The Dark Glamour

by Gabriella Pierce

  Jane bounced off her stool as Anne struggled to her feet, wiping broken glass from her clothes. “Are you okay?” she asked, trying to hide both the guilt and the glee in her voice. It had been a mean trick, but it had also been kind of spectacular.

  “Fine,” Anne snapped, flinching away. Then she glanced up at Jane, and another flicker of recognition crossed her face. Her whole posture relaxed, and Jane smiled automatically at the friendlier body language. “Sorry about this mess,” Anne went on, swerving around the bar and then returning with a broom.

  “It’s so not your fault,” Jane insisted as supportively as she could. “I think you caught a chair leg; the guys at that table shouldn’t have left them pushed out like that.”

  Anne shook her head ruefully as she pushed the largest pieces of glass and china into the dustpan first. “No one has to leave chairs anywhere.” She smiled to herself, as if she were enjoying some private joke. “I’m cursed.”

  “Me, too,” Jane blurted out impulsively. I thought I was cursed for most of my life, anyway. She wondered frantically how Anne’s magic manifested. If she didn’t know what was happening, unintentional magic could easily seem like a string of insanely bad luck.

  Anne looked at her curiously before returning to her dustpan. “I suppose plenty of people think so,” she offered noncommittally, her waves of hair hiding most of her face.

  “No, really,” Jane insisted, inching forward on her bench. “Electronics hate me. One time I swear I blew up a whole espresso machine.”

  Anne glanced nervously at the little drip coffee maker behind the bar, then back at Jane. “Just the once, though,” Jane checked herself, her full mouth set in a straight, serious line.

  “Just once that was coffee-related,” Jane assured her. “But I am cursed with electronics in general. We should start a support group—or at least go looking for a cure.”

  “You could just go live in the jungle or the desert somewhere,” Anne pointed out mischievously, sweeping up the smaller pieces.

  “Mine is an avoidable problem,” Jane admitted, “or it would be if no electricity didn’t also mean no ice cream.”

  Anne laughed, a golden, musical sound that reminded Jane intensely of Malcolm. “I don’t think I could give up my telly, personally,” she offered, and then blushed a little. Jane vividly remembered her vision of the girl’s small, sad apartment with its old-fashioned television tuned to the BBC.

  “I haven’t owned one since my last one blew up a few years ago,” Jane admitted, taking a sip of her lukewarm coffee. It tasted even more like bitter water than the last cup had, and she grimaced.

  Anne’s mouth bowed into a puzzled frown. “Are you really cursed, too, then?” Her dark eyes searched Jane’s face eagerly.

  Jane tore open the sugar packet on her saucer and grinned. “I really am,” she confirmed brightly, “so the plates just now must have been my fault. Let me get you a coffee, to make it up?” “A coffee,” just like Elodie says it, she thought proudly.

  Anne hesitated, her eyes darting around the room. “Okay,” she agreed in such a strange and noncommittal tone that at first Jane thought she had declined. “I’ll grab one. And a refill, if you want.”

  I just asked a barmaid to get herself coffee, Jane told herself, mentally rolling her eyes. I’m pretty much a social genius. But Anne was back quickly, and seemed almost happy to be sliding into the booth across from Jane. Lonely, Jane remembered with a rush of compassion.

  “Although,” Anne continued a little more animatedly as she passed the second coffee across the table, “if we really are both cursed, it’s probably tempting fate just to be in the same pub. But at one table? One of us should watch out for falling rocks.”

  Jane smiled tentatively. “I think we can risk it for a little while—maybe we’ll even cancel each other out.”

  Anne turned out to be pleasant company, if a bit awkward. Jane sketched Ella’s biography for her, enjoying the freedom of it. She had purposely made Ella’s background ambiguous and confusing in case anyone decided to check it out, but Anne had no reason to do that. So Jane invented details with cheerful abandon, mixing her English title, Brazilian name, and hybrid accent into a seamless—if long—life story. As she worked to keep their conversation lively, Jane wondered again how much Anne even knew about her own early life. Although she seemed open enough about current things, she showed no inclination whatsoever to delve into her past.

