Authors: Gabriella Pierce
666 Park Avenue (4 page)
J
ane pulled her body up into a sitting position and ran
an absent hand through the disastrous tangle of her blond hair. Her muscles felt loose and rubbery, as though she’d just run a marathon, and the world looked overly bright, the way it did when she awoke from a deep sleep. She turned her left hand curiously; the silver ring sat perfectly normally on her finger, looking as harmless as a declawed kitten. Her hand was trembling, yet her breathing was steady, her mind detached.
The scrap of stationery that had fallen out with the ring was a few inches from her knee. She unfolded it with care; there was no real hurry now that she knew what was inside. The date was six years old, but the ink was barely faded.
My dearest Jane,
I am so very sorry, but there is no way to say this gently: you are a witch. So am I, so was your mother, and so are many others around the world. Magic is real and powerful and all too ready for the taking. I have spent my lifetime hiding myself, my daughter, and then you from those who would kill to steal this terrible gift from us.
You left for Paris last night, and this morning at dawn I put the most powerful protection spells around you that I could. You are as safe as I can make you without telling you the truth about who you are. I simply cannot bring myself to do that, even now, even if in my bones I feel I should. When you were born, your mother, my darling Angeline, made me promise to never share our secret with you. She wanted to raise you as a normal girl, just as she had always wished to be. I had hoped to someday persuade her of the value of our heritage, but when she died, I had no choice but to honor her wish.
Still, I fear it is a mistake. I feel my age a little deeper in my bones every winter, and when I die, my spells will die with me. I don’t know what you will do then, or how you can possibly be ready, and I do know that people will be looking for you. I have to hope that this last gift of mine will be enough to keep you safe then.
Jane: you are powerful. Extraordinarily so. I have seen what you can do: the words you hear that haven’t been spoken, the things you move that haven’t been touched. The enclosed ring will add to your abilities, enhance them, make you as powerful as your enemies are desperate to be.
If you are reading this, then I am dead, and that means that you are in danger. Please, please find a place to hide and learn how to use your gift so you can keep yourself safe. And under no circumstances tell anyone the truth about who you are; you’ll never know whom you can trust.
I am so proud of you, my Jane, and I only wish that I could have done more to help you.
I love you, and I always will.
Gran
Hot tears pricked at the back of Jane’s eyes. “I have seen what you can do: the words you hear that haven’t been spoken, the things you move that haven’t been touched.”
The lights I blow out or the cash registers that I break?
She had spent her entire life misinterpreting the world around her: believing that Gran was too strict, that violent weather was a coincidence, that she, Jane, was just “unlucky” with electronics. She had heard thoughts, blown circuits, called Gran to her when she was about to drown in the neighboring farm’s pond. There were no accidents . . . just powers.
A small part of Jane—the part that allotted 10 percent of her paycheck to savings and only allowed herself three cigarettes per week—resisted. Magic was preposterous; witches were old-wives’ tales. But the rest of her, the vast majority of her, couldn’t force itself to question something so obviously true.
She closed her eyes, barely able to process the sound of the wind howling past the leaded windows or the creak of the bed under her weight. She was a witch. And now she was going to be hunted, tracked, sought after, unless she hid away from the world, as her grandmother had . . . or died, like her mother. The pain and betrayal and loss of it all hit her like a brick wall, mingling with her new power, until Jane began to think that she really might explode.
No wonder Gran was always so jumpy.
No wonder they had had a bomb shelter, code words, crisis plans. No wonder Gran had seen enemies everywhere. Jane shuddered: could the world really be so dangerous? She had lived on her own for six years with nothing worse than the occasional blown fuse, and she had taken that as proof that Gran was off her rocker. But what if that was because Gran had cast a protective spell around her?
What if Gran was right?
Was living a “normal” life impossibly reckless?
“It can’t be,” Jane whispered to herself. Dangerous, sure, but crossing the street was dangerous. She couldn’t live in fear now just because she knew the danger’s name. She couldn’t wind up alone with bear-trap nerves on a farm in the middle of nowhere. There had to be another way to handle this gift—this burden.
From what felt like light-years away, she registered the sound of the front door creaking open. Heavy footsteps sounded, and several voices filtered up from the front room. “Jane?” Malcolm called, but her throat was too thick with emotion to answer.
“Jane?” Malcolm said again.
