The Lost Soul (666 Park Avenue 3)

by Gabriella Pierce

  Jane reached out curiously. A spark ran through her hand and up her arm when she took the box, and she jumped a little. ‘It’s beautiful,’ she breathed, although she knew without needing to be told that it was more than just a pretty object.

  ‘It’s a spirit box,’ he explained, his dark, liquid eyes watching hers carefully. ‘It’s for people who have . . . lost someone. The more you are near it, the more the spirits that follow you will infuse the box. It’ll carry their intentions, and their love for you, and it’s a way of keeping them with you. At least, that’s what the witch who traded it to me said.’ He frowned, looking uncertain. ‘She was a real witch, for whatever it’s worth.’

  ‘She was telling the truth,’ Jane murmured, closing her hands more tightly around the box. ‘I can feel it.’ She inhaled deeply, then forced herself to set the box down on the driftwood coffee table. As powerful as its presence was already, she could only imagine how difficult it would be to let it go once it had started to ‘feel’ like Gran . . . and maybe a bit like the parents she had lost, when she was too young to even remember. ‘Where did you get it?’

  ‘Ecuador,’ he said shortly, glancing at the box and then away again. ‘I kept hoping to see you around every corner. It’s been so long.’ His hand reached out as if of its own accord to brush a stray lock of hair from her face. Without thinking, she flinched, and his hand quickly dropped back down.

  ‘It’s been so long,’ she repeated apologetically. He nodded in understanding, and instead reached out to pick up the spirit box.

  ‘I hope it’s all right,’ he offered, gesturing toward it. ‘I know it can never replace, or make up for, what I’ve taken from you. It was just something I thought you should have.’

  ‘Thank you,’ she replied automatically, her mind spinning. Malcolm and Jane’s relationship had been complicated from the start. Lynne had manipulated her son into killing Jane’s grandmother, who had long ago placed a protective spell on Jane to hide her from other witches who would seek her power. When Gran died and the spell was broken, Malcolm tracked Jane down in Paris, sweeping her up in a whirlwind romance that culminated with their wedding just months later. It was all a lie – at least at first. But then Malcolm fell in love with Jane for real. He risked his life to tell her the truth, and to try to help her get out of the city and away from his mother’s clutches. Even when she decided to stay behind and hide in plain sight as Ella Medeiros, he had proven incredibly loyal, leaving everything behind and skipping from country to country alone so that the contents of his mind couldn’t be used against her. Still, he’d been wrapped around his mother’s evil finger for thirty-two years before Jane even met him. He might well believe that he had changed, but if it came down to Jane or Lynne, which version of Malcolm would he turn out to be? ‘Tell me about the last two months,’ she suggested finally.

  Seeming to sense her mood as he had so many times before, Malcolm shifted easily into storytelling mode. He had started in Europe, where he had set up most of the safe houses that he intended to share with her. But after only a couple of weeks he had started feeling the pursuit closing in, seeing familiar shadows around every corner.

  ‘Those were probably Dalcacus,’ Jane supplied helpfully, guessing that Malcolm would recognize the surname of his mother’s shifty so-called allies.

  ‘That makes sense.’ He frowned slightly. ‘Mom always said the Romanians were only good for mercenaries.’

  Not that good, Jane thought, frowning a little herself as she thought of all the ways André and his sister, Katrin, had betrayed Lynne. Malcolm went on to tell her how he had stowed away on a series of cruise ships and wound up in South America. His prep-school Spanish was more hindrance than help there, but the money from his safe houses smoothed over the worst of his communication troubles. He had gotten comfortable enough to start asking hard questions: about himself, his mother, and magic in general, although of course there was only so much he could learn when he had to conceal his reasons for wanting to know.

  As Malcolm went on with his narrative, he played idly with the spirit box. The sight of it in his hand suddenly reminded her of the horrible moment when she had entered his memories and seen him kill Gran, and she shuddered. He glanced up in concern, but she didn’t know what to say, so instead she just took the box from him and set it gently back down. She had been prepared to trust Malcolm, but if he was hiding anything from her, then maybe she was being just as naïve about him as she had been from the start.

