to struggle to summon her power at all, not to control an excess of it. Dee could obviously tell the difference, but without knowing what to attribute it to, she looked more than a little anxious.

  Her face compounded Jane’s guilt. She had intended to tell Dee about the unstable chemistry between her and Harris any number of times, and she knew that she should have. But she hadn’t wanted to admit to having both a fiancé and a crush who made her go weak at the knees. And she really, really hadn’t wanted to hear that Dee was interested in him too.

  “Let me try again,” Jane offered lamely. It wasn’t quite an apology—or an explanation—but it was the best she could do under the circumstances.

  “There’s a really cute couple back at the bar,” Harris suggested. “Or they would be a couple if they had a reason to start talking.”

  Most of Jane wanted to stop and dissect his words for coded messages, but the smaller, saner part of her won out. She also managed to avoid glancing at Dee, sure that her friend’s nerves at the idea of Jane using her magic near people right now would be written all over her tawny-skinned face. And Jane really didn’t need any additional reasons to be jumpy, because she wasn’t a hundred percent confident herself.

  She sent her mind wandering out to the bar the way that she had in the restaurant earlier, and quickly found the two people that Harris had mentioned. The girl was short, with dirty-blond hair; the dark-haired guy probably qualified as “gangly.” They were standing back-to-back, practically touching, each in conversation with their own group of friends. Skimming their minds, Jane was impressed with Harris’s intuition: they had noticed each other several times, and were both hoping for a tap on the shoulder.

  This would be a nice thing, Jane told herself, closing her eyes and pulling stillness over her mind like a blanket. This is being a better person. One who doesn’t lust, covet, or envy, but just takes opportunities to make the world a little better for other people. I could be a good witch.

  The pair at the bar turned simultaneously as invisible hands touched their shoulders. The girl’s drink knocked into the guy’s elbow and spilled. He apologized profusely and signaled the bartender; she smiled shyly. By the time Jane was fully present back at her own table, two of the pair’s friends were even hitting it off.

  Jane’s face relaxed into what felt like her first genuine smile in ages. She felt refreshed. Even the dark club looked brighter, cleaner somehow. The experience was so potently positive that it made her want to do something else nice.

  Reaching out for the dreadlocked DJ’s mind, she took in the next songs in his playlist. She sensed that he was holding back something special—a request? a dedication?—in a shelf to the right of his booth. She furrowed her brow and concentrated hard, trying to get some purchase on the slick album cover. Her hands began to tremble with the strain, but she managed to pull the corner out.

  She sat back in her chair, breathing hard. Harris’s and Dee’s concerned faces swam in her peripheral vision, but she waved them away limply. She was almost there.

  Gripping the table for support, she reached for the DJ’s hand. It was much, much harder than moving a glass or a record, even though it was technically smaller, because it already had a purpose behind it and a trajectory ahead of it. She had to choose her moment, and then jerk as hard as she could.

  The DJ’s hand bumped the protruding edge of the record she had moved, and she felt more than heard the idea skitter across his mind. Severing the connection, she slumped back in her chair.

  “Jane, what the hell?” Harris demanded, a note of panic in his voice. Dee looked scared, too, but maybe also a little relieved that Jane hadn’t inadvertently killed or maimed anyone with her magic.

  “I got them together, I think,” Jane said, “but it was really hard.” She had expected to have to act a little, but her voice was weak and trembly all on its own. As if on cue, the music changed. Sultry, haunting, Auto-Tune-distorted notes filled the club, and the writhing twentysomething dancers slowed a little, their hips and arms beginning to find graceful arcs. “I need a moment. But go dance, spy, and let me know what they’re doing. Take your time. Blend in.”

  Dee and Harris exchanged intrigued glances, and obediently turned and headed for the dance floor. Dee cast one last suspicious look over her shoulder at Jane, who could swear that her friend was mouthing “thank you” before they disappeared together into the mass of moving bodies.

  So she was interested in Harris. Jane tried to feel good about her second romantic setup in a row, but her earlier glow was conspicuously missing. I’m just tired, she told herself. And she was. But she was also sad to see Harris go off with another girl, no matter how much she liked that girl, and no matter how often she reminded herself that she and Harris were just friends.

