666 Park Avenue (20 page)
Authors: Gabriella Pierce
“A
nd then she started shrieking at the waiter for bump
ing into her table, and it turns out there was a guy from
Star
there, and the whole thing turned into a huge mess,” Dee gloated. Jane grinned. Her friend was so giddy that she was practically dancing in her chair to the club’s thumping techno beat.
Harris cheered obediently and congratulated them both before disappearing to order another round of drinks. It was true that Jane wasn’t comfortable working magic with him anymore—and, in fairness, it wasn’t like he’d asked her to, either, since the awkward disaster in the hospital. But she had been so flushed with her victory over Madison at Barneys that when Dee had suggested calling Harris to celebrate with them, Jane hadn’t objected one bit.
Her confidence had wavered just a little when he arrived. He seemed somehow taller than she remembered and he smelled like rain and mulled spices. His dancing green eyes had hit hers like a spotlight, and her head had spun in a way that it was far too early to blame on the chardonnay.
Really?
the rational part of her brain demanded sternly.
Two weeks of work and all it takes to spin your head is a pretty pair of eyes?
She focused on a couple of three-part breaths, and began to feel a little bit more grounded.
“Jane’s getting really good on her own,” Dee went on seamlessly when Harris returned from the bar. “It makes me wonder what she could do with us forming her Circle again, like we did in Book and Bell. Too bad you’ve been so busy,” she concluded with a pout that could melt stone.
Jane choked a little on her wine, but passed it off as a cough. She had spent the last two weeks fabricating all kinds of ironclad excuses for Harris’s continued absence from their practices, but she hadn’t thought ahead to when Dee might mention them to him. It was technically true that he did have Maeve to worry about, plus a job, a family, and presumably some other friends, too. But Jane had embellished and invented for all she was worth to convince Dee that he was booked around the clock . . . and, naturally, she hadn’t troubled Harris with the details of her increasingly elaborate lies. Or even with actual invitations to their near-daily meetings, in point of fact. She shot him a sideways glance to see if he would give her away.
But he was nodding along amiably. “Sometimes things just get completely crazy. I’ve been wanting to get away, but it’s been just impossible. I’m glad I haven’t held you girls up, though. Cheers to Jane’s progress!”
Jane drank gratefully at his cue. His cover-up had been flawlessly bland: convincingly sincere but without a single unneeded detail to conflict with Jane’s version of events.
He’s such a gentleman,
she thought with a near-swoon, and set her glass down firmly. Clearly it was never too early to pace her drinking.
“So?” Dee swiveled on her chair to face Jane squarely. “Show him what you’ve got.”
This time it was Harris who choked on his drink. Dee patted his back solicitously before turning back to Jane. “Can you do anything about the stupid spotlight that’s
right
in my eyes?”
Oh, right. Magic.
Harris looked as sheepish as Jane felt, although her emotions took a slightly different turn when she noticed that Dee’s hand was lingering on Harris’s smoothly muscled back. A hot ball of jealousy congealed in the pit of her stomach, and she felt a familiar rushing electricity in her blood. “I think I can,” she managed to say around her clenched jaw.
Calm down,
she told herself frantically as the jealousy began to melt into an angry, sparking mass of magic.
Don’t get sloppy over a pointless, meaningless crush, of all things. Just do what you’ve been practicing.
Nevertheless, the spotlight that she attempted to swivel actually fell from its perch, clattering dangerously through the rafters until it reached the end of its cord. It was still a good foot or two above the heads of the super-chic twentysomethings grinding on the club’s dance floor, but Jane felt as guilty as if she actually had brained one of them.
“It’s a good start,” Dee told her encouragingly, but her amber eyes were troubled. In their no-boys-allowed practices, Jane had had to struggle to summon her power at all, not to control an excess of it. Dee could obviously tell the difference, but without knowing what to attribute it to, she looked more than a little anxious.
Her face compounded Jane’s guilt. She had intended to tell Dee about the unstable chemistry between her and Harris any number of times, and she knew that she should have. But she hadn’t wanted to admit to having both a fiancé
and
a crush who made her go weak at the knees. And she really, really hadn’t wanted to hear that Dee was interested in him too.
“Let me try again,” Jane offered lamely. It wasn’t quite an apology—or an explanation—but it was the best she could do under the circumstances.
“There’s a really cute couple back at the bar,” Harris suggested. “Or they would be a couple if they had a reason to start talking.”
Most of Jane wanted to stop and dissect his words for coded messages, but the smaller, saner part of her won out. She also managed to avoid glancing at Dee, sure that her friend’s nerves at the idea of Jane using her magic near people right now would be written all over her tawny-skinned face. And Jane really didn’t need any additional reasons to be jumpy, because she wasn’t a hundred percent confident herself.
She sent her mind wandering out to the bar the way that she had in the restaurant earlier, and quickly found the two people that Harris had mentioned. The girl was short, with dirty-blond hair; the dark-haired guy probably qualified as “gangly.” They were standing back-to-back, practically touching, each in conversation with their own group of friends. Skimming their minds, Jane was impressed with Harris’s intuition: they had noticed each other several times, and were both hoping for a tap on the shoulder.
