The Dark Glamour (6 page)

Jane stuck her tongue out at Dee and was nearly run down by a speeding bicycle that left the faint aroma of scallions and toasted sesame oil in its wake. “Karma,” she observed. “Okay. I’ll do the meditating stuff and let you ladies be the brains of the operation. Just let me know when you’ve got something, because if we could wrap this up by the weekend, I’d love to check out this Coney Island thing everyone talks about.”

Dee rolled her eyes. “Nobody talks about Coney Island anymore, but duly noted. Jane, stop. We’re home.” She pointed to the discreet, steel-edged glass door that Jane had been about to walk right past.

“Almost,” Jane murmured under her breath, and followed her friend into the lobby.

Chapter Eight

“H
ere it is.”

Jane leaned forward over the driftwood coffee table, eager for her first glimpse of the indispensable charm that would give her a new face. Misty hadn’t even been sure that there were any left in the world, but had tracked down the rumors tirelessly for two days until she’d found a person who, for tens of thousands of Jane’s dollars, was willing to produce the genuine article.

“A Forvrangdan orb,” Misty declared proudly, setting it on the table and pulling aside the cloth that shrouded it. It was a smooth, clear-glass sphere. It looked heavy, and seemed solid except for a few tiny bubbles caught motionless in its center.

“It’s beautiful,” Dee said breathlessly, tilting her head to take it in from more angles.

“It really is,” Jane agreed. “And nothing at all like an incredibly expensive paperweight.”

Dee looked alarmed, but Misty laughed. Even her laughter sounded beachy. “It’s the real thing,” she assured Jane confidently. “Paperweights don’t do this.” She slid a gray-and-white, pigeon-esque feather out of her supply bag. Careful not to touch the surface of the orb with her skin, she set the feather down gently on top of it.

At first, nothing happened, but after a short while, Jane was almost positive the feather was darker. A few seconds later, it was definite: the feather was almost as black and shiny as a raven’s. It elongated and became even glossier and uneven on one long edge, and Jane abruptly realized that now she was looking at a plastic comb. The comb began to lighten until it was distinctly purple, and then transparent. Moments later, it was a cheap-looking red pen, and briefly a salamander, then a chameleon, then a candle, then a white leather bookmark. And then, as Jane watched in growing horror, the bookmark’s edges began to curl and peel as if it were being consumed in an invisible fire, which ate its way through the leather with increasing speed. The bookmark looked like a pigeon feather again, for the briefest of moments, before it was gone, without the slightest trace of it remaining on the perfect surface of the orb.

“Okay,” Jane agreed, swallowing thickly. “Paperweights
don’t
do that. But I . . . um . . . I don’t want it to do
that
to me.”

“It won’t,” Dee reassured her quickly, although her face was a few shades paler than normal.

“It won’t,” Misty echoed, far more convincingly. “The spell controls it; channels the power and sets limits on it. That’s why the orb is destroyed at the end of the spell, instead of the object of the change. That means you,” she added, glancing up at Jane. “And that’s why there are so many rules, because you don’t harness something this major without a lot of rules. It was this coven in Sweden—I guess they were the real thing, like your family and the Dorans. They made these as weapons; tools they could use that would destroy anyone else who tried without the proper rituals. But it wasn’t enough, I guess, because rumor has it that they were wiped out centuries ago. We don’t know how many orbs were left in their stockpile when that happened, but they’re almost never heard of these days. We got this one because a friend of mine from fifteen years ago bragged about seeing one once after a little too much blessed wine, but I honestly wouldn’t know where to even begin with finding another one. So I want to be very sure before we begin that you really, really understand the rules.”

Jane opened her mouth to answer, but the words caught in her throat.

“We should review,” Dee murmured softly, and Jane nodded gratefully.

