The Lost Soul (666 Park Avenue 3)

by Gabriella Pierce

  ‘Making them all fat?’ Jane guessed, brushing off the back of her slacks.

  ‘Making you all fat,’ Dee corrected happily, linking her arm through Jane’s and tugging her cheerfully down toward the waking house.

  Chapter Ten

  BY THE TIME they had climbed down through the brownstone’s upper three floors, its inhabitants were awake and assembled in the kitchen, which was decorated in a chic but welcoming assortment of black-and-white patterns. Maeve blinked in surprise at the sight of Jane in their midst, then pulled two more dimpled white mugs down from their cabinet, filled each to the brim with coffee, and handed them over. Dee slid hers across the black marble counter toward the stove, strode quickly around to meet it on the other side, and had three frying pans set up on lit burners before Jane could blink.

  ‘She spoils us so,’ Emer murmured, smiling fondly first at Dee’s back, then at Harris. ‘I must have told her to relax a hundred times – we have meals delivered, you know – but she just . . .’

  ‘I like it,’ Dee insisted happily, pulling a fragrant, golden-brown coffee cake out of the oven and winking at Jane’s astonished expression. ‘It’s a kind of meditation, especially when you wake up before everyone else. And it gives my hands something to do while I scheme.’

  ‘Is that what I’ve been doing wrong?’ Maeve wondered aloud, stirring a lump of sugar into her coffee. ‘I’ve never actually set aside time to deliberately scheme.’

  Jane leaned across the counter, admiring the bakery-perfect crumbly topping of the cake, and Dee playfully smacked her nose with a rubber spatula. ‘Let it rest. There’ll be plenty of food any second now.’ She cracked one egg after another into one skillet while stirring some kind of thin batter in a glass bowl with her other hand. ‘I was just updating Jane on all the problems she’s going to have to solve in order to get to Hasina.’

  Jane took a long sip of her coffee to combat the sudden gloom settling over them. ‘You said you do death magic,’ she said suddenly, turning to Emer, who nodded her white-curled head in agreement. ‘I’ve been thinking . . . I would really like to talk to my gran, if there’s a way to do that. You mentioned séances the other day, and I . . .’ She held her empty hands up helplessly, and Dee dropped a slice of buttered sourdough toast into one of them.

  Emer sighed noncommittally and sipped her coffee. ‘Sometimes that is possible, though we usually have more traffic with souls than ghosts. The person, the “self” . . . it begins to fade with death, until only that pure soul is left, with no traces of its former life attached to it. The longer someone has been dead, the fewer living people who knew them, the less you have of what they’ve touched . . . the less of them you will be able to conjure.’ Emer’s vividly green eyes searched Jane’s face. ‘That wasn’t what you wanted to hear.’

  ‘It’s not,’ Jane admitted. She held up her left hand, with its plain silver band on the middle finger that had once belonged to her grandmother. ‘I have this, but that’s it.’ She almost mentioned that Gran’s diary might be coming from the Lowell Hotel, but hesitated. The diary had a magic all its own.

  ‘I assume that its original owner is buried in France,’ Emer mused, leaning forward a little in her white-painted chair, and Jane nodded. ‘Pity. That ring’s no good; I can see from here that it’s been all mixed up with magic for decades. It confuses things. Having the body, though – well, that makes up for just about any other lack. With the bones . . .’ She shivered, and a matching shiver seemed to run down Maeve’s spine. ‘If you’re truly adept and you have someone’s bones, you can call them back for real. Almost-soul, almost-body, and all the “self.” You can command and compel them if you’re strong enough. Most witches used to demand to be cremated, to minimize the risk of being dragged from their graves by unscrupulous enemies. But of course, these days there aren’t nearly as many witches who would even know what to do with a skeleton, so it’s not as important as it once was.’

  Jane thought guiltily of Gran in her casket, deep in the cold ground of Alsace. But how was I supposed to know? Gran had left her to figure out all these things for herself. She clenched her jaw in irritation. ‘So I’m on my own, basically.’

  ‘You have us,’ Harris said. His voice was soft, but his tone was pointed, and Jane bit her lip.

