The Lost Soul (666 Park Avenue 3) (7 page)

‘I had to travel pretty light these last few weeks,’ he admitted. ‘But on my way back into town I did manage to pick up a witch.’ He lifted his dark eyes to gaze pointedly into hers, and she blushed automatically.

Oh, right. Magic
. When Jane had needed to infiltrate the Doran family in order to search their mansion, she’d used a complicated spell to turn into ‘Ella’ for exactly twenty-eight days. But for staying incognito while tailing Annette for an afternoon, the glamours she had practiced with Dee would suffice. Annette hadn’t even really seen either of them in person – when she knew Malcolm he was twelve, and Jane was Ella.
She will have seen plenty of photos, but still. A few minor tweaks should do it
.

When he saw the comprehension and agreement dawn on her face, Malcolm grinned and signaled for the check.

‘Have I converted you to diner food yet?’ he asked cheerfully.

Jane did her best to match his light tone, although her full stomach was already beginning to twist with nerves. ‘It was delicious,’ she managed. ‘And you may never tell Dee I said that.’

Malcolm glanced around conspiratorially. ‘Your secret is safe with me. Speaking of which . . .’ He gestured at the high walls of the booth on three sides of them, and the mostly empty diner.

Jane’s gaze followed his gaze: no one seemed to be paying the slightest bit of attention to them. ‘This is as good a time as any,’ she agreed crisply. She folded her hands on the table in front of her, concentrating on the shapes they made against the white Formica. Then her mind’s eye slipped a little deeper, seeing the blood that ran below her pale skin and the glow of the magic that pulsed through her veins. She let herself slip into it, flexing her magic like a muscle, feeling it grow stronger.

Her gaze traveled up Malcolm’s black polo shirt, hesitating just for a moment where it opened to show the hint of his pulse beating next to his Adam’s apple. Then she continued on, resting on his familiar, square jaw. Her breathing quickened as she sent little rivers of magic toward it, making it stretch and change until it was longer, more pointed. She narrowed his nose to match, although she couldn’t bring herself to change a thing about his deep, liquid eyes. The hair, she decided instead, coaxing it straight and darkening it, making it grow until it brushed his shoulders.

When she had finished, she took an appraising look at the whole picture. He was less handsome now, she had to admit, but that just meant that the experiment was a success: he didn’t look like Malcolm anymore. She could recognize bits of his features if she looked long enough, but at most she would guess that he could be her onetime husband’s third cousin.

Now me
.

It was a little harder without being able to see what she was doing. She decided to make most of the changes to her coloring: chestnut-brown hair, darkening her grey eyes to match, and giving herself what she hoped was a spa-quality spray tan. She sent her magic experimentally groping toward her cheekbones just in case those changes weren’t enough, drawing them upward to lengthen the lines of her face, but she felt horribly uncertain about the process. It was only an illusion, so she couldn’t feel it. The alteration might have been minuscule, or she might have stretched herself into bad-plastic-surgery territory; there was no real way to know.

But Malcolm didn’t recoil in horror, so she figured that she must have done reasonably well.
Actually . . . don’t I look a little like that ex of his I met at Barneys that time?
She pushed that thought firmly aside and smiled with a confidence that she hoped she would start to feel again sometime soon.

‘Let’s go look for Annette,’ she suggested, and together they slid out of their booth and headed for the street.

Chapter Seven

I
T DIDN
’
T TAKE
long to spot Annette leaving the Dorans’ mansion, but as usual, she wasn’t alone.

‘Duck,’ Malcolm hissed, turning his body away from the massive front door and using it to shield hers from view.

Jane peeked recklessly out from behind his arm in time to see Lynne Doran fold her tall body elegantly into a waiting town car. She wore a grey jacket with a mink collar that brought out some subtle highlights in her brown hair. Jane caught a glimpse of Annette’s dirty-blond waves as the car pulled away.

She stepped out of Malcolm’s grip and hailed a cab before she could lose her nerve. ‘We don’t look like ourselves,’ she reminded him tersely as they slid into the backseat. ‘We can just hang back and wait until they split up.’

