The Dark Glamour

by Gabriella Pierce

  “Umm . . . are you guys, like, done?”

  Jane jumped, clutching her plastic fork like a weapon. She turned to see a tween in a green vinyl raincoat, with expertly moussed hair, holding an overflowing paper plate and tapping her Mary Jane–shod foot impatiently. Dee bristled, but they’d finished eating a while ago, and the restaurant was packed.

  “We’re going,” Jane assured the girl, who turned to wave over a cluster of similarly trendy friends. Jane and Dee tossed away their plates and napkins and stepped out into the cool night air. When they were safely away from the small crowd on the restaurant’s steps, Jane lit a cigarette—one of three she allowed herself each week—and returned to their previous conversation. “We don’t know anyone who meets all of those criteria, but we can’t just toss out the whole idea because of that.”

  Dee nodded. “Technically your Mystery Witch is the closest person we know who fits the bill, but you probably shouldn’t ask her.”

  “Agreed.” Jane tried to imagine recruiting Mystery Witch. It was the sort of thing Lynne might do, she decided, and maybe even the kind of thing she herself might do after a few more decades of being the most powerful person she knew. Right now, though, it felt like suicide.

  “Jane,” Dee said hesitantly, and Jane turned toward her. “I’ve been practicing some stuff on my own while I was at the bookstore. Not magic,” she rushed on when Jane cocked a bewildered eyebrow, “but not just research, either. I’ve been trying to learn that thing you said Malcolm could do, to hide his thoughts from his mother. Locking secrets in his mind somewhere that she couldn’t see them. I thought I might need it someday, so I’ve been practicing for three weeks. I think I’m getting the hang of it.”

  “Malcolm had been practicing that, too, for more than thirty years,” Jane reminded her, “and he still had the good sense to stay the hell away from Lynne during the month when he really had something to hide.” Dee looked disappointed, and Jane felt a pang of guilt for her flippant dismissal. “I’ll practice it with you if you want,” she added more gently. “It would be a really good thing for you to be able to do—it was smart of you to think of it. I wish that I had suggested it myself. But it won’t be enough to keep all three of those bitches out of your head indefinitely, and that’s what you’d have to do if they caught you. Not to mention the fact that I can’t cope with the possibility that they might catch you running this kind of risk for me, period.”

  Dee sighed. “I know. It was worth a shot, but I knew you’d say that. What we really need is your insides with someone else’s outsides. Like one of the staff’s, or some high-society friend of the Dorans’ that they’d invite into their house.”

  “Could I be royalty?” Jane asked cheerfully, hopping agilely out of the way of a fortysomething man with a mohawk. Although it was fully dark, she could still feel the damp springiness from her morning in the park, and she inhaled the night air deeply. “I always used to pretend that I was really some missing princess, like Anastasia, being raised by my grandmother the exiled queen. Except in some versions she was the crazy maid who’d kidnapped me, but that was just when she was being extra-overprotective, which makes a lot more sense to me these days than it did when I was a kid.”

  Dee stopped walking, and for a moment Jane was afraid she had tripped. But her friend was just standing stock-still on the concrete, her amber eyes far away. The neon sign of a nearby bar changed her black hair into a collage of red, blue, and gold. “Like a glamour,” she whispered. Jane waved a hand in front of her face, and her eyes finally began to track the world around her again. “We just need you,” Dee explained slowly, beginning to walk again. “We need you not to look like you. And that’s something pretty much everyone agrees witches can do.”

  “A magical disguise.” Jane breathed. Across the street, a white stick figure turned into a glowing orange hand, and she stopped obediently for a stream of cars and taxis. “It would have to be complete; I’d have to look like a whole other person. And it couldn’t take too much power to maintain, or else I might burn out. And it would be better if it were something that didn’t leave any kind of signature Lynne might sense. And do you think I could choose a specific face?”

