The Dark Glamour (666 Park Avenue 2)

abruptly.
I’m a freaking mind-reader, right?
It wasn’t a talent she had ever been very comfortable using, especially on people she knew and liked. But, however likable she found André at the moment, this was still business; it was only masquerading as pleasure.
And a convincing masquerade it is,
Jane admitted, sipping at her cognac and continuing to banter on autopilot.
But I really need to remember that I know better.
    She inhaled steadily and began to pull at the threads of her power, but although she could feel its strange hum in her veins, it was hard to find; harder to hold on to.
It’s late,
she reminded herself, conveniently ignoring the other plausible culprit swirling in the cut-crystal snifter in her right hand. She reached again and missed; it was like trying to lift water in an open hand. Still, there was no harm in trying, so she focused the scattered sparks of magic on André’s mind, opened her own, and listened hard.
    Nothing.
    She felt herself almost physically repelled by his brain, or, rather, by something just in front of it, keeping her away. She rallied her power and tried again, but there was just a smooth wall and no way in. Jane sat back in disappointment, and had to remind herself sternly to keep smiling; keep flirting; keep playing hard to get. Suddenly,
André
was the uncatchable quarry.
    It’s late,
she repeated to herself,
and I’ve been drinking. But still, I should be able to see something in there, even if it’s just what’s in the front of his mind right this moment. Unless he’s a witch, which is genetically impossible, or . . . related to some.
    Jane almost laughed aloud as the realization struck her.
‘Magic calls to magic,’
Malcolm had told her. The overriding, unthinking chemical attraction between two people with magic in their genes made it hard to think about anything else. It felt like true love, like soul mates, like meeting someone made just for her. The feeling was so basic and primal, so instinctual, that it never seemed to occur to her it might be supernaturally enhanced. She had felt it with Malcolm, then with Harris, and Malcolm’s crazy brother, Charles, had obviously felt it with her.
Of course,
someone she found as appealing as she found André couldn’t be anything but a son of a witch.
Is there anyone in this damned town who isn’t?
    Still, she decided, her mind starting to drift pleasantly from the alcohol, there was no reason to run the other way. So the Dalcaşcus were magical. This was definitely an important piece of a bigger puzzle that she needed, at some point, to try to fit together. At some point when she was sober, preferably. But in the meantime, André himself was just a man, no matter what strangeness ran in his blood. He might be magical, but the rules were the rules: he couldn’t
do
magic.
I can just enjoy this moment now, and then worry about strategy and implications and all that crap afterwards,
she decided thickly, remembering almost too late to chuckle throatily at a double entendre of André’s.
    She stood, stretching to her full height and trying to ignore the gentle spinning of the room. ‘The company here
is
good,’ she declared boldly, ‘but I’m getting tired of the view. Any suggestions?’
    André stood as well, stepping gracefully around the table between them to offer her his arm. ‘The view from my suite is exceptional,’ he murmured, his breath sending shivers down the back of her neck.
    She let him steer her into the still-waiting elevator, where his arm unlinked from hers and slid around her waist. His hand traced the hem of her emerald silk halter top, finding and exploring the space where it met her skirt. His warm, rough fingers brushed the smooth skin of her waist and she closed her eyes. When the elevator stopped, she started forward, eyes still closed, André’s hand pressed against the small of her back.
    His suite looked something like hers, but a bit smaller and with its parts rearranged into an unfamiliar pattern. His sitting room was to the left of the hall rather than the right. She saw the cloudy grey marble of the kitchen a bit farther along, and caught a glimpse of the down comforter on his king-size bed through the open door at the very end. It looked inviting, and she knew it was probably just as comfortable as hers. But she was enjoying herself, and she wanted to draw these moments out. Her shoes tapped gently a few times on the chocolate-coloured floorboards before she stepped onto