Unfortunately, the mother and daughter didn’t seem inclined to do any such thing. Jane had mostly been afraid that they were heading to brunch – a time-consuming activity, for one, not to mention that she couldn’t stomach another bite after everything they’d eaten at the diner. But stalking the two Doran women as they examined every little thing at Bendel’s was, she eventually decided, much, much worse.

‘I think you need one of these,’ Malcolm told her cheerfully, holding a retro powder puff up to Jane’s cheek.

She sneezed before she could say anything, and a black-clad salesgirl glared. Chastened, Malcolm returned the puff to its box and stepped away. ‘They’re heading upstairs,’ Jane murmured, turning away from the spiral staircase to examine a huge square studded with subtly different shades of Laura Mercier foundation. ‘I have no idea if I’m a summer or an autumn right now,’ she grumbled, counting the steps in her head until she guessed that Lynne and Annette must have reached the second floor.

‘Is there any chance that there’s less
stuff
up there?’ Malcolm asked pessimistically, craning his neck to try to get a better look. His mother and sister had already spent nearly an hour on the first floor, seemingly examining every cosmetic in existence. The chattering crowd bouncing between one colourful display and the next had made it easy to stay unseen, but the energetic music was starting to give Jane a headache, and Malcolm was looking even more drawn than she felt.

‘There’s plenty,’ Jane told him, although she suspected that he probably already knew that. ‘But we’re already all “dressed up,” so we should stick it out if we can. Anyway, there’s a salon in the building. They could still part ways.’

‘Or they could be aiming for an entire day of mother-daughter bonding,’ Malcolm pointed out grouchily. ‘Hey, what would happen if I got this hair cut? Would mine get shorter by the same amount? Or would they even be able to cut it, since it’s not—’

‘Come on,’ Jane interrupted. The staircase was clear, and she couldn’t see Lynne or Annette anywhere. ‘We don’t want to lose them.’

She thought she heard Malcolm muttering behind her as she headed for the stairs, but she resolutely ignored him.
Spying isn’t his thing,
she reminded herself charitably.
I wish it had never become mine, either
. Malcolm had given up an extraordinarily comfortable life for a dangerously uncertain one because he knew it was the right thing to do; she wasn’t about to take him to task for not enjoying it enough.

The only ones enjoying this are those two,
she thought grimly as a familiar chestnut coif came into view, bent close to a dark-blond one. Annette’s apple-green Dior suit was a little mature for her age, Jane thought: she must be trying to mimic her mother’s style. She was carefully settling an ornate jeweled comb in her tousled hair, and Lynne seemed so intent on helping her that for a moment Jane forgot to stay out of sight. Then Lynne’s dark eyes swept her way, and Jane stiffened.

Before she could decide what to do, Malcolm stepped part of the way between them, holding up a sequin-studded Carnivale mask to Jane’s stricken face. ‘We’re two hundred yards away,’ he reminded her steadily, ‘and you don’t look like you.’

‘She knew I was Ella,’ Jane said in a whisper. ‘I’m still not sure how.’ She pulled him gently over to the store’s remarkable front windows, remembering as she did that she had heard somewhere that they were Lalique. They were certainly lovely, although her attention as she pretended to examine and admire them was more than a little divided.
No matter how hard I try, Lynne will always have more experience at being a witch
. The comparison was so unfair that it was downright depressing. It was entirely possible that Charles had ‘outed’ her somehow when she had been disguised as Ella, or even that she had given herself away with some word or gesture. But she also had to consider the possibility that Hasina had used some spell that Jane would never live long enough to even hear about.
How could any witch hope to live a safe, quiet life until that ghoul is gone for good?

Malcolm squeezed her arm, and she glanced up at him. His face was a study in sympathy and concern. ‘Can I help?’ he asked softly.

‘Just keep your eyes open,’ she suggested with a tired half smile. Jane had never held a glamour in place for so long, let alone two glamours, and she was starting to feel the strain. For some reason – probably the simple fact that it wasn’t a disguise of her own body – Malcolm’s glamour was proving especially tricky, and Jane couldn’t help worrying that she would let it slip.
But I’m glad he’s here,
she thought gratefully.
He’s making it almost . . . fun
.

