“. . . substitute in peonies, as if that would be remotely acceptable.” Lynne dropped her fork onto the porcelain plate for emphasis, and reached for her delicate teacup. The kitchen smelled of eggs, muffins, and turkey bacon, with just the slightest soupçon of black truffle. Sofia wiped down the marble counter and placed another kettle of water on the stove.

Lynne, who oddly (and unfortunately) seemed to like the kitchen as much as Jane did, had been rambling on about wedding plans for nearly twenty minutes without pausing. Jane widened her eyes into what she hoped would be an appropriately shocked expression, but she was only barely following the saga of Lynne’s many wedding-related frustrations.

Jane stifled a yawn and gladly accepted a steaming mug of imported Colombian coffee from Sofia before the maid scuttled out of the kitchen. Last night, heavy feet—Charles’s?—had shuffled back and forth in front of Jane’s door. She’d tossed and turned, trying to decide if it would be too paranoid to move some furniture to block it. And, if not, which of the heavy wooden antiques in the room she could even budge. Malcolm probably could have slid the huge mahogany bookcase across the doorframe, but he had gone straight to JFK after dropping her off at the forbidding stone manse. She had tried to keep reminding herself that she was safer with him away from the house, but as she lay alone in their canopied bed, it sure hadn’t felt that way.

“. . . level of incompetence in this city is astounding . . .”

To hear Lynne rambling on about corsages as if she weren’t a powerful and bloodthirsty witch was absolutely surreal. The fact that this woman, in her prim, high-necked lace blouse and plum pencil skirt, was a witch at all was surreal. Jane blinked, trying to find any trace of the villainess who had brutally attacked Maeve, but as far as she could tell, the “annoyed socialite” version of Lynne wasn’t actually a disguise at all: the two parts of her identity fit together seamlessly.

Jane couldn’t help but be the tiniest bit envious despite herself. She’d felt split in two from the moment she had put Gran’s ring on her finger and couldn’t imagine ever feeling whole again.

“. . . just swimming in this tacky perfume like some kind of barmaid—can you imagine?”

Jane had lost the thread and settled for a combined head-shake and eye-roll, which worked for an impressive number of Lynne’s tirades.

“Naturally Marie-Annick will find someone to replace her, but I simply cannot believe the level of unprofessionalism from a company that’s supposed to be so highly . . .”

Marie-Annick . . . Marie-Annick . . . It came to her in a flash: Marie-Annick was the music director for the Brick Presbyterian Church, where they’d be holding the ceremony. And just like that, the detached fog lifted from Jane’s mind and her fingers clenched into fists. The morning after steering a two-ton taxi into a one-hundred-pound girl, Lynne was sipping ginger tea and bitching about one of the ceremony musicians’ perfume.

Jane wanted to dump the scalding contents of the rattling kettle on Lynne, but considering the fact that the older woman could literally kill her with the blink of an eye, she forced a submissive smile onto her face. To keep her hands occupied, she reached for a bagel half.

“Jane Boyle, what do you think you’re doing?” Lynne’s tirade ended in a shout, and she knocked the bagel out of Jane’s hands.

Jane’s heart started pounding and she nearly jumped out of her chair in shock. This is it, she thought wildly, looking for something, anything, she might be able to use to defend herself. Her eyes landed on a butter knife and she gripped it rigidly in her left hand.

But Lynne was oblivious to Jane’s sudden battle-readiness, busily digging into the bagel half with a teaspoon. When there was nothing left but an empty crust, she handed it back to Jane with a bright smile. “It’s a neat little trick, if you have trouble controlling what you eat,” she said, her strange, dark eyes examining Jane’s waist. “Our last dress fitting is less than a month away, dear!”

Officially the worst prospective mother-in-law ever, Jane decided, using her would-be weapon to spread fat-free cream cheese on her bagel shell. “Thanks,” she mumbled, trying to not glare too obviously at the unappetizing result.

“You weren’t raised in New York,” Lynne declared, her voice back to its snake-charmer purr, “so I know it’s hard for you to understand. But this wedding is extremely important, right down to the commas in the invitation. We have a position in this city and every move we make is scrutinized and judged and dragged through the press in case anyone important missed the live version. Our every move must be calculated, precise. We cannot afford the slightest mistake.”