  “Holy hell, Jane!” Dee laughed heartily. “Look, it’s the best plan so far. I’ll call Misty in the morning, and we’ll start up the research engine, but in the meantime you can’t sweat the details. Haven’t you figured out yet that magic has a mind of its own?”

  Jane stuck her tongue out at Dee and was nearly run down by a speeding bicycle that left the faint aroma of scallions and toasted sesame oil in its wake. “Karma,” she observed. “Okay. I’ll do the meditating stuff and let you ladies be the brains of the operation. Just let me know when you’ve got something, because if we could wrap this up by the weekend, I’d love to check out this Coney Island thing everyone talks about.”

  Dee rolled her eyes. “Nobody talks about Coney Island anymore, but duly noted. Jane, stop. We’re home.” She pointed to the discreet, steel-edged glass door that Jane had been about to walk right past.

  “Almost,” Jane murmured under her breath, and followed her friend into the lobby.

  Chapter Eight

  “Here it is.”

  Jane leaned forward over the driftwood coffee table, eager for her first glimpse of the indispensable charm that would give her a new face. Misty hadn’t even been sure that there were any left in the world, but had tracked down the rumors tirelessly for two days until she’d found a person who, for tens of thousands of Jane’s dollars, was willing to produce the genuine article.

  “A Forvrangdan orb,” Misty declared proudly, setting it on the table and pulling aside the cloth that shrouded it. It was a smooth, clear-glass sphere. It looked heavy, and seemed solid except for a few tiny bubbles caught motionless in its center.

  “It’s beautiful,” Dee said breathlessly, tilting her head to take it in from more angles.

  “It really is,” Jane agreed. “And nothing at all like an incredibly expensive paperweight.”

  Dee looked alarmed, but Misty laughed. Even her laughter sounded beachy. “It’s the real thing,” she assured Jane confidently. “Paperweights don’t do this.” She slid a gray-and-white, pigeon-esque feather out of her supply bag. Careful not to touch the surface of the orb with her skin, she set the feather down gently on top of it.

  At first, nothing happened, but after a short while, Jane was almost positive the feather was darker. A few seconds later, it was definite: the feather was almost as black and shiny as a raven’s. It elongated and became even glossier and uneven on one long edge, and Jane abruptly realized that now she was looking at a plastic comb. The comb began to lighten until it was distinctly purple, and then transparent. Moments later, it was a cheap-looking red pen, and briefly a salamander, then a chameleon, then a candle, then a white leather bookmark. And then, as Jane watched in growing horror, the bookmark’s edges began to curl and peel as if it were being consumed in an invisible fire, which ate its way through the leather with increasing speed. The bookmark looked like a pigeon feather again, for the briefest of moments, before it was gone, without the slightest trace of it remaining on the perfect surface of the orb.

  “Okay,” Jane agreed, swallowing thickly. “Paperweights don’t do that. But I . . . um . . . I don’t want it to do that to me.”

  “It won’t,” Dee reassured her quickly, although her face was a few shades paler than normal.

  “It won’t,” Misty echoed, far more convincingly. “The spell controls it; channels the power and sets limits on it. That’s why the orb is destroyed at the end of the spell, instead of the object of the change. That means you,” she added, glancing up at Jane. “And that’s why there are so many rules, because you don’t harness something this major without a lot of rules. It was this coven in Sweden—I guess they were the real thing, like your family and the Dorans. They made these as weapons; tools they could use that would destroy anyone else who tried without the proper rituals. B
ut it wasn’t enough, I guess, because rumor has it that they were wiped out centuries ago. We don’t know how many orbs were left in their stockpile when that happened, but they’re almost never heard of these days. We got this one because a friend of mine from fifteen years ago bragged about seeing one once after a little too much blessed wine, but I honestly wouldn’t know where to even begin with finding another one. So I want to be very sure before we begin that you really, really understand the rules.”

  Jane opened her mouth to answer, but the words caught in her throat.

  “We should review,” Dee murmured softly, and Jane nodded gratefully.

