The Dark Glamour (666 Park Avenue 2)

thick charge of danger.
    Jane held up her hands between them, and even in the flat light of the street lamps she could tell they were her own. The breeze lifted her hair, and a long, blond lock of it swayed back and forth tauntingly in front of them. She looked up at him; farther up than she had ever had to the entire time she had known him.
    ‘It was you all along.’ The moment of something like tenderness between them was over, she knew: over and never coming back.
    She felt frozen, rooted to the spot as he raised his hand to strike her, but for the second time that night she braced herself for a blow that never came. Instead, André turned to face a new threat that Jane hadn’t even seen coming: a bright red Dodge Challenger with a racing stripe down the hood screeched to a halt just inches from them.
    ‘Get in,’ Dee called to her, shoving the passenger door open from the backseat. Harris grinned at her from the driver’s seat. André grabbed for her, but his hands found only empty air as Jane tumbled herself through the door and slammed it shut behind her.
    Jane could feel the purr of the engine through her seat as the car accelerated. Harris piloted it expertly around a fire engine that was pulling to a stop in front of the Dorans’ mansion. Jane flinched and nearly covered her eyes as they rocketed straight for two more, but Harris didn’t hesitate. He took them through a space between the trucks so narrow that Jane could feel the pressure change in her ears. A crowd had gathered on the sidewalk, and she could see flames beginning to lick out of the windows of the seventh floor. Harris downshifted, and the engine growled, and the entire scene disappeared from view almost as soon as Jane had registered it.
    ‘You’re not even going to say hi?’ a chirpy voice quipped from the backseat, and Jane whipped around.
    ‘Mae?’ There was no doubt; the elfin features, penny-coloured eyes, and wild red curls belonged to Maeve Montague, Jane’s very first friend in New York.
The friend Lynne nearly killed because of me,
she thought guiltily, but it was impossible to regret Maeve’s presence no matter how much danger they might be in now.
    ‘Back from physical therapy and better than ever,’ Maeve smiled, and Jane, too far away to hug her the way she wished she could, reached back and squeezed the girl’s tiny hand instead.
    ‘How did you guys know?’ she asked finally, when they had crossed over to FDR Drive and were safely off the city streets.
    ‘Our grandmother and aunt had been saying all kinds of dire things,’ Harris answered, his green eyes constantly flickering back and forth between the road and his mirrors. ‘Doom, gloom, all-out war. My cousins and I have all been trying to keep an ear to the ground, but they couldn’t even tell us what we were listening for. So I went to the party tonight, and guess who I saw there?’
    Jane blushed, and then blushed harder when she realized that she was back in her own pale skin that showed every change of shade. At least it was dark in the car, she decided. ‘I’m so sorry I didn’t tell you – and please don’t blame Dee. She wanted to, but I wouldn’t let her.’
    ‘What the hell is she talking about?’ Maeve piped up from the backseat.
    ‘He didn’t mean you, Jane.’ Dee chuckled hoarsely.
    ‘No,’ Harris explained, frowning a little. ‘I saw Dee’s boss.’
    Jane spun her torso around in her seat as far as it would go. ‘Come again?’
    ‘Kate,’ Dee confirmed, and from her tone of voice Jane suspected that she was blushing now.
    Freaking Kate again.
‘She was doing the catering?’ Jane turned back to Harris, waiting for some kind of further explanation. ‘The canapés didn’t suck,’ she admitted belatedly.
    ‘She wasn’t a caterer,’ Harris said grimly, and Jane finally caught up.
    ‘Katrin. Kathy, Kate . . . Katrin Dalcaşcu.’
How many nearly-the-same aliases can one woman have?
    Harris nodded, but it was Dee who spoke next. ‘Jane, she must have seen us together, before you went undercover. She was working me the whole time.’
    ‘She was already stretched pretty thin, protecting her awful brother’s mind from being read,’ Maeve went on, ‘and she doesn’t really have much magic of her own to start with. She’s got two daughters, and the rumour is they’re total duds. Plus she had to use some to make it seem like she actually knew how to cook. And then Dee had been working on blocking out mind-readers,