The Lost Soul (666 Park Avenue 3)

by Gabriella Pierce

  With Dee missing from the group, Malcolm’s absence felt even more pronounced. Jane was sure that she’d been right to send him away – or as sure as she could be, at least. Still, his departure left Jane as the only non-family member on the Montagues’ farm, and that was beginning to feel a little awkward. She wasn’t sure that she even had a valid reason to stay, except that she didn’t know where else to go.

  Part of her longed to return to France and slip back into her old life like a disguise, but she knew it wasn’t realistic. Hasina was still at large and had plenty of reasons to want her dead. Even if Jane completely gave up on the idea of banishing her from Annette’s body, Hasina had a nearly infinite amount of time to nurse her grudge and decide to strike. Going back to France would just endanger a bunch of people on a whole new continent. Elodie, Antoine, Marjorie, that woman on the ground floor of my old building who used to wave me over to her window when I walked past and demand that I pick up a loaf of bread for her. She had enough of the money she had withdrawn from Malcolm’s escape account to rent a little studio in an outer borough for a while, and she knew that she probably should. She could even cast a fresh glamour on her passport and withdraw a bit more, and buy as much time as she needed to figure out her next move. But the idea of moving out – of moving anywhere – seemed too much like moving on for her to handle right now. It would be closing the last chapter of her life that had included Dee, and she wasn’t ready, even if Dee’s spirit was.

  Gone, she thought blankly. How was that possible? Dee had been all heat and action and life. What could she be without that motion, that passionate energy? What would happen to the void she had left in their lives – would something else seep in to fill it, or would it collapse with a crash, dragging the rest of Jane’s world behind it like a terrible black hole? And if her soul moves on and forgets, and her body is lost somewhere, what has happened to the Dee we knew? Where will her memories go, and all the little quirks that made her a complete human being?

  Emer had talked about that one morning at the brownstone, Jane recalled. ‘The longer someone has been dead . . . the fewer living people who knew them . . . the less you have of what they’ve touched . . .’ She had been listing the reasons why it would be nearly impossible to contact Celine Boyle, but of course the opposite of all those things was true about Dee. As soon as the realization hit her, Jane felt an almost unbearable longing at the idea. It was all she could do not to run out of the depressing Circle, across the lawn, and up to Harris’s room to start rifling through Dee’s things, looking for possessions to power the spell that would bring her back. Only a shadow of her, and only for a little while, Jane reminded herself, but her pulse raced all the same. I could still tell her how sorry I am . . . and I could give him the chance to say a real goodbye.

  Jane balled her hands into fists, fighting the urge to tap her foot impatiently as the service wound on. Occasionally she heard sniffles or saw hands dab tears away, and she knew that she should be concentrating harder on helping to celebrate Dee and speed her along this last journey. But the simple fact was that she didn’t want Dee to be gone – and maybe she didn’t have to be, not completely.

  Jane bent her head obediently for the final prayer, feeling an electric sort of rush as Emer opened the Circle that Leah had cast. Have a safe journey home, she wished wholeheartedly at Dee’s soul, wherever it might be. Knowing how it had lived Dee’s life, Jane was sure that it wouldn’t stay at rest for very long before returning in search of a new one, and she smiled a little at the thought of Dee’s spirit reincarnated in a body with decades of adventures in front of it.

  I guess I am starting to believe a little, she admitted to herself. In spite of her distraction during the ritual, she felt lighter somehow, almost refreshed. It might not have been the fancy society funeral that had sent Lynne, Cora, and Belinda into their next lives, but the intimate little ceremony had surely done the job – and was more appropriate for Dee, anyway.

  Their group straggled back toward the house one by one, each clearly lost in her or his own thoughts. But Jane saw Harris heading in the opposite direction, through the dunes toward the beach, and she followed him. When she caught up, he had kicked his loafers off and was standing barefoot in the sand, staring out over the gently rolling waves.

  ‘Hi,’ she started softly.

  He turned slightly toward her, but his eyes stayed trained on the ocean. He didn’t seem startled by her voice, and she suspected that he had heard her coming, or guessed that she would.

