The Lost Soul (666 Park Avenue 3) Read Online Free

amusement for a few seconds, then flicked his eyes back to Jane. ‘Lynne didn’t have the full measure of you,’ he said approvingly, and the skin on the back of her neck crawled a little.
    Lynne had once told Jane that she reminded her of herself when she had been younger, and Malcolm’s father had echoed the same sentiment.
Is this what being a witch means? Getting pushed and pursued and tricked and trapped until everything really is kill or be killed?
Of course, she reasoned to herself, back when Lynne had been Jane’s age, she had only been Lynne. Doubtless Hasina’s daughters were born with a bit of a mean streak, and being raised by their immortal ancestress couldn’t help. But if Lynne had stayed Lynne, she would have at least had a chance to grow into the sort of woman Jane hoped to be.
Just like Annette deserves,
she thought fervently.
That’s the whole point: to give her the chance to be who she is
.
    ‘Anne is a mess,’ André told her bluntly, and Jane blinked rapidly at him. She waited, sensing that he was ready to tell her some, if not all, of what he knew. ‘She was always an angry girl. She would latch on to people, build them up in her mind as her saviors, and then they would do something to upset her and she would act as if they had deliberately tricked her into loving them just so that they could let her down. I know you don’t think much of our guardianship of her’ – he twisted a wry smile at his sister, who huffed and looked away – ‘but considering how long we managed to be in her life without setting the little pyromaniac off, I make no apologies.’
    ‘She had no control over that,’ Jane protested, the heat and fear of her recent dreams pressing in on her again. There was a charred, ashy quality to the air in the lobby that she hadn’t noticed at first, but now it was all she could taste. She brushed a few strands of blond hair off her face. ‘Don’t you understand how magic works, when no one’s taught you to use it?’
    As if to punctuate her plaintive question, the lights in the bar area flared to brightness, and the clerks behind the main desk looked up curiously. Jane swallowed against the dryness of her throat, searching out her stray tendrils of power and containing them, and the lighting returned to normal. As a child, secluded in the French countryside with her austere, reclusive grandmother, Jane had always thought she was simply cursed when it came to electronics. It was only when she became aware of her magical abilities that she learned lights and computers responded to the flares in her magic – and the real reason Gran had fought to keep her hidden away from the world all those years.
    ‘You understand,’ Katrin purred in her clipped English. ‘We know your grandmother told you nothing. But tell me, did the lights go off when you were reading a book, or had a song stuck in your head, or even when you stubbed your toe?’ Jane started to answer, but Katrin cut her off. ‘No. Your magic got loose when you were angry, or frightened . . . when you were out of control. Our Anne was plagued by fires in every home because she was
extremely
out of control.’
    ‘She was a
child
,’ Jane argued, but Katrin’s words had effectively sown doubt. Jane had caused plenty of electrical trouble growing up, but the damage was minor: radio static, burned-out bulbs, constant computer restarts. The real light shows hadn’t happened until her life had been turned completely upside down.
How angry did Annette have to be for the fire to trap a family of four inside their house?
Jane wondered with a sudden all-over shudder. Her next fire was a month later, and even more fatal. Annette hadn’t been starting small fires in wastebaskets or making the room uncomfortably hot: she had set off major blazes as a child and was still doing it now.
    ‘She’s all grown up,’ André replied softly. ‘But that makes it easier, doesn’t it? That she’s so unstable?’
    Jane frowned,