The Dark Glamour (666 Park Avenue 2)

neck stand up on their own. If it was a bad idea to use the magic, it was a worse one to let it out of her control.
    So am I just supposed to carry it around in my purse like a toy Chihuahua? A cursed toy Chihuahua?
    That hardly seemed like an ideal strategy. Most of the magical community would probably assume that she was using the magic; carrying it around would make her no less a target, yet with no more ability to defend herself. And if any witch worth her salt got within twenty yards of the little silver knife, she would absolutely know what it was Jane was carrying. Jane could feel it through the leather of her purse, across half her bedspread, pressing in on her dreams while she had slept.
    I know where to keep something valuable,
she realized with a sudden flash of hope.
I know where to put something secret.
    It was a Sunday morning, and banks must be closed, but she had James McDeary’s card somewhere among her things with his private, emergency number on it. If anyone could get her where she needed to go, it was him. ‘First Trust Bank of New York,’ she muttered, digging through her enamelled card case. ‘Corner of Rector and Trinity.’
    She left the bank an hour later, feeling about twenty pounds lighter. Just as she had suspected, the bank manager had been eager to help the baroness . . . even if he’d had no idea who she was. It was actually better that way, she decided: this time, he had done nothing but fawn all over her, while the first time they had met, when she had been posing as Malcolm’s sister, he had suspected something.
Because I took the unicorn,
she realized, a small piece clicking into place in her mind. At some point, Malcolm must have mentioned that the ‘personal item’ in his safe had belonged to his late sister, and then a very-much-alive sister had showed up to claim it.
No wonder he looked so freaked out.
Jane giggled to herself.
    She had been walking uptown ever since she had left the bank, allowing the soothing buzz of the streets of Manhattan to drain the extra energy from her nerves. But when she reached Houston Street, she stopped cold.
    She had come face-to-face with an electronics store’s display window full of ( THIS WEEK ONLY! ) discounted televisions, all showing Lynne Doran’s face. Jane stopped walking as the camera zoomed out, and a photo of Anne Locksley that looked like a passport picture – or maybe a mug shot – appeared beside Lynne’s. TWENTY-YEAR-OLD MYSTERY SOLVED, the banner read. HEIRESS RETURNS TO OVERJOYED FAMILY.
    There were plenty of similarly terse and sensationalistic headlines below various family photos: apparently, Annette’s reappearance was big news.
Bigger than her brother’s disappearance,
Jane thought with something that felt almost like jealousy, and then she laughed at herself a little. Wasn’t that the point, after all? Besides, it really was a pretty spectacular story. Half the televisions were showing old photos of Annette as a little girl. At first, Jane guessed that they were Lynne’s pictures, but there were at least a couple that had to be from later, after Anne became a British foster child. The other screens were promising interviews with the family; there was even a brief clip of Lynne’s husband with a glass of whiskey in his hand and tears in his eyes.
    Damn, that woman moves fast.
Jane blinked, trying to count flight hours against the time change between New York and London.
I slept,
she decided eventually; obviously, Lynne hadn’t bothered with such trivia. The full-on media blitz that her onetime nemesis had literally pulled off overnight was impressive, even for a Doran. As Jane continued on, she realized that news of Annette’s triumphant return to the bosom of her loving family was everywhere: televisions, news tickers, even printed papers had all managed to pick up the story in a hurry.
It’s like magic,
she thought smugly, and smiled as she hailed a cab.
    The little screen facing the backseat had a promo clip of an interview with Laura and Blake Helding, who surprised Jane by managing to sit beside each other without clawing each other’s eyes out. They presented a relatively united front, unwaveringly telling the story of Annette’s supposed death in carefully edited bursts, interspersed with information about the amazing discovery that she was alive, after all. Ella’s name, naturally, never came close to being mentioned. Somewhere in all the drama, Jane registered the news that Malcolm was in