  Jane left longer and longer pauses after her own made-up stories, but she didn’t risk pushing any more than that. She feels weird talking about her history at work; who wouldn’t?

  “Would you like to get tea sometime? While you’re here, I mean,” Anne asked abruptly, and Jane jumped slightly.

  Witches, she thought exasperatedly, even though she knew there was no way Anne could literally have read her mind. “I’d love to,” she hurried to reply. “Tomorrow, maybe?”

  Anne nodded enthusiastically and dug around in her half-apron for a pen. When she found one, she reached shyly for Jane’s hand, spelling out an address on it in cramped blue letters. Jane, thinking of Lynne’s elegant ivory calling cards, suppressed a smile: Anne was in for some serious culture shock when she got to New York. “Come by around four,” Anne suggested quietly, her voice turning up at the end to make it sound like a question.

  “I’ll be there,” Jane told her emphatically. Anne was guarded, but Jane suspected that she probably didn’t have a lot of friends. Guilt turned her stomach for a moment, but she quickly decided that it must be the coffee. I’m giving her answers, she told the guilt. She deserves to know who she is, and that’s why I’m here—it’s perfect.

  Then her brain whispered viciously, André would probably kill me over this alone, and she felt the fine brown hairs stand up on her arms. He hadn’t knocked on her adjoining suite’s door since their disastrous dinner the night before, but it was impossible that he would leave her alone for long. Her sake, my sake—I’m here for a lot of reasons. I have to get this right.

  Chapter Twenty-Eight

  The hallway of Anne’s building had an industrial quality to it that might at some point have passed for “design” but now was just depressing. The hallway was unexpectedly wide, forcing Jane to wonder how much space had been wasted there that might have gone toward larger flats, and where its paint was chipped, she could see at least six colors of other paint underneath. And who puts fluorescent lights in a place people actually have to live? she wondered indignantly, turning away from the crackled mirror beside the unnecessarily wide staircase. There was, naturally, no elevator.

  The whole atmosphere reminded her intensely of the flat she had seen in her first vision, but walking into that very same flat was still eerie. Anne had cleaned up for her guest, but that just made the general shabbiness of the room more apparent. The walls were a boring, unadorned white, emphasized by the fact that Anne hadn’t hung anything on them. The floorboards had wide spaces between them, and they creaked ominously beneath Jane’s black ankle boots. Anne’s furniture all looked either flimsy or secondhand, and after a moment of indecision, Jane chose a scarred wicker armchair. It swayed a bit under her weight.

  Anne busied herself in the rust-stained kitchenette for a few minutes, returning with a tray containing an impressive spread of tea and tea-related items. She had assembled a variety of small, crustless sandwiches, scones packed with fat brown raisins, and sugars in fanciful shapes and colors. Jane felt her eyes widen a little at the incongruity of a Wedgwood teapot in the sad little apartment.

  “My best friend gave me that for my eighteenth birthday,” Anne told Jane, following her gaze to the teapot. “She said it was to give me an alternative to some wild pub-crawl.”

  “I wouldn’t have pegged you for the ‘wild pub-crawl’ type, anyway,” Jane pointed out gently, accepting the mug Anne offered her.

  Anne sat on her dusty floral couch and stared at the threadbare pink rug beneath her feet for a moment. “I’m not particularly wild,”
she replied softly, and Jane’s fingers tightened around her mug so fiercely that the dusky skin under her nails blanched as white as the half-moons at their base.

  “Well, that’s usually a good thing,” she suggested. “And you said you moved around a lot when you were younger. It makes sense you’d want to feel more . . . stable, after that.” I certainly felt a little wild after never going anywhere as a kid, she admitted reasonably to herself. The opposite scenario seemed just as likely.

  “I guess.” Anne stared down into her mug.

  Jane, worried about losing the fragile bond she felt they’d forged, leaned forward. “I so don’t mean to pry,” she lied, “but you also mentioned a foster home. I don’t know why you were there, and you don’t have to tell me if you don’t want to. I just mean that it’s probably quite reasonable for you to want some stability now.”