  ‘I do,’ she agreed. ‘And I appreciate that. It’s just that now, with all these obstacles becoming clearer and clearer, I’m not sure what I think I’m doing taking on a thing like this. Six months ago I didn’t even know that magic existed. Hasina is way out of my league – I can’t even get through her front door.’ Before any more self-pity could come pouring out of her mouth, she bit down on her toast, so hard that her teeth ached.

  ‘A door is a door,’ Maeve grumped, and Jane knew she and Dee had been discussing this problem at length. ‘That one has some especially fancy tricks to keep it shut, but at the end of the day it’s meant to be an opening that lets people into a building. We’ve got to be able to work with that.’

  ‘I’ve never gotten through it without help,’ Jane said, slumping into a black-and-white cushioned chair and resting her chin on her hands. ‘I either had a code of my own, or a guest code for a special event, and I know those codes are deactivated by now.’

  ‘But it is just a door.’ Harris stabbed a stack of pancakes violently with a fork.

  ‘Eggs Benedict for you, to start,’ Dee declared, setting a beautifully full plate in front of Jane, who attacked it hungrily. She had suspected for a while now that performing magic burned extra calories, and that was as good an excuse as any to enjoy whatever Dee felt inspired to make. ‘ “Just a door,” ’ the tall Wiccan repeated, practically dancing her way back to the stove. ‘I wonder if we could learn from what Jane’s already done.’ She returned to the table with a platter of coffee-cake squares and passed it to Emer before sitting. ‘When Lynne chased you and Malcolm out of the mansion, she had a shield up. She was magic-proofed, in a way . . . but you still used magic to get to her.’

  Jane, caught with her mouth full of sweet, crumbly cake, hurried to swallow so that she could speak. ‘I didn’t exactly get her,’ she mumbled. ‘I used a tree.’ She had pulled one down into the middle of traffic, causing a huge pileup. Lynne’s magical protection had prevented her from being crushed by it, but in the confusion she had lost her hold on their taxi, allowing them to escape.

  But Emer was nodding thoughtfully. ‘You used magic on the things around her, because she herself was invulnerable. And it changed everything.’

  She arched her thin white eyebrows at Jane, who understood that this was supposed to be the moment when she caught on, but she didn’t really understand how that strategy translated to her current situation. Do they want me to jam traffic until the Dorans come outside to see what’s going on?

  Maeve, who obviously was not fooled in the slightest, snorted and pulled a paper napkin from the top of a stack on the table, unfolding it until Jane could see light filtering through. ‘Grandma, spell it up,’ she requested, and Emer squinted at the napkin intently. Her small frame seemed to grow somehow as she stared at it, her mouth forming silent words that Jane felt sure she should be able to hear somehow. Finally she leaned back and nodded at Maeve, who shot a glance at Jane. ‘Check it out,’ she ordered, shaking the napkin meaningfully. ‘Try to tear it or burn it or something.’

  ‘I’m not really in the mood for fire at the moment,’ Jane admitted, but she dutifully breathed a little magic into her hands and sent it shooting at the napkin. Even though she understood what Emer had done, she still felt a genuine shock when absolutely nothing happened. It hung in Maeve’s fine-boned hands, undamaged, and didn’t even sway under the assault of Jane’s magic. ‘Okay,’ she agreed, impressed. ‘It’s invulnerable.’

  ‘To magic,’ Dee corrected gently, and Maeve held the napkin toward her. Dee poked a French-manicured fingernail through it, and once again Jane felt a thoroughly inexplicable surprise as the paper tore.

  ‘It’s still j
ust paper,’ Harris explained, and to Jane’s relief he sounded as though he was just putting it together himself. ‘Just like the door is still just wood on hinges. You can’t attack it yourself, but you could break it down if you find something heavy enough, and move it fast enough.’

  ‘An SUV would probably do it,’ Dee suggested archly, and Jane stuck her tongue out at her. ‘Okay, too big; it might just bounce off all that stone around the door. Still, picking a battering ram is the easy part.’ She hopped up from her chair, moving back toward the stove as if it were pulling her magnetically. ‘Good ideas are best celebrated with bacon,’ she explained over her shoulder, a satisfied smile playing on her wide mouth.

