The Lost Soul (666 Park Avenue 3) (5 page)

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 Dalca
cu.’

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

T
HE
M
ONTAGUES
’
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 repeated 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 Dalca
cu,’ 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.’

Harris chuckled, running a hand through his close-cropped reddish curls. ‘So that’s that. The limit of what we know. Good meeting, though.’ His sister shot him a stern glare, and he flushed a little.