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

uncertain of what he meant. His olive-skinned fingers caressed the cut crystal of his tumbler in a thoroughly distracting way. ‘Easier – how?’
    Katrin clicked her tongue impatiently. ‘Because my brother thinks that you’ll feel bad about killing Anne, no matter how much better it will make things for all of us. Hasina has plagued witches for far too long, as you know from personal experience. But he’ – she jerked a bony thumb toward André – ‘says that
still
wouldn’t be enough for you, if Anne wasn’t a danger in her own right, as well.’ She rolled her eyes in profoundly expressive disgust.
    Killing her?
Had it really come to that? Gran’s help had been contingent on André and Katrin’s parents keeping Annette alive, and Jane had no intention of striking any other kind of deal. ‘I want to banish Hasina,’ she corrected. ‘Or if I can’t, then force her into some kind of truce or something where she agrees that her current life will be her last. I don’t want to kill anyone – the whole point of this is that I’m trying to
save
Annette.’
    The Romanian siblings looked at each other meaningfully, then back at Jane. ‘Hasina won’t honor a truce,’ André told her. He held up one hand to prevent Jane from interrupting him and leaned forward. ‘You say you don’t know enough about her, so I’m telling you, all right? She’s lived too long to really be human anymore. Humans act with one eye on the grave, but it’s been thousands of years since Hasina has seen her own lurking in front of her. We’re specks to her, mayflies who live and die in a day. She has no equals, so she will never keep her word.’ He shrugged, his muscular shoulders rising and falling. ‘Banish her if you can, but if you miss your chance, it will be gone. She’ll stalk us, and you, and all our children and grandchildren, if you live long enough to have those. She kills witches, you know. That’s why there are so few of you left these days. Whether she does it for fun, or to eliminate rivals, or some inhuman reason of her own, no one knows. All we know is that, with her, there can be no truces, no deals, no peace.’
    Jane sighed. Deep down she had felt that Hasina wouldn’t be open to any kind of compromise, but it made her task that much harder. ‘So, banishing. Do you have any idea how I can do that?’
    Katrin snorted, fishing an energy bar out of her gym tote and tearing the cellophane viciously. ‘Kill her vessel, and her sons for good measure. We’ll handle the two of them if you want, but that’s the best offer you’ll get here,
Baroness
.’
    ‘We’re done here,’ Jane snapped, standing abruptly. She slung her hobo bag over her right shoulder, glancing around to make sure there was nothing she had missed. ‘I’ll find a way to get rid of Hasina on my own.’ She took a moment to stare each Dalcacu in the eyes until both looked away from her steady gaze. ‘I am going to do whatever I can to protect Annette. But let’s be perfectly clear about this: her brothers – both of them – are under my protection. Touch either one and Hasina won’t be your biggest problem anymore.’
    She spun toward the door and strode out, but not before catching the ghost of a smile on André’s face.

    Chapter Four
     
    B Y THE TIME Jane returned to Washington Square Park, her right leg was throbbing again, and her head felt nearly as wretched. As she climbed the stairs to her apartment, she wondered for the thousandth time if she was insane for turning down the Montagues’ offer to stay with them at their Upper East Side brownstone. A little company would be nice right about now. But she knew that wherever she went, danger followed, and beyond that, she wasn’t quite sure where they fit into all this – stopping Hasina was good for the whole magical community, but just how involved should the Montagues really be?
    ‘So my fortress of solitude it is,’ she muttered to herself, fishing around in her hobo bag