The Dark Glamour (4 page)

“Sure,” Jane agreed uncertainly. “I’m sleepy myself. Big day.” But Dee was already vanishing down the high-ceilinged hallway that led to her room, and Jane sighed. No matter how dire things had been lately, she had a wonderful new roof over her head and a good friend underneath it with her. She felt a silly smile creeping back onto her face at the thought of the progress she had made toward fixing her life in just one day.

Chapter Five

“W
ake up!” Dee’s muffled voice came from the other side of the door. “Jane, it’s, like, nine.”

“G’way,” Jane called back before burying her face in her squishy white pillow. The bars of sunlight creeping closer to the white rug under her bed made it clear that Dee was right about the hour, but Jane didn’t intend to care until the sun was directly in her eyes.
Which could take hours, with any luck.
Between strange nocturnal noises and her own nightmares, Jane hadn’t gotten a single full night of sleep in three weeks at the Rivington.

Dee went quiet for a moment, and Jane could hear her shifting awkwardly behind the door. “Um . . . Misty’s kind of on her way, and mostly to see you. I hope that’s okay. She was all worked up, and I didn’t know you were this anti-morning.”

Jane threw her pillow at the door. It hit the wood with a completely unsatisfying lack of thud. Then there was really nothing to do but swing her legs out from under the cream-on-white quilt and shuffle off to her en suite bathroom. It was tiny, but closing her eyes and standing under the waterfall showerhead, she could almost convince herself that the last month had just been a bad dream, and she was really on her honeymoon in Belize.
With Malcolm.
She sighed and groped blindly for a towel. The romantic part of their relationship was done; she was sure about that. Too many secrets; too many belated confessions. There was no amount of charisma, attentiveness, money, good looks, or even phenomenal sex that could make up for what had already passed between them. Still, she could imagine worse company to be stuck in a jungle paradise with . . . and after seeing how thoughtfully he had prepared for their post-Lynne life, she was more concerned than ever about his well-being.
He should have someone looking out for him as well as he’s looked out for me,
she thought sadly, shrugging into a terrycloth robe the apartment’s owner had clearly stolen from a very nice hotel at some point.
Which reminds me: once I find out what Misty wants, the rest of the day will just have to be a shop-a-thon
.

She followed the scent of coffee and something richer into the kitchen, and pulled a chair up to the small, spindly table. The ivory granite counters were covered in reusable shopping bags with food practically exploding over their tops. Dee, looking annoyingly efficient and wide awake, plunked down a smooth white espresso cup and a matching porcelain ramekin in front of Jane.

“I was going to just do scrambled eggs,” Dee explained, ignoring Jane’s death glare, “but I don’t know if French people even eat them that way, or if scrambling them is all vulgar and American. So I did them
en cocotte
”—Jane winced at her friend’s appalling version of a French accent—“and there’ll be toast.” Something popped in a corner behind Jane, and she jumped awkwardly in her chair. “Toast!” Dee cheered, leaning across the table to flip a couple of perfectly browned slices onto Jane’s plate.

Jane carved a creamy wedge of egg out of her ramekin, dropped it on a corner of toast, and bit. The crispy, creamy, salty, and rich combined into a perfectly extraordinary bite, and Jane sat up a little straighter in her chair. “Okay. So Misty’s coming?”

“Um.” Dee plunked down in the other chair, then reached out automatically to stir something on the stove. Steam rose from the pot, and Jane’s stomach growled. She stuffed some more egg into her mouth to keep it calm, and waited. “Remember how, last night, you said you were worried about Malcolm and wanted to know if he was okay?”

Jane tried to wash her bite of egg down with some espresso, but the combination was even tastier than its individual parts, and she decided to savor the food and nod instead of speaking.

“Well, I kind of remembered this thing in Browning’s—like a spell—except I couldn’t find the exact one I wanted. But then there was something similar in this manuscript from—oh, well I don’t have the manuscript, anyway, but they refer to it in
The History of Ritual,
which refers
back
to Browning’s, which makes no sense. So I called Misty, and she actually has the manuscript, or at least a copy in some
other
book, which Rosalie Goddard—you remember her?—referred to as source material for—”

Jane waved her toast in an impatient “get on with it” motion before taking another chunk out of it with her teeth.