Jane shuddered in spite of herself. This woman was unbelievable: she was willing to commit murder in order to procure a magical heir, yet she was worried about the pomp and circumstance that went along with being one of the city’s preeminent families. The amazing thing was, Lynne could have instructed Malcolm to elope with Jane in France and get her pregnant without ever raising her suspicions. But her desire to throw the wedding of the century and to show everyone in Manhattan that her son was respectably married before impregnating his wife had led to the very thing Lynne had wanted so desperately to avoid: Jane catching wind of her plan.

“You seem distracted,” Lynne observed as she sliced her egg whites into perfectly even rectangles. “I hope you’re not too upset about Malcolm leaving again. I can’t imagine what could possibly be considered ‘urgent’ in the art-dealing world.”

Phrasing aside, it was clearly a question—and perhaps even a test. Malcolm had sent an e-mail to the entire family from the airport, claiming that urgent business had called him away but assuring them that he’d be back in time for the wedding.

Chewing her bagel slowly, Jane thought through every angle before she answered. In Lynne’s perfect world, Malcolm would be uninterested in Jane, but Jane would be blindingly, head-over-heels in love with Malcolm. So smitten and clueless, in fact, that she wouldn’t bat an eye at his sudden departure just one month before their happy day. Her toes curled at how well she’d unwittingly conformed to that insipid role for the past month.

“I’m not worried at all,” she answered, forcing a bright note into her voice. “I love that he takes his work so seriously.” To her own ears, she sounded positively moronic, but Lynne beamed approvingly.

Then her peach mouth rearranged itself into a stern expression, and she leaned forward a little. Jane’s impulse was to lean away, but she swallowed her revulsion and stayed put. “Did he happen to mention to you where he was going?”

Jane shivered in spite of herself. She felt like a mouse facing a snake at feeding time, but Malcolm had assured her that her mind was like a locked vault to Lynne, so she met Lynne’s eyes and plastered on her most vapid smile. “Um, Spain I think?” she lied.

“Ugh. I hate Spain.” Lynne sniffed. “It’s so hot in the summer, and that rioja stuff could strip paint.”

Jane, who loved rioja second only to French wines, resisted the urge to point out that it was still January. Instead, she took an aggressive bite of her unsatisfying bagel shell while Lynne sipped her tea. The older woman’s glance fell on a glossy, gold-embossed folder in the wedding-planning stack and she fluidly snapped back into gear. “Our head-count has gone up again, so I’ll have to fax the caterer. But the bakery didn’t have a fax, as I recall”—she flipped through the folder in frustration—“so perhaps you could call.”

The bakery. A pair of wide-set amber eyes swam in front of Jane. Diana. Dee, who thought magic was genetic. Not as certain a source of help as Harris would have been, but a much, much safer one, given that Lynne had no clue who Dee was. “I was planning on shopping in SoHo anyway,” she improvised. “I’ll just stop by.”

Sofia bustled into the kitchen to check on the boiling water, then quietly left again.

“Fine.” Lynne passed Jane the folder and cleared her throat significantly. “Now, are you sure we need to invite that redheaded friend of yours to the wedding? If she gets drunk enough to lunge into traffic on a regular weeknight, just imagine the scene she would make at the wedding!”

The words slammed into Jane with the force of that speeding taxi. She crushed the remnants of her bagel crust in her fist. “She wasn’t drunk,” Jane hissed, seething.

“I’m sorry, dear, but I saw the whole thing,” Lynne replied mildly. “Now I’m not saying what happened wasn’t horrible, but really. New York is a dangerous place—she should be more careful.”

Rage and electricity spiked hotly through Jane’s limbs and the kettle let out a low whine that rose quickly toward a shriek. For a delicious moment, Jane fantasized about having enough power to lift the copper vessel from the stove and bash it into Lynne’s smug smile. This bitch so needed to be taken down. But then Sofia rushed in, and Jane was brought back to her senses. Someday Lynne will get hers, but right now I have to keep my head.

“You know what? You’re right. Disinvite her—and the brother,” Jane said briskly, making a snap decision. “We need to make sure that everything goes smoothly.”

Lynne beamed, and Jane tried hard not to grind her teeth together. She hated to even pretend to be disloyal, but the only way to keep the Montagues safe was to make Lynne think they weren’t a threat.

The decision made, she shoved her chair back and grabbed the folder, exiting the kitchen to the impossibly domestic noise of Sofia pouring another cup of tea for Lynne.