The air around them seemed to grow perceptibly warmer, and Jane smelled something that reminded her of burning leaves. The candle on the table between them flared suddenly to life, its flame stretching to an impossible height. Annette’s eyes had widened into bottomless black pits. Jane narrowed her own in response, focusing her energy on the flame, which flickered obediently down to a normal size.
‘Here’s the thing,’ Malcolm hurried to interject, glancing nervously back and forth between the two witches. ‘It’s a spell with a deadline. We’re trying to block it, but the farther away from her you are when it starts, the better our chances of success. If you could give us a heads-up about the exact timing of the spell, that would be a bonus, but the real problem is that if you’re in the same room as her when it happens, the transfer will only take a split second. The most helpful thing would be if, five days from now, you leave town. Get as far as you can, so that we maximize our chances of intercepting her. Then you can come back in the morning, and if it turns out that we were wrong about everything, I promise to drop this whole thing forever.’
Annette hesitated and looked to Jane for confirmation, allowing the candle to extinguish in the cool afternoon air. ‘We’d never ask you to hurt your mother,’ Jane agreed. ‘We’re not trying to convince you to attack her out of the blue, or run away for good, or do anything else you can’t take back. It’s just one night. One night, and it will save your life.’
There was a long silence as Annette looked down and twisted her fingers together. ‘For this spell you think she’s going to do,’ she said finally, so softly that Jane had to lean forward to hear, ‘would she maybe need some of my hair?’
Malcolm gently pulled her hands apart and pressed one between his own. Emer and Dee had both speculated that Hasina would ‘anchor’ the spell to its intended victim, but the forewarning didn’t stop a chill from running down Jane’s spine anyway. She set her menu aside and began tracing the patterns of the table’s wood grain with one fingertip.
‘I want to leave now,’ Annette whispered. ‘I could get farther away if I went right now. That’s what you want, isn’t it?’
Malcolm’s voice was steady, low, reassuring. ‘There’s no way she’d agree to you taking a trip now, with the deadline so close. And if you left without a word, she’d know you were onto her. She’d find you, for one thing, but first she’d take out Jane and all the other people who are trying to help us. There’d be no one left to stop her, and then you would be gone, for real. I know it’s scary, but your best chance is to wait.’
‘And you can’t let her guess that anything is wrong,’ Jane added, glancing back up when Annette remained silent. ‘She thinks you believe that you two are rebuilding your family. It’s the only reason you got out alone today, and it’s the only way you’ll avoid getting tied up for the next five days.’
‘Literally,’ Malcolm agreed, squeezing Annette’s hand for emphasis. ‘She’s done that to both of us before; she wouldn’t hesitate with someone she needs as badly as you. You have to make her trust you enough to let you move around freely until the moment comes when you can escape.’
‘Is this the kind of thing you two had to do?’ Annette asked plaintively. This time, when she tilted her face up to include Jane in the question, her eyes were soft and completely without resentment. ‘Was there all this . . . horribleness, back before you ran away?’
Jane locked eyes with Malcolm for a moment, remembering how carefully they had planned their own escape from Lynne. It hadn’t worked at all the way they’d intended, so it was impossible to be as naïvely optimistic this time as she had felt back then. But Annette already looked miserable, and there was nothing to be gained from telling her the whole truth. ‘It was a little like this,’ she admitted, ‘but we have much more outside help this time, and a better idea of what we’re up against. It’s still scary, and we still have to be really careful. But we are going to get you out of this.’
Malcolm nodded in emphatic agreement, and Annette managed a wan smile. Jane smiled back, and some of her imaginary hope began to feel real. It’s going to work, she repeated to herself, and it sounded a little less implausible every time. She’s with us now, and it’s going to work.
Chapter Twelve
SPIRITS IN THE Montagues’ brownstone had started to flag a little under the uncertainty of their planning, but the news that Jane and Malcolm had finally gotten Annette’s cooperation brought new life to the little group. Jane herself felt absolutely elated for three whole days. But then the doubts started to creep back in, and by the morning of their planned attack she was thoroughly worried about the enormous task in front of her. It was all well and good to be able to get into the mansion, and great that Annette had agreed not to be in it, but there was still no way of knowing what might be waiting for them on the other side of that door.
