I didn’t have to choose with Gran’s ring, she reminded herself. She had known it belonged to her. This magic, on the other hand, was something she would have to consciously choose to take on, and she had no idea what consequences such a choice might bring. It might mean nothing more than that she was the most powerful witch around . . . or it might mean that the power in the athame shouldn’t be hers but was anyway. It could change her somehow, and she might lose the ability—or the will—to get rid of it once it did.
And none of that even addressed what might go wrong outside of her if she took Lynne’s magic. In addition to the power Jane had been born with, she had already received a huge dose of magic from Gran—more than she even knew how to effectively use yet. Adding the contents of the athame to her own potent magic would almost certainly attract the attention of the other witches who were still active in the world, most of whom had probably already heard the name “Jane Boyle” by now. The extra magic would make her even more of a target than Lynne’s maliciousness had.
André and Katrin would be the first ones after her once they figured out what had happened, she knew, and the thought of the vicious Romanians stalking her around the globe made her shudder. And while it had been her plan to let Lynne think Ella had disappeared into thin air, taking the Doran magic with her, the fact that Lynne apparently had connected Ella with Jane made it even more dangerous to create new enemies for her fading alter ego.
Jane’s fingers convulsed on the handle of the athame. The power in it was tempting, no question, but there was also something repellent about the feel of it against her skin, and she let the dagger go quickly.
If she couldn’t take Lynne’s magic herself, then what could she do with it? Part of her was tempted to just throw the thing into a Dumpster somewhere, but the idea made the hairs on the back of her neck stand up on their own. If it was a bad idea to use the magic, it was a worse one to let it out of her control.
So am I just supposed to carry it around in my purse like a toy Chihuahua? A cursed toy Chihuahua?
That hardly seemed like an ideal strategy. Most of the magical community would probably assume that she was using the magic; carrying it around would make her no less a target, yet with no more ability to defend herself. And if any witch worth her salt got within twenty yards of the little silver knife, she would absolutely know what it was Jane was carrying. Jane could feel it through the leather of her purse, across half her bedspread, pressing in on her dreams while she had slept.
I know where to keep something valuable, she realized with a sudden flash of hope. I know where to put something secret.
It was a Sunday morning, and banks must be closed, but she had James McDeary’s card somewhere among her things with his private, emergency number on it. If anyone could get her where she needed to go, it was him. “First Trust Bank of New York,” she muttered, digging through her enameled card case. “Corner of Rector and Trinity.”
She left the bank an hour later, feeling about twenty pounds lighter. Just as she had suspected, the bank manager had been eager to help the baroness . . . even if he’d had no idea who she was. It was actually better that way, she decided: this time, he had done nothing but fawn all over her, while the first time they had met, when she had been posing as Malcolm’s sister, he had suspected something. Because I took the unicorn, she realized, a small piece clicking into place in her mind. At some point, Malcolm must have mentioned that the “personal item” in his safe had belonged to his late sister, and then a very-much-alive sister had showed up to claim it. No wonder he looked so freaked out. Jane giggled to herself.
She had been walking uptown ever since she had left the bank, allowing the soothing buzz of the streets of Manhattan to drain the extra energy from her nerves. But when she reached Houston Street, she stopped cold.
She had come face-to-face with an electronics store’s display window full of (THIS WEEK ONLY!) discounted televisions, all showing Lynne Doran’s face. Jane stopped walking as the camera zoomed out, and a photo of Anne Locksley that looked like a passport picture—or maybe a mug shot—appeared beside Lynne’s. TWENTY-YEAR-OLD MYSTERY SOLVED, the banner read. HEIRESS RETURNS TO OVERJOYED FAMILY.
