The Dark Glamour (666 Park Avenue 2)

responsibility for the family’s needs.’
    Jane could recognize Katrin easily enough in the wary-looking, sharp-faced girl of about sixteen, who greeted Celine and her two charges at what Jane knew had to be the London orphanage where Anne had first remembered living. ‘Mama said to remind you to top up both spells,’ the girl told Celine flatly. ‘Memory and protection. They’ll have to last, or I’m to kill her.’
    Celine just nodded, and Jane felt a prickle of fear.
She would let them kill Annette?
But she wouldn’t, of course, Jane realized a split second later. In order to keep that from happening, Gran would have used the same protection spell on Annette that she had later used on her own flesh and blood. It had kept Jane safe in Paris for six years. It was as close to unbreakable as a spell could be: it lasted for the rest of the life of the witch who cast it. That one loophole in the spell was how Lynne had managed to find Jane: by killing Gran.
    But Lynne never knew there were two little girls under that protection,
Jane thought wonderingly.
And then I got lucky.
Lynne might have searched high and low for her daughter, using all the magical and non-magical means at her disposal. But there was nothing for her to find as long as Celine Boyle was alive, powering her fierce protection spells. Then, finally, Malcolm was sent to kill Gran, because Lynne needed an heiress. The irony struck Jane like a blow to the chest: Lynne could have found Annette just like Jane did, but she only could have done it
after
her plot to replace her daughter was under way. And why would Lynne have bothered to try, twenty-two years later? She would have been sure she had exhausted all her options. And then Jane had waltzed in with uncanny timing and found exactly what Lynne had stopped looking for.
    ‘I found her,’ Jane told the implacable image of her grandmother frantically. ‘After you died, I found Annette.’
    The diary’s Gran clicked her tongue against the roof of her mouth. ‘That’s all right,’ she said briskly. ‘I only meant to keep her from Hasina.’
    Jane fell backward out of the diary then and lay on the floor gasping for breath. Lynne had searched for Annette . . . but Hasina had been looking for a body.
Blood-related, and a witch. My daughter with one of her sons . . . or her own daughter, back from the dead.
She rolled to her side, her stomach heaving as if she might vomit. The diary lay on the floor, innocent and motionless.
That’s why Lynne wanted her back so badly,
Jane moaned silently.
That’s why she was willing to trade anything for her.
    The image of Lynne’s serene face in the clearing filled Jane’s mind. She watched her onetime enemy pour her magic into the silver dagger, tossing it away like a worthless trinket. What was some magic, compared with eternal life? Besides, Hasina’s next body had more than enough magic of its own – enough to kill already, without even meaning to. Jane tried to sit up, but her muscles couldn’t seem to hear her.
    I have to,
she pleaded with her unresponding body.
It’s not over.
    Jane had to get to Anne while there was still time to warn her.

Thirty-six
    J ANE DIDN’T BOTHER to greet Gunther, who seemed, as always, to be napping, as she stalked into the Dorans’ mahogany-panelled elevator. She had finally accepted that the best plan was to wait until Annette’s welcome-home party to try to get the girl alone, but now that the big night was here, she didn’t want to waste a minute. She stabbed the code at the bottom of her invitation into the elevator’s keypad, and the doors closed, followed by the gold gate behind them. The number-eight button lit up automatically, and the elevator began to move. Jane spun the beading on her evening bag anxiously, willing the floors to go by faster.
    She had been unconscious at the time, but as far as she could tell, she had turned from Jane into Ella almost exactly twenty-eight days before . . . minus just a couple of hours.
Hope this thing doesn’t go all night,
she thought wryly as the elevator finally arrived. There was no doubt in her mind that the shape of her eyes had changed, and her electric-blue pumps felt looser on her feet than she remembered from when she had first tried them on. If she didn’t get in and out of the mansion quickly, she could be facing a serious Cinderella-at-the-ball situation.
    She stepped out of the elevator and scanned the crowded atrium. Anne was nowhere to be seen.
A