But Jane had been taking plenty of risks of her own, and her relief at being among her real friends again was so soothing that she had a hard time being too upset about Harris’s presence. She didn’t even really mind when Dee began rhapsodizing about the perfection that was Kate’s consommés. Ella’s life may be fabulous, but Jane’s doesn’t suck, either, she reminded herself wistfully. She felt an overwhelming longing to be herself again, but thought instead of the invitation on her rolltop hotel desk and the spell in her purse. It wouldn’t be long now.
“Dee said your sister was in some kind of accident last month,” Jane blurted out, ignoring Dee’s wide-eyed glare of protest. “I hope she’s feeling better now.”
Harris’s face warmed perceptibly. “That’s very thoughtful,” he told her, and Jane felt her body lean a few millimeters closer to his. “The physical therapist just signed off on less frequent sessions, which she’s thrilled about. But our parents are still freaked about the whole thing, so she’s been staying with Grandma and Aunt Charlotte upstate, and they’re driving her crazy. She can’t wait to get back to city life again.”
He smiled, and Jane smiled back. Belatedly, Harris turned to include Dee in the moment, and Jane looked quickly down at her drink. After a pause, Dee began chatting rapidly about vol-au-vents, and Jane risked looking back over to see if Harris was following along. He had been looking at her as well, and their eyes locked for a strange, happy moment before Jane looked quickly away again. “So, Ella,” Dee asked levelly, “how are things going with that handsome Romanian of yours?”
Jane blushed, but knew that between her walnut skin and the dim lighting, no one would be able to tell. She focused on keeping her voice level. “I wouldn’t exactly call him ‘mine,’ ” she demurred. But there was no point in denying what she had already manipulated the gossip columns into writing about. Harris’s family occasionally featured in the same ones. He might well have heard about “us,” and if not, then at least he can help spread the rumor, she argued to herself, but there was something about this particular lie that made her even more reluctant to tell it. I don’t like using Harris, she told herself, but that wasn’t quite it, or at least not quite all of it. “Things with André are going great,” she said firmly, watching her knuckles go white around the stem of her glass. She might not like it, but she only had one chance to get it right. “I’ve never met his sister, though, and apparently the Dalcascus are pretty close, so that might be a problem.”
She flicked her eyes nervously at Harris, and was surprised to see him rigid on his stool, his face even paler than usual under its light dusting of freckles. He can’t be jealous, Jane chided herself. Can he? “Dee didn’t tell me you were seeing that André,” he said finally, his voice quiet and strained.
“You know him?” Jane asked, nonplussed. He might, she guessed: all the surviving magical families seemed to at least know of one another. And he had certainly known (and disliked) Malcolm well before Jane had ever come into the picture. It seemed a bit too coincidental that he would have an ugly history with both of the two men that Jane had shown an interest in since they had met, but Jane reminded herself that she quite obviously had questionable taste in men.
“Only by reputation,” Harris answered, clipping off each word with a tensed jaw that Jane could see even in the low light. “It’s none of my business, but if you don’t mind some unsolicited advice . . .”
“Not at all,” Jane encouraged him. “I’d like for the relationship to go well,” she added, hating that keeping up her cover made Harris’s mouth set into such a cold, tight line.
He hesitated, and Dee looked around as if she were trying to find a way out of the conversation that she had started, but finally Harris found his voice again. “His family comes first,” he told Jane with conviction, “especially that sister, Katrin. She practically raised him, and according to my aunt, they almost seem to share a brain. He won’t ever, ever go against her wishes, so if she doesn’t approve of you—and she doesn’t like most people, by the way—you probably shouldn’t get too attached. He’ll let you down.”
“Sisters are important,” Dee offered softly.
Jane thought about Annette, Katrin, and Maeve, and the way Dee had become almost like a sister to her, even if their bond had gotten strange lately.
“They really are,” she agreed, her voice barely above a whisper. She raised her glass in a half-loving, half-melancholy toast, and Dee and Harris followed suit. “Thanks for the perspective.”