  ‘I miss her, too, you know,’ Jane told him, struggling to keep control of her voice as it threatened to break. ‘I know there’s nothing that can make this horrible thing right, but I thought of something that could help. A little, anyway.’

  Harris shifted onto the balls of his feet but didn’t answer. After a long moment of waiting, Jane took another two steps forward, trying to edge into his line of sight. She might as well have been invisible for all the notice he gave her.

  She sighed, wondering if she should just give up and go back inside. Finally, she cleared her throat. ‘I thought we could talk to her,’ she began, her voice growing steadier in her eagerness to share her idea. ‘She hasn’t been gone long; from what your grandmother said we should be able to—’

  ‘Go back to the house, Jane.’ Harris’s tone was flat and cold, his entire body utterly still except for his lips.

  He just doesn’t understand yet, Jane told herself, smoothing down the goose bumps that had suddenly risen on her bare arms. The day was certainly warm enough, but a spontaneous cold front seemed to have moved in on their little patch of beach. ‘It’s what your family does, Harris,’ she went on calmly, trying to pretend that he hadn’t spoken. ‘Her soul has moved on, but the part of her that remembers, the part that was her, lingers. We could say goodbye, tell her how much we love her; we could—’

  ‘Go away, Jane.’ Harris’s mouth clamped shut. A muscle in his jaw twitched; he seemed to be struggling now to stay as still as he had been since she had arrived.

  She felt her own jaw jut forward into a stubborn angle despite her best intentions. ‘You really expect me to believe you have nothing to say to her?’

  He turned his gaze toward her at last. She expected anger, but it was pain that she saw burning in the depths of his eyes. When he spoke again, however, his voice was icy. ‘I can talk to her whenever I want without more witchcraft, and although it’s none of your business, I happen to believe that she can hear me just as well. What you want is for her to talk to you; this is all about your need. And your needs aren’t my problem.’

  He went back to staring out over the water, leaving Jane openmouthed but speechless. After a frozen moment so strained that it felt like screaming in her ears, Jane turned on one heel and trudged slowly back to the house, leaving Harris barefoot on the sand.

  Chapter Nineteen

  WHEN JANE ENTERED the great room through its wide, glass-paned French doors, she heard voices from the formal dining room. There was soft speech, some crying, and the occasional burst of muted laughter. She wanted to join the storytelling and commiseration, but the sting of Harris’s parting words made her feel stiff and awkward, and impossibly separate from the rest of the mourners.

  She took a step forward, trying to convince herself that companionship was just what she needed, but her eye hesitated on a largish cardboard box next to the front door. It was addressed in loopy black marker to Ella Medeiros and bore a forwarding sticker that had redirected it from her Village apartment to the Montagues’ brownstone and finally to the Hamptons. She drifted toward it as if in a dream. I’ve lost so much, she thought plaintively. I stopped hoping to get any of it back. She picked up the box, tucked it awkwardly under her arm, and circled back into the kitchen and then up the stairs. Whatever had survived Annette’s fire at the Lowell Hotel, she needed to see it, even if it was nothing but a few shoes that would no longer fit her feet.

  When she set the box down on her bed and began pullin
g at the tape, she smelled acrid soot almost immediately. Whatever it is will be damaged, she warned her racing heart. The smell grew stronger as she opened the box’s flaps, but by then she had stopped caring.

  The first thing her fingers found was the slick satin of the brick-red top that Ella had worn on André Dalcacu’s private jet to London. She shook it out: it smelled like smoke, but there was no visible damage. The fabric seemed to almost glow from within against the cool blue-and-white background of the bedroom. Too bad this will never work on me again, Jane thought wryly; where Ella had been flat, Jane was all curves. Underneath was a dove-gray pair of suede ankle boots, too big for her real feet, and when she lifted them out of the box, an enameled pair of Van Cleef & Arpels earrings tumbled merrily out onto her quilt. Those will still fit, she thought, managing to savour the feeling for a full five seconds before her sorrow crowded it out of her mind again. She took that to mean that the box was a useful distraction. She missed Dee horribly, but if she spent every waking moment drowning in grief she might just curl into a ball and never get up again.

