The Lost Soul (666 Park Avenue 3) (23 page)

Then the blood was back, flowing freely down her shirt just as it had on almost a nightly basis since Dee had been murdered. Jane choked on it, gagging as she tried to speak. The darkness rushed at her like an angry tide. She tried to swim against it, choking and struggling, but it came faster and deeper until she was buried.

From a great distance she heard more shouting, another door slamming open, running feet. Then something soft and warm was pressed against her forehead, and her body remembered how to open its eyes. When she did, Emer’s green ones were peering back into them, and her tiny, fine-boned hand held a damp washcloth to Jane’s head.

‘I don’t know what kind of a ship you’re running here, Emer,’ Penelope said, looking thoroughly unconcerned, ‘but this one seems to have a touch of that posttraumatic stress thingy that the young people are always going on about these days. You can go upstairs and lie down for a bit, Blondie,’ she added, her tone more gentle. ‘I’ll start with the other interviews while you pull yourself together.’

Jane stood unsteadily and was mortified to see Maeve and Charlotte and even Harris and Leah peering into the kitchen through both of its doors. Her head throbbed painfully, but she managed a weak smile and even a little wave before dragging herself up the stairs toward her bed.

Behind her, she heard Penelope’s voice again. It was softer now, but she could still make out the chiding words. ‘You should have told me that the girl has experienced death, Emer,’ she scolded. ‘Even if it was only by proxy. You know that sort of thing leaves a mark.’ Jane couldn’t make out the reply, but she held herself perfectly still at the top of the stairs, holding her breath until Penelope’s next words floated up to her. ‘You’re lucky I came when I did. I can’t even imagine the mess that you might have made of things without my help.’

Chapter Twenty-four

W
HEN
J
ANE CAME
downstairs the following morning, the atmosphere in the farmhouse had changed perceptibly. Penelope was the only one missing from the kitchen. At first Jane assumed that she was off doing some strange ritual or research – but none of the Montagues would meet Jane’s eyes, and she realized the reason behind Penelope’s absence.
They sent her away,
she thought with uncanny certainty.
This is a family meeting, and she wasn’t welcome
.

‘Sorry,’ she blurted lamely, and some of the pale faces in the kitchen turned her way. ‘I can just—’ She waved vaguely toward the stairway’s other outlet toward the formal dining room.
Sit outside until you’re done. Walk into town and get a muffin. Disappear
.

‘Thank you, Jane,’ Charlotte said stiffly, and Jane felt her own cheeks flush a mortified shade of red. She spun to leave, but Maeve’s voice caught her before she could go more than a step.

‘Wait,’ her friend snapped. Her voice was raw with frustration, and Jane wondered how long the five of them had been arguing already. ‘This concerns her as much as any of us.’

‘Not quite as much,’ Harris mumbled, but he was staring into his coffee so fixedly that Jane had trouble making out the words.

‘That’s not fair, and you know it,’ Maeve began, but Charlotte clicked her tongue and her niece and nephew quieted down, though petulantly.

‘Annette Doran, or Hasina rather, contacted us this morning,’ the redheaded woman explained, straightening her silk Carine Gilson robe conscientiously. ‘It’s set off quite a stir, as you can see.’

Jane shot her a strained smile. ‘ “Contacted us,” ’ she repeated, putting a question into the word. But the guilty, awkward looks on the faces around her told a different story.
Oh. Not ‘us,’ then. ‘Them.’
Whatever Annette’s message had been, it separated her from the group as neatly as a knife.

‘She had an offer,’ Harris explained. Maeve opened her mouth to protest, but before she could speak, he cut her off. ‘What? That’s what it was.’

‘So says Mr. Everything-Is-a-Trap,’ Leah muttered under her breath, picking a paper napkin into smaller and smaller shreds with her YSL-logoed fingernails.

‘Will someone just tell me what’s going on?’ Jane felt guilty pushing them on what was clearly a sensitive subject, but she didn’t think she could stand any more oblique and unhelpful bickering.

