The Lost Soul (666 Park Avenue 3) (17 page)

Chapter Seventeen

T
HE CAT HISSED
, and Jane flipped over, startled out of her nightmare-filled sleep.

‘Ow,’ Maeve remarked crossly, setting a mug of tea on the white-painted dresser and sucking on the skin of her hand where some had spilled.

‘Sorry,’ Jane mumbled, although her contrary, sleep-deprived side wanted to point out that Maeve was the one who had walked into her room unannounced. She yanked her hair into a messy bun while the cat turned in a couple of huffy circles and plunked back down onto her legs.

Sunlight streamed onto a couple of deep-blue throw rugs scattered across the white-painted floorboards. The bedspread and cushion on the rocking chair in the corner were white, but all their wood had been painted a rich, matching blue, which was echoed in the thin molding at the top of the walls. It was like she had slept inside of a piece of Delft china, though considerably more comfortable.

‘Damn cat.’ Maeve shrugged, picking up the mug again. ‘His name is Maki, by the way. That was Leah’s call, but she’s also the one who chased him around the grounds every day trying to dress him up in little outfits until he turned into such a grump.’ Maki’s ears twitched, and the slim redhead hesitated briefly, but when the huge cat’s eyes remained closed, she crossed the rest of the distance to hand the mug to Jane. ‘Bael fruit,’ she explained, ‘and lemongrass and rhy – rhodiola?’ She grimaced. ‘Grandma made it; I don’t really know.’

‘Maybe it’s poisoned,’ Jane suggested hopefully as she took the tall, ivy-patterned mug from her friend’s hands. She took a deep sip before Maeve could answer, earning herself a scalded tongue as well as a disapproving scowl.

Maeve sat on the bed, smoothing the quilted bedspread on either side of her with her palms. Maki, who was indeed the largest and fluffiest grey cat that Jane had ever seen, made a noise somewhere between a purr and a growl. ‘Were you planning on hiding in here forever?’

Jane felt that the accusation was distinctly unfair, especially when there were so many fair ones readily available for use. She pulled her left wrist free of the covers and checked her watch. To her surprise, it was one o’clock. ‘Oh,’ she mumbled, then lay back down and stared at the ceiling. ‘I’m still tired,’ she said truthfully. She felt as if she could sleep all day and still not be strong enough to shower, dress, go downstairs.
And face them . . . no. Sleep is better
.

‘I miss her, too,’ Maeve said quietly. ‘We all do. It’s something we’ve been talking about, last night and this morning. It’s something you could come downstairs and talk about, too.’

Because talking helps,
Jane added bitterly in her own mind.
We can all share stories about how she helped us or recount jokes that she used to tell; we’ll reminisce and pretend to ignore the fact that my colossal failure took her away from us
. Maeve seemed to read the answer on Jane’s face, which at least saved her the trouble of having to speak out loud. Between the fighting and the profound draining of her magic, she felt like a giant bruise inside and out.

‘She went after Lynne Doran with her bare hands,’ Maeve murmured, and Jane clamped her eyes shut. ‘It was crazy brave – I wish I’d been half as brave. Instead I was just hiding in the elevator with Grandma.’ Her voice twisted bitterly at the end, and Jane, curious, opened her eyes. Unshed tears glittered in Maeve’s. Jane took another, more cautious sip of her tea, unsure of what to say, but Maeve continued on without her help. ‘My point is this: she went straight for Lynne. Even though Charles was lurking around her, even though she was by the spell ingredients that everyone would be protecting with their lives, and even though it meant she was cut off from all of us by three pissed-off enemy witches.’

‘I know all this,’ Jane hummed into her mug. The tea was growing on her, but Maeve’s company wasn’t.

‘Oh, good,’ Maeve replied tartly, wiping her eyes with one sleeve, sniffling a little, and then shaking her shoulders resolutely. ‘Then you know that, once Dee did that, she was dead no matter what any of us did.’

Like if none of us had led her to the slaughter in the first place?
But Jane knew what Maeve wanted her to say, and she also suspected that the newly minted witch wouldn’t leave until she’d said it. ‘I hadn’t thought about it like that,’ she answered out loud, her own voice ringing false and hollow in her ears. ‘I guess you’re right.’