  There was a pair of wide-framed sunglasses whose tortoiseshell frames were a little too melted to wear, an eyeliner brush that seemed unharmed, and a couple more bright, slinky articles of clothing with discreet singe marks here and there. A good tailor could probably fix most of them, Jane guessed, and made a mental note to repair what she could and donate it to charity.

  At the bottom of the box her fingertips scraped more fabric, but this was rougher than any of Ella’s clothing and seemed to be stretched over something flat and hard. Jane found its edges and lifted it gingerly, pushing the empty box aside as she did. In her hands was a book, covered in old-fashioned floral fabric. The edges of its pages were faintly yellowed by time, but the fire hadn’t so much as touched it. Jane lifted it to her nostrils and inhaled curiously; even after being packed tightly in with all the other smoky items, the book smelled like dust and paper and nothing else. She shouldn’t have been surprised that Gran’s enchanted journal would come through a massive inferno unscathed. It must have been loaded with more protective spells than Jane could learn in a lifetime.

  Deep down, Jane knew that Harris was right about her motives for wanting to communicate with Dee. The sense of peace that had settled into the Circle after Emer’s funeral ritual should be honoured, not disturbed. Jane still felt a pressing need to pour her heart out to her friend, but Dee had more than earned her rest. It wouldn’t be fair to inflict the problems of the living on her afterlife.

  But the thing that lives in this book was never alive, and it isn’t dead. It was a shadow of her gran, a memory that Celine Boyle’s magic had turned into a sort of reference guide to the story of her life. It didn’t have a peace to disturb, and as a bonus, Jane had never done anything to hurt it. The burden of her constant guilt seemed to get heavier with every wrong choice she made. Even just speaking with someone whom she hadn’t harmed would be a very welcome relief.

  Jane opened the book, flipping through the apparently blank pages while invisible writing played at the edges of her sight. Her magic prickled, responding to the journal’s curious spell, and Jane sent it searching deep into the secrets of the paper. Show me, she thought at it, hearing the words both inside her mind and, somehow, inside the book. Let me see who your owner was. Let me see the mark she left on you.

  Then she was falling, her own body somewhere far above and behind her. Images rushed by, too quickly to be anything but a blur of colour and light and movement. She knew to expect them this time and tried to watch, looking for familiar faces, but before she could recognize so much as a single frame of the slide show it was over. Jane was motionless in the dark, standing on nothing, face-to-face with the memory that looked identical to Gran.

  ‘You again,’ it observed in a tone so Gran-like that Jane didn’t know whether to laugh or cry.

  ‘Me again,’ she agreed instead. The diary version of Gran had been the one who told Jane about Hasina in the first place. She had showed her the real Gran’s pursuit of the witch she suspected of killing Jane’s mother – Lynne Doran – and her discovery that Lynne was the latest in a long line of hosts for her ancestress. When André and Katrin Dalcacu’s parents had kidnapped Annette from under her mother’s nose, Gran had agreed to help them hide the girl until Hasina finally died. Unfortunately, Jane hadn’t received the diary until after she had already undone all her grandmother’s careful work.

  ‘I couldn’t stop her,’ she blurted out. ‘Hasina switched into Annette’s body.’

  The Gran-like figure blinked rapidly a couple of times. To Jane it looked like a robot assimilating new information, not a human being reacting in surprise; which oddly enough made her feel more comfortable opening up about the events of the last few weeks. She explained about Malcolm’s return, their meetings with Annette, the plan to intercept Hasina during her spell, and the disaster that had unfolded in the atrium. ‘Annette’s young – twenty-seven, I think,’ she finished, an edge of frustration creeping into her voice. ‘She can have a whole pack of children of her own.’

  ‘That’s true,’ not-Gran confirmed sternly, but somehow serenely. ‘And even if she never finds a new body, this transfer has provided her with many more years of life. Witches will die as long as she lives; I fear that you are in even more danger than you were before.’

  ‘Maybe she’ll have to stop, now that more of us know about her,’ Jane suggested halfheartedly, knowing before the words were fully out how ridiculous that hope was.

