666 Park Avenue (12 page)
Authors: Gabriella Pierce
J
ane woke up the following morning to her now-familiar
empty bed. She rolled over and rubbed the crusted salt from last night’s tears off her face.
A square piece of stationery, thick and cream-colored, lay on her nightstand. It looked like Lynne’s, but the handwriting was Malcolm’s.
“Dear J: Amazing acquisition possibility in Moscow. Back in a few days tops. Miss you! Love, M.”
“You win again, Lynne,” Jane croaked sleepily. She tried to clear her throat, but it was as if last night’s crying jag had dried up all of the water in her body.
She had no idea why Malcolm’s mother wanted to put distance between them, but she was certainly getting her way in spades. She had hoped that morning would shed new light on the bizarre argument she had overheard the night before. But even with the sunlight streaming in and Jane’s mind arguably calmer, it was just as confusing. Lynne was thrilled about the wedding, and was pretty damned convincingly ecstatic about Jane. So what was all that about loyalty and “that
girl
”?
“She didn’t mean me,” Jane tried out, swinging her legs over the side of the bed. It sounded good, and not so much as a static-shock’s worth of magic hummed in her blood when she said it, so she took it further. “So I guess Malcolm has another fiancée. Ooh! Or Malcolm has a split personality, and his other half
thinks
it has a different fiancée and Lynne wants him to snap out of it.” She wandered into the bathroom and made a face at her ratty hair and streaked mascara. “The family has tried to keep his affliction secret for years,” she went on, warming to her subject and waving her arms theatrically, “but it nearly got out during that turbulent time in college when Malcolm formed a four-man rock band with no one in it but himself.”
She smiled a little in the mirror, but it looked forced, even to herself. Whatever was going on with Malcolm and his mother, it wasn’t something she could just joke away on her own. They needed to talk, to open up. Or he did, at least. She still had a fairly major secret to keep.
Hypocrite.
The thought made her pause, though. She had a secret, sure, but even she barely knew what it was. She had spent the last few weeks so focused on trying to suppress it—rather ineffectually, she had to admit, after last night—that she wasn’t exactly sure what she was hiding from everyone.
She was a witch because the women in her family were, and other mysterious people out there were, too. So . . . what was a witch? Was it just having those uncomfortable random flashes of power that she couldn’t control? Or was there more? Witches in stories could do all sorts of amazing things, even if most of them were spectacularly ugly.
So if I’m kind of a fox,
Jane wondered,
does that mean I have less power?
Whatever she had inherited certainly hadn’t done much for Gran . . . living and dying basically alone in the middle of nowhere. But maybe that had more to do with Gran than with witchcraft itself.
“Well, then,” she told her reflection as she brushed on jet-black mascara, “I guess I need to know more. And with my split-personalitied fiancé out of town, I have some time on my hands.”
She felt the faint gravitational pull of her sleek little laptop, but that didn’t seem right. Computers were new, and magic was old. Besides, computers had long memories and secret Internet caches. She hadn’t been able to bring herself to surf anything but theknot.com since they had arrived.
But libraries have genuine old things. And I’m pretty sure New York has a library or seventy.
Two hours later, she was cozily ensconced at a back table of the New York Public Library, as close as she could possibly be to the occult section without actually sitting there. The vaulted ceiling and honey-colored wood certainly had the antiquated feel she had been looking for, but other than that she was beginning to feel a little silly.
“Witchcraft,” she had said succinctly, when the helpful young man with the skull-faced ring had asked if he could direct her search. He’d burst out laughing, which did nothing to make her feel any less silly. Things had improved, though, when he had explained that his laughter had more to do with the huge size of the category than her request. Once she had narrowed her search down a little (“historical mythology” had a useful ring to it), he had pointed her in the right direction and recommended a few authors. He’d even told her how to shake the photocopier just so, to make it work for free. She had no intention of leaving a paper trail lying around the house, of course, but it was still nice to know.