Chapter Eighteen
Jane studied the heavy stone archway of the Dorans’ house. It struck her all over again that, squatting gloomily between 664 and 668, the building shouldn’t really have been numbered 665 at all. Were they superstitious, she wondered, or afraid that using the right street number might give something away about them? The greenish-gray mansion easily rose eight stories from the street, but there was nothing graceful or sleek about its height. Even though her inner architect, which tended to see things in blueprint form, insisted that it was vertical, it seemed to almost be looming over the sidewalk. The windows, although moderately sized, were set deep back into the thick stone. She remembered how little daylight penetrated the fortress, even on the higher floors. André typed a short code into a discreet keypad to the right of the entrance, and a massive wooden door swung open on silent hinges. They stepped through the enormous arched entryway into the foyer.
An icy shiver ran down the length of Jane’s spine at the familiar marble and gilt. That’s where Cora fell when I hit her with that ball of magic . . . That’s where they re-paneled the wall after I nearly killed Malcolm’s father by accident . . . It was a nerve-racking trip down evil memory lane. No one will recognize me, she told herself with as much conviction as she could muster. And it was true that Gunther, the ancient uniformed doorman, barely opened his bleary eyes as they passed by. Although her return to the mansion was momentous for her, to everyone else she was just another slinkily dressed invitee.
The atrium was full of those, Jane noted when the wood-paneled elevator let her and André off on the eighth floor. The eighth floor had always made Jane a little uncomfortable. Although normally she liked airy spaces—of which there were few enough in the Dorans’ massive house—something about the floor-to-ceiling glass that ran all the way around the building made her feel as though the mansion might try to throw her out. The view was spectacular, somehow avoiding taller buildings to create a sightline from Central Park to the East River, but Jane hugged the solid interior of the hollow square, reassured by the cool wall at her back.
Her first instinct was to locate Lynne and then the twins. The semi-familiar woman Jane had noticed with them at the last party was nearby, apparently deep in conversation, but Jane felt sure she was keenly aware of André and Ella’s entrance all the same. That must be André’s sister, Jane realized. She couldn’t see much of the woman’s face in its one-quarter profile, but there was a similarity in their coloring.
She doesn’t want me here, Jane thought, her smugness at getting in tinged with anxiety. But I don’t really want to be here, either, so once I get what I came for we’ll both be a lot happier.
Unfortunately, getting what she came for seemed to be a lot easier thought than done. It required slipping away from the party, for starters, and although Katrin Dalcascu seemed determined to spend the evening with her back pointedly turned to Jane, the resident witches were a lot less inclined to lose sight of her. Lynne, in particular, kept her dark eyes riveted on Jane. Her scrutiny was so intense that Jane kept feeling the urge to check the artful folds of the black fabric of her sheath dress to make sure nothing had slipped. She had been going for “elegant but understated,” hoping it would help her blend in to the shadows, but that wouldn’t help if she couldn’t even get to said shadows unnoticed.
André’s arm circled her waist possessively, and Jane jumped a little. A whole floor full of people keeping their enemies closer. At least André’s presence seemed to keep Lynn
e away, and Jane felt a tiny sliver of relief at not having to make up more information about Malcolm.
She sipped at her champagne, then took a longer drink of it. Maybe everyone will just get drunk, she thought hopefully, tracking the movements of a small army of silent waiters bearing trays laden with full flutes. At her current rate, she would probably be pretty tanked herself by the time any of the other witches got tipsy enough to leave her alone. At least Ella has a higher tolerance than Jane, she thought anxiously, raising her glass and then self-consciously lowering it again. Even without the curves she had lost, the eight extra inches of height allowed for more food and drink than her old body could comfortably handle.
“André, I’ve just been dying to get a moment with you. Would you excuse us, dear?”
Jane blinked; Cora McCarroll had seemingly come out of nowhere, and deftly inserted herself between Jane and her date. She linked her arm in his and led him away before he could even open his mouth to protest. Jane froze, feeling as exposed as a deer in headlights.
