The Dark Glamour

by Gabriella Pierce

  Elodie cocked her head thoughtfully. “What color were those fuzzy socks I got at Galeries Lafayette?”

  “Green. And you got gray ones for me. And it wasn’t at Galeries Lafayette, it was from one of those vendors right outside.”

  “What did Antoine say about the real Marjorie’s first drafting project?”

  “That it looked like she spent her entire time at university screwing guys who couldn’t draw, which is probably true.”

  Elodie smiled a little and ducked her head to hide it. Jane’s heart jumped in her chest: how was it that everyone she liked turned out to be either thoroughly evil or amazingly cool? But Elodie wasn’t done testing her yet. “Show me some magic.”

  Jane frowned. She didn’t want to admit to being able to read Elodie’s mind, since she already felt guilty about doing it moments before. And “Think of a number between one and a million” felt kind of gimmicky, anyway. But telekinesis never goes out of style, right? Jane checked discreetly around; while there were a few people who were technically within sight, none of them seemed to be paying any attention to the two girls on the stone bench. Many were holding umbrellas and most were hurrying along; they were about as private as they were ever going to be in a public place.

  She pulled at her magic again, feeling its sluggish reluctance to respond. I know we’re tired, she told it soothingly. Just a little now; I only need a little. “Watch the tree,” she told Elodie shortly, her voice coming out as more of a gasp. Elodie obediently turned to the crackly-barked acacia whose canopy spread almost to the space above their heads. Its leaves were still not much more than buds this early in the year, and there were even some of the edamame-like seedpods left on its branches. From Elodie’s rapt posture, Jane suspected that she was waiting to see Jane magically make the entire tree dance or something, but she hoped her friend would settle for much, much less.

  She tugged as hard as she could at one of the brown seedpods closest to them, and it danced noncommittally on its twig. What would Dee say? she asked herself sarcastically, and pulled in a shaky breath to try again. This time, the seedpod came loose and began whirling toward the ground like a tiny little helicopter rotor. Feeling a little more comfortable with her plan now, Jane mentally caught it in midair, stopping its fall just above Elodie’s black curls. She let it down slowly from there, turning it back and forth as if to display it. Elodie watched its unnaturally slow descent curiously, reaching up as if she might touch it and then pulling her hand back superstitiously. Jane made the pod bounce a bit in the air for emphasis, and Elodie, not taking her eyes off the hovering object, nodded. Exhaling all the air in her lungs, Jane let it fall. Elodie flinched to one side to avoid letting it touch her.

  For a long, silent moment, Elodie looked at the seedpod by her feet. It wasn’t major magic, Jane knew, but wouldn’t it have convinced her six months ago? Finally, Elodie cleared her throat. “So you’re Jane. And I was totally right that moving to New York was a god-awful mistake, and now you know never to ignore my advice again.”

  “You loved Malcolm before he proposed,” Jane pointed out reasonably, ignoring her urge to sigh with relief. “You even loved him after he proposed; you just didn’t love that he was from America. Which was, as it turns out, the least of his flaws.”

  Elodie’s eyes softened, and Jane saw concern in the corners of her mouth. “He . . . really killed her? Your Gran?”

  Jane nodded, her eyes finally filling with tears. “It’s not that simple, of course. He was manipulated. There’s a whole history, and it’s all super-complex. Except that really, it is that simple. He murdered my only family, and now I have to reunite his just to stop them from murdering me.”

  Elodie drew her plump lower lip between her teeth. “This sister, who’s in London. You must know more than that—haven’t you even Googled her yet?” She pulled a sleek phone out of her faux-crocodile purse. “I can do it now; what’s her name?”

  Jane shook her head. “It used to be Annette Doran, but there’s no way she’s been living under that name for more than twenty years without being found.” How was she never found? Jane’s mind prodded at her; she still didn’t have an answer, and she didn’t have the time to try to figure one out. Annette was alive, and Jane had to find her; that was all that mattered right now.