It wasn’t long, though, before the library’s wealth of information about witches began to frustrate her. There were so many conflicting stories and descriptions that it was impossible to choose just one that matched her own limited knowledge, unless she was ready to select at random. Had her ancestors made a pact with the devil? Or had they come into the world already able to tap into unseen natural forces? Was it a blessing? A curse? A mutation? None of it sounded any more likely than the rest.
Jane dropped her head down on her pile of open books.
I should have had a plan,
she thought woefully. It had seemed so straightforward: she had imagined a montage of herself rummaging through the stacks, the Dewey decimal system her new best friend. She was even wearing tortoiseshell glasses, although all she had in reality were sunglasses. Out of nowhere, her witchy blood would draw her, like a moth to a flame, to the one passage that would make sense of it all. Or perhaps it would even make a book jump off the shelf. The montage continued until she understood everything she could possibly want to know, without having to bother sifting through any dull, inapplicable information.
The reason that movies
had
montages, she now realized, was that the long version—the real version—was lethally boring.
“Time for a break,” she announced. She had said it under her breath, but it still earned her a glare from a white-haired woman in a blue tracksuit and clashing orange earplugs. “Sorry,” she mouthed, and headed off in search of the bathroom.
Before she had gone ten steps, her ankle snagged a book on a low shelf. She tripped and crashed sideways, smashing her elbow on the wood paneling. The ear-plugged woman collected her books in her arms and stomped off in silent protest against Jane’s not-at-all silent cursing, although Jane felt that she had been fairly restrained under the circumstances. Feeling fed up and just plain childish, she sat down heavily on the floor and worked out a way to rub both her ankle and her elbow at the same time. It was awkward, though, and it didn’t make her feel any better, so she turned her attention to the book that had caused her trouble in the first place.
At first, she assumed that it was simply too large for the shelf, and blamed the librarians for not putting it with the other oversized books. But it quickly became apparent that it wasn’t really so big . . . it was just hanging out into the aisle because it hadn’t been pushed fully in by the last person to peruse it. She turned the book over in her hands. The faded gilt letters spelled out:
A TRUE HISTORY OF WITCHES AND MAGICK, BY ROSALIE GODDARD.
Jane’s imaginary montage flickered briefly through her mind, and she grinned. Frustration and sore elbow completely forgotten, she opened the book on her lap and began to read it right there on the floor. Soon she had a whole collection of books stacked next to her: in addition to the “true history,” there was one about female authors in the seventeenth century, another about New York’s high society during the height of the witch hunts—with several passages on Rosalie Goddard’s family itself—and two about the histories of mental illnesses and psychology in America.
Rosalie Goddard had written twelve thrilling chapters, in which she made quite a lot of claims about magic. It was real, she had insisted, and hereditary, although the trait only manifested in women. Witches could do all sorts of amazing things . . . including, of course, blend in with regular human beings. Jane, convinced that she was on the right track, forced her way through the more obscure and confusing parts: there was a dense section on seven magical sisters and their children, complicated wars between those seven witch families, and extensive but vague descriptions of how magic was transferred from one person to another.
Every witch was born with some magic of her own, Jane read avidly, although the amount seemed to vary widely. Rosalie suspected that the variation had something to do with astrology, but Jane got lost in the star charts and couldn’t follow the author’s logic to any kind of conclusion. If the witch wanted more magic—and, apparently, they all did—she had to either inherit it . . . or steal it. It could be transferred from person to person through silver—Jane stroked her smooth silver ring absently—but the exact process was complex. There was a lot of stuff about “right” and “will” and the witch’s “last breath,” which didn’t make any sense, because Gran had kept on breathing for six more years after protecting Jane in Paris.
A note from the publisher was inserted at the very back of the book, explaining that Rosalie’s family had tried to suppress her book entirely, and then to pass it off as fiction. When their efforts failed, the Goddards decided their main PR problem wasn’t the book at all—it was the author. They shipped Rosalie off to a European mental institution, never to be heard from by the public again.
When Jane finally came up for air, the rectangles of sun on the floor had moved all the way across the room. It was also more crowded than it had been in the morning. Jane blinked at the assortment of elderly people, students, and families that had filled the honey-colored tables, trying to bring herself back to the present.
Between one blink and the next, something changed.