  ‘Another tree might do it,’ Jane mused, momentarily distracted when her fork clinked down on her empty plate. Harris slid another piece of coffee cake onto it with a mischievous smile, and she grinned back. She hadn’t realized how much lingering awkwardness she had felt around him until Dee had pointed it out; and somehow, acknowledging it seemed to have broken the tension. She remembered how comfortable she felt around him when they had first met, before their chemistry had overshadowed their friendship, and broke off a forkful of cake happily. ‘It took all my juice just to uproot the last one, though,’ she admitted. ‘I don’t know if I could really throw something that heavy.’

  ‘Last time you’d already done about sixteen impossible things before you even got to the tree,’ Maeve pointed out reasonably. ‘And besides, you were alone.’

  Dee leaned over Jane’s chair, scraping three perfectly crisp strips of bacon onto her plate. ‘I may have forgotten to mention that part before,’ she murmured near Jane’s ear. ‘We’re your new coven.’

  ‘You’re my what?’ Jane twisted to follow Dee’s rapid progress away from the table. ‘Are you bribing me with food so I’ll completely ignore your personal safety?’

  ‘You already agreed,’ Harris told her complacently. ‘We went through all this in my car a couple of weeks ago. You agreed to let us in and let us help, and now we’re calling you on it.’

  ‘A Circle is far more powerful than a witch, Jane, and more stable, too,’ Emer added. ‘If your objective is as important to you as it seems, then this would be a foolish thing to argue against.’

  Jane opened her mouth, then closed it again. All her instincts told her that it was too dangerous to let anyone she cared about get onto Hasina’s bad side, but Emer’s words had the ring of truth. If she couldn’t save Annette on her own, but might have a chance with her friends’ help, then they would all be safer if she accepted their offer. And wasn’t I just talking with Malcolm about needing more power? ‘Okay,’ she said. ‘But if any of you takes some stupid risk and gets killed, I’m figuring out a way to bring you back so I can kill you again myself.’

  Emer swallowed a bite of her sandwich and dabbed daintily at the corners of her mouth with Maeve’s torn napkin. ‘I’ll make sure to get you some books that will help you get started with that,’ she offered amiably, and Jane chuckled in spite of her renewed doubts.

  ‘Thank you,’ she said sincerely, then widened her smile to include the entire little group in the kitchen. ‘Really; thank you.’

  Chapter Eleven

  IT TOOK NEARLY a week for Annette to contact Malcolm. Jane was overcome with relief just to hear that she had finally reached out to him – until she heard Annette’s choice of a meeting place.

  ‘It’s not exactly low profile,’ Jane muttered, wrapping her cherry-blossom scarf a little higher to cover part of her chin as well as her neck.

  ‘It is by my mother’s standards,’ Malcolm reassured her, holding the door of the Ainsworth open to let Jane through. ‘There are television screens, for God’s sake. I’m amazed Annette even knows this place exists.’

  Jane would have preferred something a little more dive-like, or better yet a dark alley or hidden park bench, but she knew that New Yorkers had a different scale for measuring privacy than the rest of the world. Nonetheless, she was comforted to find that the inside of the bar was dark and cozy and filled with chattering people who didn’t pay the slightest bit of attention to the latest arrivals. The flat-screen televisions suspended from the ceiling projected a baseball game into every corner of the room. By the time she and Malcolm had slid onto the brown leather of one of the smaller booths, Jane, to her relief, felt more or less invisible.

  ‘She told Mom that she was dying to go on one of those Statue of Liberty boats,’ Malcolm told her absently, drumming his fingers on the table. ‘It was smart, you know? Annette acted really enthusiastic, so Mom would have to break her heart, tag along, or let her go alone, and she really couldn’t stand either of the first two choices.’ He had already said essentially the same thing when Annette had first contacted him, and twice more in the cab on their way to the bar. Jane, feeling a wave of sympathy for the confusing muddle of emotions that he must be feeling, reached her hand out to cover his and help it to still.

  ‘You should try the edamame burger,’ a low voice purred, and Annette slid in next to Malcolm. Jane reflexively jerked her hand back, and Malcolm abruptly stopped his tapping. After a brief once-over of Jane’s body that was uncannily reminiscent of Lynne, the girl added, ‘They’ll make it without the bun, if you ask.’

  Jane bit back a retort. Starting off with sarcasm wasn’t exactly the best approach to a compromise.

