The Dark Glamour (666 Park Avenue 2)

cruel smirk that made Jane shudder in spite of herself.
    ‘She sent me here,’ Jane went on, visualizing the words she had practised with Misty just before she said them. ‘But I meant your actual daughter. Malcolm Doran hired me to find Annette.’
    Lynne’s expression turned thunderous, and Jane braced herself: when witches got that angry, bystanders weren’t always safe. But Lynne was, of course, an expert in her craft, and nothing changed except for the air between them. ‘Annette is dead,’ Lynne finally said in a voice like a snake’s hiss. ‘You of all people should know I couldn’t be tricked into believing such an obvious lie.’
    Jane felt magic building in the older witch like a battery charging. She realized that she had to get the truth out quickly before Lynne lost her patience and attacked, and she braced herself just in case her time was running out too fast. ‘Stand down,’ she snapped, surprising both of them. But Lynne was still listening, so she decided to go with it. ‘I have proof.’ As slowly as she dared so as not to spook Lynne more, she reached into her handbag and pulled out her phone. She had already primed the photo of herself and Anne that Elodie had obligingly sent that morning (without so much as an ‘I told you so’, Jane noticed appreciatively). She tossed the phone gently to Lynne, who caught it deftly.
    Bitch just had to be coordinated, too,
floated across Jane’s mind. Most of her attention, though, was occupied watching every one of her enemy’s muscles for sudden movements. The chestnut trees around them waved gently in the breeze, and where the late-April sun dappled Lynne’s face, Jane could see that her skin looked unusually thin and tired. Lynne didn’t speak or move, but she almost seemed to shrink into herself as she took in the photo.
    ‘I don’t know how it happened,’ Jane told her eventually, ‘but you were lied to.’ It wasn’t the full truth: she didn’t know the exact mechanics and she hadn’t got confessions from any of the perpetrators. But she had already decided that she wasn’t going to sell out the Dalcaşcus just yet. There was no real need to, since they would lose so much from Annette’s return already – and probably have to run for the hills anyway, lest Anne recognize them and spill the beans. Besides, implicating them might make Jane seem petty or vengeful, and she needed Lynne to believe and respect her in order for her plan to work.
    Lynne stared at the screen for several long minutes. Sparrows sang in the bushes, and a red-tailed hawk wheeled overhead. Jane could hear children’s laughter somewhere nearby, although no one passed their little clearing close enough to be seen. She wondered if the magnetic charge of their magic helped keep passersby away; she certainly would have avoided their current spot if she hadn’t had to be there.
    When Lynne’s voice sounded again, Jane jumped a little. It was hoarse and broken and nothing like her usual controlled purr. ‘Where?’ she gasped. Her dark eyes swept up to meet Jane’s, and Jane was stunned by the change in them. Lynne had always been cool, commanding, thoroughly in charge. Now, with her widened eyes and softened, uncertain mouth, she looked like a supplicant.
    ‘I can tell you exactly how to find her,’ Jane went on. She said the words just as she had practised them, but inside she felt shaken by the rawness of Lynne’s need.
That was the whole point,
she tried to tell herself. It was harder than she had ever imagined, to bargain when Lynne looked more like a distraught mother than an arch-nemesis. Jane shivered a little in the warm spring sunlight and reminded herself that she had to be as careful as possible, just in case. ‘But I’m going to have to insist on some terms, of course.’
    Lynne nodded absently, glancing at the picture every few seconds as if she were afraid it might disappear. ‘Name them.’
    Jane cleared her throat again, still feeling unpleasantly guilty. ‘First, my employer insists that you immediately call off the search for him and his wife,’ she delivered quite smoothly, all things considered. ‘The police, the reward . . . it all needs to go away. Everyone must stop looking for Malcolm Doran and Jane Boyle, including you.’
    ‘Of course.’ Lynne frowned, and Jane reminded herself that she was only useful to Lynne in the absence of Annette, anyway. That condition had been, by far, the easier of the two.
    ‘And then