  “The spell lasts for twenty-eight days exactly,” Misty began pedantically, “one full cycle of the moon. There’s no way to know what you’ll look like once it’s done, so we can’t really lay any groundwork for your new persona before we do the spell. But that means that you’ll really need to hit the ground running once it’s done, because once the twenty-eight days are up, that persona will be gone for good. But the good news is that the fuel for the spell comes from the orb that whole time, not from you, so you’ll have all of your magic in case you need it.”

  “That’s good.” Jane nodded. She had tried what Dee had called a “glamour” the day before. After a few attempts, she had succeeded in making her hair look blond again, but it was exhausting work and slipped back to its dyed shade every time she thought about anything else whatsoever. It was an interesting parlor trick, but it wouldn’t hold up.

  “It really is,” Dee reminded her encouragingly. “A month isn’t very long for everything you’ll have to do with your new face. As soon as you talk to Lynne, she’ll know you’re a witch no matter what you look like, so you can forget trying to pretend you’re anything else. She’ll expect you to be able to do magic. The more power you have at your disposal, the more interested in you she’ll be.”

  Jane nodded again, trying to look a little more enthusiastic this time. But she couldn’t keep one thought from fluttering around the corners of her mind like a bat: Magic has a mind of its own . . .

  The spell might work, but it could certainly work in unexpected and wrong ways. I could get stuck. The spell could end while I’m in the middle of a conversation with Lynne. I could turn into a toad for a month. My mind could change along with my face. This could all be for nothing, or it could be for worse than nothing. She shivered, drawing the black hoodie that she had borrowed from Dee tighter around her shoulders. But it’s the best plan I’ve got.

  “The disguise might start to fade out toward the end of the month,” Misty went on, echoing Jane’s fears a little too closely for her comfort. “The stronger we manage to make the initial spell, though, the less likely that will happen, so if you want to take some more time to get ready—”

  “I’ve been getting ready all day,” Jane interrupted. She had felt the bars of sunlight move across her bed as she had sent ripples through her magic, listened to it murmur. Her awareness had spread to every corner of the apartment; she had known about but ignored the trays of food Dee had left by her door, and had heard every worried thought of Misty’s since the wild-haired blonde had stepped across their threshold. She had even heard some thoughts of Dee’s, although she had tried to avoid it, but to her pleasant surprise, Dee’s mind-closing efforts seemed to be paying off. Her available thoughts were superficial, and while Jane was sure she could dig out the more substantial ones if she wanted to, it was a relief not to have them floating at her and distracting her from her calm.

  Now the sun was setting in a riot of red and gold out her remarkable panoramic living-room windows. A heavy lid of star-flecked dark blue chased it to the horizon, and Jane was pretty sure she wasn’t going to feel readier anytime soon.

  “The spell takes time,” Dee told her softly. “We’re ready to start when you are, but it’ll be a long night once we do. If you’d like to at least eat something . . .” She trailed off uncertainly.

  Jane unfolded her legs from the nubby white couch and spread her toes over the cool, glossy finish of the bleached hardwood floor. “Now’s good,” she insisted gently, drifting over to the spot in front of the windows where hundreds of candles marked out a strange symbol on the floor. The view through the windows shifted slightly as she moved, and Jane felt an almost seasick light-headedness. What’s some archaic Swedish mark doing on the eleventh floor of a building in Manhattan? Or was it even Swedish to start with? Ambika and her daughters had lived and died before there were maps.

  Misty appeared beside her with the orb wrapped carefully back up in its shroud. Magic-proof, Jane realized. The cloth saved my coffee table from whatever happened to that pigeon feather.