“The spell lasts for twenty-eight days exactly,” Misty began pedantically, “one full cycle of the moon. There’s no way to know what you’ll look like once it’s done, so we can’t really lay any groundwork for your new persona
before
we do the spell. But that means that you’ll really need to hit the ground running once it’s done, because once the twenty-eight days are up, that persona will be gone for good. But the good news is that the fuel for the spell comes from the orb that whole time, not from you, so you’ll have all of your magic in case you need it.”

“That’s good.” Jane nodded. She had tried what Dee had called a “glamour” the day before. After a few attempts, she had succeeded in making her hair look blond again, but it was exhausting work and slipped back to its dyed shade every time she thought about anything else whatsoever. It was an interesting parlor trick, but it wouldn’t hold up.

“It really is,” Dee reminded her encouragingly. “A month isn’t very long for everything you’ll have to do with your new face. As soon as you talk to Lynne, she’ll know you’re a witch no matter what you look like, so you can forget trying to pretend you’re anything else. She’ll expect you to be able to do magic. The more power you have at your disposal, the more interested in you she’ll be.”

Jane nodded again, trying to look a little more enthusiastic this time. But she couldn’t keep one thought from fluttering around the corners of her mind like a bat:
Magic has a mind of its own . . .

The spell might work, but it could certainly work in unexpected and wrong ways.
I could get stuck. The spell could end while I’m in the middle of a conversation with Lynne. I could turn into a toad for a month. My mind could change along with my face. This could all be for nothing, or it could be for worse than nothing.
She shivered, drawing the black hoodie that she had borrowed from Dee tighter around her shoulders.
But it’s the best plan I’ve got.

“The disguise might start to fade out toward the end of the month,” Misty went on, echoing Jane’s fears a little too closely for her comfort. “The stronger we manage to make the initial spell, though, the less likely that will happen, so if you want to take some more time to get ready—”

“I’ve been getting ready all day,” Jane interrupted. She had felt the bars of sunlight move across her bed as she had sent ripples through her magic, listened to it murmur. Her awareness had spread to every corner of the apartment; she had known about but ignored the trays of food Dee had left by her door, and had heard every worried thought of Misty’s since the wild-haired blonde had stepped across their threshold. She had even heard some thoughts of Dee’s, although she had tried to avoid it, but to her pleasant surprise, Dee’s mind-closing efforts seemed to be paying off. Her available thoughts were superficial, and while Jane was sure she could dig out the more substantial ones if she wanted to, it was a relief not to have them floating at her and distracting her from her calm.

Now the sun was setting in a riot of red and gold out her remarkable panoramic living-room windows. A heavy lid of star-flecked dark blue chased it to the horizon, and Jane was pretty sure she wasn’t going to feel readier anytime soon.

“The spell takes time,” Dee told her softly. “We’re ready to start when you are, but it’ll be a long night once we do. If you’d like to at least eat something . . .” She trailed off uncertainly.

Jane unfolded her legs from the nubby white couch and spread her toes over the cool, glossy finish of the bleached hardwood floor. “Now’s good,” she insisted gently, drifting over to the spot in front of the windows where hundreds of candles marked out a strange symbol on the floor. The view through the windows shifted slightly as she moved, and Jane felt an almost seasick light-headedness.
What’s some archaic Swedish mark doing on the eleventh floor of a building in Manhattan?
Or was it even Swedish to start with? Ambika and her daughters had lived and died before there were maps.

Misty appeared beside her with the orb wrapped carefully back up in its shroud.
Magic-proof,
Jane realized.
The cloth saved my coffee table from whatever happened to that pigeon feather
.

Dee approached on her other side, the growing starlight washing her eyes and face out to the same dark silver. “It starts with blood,” she told Jane softly, and there was something even more silver in her hands. She handed it to Jane, who recognized the two-edged blade that Dee had called an “athame.” They had used it to help focus Jane’s mind when she had first learned to use her power, but never used the edges for what Jane realized was probably their actual purpose.
Lynne did, though
. Jane suddenly saw her mother-in-law as vividly as if she were on the deck of the harbor-cruise boat with her again, watching the older witch slide something half-seen into her purse; watching her blood drip in the near darkness. Lynne did things with her power that Jane hadn’t been able to even imagine, but now she was beginning to. Whatever they were about to do was major magic, and Jane could feel the Earth turning ever so slowly ten stories beneath her bare feet.