I saw something,
her mind told her insistently, but she couldn’t think what.
Just then sunlight flashed off of a perfectly bald head across the room, and Jane started, the hairs on her arms standing on end. Even in profile, she had no trouble recognizing Yuri, Lynne’s huge, silent driver, who was now striding silently out of the library. There were plenty of reasons why he might have been there, of course. And plenty of reasons he might be leaving now. There was no reason to think that his presence wasn’t a coincidence . . . except that, just as he reached the door, he turned back. His beady black eyes found Jane’s and narrowed. An instant later, he was gone.
M
alcolm’s trip lasted through the weekend, and by
Monday Jane was getting downright anxious. She’d left her entire life behind—for what? An absentee fiancé? But as angry as she was, she was even more lonely. His absence was achingly painful.
So when she got a text announcing that he would be back that evening, she was ready to overlook the fact that it was just a stupid mass text message to everyone in the family. She was feeling more than romantic enough for both of them. Her newly acquired event-planning skills kicked in, and in record time she had put together the textbook definition of a romantic evening for two, complete with dinner reservations and a rose petal–covered bed. All Malcolm would have to do was show up.
Malcolm’s luggage arrived before he did, and the porter who brought it informed her that he was in the parlor with his father.
Well, of course his parents missed him, too,
she told herself, trying not to feel miffed. The porter’s eyes flickered curiously across the rose petals on the downturned duvet. “Thank you,” she repeated, more loudly this time, and the man took the cue and left the suite. “Okay,” she told the now-empty bedroom. “I’ll just have to go down there and remind him why men get engaged in the first place.”
Unfortunately, when she reached the parlor (now wearing a sexy white-lace sheath that he’d never seen but was sure to love), he seemed to be in a bad mood. Slouched low in a leather chair, crystal tumbler in hand as he stared into the fire, he looked positively broody. Jane kicked an extra sway into her hips to knock him out of it. “Darling, I’ve missed you all weekend,” she said brightly. Malcolm’s eyes flicked up at her briefly and then away. “I don’t know if you had anything specific in mind for dinner, but the girls at work were really excited about this little French place on 79th and I was thinking that it might be sort of nostal—”
“Actually,” Malcolm broke in without looking up, “I have dinner plans. Some old friends, sort of a guys’ night out. Another time, though. Absolutely.” His dark eyes traveled to his father, who was swirling whiskey idly in a glass, but never rose any higher than Jane’s ribcage.
“Um . . . okay,” Jane stammered, feeling like he’d hit her in the gut with the fire poker.
Not to mention the fresh blowout, smoky eyes, and Aubade’s sexiest push-up bra, all wasted.
“I’ll . . . just have Sofia put something together.” She swept dramatically from the room à la Lynne, but knew that it was a total waste of the gesture: there were no eyes watching her go.
Jane’s heart crashed down to her toes as soon as the bedroom door closed behind her.
Guys’ night?
She had yet to even meet any of his guy friends. Suddenly they were so important to him that he couldn’t even say hello to her after five days apart? By the time she’d blown out the candles she’d lit, she was more angry than hurt.
She stared at her fully made-up face in the bathroom mirror. “He’s got plans? I can have plans. I have friends too—well, a friend, anyway,” she told her reflection. She grabbed her iPhone and dialed Maeve, her ankle boots tapping rhythmically on the thick carpet as she paced.
“I actually have plans. But just with my brother!” the chirpy voice on the other end of the line was quick to explain. “You should come! Vento, on West 14th, twenty minutes.”
“Done and done.” Jane grinned and dropped the phone into a suede clutch.
Maeve is
exactly
what I need tonight.
The prospect was so appealing that she managed to make it through the subway without any major electrical incidents, although her anger with Malcolm may have been responsible for shorting out an escalator on her way out of the station.
Fluke,
she told herself firmly, shutting out the nastier voice in her head that whispered,
freak.
From there, it was a quick walk through the icy night to the cozy restaurant, where she easily spotted Maeve’s red hair and dropped into the wide wooden chair beside her. “I should probably warn you that I’m a walking curse when I’m in a bad mood, and I am
definitely
in a bad mood tonight.”