Jane had every confidence that whatever Hasina needed for her spell would be there, of course. The mansion was Lynne’s fortress; she wouldn’t trust her preparations anywhere else. But there was no way to know for sure what form those things would take, or how they would be guarded. Dark magic required dark materials, and nightmares crept back into Jane’s sleep, full of grinning skulls, pools of blood, and fire, always fire.
To compound her worries, the timing of their assault on the huge stone house was perilously uncertain. Annette had reported overhearing Lynne mention something about ‘midnight’ to her twin cousins, but Lynne’s meeting with Jane in Central Park had been sometime midafternoon, which meant the spell could easily take place several hours earlier. Annette’s information had divided their group and created a creeping sense of uncertainty. Jane had decided that the consequences of arriving late were worse than those of being too early, but she could tell that Malcolm, in particular, had serious reservations about her decision.
So when Malcolm approached her that morning, asking if he could help Annette get to safety instead of joining the assault on the Park Avenue house, she felt a distinct sense of relief. Her feelings for him were still wildly complicated, and she needed to focus on the monumental task at hand without that distraction. His place was with his sister, helping her get quickly and safely out of the house, while hers was here, making it safe for them both to eventually return.
Besides, the biggest advantage that Malcolm brought to the table was an intimate knowledge of his former home, the need for which had been eliminated thanks to Dee and Maeve’s dedicated work. Playing with variations of the spell Jane once used to find Annette’s old belongings, they had succeeded in tweaking it so that it would lead her to Hasina’s spell ingredients instead. The modifications hadn’t been easy – Harris lost half an eyebrow in the experimentation, and Maeve had spent an entire day unable to speak anything but Gaelic – but Dee guaranteed that this final spell would work. Annette needed Malcolm much more than they did at the moment.
Breaking in and finding the spell ingredients was only the first step. Once inside, they would have Lynne’s creepy twin cousins to contend with – and Lynne herself, of course. Jane knew that even without her magic, Lynne Doran’s slender, couture-clad form was still the scariest thing that would be waiting for them inside 665 Park Avenue.
Once we’re past all that – Jane forced her brain to move on – the end of the plan is solid, at least. Emer had spent every moment of the last two weeks fashioning a wooden box. Though it looked, on the surface, almost nothing like the whimsical spirit box Malcolm had brought Jane, whenever she glanced at it out of the corner of her eye, she kept thinking it was hers. They were, after all, both designed to contain souls. When Hasina’s spell forced her essence out of Lynne’s body, Emer’s box would trap her before she could travel to Annette’s. All they needed to do was make it to that one vital moment – if only the obstacles in their way didn’t seem to multiply every time Jane counted them.
She tried to distract herself with a walk in the roof garden, meditation in the sauna, cup after cup of Emer’s fascinating homemade herbal t
eas . . . but the bustling preparations of her friends chased her from room to room until she began to feel like a trapped animal. I can’t let them see me scared, she thought: against all odds they had succeeded in making her vague, unlikely plan possible. It would be unfair and unkind to let her nerves take anything away from that remarkable accomplishment, especially now, when they were so close to putting their ideas into action. So close to following me through an unbreachable door into a nest of angry witches and making them even angrier, Jane’s brain corrected. She pushed away from the breakfast bar, dropped her stoneware mug in the dishwasher, and all but ran out of the kitchen.
But the tension in the sitting room seemed to crackle almost audibly, giving Jane a stress headache from the moment she walked in.
‘I don’t even know what this does,’ Harris exclaimed, picking up a waxed-paper bundle and then tossing it back onto the coffee table. There was a sudden, blinding flash and a small puff of smoke, and Dee and Maeve took shelter behind the striped couch.
‘That was supposed to be edelweiss and a little basil,’ Emer called reprovingly from across the room, where she was occupied with a length of rope and a tiny silver knife.
‘I punched it up a little,’ Dee admitted, rolling her eyes and dusting her arms off theatrically. ‘I’ll go make some more.’