Of course it starts with blood.

She held out her hand to Dee, who held up the athame and began to whisper. The starlight flashed wildly as she spun the blade downward, and the spell began.

Chapter Nine

J
ane woke up in her bed. She stared at the white ceiling for a while, feeling powerless to even shift her eyes to the skylight a few feet away. Every muscle was sore and even her lungs felt ragged, as if she had been running. Or screaming.
Maybe I was doing both,
she thought curiously.
There was a spell . . . wasn’t there?

It had lasted for hours, or maybe she had dreamed the whole thing. Her muscles and joints protested loudly as she turned her entire body toward her window; the stars she remembered were still out there, although the sky behind them was fully, finally dark now. She slid carefully off the bed, wobbling a little on her bare feet. Her fingertips brushed the soft, powdery paint of the wall, and she followed it, coaxing her body to stay upright with each step. By the time she reached her little bathroom, she felt fairly confident that her legs would cooperate, and she risked letting her fingers leave the wall in order to flick a light switch. Clumsily, she hit both at once, and the overhead bulb came on at the same time as the softer ones embedded around the mirror above the sink.

Damn.
She shrank back instinctively, shielding her sensitive eyes with her other hand until they adjusted to the fierce glow.
Those nut-jobs turned me into a vampire, probably.
She peeked out from behind her hand and found that she could see without squinting now, but she still hesitated, afraid to face the mirror.

“I can’t just stand in the doorway all night,” she announced reasonably, and then shuddered: her voice wasn’t noticeably higher or lower, but it was absolutely different: the same note produced by a new instrument. More curious than afraid now, she pulled herself forward into the bathroom, lurching to a graceless stop in front of the lit mirror.

She’s so tall,
she thought, half-hysterically.
I am, I mean.
Her new body had at least eight or nine inches more in its legs and torso than her old one had, but not noticeably more weight to go around. Her new, model-esque height came with pointed shoulders, small ripples of breasts, a long, flat stomach, and stretched-teardrop hips. Above her sharp collarbones, her face was unexpectedly girlish. Her jaw was wide, her cheeks short and round. She had a plump bow of a mouth and sparkling black eyes, which matched her straight, shoulder-skimming black hair perfectly. Most striking, though, was her skin. Jane, who had spent her life with the kind of hopelessly unfashionable peaches-and-cream skin that showed every blush and burned if she even thought about sunlight, ran a walnut finger across her walnut jawbone in wonder.

I wonder where I’m from,
she thought idly; between her coloring and the slight almond turn to her eyes, she was distinctly racially ambiguous.
I just have to decide where I want to be from. And what my name is
.

The choices to be made from the seemingly endless possibilities in front of her suddenly felt almost overwhelming, and her breath caught in her throat.
I need some help with this,
she decided. She didn’t know how long she had been unconscious, but surely Dee would want to see the outcome of their bizarre spell. She was probably still awake, in fact, and Jane pushed herself away from the mirror to go show her how their efforts had paid off.

She had barely stepped into the hallway before she smelled hot sugar and butter bound together by flour, and she forced her still-wobbly legs to pick up their pace.
She’s awake
and
baking,
she urged her limbs.
Please hurry!

She entered the living room just as Dee was leaving the kitchen, with a telltale piece of cookie in her hand. Dee stopped and stared at her in shock. She was still wearing the black lace top and baggy black cargo pants that she had had on for the spell, but they looked wrinkled and tired . . . as did Dee’s face.

“It’s me,” Jane told her unnecessarily. “It worked.”
The sky is blue and Lynne’s a witch
.