Maeve’s eyes narrowed into hard copper slits, and Jane sighed. ‘They got the better of us, Jane,’ Maeve told her sharply. ‘We can all have our opinions about how that happened – mine is that it was bad luck, by the way. We didn’t know that Annette was a suicidal psychopath who was immune to reason, and Lynne did know it, is all. But my real point is that once we were in the atrium, Dee chose to make a really desperate play. The rest of us were hanging back and cautious, but not you, and not her. So you had one set of problems, and she had another – you both chose. She’d be livid if she knew you were up here sulking after she did something so incredibly badass.’

Her words rang true, but there was a hard, painful place in Jane’s heart that even true words couldn’t touch. ‘I know you want me to hang out in the kitchen and get all philosophical about tactics—’

‘I
want
you to help plan your beloved friend’s funeral,’ Maeve snapped, ‘but I’ll settle for you getting up and taking a damn shower.’

Funeral
. Jane’s entire being quailed at the word. She had been too young to remember her parents’ service, and Gran had kept their little family carefully separate from everyone else in their town. The first time that Jane had actually attended a funeral, it had been Gran’s.
I wore that cheap black dress and Malcolm hovered over me, jumping to attend to every little thing so I didn’t have to,
she recalled. She also remembered the glares and grumbling from her grandmother’s neighbours, especially the creaky old man who had apparently seen Malcolm on his previous trip into town. But mostly, her impressions of the day were dark colours, salty tears, hushed voices, and the thick, sweet smell of incense in the stifling air. It had been a struggle from start to finish, and she had left as soon as it was decent to do so.
Or maybe a little bit before then, if you ask the neighbours. And that was before I even knew that I was the reason she’d been killed,
her brain noted viciously. With Dee, she had known the truth immediately. How much harder would it be to stand in front of a cold grave by herself, knowing that she was the reason for its having opened?

‘It wasn’t your fault,’ Maeve said in a softer tone, and Jane found herself blinking back tears of her own.

‘I know you have to say that,’ she explained helplessly, and the first tear broke loose to roll down her face. It left a burning trail that reminded her of the fiery scratches left by Annette’s fingernails.

‘I don’t
have
to say anything.’ Maeve tossed her reddish curls imperiously, even managing a small smile, and Jane laughed a little in spite of herself. The laughter hurt.

‘You have to start at the end to make it not my fault,’ she pointed out. ‘I dragged her into this, then let her be involved again after her first near-death experience, kept asking for her help, and finally came up with this brilliant plan: let’s all risk our lives just to protect the enemy from herself. Because there’s some huge difference between Hasina and the people who hang around her. Who
choose
to be on her side, even after being warned. We should all be willing to die for them, and by the way I just know that my former husband is totally going to fix it so it’ll all go fine, because he’s never let me down before.’ She took a long swig of her tea and then set the mostly empty mug on the night table next to her spirit box.

‘For what it’s worth, I still trust Malcolm,’ Maeve observed, and Jane frowned, caught off guard by the shift of topic.

I do, too,
she thought, but she didn’t say so. ‘Well, you can all rest easy now because I made him leave, and—’

‘You made him
what
?’ Maeve nearly shrieked. ‘Look, Jane. I know you’ve been in here beating yourself up about all the mistakes you’ve supposedly made and how awful your judgment must be. But if you’ve sent away the one person who was completely, automatically, exclusively on your side, then I’m thinking of joining you. Your judgement sucks.’

Even more than her resentment at Maeve’s efforts to cheer her up, Jane felt wounded by her sudden about-face. ‘Good to know the rest of you have my back,’ she grumbled.

‘We love you.’ Maeve sighed exasperatedly. ‘We’re on the same side as you, and you know it. But Malcolm is on
your
side, no matter which one that is. And I’m pretty sure you can tell the difference.’

Jane bit back a retort; the distinction actually did make sense to her. ‘I don’t know if I want him on my side,’ she admitted instead, quietly. ‘I also don’t know if he’s become the partner – I mean, the person – that I thought he could be, and that he wants so much to be. I don’t know if he’ll ever quite get there.’

