The Lost Soul (666 Park Avenue 3) (4 page)

Killing her?
Had it really come to that? Gran’s help had been contingent on André and Katrin’s parents keeping Annette alive, and Jane had no intention of striking any other kind of deal. ‘I want to banish Hasina,’ she corrected. ‘Or if I can’t, then force her into some kind of truce or something where she agrees that her current life will be her last. I don’t want to kill anyone – the whole point of this is that I’m trying to
save
Annette.’

The Romanian siblings looked at each other meaningfully, then back at Jane. ‘Hasina won’t honor a truce,’ André told her. He held up one hand to prevent Jane from interrupting him and leaned forward. ‘You say you don’t know enough about her, so I’m telling you, all right? She’s lived too long to really be human anymore. Humans act with one eye on the grave, but it’s been thousands of years since Hasina has seen her own lurking in front of her. We’re specks to her, mayflies who live and die in a day. She has no equals, so she will never keep her word.’ He shrugged, his muscular shoulders rising and falling. ‘Banish her if you can, but if you miss your chance, it will be gone. She’ll stalk us, and you, and all our children and grandchildren, if you live long enough to have those. She kills witches, you know. That’s why there are so few of you left these days. Whether she does it for fun, or to eliminate rivals, or some inhuman reason of her own, no one knows. All we know is that, with her, there can be no truces, no deals, no peace.’

Jane sighed. Deep down she had felt that Hasina wouldn’t be open to any kind of compromise, but it made her task that much harder. ‘So, banishing. Do you have any idea how I can do that?’

Katrin snorted, fishing an energy bar out of her gym tote and tearing the cellophane viciously. ‘Kill her vessel, and her sons for good measure. We’ll handle the two of them if you want, but that’s the best offer you’ll get here,
Baroness
.’

‘We’re done here,’ Jane snapped, standing abruptly. She slung her hobo bag over her right shoulder, glancing around to make sure there was nothing she had missed. ‘I’ll find a way to get rid of Hasina on my own.’ She took a moment to stare each Dalca
cu in the eyes until both looked away from her steady gaze. ‘I am going to do whatever I can to protect Annette. But let’s be perfectly clear about this: her brothers – both of them – are under my protection. Touch either one and Hasina won’t be your biggest problem anymore.’

She spun toward the door and strode out, but not before catching the ghost of a smile on André’s face.

Chapter Four

B
Y THE TIME
Jane returned to Washington Square Park, her right leg was throbbing again, and her head felt nearly as wretched. As she climbed the stairs to her apartment, she wondered for the thousandth time if she was insane for turning down the Montagues’ offer to stay with them at their Upper East Side brownstone. A little company would be nice right about now. But she knew that wherever she went, danger followed, and beyond that, she wasn’t quite sure where they fit into all this – stopping Hasina was good for the whole magical community, but just how involved should the Montagues really be?

‘So my fortress of solitude it is,’ she muttered to herself, fishing around in her hobo bag for her Christofle key chain. A sound from the other side of the door caught her attention, and she froze. Dee still had a key of her own, but she hadn’t been back to the apartment since she went to stay uptown.

Jane felt for her magic, which was as tired and out of sorts as the rest of her. She struggled in vain for a moment to bring it into some semblance of order, but it slipped away maddeningly, dancing around the edges of her control.
Screw it,
she decided abruptly, jamming her key into the lock. Anyone who tried to sneak up on her was in for a nasty surprise of their own.

‘Hello?’ she demanded, slamming the door shut behind her. ‘I know you’re here.’ There was a pause, and then a distinct clang as something fell in the kitchen. She sighed in relief.
Dee
. Cooking up something delicious, she hoped.

‘In a minute,’ a familiar voice rumbled – but it wasn’t Dee’s. ‘I don’t want your omelette to burn.’

Jane ran into the galley kitchen so fast that her feet barely seemed to touch the floor.
Malcolm
. He stood over the stove, a broad smile on his handsome, tanned face.

‘Forget the omelette.’ She grabbed his arm and dragged him into the living room. ‘I’m just glad you’re okay.’

‘You’re the boss,’ he said, sinking down into the buttery leather couch beside her. ‘I can’t cook anyway,’ he added, spreading his hands helplessly.

‘I know that,’ she agreed, wrinkling her nose at the distinct smell of burnt eggs. ‘It was a nice thought.’

His eyes focused on hers. ‘You called, and I came,’ he said simply. ‘Bearing gifts.’ He held up a small wooden box, pieced together from at least half a dozen different woods that came together to form a five-pointed star on the lid. Although there was a clear break to indicate where it should open, it seemed to be sealed shut.

Jane reached out curiously. A spark ran through her hand and up her arm when she took the box, and she jumped a little. ‘It’s beautiful,’ she breathed, although she knew without needing to be told that it was more than just a pretty object.

‘It’s a spirit box,’ he explained, his dark, liquid eyes watching hers carefully. ‘It’s for people who have . . . lost someone. The more you are near it, the more the spirits that follow you will infuse the box. It’ll carry their intentions, and their love for you, and it’s a way of keeping them with you. At least, that’s what the witch who traded it to me said.’ He frowned, looking uncertain. ‘She
was
a real witch, for whatever it’s worth.’