  Dee approached on her other side, the growing starlight washing her eyes and face out to the same dark silver. “It starts with blood,” she told Jane softly, and there was something even more silver in her hands. She handed it to Jane, who recognized the two-edged blade that Dee had called an “athame.” They had used it to help focus Jane’s mind when she had first learned to use her power, but never used the edges for what Jane realized was probably their actual purpose. Lynne did, though. Jane suddenly saw her mother-in-law as vividly as if she were on the deck of the harbor-cruise boat with her again, watching the older witch slide something half-seen into her purse; watching her blood drip in the near darkness. Lynne did things with her power that Jane hadn’t been able to even imagine, but now she was beginning to. Whatever they were about to do was major magic, and Jane could feel the Earth turning ever so slowly ten stories beneath her bare feet.

  Of course it starts with blood.

  She held out her hand to Dee, who held up the athame and began to whisper. The starlight flashed wildly as she spun the blade downward, and the spell began.

  Chapter Nine

  Jane woke up in her bed. She stared at the white ceiling for a while, feeling powerless to even shift her eyes to the skylight a few feet away. Every muscle was sore and even her lungs felt ragged, as if she had been running. Or screaming. Maybe I was doing both, she thought curiously. There was a spell . . . wasn’t there?

  It had lasted for hours, or maybe she had dreamed the whole thing. Her muscles and joints protested loudly as she turned her entire body toward her window; the stars she remembered were still out there, although the sky behind them was fully, finally dark now. She slid carefully off the bed, wobbling a little on her bare feet. Her fingertips brushed the soft, powdery paint of the wall, and she followed it, coaxing her body to stay upright with each step. By the time she reached her little bathroom, she felt fairly confident that her legs would cooperate, and she risked letting her fingers leave the wall in order to flick a light switch. Clumsily, she hit both at once, and the overhead bulb came on at the same time as the softer ones embedded around the mirror above the sink.

  Damn. She shrank back instinctively, shielding her sensitive eyes with her other hand until they adjusted to the fierce glow. Those nut-jobs turned me into a vampire, probably. She peeked out from behind her hand and found that she could see without squinting now, but she still hesitated, afraid to face the mirror.

  “I can’t just stand in the doorway all night,” she announced reasonably, and then shuddered: her voice wasn’t noticeably higher or lower, but it was absolutely different: the same note produced by a new instrument. More curious than afraid now, she pulled herself forward into the bathroom, lurching to a graceless stop in front of the lit mirror.

  She’s so tall, she thought, half-hysterically. I am, I mean. Her new body had at least eight or nine inches more in its legs and torso than her old one had, but not noticeably more weight to go around. Her new, model-esque height came with pointed shoulders, small ripples of breasts, a long, flat stomach, and stretched-teardrop hips. Above her sharp collarbones, her face was unexpectedly girlish. Her jaw was wide, her cheeks short and round. She had a plump bow of a mouth and sparkling black eyes, which matched her straight, shoulder-skimming black hair perfectly. Most striking, though, was he
r skin. Jane, who had spent her life with the kind of hopelessly unfashionable peaches-and-cream skin that showed every blush and burned if she even thought about sunlight, ran a walnut finger across her walnut jawbone in wonder.

  I wonder where I’m from, she thought idly; between her coloring and the slight almond turn to her eyes, she was distinctly racially ambiguous. I just have to decide where I want to be from. And what my name is.

  The choices to be made from the seemingly endless possibilities in front of her suddenly felt almost overwhelming, and her breath caught in her throat. I need some help with this, she decided. She didn’t know how long she had been unconscious, but surely Dee would want to see the outcome of their bizarre spell. She was probably still awake, in fact, and Jane pushed herself away from the mirror to go show her how their efforts had paid off.

  She had barely stepped into the hallway before she smelled hot sugar and butter bound together by flour, and she forced her still-wobbly legs to pick up their pace. She’s awake and baking, she urged her limbs. Please hurry!

  She entered the living room just as Dee was leaving the kitchen, with a telltale piece of cookie in her hand. Dee stopped and stared at her in shock. She was still wearing the black lace top and baggy black cargo pants that she had had on for the spell, but they looked wrinkled and tired . . . as did Dee’s face.