The Dark Glamour (666 Park Avenue 2)

a nondescript doorway, which opened as they drew close to it. A massive bouncer nodded politely, and then closed the door with a soft but firm click when they had passed. Jane continued forward into the glass-walled elevator that waited invitingly in front of them, and André joined her, sliding his thumb idly along the small of her back.
    The elevator rose smoothly and swiftly, and when it came to a rest, Jane stifled a gasp. They were on the roof, covered only by a glass-and-wrought-iron canopy that would keep out rain. Tucked into many of the iron joints were a number of the cylindrical heat lamps that made Jane think of Parisian cafés. The April air was still damp and chilly, but under the canopy it felt like a sultry summer night. Ivy curled up trellises and around the wrought-iron frames of white-cushioned couches that dotted the flagstone roof. At the centre of it all was the epitome of elegance and charm herself: Lynne Doran, in a high-collared garnet dress, her chestnut hair forming a perfect twist, a sparkling martini glass in one hand.
    The air rushed out of Jane’s lungs, and for a brief moment it felt as though André’s hand on her back was all that kept her upright and moving forward.
She can’t recognize me,
she reminded herself sternly, trying to shake her muscles out of their rubbery inertia.
She isn’t even looking at me.
    It was true: although a black-shirted waiter had made a beeline for the party’s newest arrivals, no one else seemed to have noticed them at all.
It’s my job to notice them right now,
she reminded herself, turning slowly until she had taken in the entire roof. Although there were plenty of people whom she didn’t recognize, familiar faces dotted the party like fireflies, each one catching Jane’s attention in a quick flare.
Blake Helding, Andrew McCarroll, Rolly McCarroll, Cora McCarroll, Laura Helding
. . . it was like the mansion at 665 Park Avenue had turned itself inside-out on top of this downtown club.
    Jane’s glance darted warily back to Lynne, but her nemesis was deeply involved in conversation with a tall, thin woman in a severe black pantsuit, who had her back to Jane. There was something familiar about her posture, but Jane couldn’t place her.
    While André made small talk with a distant Helding cousin, and Jane smiled vapidly at his wife, she sent the tendrils of her mind out towards the woman talking to Lynne. Jane concentrated hard, pushing mentally past the people milling in between, and finally found the woman’s mind. Or, more accurately, found the blank wall where the woman’s mind should be.
I keep forgetting other people are witches,
she griped silently, and turned her probing attention to the trophy wife directly in front of her. The woman was making an extremely emphatic point about some congressman’s recent sex scandal, but the inside of her mind was as firmly barred as the first woman’s had been.
    Officially weird,
Jane decided. Of course, it was possible for this woman to be a witch, too, but she wasn’t that much older than Jane, and probably a bit younger than Malcolm. If a practising witch of his age had been available to marry into the family, Lynne never would have let her wind up with some third cousin. Breathing a little more shallowly now, Jane prodded André’s mind, and then bounced her attention to Andrew McCarroll’s, then to a stranger in a plum Armani shirt.
Walls, walls, and more walls.
Had she lost her power somehow? With a burst of inspiration, she shot her focus towards a waiter who was winding carefully through the crowd.
    The man flinched almost physically under the force of Jane’s mind, and she saw everything: his worry over his dog’s illness that morning, his grocery list, his shirt size, the way he took his coffee, the phone number one of the guests had just slipped into his pocket. She could see the three friends he had gone to see Aerosmith with, and how much he had lost in an Atlantic City casino the next night, and the mountain of crab legs he had crammed into his mouth at the buffet to try to make up for it. By the time she pulled free, she knew him almost as intimately as she knew herself, and she gagged a little at the unintentional violation of his privacy. André turned towards her, curious and concerned, but she waved his attention away. ‘I inhaled some bubbles,’ she explained awkwardly, waving her glass of champagne. André frowned, and she pasted on her old party smile. ‘Excuse me,