“We think you can find Malcolm. Or see him, or see
with
him, or something we don’t really get, but it should put your mind at ease either way, don’t you think?”

Jane considered rushing to swallow again, but couldn’t quite bring herself to do it. Instead, she leaned across the table, holding her toast safely out to one side, and hugged Dee loosely around the shoulders. She sat back and decided to give her resourceful friend a thumbs-up for good measure.

“Cool. All you need is something of Malcolm’s, to focus the magic on, and Misty’s bringing the rest.”

Jane wiggled her left hand pointedly. She still hadn’t put her wedding ring back on, but in the safety of the apartment, she had given in to the temptation to put the five-carat, emerald-cut diamond back on her ring finger. It was a lot of ring, after all, and she had had a relatively short amount of time to enjoy it during her whirlwind engagement.

But Dee shook her head. “That’s not Malcolm’s; it’s yours. This is the tricky part: it has to be something that really belongs to the person you’re looking for, present tense. Something meaningful to them, that they would consider their property.” Jane’s face fell, but Dee waved her concern away. “I know it’s a pain, but it’s a good thing if you think about it. Otherwise witches would be able to find you from, like, a napkin you used and left on the table. Or a closetful of designer clothes that you abandoned in someone else’s Park Avenue townhouse in a bit of a hurry,” she reminded Jane, and Jane had to admit that she made a good point. She wanted to find Malcolm, but she’d rather stay in the dark about his whereabouts than know that Lynne had a whole suite’s-worth of ways to find her.

Jane swiveled in her chair and gazed doubtfully toward the hallway that led to her bedroom. She had brought so little with her from the mansion, and then even less from the Rivington. As she turned back to point that out to Dee, a flash of blue on the driftwood coffee table in the living room caught her eye. She swallowed her last bite hurriedly, hoping that at least one of the two extra ramekins on the edge of the sink might contain more of the heavenly eggs, but so excited that she was willing to wait another minute or two to find out. “Unicorn,” she blurted out as soon as her mouth was mostly empty. “The glass unicorn thingy I showed you last night. The ‘personal item’! It obviously wasn’t for me, which means Malcolm never gave it away, and he hid it in the safe, so it must be personal and meaningful, right?”

Dee quirked her mouth sideways thoughtfully. “That should do it,” she announced after a moment. “It’s actually way better than the possibilities I was going to suggest. This is good!” Her eyes flickered briefly toward the oven’s digital clock. “Misty should get here anytime now, but it’ll take us a while to set up. You’ve got time to get a little meditation in, and I think you should. The more power you have ready, the more you can see. Raid my closet for something you haven’t been wearing for days, and then meet us in the living room in about half an hour, okay?”

Jane nodded and rose obediently. From her standing position, she could see over the lip of the ramekins. A perfectly smooth yolk glistened invitingly in the center of the smooth custard inside each one, with a delicate dusting of cracked black pepper providing inviting contrast. Jane stretched out her fingers, snagged the lip of one of them, and then shrugged at Dee. “Magic is hard,” she explained innocently. “I need the calories.” She tucked her spoon between her palm and the ramekin, hesitated, and then picked up the second porcelain container in her other hand. “And lots of protein,” she added over her shoulder, retreating hastily toward the bedrooms.

The first egg was gone by the time she reached Dee’s closet. In the careless jumble of mostly black clothes, Jane found a dark green knit dress that looked like it would do for the day. The skirt would be pretty mini on Dee’s tall body, but on Jane it fell just a couple of inches above the knee. Smiling and slurping at her other egg, Jane wandered back to her room, sprawled on her back on the bed, and tried to locate the diffuse tingling that would begin the process of calling her magic together.

It was a struggle to keep her mind from wandering after the events of the last two days, but she concentrated on her breathing the way Dee had taught her, and eventually was able to calm her swirling thoughts. Underneath the new stillness it was easy to pick out the peculiar, electric rush of magic humming along in her blood. It was peaceful and gentle now, nothing like the raging lightning it became when she was emotional. This kind of power could be harnessed and controlled, applied to whatever task she needed it to perform, instead of just lashing out wildly. She drew in three deep breaths, exhaling until her lungs burned, and began to collect her magic in her fingertips, coaxing it, pushing at it, and corralling stray currents that tried to escape.

