Officially weird, Jane decided. Of course, it was possible for this woman to be a witch, too, but she wasn’t that much older than Jane, and probably a bit younger than Malcolm. If a practicing witch of his age had been available to marry into the family, Lynne never would have let her wind up with some third cousin. Breathing a little more shallowly now, Jane prodded André’s mind, and then bounced her attention to Andrew McCarroll’s, then to a stranger in a plum Armani shirt. Walls, walls, and more walls. Had she lost her power somehow? With a burst of inspiration, she shot her focus toward a waiter who was winding carefully through the crowd.
The man flinched almost physically under the force of Jane’s mind, and she saw everything: his worry over his dog’s illness that morning, his grocery list, his shirt size, the way he took his coffee, the phone number one of the guests had just slipped into his pocket. She could see the three friends he had gone to see Aerosmith with, and how much he had lost in an Atlantic City casino the next night, and the mountain of crab legs he had crammed into his mouth at the buffet to try to make up for it. By the time she pulled free, she knew him almost as intimately as she knew herself, and she gagged a little at the unintentional violation of his privacy. André turned toward her, curious and concerned, but she waved his attention away. “I inhaled some bubbles,” she explained awkwardly, waving her glass of champagne. André frowned, and she pasted on her old party smile. “Excuse me, please,” she added to the cousin and the trophy wife, backing out of their little circle and heading for the fresher air outside of the canopy.
She reached the wrought-iron railing, and leaned out slightly over the busy street below. It’s a business event thrown by two magical families, she mused, the thoughts snapping into place like interlocking blocks. Anyone whose mind could be read is a weak link. It would only make sense that the active witches present would protect their own family members’ minds from being read. No wonder Lynne was annoyed that the Dalcascu only sent two people. Her side is stuck blocking the minds of half of Manhattan, while André is the only one his sister has to worry about. Most of the attendees probably had at least a little magical heritage, Jane guessed, which would make them harder to read than most people to begin with. But it still must have taken a huge amount of power and concentration to render their minds completely unreadable.
It seemed like an awful lot of effort, actually, for people as rich and powerful as the Dorans. No matter how alluring the prospect of a good deal was, couldn’t they do as well, or nearly as well, without dealing with other witches? That way they would have a major advantage, which was how Lynne preferred to conduct all her business.
Unless, Jane’s brain continued on briskly, it’s not really about that kind of “business” at all. It would undoubtedly be better to treat with nonmagical companies when the stakes were purely financial. And Lynne didn’t need more money; she needed more witches. Young, female witches who could be brought into her family so that she could continue her magical legacy the way she had once tried to do through Jane. Except this time, instead of murder and seduction, she’s inviting their relatives to swank parties, Jane thought bitterly, kicking at a scuff mark in the flagstone. But her feelings aside, she knew she had hit upon something. “Cash-poor,” Laura called them, but they’ve got plenty of money. She meant magic. Lynne had magic, so the Dalcascus must have witches. It wasn’t a merger at all: it was an alliance.
And I’m stuck right in the middle of it, she realized suddenly, feeling more than one pair of eyes on her. She looked up and saw Laura look quickly away and move off into the crowd. From one dark corner, Belinda Helding was staring at her thoughtfully, but unlike her daughter-in-law, she didn’t bother to hide what she was doing when Jane met her cold, pewter gaze. Jane’s eyes located Laura’s asymmetrical taupe cocktail dress again, this time next to Lynne’s sleek garnet one. The two women were whispering, their shining coiffed heads so close they were nearly touching.
Laura is suspicious, Jane decided in a panic. She met me, and now I’m here, and she knows something’s up. There were at least three witches between Jane and the elevator. She gripped the railing so hard that her knuckles went white, but the interested tilt of Lynne’s head was telling her something important, and she concentrated hard. Dee got me and André onto Page Six, she reminded herself, feeling a sudden space of calm in her mind. They can’t read my mind, so they’ll think André’s posse is protecting me, too, which would mean I’m important. They’ll be curious, and I can use that.