Harris watched her go, then turned his glittering green gaze to Jane. ‘Where’s the man of the hour?’ he asked, with minimal sarcasm. ‘I would have thought he’d be here by now.’
Jane took a deep breath. The Montagues had made so much progress in coming to accept Malcolm’s presence here, but it was always clear that he wasn’t really one of them. She hadn’t yet told them that he wouldn’t be joining them tonight. She knew it was cowardly, but she’d put off this discussion as long as possible, knowing it would break the town house’s fragile sense of peace. ‘He’s not coming with us tonight,’ she said slowly.
‘He’s with his sister,’ Maeve guessed in the pause that Jane’s discomfort left.
‘She was really upset,’ Jane confirmed, not quite looking at anyone in particular. Malcolm had read her a few of Annette’s increasingly frantic text messages until she had to ask him to stop – Annette’s panic was so intense that it began to feel contagious, and she needed a clear head right now. ‘Apparently Lynne told her that there was some kind of supersecret family initiation tonight and she totally freaked out. Malcolm tried to calm her down, but she begged him to pick her up at the house this afternoon and help her get out of the city.’
Emer nodded her approval, but Harris’s voice sliced through the air like a knife. ‘What did Malcolm tell her, exactly, to “calm her down”?’ Jane frowned, not understanding why the phrase would sound so sinister to him, and after a moment he clarified. ‘Did he tell her that we’d figured out how to break down the door? That we could find her mother – or at least, her tools – as soon as we got inside? That we know the earliest moment the spell could begin, because we have Ella’s call history? That Grandma knows how to trap Hasina between bodies?’
‘In other words, “our entire plan,” ’ Dee translated from the doorway, twisting her tawny hands together.
Jane froze, her tongue feeling heavy and uncooperative. ‘She was—’
‘Scared,’ Emer finished for her. ‘Sending frightened messages.’ Her voice was flat, and her face unreadable.
‘She was,’ Jane insisted, trying to fight off the new, squeaky note in her voice. She knew the truth – she had seen it on Annette’s face just a few days ago. Of course Harris doubted Annette’s sincerity. He hadn’t seen the horror that slowly overtook her, the pure fear etched into her features as though with a knife. Jane wished she could explain in a way that would show him what she had seen. ‘Look, I don’t know for sure how much Malcolm told her about any of that, but he’s with her right now. He’d tell us if anything had gone wrong.’ Her last words met a resounding silence that reminded her of the breathless pause before thunder.
When the thunder came, it started off deceptively softly. ‘Call it off,’ Harris growled, then he turned to include the rest of the room. ‘The whole thing is off, starting now.’
‘We can’t do that,’ Maeve temporized, but Harris was still gaining steam.
‘Jane. Can you reach him? He’s in a car with Hasina’s new body, so either he’s in on it, or he’s in danger. He has to pick one. Tell him that he drives his sister into an overpass this minute, or he’s not setting foot in this house again.’
His grandmother cleared her throat warningly, clearly gearing up to remind him whose house this actually was, but Jane found her voice first.
‘No one’s calling anything off,’ she insisted, wishing that she hadn’t delayed this conversation to begin with.
Harris leaped to his feet. ‘The hell we’re not,’ he shot back, his voice a low snarl. ‘They’re waiting for us. If you think any of us is going to follow you into the trap your boyfriend and his sister have set, you’re absolutely insane.’
‘Harris,’ Dee murmured, her amber eyes flicking anxiously between him and Jane. ‘Can we hear her out?’
He snapped his mouth angrily shut, crossed his arms across his triangular torso, and waited expectantly. Thanks, Dee, Jane thought silently at her friend, unsure how much of her own thought was sarcasm. ‘It’s not a trap,’ she began, improvising wildly as she went. ‘I think I love him’ isn’t going to be on anyone’s top-ten list of convincing explanations. ‘Malcolm’s been totally up front about everything having to do with his family,’ she began. ‘He showed me his phone so I could see Annette’s texts, and I . . . I checked it, okay?’ She had felt an uncomfortable mix of embarrassment and vindication after scrolling through his messages and had hoped that ignoring it would make it go away. ‘The very first contact he’s made with any of them was when we asked him to reach out to his sister. There was nothing else; nothing that didn’t belong.’
