666 Park Avenue (19 page)
Authors: Gabriella Pierce
L
ynne’s trill of laughter rolled back over the crowd, so
clear and brittle that Jane worried that it might crack her champagne flute. Her mother-in-law-to-be-slash-nemesis was in fine form, statuesque in a beaded silver Valentino and surrounded by three congressmen and a major hip-hop star.
Jane, whose main goal was to get through the entire fund-raiser without being noticed, pressed herself against a none-too-sturdy window and tried to gage the approximate temperature outside.
Early February . . . in New York . . . on the water . . . and the boat’s moving,
she tallied.
Nope, outside isn’t an option.
Unless, of course, she got desperate enough to throw herself into the Hudson River, which was impossible to completely rule out.
“Jane!” Laura Helding shouted over the din of earnest Democratic Party donors (Lynne had briskly informed her that the Republican fund-raiser, held in April, was also mandatory for the entire family). Jane glanced around, but the only viable cover was behind a tuxedoed cocktail waitress, and besides, Laura had already seen her.
Peeling herself away from the cold window, Jane pushed her way reluctantly through the clusters of her animated fellow cruisers. Drinks had been circulating for over an hour, and between that and the gentle sway of the ship, crossing the room was no simple task. Jane had to be vigilant to keep her floaty silk Roberto Cavalli dress (“It’ll do for the liberals, dear, but please find something in a solid color for the Republicans”) from being spilled on. Her toes ached, having been stepped on twice already.
Being a Doran is not for amateurs,
she told herself grimly.
A flashbulb burst somewhere to her left, and Jane lifted her lips into what she hoped looked like a carefree smile. The action still wasn’t as automatic as she wished, and she barely managed to hold the pose during the rapid burst of about a dozen more shots.
By the time she reached Laura’s little clique near the buffet table, Jane’s cheeks ached, but she turned the smile up another notch and greeted her heart out. Laura introduced her giddily to the wife of a senator, the wife of a technology guru, the wives of two NBA players.
The wife of, the wife of . . .
Smiling for all she was worth, Jane reflected that Laura herself was a “wife of,” and apparently considered Jane to be heading into the same category. Which she was, in a way . . . except that, technically, she would be the power half of her particular power couple. Malcolm had the money, the status, the connections . . . but Jane was the piece that was truly irreplaceable.
That realization combined with the champagne to give Jane a warm glow in the pit of her stomach. She wasn’t just some mousy fugitive: she was strong. She could make shoes shake, and could almost count on being able to read minds on purpose.
After a round of gossipy small talk about some mistress’s horribly unflattering sequined dress, Jane politely excused herself, trying not to notice that Laura’s face fell just a fraction of an inch when she did. In her own way, Blake’s wife was trying for solidarity, at least, if not for real friendship. It had to be hard to be attached to a family like this one, responsible for all of their secrets but never quite allowed all the way inside.
Jane cut her way carefully to the door, suddenly desperate for a moment alone. The icy air hit her like a solid wall, but it cleared her head instantly. She was in the back of the ship—the stern, she remembered from the captain’s brief safety lecture—and a trail of turbulent water disappeared behind them into the dark night. She leaned against the rail idly, watching the wake rumble and churn beneath the hull. To her right, the lights of Manhattan glittered like a million impossibly close stars that had been shrunk into a snow globe just for her. The Statue of Liberty loomed in the distance, and Jane made a mental note to come back out here when they passed it to enjoy it in private.
Or not.
She heard the distinct squeak and click of the door behind her, and felt the hairs on her arms stand on end. She turned and peered into the inky blackness. Finally, she saw an approaching figure pass under a deck light, and groaned.
Lynne.
She looked about nine feet tall in the dark, her sleek brown hair swept up into a shining twist. She didn’t seem to feel the cold at all, and Jane, whose own pale mane was quickly turning into a heap of cotton candy in the whipping wind, couldn’t stifle a pang of jealousy at Lynne’s apparently unruffleable updo.
Maybe there’s a spell . . .
Stop.
No matter how many people assured her that Lynne couldn’t read her mind, it still felt unsafe to think things like that around her.
“Jane?” Lynne gasped. She seemed more alarmed than anything, and immediately slid something into her silver clutch. She balled her hand against her side, looking almost uncertain.
What the . . . ?
“Hi, Lynne,” Jane chirped, enjoying the rare sight of Lynne looking so off-balance.
“I hope you haven’t been out here too long, dear,” Lynne managed in a reasonable approximation of her usual implacable tone. “Catching pneumonia before your wedding would be simply dreadful.” She stepped to the left, arching one eyebrow significantly. It was clear that she wanted Jane to go back in, ASAP.