‘She was telling the truth,’ Jane murmured, closing her hands more tightly around the box. ‘I can feel it.’ She inhaled deeply, then forced herself to set the box down on the driftwood coffee table. As powerful as its presence was already, she could only imagine how difficult it would be to let it go once it had started to ‘feel’ like Gran . . . and maybe a bit like the parents she had lost, when she was too young to even remember. ‘Where did you get it?’

‘Ecuador,’ he said shortly, glancing at the box and then away again. ‘I kept hoping to see you around every corner. It’s been so long.’ His hand reached out as if of its own accord to brush a stray lock of hair from her face. Without thinking, she flinched, and his hand quickly dropped back down.

‘It’s been so long,’ she repeated apologetically. He nodded in understanding, and instead reached out to pick up the spirit box.

‘I hope it’s all right,’ he offered, gesturing toward it. ‘I know it can never replace, or make up for, what I’ve taken from you. It was just something I thought you should have.’

‘Thank you,’ she replied automatically, her mind spinning. Malcolm and Jane’s relationship had been complicated from the start. Lynne had manipulated her son into killing Jane’s grandmother, who had long ago placed a protective spell on Jane to hide her from other witches who would seek her power. When Gran died and the spell was broken, Malcolm tracked Jane down in Paris, sweeping her up in a whirlwind romance that culminated with their wedding just months later. It was all a lie – at least at first. But then Malcolm fell in love with Jane for real. He risked his life to tell her the truth, and to try to help her get out of the city and away from his mother’s clutches. Even when she decided to stay behind and hide in plain sight as Ella Medeiros, he had proven incredibly loyal, leaving everything behind and skipping from country to country alone so that the contents of his mind couldn’t be used against her. Still, he’d been wrapped around his mother’s evil finger for thirty-two years before Jane even met him.
He
might well believe that he had changed, but if it came down to Jane or Lynne, which version of Malcolm would he turn out to be? ‘Tell me about the last two months,’ she suggested finally.

Seeming to sense her mood as he had so many times before, Malcolm shifted easily into storytelling mode. He had started in Europe, where he had set up most of the safe houses that he intended to share with her. But after only a couple of weeks he had started feeling the pursuit closing in, seeing familiar shadows around every corner.

‘Those were probably Dalca
cus,’ Jane supplied helpfully, guessing that Malcolm would recognize the surname of his mother’s shifty so-called allies.

‘That makes sense.’ He frowned slightly. ‘Mom always said the Romanians were only good for mercenaries.’

Not that good,
Jane thought, frowning a little herself as she thought of all the ways André and his sister, Katrin, had betrayed Lynne. Malcolm went on to tell her how he had stowed away on a series of cruise ships and wound up in South America. His prep-school Spanish was more hindrance than help there, but the money from his safe houses smoothed over the worst of his communication troubles. He had gotten comfortable enough to start asking hard questions: about himself, his mother, and magic in general, although of course there was only so much he could learn when he had to conceal his reasons for wanting to know.

As Malcolm went on with his narrative, he played idly with the spirit box. The sight of it in his hand suddenly reminded her of the horrible moment when she had entered his memories and seen him kill Gran, and she shuddered. He glanced up in concern, but she didn’t know what to say, so instead she just took the box from him and set it gently back down. She had been prepared to trust Malcolm, but if he was hiding anything from her, then maybe she was being just as naïve about him as she had been from the start.

‘And the whole time, you never told anyone who you really were or why you were asking?’ she prompted. She gathered some exploratory magic and sent it out through her eyes, wondering if she would even be able to see enough of his thoughts to make sense of. ‘Never,’ he told her firmly, his eyes wide and unflinching. ‘I would never have risked putting your life in danger.’

Jane nodded. She knew for sure that he really believed what he was saying: his entire being throbbed with sincerity.
I don’t even have to read his mind,
she realized, feeling the magical electricity swirl and eddy in the space between them, drawing them toward each other like a river of tiny magnets.
I just know him
. After a fairy-tale courtship, unsettling engagement, and disastrous marriage, she finally understood Malcolm Doran.

‘It had been so long without any real news of what was happening up here, whether you were okay. I was going crazy, not knowing. And then the stories in the papers changed,’ he went on. ‘Suddenly I was a drug addict who’d kidnapped you and possibly killed the family driver.’

‘I actually did that part,’ Jane said in a rush, realizing just how much they had missed in the time they had been apart. She quickly sketched the scene in the alley when Yuri, Lynne’s driver and personal hit man, had come for her. She shuddered at the memory of the vile things she had seen in his mind after he had lost control and attacked: Lynne had been covering up her pet thug’s dirty little secrets for years. ‘He started choking Dee,’ she finished, ‘and I couldn’t get there in time. But he had a tire iron, and I had magic, and . . .’

She spread her hands helplessly. Even to defend an innocent woman from a certified sociopath, killing wasn’t something she could easily shrug off. She knew that she had done her best under the circumstances, but it was impossible not to wonder about the ‘what-ifs.’ With a little more control of her power, she might have just knocked him out . . . but what was done was done. Hot tears stung behind her eyes, and she blinked hard.

Gran didn’t tell me enough,
she thought bitterly for what felt like the thousandth time.
She died before I even knew what to ask
.