The Dark Glamour (666 Park Avenue 2) by Gabriella Pierce Page A

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 any more,
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 neighbour 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