Ten days before the wedding, Jane found herself alone in the Dorans’ parlor. She had worked a half-day at the MoMA. She was planning a reception for a visiting professor from London’s Slade School of Art. The work went quickly, but she still missed Maeve’s presence in the office. She had finally been released from the hospital three days prior—an infection and a slipped stitch had slowed her recovery considerably . . . as if it hadn’t been slow enough already.

Jane had wondered if Lynne or one of the twins had had a hand in Maeve’s complications, but she had decided not to mention the possibility to Harris. He had to be worried enough as it was, and besides, he’d probably already thought of it.

Jane walked over to the marble wall that held Lynne’s family history. She felt like she could draw most of it from memory by now, from Ambika all the way down to Annette. She had tried once to calculate in her head how long ago Ambika had begun this family’s legacy, but she had lost track somewhere around the twelfth century. She found herself wondering about Ambika and her dubious legacy. Was she one of the original seven witches Rosalie had talked about in her book? What kind of a world had she lived in? And if she was one of the first seven, what exactly had caused the fight between her and her siblings that had lasted through so many generations? Was it a struggle over power . . . or something more?

Or maybe she was just a Dark Ages version of Lynne, Jane thought wryly, trying unsuccessfully to picture Lynne without a chauffeured car or five-star restaurants to call in from. But thoughts of Lynne—and Yuri—made her feel like an ice cube had been dropped down the back of her dress. It was getting harder and harder to smile pleasantly, talk about the wedding, listen to gossip, all the while holding her breath, waiting for something to give her away or for someone else to get hurt.

Jane reached out her fingers toward the wall and found Malcolm’s name, tracing it gently over and over. Postcards had begun to arrive in the last week: brightly colored, information-less scraps of paper addressed to the entire family. He had sent one from Madrid, one from Barcelona, one from Marrakech. They had alluded to complications, delays, additional business in undetermined parts of the world. He hadn’t bothered to spring for express air mail, so Jane was sure that they would keep coming, full of bland excuses, even after she and Malcolm were long gone on their “honeymoon.” It was a smart plan: as long as the family was still getting weeks-old news from Malcolm, they would be less likely to realize that he and Jane had disappeared. They could have a month’s head start before someone noticed that his postcards had stopped coming.

He would arrive home just the one day, for her, and then they would start their new life together . . . wherever that turned out to be.

In the meantime, each card ended with a sterile “Love to J—see you soon.” It wasn’t much, but it was enough to keep her going. Wherever he was now—and she was fairly sure that he hadn’t ever been in Spain or Morocco at all—he was thinking of her. He was doing all of this for her. All she had to do to keep up her end was not give them away, for just another week and a half.

Her fingers slid to the right along the marble wall, exploring the grooves of Annette’s name. She remembered optimistically wondering if Malcolm’s little sister might have been a friend to her if she’d lived. After everything she had learned about Manhattan’s magical families, and about this one in particular, that seemed extremely unlikely. Annette would have been a full-blooded witch, just like her. Lynne wouldn’t have needed Jane in the first place if her own heir had survived, but if she had decided to bring Jane into the family anyway, as extra insurance, Annette almost certainly would have been raised to see her as a rival.

Seven magical sisters. Had Ambika known what the magic would do to her extended family? Just how far it would spread around the world? Just how many magical families were out there now? Hundreds or thousands, maybe, if the size of the Dorans’ tree was any indication. The Montagues were part of another one that would probably have just as many branches, and even orphaned Jane Boyle might have a couple of long-lost fifth cousins with traces of the gift in their DNA. Malcolm had mentioned something about two families dying out completely, but how many witches were left in the world? And, inherited or not, magical lines changed names in nearly every generation. When the seven original families had branched and divided and intermarried, it would be impossible to know where the power had gone unless you followed it closely. So Manhattan’s witches watched each other like hawks, Harris had told her, tracking each other’s power with obsessive jealousy. Not exactly a warm, loving environment.

Her eye landed on the strange smooth patch next to Annette’s name. A mistake? she wondered again, and then she realized: that was the space for Charles. It must have been prepared when Lynne had gotten pregnant again. Maybe the baby’s name had even been chiseled in, before the whole area had been erased to cover up Charles’s existence. Jane felt a pang of sadness, even pity for the family that had been touched by so much tragedy. It wasn’t that Lynne hadn’t earned her karma in spades—she had, and more—but it was still more sorrow than Jane could comfortably wish on her worst enemy.

The thought of Charles, living his whole life in the attic, left her somewhere between pity and fear. Since the night she had spotted him in the kitchen, every creak and shadow in the halls had made her jump at the thought that Malcolm’s troubled younger brother might leap out and attack her again. Although he was supposedly safely closed in the attic, she kept smelling the stale, rotten air that had filled her lungs that horrible night when he had grabbed her.

A floorboard groaned behind her, and Jane spun toward the door, a scream dying in her throat. The shape that blocked the light was much too small to be Charles. The hall light glinted off a silver-streaked bun, and Jane had the figure narrowed down to one of two.

“What are you doing here?” the newcomer snapped brusquely.

Belinda, definitely.

“I had a headache,” Jane improvised. “I just wanted a little peace and quiet.”

Belinda Helding sniffed disapprovingly. “You’ll skip dinner, then. Have something sent to your room.”

Jane suppressed an unexpected smile. She doesn’t want me here any more than I want to be here, she realized. By the Doran standards, Belinda was practically an ally. Jane was seized by an irrational urge to giggle. “That sounds good,” she replied instead, trying to make her voice sound appropriately weak and faint. “Thank you for your concern.”

Belinda’s head tilted quizzically, as if she honestly couldn’t understand why anyone would imagine that she was concerned about Jane. Jane plastered a half-grateful, half-apologetic smile onto her face and made her way to the door.

Jane got close enough to smell the dusty-violet scent of Belinda’s perfume before the older woman budged at all. With a sigh that would be more appropriate to a mother dealing with an exasperating child’s temper tantrum, Belinda took one reluctant, shuffling step to the side, leaving only barely enough room for Jane to pass through. Lynne would tell me to diet, she reflected. Then Belinda’s trailing gray sleeve brushed Jane’s arm. A static shock—or maybe a shock of another kind—passed between them, and Jane cringed involuntarily.

She snapped her default smile back onto her face as quickly as she could, but she could still feel Belinda’s eyes, like hard little chunks of pewter, boring into her back as she forced herself to walk, not run, back to her suite.

Ten days. Just ten more days. The wedding couldn’t possibly come soon enough.