The Dark Glamour (666 Park Avenue 2)

in Lynne’s possession, but what if she had been wrong all along?
    She stumbled as she made her way back towards the immaculate bedroom, a vicious cramp knotting her stomach. Her fumbling fingers flicked off the light, and then the one in the bedroom as well, and then she was in the hallway. As she pulled the door shut behind her, she realized that she hadn’t closed the office door, but her blood was pounding in her ears, and her entire body was wracked with the awareness of her failure, and details like that didn’t seem to even matter any more.
    Two more weeks as Ella, and then I can go back to being hunted as Jane.
Even if Annette’s things were still in the house somewhere, it was a huge house, and hadn’t Malcolm once told her that the families who lived there had divided and redivided it as needed? Ariel McCarroll could be sleeping on Annette’s old pillow, for all Jane knew, but there was no way she could search all eight floors in one evening without attracting the wrong kind of attention.
    She leaned against the wall of the hallway, closing her eyes and feeling blank with disappointment. She wanted to rally, to think of some new plan, but her brain just felt hollow. Not knowing what else to do, she pulled herself away from the wall and made her slow way back up the stairs.
    She stood up and pressed two fingers hard into the space just below each cheekbone, allowing the pressure to pull her together. ‘Okay,’ she whispered, starting forward, but she hesitated just as her hand was on the door that led back to the atrium.
They call it an ‘atrium’, but it’s not really,
her inner architect observed. Its light came from the glass walls around the four sides of the house and an enlarged skylight in the centre, but there was still one level above it, shaped like a hollow square. And so the staircase behind her led down to the floors that she had just explored, but another set led up, as well, to the real top floor of the mansion.
    The floor where she keeps her nasty secrets.
    The memory of pain and fear shot through every nerve of her body. But a flood of absolute conviction followed close behind it, and Jane knew where she had to go.

Nineteen
    T HE STAIRS TO the attic weren’t carpeted, and Jane carefully set each toe and heel down together to avoid unnecessary noise. The scent of pine and dust filled her lungs, and she was sure her hair would smell musty by the time she returned to the party.
    The first door at the top of the stairs led to what looked like a child’s playroom, but Jane knew better than to get excited just yet.
It may look like it’s for a child, but I know it’s for Charles,
she thought ruefully. She blinked her spell-covered eyelids a few extra times, just in case. She knew she had guessed right when nothing stood out to her enhanced vision, but she still felt a pang of disappointment.
    The next room was set up like a classroom, with just one lonely student desk under the sloping roof.
I wonder if they brought in teachers,
Jane thought idly, trailing her fingers across the dusty chalkboard. Charles had spent his entire life in this attic. The household staff knew about him, of course, but would Lynne have allowed in outsiders? Jane imagined Sofia, the Dorans’ tiny, bulge-eyed maid, standing at the front of the room lecturing a drooling Charles on geography.
    Of course, he probably would have needed a doctor sometimes, too,
Jane realized pragmatically, and, as if the attic were attempting to answer her questions, she opened the next door to find what looked like a hospital room transported into an Upper East Side attic.
Man,
she thought, shuddering and hurrying along,
when Lynne decides to keep a secret, she doesn’t screw around.
    The next room, opening to the right rather than straight ahead, contained a massive flat-screen television, a squishy-looking couch, a floor-to-ceiling shelf stacked with approximately every board game ever invented, and Charles. His stringy brown hair hung over his eyes, which Jane remembered as flatter, duller copies of Malcolm’s. His intimidating bulk was crammed into a corner of the couch as if the other three-quarters of it were off-limits, and his meaty hands were full of Stratego pieces. At the soft creak of the door opening, he looked up, and another piece fell out of his slack mouth.
    ‘Jane,’ he announced happily. ‘My friend Jane.’
    Jane flinched at the sound of her name, and held her hands up to her face. The long, sturdy