There were plenty of similarly terse and sensationalistic headlines below various family photos: apparently, Anne’s reappearance was big news. Bigger than her brother’s disappearance, Jane thought with something that felt almost like jealousy, and then she laughed at herself a little. Wasn’t that the point, after all? Besides, it really was a pretty spectacular story. Half the televisions were showing old photos of Annette as a little girl. At first, Jane guessed that they were Lynne’s pictures, but there were at least a couple that had to be from later, after Anne became a British foster child. The other screens were promising interviews with the family; there was even a brief clip of Lynne’s husband with a glass of whiskey in his hand and tears in his eyes.
Damn, that woman moves fast. Jane blinked, trying to count flight hours against the time change between New York and London. I slept, she decided eventually; obviously, Lynne hadn’t bothered with such trivia. The full-on media blitz that her onetime nemesis had literally pulled off overnight was impressive, even for a Doran. As Jane continued on, she realized that news of Anne’s triumphant return to the bosom of her loving family was everywhere: televisions, news tickers, even printed papers had all managed to pick up the story in a hurry. It’s like magic, she thought smugly, and smiled as she hailed a cab.
The little screen facing the backseat had a promo clip of an interview with Laura and Blake Helding, who surprised Jane by managing to sit beside each other without clawing each other’s eyes out. They presented a relatively united front, unwaveringly telling the story of Annette’s supposed death in carefully edited bursts, interspersed with information about the amazing discovery that she was alive, after all. Ella’s name, naturally, never came close to being mentioned. Somewhere in all the drama, Jane registered the news that Malcolm was in rehab somewhere in Austria, and his wife was home with her family, waiting for the annulment papers that would put a period at the end of her (totally un-newsworthy) ordeal. Laura elegantly implied that anyone who didn’t respect poor Jane Boyle’s privacy during this difficult time deserved to be drawn and quartered, while simultaneously exploiting Anne’s tragic childhood for all it was worth. Jane was frankly impressed by her friend’s media savvy, and even went so far as to wonder if it would be possible for them to stay in touch once the circus had calmed down.
Or maybe we don’t have to wait that long, she realized once she got back to her room. A silver tray was waiting conspicuously on the little table just inside her door, and resting on top of it was a thick, creamy envelope. She didn’t even need to look at the handwriting of Ella’s name to know who it was from—she felt sure she would recognize that stationery for the rest of her life—and she slid it open curiously. Instead of the personalized note she had expected, what she pulled out of the envelope was a formal, engraved message . . . an invitation, she realized after a confused moment.
The Dorans, it seemed, would welcome her presence at an intimate gathering of friends and select members of the press intended to welcome Miss Annette Doran back to her rightful place in Manhattan society.
The soiree was set for the following Saturday night. It would be the last day of her disguise, Jane realized, and instinctively turned toward her full-length mirror to check her appearance. Almond-shaped black eyes stared back at her from Ella’s mahogany face. In spite of her fears during the incredibly stressful previous week, the orb’s spell seemed to be going strong. Based on when I woke up as Ella, I’d have until midnight, she reminded herself. She pulled the closet door open, banishing her reflection and replacing it with her impressive collection of party dresses.
Am I seriously considering this? I wonder what Anne will think, seeing me there, Jane thought with a little restless agitation, closing the closet door again firmly. But, of course, Lynne must have told Anne about her part i
n their reunion already. And if Lynne was willing to forgive and forget the steep bargain Ella had driven, why should Anne hold a grudge of any kind against her? She had been a little deceptive, sure, but obviously everything was working out for the best for everyone. And in record time, Jane mused: getting as many invitations as she felt sure had been sent out engraved on such short notice was nearly as impressive as the media blitz Lynne had arranged to coincide with her party-planning.
She turned the invitation over and over in her hands. It meant something to her that Lynne was willing to bury the hatchet to this extent, but it still felt wrong somehow to go and toast Anne’s arrival in New York. I did my part, she decided. They can take it from here without me.