By the time thirty minutes had passed, Jane had a respectable bundle of power resting invisibly inside each hand. She wasn’t sure if it would be enough, and considered trying to make herself angry or something to add to it, but in her calm, clear-headed state she understood that this would be a silly risk. She might not be the most powerful witch in the world—she might not even be at
her
most powerful right then—but she was ready to get to work on the spell, and that mattered more. She swung her legs off the bed, enjoying first the velvety shag beneath her feet, and then the waxy hardwood beyond it. Her senses felt heightened; every touch was meaningful, every surface complex and compelling.

She found Dee in the living room with Misty, a thirtysomething woman whose super-processed blond waves and just-a-little-too-tanned skin made her look as though she’d spent her life on some windswept beach. In reality, Dee had told Jane, Misty Travers (née Lois Trapinski) had been born on the Lower East Side, just blocks from where her occult bookstore now stood. She had apparently brought about half of the shop’s more private stock with her: crystals of all sizes and colors formed a large circle around the two women, a bundle of sage smoldered acrid smoke in a copper bowl off to one side, and Misty was carefully measuring out tiny vials of something clear and viscous.

The two of them looked up at Jane simultaneously, and she could see their mouths moving, but the gentle buzz of the magic in her ears muffled their voices. Jane waved as a response, and they seemed to understand, so she joined them inside the crystals and set the glass unicorn in the middle before tucking the dress around her thighs. Misty handed her and Dee a full vial of the clear goo, keeping one for herself. She mimed drinking it, arching a brown eyebrow at the other two to make sure that they understood.

When Misty and Dee tipped their vials into their mouths, she did the same. It tasted like nothing at all, but as it spread down her throat, she felt her mind detaching even further from her seated body. It felt like she might float away entirely, and she reached blindly for the hands of the women beside her. She found them so easily that they must have been doing the same, and she felt Dee’s warm, calloused hand and Misty’s thin, soft one in hers. She could see, out of the corner of her eye, Misty chanting fervently, and sent the magic she had been holding in her hands flowing through the other two, starting circles in both directions, which began and ended in her heart.

The crystals around them started to glow, and the buzzing in Jane’s ears grew so loud she almost moved her hands to cover them. But the unicorn was starting to glow, too, and she held on. She kept sending the magic around their Circle until, with a tearing pain, everything around her was gone. She couldn’t see or hear; she couldn’t feel her own body anymore. All that she could feel was a nauseating burning in every inch of her, and although she tried to struggle, without her physical form there was nothing for her to move. When the pain finally, mercifully stopped, it was a long moment before she was able to ask herself why. But her vision slowly refocused itself, and she guessed that she must have arrived at her destination.

Instead of her airy, soothing new apartment, Jane was in a room with one grimy window. She tried to look around, but it was as if her head were stuck in one position, her eyes fixed on a sitcom on a small television with an old-fashioned curved screen. She tried to reach out magically to find Malcolm’s mind, but her magic was as immobile as the rest of her.
Because I’m not really here,
she reminded herself.
I’m just seeing Malcolm—except I’m not. Where is he in this pit?

Her view lurched and changed, and she was moving through the tiny room at an alarming rate.
I’m seeing
with
Malcolm,
she realized, remembering Dee’s attempt to explain the spell.
I’m seeing what he sees.

She scanned the room, searching her peripheral vision for any clue to where he might be. The apartment was shabby, with bare walls and an unappealing hodgepodge of furniture. Jane saw a twin bed in one corner and guessed that Malcolm’s place was a studio, and a rather small one at that. Clothes were scattered around carelessly: a puddle of geometric black and white lay half-on, half-off the bed, a pair of slim loafers by the coffee table, something red and shiny draped on the back of a wooden chair.

I’m missing things,
her brain complained, but it was impossible to really take anything in while Malcolm’s body was sweeping her along. Just before she was certain that she would crash into a dingy, off-white wall, she turned sharply toward an opening that she hadn’t even seen.

Malcolm was in a tiny bathroom now, pooling slightly reddish water in his hands before splashing it onto his face. His hands looked like she remembered, with the same golden tone under their skin, but they were slimmer and smoother. Jane felt a knot forming in her disembodied stomach. Something about this vision was wrong.