This would be a nice thing,
Jane told herself, closing her eyes and pulling stillness over her mind like a blanket.
This is being a better person. One who doesn’t lust, covet, or envy, but just takes opportunities to make the world a little better for other people. I could be a good witch.
The pair at the bar turned simultaneously as invisible hands touched their shoulders. The girl’s drink knocked into the guy’s elbow and spilled. He apologized profusely and signaled the bartender; she smiled shyly. By the time Jane was fully present back at her own table, two of the pair’s friends were even hitting it off.
Jane’s face relaxed into what felt like her first genuine smile in ages. She felt refreshed. Even the dark club looked brighter, cleaner somehow. The experience was so potently positive that it made her want to do something else nice.
Reaching out for the dreadlocked DJ’s mind, she took in the next songs in his playlist. She sensed that he was holding back something special—a request? a dedication?—in a shelf to the right of his booth. She furrowed her brow and concentrated hard, trying to get some purchase on the slick album cover. Her hands began to tremble with the strain, but she managed to pull the corner out.
She sat back in her chair, breathing hard. Harris’s and Dee’s concerned faces swam in her peripheral vision, but she waved them away limply. She was almost there.
Gripping the table for support, she reached for the DJ’s hand. It was much, much harder than moving a glass or a record, even though it was technically smaller, because it already had a purpose behind it and a trajectory ahead of it. She had to choose her moment, and then jerk as hard as she could.
The DJ’s hand bumped the protruding edge of the record she had moved, and she felt more than heard the idea skitter across his mind. Severing the connection, she slumped back in her chair.
“Jane, what the hell?” Harris demanded, a note of panic in his voice. Dee looked scared, too, but maybe also a little relieved that Jane hadn’t inadvertently killed or maimed anyone with her magic.
“I got them together, I think,” Jane said, “but it was really hard.” She had expected to have to act a little, but her voice was weak and trembly all on its own. As if on cue, the music changed. Sultry, haunting, Auto-Tune-distorted notes filled the club, and the writhing twentysomething dancers slowed a little, their hips and arms beginning to find graceful arcs. “I need a moment. But go dance, spy, and let me know what they’re doing. Take your time. Blend in.”
Dee and Harris exchanged intrigued glances, and obediently turned and headed for the dance floor. Dee cast one last suspicious look over her shoulder at Jane, who could swear that her friend was mouthing “thank you” before they disappeared together into the mass of moving bodies.
So she
was
interested in Harris. Jane tried to feel good about her second romantic setup in a row, but her earlier glow was conspicuously missing.
I’m just tired,
she told herself. And she was. But she was also sad to see Harris go off with another girl, no matter how much she liked that girl, and no matter how often she reminded herself that she and Harris were just friends.
And. I. Have. A. Fiancé!
Why was that so hard to remember when Harris was around? No wonder she didn’t have the same altruistic high she’d had after giving the two strangers at the bar their little push. She had gotten that from acting like a good person . . . and her second try at playing Cupid was a timely reminder that she really wasn’t one.
I’ll just have to try harder,
she resolved, sipping at her wine and swaying a little to the music. She gently turned the two rings on her left hand. One for her past, one for her future. That was all that mattered . . . it was all that could matter.
T
en days before the wedding,
J
ane found herself alone in
the Dorans’ parlor. She had worked a half-day at the MoMA. She was planning a reception for a visiting professor from London’s Slade School of Art. The work went quickly, but she still missed Maeve’s presence in the office. She had finally been released from the hospital three days prior—an infection and a slipped stitch had slowed her recovery considerably . . . as if it hadn’t been slow enough already.
Jane had wondered if Lynne or one of the twins had had a hand in Maeve’s complications, but she had decided not to mention the possibility to Harris. He had to be worried enough as it was, and besides, he’d probably already thought of it.
Jane walked over to the marble wall that held Lynne’s family history. She felt like she could draw most of it from memory by now, from Ambika all the way down to Annette. She had tried once to calculate in her head how long ago Ambika had begun this family’s legacy, but she had lost track somewhere around the twelfth century. She found herself wondering about Ambika and her dubious legacy. Was she one of the original seven witches Rosalie had talked about in her book? What kind of a world had she lived in? And if she was one of the first seven, what exactly had caused the fight between her and her siblings that had lasted through so many generations? Was it a struggle over power . . . or something more?
Or maybe she was just a Dark
Ages version of Lynne,
Jane thought wryly, trying unsuccessfully to picture Lynne without a chauffeured car or five-star restaurants to call in from. But thoughts of Lynne—and Yuri—made her feel like an ice cube had been dropped down the back of her dress. It was getting harder and harder to smile pleasantly, talk about the wedding, listen to gossip, all the while holding her breath, waiting for something to give her away or for someone else to get hurt.