“Oh my God, Jane, I thought you were—” Dee stopped, apparently trying to make a huge mental adjustment. “It
worked
?”

Jane glanced quickly at her hands; they were still the same glowing shade of brown. The half-moons under her nail beds stood out in even brighter contrast than Dee’s. “Didn’t it?”

Dee waved her cookie dismissively. “Of course, it’s just . . . we kept checking on you, and then Misty had to go, but I kept checking, and you still looked like you the whole time. And you wouldn’t wake up, and now it’s— Oh, you must be starving.”

“Are those hazelnut?” Jane asked helpfully, tilting her new chin toward the cookie.

Dee looked at it as if she had no idea how she had come to be holding it, then shook herself all over. “White chocolate–cherry,” she corrected with a little more of her usual confidence. “But samosas first, and— Well, there’s a lot, actually. I cook when I’m worried. And for God’s sake, Jane, you haven’t eaten in two days.”

She disappeared back into the kitchen, leaving Jane frozen in place this time. She cleared her throat; it seemed to take longer than it did in her real body. “I haven’t what in
what
?” she called out to the doorway that Dee had just vacated.

Her friend’s tangle of black hair reappeared, although the rest of her body remained occupied by the stove. “I know you didn’t touch the food I left before the spell, and then you were out all day today. We were really starting to panic, you know.”

“I don’t . . .” Jane whispered, then raised her voice again. She could hear the note of hysteria in it, but felt that a little panic was probably in order about now.
“Today?”

Dee reappeared fully in the doorway, this time holding a plate. Jane could smell oil and the soft, low note of chickpeas, and her taut stomach growled fiercely. Dee opened her mouth to say something, but a loud, bell-like chime interrupted her. Her amber eyes darted to the front door and then back to Jane. “Shit,” she whispered. “Jane, I really thought we needed—”

Today?
Jane walked automatically to the front door, her mind still trying to wrap itself around this new information. She heard Dee frantically trying to apologize for something or other behind her back, but she couldn’t focus on that right now: someone had come to their apartment in the middle of some unspecified night. Feeling a little reckless (she had, after all, just pulled off a seriously empowering amount of magic), Jane swung the door open without so much as checking the peephole.

He’s not so tall anymore,
was her first thought, but the rest was still the same: the short, coppery curls, the dancing green eyes, the long, lean muscles that made a leather jacket look better on him than on just about anyone else she could think of. “Harris.” She breathed, and stepped—almost fell—into his arms. He stayed perfectly still, and at first she imagined that he must just be surprised to see her.

It was only after she had been clinging to his unresponding body for a good ten seconds that she realized that he had no idea who was hugging him. Apparently, the spell had left some things the same, though, because the tiny currents of electricity that curled under her skin whenever she was close to him were responding just as emphatically as ever. Jane pulled herself gently away.

“Excuse me,” she improvised. “I’m from, erm, Brazil. We hug.” She stepped back and shot a pleading look at Dee. The fact that Harris was here at all suggested that Dee was starting to have second thoughts about concealing Jane’s whereabouts, but a new face gave them a chance to keep her secrets. “Please come in.”

Dee had been gesturing frantically to Jane, but stopped as soon as Harris could see her. She opened her arms and accepted his hug while Jane chewed the inside of her cheek; theirs looked a lot more enjoyable than her one-sided gaffe had been. “. . . At this time of night,” Dee was saying.

What time?
Jane wondered. She inched to where she could see the digital clock on the oven. She assumed that it was broken when she saw 12:14, but then remembered that she was in America, where they used twelve repeating hours instead of twenty-four.
After midnight on Saturday, then . . . or actually Sunday, I guess.
She had slept through Saturday. And of course, she realized, Dee had called Harris when Jane had headed into hour twenty-four of her magical coma. She could hardly blame her friend for that. And as the son of a son of a witch himself, raised on his grandmother’s stories and lore, Harris was a pretty smart choice to call for help.