  And. I. Have. A. Fiancé! Why was that so hard to remember when Harris was around? No wonder she didn’t have the same altruistic high she’d had after giving the two strangers at the bar their little push. She had gotten that from acting like a good person . . . and her second try at playing Cupid was a timely reminder that she really wasn’t one.

  I’ll just have to try harder, she resolved, sipping at her wine and swaying a little to the music. She gently turned the two rings on her left hand. One for her past, one for her future. That was all that mattered . . . it was all that could matter.

  Chapter Thirty-seven

  Ten days before the wedding, Jane found herself alone in the Dorans’ parlor. She had worked a half-day at the MoMA. She was planning a reception for a visiting professor from London’s Slade School of Art. The work went quickly, but she still missed Maeve’s presence in the office. She had finally been released from the hospital three days prior—an infection and a slipped stitch had slowed her recovery considerably . . . as if it hadn’t been slow enough already.

  Jane had wondered if Lynne or one of the twins had had a hand in Maeve’s complications, but she had decided not to mention the possibility to Harris. He had to be worried enough as it was, and besides, he’d probably already thought of it.

  Jane walked over to the marble wall that held Lynne’s family history. She felt like she could draw most of it from memory by now, from Ambika all the way down to Annette. She had tried once to calculate in her head how long ago Ambika had begun this family’s legacy, but she had lost track somewhere around the twelfth century. She found herself wondering about Ambika and her dubious legacy. Was she one of the original seven witches Rosalie had talked about in her book? What kind of a world had she lived in? And if she was one of the first seven, what exactly had caused the fight between her and her siblings that had lasted through so many generations? Was it a struggle over power . . . or something more?

  Or maybe she was just a Dark Ages version of Lynne, Jane thought wryly, trying unsuccessfully to picture Lynne without a chauffeured car or five-star restaurants to call in from. But thoughts of Lynne—and Yuri—made her feel like an ice cube had been dropped down the back of her dress. It was getting harder and harder to smile pleasantly, talk about the wedding, listen to gossip, all the while holding her breath, waiting for something to give her away or for someone else to get hurt.

  Jane reached out her fingers toward the wall and found Malcolm’s name, tracing it gently over and over. Postcards had begun to arrive in the last week: brightly colored, information-less scraps of paper addressed to the entire family. He had sent one from Madrid, one from Barcelona, one from Marrakech. They had alluded to complications, delays, additional business in undetermined parts of the world. He hadn’t bothered to spring for express air mail, so Jane was sure that they would keep coming, full of bland excuses, even after sh
e and Malcolm were long gone on their “honeymoon.” It was a smart plan: as long as the family was still getting weeks-old news from Malcolm, they would be less likely to realize that he and Jane had disappeared. They could have a month’s head start before someone noticed that his postcards had stopped coming.

  He would arrive home just the one day, for her, and then they would start their new life together . . . wherever that turned out to be.

  In the meantime, each card ended with a sterile “Love to J—see you soon.” It wasn’t much, but it was enough to keep her going. Wherever he was now—and she was fairly sure that he hadn’t ever been in Spain or Morocco at all—he was thinking of her. He was doing all of this for her. All she had to do to keep up her end was not give them away, for just another week and a half.

  Her fingers slid to the right along the marble wall, exploring the grooves of Annette’s name. She remembered optimistically wondering if Malcolm’s little sister might have been a friend to her if she’d lived. After everything she had learned about Manhattan’s magical families, and about this one in particular, that seemed extremely unlikely. Annette would have been a full-blooded witch, just like her. Lynne wouldn’t have needed Jane in the first place if her own heir had survived, but if she had decided to bring Jane into the family anyway, as extra insurance, Annette almost certainly would have been raised to see her as a rival.

  Seven magical sisters. Had Ambika known what the magic would do to her extended family? Just how far it would spread around the world? Just how many magical families were out there now? Hundreds or thousands, maybe, if the size of the Dorans’ tree was any indication. The Montagues were part of another one that would probably have just as many branches, and even orphaned Jane Boyle might have a couple of long-lost fifth cousins with traces of the gift in their DNA. Malcolm had mentioned something about two families dying out completely, but how many witches were left in the world? And, inherited or not, magical lines changed names in nearly every generation. When the seven original families had branched and divided and intermarried, it would be impossible to know where the power had gone unless you followed it closely. So Manhattan’s witches watched each other like hawks, Harris had told her, tracking each other’s power with obsessive jealousy. Not exactly a warm, loving environment.