  ‘And the whole time, you never told anyone who you really were or why you were asking?’ she prompted. She gathered some exploratory magic and sent it out through her eyes, wondering if she would even be able to see enough of his thoughts to make sense of. ‘Never,’ he told her firmly, his eyes wide and unflinching. ‘I would never have risked putting your life in danger.’

  Jane nodded. She knew for sure that he really believed what he was saying: his entire being throbbed with sincerity. I don’t even have to read his mind, she realized, feeling the magical electricity swirl and eddy in the space between them, drawing them toward each other like a river of tiny magnets. I just know him. After a fairy-tale courtship, unsettling engagement, and disastrous marriage, she finally understood Malcolm Doran.

  ‘It had been so long without any real news of what was happening up here, whether you were okay. I was going crazy, not knowing. And then the stories in the papers changed,’ he went on. ‘Suddenly I was a drug addict who’d kidnapped you and possibly killed the family driver.’

  ‘I actually did that part,’ Jane said in a rush, realizing just how much they had missed in the time they had been apart. She quickly sketched the scene in the alley when Yuri, Lynne’s driver and personal hit man, had come for her. She shuddered at the memory of the vile things she had seen in his mind after he had lost control and attacked: Lynne had been covering up her pet thug’s dirty little secrets for years. ‘He started choking Dee,’ she finished, ‘and I couldn’t get there in time. But he had a tire iron, and I had magic, and . . .’

  She spread her hands helplessly. Even to defend an innocent woman from a certified sociopath, killing wasn’t something she could easily shrug off. She knew that she had done her best under the circumstances, but it was impossible not to wonder about the ‘what-ifs.’ With a little more control of her power, she might have just knocked him out . . . but what was done was done. Hot tears stung behind her eyes, and she blinked hard.

  Gran didn’t tell me enough, she thought bitterly for what felt like the thousandth time. She died before I even knew what to ask.

  Malcolm’s hand inched over to cover hers, and the warmth from it spread quickly up toward her heart. It was the first time since discovering Malcolm’s role in Gran’s death that Jane had been able to long for both of them at once. A hot tear escaped from her eye to roll slowly down one cheek. Malcolm looked for a moment as if he might lean in to kiss it away, but he hesitated, then brushed it from her skin with one gentle, calloused finger instead. ‘I promise you: if Yuri attacked you, it was you or him. The same goes for . . . Dee, you said?’

  ‘A friend,’ Jane explained wryly, sniffling a little. ‘She helped make our wedding cake.’

  Malcolm swiveled his head toward the door, then back. ‘She’s the one I met in front of the house, right? On the day of the ceremony?’

  Jane laughed out loud at the memory. Dee, knowing that it was too dangerous to attend a wedding full of witches with so many readable secrets in her head, had stopped by early in the day to drop off a couple of ‘wedding cookies.’ For Jane, that had been the only perfect part of Manhattan’s so-called wedding of the century – that, and the knowledge that soon she and Malcolm would vanish into anonymous safety. Unfortunately, both the sweets and that hope had been all too fleeting.

  ‘She cooks, too,’ she told Malcolm more soberly. ‘In fact, after she had to leave the bakery, she went to work for a catering start-up that was run by Katrin Dalcacu.’

  Malcolm blinked rapidly,
trying to absorb that piece of news. Jane explained how Katrin had seen her with Dee, then lost track of Jane when she transformed into Ella. So Katrin had gotten close to Dee while her brother, André, explored other possible leads . . . not realizing that Jane herself was by his side for most of it. She politely glossed over most of those details, although the rigidity of Malcolm’s neck and shoulders told her that she probably wasn’t being quite as discreet as she’d hoped. So I killed a guy and slept with the enemy for a while, she thought crabbily. Like he’s never done anything he regretted?

  The hardest part, it turned out, was telling him about Annette. Malcolm, who had always felt responsible for his little sister’s supposed death – guilt that his mother had encouraged and used to manipulate him – hung raptly on every word of her story. He barely breathed from Jane’s initial, accidental vision of ‘Anne Locksley’s’ apartment to their fiery showdown in the Dorans’ billiard room. To her surprise, and relief, he didn’t question a word of it, even when she got to the part about his mother’s true nature.