  During the past week, Jane and the Montagues had done their best to guess the details of Hasina’s body-switching spell. It would be crucial, Emer explained, to get Annette as far away from Lynne as possible. The distance wouldn’t be enough to save her on its own, but it would buy Jane precious time to interfere and stop Hasina before she could transfer into her new body. That part was still the most uncertain of all their plotting – no one had figured out how they could accomplish the banishment in question.

  Annette and Malcolm traded an awkward sidelong glance, and Jane suddenly felt that she was intruding on something private. She glanced around at the Lacoste-wearing strangers with their bright cocktails and expensive beers, wishing for a moment that she could join them. They looked so happy and normal, not at all like people staging an intervention to prevent the survival of a bloodthirsty immortal spirit. Then again, she thought wryly, we probably don’t look like that, either.

  Jane pretended to study a menu, trying to give the siblings enough distance so that they wouldn’t feel crowded. Malcolm cleared his throat uncomfortably, then took a deep breath and began to explain the Dorans’ true heritage to his sister.

  ‘I can only imagine how hard this is to hear, after you’ve wondered about your birth mother for so long,’ he finished. ‘The family that you come from is a seriously screwed-up one, Annette, and you deserve so much better. But I’m here, and I’ll always be here for you.’

  ‘Did she tell you all this?’ Annette asked when he paused, indicating Jane with her chin.

  ‘She didn’t have to.’ Malcolm pressed gently on his sister’s arm to turn her back toward him. ‘There were clues all over the place. I heard hints and suspicions from a lot of people before I got back here and learned that Jane had put them all together. And I’m glad she did, because you’ve only just come back to me, and I don’t want to lose you all over again.’

  Jane felt her throat swelling a little at the emotion in his voice, but Annette’s face could have been chiseled from flint. ‘I’m sure it was an awfully long twenty years for you,’ she snapped. ‘Why don’t you ask her about that, too?’

  This again. Lynne’s hold over her daughter was so strong, she had Annette convinced that Jane was responsible for everything that had gone wrong in her life – even things that had happened when Jane was barely a toddler. ‘I didn’t know,’ Jane interrupted, then paused as a server passed perilously close to their table, balancing a tray laden with drinks. ‘I didn’t know that Gran had anything to do with your kidnapping until after I’d found you again,’ she resumed in a lower voice. ‘I didn’t even know about magic at all until af
ter Gran died. She never told me any of it. I grew up a lot more like you than I think you realize, actually.’

  She was aware as the last words were leaving her mouth that they were a bit of a risk, but Annette seemed interested rather than offended. ‘Your magic . . . did things?’

  ‘Not like yours,’ Jane admitted, ‘but yes. It happened a lot, and Gran would get upset and angry, and I wouldn’t know why. She was always afraid. I understand her much better now, but it doesn’t erase the things that happened, or how I felt for all those years. It doesn’t undo the loneliness and confusion, and all that time I spent thinking I could never be part of the world.’ She shook her head, trying to shake away the memories, but they clung to her like smoke. ‘Maybe we don’t get to be, really.’

  ‘Our mother took nearly everything from Jane,’ Malcolm added into the silence that followed. ‘She’s about to take everything from you. Think hard: Haven’t you had any doubts these last few weeks?’

  Annette pressed her full lips together, her jaw tensing a little into its familiar stubborn set. ‘Has she encouraged you to make friends?’ Jane prompted. ‘Join any clubs or charity organizations? Look for a job or take classes or anything?’

  When his sister didn’t answer, Malcolm picked up Jane’s line of questioning. ‘I’m sure you’ve been doing a lot of “catching up” and “bonding,”’ he guessed. ‘Has she let you do that with anyone other than her?’

  ‘Just because she doesn’t want me hanging out with traitors and kidnappers,’ Annette started hotly, indicating first Malcolm and then Jane with her defiant glare, ‘doesn’t mean she’s some kind of creepy body snatcher.’

  ‘The fact that she’s going to transfer her essence into you five nights from now, on the other hand . . .’ Jane muttered, gripping the leather menu in her frustration. I glossed over this part when I imagined our rescue plan, she admitted to herself. Somehow she had let herself think that Annette would naturally see the truth – despite the fact that when she said the truth out loud, it sounded ludicrous, even to her.