Chapter Thirty-Five
By Wednesday, Jane was thoroughly bored with being Ella. She hadn’t been able to exchange more than a few quick text messages with Dee, who had apparently gone straight to work following her long weekend, and it wouldn’t have been smart to risk being seen with her right now, anyway. Jane felt she had imposed enough on Misty’s hospitality for the time being, and she certainly didn’t want to see André, who had started sending aggressively flirtatious notes the moment he had returned, empty-handed and presumably furious, from Alsace. So Jane spent a good deal of her time in her hotel room, alternately reading The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo and tabloids. The discovery of the missing Doran was still big news, of course, fueled in part by speculation about what was sure to be the most elaborate coming-out party New York had ever seen.
By the time the front desk called to let her know that a package had arrived for her, her cabin fever had gotten so irritating that she nearly ran down the stairs to collect the delivery herself. She remembered just in time that royalty didn’t do that sort of thing, and literally sat on her hands to avoid calling back every few seconds to ask why the bellhop hadn’t reached her door yet.
Her excitement only grew as she took the package—a wide, flattish box covered in brown paper—and recognized Elodie’s cheerful handwriting. The box looked fairly intact, and Jane guessed that her friend had thoughtfully repackaged the mangled box that had originally arrived from Gran’s farmhouse. It didn’t stay intact for long, though: she began by trying to pull off the paper and then, in her eagerness, wound up ripping straight through the cardboard beneath. Crisscrosses of tape held it together in unexpected and sometimes inconvenient ways, but she was determined, and in a few seconds she was looking directly at the last remnants of her inheritance.
It didn’t look like much, she had to admit, but it didn’t really matter: everything in the box had belonged to Gran, and that made it special to her. There were a few books in English, more in French, and a floral fabric–covered one that she set aside, noting that it looked like a diary of some kind. There was a pair of reading glasses with gray plastic frames in a soft leather pouch, two glass paperweights with flowers suspended inside, an ancient-looking Polaroid camera with no film in it, a little box that held a few seashells, and a collection of broken and dried-out pens. Jane lifted each item carefully out of the wreckage of the cardboard box, lining them up on the floor in front of her. The resulting display made her feel as though Gran were in the room with her, and she closed her eyes in a moment of pain. She reached out blindly until her hand encountered the cold surface of one of the paperweights, and let her mind slide back to the old farmhouse at the foot of the mountain.
She remembered the way that the dusty sunlight had fallen sideways through the small windows, illuminating the pink anemone in one glass bubble, the yellow rose in the other. She had held them up, turning them to catch the light, transfixed by the way they seemed to glow from within. Gran would be in the kitchen, filling the entire house with the smell of cabbage and boiled ham, or she would be in the living room, nestled in one of her overstuffed armchairs, the gray reading glasses perched on her nose. Jane’s hands balled into fists as she opened her eyes. No matter how well things had turned out, she had already lost so much to this conflict. She was free to start over now, but with no family to return to, starting over was her only real choice.
She picked up the diary and flipped it over in her hands. The fabric was faded, but still cheerful, with white, red, and pink flowers overlapping one another on a periwinkle-blue background. Jane felt a little more apprehensive than she had expected: Gran had always presented such an intimidating, closed-off façade that Jane was almost afraid to find out what had been underneath. Even now that she knew what Gran had been hiding, and what she had been hiding Jane from, it was still hard to shake the feeling that she might regret invading her guardian’s privacy. She took a deep breath and opened the front cover.
An empty white page stared back at her.
She flipped slowly through the blank pages, deflated. She felt sure, just as she opened each, that there was writing on it, but there wasn’t. She closed her eyes, feeling a little foolish for getting her hopes up. But once she wasn’t looking at it, the book seemed to thrum and almost tremble in her hands. Something is here, she insisted to herself.
She wondered wildly what would happen if she tried the same location spell with this book that she had performed on Anne’s glass unicorn and then with her stuffed rabbit. Would she see through the eyes of Gran’s body, buried in the little cemetery of Saint-Croix, or would she see something different, something about what had become of her grandmother’s soul? She felt a chill at the thought, but she felt her magic begin to form a circuit, passing faster and faster between her heart and the book.
