The Dark Glamour (666 Park Avenue 2)

wouldn’t really need the Dalcaşcus for anything. All the parties and shopping trips and negotiating sessions were moving things along between the Dorans and the Dalcaşcus, but the best way to seal the deal would be to make sure Jane didn’t pop back up again.
    My lover is coming to kill me,
she realized sickly. She had thought that she was just flirting with danger, but it had been in her bed nearly every night for the past two weeks.
    ‘Now. Tell me why you chose London,’ she heard André insist from what sounded like a great distance, and she shook her head in confusion. She tried to speak, but no sound came out. ‘What brought you here?’ he asked again, and this time the threat in his voice was barely masked at all.
    Jane reached for her water glass, watching the hand that brought it to her mouth in sudden fascination.
Is my skin getting paler?
she wondered wildly. She had a panicked urge to try to hold up her knife to check her reflection. ‘A friend,’ she blurted out randomly. ‘I got a tip.’
    André’s stare grew darker. ‘And?’
    And now I’m going to turn back into a pumpkin. Into Jane, I mean.
She knew it was too early, but she couldn’t shake the feeling that she should be hiding her face, that it was changing back by the minute. She could practically feel her hair growing. ‘And nothing,’ she gulped desperately. ‘It turned out to be nothing.’
    ‘Ella,’ André rumbled, ‘I’ve been more honest with you than that.’
    ‘I’m sorry,’ she told the sickly spinning air around where she thought his face should be. ‘I need a couple more days to . . . run down leads. From my friend. But I think this was all a mistake.’
    ‘Apparently,’ he replied archly, but his eyes were blackly furious. A waiter approached their table, but paused and then turned away quickly.
No help. Just me and my stalker, here.
André leaned closer, and Jane focused on the way his black hair scattered the light. ‘Ella, we both know that Jane and Malcolm went their separate ways weeks ago. And I don’t know what you’re doing here, but I don’t believe this “tip from a friend” nonsense, either. We could be helping each other look.’
    ‘Sure, if I tell you everything I know,’ Jane retorted.
I don’t even know what I know.
‘It’s not like we can split the reward – the real one, I mean.’ Three million dollars would be easy enough to divide up, but not the advantage some lucky hunter could get from bringing Jane Boyle back to Lynne. And as it stood, the Dalcaşcus would gain even more from Jane’s untimely death than from anything Lynne might offer them for her.
    ‘Ella.’ André smiled confidently, and Jane shrank back in her chair. ‘We can work out all sorts of rewards.’ He slid his hand across the table and grasped her left one before she could pull it back. His olive-skinned fingers traced the plain silver ring on her middle finger; it felt as though he had slid his hand under her skirt right there in the middle of the restaurant. ‘With your . . . talents . . . I’m sure we could find a mutually acceptable agreement.’
    He knows we’re using each other,
Jane reminded herself, dedicating every muscle in her body to not jerking her hand away.
He’s just wrong about why.
No wonder he had remained so attentive even after finding out she was a witch. He was just as interested in Malcolm and Jane’s whereabouts as Lynne was; Jane’s bluff to interest her mother-in-law must have been equally intriguing to the Dalcaşcus.
    Jane stared at her hand under André’s. It looked tiny and trapped, and most important, it kept looking like Jane’s.
Didn’t Misty say the disguise could . . . slip?
‘I feel sick,’ she whispered in perfect honesty. ‘Thank you for dinner, but it seems to be disagreeing with me.’ She yanked her hand free of his, gave an impossibly bright smile to everyone and no one in particular, and all but ran from the restaurant.
    I have to get to Annette,
she heard herself thinking distantly as she reached the street and began to run.
I’m not safe without her. Until she’s back home, I’m not safe anywhere . . . not as anyone
.

Twenty-seven
    T HE C HEEKY D RAGON was considerably less crowded for lunch than it had been for dinner. But there were enough customers to keep Anne fairly busy when Jane first arrived. Jane thought she saw a faint glimmer of recognition on the waitress’s face, but if she had made an impression on her last visit, it