“I don’t think I’ve officially met your . . . friend,” Harris said, and Jane’s eyes snapped over to him as if they had a mind of their own. It was as though the air around him were somehow brighter than in the rest of the room.

“My roommate,” Dee corrected as Jane started forward with her right hand outstretched for a more formal greeting than her first one. “She . . . um . . . Ella. This is my roommate, Ella.”

“I’ve heard all kinds of nice things about you,” Jane told Harris automatically, hoping this was enough of an explanation for her greeting him by name. And body-check.

“Charmed,” Harris replied, turning her proffered hand to kiss the back, and Jane felt her unfamiliar lips curve up into an unfamiliar smile.

She searched her empty brain for some sort of nonchalant reply, but just then Dee appeared between them with a plate of lukewarm samosas. “It turned out to be nothing, of course,” she told Harris conversationally, and Jane admired her coolness. “Our downstairs neighbor came home drunk and tried to get in here. It woke us up, and we’d already Netflixed
Paranormal Activity
earlier, so we were a little freaked out. I decided to stay up and cook a little, and then I guess the guy came back, because there were all kinds of weird noises and scratching at the door, and it completely freaked me out.”

To her surprise, Jane felt the skin on her arms rise in goose bumps even though Dee was making the whole thing up.
She’s really good.
“You should have called the police,” Harris told Dee gently, rubbing her upper arms reassuringly. Jane clapped her hands over her own upper arms. “But of course I’m always happy to come play hero for the two of you,” he added, flashing his wide, easy smile that never failed to make Jane want to smile back.

His bright green eyes met hers and narrowed curiously for a moment. Jane inhaled and looked away as casually as she could manage, feeling a familiar heat rising in her cheeks.
He’s so close,
a rebellious part of her thought, and she felt an intense longing to just tell him who she was.

“We know,” Dee assured Harris, moving the plate out to the side and leaning her body a little closer in to his. “Thank you so much.”

“I guess, now that we’re all safe again, I’ll go back to bed,” Jane made herself say.
Normal people have normal lives, and I want that for them. And once I fix things with Lynne, I’ll be able to have that, too. Or something more like it, anyway.
The thoughts sounded hollow, and she shrugged her shoulders irritably, feeling a dull ache in their tired muscles.

“I should, too, actually,” Dee admitted guiltily. “This Kate woman called earlier; she’s starting a catering company and heard I did pastry.” She glanced back at the food-covered surfaces of the kitchen. “I guess we can call tonight ‘interview prep.’ ”

“That’s great!” Jane told her warmly. “I had no idea. Let me know if I can help at all.”
Like lend you clothes that we’re both a little too tall for now, or act like a stranger off the street who adores your cakes, or snuggle with your new boyfriend. Or anything.
She smiled ruefully at her hopelessly one-track mind. It would get better once Harris and his pesky magical blood were a safe distance away, and then, she knew, she would be able to be properly happy about how Dee was getting her life together post–Hurricane Jane. Right now she could settle for ignoring her baser impulses and acting the part of a good friend.

“I’ll let you two sleep, then,” Harris offered gallantly, heading for the door but detouring toward the kitchen. “Although, if you could spare a little something for the long, lonely subway ride . . .”

“I’ll wrap the cookies for you,” Dee suggested, and Jane had to fight the urge to kick her in the shin. Following a short flurry of activity in the kitchen and a good-natured wave, Harris was gone. When Dee closed the door behind him, Jane felt her body finally relax.

Dee turned and raised an awkward black eyebrow at Jane. “Ella?” Jane asked, a little incredulously. “Like
Ella Enchanted
?”

“Like ‘she,’ in Spanish,” Dee admitted sheepishly. “My mind went blank. But use the ‘enchanted’ thing if you ever write your memoirs or something, okay?”

“It’s a deal,” Jane promised, making a long-overdue beeline for the kitchen.