The Dark Glamour

by Gabriella Pierce

  The window! she realized in a heart-pounding rush. It was backward, she knew, and her eyes were nearly closed; but it didn’t matter: the silhouette outside was symmetrical and enough light filtered in that she could make out the general shape. Two large windows, like halves of a split barrel, Jane told herself rapidly, trying to memorize every detail. Yellowish brick. A tower in the middle, with a little clock. Before she was sure she had it, a large red blur passed in front of the window, blocking the entire building from view. Annette began to turn back toward her cutting board, and Jane mentally tugged at the girl’s mind, trying to get her to slow down. But her magic evidently didn’t work without her body, because Annette continued toward her work without any hesitation.

  As she turned, though, Jane’s eyes caught the thing that had nagged at her mind earlier. A folded newspaper sat on the polished bar beside the bin of limes, and this time Jane got a clear glimpse of it before she was stuck again with the sight of the citrus-stained cutting board.

  The Times, it read quite clearly, with an intricate crest between the two words. It was a popular enough name for a newspaper, but Jane knew exactly what she was looking at. After all, she had seen the same crest every day for two years next to her desk at Atelier Antoine, because Elodie Dessaix, the daughter of a British diplomat, was a lifelong subscriber to The Times of London. And that red thing . . . I’m almost positive that was a double-decker bus.

  Jane could feel her spirit starting to tug her away from Annette’s. The sensation was mild so far, but she suspected that it wouldn’t stay that way for long. She had done well this time, but the spell still couldn’t last forever. She thought about trying to fight its pull, but the memory of being torn forcefully back into her own body made her feel faint. And I’m exhausted, she realized; her whole spirit felt shaky and weak. I have to let go.

  Jane’s will collapsed then. She blinked briefly and saw the plain white ceiling of her hotel room and felt the quilted bedspread beneath her folded body.

  I quit, bounced hollowly around her brain. I was there, and I just let it go.

  But all her energy was gone; she couldn’t stir her muscles to sit up or even roll over to switch off the lamp. Instead, her mind swam downward toward darkness, forcing her into a sleep that was more like a temporary death.

  Chapter Twenty-One

  Jane was in her old farmhouse in Saint-Croix-sur-Amaury, but Gran was nowhere to be found. Jane moved through the house, running her fingertips over the depressing oil paintings along the stairway, and then across the round kitchen table with its bouquet of dead daisies in their familiar blue-glazed vase. She wanted to call out for Gran—it would have been the most natural thing to do—but her vocal cords wouldn’t obey. She left the kitchen, an added sense of urgency hurrying her steps along, and moved quickly toward the living room. The hallway felt almost too short; she was afraid of arriving at her destination and wished for a longer delay, but the entrance to the living room was just ahead, and there was no avoiding what was waiting for her inside.

  She tried to brace herself for what she would find, but it was hard to concentrate when Malcolm was banging on the farmhouse door. She tried, but it seemed that every step that brought her closer to the living room also made the pounding outside more urgent. Can’t he just let me do this? she wondered angrily. He’s the whole reason I’m here.

  She wanted to go in and see Gran, but the knocking wouldn’t let her think. She hesitated between the entrance to the living room and the front door; maybe it would be easier to see what Malcolm wanted first, then go and visit Gran. But I need to see her, she fretted anxiously; there was definitely a reason why she needed to see Gran before she let Malcolm in. But with the racket at the front door, it was impossible to remember why.

  Come in, she whispered.

  “Come in,” she mumbled out loud, rolling over and shoving her face into her soft hotel pillow.

  Then she sat bolt upright. The knocking came again at the door to her suite, and she realized that she had at least a few seconds to prepare for whomever might walk through the door. She swept the stuffed bunny underneath the frame of the bed, tugging the edges of the comforter down carefully to make sure it was covered. She swung her legs over the side of the bed and kicked the box containing the rest of Annette’s things into the closet, pausing briefly to pull a terrycloth Lowell robe over her rumpled black dress.

