The Dark Glamour (666 Park Avenue 2)

blow.
    A crash came from somewhere across the room, and Anne’s advance stopped abruptly. The girl spun away from Jane, her killing energy fracturing in every direction. The smell of smoke was much stronger, and Jane struggled up onto one elbow and tried to force her eyes to focus. But there was no sense in what she saw: a tall, dark-haired man framed by a strange red light flooding in from the hallway.
    André Dalcaşcu had just saved Jane’s life.

Thirty-seven
    ‘H ELP ME,’ JANE whispered, but the air was thick and acrid and she wasn’t sure she could be heard at all.
    With a furious scream, Anne launched herself at André, clawing at his face with her fingernails. Her uncontrolled magic raged around the room, seeming to pick up momentum as it went. Pictures flew off the walls, and the green felt of the billiard table in the corner caught fire.
    Jane tried to protect her head with her arms, but the storm was only getting more violent. Somewhere near the door, she heard a sickening thud, and André howled in pain.
He didn’t expect her to attack him,
Jane thought, looking up in time to see Anne land a kick that doubled him over. ‘Run, Ella,’ he gasped.
    Their eyes met for a moment, and she became sure it was true: he had followed them from the party, overheard the altercation, and had come to try to save her. Knowing as she now did how unlikely he was to ever actually care about anyone outside his own family, she felt deeply moved.
    ‘I’m trapped,’ she tried to call to him. Her voice sounded a little louder this time, but only barely.
    Something stung the skin of her free leg, and she tore her eyes away from André. The hem of her dress had turned black in places, and glowing sparks worked their way up the silk that covered her leg. She was trapped
and
on fire. She looked up again just in time to see Anne sink her teeth into André’s forearm.
    The hell with this.
Jane drew herself up as straight as she could, locked her eyes on one of the marble busts along the walls, and magically launched it at Anne’s back. It was too heavy to throw hard, but it hit her almost squarely in the neck, and the girl crumpled to the floor.
    She turned her power to the overturned table that was pinning her down. With a mental heave, she was able to drag her leg free, although when she tried to stand, she realized that it was too painful to put her weight on it. André crossed the room in two long bounds, and she leaned gratefully on his shoulder as they made an awkward, three-legged progress to the stairs. She didn’t look down as they passed Anne’s limp form; she was afraid to be tempted to wish her dead.
    As they climbed down as quickly as her already swelling leg would allow, she realized that the shrill ringing she heard wasn’t just in her ears: it was everywhere. ‘Smoke alarms,’ she told André tersely, and he nodded.
    ‘The elevator won’t work,’ he replied, and she was relieved that he seemed to understand her train of thought. ‘Most of them will take the front stairs, but we still have to hurry.’
    ‘Trying,’ Jane grunted, and his arm tightened around her. ‘’S okay. I escape from this place all the time.’
    One agonizing step at a time, they made it to the sixth floor, the fourth, the first. Gunther had deserted his post by the time they passed it, but, as far as they could tell, they were the first ones through the heavy stone arch that led to the street.
    Park Avenue was eerily empty, but she knew there was no way the stillness could last. Sirens were approaching fast from uptown, and somewhere in the not-too-far distance, a church bell was chiming over and over.
Midnight,
she thought; it had to be, but it felt too early.
Time flies when you’re in mortal peril.
André had got her as far as the median of Park Avenue, but even though she could faintly hear a babble of voices approaching the lobby of number 665 below the wail of the first fire truck that had come into view, she needed to stop.
    ‘Just for a minute,’ she pleaded. Her leg was throbbing dangerously, and she felt as though she could barely breathe.
    ‘Ella,’ André began, bending down to bring his face close to hers . . . and then he stopped. She stared at him in confusion, and he stared back at her in what she slowly began to recognize as horror.
    ‘Midnight,’ she whispered, and he let her go and stepped back so quickly that she nearly lost her balance.
    ‘You,’ he growled, and the air around them took on the