  Elodie put her phone away, then turned back to Jane. “So then how will we find her? There are a lot of women in London.”

  “I know,” Jane agreed, “but we don’t need to find a woman. We just need to find a building.” She fished in her own purse for the little notebook and pen she had stashed in there in case she stumbled across any clues she needed to write down. She sketched the one real clue she had on it: the outline of the building she had seen outside the window of Annette’s pub. “These parts were windows,” she clarified, shading most of the two half-cylinders, “and the whole thing is sort of goldish brick.”

  But Elodie was already nodding confidently. “This is King’s Cross Station. She lives at King’s Cross Station?”

  “She works across from it,” Jane clarified. She felt a momentary stab of doubt; Elodie’s eye for architecture was at least as good as hers, but Jane’s drawing was cramped and marred by the lines on her notebook paper. “Are you sure?”

  “Of course I’m sure,” Elodie insisted, rolling her brown eyes in annoyance. “You disappeared to the States like all those girls who dump their friends for a guy, showed up on my doorstep like the world’s most conspicuous protected witness, and then dumped all of these ridiculous secrets in my lap; the least you can do is believe what I tell you. Especially when your entire ‘plan’ apparently consisted of strolling around one of the biggest cities in the world looking for one building. Dolt.”

  Jane nodded, although she would have preferred to be dancing with glee. She works across from King’s Cross Station, she tried out in her head. Oh, Annette? Sure, she’s at some little pub by King’s Cross. I know just where she is. “Okay,” she agreed. “Well, look. I’ve heard of that station, so I’m sure it’s on my map. I can’t thank you enough for believing me and helping me. I promise you that once all this is over—”

  “Seriously?” Elodie asked in a dangerously low voice. When she spoke again, it was nearly a shriek. “Seriously? So you go find this chick and I go to the Finnish embassy and that’s it now?”

  “Consulate,” Jane corrected automatically, and then winced. “Look, El, I couldn’t stand being responsible for getting you any more involved than I already have. It’s not safe.” The image of Maeve sleepwalking out into the middle of a city street flashed before Jane’s eyes. She saw Lynne’s malevolent stare, the taxi hurtling forward, Maeve’s fragile body crumpling like paper. Then she saw Yuri, pinning Dee’s helpless body to the ground and raising a tire iron for what would surely have been a fatal blow. Jane shuddered. “It’s better for me to go alone.”

  Elodie pursed her lips, and Jane sensed trouble. “Like you went to New York alone? Like you fled the scene of your own wedding alone? Or came to London and started wandering around with no plan whatsoever until you cracked and told me your whole story, alone? Jane, honey, you’re really not doing so well on your own.”

  Jane thought about pointing out that she had, technically, done the first two things on Elodie’s list with Malcolm and the third with André, but she doubted that any of those corrections would support her point. Besides, she hadn’t been able to even really talk with Dee during the last couple of weeks, and it was undeniably nice to have a close friend by her side again. “I’ll be fine,” she protested, but her heart wasn’t in it.

  “You haven’t been so far,” Elodie reminded her tartly, and hopped off the bench. She held out a hand to Jane, who reluctantly allowed herself to be pulled up to stand beside her friend. “Come on; I could use a pint after all this, anyway.”

  “Me, too,” Jane muttered under her breath, but if Elodie heard that she ignored it completely.

  Instead of responding, she linked her arm through Jan
e’s, striding off so energetically that Jane stumbled a little to keep up. She checked halfheartedly over her shoulder to make sure they weren’t being followed. Elodie’s positive energy was so infectious, though, that for the first time that day Jane really didn’t expect to see anyone there. The old Jane didn’t jump at shadows, she realized with a new confidence. I’m getting bits of her back already. She squeezed Elodie’s arm a little extra for good measure and turned her attention back to the path ahead of them.