I don’t want to see the present, though, she thought almost pleadingly. I just want to understand the past a little better.
It came to her in a flash: she had done exactly that once, without even meaning to. The force of her magic had shattered Anne’s unicorn into countless shards, but before it had exploded, she had seen the girl the object had once belonged to. Without giving herself time to think, Jane gripped the diary, making sure to press Gran’s silver ring against it as hard as she could. Then she poured herself into the diary, shoving her mind into the grain of the paper, flattening herself into its lengthwise plane.
Images rushed past too fast for her to see them, although she craned to look. But she was being pulled deeper, somewhere more still, and when she finally landed on what felt like solid ground, there was only one other image in front of her. “Gran,” she whispered, nearly choking on the word. Celine Boyle nodded back at her.
Jane risked a glance downward, but whatever was beneath her feet was invisible. There was nothing but darkness on all sides of her, except that Gran stood in the same darkness, looking back at Jane expectantly.
“I’m not real,” Gran cautioned her when Jane started forward, holding up a warning hand. Jane stopped obediently; she could tell now that there was something insubstantial about her grandmother, and also somehow ageless. She didn’t look real.
“But you’re here,” Jane told her stubbornly, and then felt exasperated with herself; even in the magical non-presence of her deceased grandmother her instinct was to act like a child.
“I’m a memory,” Gran replied simply. “I’m Celine Boyle’s diary. You are Jane Boyle, and you have the power to read this, but I have no recollection of you gaining the knowledge.”
Jane thought about that for a moment. She had no idea when Gran had made this remarkable spell, but Gran had died before Jane had learned about magic. So, of course, the version of her in the book wouldn’t expect to encounter Jane, although she didn’t seem especially upset about it. Jane’s initial impulse to throw her arms around Gran had faded down to nothing almost immediately; whatever was standing in front of her, it wasn’t the difficult, overprotective woman she had loved. But she could show her to me, Jane realized, or . . .
“Can you tell me about my mother’s death?” she asked plaintively, and Celine Boyle nodded curtly.
With a sickening spin, Jane felt herself disappear into one of the strains of memory around her, which immediately became sharper, slower,
more visible. “I wasn’t there, of course,” Gran’s voice came from somewhere around her, although the image of her hadn’t joined Jane wherever she was now. A younger Gran was picking up a phone, and Jane realized that they were in the kitchen of their old farmhouse in Alsace. Gran listened to the voice on the other end of the line, which was nothing but a faint buzz to Jane, and then her face began to crumble. Her grief was so raw that Jane couldn’t help herself: she looked away, and the walls began to shift around her.
“I was told it was a car accident,” the voice of Gran from the diary went on clinically, and a shifting collage of images showed Celine on a plane, talking to police, talking to neighbors, staring through an empty window, clutching ten-month-old Jane to her chest. “But I didn’t believe it.”
Jane frowned; she had wondered once if her mother’s magical heritage might not have played a part in the flash flood that had swept her parents off the road one night. After all, Anne had accidentally killed her entire foster family because she didn’t understand her magic and couldn’t control it; might not Angeline Boyle have done something similar? It was the question she had wanted to ask in the first place, but hadn’t quite been able to say out loud. She held her breath, simultaneously hoping Gran would go on—and that she wouldn’t.
“I suspected a witch named Lynne Doran,” Gran continued, and Jane’s breath flew out of her.
“Lynne?”
“So I stayed in America to investigate.”
Jane shook her head. “You brought me back to France the next day,” she told the disembodied voice, but the images around her were telling a different story. Gran had stayed, and if the changes in little Jane were any indication, she had stayed for quite some time. “I don’t remember this,” Jane whispered. She knew she must have been too young to register where she was at first, but as her younger self passed three and headed toward four, she felt completely disoriented. At some point, they had obviously traveled to France; how could she have no memory of an international flight by then?
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