Jane reached out her fingers toward the wall and found Malcolm’s name, tracing it gently over and over. Postcards had begun to arrive in the last week: brightly colored, information-less scraps of paper addressed to the entire family. He had sent one from Madrid, one from Barcelona, one from Marrakech. They had alluded to complications, delays, additional business in undetermined parts of the world. He hadn’t bothered to spring for express air mail, so Jane was sure that they would keep coming, full of bland excuses, even after she and Malcolm were long gone on their “honeymoon.” It was a smart plan: as long as the family was still getting weeks-old news from Malcolm, they would be less likely to realize that he and Jane had disappeared. They could have a month’s head start before someone noticed that his postcards had stopped coming.
He would arrive home just the one day, for her, and then they would start their new life together . . . wherever that turned out to be.
In the meantime, each card ended with a sterile
“Love to J—see you soon.”
It wasn’t much, but it was enough to keep her going. Wherever he was now—and she was fairly sure that he hadn’t ever been in Spain or Morocco at all—he was thinking of her. He was doing all of this for her. All she had to do to keep up her end was not give them away, for just another week and a half.
Her fingers slid to the right along the marble wall, exploring the grooves of Annette’s name. She remembered optimistically wondering if Malcolm’s little sister might have been a friend to her if she’d lived. After everything she had learned about Manhattan’s magical families, and about this one in particular, that seemed extremely unlikely. Annette would have been a full-blooded witch, just like her. Lynne wouldn’t have needed Jane in the first place if her own heir had survived, but if she had decided to bring Jane into the family anyway, as extra insurance, Annette almost certainly would have been raised to see her as a rival.
Seven magical sisters.
Had Ambika known what the magic would do to her extended family? Just how far it would spread around the world? Just how many magical families were out there now? Hundreds or thousands, maybe, if the size of the Dorans’ tree was any indication. The Montagues were part of another one that would probably have just as many branches, and even orphaned Jane Boyle might have a couple of long-lost fifth cousins with traces of the gift in their DNA. Malcolm had mentioned something about two families dying out completely, but how many witches were left in the world? And, inherited or not, magical lines changed names in nearly every generation. When the seven original families had branched and divided and intermarried, it would be impossible to know where the power had gone unless you followed it closely. So Manhattan’s witches watched each other like hawks, Harris had told her, tracking each other’s power with obsessive jealousy. Not exactly a warm, loving environment.
Her eye landed on the strange smooth patch next to Annette’s name.
A mistake?
she wondered again, and then she realized: that was the space for Charles. It must have been prepared when Lynne had gotten pregnant again. Maybe the baby’s name had even been chiseled in, before the whole area had been erased to cover up Charles’s existence. Jane felt a pang of sadness, even pity for the family that had been touched by so much tragedy. It wasn’t that Lynne hadn’t earned her karma in spades—she had, and more—but it was still more sorrow than Jane could comfortably wish on her worst enemy.
The thought of Charles, living his whole life in the attic, left her somewhere between pity and fear. Since the night she had spotted him in the kitchen, every creak and shadow in the halls had made her jump at the thought that Malcolm’s troubled younger brother might leap out and attack her again. Although he was supposedly safely closed in the attic, she kept smelling the stale, rotten air that had filled her lungs that horrible night when he had grabbed her.
A floorboard groaned behind her, and Jane spun toward the door, a scream dying in her throat. The shape that blocked the light was much too small to be Charles. The hall light glinted off a silver-streaked bun, and Jane had the figure narrowed down to one of two.
“What are
you
doing here?” the newcomer snapped brusquely.
Belinda, definitely.
“I had a headache,” Jane improvised. “I just wanted a little peace and quiet.”
Belinda Helding sniffed disapprovingly. “You’ll skip dinner, then. Have something sent to your room.”
Jane suppressed an unexpected smile.
She doesn’t want me here any more than I want to be here,
she realized. By the Doran standards, Belinda was practically an ally. Jane was seized by an irrational urge to giggle. “That sounds good,” she replied instead, trying to make her voice sound appropriately weak and faint. “Thank you for your concern.”
Belinda’s head tilted quizzically, as if she honestly couldn’t understand why anyone would imagine that she was concerned about Jane. Jane plastered a half-grateful, half-apologetic smile onto her face and made her way to the door.
Jane got close enough to smell the dusty-violet scent of Belinda’s perfume before the older woman budged at all. With a sigh that would be more appropriate to a mother dealing with an exasperating child’s temper tantrum, Belinda took one reluctant, shuffling step to the side, leaving only barely enough room for Jane to pass through.
Lynne would tell me to diet,
she reflected. Then Belinda’s trailing gray sleeve brushed Jane’s arm. A static shock—or maybe a shock of another kind—passed between them, and Jane cringed involuntarily.
She snapped her default smile back onto her face as quickly as she could, but she could still feel Belinda’s eyes, like hard little chunks of pewter, boring into her back as she forced herself to walk, not run, back to her suite.
Ten days. Just ten more days.
The wedding couldn’t possibly come soon enough.