‘We’d been wondering about you two.’ Maeve hesitated, then shrugged her frail-looking shoulders. ‘You seemed to be getting along with him,’ she finished tactfully.

I thought I was
. Truth be told, the last couple of weeks with Malcolm seemed highly confusing viewed in the bright light of this afternoon. Jane had been so sure that she was getting to know him all over again or, rather, finding out that what she had thought she knew about him at the beginning was finally true. In other words: confusing. Their relationship hadn’t been normal or simple since day one, but everything up to their wedding had been a lie. How could she ever make sense of their new, postannulment romance? ‘Things with him were finally making sense . . . then,’ she equivocated.

Maeve seemed to understand. ‘That must have made it even worse once they didn’t,’ she guessed perceptively.

Jane bit her lip. ‘I’m a horrible person. I’m talking about Malcolm the morning after . . . after . . .’

‘It’s complicated,’ Maeve translated gently, sparing Jane the pain of finishing her sentence. It was difficult enough to talk about Dee in the heat of emotion, but to mention her death in normal conversation was like rubbing sandpaper across an open wound. ‘Too much has happened for you to work through it all at once, especially by yourself. It’s all getting mixed together, and that’s just going to make you feel worse. So will you
please
stop behaving like a sulky hermit, because it’s not helping anyone. Least of all you.’

Jane wriggled her way upright, casting a meaningful look at the mug on the spindly white-painted table beside her. ‘If there’s more of that,’ she compromised, ‘I might consider coming downstairs to get it. I’d even be willing to shower first.’

Maeve’s face broke out in a mischievous grin, then relaxed into a sadder smile. ‘I’ll get some water boiling.’

Jane didn’t need to be able to read her friend’s mind to know what she was thinking as she spoke. Dee had been the only one in the house who could do anything much more complex in the kitchen than boiling water.
And now she’s gone
. That ache was almost unbearable . . . but only almost. However difficult it was, life had to go on.

Chapter Eighteen

L
EAH MOVED SILENTLY
around the marker driven into the earth, her beaten-copper sheet of hair glowing brilliantly against her black peasant top. To Jane’s eye, her steps measured out a perfect circle. She sprinkled salt from a little leather pouch as she went, and it glittered prettily in the sunlight before disappearing into the grass. When she had completed one full turn, she repeated her path, this time pouring water in a thin, steady stream as she went.

Emer, wearing a voluminous green cloak over a classic navy sheath, cleared her throat and raised her arms. ‘The Wheel turns,’ she intoned. ‘Our brave sister has set with the sun, and with it she will rise into a new day. Our hearts are dark without her, but we rejoice to know that she still walks in light. Her passage into the Summerlands was paid in blood, and today we gather to give her comfort and show her the way.’

The cadence of her words was soothing, almost like a lullaby.
Singing the dead to sleep,
Jane thought randomly, but of course Emer would say that the point was to help Dee to reawaken.
Just not as herself . . . and not with us
.

Emer’s belief in a beautiful afterlife and eventual reincarnation seemed truly sincere to Jane. Although she had been deeply saddened by Dee’s death, she often sounded almost envious that the girl would move on to the heavenly Summerlands of her childhood lore. Jane knew that she should try to take her cue from the elderly witch and find something to celebrate in Dee’s passage, but she couldn’t quite summon the right spirit. It would be a lovely ending to a too-short life, and certainly just what the young Wiccan deserved, but was that enough to make it real?

She could be lost,
Jane thought anxiously, fidgeting a little.
Frightened and alone. Or she might just be . . . gone
.

Emer poured wine onto the ground from a glazed Provençal pitcher. She had told Jane that the absence of Dee’s body wouldn’t matter, that Dee herself was beyond things like physical distance now. The ritual was for her soul and for her mourners, and it would serve its purpose just as well even with nothing to bury.

But in spite of that reassurance, Jane couldn’t help thinking about the fate of that body. It was so much of what made her Dee – her height, her calloused hands, her raven hair, the throat that produced her hoarse voice.
And now Annette has it
. Although they had all kept a close eye on the news since Dee’s death, her body didn’t seem to have been discovered. Realistically Jane knew that Annette had probably burned it to ashes, but it was hard to imagine such a fate befalling all that remained of her beloved friend.