Halfway across the room, one corner of Lynne’s peach-lipsticked mouth twitched up, and then her black-and-white Chanel dress began to move purposefully toward Jane. Jane glanced around for some sort of cover, but saw nothing except a crowd of unfamiliar faces in her immediate vicinity. The plain, recessed wooden door that led to the back staircase was only a few yards away, practically taunting her with its nearness. Jane scowled at it, then turned back toward Lynne.
But the vintage Chanel was no longer in view, because someone had directly blocked Lynne’s path. The sharply muscled planes of the woman’s exposed back and her severe black haircut were instantly recognizable: Katrin had put herself between Lynne and Jane. Jane held her breath expectantly for a short moment, but Lynne’s face did not reappear around Katrin. She was obviously eager to discover what Ella knew about her son, but not so eager that she would alienate the Dalcascu in order to find out. Careful woman, keeping all her options open until one of them works out.
Jane backed quickly toward the staircase door. The last thing she saw before she reached it was André, striding back to the place where she had been moments before, his face nearly as angry as Lynne’s. Jane shivered at the sight of him, feeling a moment of real fear. Her hands felt numb, but she forced them to work with the handle of the door until, finally, it swung open and she all but fell through.
Jane’s breath rasping was the only sound in the suddenly silent air. She fumbled with the catch on her clutch, forcing it open with wooden fingers and fishing out the crumpled baggie inside. It contained four smaller plastic bags, and Jane turned one of them into a makeshift mixing bowl for the rest. Annette Doran, she thought fiercely, closing her eyes. Annette Doran. Annette Doran. A vision of the girl’s square jaw and dirty-blond waves of hair floated in front of her. Annette Doran. Annette Doran. Annette Doran. The girl’s dark eyes stared out of her golden skin and bored into Jane’s closed ones. Annette Doran, she thought violently, smearing the combination of powders on her eyelids.
The stairway looked exactly the same when she opened her eyes again, and she fought off a wave of disappointment. The spell wouldn’t work until she saw something that belonged to Annette, so there was no real way to tell whether she’d performed it correctly. But Jane felt a strange, eerie tingling in her fingertips and eyelashes, and decided that magic was definitely happening.
She tapped down the stairs as quickly as care allowed, stopping at the seventh floor. That floor was mostly bedrooms, including the one she had shared with Malcolm, so it seemed like the best place to start. Her heart pounding audibly, Jane entered the same code André had used for the main entrance, and was relieved when the door swung open. It was possible that the Dorans could have gotten more paranoid since her great escape the month before, but all the keypads apparently still responded to the authorized codes. Jane, scanning telepathically for all she was worth, stepped into the corridor.
It was dark and silent. Jane felt one of Lynne’s thousands of Oriental carpets beneath her feet, and she moved quietly to the nearest door. Linen closet, she realized disappointedly, closing it again quickly. The next one was closer to what she was looking for: the door revealed a high four-poster bed, a teak armoire, and a few overstuffed chairs near a mosaic-inlaid fireplace. The bed was perfectly made, the armoire looked empty, and the dim yellow glow of the streetlamps outside didn’t reveal a single personal item to Jane’s eager stare. She blinked again, hoping her magic eye shadow would do something—anything—but her vision remained unchanged. It’s a huge house, she reminded herself. But four sterile, empty guest rooms later, she began to have real doubts. Lynne was conscious of the past, but she wasn’t especially sentimental: the Lowell Hotel was homier and more personal than the mansion’s vacant rooms.
A creaking noise sounded somewhere in the maze of dark hallways, and Jane whipped open the closest door and jumped inside. She pulled the door most of the way closed, avoiding the snick of the latch. Her heartbeat pounded so hard she felt dizzy, and she rested her head against the painted wood of the door until it began to slow. She didn’t hear any new noises, and she exhaled all of the air in her lungs. She glanced around quickly at the room she had hidden in. It was much smaller and plainer than the others, with a window no wider than Jane’s shoulders. Sofia’s room, or someone else on the staff, she realized. With a disappointed sigh, she slipped back out of the little bedroom.