  By the time she reached the door of her suite, the knocking was as loud as it had been in her dream. She yanked it open. It wasn’t Malcolm on the other side (of course it’s not, she realized belatedly, with a pang of regret); it was André.

  He seemed almost as startled to see her as she was to see him, and she wondered just how disheveled she looked after the previous night’s marathon of stress and magic. But he recovered quickly, smiling his predator’s smile and holding up a bottle of Pommery for her to see. “I thought I might invite myself to join you for brunch,” he explained courteously. “So I come bearing gifts.” His smile stayed in place, but his eyes flickered curiously over her shoulder, sweeping as much of the suite as he could see. His body slanted forward slightly, and she could tell he was eager to get inside for a better look.

  I must have really rattled him with the strange behavior last night. He’d been suspicious of her since he had discovered that she was a witch; of course he wouldn’t believe a lame upset-stomach excuse. But she had hidden the evidence of her real purpose in going to the Dorans’ house, so she smiled as convincingly as she could and stepped aside to let him in.

  “I’ll call room service, but do we need orange juice or is there some in your kitchen?” he asked, his voice fading as he made his way into the living room.

  “I don’t have any,” Jane replied, following him slowly. The full details of the night before were starting to filter in to her surprised brain. “But I’m afraid I don’t really have time for room service, either. I have to make an unexpected trip today, so we should probably just save that bottle for when I get back.”

  The unmistakable pop of the champagne’s cork startled her, and she flinched back into the hallway. André, as graceful and unconcerned as ever, fished two flutes out of the bar cabinet, filled them with careful, alternating pours, and held one out to her. Jane took it automatically, but André didn’t let go. She glanced up to see his burning black eyes boring into hers. “Where are you going?” he asked, and there was nothing unconcerned about his voice.

  Jane fought the instinct to flinch; André would notice any sign of fear or uncertainty. Lynne’s interest in me is a double-edged sword. He can’t afford to scare me off, but he’ll be scrutinizing every move I make. She closed her eyes as she sipped her champagne, drawing the moment out as long as she could to steady her nerves. She had already lied to André about nearly everything she possibly could, and it was doubtful he believed any of it anymore. What could it hurt to tell him where she was really going? London was a big place, and no one but her knew that Annette Doran was even alive. It was better to tell as much of the truth as she could than to risk getting caught over an unnecessary lie. “I have to go to London,” Jane told him, deliberately turning her back on him to saunter to the taupe couch, “this afternoon. Some family business just came up.”

  André crossed the room in three swift steps and sank down beside her on the couch. The hairs on her arms stood up with the charge of his nearness, and she tugged absently at the cuffs of her robe. “You haven’t told me about your family.”

  I can’t fake a whole branch of a witch family to him, she decided frantically; if she made up concrete facts, he might check them out. It would be best to stay vague. “They’re terribly boring,” she countered, widening her eyes innocently. “But sometimes my twenty-year-old cousin gets it into her head to party like a rock star; she’s been to rehab twice already. But it doesn’t stick, so this time I got elected to talk some sense into her before she gets out of hand again.”

  André looked thoughtful. “London. Today.”


  She nodded, sipping her champagne and wishing he would relax enough to do the same. “I think the flights mostly leave in the afternoon, but I haven’t even booked a ticket yet, so I have a busy morning ahead.”

  An amused smirk twisted his mouth. “Considering that it’s almost noon, I would say so.”

  Holy crap. Jane whipped around to check the clock on the mantel. No wonder he was surprised to see me in my bathrobe. The spell must have taken even more out of her than she had realized; she had slept for over eleven hours. “Wow,” she observed feebly. “The aftereffects of last night.”

  André nodded thoughtfully, and Jane hoped he was comparing her current disarray with her long, long absence from the party the night before. She suspected that they would add up, even if it was only a lucky coincidence. “Well,” he said finally, “it seems I can be of service.” Jane raised an eyebrow curiously, encouraging him to explain. “I had an ulterior motive in coming here this morning,” he confessed self-deprecatingly. “I planned to tell you that I needed to leave town for a while as well, and hoped you would forgive my absence. It’s unavoidable . . . but now I think the timing is better than I had thought.”

