The Lost Soul (666 Park Avenue 3) (2 page)

Coffee. A shower and a massive mug of coffee,
she decided. It was a start. Next on the agenda was cornering Annette Doran, and making sure she knew just what type of witch her mother really was.

Chapter Two

S
EVEN HOURS AND
an unwise amount of caffeine later, Jane squinted resentfully at the pale spring sun. As far as she could tell it had gone from inching torturously toward its highest point to refusing to move at all, and her watch seemed equally reluctant to move. She lowered her eyes and pressed her oversized sunglasses more securely onto the bridge of her nose. The banded wooden doors of Park Avenue Presbyterian seemed to be smirking at her.

‘Open,’ she whispered fiercely, twisting her right foot uncomfortably in its sensible-but-still-painful kitten heel. The heavy double doors began to swing forward, and Jane flinched, hoping she hadn’t sent out her magic without realizing it. But then a stocky, impeccably dressed man stepped out, turning back to help an elderly woman in Chanel across the threshold. ‘Finally,’ Jane muttered, watching the trickle of congregants intently.

Since the spectacularly destructive end of Annette Doran’s welcome-home party the weekend before, her mother had been doing nonstop damage control. For Lynne Doran, socialite extraordinaire, that meant appearing in public – flawlessly turned out – as often as possible, in a wide variety of PR-friendly activities. Jane had even found a photo of her and Annette at an ASPCA adoption event, holding an undeniably photogenic puppy up to their smiling faces. Jane suspected that the pair would be conspicuously attending church as well, and so she had staked out a position in the shadows of an alley across the street, hoping to catch a glimpse of them.

A tall woman with dirty-blond hair stepped through the double doors and Jane inhaled sharply, but upon closer inspection the stranger was at least ten years older than Annette.
Not that Lynne would have let her out of the house in espadrilles, anyway
. A breeze curled around the side of the building she was leaning against, but to Jane it felt hot and angry, like the air in her dream from the night before.

Jane knew it was dangerous to get near Annette, and especially to try to reason with her, but this seemed like her only hope. If she could just make Annette hear the truth – the whole truth – she stood a chance at rescuing her from Lynne’s clutches. Right now, Annette believed that Jane’s family had been plotting against her for her whole life. And while it was true that Jane’s own grandmother had helped abduct four-year-old Annette and erase her memory of her childhood, she only did so to keep her safe from Lynne. Jane’s grandmother had known all along what Jane had only recently discovered: that the person known as Lynne Doran was actually Hasina, one of the world’s original witches. She had survived over the millennia by taking over the bodies of her female relatives, leapfrogging from one generation to the next each time her current shell grew old. ‘Lynne Doran’ had been so anxious to reunite with her long-lost daughter not because she missed her, but because she needed a new body to inhabit. Now Jane had to somehow convey all this to Annette and convince her that she needed to get to safety. Malcolm, Annette’s older brother and Jane’s ex-husband, was already in hiding from his psychotic mother; Jane knew he would be eager for Annette to join him.

When Annette finally appeared in the doorway of the church, Lynne was stuck to her side as firmly as ever. The women made a striking pair. Their colouring was different and Annette’s frame was a bit more solid than her willowy mother’s, but the way they carried themselves in their demure Sunday suits marked them unmistakably as family.
Financially and genetically blessed family,
Jane thought ruefully, pressing herself back a little into the narrow alley. Fellow churchgoers flocked about the two women like butterflies around rare, impressive flowers, and Lynne greeted all of them with gracious nods and calibrated smiles. Annette carefully mimicked her mother’s gestures and expressions, though she seemed a little uncomfortable to Jane’s skeptical eye.

Finally, Lynne reached discreetly into her purse, no doubt sending a text message to summon their driver.
I thought they’d leave on foot
. They were only a few blocks from the mansion, and it hadn’t occurred to Jane that they might be going somewhere else after the service. Park Avenue was wide, with a tree-lined divider down the centre that would shield her somewhat from view, but she hesitated. Was it worth the risk to step out into the open and hail a cab?

As she wavered, a strong arm grabbed her from behind and pulled her backward into the shadows. When the grip on her arm released suddenly, she stumbled for a few steps, her injured leg buckling underneath her, and fell to the ground. Jane threw her hands up instinctively to protect her face and felt the magic in her blood spring up, whipping the debris around her into a brief, frenzied tornado.

But instead of falling back to the concrete, the debris paused in midair, then parted abruptly to slam against the brick walls on either side. An older woman stood there in the silence, looking at Jane. She was all grey hair, cold pewter eyes, and sharp angles, and Jane felt a certain fleeting satisfaction at the sight of the thick white bandage peeking out beneath the sleeve of her cardigan. Annette’s fire had at least gotten a piece of one of her aunts, Jane thought grimly. It was Cora McCarroll, she was almost sure, and not Cora’s grumpier, more taciturn twin. Jane pulled her magic into a steady, more orderly shape around her body.

‘You shouldn’t be here,’ Cora snarled, and Jane felt the static charge of her magic pressing angrily against Jane’s own.

‘You’re blocking the way out,’ Jane said between clenched teeth, rubbing at her aching leg and sending a tendril of magic to explore the shadows of the alley behind her. In a moment it found something solid but not too heavy. She held her breath and launched it forward.

Cora waved, almost contemptuously, as the garbage can that Jane had lobbed at her glanced off one of the brick walls with an empty, useless clang. ‘There’s more than one way for you to leave here,’ she snarled, and the static charge pressed closer, taking on a sharper, more hostile feel.