Lynne stepped back from her tête-à-tête with Laura and turned her dark eyes to rake Jane over from head to toe. Jane pushed away from the railing before she could talk herself out of it, and sauntered across the roof toward Lynne. She was amazed at how steady she felt; even her champagne stayed level in its flute as she closed the space between them.
“Lady Baroness,” Lynne greeted her with an arched eyebrow that briefly took Jane back three months.
“Mrs. Doran,” she replied politely, inclining her head a fraction of a degree.
“You’ve made quite the entrance in New York,” Lynne observed, her voice smooth as a polished diamond. “I’m told that André normally goes for women who are more . . . interchangeable.”
“Perhaps he’s trying to impress you,” Jane shot back coolly, enjoying the fleeting twitch of surprise on Lynne’s face. Being a mystery was much more fun than being the prey, she decided.
“That could be it,” Lynne agreed impassively, brushing back an imaginary stray lock of hair into her flawless twist. “Although at the moment I’m rather more interested in what you’re trying to do.”
Out of the corner of her eye, Jane watched the shifting pattern of people: Laura moving toward Belinda; Cora and André close together while the naggingly familiar woman in black, still facing away from Jane, drew nearer to the huddled pair. The woman in the black suit kissed André quickly on both cheeks, but Jane still couldn’t see her face. Cora and Belinda found each other in the crowd: identical gray twins in identically unflattering gray gowns.
“I’m sure my goals wouldn’t interest you,” Jane answered carefully, “unless I could help you with yours, that is.” The slight tension around Lynne’s peach-lipsticked mouth told her that her message had been received clearly.
“While I’m sure you have André wrapped around your lovely little finger,” Lynne drawled with the hint of a threat in her soft voice, “my business is with his sister, Katrin. I’m sorry to say that if you wanted to put your hand into our dealings, you’ve seduced the wrong sibling.”
God, what a world she lives in, Jane thought with a shudder of disgust. What a world she imposes on the rest of us, she corrected herself, because technically it was true that she had seduced André to get to Lynne. The fact that her motives were far more personal than Lynne apparently suspected, and that André had been more than willing to cooperate, didn’t make it all that much better.
The fact that she murdered my grandmother does. Jane’s jaw clenched; she refused to feel any kind of guilt in front of this woman. “Your ‘business’ with Katrin is your own,” she told Lynne firmly, searching her brain for anything that would pique her mother-in-law’s interest. I certainly can’t risk mentioning Annette yet. “I’m more interested in a mutual friend we have. In South America,” she added, remembering what Laura had said about Malcolm over dinner the other night. She bit her lip uncertainly; it felt unpleasantly like a betrayal. But the information ultimately came from Lynne in the first place. Whether it was true or not, it was nothing new to Lynne, but Jane guessed that it would still get her attention.
Lynne’s dark eyes snapped wide, and Jane recoiled instinctively. Too much attention, maybe, she quailed, but there was no undoing it now. All she could do was pretend to be holding a better hand than she really was, and that started with not showing weakness. She straightened her long spine and set her shoulders squarely. “First, of course, I have some questions for you,” she improvised, hearing an authentic note of boldness in Ella
’s unfamiliar voice.
A large hand closed painfully around her arm and jerked her back, away from Lynne. For a moment, she saw Cora McCarroll whispering frantically in Lynne’s ear, but André spun her around and was half-shoving her toward the glass-walled elevator. “We have to go now,” he hissed in her ear, and pushed her inside.
He loomed in front of her, filling her field of vision, but as the elevator started to descend, Jane saw Belinda Helding glaring after it from off to the left. Beside her, Jane saw the tall woman in the black pantsuit, her face obscured by a heat lamp. Laura Helding stood alone to the right of the elevator, and she, too, stared intently at Jane. I’ve been made, Jane realized with absolute certainty, reading her friend’s face expertly. She had been naïve to assume that no one would notice that her mind wasn’t supposed to be unreadable; someone had.
They know I’m a witch. The elevator doors slid open, and André propelled her out to the street, his face a mask of fury. He knows I’m a witch.
It’s over.