  “Oh,” Jane blurted out, and then stopped, confused. “Where are you going?”

  “Mainland Europe,” he purred, and she guessed that he didn’t intend to get any more specific about that. “But I had also been thinking of making a stop in London, and suddenly that seems like a much more appealing prospect. So,” he finished in a businesslike tone that caught her off-guard, “we will take my plane. The pilot is on notice for five o’clock, which gives us plenty of time for brunch.”

  Jane blinked. Well that happened fast. “I couldn’t possibly impose,” she began, knowing as she did that protests would be useless.

  “Nonsense,” he told her, just as she had expected, and then he reached over and held her chin in his fingers, forcing it up gently until she met his eyes. His pupils were dilated, and she felt uneasily as if she might fall in. “I will not take no for an answer.”

  “Well, then,” Jane said slowly, licking her lips involuntarily. “I guess the answer is yes.”

  He smiled wider then and raised his still-full glass in a toast. As she clinked hers against it, her head was racing with excuses. She opened her mouth to backpedal, but before she could speak, he covered it with his own. Her objections slipped out of her mind as his kisses grew more insistent, more demanding.

  He pushed her back on the couch and pulled her terrycloth robe open, glancing only briefly at the cocktail dress she still wore underneath. His large, capable hands found its invisible zipper without the slightest hesitation, and her body rose up to meet his hungrily.

  Danger, a tiny part of her brain whispered, but the tension just sent a deeper thrill through her.

  I don’t care.

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  Sunlight glimmered off Jamaica Bay, refracting into a million bright pieces in the airplane’s cabin. Jane had always heard that private jets tended to be less glamorous than they sounded, but this certainly was not true of the Dalcascus’ plane. Heavy, gold-embroidered curtains worked as movable dividers to create as large or intimate a space as was needed, and André had opted for something fairly intimate. There were two oversize seats for takeoff and landing, and a low couch along the opposite side that was as deep as a bed. More curtains doubled as wall-hangings, obscuring the usual gray plastic of the plane’s shell. It wasn’t to Jane’s taste, exactly—the Romanian siblings favored bloodred leather and velvet and a clutter of luxury over the clean, open spaces she preferred. But there was no denying that the thing was swank, and once their climb slowed and gravity relaxed its downward pull, it was as easy to believe that she was in a sexy lounge as thousands of miles up in the sky.

  Complete with sexy strangers, she thought, glancing coyly at André, who was buckled in beside her. Two weeks would normally be enough time to at least start to get to know someone, but their bizarre double-double-agent game ensured that she had no real idea who the man sitting next to her really was. It’s just as well, she decided. She didn’t really want a romance and certainly couldn’t afford another entanglement right now. So if by some miracle André turned out to be a genuinely good and likable guy, she would really prefer not to know about it. And if, as she suspected was far more likely, he was as evil and soulless as Lynne Doran, she’d rather not know that, either. It was far more palatable to be sleeping with a stranger than with the enemy.

  He blinked against the slanting sunlight, his long black eyelashes settling briefly on his olive skin, and Jane nearly sighed out loud at the sight of him. It was definitely better to just enjoy the moment and not ask too many questions. As long as she didn’t make the mistake of actually trusting him, he was the perfect companion.

  André’s eyes were open a slit, and slanted toward her small, perky breasts. Jane had been pleased to realize that she no longer required a bra at all, and André seemed to greatly appreciate that new direction in her wardrobe. But they were both distracted by a subtle-but-noticeable light that flashed on over the cabin door, and Jane cleared her throat and sat up in her red leather seat. “Does that mean the plane’s going down?”

  “Not the plane, no,” André leered, his accent a little thicker than usual. But he pressed a button on the wall, and the door opened to reveal a stewardess wearing what Jane could only describe as a black leather bustier.