‘Annette has offered us a trade,’ Charlotte finished crisply. ‘She claims that, if you meet her tomorrow evening, she will leave the rest of us alone.’

Emer looked at her sadly. ‘She’s offered my family one hundred years of amnesty.’

Jane considered that for a moment. André had insisted that it was impossible to make any kind of truce or deal with Hasina, because she had lived far too long to consider a human deal permanent. But even with Annette’s instability, as long as Hasina was in charge they should be able to stick to a bargain that lasted a mere hundred years. There might be fewer witches in the world than there used to be – thanks to Hasina’s own hunting practices as much as natural attrition – but there were assuredly enough to keep her powered for a hundred years without even touching the Montagues. If there wasn’t too much of Annette’s angry, vengeful influence hovering around the body that used to be hers, then this could be the deal of a lifetime for Jane’s closest friends.
I wanted to keep them safe,
a little voice reminded her.
That was always the point of this
. ‘That sounds like a good deal,’ she said, then cleared her throat; there was something strange about the sound of her voice. ‘I hope you told her I would go.’

‘Obviously we told her to go to hell,’ Maeve said sarcastically. ‘Oh, no, wait. We said we’d think about it. Talk it over with you. Because Carrie – that’s our cousin, Jane, she’s in medical research – has invented this operation called a “sanity-ectomy,” and this morning we all went out and had one.’ She glared around the kitchen, but from the conspicuous lack of reaction Jane guessed that this wasn’t her first hostile outburst of the morning.

‘Oh. Well, it’s okay you didn’t give her an answer,’ Jane reassured all of them, trying to avoid Maeve’s furious glare. ‘Like Maeve said before, this concerns me, too. I appreciate you waiting to talk it over with me,’ she added, ignoring the fact that they hadn’t especially welcomed her into their discussion with open arms.

‘You’re fine with volunteering to stick your head into the lion’s mouth?’ Leah finished for her, perking up and looking genuinely interested. ‘Because that would have saved us a whole lot of moral ambiguity if you’d popped in and said so, like, two hours ago.’

‘We were holding a
secret
family conference,’ Maeve pointed out hotly. ‘Which, for the record, I said was totally pointless – two hours ago. We could have just told Annette to go to hell and then woken Jane up for brunch.’ In spite of her indignation, Maeve couldn’t seem to resist a glare and then a shudder at the plate of greyish eggs that sat, untouched, in front of her.

‘This “meeting” with Annette is a trap,’ Charlotte pointed out in a neutral tone that made it clear that she knew how very obvious that was.

‘Everything is a trap,’ Harris muttered.

‘Yes, everything
is
a trap,’ Jane agreed with a shrug. ‘But in this case it’s a trap for me, and a bargain for you.’

‘You
would
see it that way,’ Maeve glowered. ‘So the decent people among us thought we shouldn’t tell you about the offer at all.’ She turned her ferocious glare on Harris, who looked fixedly at his thumbs.

‘Maeve, berating people is not the way to convince anyone of your point of view,’ her grandmother corrected sternly. ‘Don’t tempt me to recommend charm school for you the next time your father checks in; it’s never too late.’ Jane felt a sudden pang; she would have really loved to belong to a whole, living family, and especially to this family.

‘I know you’re worried about me,’ she told Maeve softly, ‘but I’m worried about you, too. I brought this craziness into all your lives, and now I have a chance to end it.’ The two final words rang in her ears over and over again, and she tried to suppress a shudder.
Am I really worth one hundred years?
she wondered in the most private part of her mind. It couldn’t just be Annette’s anger driving such a generous offer; Hasina must really want Jane.
Two magical parents,
she mused,
and one of them part of her old blood vendetta. I guess I
do
have family, after all
. She didn’t know what attracted Hasina more – Jane’s own substantial magic, or the fact that a living witch had popped up from Anila’s line after all this time – but the combination must be irresistible.

‘I did think that you had a right to know, Jane, but I. . .’ Emer trailed off, handing Jane a mug of steaming tea and pressing her hands gently to her mouth as if to search for her missing words.