Chapter Seventeen
Jane opened her eyes and glanced over toward the front door of her suite. She breathed a sigh of relief when she saw that her barricade was still in place: a taupe couch stood on its end behind a walnut hutch, two armchairs, and a rolltop writing desk. The pileup had been a compromise of sorts: her initial instinct had been to flee the hotel, the Dorans, and her assumed identity, and never look back. But although the cab ride back to the hotel with André had been strained, to say the least, he had spent most of it trying to pretend that things were normal.
“Those parties are so dull,” he had declared in a lousy imitation of a casual tone.
Jane had nodded along, her mind racing. He knew she was a witch, and the information had clearly rattled him. But he seemed determined not to show it. He had even kissed her good-night in the elevator—a long, slow, deep kiss that sent two completely different sets of shivers down her spine and into her legs. She had ridden the last two floors alone, breathing as hard as if she had just sprinted a mile. By the time she had stumbled into her suite, she had decided to wait and see . . . behind a well-reinforced door.
A soft tapping came from the other side, and Jane realized that it was the sound that had woken her up. “Housekeeping,” a tentative voice warbled from the hallway.
Jane popped out of bed, on the alert and ready to read the mind outside the door. Although it’s not like I could let her in, anyway, she realized quickly, and rolled her eyes at herself. The barricade might realistically gain her a moment or two if angry witches were at the door, but for anyone else it was just an inconvenience. “Come back in an hour, please,” she called through the door, and heard a shifting noise as the woman moved along down the hall.
Out of the corner of her eye, Jane saw movement in the bathroom, and she flattened herself against the wall beside the door. It had been a person, she was sure: tall, with shoulder-length dark hair. Like me, her brain supplied. Now, anyway. She sighed heavily; she had gotten so used to the sight of her new face in the mirror that it didn’t usually startle her anymore. Will I jump at first when I see the old Jane again? she wondered sadly, peering around the doorframe into the bathroom just to be completely sure there was no one there. Ella’s dark, almond-shaped eyes blinked back at her, and she straightened and returned her attention to her makeshift barricade.
“All right,” she murmured to herself, eyeing the taupe couch resentfully. “You first.”
It took much longer to put her sitting room back in order than it had to demolish it. Jane felt sweaty and disheveled by the time she had finished, but with the door unblocked, she felt perversely unwilling to turn her back on it long enough to take a shower. I’m losing it, she decided, but after the previous night’s drama it was hard to get her thoughts in order. But if that’s what it takes to relax long enough to brush my teeth . . .
Something rustled just on the other side of the door, and Jane jumped in the air, stifling a scream. But instead of the wood splintering to reveal a horde of angry witches, a thick ivory card slid anticlimactically under the door of her suite. She clenched her hands into fists, focusing on her breath until her heart stopped racing. Finally, she crouched and scooped up the card, fumbling until it was out of its envelope and right side up. It was unmistakably Lynne Doran’s stationery, but it took Jane a moment to make sense of its contents. Instead of the handwritten notes she had grown used to at the mansion, this was a printed invitation. I guess that’s a message all on its own, she thought, tracing the slightly raised lettering. Lynne had invited Ella to a cocktail party the following Friday . . . at 665 Park Avenue.
“I’m in,” she whispered. “How the hell am I in?”
She paced the hall, her bare feet padding on the plush runner. André had clearly intended to bring Ella to the party as titled and tabloided arm candy to impress the Dorans—a tactic Lynne had apparently seen through. Once Jane arrived, though, someone on André’s side—maybe the “battle-ax” sister that Laura Helding complained about—had pegged Jane as a witch. The Dalcascus couldn’t have known at first whether Ella was a Doran spy or a free agent with an agenda, but they had obviously realized quickly that it had been a mistake to allow her anywhere near the pending “merger.” But it had gotten completely out of their control, Jane realized thoughtfully, right around the time that she had obliquely mentioned Malcolm to Lynne. Lynne’s interest made Ella too valuable to attack or even just cut off. André would have to keep her close now . . . and his family would be waiting for any chance to turn the tables on her. This wasn’t the time to give up on her disguise; it was the time to work it for all she was worth.
She had to be Ella—and only Ella—for a little over a week, and then she would be in the mansion and on to the next step in her search for Annette.