“Not for long, if I can help it!” Curls bouncing, Maeve shoved her suspiciously complicated-looking cocktail toward Jane before signaling the waitress for another. Jane, better versed in wine than mixed drinks, hesitated for only a moment before she sipped: the flavors were unusual, but they blended into something surprisingly pleasant. It was only then that she noticed the redheaded guy sitting across the table, watching her with an amused smirk.
“So you’re the brother, I guess,” Jane said awkwardly. He was tall and lean, with close-cropped copper curls and dancing green eyes. “I’m Jane,” she finished lamely, adding a half-wave for good measure.
“Harris.” He nodded.
She took another deep drink from Maeve’s tumbler.
“Bad day?” he asked lightly, eyeing her now-empty glass.
“ ‘Bad’ would be something of an understatement.”
“And that’s why God created truffle pizza,” Maeve declared, jamming a menu into Jane’s hands. “And alcohol.”
The waitress appeared over Harris’s shoulder, bearing two more cocktails and a draft beer. “Perfect timing,” Maeve grinned, and dinner was off to an excellent start.
Harris, a financial consultant, shared his sister’s enthusiastic outlook and quirky sense of humor. Seeing the two of them with their heads thrown back in laughter, Jane had no trouble at all seeing the family resemblance, and she felt a quick pang. Jane and Malcolm were both only children; neither of them shared this type of bond with anyone else.
Our children will,
she vowed silently. The lavender-scented cocktail was deceptively mild-tasting, but she was definitely feeling its effects. She’d never really thought about children, but apparently weeks of Lynne’s “hints” and a bit of hard liquor brought the idea right to the surface. Of course, maybe she was counting her chickens too soon, given Malcolm’s physical and emotional distance.
Screw that,
she told herself, gesturing to the waitress for another drink while Maeve cracked Harris up with a dead-on impersonation of Archie from the MoMA, waving her arms around as if they were attached by springs.
I’m young and out with friends in Manhattan. I will deal with my prodigal fiancé when I get home.
Out loud, she insisted that the other two order dessert with her, and then broached the subject that was now foremost in her mind: “Where can we go after dinner?” She had lived in Manhattan with a tabloid staple for nearly three weeks and hadn’t been to a single nightclub. Through the haze of her four cocktails, that suddenly seemed like an absolute crime against nature.
“Ooh!” Maeve squealed happily, her light brown eyes dancing. “We’re right by the Meatpacking District! And Harris, don’t even think about laming out.”
“I’d be a fool to miss it.” Harris laughed, his eyes on Jane. His tone was breezy, but his gaze was intense. She felt her cheeks redden, and hoped that the dim light of the restaurant masked her blush. They paid the bill and left, Harris’s cool hand resting lightly on the small of her back. His touch was electric, and Jane knew she was probably glowing red in the dark.
Like a little flirting ever killed anyone,
she told herself airily, breathing on her hands to keep them warm. It was nice to have a hot guy paying a little attention to her, especially since her own hot guy didn’t seem inclined to do so.
Could be the gin talking,
she had to admit, but she glanced involuntarily up at Harris, whose green eyes glittered back down at her attentively, and she decided she really didn’t care.
The club was dark and hot, and Jane had forgotten its coy one-word name almost before she and the Montague siblings were inside. It didn’t hurt that as soon as the bouncers had gotten a good look at her, they had been ushered inside immediately, and a red suede–covered booth had been cleared of its disgruntled occupants. Jane sat where the bouncer indicated—all but bowing as he backed away from their little group. She threw a questioning look at Maeve. “Am I missing something here?”
“You may not read Page Six, but they sure as hell do,” Maeve explained, signaling to a waiter. “Honey, you’re practically famous.”
“Tough life,” Harris added. His expression was casual, but something in his tone set Jane’s teeth on edge.
“Right, because it’s every little girl’s fantasy to live in the world’s creepiest house with her fiancé’s controlling family and then have the rest of the world act insane just because she’s about to share their last name.” A glass of dark liquid appeared at her elbow and she clutched it like a life preserver.