Jane’s eyes flew open; Malcolm stooped in the narrow doorway of her bedroom. She surreptitiously shoved the letter into her jeans’ pocket. “You’re so pale,” he murmured, moving to fold her into his arms. For a moment, she was almost surprised that he recognized her; it felt impossible that she could still look the same when so much had changed.
But I need to be the same.
She concentrated on that thought as hard as she could, trying to force her mind to work in spite of the battering it had just taken. At first it rebelled, but after a long moment, a decision began to form. She wouldn’t be like her grandmother. She wouldn’t shut herself away, hoping to hide from disaster by closing herself off from the world.
“Jane?” Malcolm’s dark eyes were gentle and worried, a trace of a frown on his full lips. Danger, magic, mysterious enemies . . . it was hard to imagine all those existing in the same world as Malcolm.
He’ll never know that they do,
she told herself fiercely.
I’m not losing anyone else. I’m not giving any more ground.
“You’re all I have now.” She took his hand, a tear slipping down her cheek. “You’re my family.”
He took her left hand and kissed the diamond on her ring finger. If he noticed the smooth silver ring beside it, he didn’t say anything. He just laced his own fingers between hers and led her back toward the door. “Always and forever,” he promised.
“W
e’ll all miss her, dear,
” M
onsieur
D
upuis said.
J
ane
couldn’t help but notice he was holding Madame Foucheaux’s hand. She thought back to Gran’s apparent overreaction to the “fictional” romance in Jane’s diary, and wondered how much—if any—of it had ever been in her imagination. “And I promise to take good care of Honey.” Honey had never warmed up to Jane and Malcolm, but a few good meals and a thorough brushing courtesy of Gran’s neighbors had turned him into a generally pleasant and eminently adoptable dog.
“Thank you,” Jane said, her eyes downcast. A black thread was unraveling from the sleeve of the cheap black dress she had chosen randomly from Saint-Croix’s sole, dingy department store.
One more thing coming apart at the seams.
For the past few days, she and Malcolm had feverishly prepared for Gran’s funeral. The coroner had discreetly (but a little too eagerly, as if he had a penchant for gossip) informed them that between Gran’s age and the cold, it was impossible to establish exactly when her heart had stopped. It didn’t matter, though. She was gone, and knowing exactly when it happened wouldn’t do a thing to change that.
The macabre story of the dead widow in the farmhouse had piqued plenty of interest around the area, and everyone in town had turned up for the funeral mass. Every last villager was now standing in the receiving line at the small stone church, offering Jane condolences in one breath while waiting hopefully in the next for a crumb about Gran’s tragic demise. Jane wished that at least one of the so-called “mourners” would have bothered to check on her grandmother in the last month, if they were going to act all caring now. Then again, Jane herself hadn’t stopped by in six years.
“I’m so sorry for your loss,” Madame Martine, a local artist who fancied herself eccentric, murmured. Jane gave her and her tie-dyed headscarf a wan smile. A headache was blooming behind her eyes, growing stronger with every “sorry.” The ancient church, damp and musky, echoed with words—both said and unsaid.
Perhaps if she’d come back sooner . . .
Such an odd lady . . .
Jane rubbed her temples, longing to block the voices that seemed to wander through her head at random.
. . .
wonder how much the house will go for . . .
. . . girl was gone for so long . . .
. . . killed her . . .
If my child ever leaves like that . . .
The
idea
of mind-reading, as it turned out, was much more appealing than the actual experience of it. The magic from the ring still pulsed through Jane’s body, throbbing uncomfortably at unexpected moments. She didn’t know how to control her powers, and disembodied thoughts came in unpredictable, vivid flashes. She couldn’t even pinpoint whom they belonged to, and could rarely hear more than a snippet before her mind skipped away to eavesdrop on someone new. She felt perversely glad to be in mourning: no one would expect her to behave completely normally at a time like this. Her confusion, distraction, and startled responses to unsaid words didn’t seem too terribly out of place, even if they felt cringe-inducingly noticeable to her.
“You poor dear.” Madame Sandineau grasped her fingers, and Jane nearly gasped aloud at the influx of unwanted information that flashed in her mind: namely, that the sinewy fromagière hadn’t showered since Tuesday in order to conserve hot water. Jane felt a rush of vertigo as she watched herself through Madame Sandineau’s thoughts.
She carefully disengaged herself from the woman’s strong grip. That grasp confirmed Jane’s suspicion that her powers were amplified when she touched people. She couldn’t see a way to get out of that completely, what with the receiving line. She sighed. Her feet hurt, and the cheap dress was making her legs itch.