But if I go back inside, I’ll never find out what’s making you so antsy,
Jane wanted to say. In this particular moment, Lynne had ceased to be a dangerous enemy and had become, however temporarily, a fascinating puzzle.
“Jane?”
Sighing a little, Jane reluctantly stepped toward the door. As she did, she nearly slipped on a small, dark patch of liquid pooling near Lynne’s stiletto. She grabbed onto Lynne’s shoulder to steady herself, then looked into the older woman’s dark eyes, astonished. “Lynne, are you . . . bleeding?”
From Lynne’s clenched left fist, another drop of red blood welled up and fell to the deck. The impossibly tall woman’s peach mouth pressed into a flat line. There was no sign of pain on her face, but there was a fairly terrifying amount of annoyance. “That idiot Blake attempted a toast, and sheared my martini glass off right in my hand.”
The wind pressed painfully against Jane’s eardrums, stinging her eyes and chapping her lips. Lynne’s tone was perfectly natural, but her hesitation confirmed that she was lying.
That and the fact all she ever does is lie, basically.
“Well, can I get you a Band-Aid or anything?” Jane asked perfunctorily, remembering her role as a doting daughter-in-law.
“Just run along, dear.”
Jane slipped back through the door into the well-lit party room. Rubbing her hands on her upper arms to warm them, she scanned the crowd for Belinda and Cora.
The last time Lynne was somewhere she wasn’t supposed to be, someone almost died.
The twins were laughing merrily with a silver-haired man in the corner though, looking no more threatening than the average socialite. Nothing, in fact, seemed out of place in the room. There was no sign that someone, or something, had just cut Lynne’s hand deeply enough to make it bleed, and no real danger seemed to be brewing.
Making her way to the window with a view of the stern, Jane gazed out at Lynne. The matriarch was at the rail, just as Jane had been moments ago, leaning slightly over the water. She looked for all the world as though she was just enjoying the view. But when Jane looked closer, she saw that Lynne’s left hand was stretched over the metal guard. From her palm dripped a steady stream of dark red blood.
A
fter two weeks of unimpeachably good behavior,
J
ane
was starting to get antsy. She had trekked to Brooklyn nearly every day to meditate with Dee, practiced on her own in between sessions, and made excuse after excuse to exclude Harris from it all. It was exactly what she had told herself she should be doing . . . and it was getting dead boring.
There was no denying that the work was yielding results, though. She could burn out lightbulbs on purpose, and she could (usually) stop herself from blowing them out when she was angry. Her telekinesis was stronger, too. Just that morning, she had dragged Dee’s wooden bench across the living room, though the effort had left her spent, and her mind-reading was getting easier and more reliable with every attempt.
But her progress felt slow when measured against the rapid approach of her wedding in two weeks, and after that . . . well, she had no idea what life would be like in hiding. She didn’t even know which continent Malcolm would take her to. The world as she knew it would cease to exist after March 2, and that date was bearing down on them all like a freight train.
The looming uncertainty left Jane grouchy and unfocused, which was why she groaned when Dee had announced it was time for her to practice her craft in public. It felt risky, but she had to admit that it also sounded like progress.
Dee had suggested Rockefeller Center, but Jane had cringed at the image of skaters tumbling everywhere. Instead she had chosen Barneys, with the hopes of checking out the lingerie selection afterward. “It’s so freaking crowded,” Jane whispered, the adrenaline rushing out of her as the crowd of well-dressed shoppers pressed around to try on hats, jewelry, and handbags. Her almost unbearable cabin fever vanished abruptly into thin air, and she wanted nothing more than to be sitting on Dee’s saggy couch. “It’s a Thursday, for God’s sake. Don’t they have anywhere they need to be?”
“Well, we’re here,” Dee pointed out reasonably, grinning in response to Jane’s glare. “Maybe they’re practicing
their
magic.” She all but skipped to the elevators, forcing Jane to follow close on her chunky black heels.
I’m the witch here, so why’s she the one dressing the part?
Jane thought irritably. Of course, the bright side of that was that if anyone noticed the magic she planned to work, they would most likely blame it on Dee. Jane knew she was being the slightest bit unfair: tons of New Yorkers dressed in black, heels were in for spring, and the bright red tartan coat Dee had thrown over her ensemble didn’t look the slightest bit mystical. But knowing that she was moody because she felt nervous about trying out her magic in public, and snapping out of her funk were two entirely different things.
When they reached the cast-bronze bank of elevators, Dee spun around, her face annoyingly cheerful. “Which floor?”
