The Dark Glamour (666 Park Avenue 2)

perfectly straight arc, but looked annoyed about it. Jane wondered where on earth she had been trying to hit it, but didn’t want to ask after nearly half an hour of pretending she had the slightest clue what she was doing.
    ‘Trust me, being in that family does
not
come for free,’ she countered, sipping at her Manhattan. It was a little early in the day, she had thought, but no one at this particular party seemed to care about things like that. Although Elodie swore it had been under way for only an hour, two very prim-looking women had removed their shoes and were mincing happily through the pool of a large, white-tiled fountain.
    ‘I don’t know,’ Elodie mused, but there was a twinkle in her espresso eyes. She had straightened her bouncy black curls for the occasion, and Jane noticed with surprise that the two of them – usually as different as night and day – looked remarkably alike at the moment.
She could be my sister . . . my sister with much better cheekbones.
Jane smirked at the irony of being jealous of her own fake looks. ‘You got the wedding of the century, plus a whole second identity out of the deal.’
    Jane frowned. ‘I
still
get junk mail about that stupid wedding, you know. Apparently this month trailing-sweet-pea bouquets are half-off. They don’t seem to get that I already used mine.’
    Elodie raised an eyebrow, casually knocking her croquet ball into a post set in the ground, without even looking at it. ‘I win. Now can we focus, please?’
    ‘Was it close at all?’ Jane asked stubbornly, gesturing at the finished game with her mallet. Elodie rolled her eyes, which Jane took for a No. ‘Gran told me the truth in a letter,’ she continued more seriously. ‘But what really made me believe it was just before, when I put her ring on and felt it for myself. And you needed to see me do . . . something . . . before you were convinced. Maybe she
needs
to start another fire, to really feel what’s going on in her.’
    Elodie rolled her eyes again, which Jane took to mean ‘You’re even worse at strategizing than you are at croquet’.
    ‘Or I guess I could just tell her,’ Jane concluded resolutely. ‘Some of it – most of it. Leaving out as much as I can about me, but telling her about her. And her family – or most of it. As much of the truth as I can to get her attention without scaring her away.’
    ‘And you think you know how much that is now?’ Elodie looked unconvinced. ‘After meeting her all of three times?’
    Jane knew her friend had a point – after all, Jane still had no idea what had happened to Annette in the first place. She didn’t have answers to most of her questions, in fact, but she was increasingly conscious that the third week of her disguise was already half over, and that by the time she met Anne the next day, it would feel ‘nearly gone’.
    Even more important, she felt as if she at least knew
something
about Malcolm’s missing sister now, even after just three short encounters. The girl had had an awful life because of her magic, and had no idea where she had come from, and underneath her stubbornly guarded front, she was also deeply lonely. It wasn’t as much information as Jane had hoped for – and she hoped she could get a little more the following afternoon, before making her big revelation – but it was still something, and if it was all she could find out, it still might be enough. Jane needed Anne . . . but by now she felt fairly confident that Anne needed her right back.
    She tossed her hair off her shoulders – it really seemed to be growing too quickly – and opened her mouth to tell Elodie what she had been thinking, but at that moment, Elodie had the same look on her face, so Jane decided to hear her out instead. ‘I didn’t know where to find you, and then this has all been so wild I forgot,’ she began, and Jane blinked, trying to follow along. ‘A box of your grandmother’s things came to the apartment a couple of weeks ago. The postmark was recent, but it looked like it had been through a tornado, so I think La Poste beat it senseless, lost it, and then put a new sticker on before they finally delivered it. Of course, then I didn’t even know where to send it, so I guess they’re not all to blame.’
    Jane felt an electric spark run all the way down her spine and then on to her toes.
Gran.
She had thought the hidden ring and letter had been Celine Boyle’s final message to her – could there be more? Gran had