Jane pushed back against it blindly. Malcolm and her gran had both told her that she was an extremely powerful witch, but the fact remained that she hadn’t learned about her magic until very recently. Against a witch like Cora, who had been spell-casting for decades, raw power only mattered so much. ‘You told Lynne that you wanted to be left alone,’ Cora continued, almost conversationally. ‘You didn’t mention that you intended to keep sticking your nose where it didn’t belong. I can’t imagine what you’re still doing in this hemisphere, but if you knew what was best for you, you’d stay away.’

‘You didn’t mind me being around when you thought you could use me,’ Jane pointed out.

Cora laughed sharply. ‘You had something we needed. But not anymore. We have Annette now, and
she
doesn’t need some stalker following her around and filling her head with paranoid nonsense. She is heir to something more important than you could possibly understand, and your interference is entirely unwelcome.’

What they had needed was magic, and Lynne’s blood. Jane had one of the two, and Lynne had manoeuvred her into marrying her son in the hope that the couple would produce a daughter who had both. Jane had run away on her wedding day, after learning the awful truth about her in-laws. It wasn’t until she discovered Annette – who, of course, fit the bill perfectly – that she realized returning Lynne’s long-lost daughter could gain her her own freedom. ‘You guys really are just the picture of a close, loving family,’ she spat back. ‘I suppose Annette should consider herself lucky.’

Cora’s thin lips twisted upward in a ghostly approximation of a smile. ‘You have no idea,’ the witch purred, her pewter eyes half closing in what Jane could only call rapture. Her mouth fell open in shock. Cora McCarroll
knew
what Annette’s body was intended for, and she thought it was an
honour
.

The edge of the older woman’s magic grew softer for a moment, and Jane instinctively pushed outward against it, clearing a little more breathing space around herself. Cora took a step back and frowned. ‘This is a family matter,’ she snapped, pulling the edges of her magic and her cardigan closer to her body. ‘You’re out, so stay out.’ She spun dramatically and stormed out of the alley, leaving little eddies of trash and newspaper spinning around in her wake.

Jane made no move to follow; she was sure that Lynne had already whisked Annette away to their next photo op. Instead she found a clear space on the concrete ground and leaned her back against the cold brick wall, closing her eyes and trying to trace the currents of her magic as it returned to her body. Jane had put a lot of work into learning to harness and control her power during the previous few months, and knowing that she had held off Cora so steadily and still had some reserves left brought a grim, tired smile to her lips.

‘
Family,
’ she murmured thoughtfully, turning the word over in her mouth. Technically, witches were all one big family: they could all trace their ancestry back to one of the legendary Ambika’s seven daughters. In the more modern sense, Jane was out of the family . . . but that didn’t mean Annette was entirely without loving, concerned relatives.

Jane snapped her faux-lizard wristlet open and slid her cell phone out. The screen flared to life, displaying what she had self-consciously been looking at over and over throughout the previous week: the last of the fake ‘junk’ emails that Malcolm had sent her, so that she would know how to contact him. She scrolled to the bottom and tapped the number tacked on to the end of the email.

The line beeped in a measured, foreign-sounding way, and Jane waited patiently. Finally she heard what sounded like a voicemail tone, followed by an expectant, staticky silence.

‘It’s me,’ she said shortly. ‘I wanted to wait until I could tell you that everything was safe again. It mostly is – for you, I mean. But Annette’s alive, and she’s in danger, and I don’t really know where to go from here. Malcolm, I think it’s time for you to come home.’

She cut off the call and slid the phone back into her purse as she stood up, brushing dust off her clothes and stepping out of the alley.

Chapter Three

T
HE
L
OWELL
H
OTEL
had changed since Jane had stayed there. She paused across the street from the stately building, taking in the three upper floors whose windows were dark and cracked. She took a deep breath and crossed the street, heading for the hotel’s gold-rimmed doors. Inside, the smartly dressed staff looked oddly subdued, and a steady stream of workers in heavy-duty breathing masks passed through the marble-floored lobby.

Jane peered through her oversized sunglasses, inexplicably nervous that the woman at the front desk would recognize her.
I’m wearing a different face and body,
she reminded herself; the last time she was here, she had been Ella Medeiros, an heiress of vague origins. She had performed a complex spell to change her appearance and hidden under a new identity to protect herself from Lynne Doran. Crossing the lobby as quickly and quietly as possible, Jane headed straight for the bar, breathing an audible sigh of relief when she saw that the one person she had been hoping to see was still right where he belonged.

‘My enemy,’ André Dalca
cu rasped, his Romanian accent thicker than she remembered. He raised a cut-crystal tumbler full of dark amber liquid toward her in a toast, but as he did Jane realized that even he was different: his half-mocking smile, which had become so familiar over the past month, seemed somehow skewed.

Jane pulled off her sunglasses, blinking as her eyes adjusted to the softer lighting of the lobby bar. Now she was close enough to see the long, angry scar running along André’s right cheek, curling toward the corner of his mouth. It added a perverse hint of mystery to his already-handsome face, and Jane had a feeling that once it faded it would look positively rakish. At the moment, though, it still looked painful. She felt the impulse to reach out and stroke his damaged skin.

Instead she took another minute to collect herself, glancing around for André’s sister, Katrin, as she arranged her Badgley Mischka hobo bag on one of the empty armchairs. The chain of its strap slithered down the red leather with a small sigh, and Jane echoed it as she sank into a second chair. ‘You were hunting me,’ she reminded him. He caught her staring at his scar, and she tried not to blush. ‘Annette did that to you,’ she said softly.