“Just pick one,” Jane growled. They had both agreed that the upper floors were likely to be a little calmer than the street-level one, but when it came to the actual decision between designer sportswear and shoes, Jane couldn’t care less.
Dee rolled her amber eyes, but she marched into an open elevator and punched a button at random.
“Evening wear?” Jane said, picturing piles of expensive delicate silks and satins in jagged shards on the floor. As the doors glided shut, she opened her mouth to suggest a less couture floor, but someone stuck their hand in the doors just before they closed, and suddenly Jane and Dee were surrounded by chattering shoppers.
Unable to have a meaningful conversation and momentarily distracted, Jane glanced around idly at the newcomers.
Coral is back in,
she noted,
and woven-leather bags. A year and a half behind Paris, as usual.
She couldn’t help but feel a little smug until a perfect blowout in the far corner of the elevator caught her eye. Its owner was wearing the head-to-toe black of a salesperson, and Jane had a nagging feeling she’d seen those glossy chestnut tresses before. Then the mystery employee raised a hand to rake her scarlet-nailed fingers through her hair, and Jane was sure.
Madison.
Luckily for Jane’s composure, Malcolm’s ex never turned around. When the elevator reached the fine-china floor, Jane grabbed the red hem of Dee’s coat, cautioning her to stay put. As long as there were enough people in the elevator to camouflage them, she felt a reckless desire to follow Madison. She had expected the girl to exit on the seventh floor, where the personal-shopping department was based, but Madison and three other shoppers stayed on until the very last stop.
FRED’S AT BARNEYS
, the lit-up button announced, and Jane realized that she was tailing Malcolm’s ex on her lunch break.
Kind of stalkerish,
Jane admitted, but the curious, envious part of her brain hushed the thought. And anyway, wouldn’t a restaurant be as good a place as any to practice magic?
The restaurant boasted a pleasant milk-chocolate-colored wood motif, and a massive stone fireplace sat in one corner. When the hostess led her and Dee to their table, Jane plunked down in a chair with a sigh, picked up her menu, and glanced around it the way that she had seen people do in spy movies. The ploy felt awkward and the menu made it hard to see, so she gave up, dropped it on the table, and leveled with Dee. “That walking tanning-bed ad on the elevator with us used to date Malcolm,” she whispered. “Do you see her anywhere?”
Dee nodded. “Two tables back, to your right, with some guy,” she confirmed, barely moving her lips.
Dresses like a witch, spies like a spy,
Jane thought wryly.
She’s like the Swiss Army knife of friends.
Dee leaned out into the aisle subtly before returning with her assessment. “Kind of hunky, but if Malcolm looks anything like his photos, you win. Listen to her.”
“I’ll never be able to hear what she’s saying over this din,” Jane pointed out. “I could probably muss up her blowout a little, though. That could be fun.”
Dee rolled her eyes. “I meant listen to her thoughts.”
“Oh, right.” Jane put both hands on the table to anchor herself and took a deep breath. She then closed her eyes and focused until the voices around her diminished into white noise. She cast her mind out like a net, touching, probing, until she found a mind that felt familiar.
But it wasn’t words that occupied Madison’s mind right then. Instead, she had a fairly detailed, full-color fantasy going on, in which she crashed Jane’s wedding with her lunch date—who, in Madison’s view at least, was considerably better-looking than Dee had implied. Of course, in the fantasy, Jane’s hair was so peroxided that it was falling out in clumps, so Jane decided to take the details with a grain of salt.
The vision-Madison was wearing a skintight white dress (which she currently had on hold on the seventh floor), and Malcolm turned from his overweight straw-haired bride to see his radiant, model-thin, tropically tanned ex with her handsome oil-heir date. Predictably, Malcolm shoved Jane out of the way so he could beg Madison to marry him right away, in front of all of these witnesses, because he had never stopped loving her.
Jane gagged theatrically and reported her findings to Dee. “Nice work,” Dee said, her amber eyes glittering. “Now spill something on her.”
Jane obediently reached her mind out again toward Madison, this time looking for something inanimate. The last couple of weeks of practice had obviously yielded results; it felt as though she were running her fingers over the table behind her.
“Concentrate,” Dee whispered, and Jane almost snapped that that was harder to do with her friend talking at her, but then her mental fingers found the cold, brittle edge of a water glass, and she pressed her mouth shut and pulled. A squeal from somewhere behind her confirmed her success, and a waiter ran frantically past their table.
Jane opened her eyes and grinned at Dee, who was flashing a wide, white grin of her own. Suddenly the idea of a “real-world” practice session seemed absolutely brilliant all over again.