The Dark Glamour (666 Park Avenue 2)

a minor celebrity who was committed to seeming ‘quirky’, she had immediately come up with a long list of apartments that were ‘just a little’ pricier than Jane’s budget.
    Jane, who loved open, airy spaces and whose budget had been well below her new, nearly unlimited, means, didn’t mind a bit.
    ‘Now, I know it looks like a lot of glass,’ the agent warned, ‘but the bedrooms have more privacy, of course. And you’re on the top floor, so do come and see the view.’
    ‘Bedrooms’, plural?
Jane wondered wryly; she had definitely inquired about one-bedroom apartments only. But then she saw the view, and she stopped caring. The wide wall of windows looked out over block upon block of quaint brick and low roofs, eventually ending in a strange glimmer that Jane was pretty sure was the Hudson River. It looked almost European; nothing at all like the brittle, vertical city that had already cost her so much.
    ‘And this room would be perfect for an office,’ the realtor prattled on, waving her arm into the second bedroom while Jane peered into the first.
Walk-in closet, skylight, king-size bed, en suite bathroom. Check, check, check . . .
‘Or for guests – everyone I know with an extra room has guests nearly year-round if they want them! Or sometimes young women prefer to live with a friend, which, if the rent is more than you had planned on, could be a lovely alternative.’ She nodded sagely, curls bobbing in steely unison, and then vanished back down the hall, presumably to show Jane the ‘incredibly efficiently conceived kitchen’.
    Jane, whose main requirements for a kitchen were a phone and a place to stack takeout menus, didn’t follow her. Instead she kicked off her scuffed kitten-heeled slides and sat gingerly on the nubby white couch. It was comfortable, and she curled her feet up underneath her, watching the roofs glow suddenly and sporadically in the rays of light that peeked tentatively out from the low-hanging clouds.
    The agent clicked back into the living room, an alert and searching look on her face. She was clearly nonplussed by the sight of Jane barefoot on the couch, and hesitated long enough for Jane to speak first.
    ‘I need to make a call,’ Jane told her calmly, relishing the way the careful angles of the room swallowed her voice. She had always intended to build spaces just like this, before she’d gone and let ‘true love’ completely derail her budding architecture career. Just being inside of it made her feel more grounded, more like herself again. She remembered the version of herself that had made an Eiffel Tower out of matches; the bright-eyed student who had walked into her internship at Atelier Antoine for the first time. She felt as though it could actually be possible to get her world back, and after her three hopeless weeks of trying to disappear, she didn’t intend to lose sight of the real goal ever again.
It’s not just about safety. It’s about freedom.
She turned her body towards the realtor, who stiffened slightly. ‘I’ve forgotten my phone.’
    ‘Please, use mine,’ the realtor murmured, pulling a sleek Prada phone out of her quilted-leather purse – Chanel, Jane noticed clinically. She was feeling stronger by the second. The other woman had clearly noticed the change as she backed hurriedly out of the room, never taking her eyes off Jane.
    Jane slid the keyboard out from behind the screen. She hadn’t ‘forgotten’ her phone, exactly, but she had put it in ‘airplane mode’ the night of the accident for fear that the Dorans could use its signal to find her somehow. She fished it out of her straw tote and scrolled through the contacts to the
D
s, where she found the number she was looking for. She entered it into the agent’s phone, and waited with mounting anxiety through the strange, fluttery American ringing noises.
    ‘Diana Rivera,’ a familiar, throaty voice answered, and Jane’s throat closed briefly with joy.
    ‘Dee,’ she sighed, ‘you’re safe.’ After Dee had helped Jane to kill the Dorans’ driver, Yuri (in an alley in Brooklyn,
not
on Park Avenue the way Lynne had apparently made it look), the Wiccan with a gift for pastry had had to leave her job and her apartment. They had considered it too risky that the police might link Yuri’s corpse to the address of one of the women who had made Jane’s wedding cake, and much too risky that Lynne might do so. And although the magically transported body had probably removed