The Dark Glamour (666 Park Avenue 2)

marble wall to convince Jane that Rosalie had found her first major lead.
    Sabina had taught Rosalie all about Ambika: the only child of a powerful warlord, who faced ferocious challenges from her father’s subjects when he died. But the gods had touched her, Sabina said (Rosalie quailed at the plural), and the shamans had all agreed when she appeared before them glowing with magic that she should be their queen. The lesser warlords had taken a little more convincing, but they had fallen into line quickly enough when Ambika had raised floods and earthquakes to decimate their armies.
    However, old age came sooner back in those days, and although Ambika had had seven sons and seven daughters, she hadn’t been able to choose any one of them as the next ruler. So she had divided her land among her sons and her magic among her daughters, and then she had closed her eyes and died. Her daughters, Sabina Thorssen had explained, were as different as the days of the week. Jane wondered whether she was more likely the descendant of the one who had used all her power to manage the weather around her tiny farm, or the one who had constantly bewitched men into attacking, on her behalf, the lands that her brothers had inherited. One of them was widely known as ‘Amunet the Vengeful’. Several had adjectives tacked on to their names, in fact, but Lynne’s ancestress’s reputation was a bit of a puzzle. Although she hadn’t lived any longer than anyone would have expected back in prehistory, according to Sabina Thorssen, she had been known as ‘Hasina the Undying’.
    ‘But she
did
die,’ Jane argued with the yellowed page. ‘You said so yourself. Why would people keep calling her that after they’d buried her? Or is it a figure of speech – like Lynne still has to keep a shrine to her memory somewhere in a closet or something?’
    But Rosalie’s words couldn’t rearrange themselves to answer her questions, of course. Feeling a little silly and a lot more poised than she had that morning, Jane pushed away from the triangular table, replaced the journals on their shelf, and headed out to the front room to thank Misty and return to her mission.

Sixteen
    T WO NIGHTS LATER, Jane snuggled closer against André’s solid shoulder as the city flashed by in a neon blur. She inhaled his musky cologne, which made her feel almost light-headed.
Must keep watching the street signs,
her brain told her lazily, and she forced her eyes to flicker out the window occasionally. They definitely weren’t going to the Dorans’ mansion, she realized with a small pang of frustration; that was only a couple of blocks from the Lowell. But the trip was already long enough for her to really feel the effects of André’s nearness. She straightened her spine a little, trying to shut out her magical attraction and focus on her plan.
    That morning, a note had been delivered to her suite practically begging her to give André something to look forward to by agreeing to accompany to him to a terribly dull work party. Jane had, of course, agreed immediately, although she had waited a cool ninety minutes to inform him of that fact. Playing hard to get for two days while enduring an unexpectedly physical craving for André’s company hadn’t been easy, but it had definitely been worth it.
And it’s worth keeping up now.
    She forgot her strategy for a few blocks in the lower Thirties, when his hand found its way onto her knee and then began a purposeful slide upward, towards her spangly silver minidress. It suddenly felt both too short and too long at the same time.
    ‘You blind, buddy?’ their cabdriver shouted belligerently to the driver of a city bus in the next lane, and both Jane and André jumped a little. The bus driver responded by flipping the cabbie off with an exaggerated flourish. Their spat escalated quickly from there, ending in vague threats and the suggestion of a drag race that was so ludicrous André lost his focus long enough for Jane to regain her own.
    She emerged from the taxi in the East Village feeling as though she had just surfaced after nearly drowning, and she pulled the humid city air deep into her lungs as the cab sped away. ‘This way,’ André murmured, his lips brushing her hair, and for a moment she thought she might begin to sink again into the animal scent of him.
    She turned her head away carefully as they made their way across the street: she felt sure she would need her wits about her. André steered her to