  Chapter Twenty-Five

  “You could totally see the station from there,” Elodie whispered, pointing along the street. Tucked between a punk clothing store and an apartment building, a pub sat almost directly opposite the yellow-brick building Jane had seen in her vision of Annette. It was painted dark green, had a small dusty window on either side of its red door, and a sign hanging over the sidewalk said THE CHEEKY DRAGON. Elodie discreetly blocked her pointing finger from view with her other hand, looking around them suspiciously.

  The stuff spies are made of, Jane thought, smiling. Once they had left the stately buildings by the river far behind, Jane was even happier to have company. She didn’t exactly feel unsafe in King’s Cross, but it definitely wasn’t as nice a neighborhood as the Dessaixes’. Now and then, one of the men hurrying into or out of the station would glance up and stare at her in a way that made her wish she had worn a plain black raincoat instead of her rather flashy Burberry-plaid one. She was glad not to be there alone.

  Ignoring the glances from passersby, Jane stopped across from the pub and took it in. The Dragon seemed to almost be squatting on the curb. A neon sign advertised Guinness, and a streaky chalkboard by the door listed food Jane was fairly sure would taste even worse than it sounded. Why do these people insist on eating “kidney” when there’s “foie” out there? Besides, if the kitchen was anything like the rather grubby bar she had seen Annette working at, Jane suspected that she really should pass on dinner.

  “Good, I’m starved,” Elodie declared, dragging Jane across the street toward the red-painted door.

  “Are you French at all?” Jane grumbled, but she good-naturedly let herself be pulled across the threshold.

  A few older men—the same men, Jane recognized, who were in bars at five o’clock all over the Western world—were scattered around the dark room. One of the wooden booths was occupied by a twentysomething couple in cheap clothes; a small group of university-age students was gathered around a cluster of stools at one end of the bar. A very young-looking man in a stained white button-down shirt ran a grayish sponge along the bar. Jane twisted her fingers together: was this the right place?

  Some parts looked familiar—the colors were right, and the general shape of the room—but she had seen everything from a perspective that she couldn’t get to without drawing an impossible amount of attention to herself. And I don’t see Annette anywhere.

  “Sit. Down,” Elodie hissed in her ear, and Jane’s knees buckled cooperatively. Fortunately, there was a wooden bench just behind them, but she suspected that she would have some bruises on her rear end from the impact. No big; André will kiss that all better, she caught herself thinking, and blushed furiously. “Is she here?” Elodie asked so softly that she almost just mouthed the words.

  “No,” Jane whispered back. “And we’re kind of overdressed.” Elodie’s stylish boots, expensive top, and obviously well-groomed hair stood out like a stoplight, and Jane imagined that her own sleek Burberry look wasn’t much better. Three of the girls in the student-ish group in the corner, all in sweats and too-tight denim, had their heads close together in a gossipy pose. The young man behind the bar watched Jane and Elodie as though they were a pair of green, slimy aliens and didn’t make any kind of move in their direction. Jane twisted her hands awkwardly together on the table, then moved them to her lap.

  “They’re just jealous.” Elodie giggled, pulled out a tiny camera, and snapped a few random photos like a giddy tourist.

  “I’m trying to be inconspicuous,” Jane reminded her waspishly, kicking at her under the table.

  “Can I get you something?” a British-accented voice asked them, and both girls jumped. A waitress was standing by their table, wearing faded jeans and a fitted white tee that emphasized her generous bust. Most important, she had wavy, shoulder-length dark-gold hair, an elegantly square jaw, and dark eyes like two deep pools.

  Holy . . . Jane kicked Elodie under the table again, harder this time. Elodie winced, but rose to the occasion. “We’ll both take pints of Guinness and fish-and-chips, please.”

  Annette pursed her lips in concern. “Kitchen’s closed another half-hour,” she told them carelessly, her voice the liquid-gold sister of Malcolm’s deep rumble. “I can get you sandwiches, or you can just start with the pints and wait if you like.”