I’m supposed to be able to move things without touching them,
she thought glumly, longing to scratch them red.
That would be a little more useful right now than the stupid mind-chatter.
“Are you doing okay?” Malcolm whispered in her ear. “Do you need to take a break?”
Jane shook her head, grateful for his comforting presence by her side. “It’ll be over soon enough.” Malcolm had been unbelievably attentive since their horrible discovery in the little old farmhouse, and if such a thing were possible, she’d grown to love and need him even more in the last eight days. Each morning he’d brought her breakfast and held her when she cried, and each night he’d stroked her hair until she fell asleep. He’d hired a team of movers to ship all her belongings to his parents’ house in New York, where they’d be staying until they found their own apartment, and he’d insisted on paying for the entire funeral. She hadn’t had a thing to worry about except for her grief . . . and her stupid, willful, uncontrollable magic.
Malcolm’s attentiveness had made her even more resolved to hide her new secret from him, and so she had flushed Gran’s note down the toilet as soon as she was alone. She ached when she watched the familiar handwriting disappear, but she already knew the contents by heart—and besides, Gran herself had warned Jane to hide the truth. Destroying the physical evidence was an unavoidable first step.
Unfortunately, the flickering lights and finicky heater in the squat little church strongly suggested that Jane wasn’t hiding nearly as well as Gran would have liked.
Suddenly, goose bumps rose on her arms and she got the chilling feeling of being watched. Looking up, she saw an old man with papery skin and wiry eyebrows in the back of the church. He was glaring at her, and she realized with a start that he was the strange man who was at the flower shop the morning they arrived in the village. She stiffened.
Malcolm lightly touched her back, but Jane couldn’t look away from the old man’s dark, unwavering eyes. A stab of rage pierced her mind, and a violent jumble of images that she couldn’t quite make out—a letter-opener maybe? a barking dog?—flooded her mind. She winced, and felt Malcolm squeeze her hand in concern. The magic subsided as quickly as it had come, and when she regained her bearings, she saw that the old man had left.
It doesn’t matter,
she told herself firmly. He
doesn’t matter
. Soon she and Malcolm would be thousands of miles away. She didn’t have to worry about deciphering the secret feelings of some stranger from her hometown; she had to worry about protecting her fiancé from finding out that he was in love with a mind-reading freak.
“Please talk to me if there were a thing I can do. I loved your grandmother greatly,” the local constable said, resting his hand on Jane’s shoulder. He’d known her since she was a baby, and had always insisted on practicing his English with her—even, apparently, at her grandmother’s funeral. Jane fought the urge to snort, but it was quickly overshadowed when another voice, male this time, filled her head.
. . .
killed that nice old woman herself for the inheritance. Those city girls are all the same—wouldn’t lift a finger for . . .
Jane winced and snatched her shoulder from the tight grip of the beefy, iron-haired constable. Suddenly she couldn’t stand being in Saint-Croix for another moment, couldn’t stand to hear another thought about what a horrid person she was or about her grandmother’s gossip-worthy reclusiveness. Most of all, she couldn’t stand to be so near the place that had filled her with this loathsome power.
She tugged Malcolm’s impeccable black cashmere sleeve. “We have to leave,” she told him. “Now.”
She wanted out of the village, out of Alsace, and out of France entirely. She was done being Jane Boyle, mysterious, ungrateful American orphan; that chapter of her life couldn’t be over soon enough.
Malcolm nodded, considerate as always, and she felt a tiny pang. Even though he would never know that she was deceiving him, she would work as hard as she possibly could to make it up to him. “I’ll take care of it. Meet me at the car.”
She turned and began to push through the crowd, muttering “Excuse me” in defiant English, and ignoring the shocked—and angry—looks from the congregation.
She emerged outside into the gray daylight, a little breathless. The old man from the flower shop was waiting across the narrow cobblestone street, and he didn’t look any less furious than he had before. A matching fury began to stir in her. How dare he? How dare he insult her grief and intrude on her mourning? Couldn’t he spare an hour or two to respect the dead rather than glare at the bereaved? Jane was seized with a sudden impulse to cross the street and make him explain himself. Just as she was about to step off of the curb, Malcolm came up behind her and looped his arm through hers. “This way,” he reminded her, kissing the top of her head, and the hard knot of her anger began to melt away.
She walked arm-in-arm with him to the car, leaving the angry old man—and everyone else in Alsace—behind her for good.
