The Dark Glamour (666 Park Avenue 2)

what
you’re
trying to do.’
    Out of the corner of her eye, Jane watched the shifting pattern of people: Laura moving towards Belinda; Cora and André close together while the naggingly familiar woman in black, still facing away from Jane, drew nearer to the huddled pair. The woman in the black suit kissed André quickly on both cheeks, but Jane still couldn’t see her face. Cora and Belinda found each other in the crowd: identical grey twins in identically unflattering grey gowns.
    ‘I’m sure my goals wouldn’t interest you,’ Jane answered carefully, ‘unless I could help you with yours, that is.’ The slight tension around Lynne’s peach-lipsticked mouth told her that her message had been received clearly.
    ‘While I’m sure you have André wrapped around your lovely little finger,’ Lynne drawled with the hint of a threat in her soft voice, ‘my business is with his sister, Katrin. I’m sorry to say that if you wanted to put your hand into our dealings, you’ve seduced the wrong sibling.’
    God, what a world she lives in,
Jane thought with a shudder of disgust.
What a world she imposes on the rest of us,
she corrected herself, because technically it was true that she had seduced André to get to Lynne. The fact that her motives were far more personal than Lynne apparently suspected, and that André had been more than willing to cooperate, didn’t make it all that much better.
    The fact that she murdered my grandmother does.
Jane’s jaw clenched; she refused to feel any kind of guilt in front of this woman. ‘Your “business” with Katrin is your own,’ she told Lynne firmly, searching her brain for anything that would pique her mother-in-law’s interest.
I certainly can’t risk mentioning Annette yet.
‘I’m more interested in a mutual friend we have. In South America,’ she added, remembering what Laura had said about Malcolm over dinner the other night. She bit her lip uncertainly; it felt unpleasantly like a betrayal.
But the information ultimately came from Lynne in the first place.
Whether it was true or not, it was nothing new to Lynne, but Jane guessed that it would still get her attention.
    Lynne’s dark eyes snapped wide, and Jane recoiled instinctively.
Too much attention, maybe,
she quailed, but there was no undoing it now. All she could do was pretend to be holding a better hand than she really was, and that started with not showing weakness. She straightened her long spine and set her shoulders squarely. ‘First, of course, I have some questions for
you,’
she improvised, hearing an authentic note of boldness in Ella’s unfamiliar voice.
    A large hand closed painfully around her arm and jerked her back, away from Lynne. For a moment, she saw Cora McCarroll whispering frantically in Lynne’s ear, but André spun her around and was half shoving her towards the glass-walled elevator. ‘We have to go now,’ he hissed in her ear, and pushed her inside.
    He loomed in front of her, filling her field of vision, but as the elevator started to descend, Jane saw Belinda Helding glaring after it from off to the left. Beside her, Jane saw the tall woman in the black pantsuit, her face obscured by a heat lamp. Laura Helding stood alone to the right of the elevator, and she, too, stared intently at Jane.
I’ve been made,
Jane realized with absolute certainty, reading her friend’s face expertly. She had been naïve to assume that no one would notice that her mind wasn’t supposed to be unreadable; someone had.
    They know I’m a witch.
The elevator doors slid open, and André propelled her out to the street, his face a mask of fury.
He knows I’m a witch
.
    It’s over
.

Seventeen
    J ANE OPENED HER eyes and glanced over towards the front door of her suite. She breathed a sigh of relief when she saw that her barricade was still in place: a taupe couch stood on its end behind a walnut hutch, two armchairs, and a rolltop writing desk. The pileup had been a compromise of sorts: her initial instinct had been to flee the hotel, the Dorans, and her assumed identity, and never look back. But although the cab ride back to the hotel with André had been strained, to say the least, he had spent most of it trying to pretend that things were normal.
    ‘Those parties are
so
dull,’ he had declared in a lousy imitation of a casual tone.
    Jane had nodded along, her mind racing. He knew she was a witch, and the information had clearly rattled him. But he seemed determined not to show it.