  “We’ll do that,” Jane agreed, feeling strangely out of her own body. Although she had used her own natural, American-English accent to talk to Elodie, she faintly remembered that “Ella” was supposed to sound foreign—in fact, she was supposed to sound just like Elodie. Shape up, she snapped at herself, correcting the sound of the words in her mind. “We’ll wait, I mean,” she clarified when she realized that both Elodie and Annette were giving her confused stares. “With just the beers, is fine.”

  Annette nodded crisply and moved off, although Jane caught her glancing curiously over her shoulder at their table.

  “We sound like sisters all of a sudden,” Elodie whispered sardonically.

  “Um,” Jane replied wittily, still watching Annette out of the corner of her eye. The girl had an athletic squareness to her, but her movement wasn’t especially easy or graceful. She reminded Jane of an overgrown puppy still trying to get used to the new length of her limbs.

  “It’s a good idea,” she went on. “No one has ever been able to figure out where I’m from.”

  “That was the idea,” Jane confirmed. Annette was behind the bar, carefully pulling the Guinness tap over a tilted glass. “El, I have no idea what to do next.” I didn’t actually think I’d find her, she realized uncomfortably. Even at her most optimistic, her search had been so far-fetched that she hadn’t been able to really imagine this moment. Everything had been hypothetical, but now she was just a few yards from a very, very real Annette.

  Elodie rolled her eyes in a manner that Jane felt was unnecessarily exaggerated. “Well, you could lurk in the shadows and stalk the girl until either she notices and freaks out, or your clock strikes midnight, Cinder-Ella.” Jane stuck out her tongue. “Thank God you didn’t try to do this alone.”

  Jane opened her mouth to argue, but Annette was coming back. And she had to admit, Elodie was absolutely right. Without the prior knowledge she had used as an “in” with Laura Helding, or the casual confidence she had gotten from André’s obvious attraction to her, she felt completely out of her depth.

  It’s not that I’m not personable, either, she sulked privately as Elodie effortlessly began chatting with Annette. People like me plenty. I just don’t really know where to start with a total stranger I have so much secret history with. But Elodie evidently did, because Annette—or Anne Locksley, as she introduced herself—seemed willing to chat. She was even willing to pose for more of Elodie’s obnoxious tourist photos: she obligingly leaned her head first near Jane’s, then Elodie’s as the camera changed hands, and smiled generically.

  “ ‘Anne’ is a great name,” Jane jumped in while Elodie was fussing to get the camera back in its little case. “I love those really classic ones. Is it a family name?”

  Annette (Anne!) seemed to almost-but-not-quite flinch. The moment was so quick that Jane nearly missed it, but a glance over at Elodie’s concerned frown confirmed that she had seen the girl’s reaction, too. “Anne” was already back to her casual self, though. “Don’t really know,” she admitted.

  “Well, it’s pretty,” Jane offered awkwardly. Anne flashed a smile before whisking herself back to the bar.

  “Nice,” Elodie whi
spered ironically.

  “Well what am I supposed to do?” Jane whispered back. “Show up out of the blue and ask her what happened in the Hamptons when she was six and allegedly died?”

  Elodie chuckled. “I wasn’t saying you weren’t being direct enough, Jan— Ella. I think you scared her off.”

  “I don’t have much time,” Jane reminded her friend, taking a largish swallow of her beer and then self-consciously wiping the bitter foam off her upper lip.

  “Don’t be silly,” Elodie told her in an exasperated tone. “We have these whole pints. And then at least one more, with food. And then two whole weeks, in case you need them.”

  Jane nodded noncommittally. After all of the unexpected twists in the mission so far, it felt impossible to just sit back and relax and let things take their course. She sipped her beer again, more carefully this time. She stiffened when she saw Annette—Anne—heading back toward them with green paper place mats and rolled-up silverware.

  Elodie kicked Jane under the table with one of her pointy-toed boots. She mouthed something that looked a lot like “Chill,” and Jane obediently attempted to do just that.

  “Thanks,” she said when Anne had set their table. It sounded a little squeaky, and Elodie kicked her again. She seemed to be enjoying herself far more than Jane was.