  ‘I’d heard things, growing up,’ he admitted. ‘And once I was in hiding, I realized that I needed to know everything I could about who was hunting me – especially if you were going to join me some day.’ Jane was almost sure that he was blushing a little. ‘I followed every occult trail I could, listened to every so-called witch. Most of what they had to say was nonsense, of course, and most of the rest was useless. But now and then there were hints about the woman whose name is on my mother’s wall, and I kept my head down and listened. It was never really clear, but it was enough to know that – well, I’m not exactly surprised to hear that Annette’s in danger.’ He lowered his chin a little so that their eyes were level. ‘I don’t owe my mother anything anymore. Whether she even is my mother, or not, or sort of or maybe – whoever is driving that body has been using me for years. This Hasina person is entirely on her own side, as far as I can tell.’ His eyes bored into hers. ‘And I’m on yours.’

  ‘I know,’ Jane blurted before she could overthink it. Malcolm squeezed her hand a little harder, and a wave of heat coursed through her body. ‘I’m glad you’re here,’ she added impulsively.

  ‘I missed you,’ Malcolm said gently, the corners of his mouth twitching toward a smile. ‘I would have stayed away for the rest of my life if you hadn’t called me, no matter what the papers said. Nothing else ever would have made me sure enough to risk it, to risk you.’ He lowered his eyes, but his fingers wove their way between hers. ‘If there’s one thing I know – and there really might only be the one – it’s how to be loyal.’

  Jane stretched forward and kissed him lightly on the forehead, feeling the old familiar current crackling between them. ‘You’ll have plenty of chances coming up to prove that,’ she promised. ‘But for what it’s worth: I already believe it.’

  Chapter Five

  THE MONTAGUES’ STATELY Upper East Side brownstone looked even more pleasant than Jane remembered. Its inhabitants were similarly inviting – at least until they saw Malcolm standing behind her on the doorstep.

  ‘He’s here to help,’ she announced quickly. Malcolm Doran and Harris Montague had taken a particularly active role in the rivalry between their two families, and there was no love lost between them. Jane had struggled with her magically enhanced crush on the redheaded Harris ever since they first met through his sister, Maeve, her first real friend in New York. But now that he was dating Dee, Jane had firmly pushed those feelings aside.

  ‘Then he is welcome in my house,’ said a voice from somewhere behind Harris’s tall, lean frame. He stepped back with automatic deference, leaving Jane to gaze into a pair of bright, lively green eyes.

  ‘I’m Emer,’ their tiny, frail-looking owner said, smiling warmly. ‘You’d be Jane – shame on you for running out before we could meet the last time you were here. But you’ve returned with another charming guest, so you’re both forgiven and invited in for tea.’

  Jane heard Harris sputtering at the word charming as she passed him, but he clearly had no intention of arguing with Emer. His grandmother, and Maeve’s, she reasoned. The elderly woman moved with a stately authority, as befitted the matriarch of a family of witches. Jane couldn’t resist mentally comparing her to Lynne Doran as they all settled onto candy-ribbon-striped couches in the sitting room. Both women had an air of unspoken command, and a ramrod-straight posture, noticeable in spite of the almost comical difference in their heights. But the similarities only made Emer’s warmth more apparent, and Jane felt an immediate, instinctive trust in her that she had never felt toward her mother-in-law.

  ‘Harris, darling, fix us a pot of tea,’ Emer suggested mildly, and he headed for a swinging door that presumably led toward the kitchen.

  ‘I’ll help,’ Dee offered huskily, smiling first toward Malcolm and then, pointedly, at Jane before turning toward the same door.

  ‘I’d rather you stay,’ Emer countered in the same gentle tone, and Dee stopped midstride. ‘Something tells me that Jane has returned to us on witch business,’ the elderly woman explained. ‘And while you may not have the bloodline, Diana, you know more about the craft than many who do.’ She inclined her white-haired head toward Maeve, who looked like she wanted to sink into the couch and disappear.

  Maeve had always resented her magical heritage and tried to keep it as far from her life as possible – until she met Jane. Once she saw that her new friend knew absolutely nothing about her abilities or the dangers of the Dorans, Maeve tried to warn her, only to be hit by a taxi courtesy of Lynne when she realized that Maeve was a threat. To Jane’s surprise, Maeve had begun studying magic during her rehab. And even more surprisingly, it turned out that she did have a small spark of magic after all – despite the fact that Maeve’s gift had passed to her through her father, which was almost always a magical dead end.