  ‘She won’t,’ un-Gran replied, and Jane wondered if she were imagining the hint of surprise in her familiar voice. ‘It is necessary in order to maintain her power.’

  ‘I don’t understand,’ Jane said as she frowned. ‘Are other witches some kind of threat to her?’ It was hard to imagine, given how Hasina had grown over the millennia.

  ‘It’s far more than that.’ Gran’s image went on to explain that Hasina’s magic had stopped behaving normally after her first body’s life had ended. Magic replenished itself on life, she reminded Jane: it needed organic energy for fuel. No matter how drained of magic Jane might feel – and she had felt pretty empty after the battle in the atrium – her power always rose back to its natural levels with a little rest (and a lot of food, Jane amended silently). When magic was sent to inhabit something that wasn’t alive, however – as when it was stored in silver, for example – it wouldn’t just remain inert and waiting. It slowly leeched back into the world, dissipating year by year until it was gone.

  While Hasina wasn’t an inanimate object, of course, she wasn’t quite alive, either. The thing that animated her, the life force, didn’t belong to the body it inhabited. The spirit that did belong there had no control over its own body, and quickly grew weaker and more confused until it couldn’t really be called a ‘person’ at all. So the body had a harder and harder time maintaining its magic the longer Hasina was in control . . . and Hasina wasn’t partial to being short on power.

  ‘So she has to kill other witches, to take their magic,’ Jane finished slowly, and the Gran-like image nodded gravely. Something clicked in Jane’s brain: she had been so focused on the present that she had almost forgotten the reason why Gran had investigated Lynne Doran’s secrets in the first place. ‘Is that why – do you think that’s what happened to my parents? She killed them for my mother’s magic?’

  The image hesitated ever so slightly, then nodded. ‘I believe that Hasina killed your mother in order to steal her magic.’

  There was something odd and stilted about her speech, and Jane frowned. ‘ “My mother,” ’ she repeated pointedly. She had pictured the car accident hundreds of times growing up, piecing it together from the scraps of information that Gran had occasionally let fall. The specific details shifted and changed in her mind, but she knew that there had been a narrow, winding mountain road in North Carolina, a flash flood, and a brutal crash. She knew that a kindly neighbour had insisted on babysitting for the young couple, or
else ten-month-old Jane would have died as well. And she knew that both of her parents had been in the car.

  ‘Hasina could have killed her alone,’ un-Gran admitted finally. ‘But she had an old, old grudge against your father as well, and I imagine that the opportunity to avenge herself on him while also gaining magic from your mother was especially appealing to her. In fact, a theory that Lynne Doran might have acted on her family’s bad blood with his was what led me to discover Hasina’s existence in the first place.’

  Jane felt her breathing speed up and grow shallow. The real Gran had never been willing to tell Jane much of anything about her father. He had evidently changed his last name to ‘Boyle’ after marrying Angeline, making it impossible for Jane to learn even basic information about his life. Gran’s stubborn silence on that topic had been one of the many things that had sent teenaged Jane into helpless fits of rage, but no matter whether she shouted or reasoned or went on a hunger strike, Gran refused to budge. But her memory is answering all my questions, she realized. It must have been created without Gran’s own stubborn reservations. Jane sucked in a deep breath and forged ahead. ‘Tell me about the grudge. Who was my father to Hasina?’

  ‘It goes back to long before his birth,’ the memory cautioned. ‘Hasina’s memory is as long as her life, and she can carry a vendetta through many generations. It began with the famous witch trials in Salem – you’ll remember them, of course.’ Jane didn’t bother to answer. Gran herself had homeschooled her, so she knew perfectly well that Jane knew all about them. ‘What you most likely do not know is that the accusers and judges were merely the tools of actual witches. For some time the New World had been home to the last surviving descendants of Anila, one of Ambika’s daughters. They had lived in relative peace and obscurity for some time, but to their dismay Hasina’s daughters crossed over, invading the territory that had been theirs alone. They managed to discover her secret and realized that she was an even greater threat than they had realized: it was imperative to their continued survival that she be killed.’