Malcolm’s dark eyes widened in surprise, and she whirled around to see what he was looking at. All she saw were the backs of his mother and sister, sorting through Loro Piana cashmere scarves. ‘I’ve gotten dragged in here a few times,’ Malcolm explained awkwardly. ‘Isn’t the third floor . . . lingerie? If they head up there, we may need a new plan.’

‘But our old one is working out so well,’ she joked, stepping back from the window and trying on a giant pair of Roberto Cavalli sunglasses for the hell of it. ‘Let’s not borrow trouble yet,’ she counselled more seriously after a moment. ‘I’m starting to wonder if today is just destined to be a loss.’

Malcolm pursed his lips thoughtfully. ‘Is there likely to be a “good” day, though?’ he asked. ‘Won’t my mother be doing everything she can to persuade Annette that this is some fabulous birthright she’s won her way back to, just like we’re going to try to convince her of the opposite?’

He was right, Jane had to admit. The fact that they had happened to follow the pair on yet another day of mother-daughter bonding probably had nothing to do with luck at all, good or bad. It would be smart for Lynne to keep her daughter as close and as happy as possible for the remainder of the twenty-eight days. Her life, after all, depended on a transfer with no glitches or interference. It would be careless to leave Annette to her own devices for the next week and a half . . . and Lynne was a woman with a keen eye for detail. ‘She knows how badly Annette wants to be part of a family,’ Jane grumbled, switching to a pair of Ray-Bans.

Malcolm nodded seriously, then adjusted the frames a little on Jane’s nose. ‘How do you convince someone that what she’s wanted her whole life isn’t all it’s cracked up to be?’ he wondered aloud.

Bitter experience is a pretty effective teacher,
Jane thought ruefully, but unfortunately they didn’t have the luxury of letting Annette make mistakes in order to learn from them. ‘Malcolm,’ she hissed suddenly, swiveling her head back and forth, ‘do you see your mother anywhere?’

Annette’s apple-green ensemble was still in view inside the luxury accessories section, but Lynne’s demure, mink-topped grey jacket was nowhere in sight. Jane spun around, worried that Lynne had somehow snuck up behind their unsuspecting backs, but all she saw was Fifth Avenue traffic outside the stained-glass windows.

It’s what we wanted,
Jane almost said, but how long would Lynne be gone? There was no way of knowing whether she was off to the salon for the afternoon or simply powdering her nose for a minute.

‘You should go to her,’ she said quickly. ‘I’ll back you up from here, but she’s more likely to listen to you.’ She reached up and waved her left hand across his face, releasing the magic that held his disguise together as she did. It was a bit complicated keeping her own in place at the same time – like separating a melody from its harmony in an unfamiliar song – but the feeling of relief afterward was so intense she had to close her eyes for a moment. ‘Go,’ she gasped, checking to make sure that Malcolm looked entirely like himself again. ‘And hurry.’

Malcolm wrenched himself away from the window and crossed the store in a few long, eager strides.
Of course, he’s been dying to see her,
Jane realized, feeling a little foolish. She’d been thinking of their afternoon in terms of a reconnaissance mission while he’d been painfully close to his long-lost sister the whole time.

Jane braced herself as Malcolm approached Annette, who was holding up an Hermès bangle thoughtfully. The curious look on her face turned to shock and then something approaching rapture, and Jane tried to make herself relax a little. Annette might be a bit of a hothead, but surely she wouldn’t attack her own brother in a public place, even if he told her something she didn’t want to hear.

Annette’s face darkened, her square jaw setting. Jane balled her hands into fists, letting the magic that was holding up her glamour flow into the rest of the power that she held in reserve, ready to release it at a moment’s notice. But no flames licked around the highly flammable cashmere; and Malcolm continued to speak earnestly, even fearlessly. Jane allowed herself to do a quick visual sweep of the store, checking for Lynne. She didn’t see her anywhere, but considering how many tall, well-dressed, glossy-haired women were nearby, it was hard to be confident that they had enough time. ‘Hurry,’ she whispered again, wondering if there was some magical way to project her voice to his ear.