The Dark Glamour (666 Park Avenue 2)

it,
she thought as loudly as she could without actually speaking, but of course he didn’t turn her way. ‘What a lovely thing for you to have done,’ she told André blandly.
Yeah, no. No way in hell Lynne bought that, either.
But, for whatever evil reason of her own, she had apparently pretended to, and now Jane was stuck with two people who wanted her dead at the same party where she was about to try to pull off her most daring rescue yet.
    She turned away from André abruptly, weaving her way quickly through trees and people until she had almost made a full circuit of the hollow square of the atrium. Taking up a position behind a cluster of Valentino-clad PR reps, she spotted André’s back near where she had left him. His head turned back and forth, searching the crowd, and Jane sidled closer to the chattering group she was using as cover in case it occurred to him to turn all the way around.
    But now that he wasn’t actively trying to use or control her, André was far from her biggest problem.
    Getting Anne out from under her mother’s nose will be a hundred times harder than getting Malcolm out of the basement,
she thought nervously, and then felt a sudden pang of regret for having to leave Charles behind. Maybe somehow she would be able to come back and go three for three with saving Doran siblings, but right now it was hard to imagine.
Plus, where could I take him?
She was fairly sure he would agree to go with her . . . but then she’d be stuck with him.
    Harris’s close-cropped coppery curls flashed in the glow of the candles, and she realized that he was much closer than he had been. He made his way closer, parting the crowd politely and quickly. Jane turned towards him hungrily, and their eyes met. She started forward, her lips parting expectantly, but although she saw recognition in his eyes, that was all that they registered. Following the briefest of hesitations, he looked away and continued on, and Jane realized that he had just been going to the elevator.
Leaving already?
she wondered sadly.
Before the grand entrance?
She was fairly sure Harris didn’t smoke, and she couldn’t think of another explanation. She twisted her beaded evening bag between her hands, feeling unaccountably abandoned.
    She almost decided to follow him, but just then the lights flickered and everyone turned towards the double doors that led to the building’s main staircase.
I’m here for Anne,
she reminded herself. Everything else could wait. A whisper ran through the well-dressed crowd, an anticipation that Jane could almost touch. The doors remained closed for a few long moments, seeming to vibrate slightly under the focus of the assembled guests. The murmuring subsided, and a perfect stillness came over the room. When Jane felt that the entire eighth floor might explode under the tension, the double doors swung open as if by magic, and Anne stepped tentatively into the room. Her wavy hair was tied up into soft twists, some falling artfully down and others held in place by star-shaped white flowers. Her dress was white, too: a Grecian-looking thing that draped over a cord at the waist, fell to the floor, and made Anne’s golden skin glow as if it had been polished.
    A gasp flew around the room, and the almost painful stillness ended abruptly in a wild crash of applause from every corner. Anne smiled tentatively, turning back briefly to look at Lynne, who had remained discreetly in the shadows behind her daughter. Then she turned to the room and smiled again, and the applause became deafening.
    Although Anne seemed to want to hug the interior walls of the room, it still took Jane nearly an hour to get anywhere near her. André was apparently still looking for Ella in the wrong part of the room, but Belinda Helding proved harder to shake. Her angry pewter stare followed Jane from spot to spot, until Jane lost her by ducking behind an ivy-and-light-covered trellis. She peeked out to try to find a clear path to Anne, and found herself looking directly into the taut, olive-skinned face of Katrin. Jane backed into the trellis, attracting a dark, piercing stare from Lynne, all the way across the room. Katrin spun fearfully towards Lynne, and Jane took advantage of the distraction to scurry towards the bathrooms as inconspicuously as she could.
    The Dalcaşcus don’t want Hasina to move into Anne any more than I do,
Jane thought angrily, glaring at the mirror. She splashed some water on her face and halfheartedly