I’m thinking about this wrong, Jane decided. Lynne plays the media like a fiddle, but her real self is super-private; she wouldn’t leave Annette’s things out for just anyone to see. Malcolm felt like he had to hide his own memento away in a bank vault. She groped her way back along the hallway toward the wooden door that led to the stairs. But she still might have kept hers close by.
Jane knew—theoretically—where Lynne’s bedroom was on the sixth floor, but she had never been inside. She held her breath as she turned the polished-brass door handle, but it didn’t give off so much as a squeak. Her eyes adjusted slowly to the dark interior of the room. A king-size four-poster bed resolved itself first, and eventually Jane was able to make out a few chairs, a low table, and a massive armoire. No windows—does she combust in direct sunlight?
She closed her eyes, listened hard for any nearby minds, and flicked on the light switch. The room was almost as spare and cold as in the dark: the wallpaper was a steely charcoal color that reminded her of the twins’ flat pewter eyes. The pattern on it showed twisting vines of the same color, winding their way toward the ceiling but never reaching it, and the depressing theme was repeated on the bedspread and pillow shams. The devil has pillow shams. Jane shuddered, but even with the warm light of the wall sconces to supplement the spell on her eyelids, nothing in the room seemed the slightest bit out of place. There was, however, a door in the far wall that Jane hadn’t been able to see in the dark.
It’s just a bathroom, she tried to tell herself, even after she noticed the open door to a gray-marbled bathroom off to her right. It’s nothing. But her black Swarovski-studded peep-toes were moving as if of their own accord, carrying her toward the closed door. The honey-colored floorboards creaked faintly when she was halfway there, but it was too late: no one was listening and no one came to stop her, and within moments her hand was on the doorknob. This is a terrible idea, her brain told her as she pushed the door open.
All of Jane’s senses heightened as soon as she flipped the lights on in what could only be Lynne’s private office. A massive teak desk squatted in front of the deep-set window, and a couple of teak-lined file cabinets stood against the left-hand wall. Jane’s gaze ran along the walls, whose paper matched the bedroom’s, looking for a cliché along the lines of a painting hiding a wall safe, but there was nothing. Lynne apparently liked a thoroughly spartan working environment; her desk was as uncluttered as her walls. She’s obsessed with her family’s history; I know she is, Jane thought anxiously, tugging at a drawer of one of the file cabinets. It opened easily under her hand, and she
shut it again with a little more force than she needed, reaching for the next one before it was fully closed. The second drawer wasn’t locked, either, and Jane worked her way quickly around the room. Nothing stood out, and nothing was locked.
Who the hell is this woman?
Jane’s breath sped up. She couldn’t stay away from the party forever, but what was she supposed to do now? Her whole plan had been based on the assumption that something of Annette’s must still be in Lynne’s possession, but what if she had been wrong all along?
She stumbled as she made her way back toward the immaculate bedroom, a vicious cramp knotting her stomach. Her fumbling fingers flicked off the light, and then the one in the bedroom as well, and then she was in the hallway. As she pulled the door shut behind her, she realized that she hadn’t closed the office door, but her blood was pounding in her ears, and her entire body was wracked with the awareness of her failure, and details like that didn’t seem to even matter anymore.
Two more weeks as Ella, and then I can go back to being hunted as Jane. Even if Annette’s things were still in the house somewhere, it was a huge house, and hadn’t Malcolm once told her that the families who lived there had divided and redivided it as needed? Ariel McCarroll could be sleeping on Annette’s old pillow, for all Jane knew, but there was no way she could search all eight floors in one evening without attracting the wrong kind of attention.
She leaned against the wall of the hallway, closing her eyes and feeling blank with disappointment. She wanted to rally, to think of some new plan, but her brain just felt hollow. Not knowing what else to do, she pulled herself away from the wall and made her slow way back up the stairs.
The Dark Glamour Page 13