Jane wrapped her hands around the warm mug and gratefully took a sip.
She doesn’t want me sacrificed, but she’s also responsible for all of them, and the rest of her family as well
. It was an impossible position; no wonder Emer had been so quiet. ‘Annette intends to kill me,’ Jane conceded. ‘That doesn’t mean that she’ll succeed.’

Charlotte pursed her lips skeptically, but refrained from reminding Jane that they had already learned otherwise the hard way. Annette had been born powerful and had only grown more so. Serving up Jane’s magic to her on a silver platter was hardly the best course of action, even if she vowed not to use it against the Montagues. Something about the thought nagged at the edges of Jane’s mind, but with so much attention on her she couldn’t focus on what it was.

‘This is my life we’re talking about here, so it’s my choice,’ she said flatly, making eye contact with Emer in particular. ‘I know I’m a guest in your home, so you can kick me out onto the street if you really don’t approve of my decisions. I guess you could even knock me out and tie me up to keep me from going – or you could try, at least.’ She raised an eyebrow at Maeve, mimicking the exact angle that Lynne Doran had always used to make her feel about three inches tall.

Maeve half stood as Jane crossed the kitchen toward the door to the back lawn, but Jane flicked her eyes in warning, and her friend froze in place. Jane imagined her stuck there as she crossed the dewy grass toward an ivy-covered gazebo that overlooked the ocean. To her surprise and relief, Maeve didn’t follow her.

Ignoring the stone benches that ringed the gazebo’s lattice walls, Jane stretched out lengthwise along its cool slate paving stones, spinning the plain silver ring on her right hand as she struggled to catch hold of the thought that had half formed in the kitchen. It came to her in a flash. The deal that Annette had offered was for Jane, but Jane was just a person. She had been born with magic and inherited even more, but the magic wasn’t an inseparable part of her. Gran had poured her own into the ring that was currently on Jane’s finger – and Lynne had given hers to Jane inside an ancient, rune-covered athame.

There was no reason why Jane had to walk into Annette’s trap and provide her with even more ammunition. She could give up being a witch and leave her magic with her friends.
Then, when the truce runs out a hundred years from now, maybe Maeve’s and Leah’s granddaughters will have inherited enough power to fend off Hasina on their own
.

She could feel the earth turning, she thought, ever so slowly to her left and down. There were noises, too, and more of them the longer she was still. It was just the wind through the ivy at first, and then she could separate out the sound of the waves in the distance. A lawnmower grumbled somewhere even farther away, and a little bird trilled happily from the wooden lattice of the gazebo’s walls. When it changed its mind and flew away, Jane could hear the beating of its tiny wings against the air. There were sounds inside the earth as well, she realized after a while: worms tunnelling, mice burrowing, ants carrying morsels of food along long, blind hallways.

Jane lay for a while, and turned with the earth, and listened. Her magic had come from this world somehow; it was a part of the sounds and the life stirring around her. If she released what she had and then destroyed both the ring and the double-edged knife, the tremendous magic they contained would flow back into the world, harmless and unharnessed. Would it make some kind of difference? Might the earth spin a tiny bit faster, or its rivers run with a little more energy? Or would the magic that she had freed just work its way into newly born witches, encouraging them to envy and covet and kill in perpetuity? She had tried so hard to do the right thing, but it seemed like there was always some vital piece of information that she didn’t know.

I’m going to die
. The thought seemed unreal, as though it surely belonged to someone else, but she knew that she needed to face the possibility.
Tomorrow night
. The sun would set, then it would rise over the water that she was listening to right now. And that would be the last time that her heart would beat while it rose.

She would fight, of course. It just wasn’t in her nature to placidly accept something so permanent and final. Even now a small, angry part of her brain was tossing out possibilities: she could use Lynne’s magic herself, set a trap of her own, strike first and strike hard. She
would
try, but she would fail, and her failure would have to count to the rest of the world nearly as much as her success would have.
I’ll be okay with it if it buys them safety. I don’t want to die, but I know that I can
. This was the first and most important difference, she realized, between herself and Hasina.