The Dark Glamour (666 Park Avenue 2)

me,
Jane suddenly remembered,
not to Ella. She had told me I reminded her of herself on my wedding day.
    Jane took a few steps back to the paved path and sank down onto a nearby bench, fighting the urge to laugh out loud. Lynne had seen through her disguise. There was no way of knowing how or even when the older woman had figured it out, but it didn’t really matter. Lynne had willingly – eagerly – accepted Jane’s terms, and all her magic was now safely stowed in the athame in Jane’s purse.
    I took her magic, and she knows who I am, and all she could think about was getting to Annette,
Jane marvelled, and slowly a weight she hadn’t even realized she’d been carrying began to lift from her shoulders.
    I did it.
    She practically skipped out of the park. She couldn’t wait to tell Dee . . . and Malcolm.

Thirty-four
    T HE NEXT MORNING, Jane found herself sitting on her hotel bed, staring at Lynne’s athame. It was more or less the same position she had spent the entire previous afternoon and evening in, but it didn’t feel old yet. The thin, double-edged blade was as long as Jane’s hand, and its mirrorlike surface seemed to almost absorb the earth tones of the bedroom. The handle of the athame was made of silver, as well, but the similarities ended there. Every inch of the hilt was deeply scarred with strange symbols and letters, and it was so tarnished that only a few gleams of the metal were still visible underneath the black crust. It was beautiful, really. The only problem now was deciding what to do with it.
    The most obvious choice, of course, was to take its power for herself. She remembered the way she had picked up the silver ring Gran had left for her; she remembered her immediate conviction that it was
hers.
She felt sure she could do this again with the athame, and let its magic flow into her the way Celine Boyle’s once had.
    It was an attractive option in a lot of ways. She would be at least twice as powerful as she already was – more than powerful enough to keep any remaining enemies at bay. She would be unstoppable . . . or she would feel unstoppable, at least, and therein lay the problem with that plan. The magic in the blade was Lynne’s, and Lynne was – or had been, at least – pretty impressively evil and power-hungry. Jane had never heard or read anything to make her think there was such a thing as good magic or bad magic, but there certainly were bad witches out there, and she was reluctant to inject their current into her own veins.
    I didn’t have to choose with Gran’s ring,
she reminded herself. She had
known
it belonged to her. This magic, on the other hand, was something she would have to consciously choose to take on, and she had no idea what consequences such a choice might bring. It might mean nothing more than that she was the most powerful witch around . . . or it might mean that the power in the athame shouldn’t be hers but was anyway. It could change her somehow, and she might lose the ability – or the will – to get rid of it once it did.
    And none of that even addressed what might go wrong
outside
of her if she took Lynne’s magic. In addition to the power Jane had been born with, she had already received a huge dose of magic from Gran – more than she even knew how to effectively use yet. Adding the contents of the athame to her own potent magic would almost certainly attract the attention of the other witches who were still active in the world, most of whom had probably already heard the name ‘Jane Boyle’ by now. The extra magic would make her even more of a target than Lynne’s maliciousness had.
    André and Katrin would be the first ones after her once they figured out what had happened, she knew, and the thought of the vicious Romanians stalking her around the globe made her shudder. And while it had been her plan to let Lynne think Ella had disappeared into thin air, taking the Doran magic with her, the fact that Lynne apparently had connected Ella with Jane made it even more dangerous to create new enemies for her fading alter ego.
    Jane’s fingers convulsed on the handle of the athame. The power in it was tempting, no question, but there was also something repellent about the feel of it against her skin, and she let the dagger go quickly.
    If she couldn’t take Lynne’s magic herself, then what could she do with it? Part of her was tempted to just throw the thing into a Dumpster somewhere, but the idea made the hairs on the back of her