  For a moment, she thought that her transition might have been too abrupt, but Anne just took a gulp of her lapsang souchong tea and nodded thoughtfully. “I don’t remember a bit of that, though. Not a thing before I arrived at the orphanage. They said I looked five or six, and in good health, and that’s all I’ll ever know about . . . before.”

  Jane leaned a little farther forward, causing her wicker chair to creak unpleasantly. She plucked a piece of sugar shaped like a pair of hot-pink lips off its porcelain tray and dropped it into her tea. “You mean you didn’t remember anything? That can’t happen every day; surely the people at the orphanage must have investigated.” Not to mention the entire population of the continent you were supposed to be on.

  Anne shrugged, although some visible tension remained in her shoulders. “Of course. And especially this girl, Kathy, who volunteered there. Her parents have all kinds of connections, but even they couldn’t find out where I came from. But eventually the government had to place me with a family, who were . . . lovely. Really.”

  Anne’s dark eyes welled up with tears, but they didn’t fall. Jane longed to tell her that it was all right; she didn’t have to talk about this if she didn’t want to. I need to know what happened, she reminded herself, closing her eyes just a bit longer than a blink. Even if it’s hard for her. “You say that sadly,” Jane encouraged gently, dropping her voice half an octave to sound more soothing.

  “The last time I talked to them I was throwing a tantrum,” Anne murmured. Her square jaw clenched tightly. “It was six months in, and they had bought me new shoes—those shiny Mary Jane kind—and wanted me to throw out the ones I’d been wearing. Which had holes in them by then, but Kathy had picked them for me, and I was in the middle of a complete fit when the smoke alarms started going off. They made me leave, but their girls—Lacey and Renee—were playing in the attic, so they had to go back in. The fire was everywhere by then, though, and . . .” Anne trailed off and spread her hands helplessly.

  Jane’s mind flashed to Malcolm’s hands, and she dragged it violently back. “I’m so sorry,” Jane told her sincerely. Losing two families in a year seemed too much for a young child . . . even if she only remembered one of them.

  “It was awful, but it wouldn’t have been so bad if there hadn’t been a fire at my next foster place a month later,” Anne continued matter-of-factly, although her hands were wrapped so tightly around her teacup that her knuckles were white.

  “That’s a horrible coincidence,” Jane agreed softly. That’s an absolutely awful power, she thought silently.

  “That’s what Kathy said,” Anne nodded, but went on to explain that other prospective foster families hadn’t seen things quite the same way. Little Anne had quickly developed a reputation as a possible arsonist, and even people devoted to taking in troubled kids didn’t want to risk having her in their houses. Another fire in her group home when she was eleven had sealed things, even though an investigation hadn’t turned up any kind of evidence of a crime.

  Not that it would have, Jane thought sadly, feeling an entirely new kind of guilt. Knocking the lights out doesn’t seem so bad when you compare it to burning the house down. She felt a wave of empathy for Anne, who wouldn’t have had any idea what was happening . . . or that she could have stopped it if she’d known how. Lynne was obviously no picnic as a mother, but at least she could have helped her with her magic. Whoever took Annette from her completely destroyed the poor girl’s life.

  “But Kathy and her family kept looking out for me,” Anne went on positively. “She’s the one who gave me this tea set, actually. They’ve been there for me my whole life, or the part that I remember. So it’s a bit like family, when you think about it.”

  Her face lit up with the ghost of a real smile, and Jane automatically smiled back. They didn’t take you in, though, she bit back. Or find your real parents, even with all their supposed pull. And it wasn’t as if Annette’s real parents had been subtle about their search for their missing daughter. No wonder Anne came across so lonely, if a nice teapot was all her “best friend” had come up with.

  Jane snagged a smoked-salmon finger sandwich and nibbled it, hiding as much of her face as she could with the little rectangle. She felt guilty all over again thinking of all her own friends had been willing to sacrifice for her, and they hadn’t known her for nearly as long as this Kathy had known Anne. No close friends, no one to teach her about her magic . . . she really lost everything. Jane crossed her ankle boots and considered her own agenda in a whole new way. I might actually be helping her, she realized. Not just telling myself that—this could be good for her.