Harris looked genuinely puzzled at her tirade. “Maybe not when you put it that way, but you still have what every girl on this island has been fantasizing about for the last decade or so. Or so all my ex-girlfriends kept telling me,” he added, with a self-deprecating smile.
“But that’s another thing!” Jane all but wailed, feeling her skin flush with embarrassment. She had almost managed to forget Madison, but suddenly the shiny chestnut hair and tanned breasts were large as life in her mind’s eye. “I ran right into some ex of Malcolm’s practically the minute I stepped off the plane. I know he must have dated people before—obviously—but there’s 8 million of them here. What are the odds that one of the first ones I met used to go out with my fiancé?”
Harris’s green eyes sparkled wickedly. “Do you really want me to answer that?”
“Harris!” Maeve shoved her brother. “Jane, ignore him. But it’s true that if you were looking for a lifelong altar boy, you missed the mark.”
Jane frowned and sipped at her drink. When she looked up again, Maeve had concern written all over her elfin features. Harris refilled Jane’s glass.
“Trouble in paradise?” they asked simultaneously.
Jane stabbed a marinated olive viciously with a silver toothpick. The world was starting to spin, the bodies and tables whirling around her like a Dali painting. “No,” she answered sullenly. So Malcolm had a past. So he had dated—who knows?—half of the eligible women in Manhattan? Did Malcolm regret proposing to her now that he was home? Was being back on his old hunting ground making him nostalgic? Was that why he was acting so distant—he was bored with her already?
Jane set her glass down on the table, some of the liquid sloshing over the sides. Suddenly the music felt too loud and the crowd of writhing bodies loomed oppressively. A girl in a teal halter dress glared at Jane from across the room. Had she dated Malcolm, too? “Do you think he misses his single life?” Jane asked miserably.
“Better hope not,” Harris muttered. “I wouldn’t want the Dorans to set that goon on you—what was his name, Mae?”
“Boris,” Maeve declared. “Sergei?”
“Yuri?” Jane guessed.
“That’s it!”
Jane shook her head, noticing that the room seemed to move a split second slower than her eyes. “He’s just the driver.”
And the guy who stakes out libraries,
she added silently since she couldn’t exactly say it out loud.
“Not according to at least five or six of Manhattan’s clingiest bachelorettes,” Harris snorted, resting a lean, muscled arm along the red suede of the booth’s back.
“It’s just rumors,” Maeve hurried to add. “Rumors from a few different sources, is all. That if Malcolm’s ex—”
“Flavor of the week,” Harris inserted.
“—didn’t go away quietly, that driver guy would
do
something.”
“Scare the hell out of her, at the very least,” Harris corrected. “And it’s not just rumors. Tamara DeWitt and Madison Avery both swear it happened to them personally.”
The second name made Jane sit a little more upright as the jealousy-inducing images from before churned in her head.
Madison Avery—is that Madison from Barneys?
She spun the plain silver ring around her middle finger.
I’d be bitchy too, if someone sent that giant to scare me off. Wait,
does
someone want that giant to scare me off? What
were
Lynne and Malcolm arguing about before he left?
The music changed abruptly to a Discobitch song that had been huge in Paris a few summers ago, and Jane felt a sudden rush of recklessness. Grabbing Harris’s hand, she whirled toward the dance floor, feeling the clinging lace of her mini-dress hug her curves as she moved. “Dance with me,” she breathed, and Harris’s lean body pressed willingly against hers. She felt the same electricity she had when he touched her earlier, except now, with his whole body just centimeters away, it was more of a pulse than a spark.
It felt, honestly, nearly the same as when she touched Malcolm.
Guess it’s not just him,
her libido told her smugly.
I just needed to date Americans after all.
Not that this counted as dating, of course, but she felt like flirting, and Harris seemed more than willing to flirt back. They danced, laughed, and drank; he brushed imaginary hair from her eyes, and she plucked invisible lint from his shirt’s collar. It seemed ages since she had felt so attractive, so desired, even though Malcolm couldn’t really have been distant for that much more than a week . . . or two.
Just how long
has
he been pulling away for?
she wondered suddenly.
Where was I?