  Seriously?

  The woman swished in with all the swagger of a professional dominatrix. Jane automatically pressed herself back against her chair, but all the woman did was drop a scrap of glossy paper in her lap, another one in André’s, and sashay through the cabin door again. “Dinner,” André explained curtly, and if Jane wasn’t mistaken, he was blushing a little as he held up his piece of paper to show her the menu printed on it.

  Bet the flight attendant does more than just waitress duty, if asked, Jane realized, blushing a little herself. She clenched the menu in one hand and read it over and over until a few of the words made sense. Should you ever order oysters on a plane? How about on this plane?

  The meal, of course, turned out to be every bit as flawless as the ones she had enjoyed back on land when she had been a Doran fiancée. In addition to the oysters, there was caviar with toast points, red snapper tartare, medium-rare quail, and a boeuf bourguignon that rivaled Gran’s. The flight attendant swished in periodically with new plates, expertly matched glasses of wine, and the occasional lingering smile that made Jane feel uncomfortably as if her clothes had suddenly gone see-through.

  But eventually the meal was done, the sun was setting behind the Atlantic Ocean, and she was alone in the red-draped cabin with André. Coincidentally or not, he was also watching her in a way that made her wonder if she was still dressed . . . and how strongly she felt about staying that way. Even though she had never been able to read his mind magically, thanks to Katrin’s blocking mojo, she had a fairly strong intuition about what sorts of things he might be thinking. There are still hours and hours left in the flight, she reminded herself, stretching her long body languorously.

  “The ‘fasten your seat belts’ light is off,” he told her, echoing her thoughts. “Perhaps now you would like to see the rest of the plane?”

  Jane unbuckled her seat belt obligingly but stayed in her seat. “What sort of things might I see?” she asked archly.

  “There is an office,” he told her idly, running an olive forefinger along her arm and making the fine hairs stand on end. “A small one, anyway. Very boring. And a little half-kitchen near the back, in case you want just a snack and not a five-course meal.”

  “Well, we just ate,” Jane murmured, turning her body toward his. “So I don’t think we need that.”

  He gently tugged the shoulder of her top down her arm. “Maybe, maybe not,” he replied softly. “I have learned a thing or two about you, Ella, and I know you are a woman of considerable appetites.” His finger began tracing her collarbone, which seemed
to be directly connected to the electrically warm place between her legs.

  Impulsively, she slid out of her seat and turned so that she was straddling him. His hands gripped the small of her back, pulling her down and closer so that she could feel the hardness of him. “I was hoping to hear about a bedroom,” she told him seriously as his lips touched her throat, “but you kept talking about everything else and wore out my patience.”

  “Hmm,” he murmured, his voice muffled by her warming skin, “I would never wish to upset a guest, but I do enjoy testing the limits of your patience.” He reached up and began unfastening the small, iridescent shell buttons of her top. It was a brick-red satin sleeveless thing that would have made the real Jane look both blotchy and lumpy, but on Ella it looked divine, and Ella was the one who coyly slid André’s leather belt out of its buckle. He smiled when he reached her last button, and pulled the top just partway down over her arms, so they were caught behind her in the fabric.

  Then he surged up and spun her back into her own chair, pinning her there with his body. Jane wriggled a little, experimentally. She was pretty sure she could work her arms free of her top with a little effort, if she wanted to, but then André began to kiss his way down her body and she discovered that she really preferred to stay exactly where she was. After a brief pause to flick his tongue gently around her nipples, he moved downward, his mouth sending shivers radiating out in every direction.

  The waistband of the long, swishy broomstick skirt she was wearing—another piece that wouldn’t have flattered Jane’s real, much shorter body—was elastic, and André rolled it down turn by turn. His mouth explored each inch of newly exposed skin, and Jane moaned happily. Good food, great wine, the setting sun turning the tops of the clouds all gold, and an incredibly sexy man who can’t get enough of my body, she counted in her head: it was a lot of blessings at once. Even if I am in near-constant danger, including right now.