  Lynne was no picnic, certainly, but Jane was betting everything that she would mellow once her daughter was home. And then she would be the perfect person to teach Anne to control her magic, and to introduce her to a world where people actually considered her needs. The way most of New York fawned over the Dorans was downright ludicrous, actually, but for someone as used to being pushed aside as Anne was, it could be just what the doctor ordered. Jane frowned into her mug. It never occurred to me that she would be a real person.

  Jane checked her thin tank watch as discreetly as she could. She had promised to meet Elodie later that afternoon, and her time was running short. I did that on purpose, she reminded herself, so that I wouldn’t be able to unload everything on her right away. She was more tempted than ever to just tell Anne the truth—but that didn’t mean caution wasn’t still the smarter play.

  When she looked up again, Anne was watching her intently. Jane twisted her watch face down awkwardly, hoping she hadn’t been too obvious. Anne leaned back on the floral couch and tucked her feet up underneath her. “I didn’t ask how long you were in London for,” she said lightly, stacking one coltish wrist on top of the other. “Or where you were going after, now that I think about it.”

  “Back to New York,” Jane answered truthfully. And the rest depends on what you say to going back there with me. Anne’s full lower lip pouted, and Jane realized that she really had succeeded in making a connection with the solitary girl. “But I do have a little more time here—just not today. Maybe we could get together again tomorrow? I’d really like to talk more.”

  Anne nodded even a little more enthusiastically than Jane had expected. “You could come by after my lunch shift,” she suggested, “or I could come see you, of course, if it’s more convenient.”

  Jane had a vivid vision of Anne and André coming face-to-face in the hallway of her hotel, and barely suppressed a shudder. “I’ll be in the area,” she lied. “I’d love to come back here.”

  Anne glanced around at the bare walls and unsteady furniture, and Jane felt she could almost read the girl’s mind. She leaned forward impulsively, ignoring the wicker chair’s protest, and laid one of her brown hands on top of Anne’s golden-skinned one. “I’ll come back tomorrow,” she repeated, and Anne smiled shyly. And I’ll make things better for both of us.

  Chapter Twenty-Nine

  “So she’s a pyro?” Elodie asked skeptically, tapping a croquet ball toward a wicket with one hand while sipping a mimosa from the other.

 
; “No,” Jane insisted, turning her own mallet over a few times in a futile attempt to find a version that felt correct. “It’s not on purpose. Remember how my computer was constantly going down?”

  “That cute IT guy thought you were into him,” Elodie agreed. “So did I, actually. This isn’t the best example of how this stuff isn’t on purpose, now that I think about it.”

  “I wasn’t into the IT guy!” Jane squeaked indignantly, wincing when some heads turned their way. She had come straight from Anne’s little flat to meet Elodie, but Elodie had been in the middle of a mandatory garden party thrown by her parents. Jane had arrived to find the Dessaixes’ spacious lawn full of well-dressed and slightly tipsy diplomats. The hosts had prudently invested in a heated tent for shelter, but to Jane’s surprise, the sun had finally come out, and spring was well under way. I guess it sneaks up on you when it rains nonstop for days, she admitted wryly, watching a pair of yellow birds chase each other around a stand of purple irises.

  In her gloomy, rainproof city wear, she had felt distinctly out of place, but fortunately Elodie’s clothes fit Ella’s body a lot better than they had ever fit Jane’s. Jane did suspect that the skirt of her borrowed pastel sundress was meant to be knee-length, but overall she looked the part of an embassy wife with nothing more dangerous on her mind than thank-you notes. “Trust me, Anne has no idea that she did any of that stuff.”

  “So she could do it again,” Elodie pointed out, hitting her ball once more and then hopping up and down in triumph for reasons Jane didn’t fully follow. “Like, if you tell her some really upsetting, crazy, life-changing thing, she could barbecue you.”