‘That doesn’t sound like a double cross,’ Maeve agreed reasonably, laying a soothing hand on Harris’s sleeve.
He shook her off with an irritated shrug. ‘Or they just covered their tracks with, you know, magic,’ he countered angrily, gesturing at the cluster of women in the room. ‘Can any of you honestly rule that out?’
A charged silence filled the room. ‘You could do it,’ Dee murmured, her eyes downcast. When she lifted them, Jane could see how painful her indecision was for her. ‘I’m not saying that they did,’ she rushed to add. ‘If you trust Malcolm, then I do, too. But it’s not like it’s a completely unreasonable point Harris is making, is all.’
‘She married Malcolm Doran,’ Harris exploded, and Dee flinched away from his side. He balled his hands into fists and closed his eyes. When he reopened them, he seemed to have mostly regained control of his emotions, but Jane could see the fear and anger still bubbling just below the surface. ‘Am I really the only one who can see that Jane’s opinion isn’t the one we should trust when it comes to these people?’
‘He’s practically lived in our house for a week now,’ Maeve pointed out.
Is that all? Jane wondered; it felt as though it had been much, much longer. In spite of her certainty that Malcolm had been truthful with them, a tendril of doubt snaked its way into her mind. He hadn’t been back in New York for very much time at all.
‘And he tried to help Jane,’ Maeve pushed on. ‘Even after seeing what happened to me when I tried.’
A heavy silence filled the room, and Jane felt herself losing the will to argue. She believed that she was right about Malcolm, but was that enough of a reason to keep endangering her friends? I could have just left New York when I had the chance, and it wouldn’t matter whose side Malcolm was on, she thought miserably. I could still leave, and they could go back to arguing about where to go for brunch and which Broadway opening to attend this weekend.
But even as the thought passed through her mind, Jane knew it was a lie. ‘She kills witches,’ she heard André say, as clearly as if he were sitting on th
e loveseat in their midst. ‘No truces, no deals, no peace.’ Running away from Hasina wouldn’t help anyone – she had gotten to Celine Boyle, after all, who had been about as isolated as it was possible to be. She found her and sent Malcolm to kill her.
‘I trust him,’ Jane breathed, and for a long moment Harris’s green eyes remained locked with her own. I trusted him before, too, she didn’t say, and she knew that everyone in the room was thinking the same thing. ‘I trust him,’ she repeated, this time more firmly, ‘and I’m going to Park Avenue tonight, even if I have to go alone. You all know how much I hate putting you guys in any kind of danger, anyway,’ she half joked, trying for a winning smile but fairly sure that it missed.
‘Don’t be silly, Jane.’ Emer waved away her protests. She turned her attention squarely on Harris, who shifted a little uncomfortably under her clear green gaze. ‘It would be an awful trap,’ she explained in a clipped, concise tone. ‘The spell is meant to happen tonight. If they know we’re coming, then letting us get all the way into their own home would be absurd. All they would have to do is keep us away for a few hours and then deal with us when Hasina has her brand-new body. Using Malcolm to lure us closer would be thoroughly pointless.’
Harris looked like he wanted to argue, but no words came out. Jane knew that, no matter how strong his dislike of Malcolm, he was a fair-minded man. She sighed gratefully when he threw up his hands in defeat.
‘All I had to do was out-logic you?’ She tried to joke, although there was still a lingering edge to her voice.
Emer turned squarely toward Jane, and this time it was her turn to flinch. ‘None of what I’ve said means that we’re safe,’ she reprimanded. ‘Annette should never have been told the details of our plan. I understand how you feel for the girl, but it was a terrible risk, and it’s put her life in worse jeopardy along with ours. We will all need to proceed very, very carefully tonight. Jane, you will prepare a message for Malcolm, ordering him to kill his sister immediately. If we are mistaken and the Dorans are ready for us after all, you must send it. I do hope that your trust in him is well placed, as he has now become our very last line of defense.’
The Lost Soul (666 Park Avenue 3) Page 8