The Dark Glamour (666 Park Avenue 2)

prep”.’
    ‘That’s great!’ Jane told her warmly. ‘I had no idea. Let me know if I can help at all.’
Like lend you clothes that we’re both a little too tall for now, or act like a stranger off the street who adores your cakes, or snuggle with your new boyfriend. Or anything.
She smiled ruefully at her hopelessly one-track mind. It would get better once Harris and his pesky magical blood were a safe distance away, and then, she knew, she would be able to be properly happy about how Dee was getting her life together post-Hurricane Jane. Right now she could settle for ignoring her baser impulses and acting the part of a good friend.
    ‘I’ll let you two sleep, then,’ Harris offered gallantly, heading for the door but detouring towards the kitchen. ‘Although, if you could spare a little something for the long, lonely subway ride . . .’
    ‘I’ll wrap the cookies for you,’ Dee suggested, and Jane had to fight the urge to kick her in the shin. Following a short flurry of activity in the kitchen and a good-natured wave, Harris was gone. When Dee closed the door behind him, Jane felt her body finally relax.
    Dee turned and raised an awkward black eyebrow at Jane. ‘Ella?’ Jane asked, a little incredulously. ‘Like
Ella Enchanted?’
    ‘Like “she”, in Spanish,’ Dee admitted sheepishly. ‘My mind went blank. But use the “enchanted” thing if you ever write your memoirs or something, okay?’
    ‘It’s a deal,’ Jane promised, making a long-overdue beeline for the kitchen.

Ten
    T HE HEAVY, CARVED-WOOD doors of number 665 swung open, and Jane jolted to attention. She had been staking the place out from a Starbucks across the street, set a little bit back on Sixty-Eighth Street, from about nine that morning, but so far hadn’t seen a single useful thing. A couple of the youngest McCarrolls, the grandchildren of Lynne’s cousin Cora, had left with a nanny shortly after Jane had started watching. Blake Helding, the son of Cora’s twin, Belinda, had staggered in around ten thirty in what looked an awful lot like last night’s clothes. But between then and almost noon, she had seen nothing but comings and goings through the staff entrance, and she was starting to feel both discouraged and over-caffeinated.
    Jane leaned forward towards the window, checking automatically to make sure her sunglasses were still in place. It was probably overkill, since she had acquired a completely different face and body since the last time she had seen anyone who lived in the Dorans’ mansion, but a habit was a habit.
Besides,
she reflected,
if I’m trying to act like I belong in their circle, getting recognized as ‘that chick who was stalking the house’ would probably be counterproductive.
    The woman who emerged from the dark stone archway was so thin she looked brittle, with massive sunglasses like Jane’s and a telltale head of completely implausible highlights.
Laura.
Blake Helding’s wife – probably distinctly irritated with her husband’s so-late-as-to-be-early arrival home – was striding away down the block, and Jane nearly knocked over her stool in her hurry to get outside and follow her. She stayed behind her onetime almost-friend and across the street, careful not to get caught at a corner by the changing traffic signals. She guessed that Laura would have taken one of the family cars if she’d been planning on going far, and three short and one long block later, Laura proved her right.
    Sunday at noon – brunch time,
Jane realized belatedly as she watched Laura saunter into 212. She chewed her lower lip thoughtfully and considered the merits of staying right where she was. She had only twenty-eight days, one of which was half-gone: an abundance of caution was not what was called for here.
    She stepped out onto the street, first nearly breaking an ankle in her viciously pointy, strappy shoes and then narrowly missing getting hit by a delivery truck. Crossing the rest of Sixty-Fifth Street more carefully than she had begun, she checked to make sure that a couple of crisp fifty-dollar bills were readily available in the pocket of her vintage, chain-strap Chanel minaudière.
    She strolled past the line of waiting patrons as if she couldn’t see them; she was busy locating Laura and her three trophy-wife friends, anyway. ‘One for brunch,’ she told the host in the bored, lofty tone that she had learned from the Dorans.
    ‘Do you have a reservation?’ he asked pointedly, his wispy