Jane stepped into the dim, sticky-floored bar where she was supposed to be meeting Dee. Jane would be heading into the lion’s den tomorrow night, and Dee had agreed to collect the locator spell that Jane would need from Misty and then meet her at a bar near their apartment to explain it to Jane. Just like the old days, Jane told herself, recalling all the times the two of them had met secretly to work on Jane’s magic, although somehow she didn’t quite feel it.
She peered around the dark space doubtfully. The slim triangle of a familiar torso caught her eye almost immediately. “Harris,” she blurted out, trying to keep her face as cheerful as possible. This is her version of being extra-discreet?
Harris turned and stood, smiling politely, and waited for Jane to sit before he returned to his own stool. “Hi there, Ella,” his cool voice rippled. “Hope you don’t mind me tagging along on girls’ night.” He smiled a little more broadly this time, and Jane felt the corners of her own mouth tugging their way up, but inside she was furious. Dee clearly hadn’t spilled her secret, but to Jane’s whirling mind that made it even worse that she had brought a date.
Hanging around with Ella Medieros right now is nearly as risky as being friends with Jane Boyle was, she thought uncomfortably. Harris’s sister, Maeve, had been run down by a taxi for the heinous crime of trying to help Jane, and her recovery had been slow and painful. Yuri had tried to kill Dee in the alley behind her apartment, and Lynne had even brutally beaten her own son when she found out that he had changed sides. Jane had felt awful, even though all three of them had known about the danger . . . and Harris wasn’t able to make the same kind of informed decision at the moment.
“Hi,” Jane replied awkwardly. She tried to shoot a meaningful glare at Dee, but try as she might, she couldn’t seem to catch her friend’s eye. Instead, Dee, radiant in a red cowl-necked sweater that was more stylish than anything Jane had ever seen her wear, laughed at Harris’s jokes, invented completely unnecessary reasons to touch him, and flipped her tangle of black hair over her shoulder at every opportunity. She must not even know how dangerous it had been to bring him to their meeting, Jane realized sadly as she watched Dee gaze longingly after Harris when he shoved his way to the
bar to get them a round of drinks. That right there is the face of a serious crush, and crushes make people careless.
There was probably a message in there somewhere about her and André. She had been a little nervous about seeing him after their hasty exit from the rooftop party, but, if anything, the new tension between them improved their already sparkling chemistry. It was as if they had a shared secret now—one they were keeping from each other. It was an unconventional basis for a relationship, but since they spent most of their time in bed anyway, Jane didn’t much care about the basis of anything. The thought was interrupted when Dee suddenly leaned forward and pressed a crumpled baggie into Jane’s hand.
“The spell is really easy,” Dee rushed hoarsely, pushing back her thick hair in an entirely different manner from when Harris was still at the table. “Just mix all of these together, picture her while saying her name seven times—before or grown-up, it doesn’t matter—and then spread the powder on your lids like eye shadow. There’s enough here for an hour.”
“Eye shadow?” Jane asked blankly.
“It should wind up sort of gold,” Dee assured her. “Not great for you, but definitely plausible. Just keep it in mind when you pick your outfit.”
“Thanks,” Jane said numbly, leaning down precariously to shove the baggie into her purse. Apparently, Dee isn’t so much “careless” as she is “a much ballsier undercover agent than me.”
An AC/DC song began to play a little too loudly on the jukebox. Harris returned with a Manhattan and two bottles of Brooklyn Brown Ale. “So, Ella. Dee says you’ve been working around the clock lately. Between that and the fact that trying to pry her away from her new job is like trying to shove a cat into a kitchen sink, I barely see either of you anymore. Tell me honestly: is it me?”
His green eyes were mischievous, but his smile was cool and sweet, and Jane took it in like oxygen. “I can see why you’d be worried,” she told him playfully, “but Dee’s been completely ignoring me, too. I’ve been so neglected that it’s driven me to work overtime; can you imagine?” In the back of her mind, she wondered what Ella’s job was supposed to be—had Dee already made something up? This is why you don’t bring plus-ones, she decided. First André and now Dee had demonstrated vividly why it was a bad idea.
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