  Dee, by contrast, had no magic of her own, but she had been fascinated by it long before she even knew that it was real. She had proven an enormous help when Jane was first attempting to understand and use her power. Dee sat back down obediently beside Maeve, discreetly pressing one of the girl’s thin, pale hands with her own for a moment. ‘Is there any chance you’ve come here with good news?’ she asked lightly, arching a thick black eyebrow at Jane.

  ‘Malcolm’s back,’ Jane offered with a forced smile.

  ‘Good news for me,’ Emer chimed in, beaming sincerely, and Jane felt her own expression soften. ‘Handsome young men in my sitting room are always welcome.’

  Maeve rolled her copper eyes, although she couldn’t suppress a smile of her own. ‘You must be happy your sister is alive,’ she said to Malcolm.

  ‘I’m very glad about that,’ he admitted, ‘but from what Jane tells me it’s not entirely good news.’

  Emer nodded crisply. ‘Hasina is still alive. I wouldn’t have thought such a thing was possible, but frankly it explains quite a bit. I’m sorry to say, young man, that our families have not traditionally been friends, but I never imagined it was because of our affinity to death.’

  ‘It’s sort of the family specialty,’ Maeve explained when she saw Jane’s quizzical expression. ‘Séances, speeding the dead, calming angry ghosts.’

  ‘A calling that would, of course, make us the natural enemies of a witch who repeatedly escaped her own death,’ Emer added, as Harris swung open the door to the kitchen with one hand and balanced a cherrywood tray in the other. A fine curl of steam wafted up from a fragile-looking teapot covered in hand-painted yellow pansies. When he brought the tray carefully over to the sofa, Jane gratefully accepted a matching porcelain cup full of warm golden-green liquid. It smelled sweet and astringent at once, and Jane sipped it so eagerly that she immediately burned the tip of her tongue.

  ‘I’ve been told that Hasina kills witches,’ she blurted out. ‘My, um, source didn’t know why, but it sounded like a long-standing, routine thing. He said that’s why there are so few of us left today.’

  ‘ “He”?’ Harris repeate
d sharply, taking an armchair across from his grandmother and jerking his pointed chin in Malcolm’s direction. ‘As in him? Because, as reliable sources go . . .’

  ‘It was André Dalcacu,’ Jane admitted, staring into her tea to avoid the tense current swirling around the sitting room. ‘I saw him yesterday.’

  ‘Speaking of “reliable sources,” ’ Malcolm added pointedly, raising his dark-gold eyebrows in surprise.

  Jane grimaced internally. Fortunately, Emer spoke again, covering the silence.

  ‘I’d always been told that the Dorans were rather predatory,’ she mused. ‘We wouldn’t have known, I suppose, if it was the same predator wearing different faces.’

  ‘That was all he said?’ Maeve asked skeptically, dropping a cube of sugar into her tea and sniffing at it. She wrinkled her nose, squeezing its dusting of freckles together, and reached for another cube. ‘Nothing about how often, or how she picks them, or whether she even has a reason?’

  ‘I know that all I’m bringing to the table are puzzle pieces,’ Jane admitted frankly. ‘But then Malcolm showed up, and he had some pieces. Which made me realize: it could be helpful for us to all sit down and figure out what, exactly, we know. About Hasina, and how she jumps bodies, and everything.’

  Harris stirred and looked like he might speak, but to Jane’s relief Dee jumped in ahead of him. ‘I’ve spent the last week and a half digging into research. I looked up all the antiaging and resurrection spells that I could find, but most of them seem sketchy at best.’

  ‘They don’t work,’ Emer agreed firmly. ‘Those are for charlatans, and the desperate.’

  ‘That figures,’ Jane admitted wryly. ‘But I think that this spell is something a little more . . . unique. Gran’s diary suggested that Hasina discovered this spell on her own, not that she learned it from anyone else. And I highly doubt she would have allowed her invention to make it into books. Gran said it took a month to prepare and was very difficult – and very dangerous.’