Seduction: A Novel of Suspense (18 page)

How fascinated he would have been with the house she’d visited tonight, Jac thought. And how curious Grand-père would have been to hear the story about Fantine, the exiled perfumer from Paris, who lived there and cooked up scents to fill her husband’s jeweled flacons.

Robbie would be just as intrigued. Suddenly she was homesick for him. She tied her robe around her and walked toward her bag to get her phone. To call him. Just then, the cell began ringing. Jac was startled but not too surprised. They were close and often sensed when one was thinking of the other. But glancing at the LED readout she saw it wasn’t Robbie. It was someone else who would be just as interested in the house she’d visited and the people she’d met, but for very different reasons.

“Good evening, my dear.” Malachai’s mellifluous voice came over the line. “I thought I’d check in.” After their repeated arguments about her making this trip, she half expected him to launch into a tirade that she come back, and when he didn’t, she relaxed and told him about the house and Theo’s aunts.

She was glad the tension between her and Malachai was behind them.

“I was surprised when Minerva told me she knew you. You didn’t mention that.”

“I didn’t? I thought I had. Yes, I knew her and her brother and I studied with her husband at Oxford. He was a fine therapist and so is she. But tell me, Jac, how do you find Theo?”

Brooding and disturbed, she wanted to say but didn’t. No need to bait Malachai. Instead she chose a less provocative way of describing her childhood friend. “War-torn, I think. He said he hasn’t been able to really get past his wife’s death.”

“Did he tell you how she died?”

“No.”

“I did a little research.”

“Why am I not surprised?”

“Would you like to know?” Malachai asked.

“Would it matter if I said no?”

He laughed.

Sometimes, like tonight, his laughter had a tone in it that reminded her of a character named Waldo Lydecker in the 1940s black-and-white murder mystery
Laura
. Played by Clifton Webb, the acerbic Lydecker loved Laura in his own twisted way, more than he could cope with. He had an imperious laugh. As if he stepped down to laugh. She didn’t like it from the character in the movie, and even less from Malachai.

“His wife drowned, Jac.”

“How horrible.”

“Yes. It was horrible, truly horrible.”

There was silence on his end.

“Malachai? What aren’t you saying?”

During the pause that held for another two or three seconds, Jac flashed on Ash talking about concerns for her in regard to his brother.

“It was ruled an accident,” Malachai said, putting emphasis on the word
ruled
.

“Yes?”

“She’d recently started seeing a therapist and rented a flat in London.”

“What does any of that mean? People who rent apartments or see therapists never get in accidents?”

“There was some suggestion she committed suicide.”

“Even if that is true, how is that going to scare me away from looking for a cave used by Druids?”

“When the two of you were at Blixer Rath you were uncharacteristically sympathetic to Theo.”

“So you’ve said. But I still don’t understand your point.”

“I think he has unresolved issues, and I don’t want you to become entangled in them. Just promise me that if you have any concerns, you’ll come home.”

“I promise I’ll call you. Is that enough?”

“At the first sign?”

“Yes. All right?”

“Yes.”

“Now I have a question for you.”

“What is it?”

“Why did you keep the information about Theo’s family from me? I found out tonight that one of his ancestors was an original member of the Phoenix Club. The whole family seems to have believed in reincarnation and various aspects of spiritualism. In all the times we talked about me coming here you never mentioned any of that. Why?”

“Doctor-patient confidentiality.”

“Which part was confidential? That his family history intersected with yours? That you knew members of his family?”

“Discussing any part of a patient’s background is unacceptable, Jac. You know that. If I talked about one patient to you, you would never trust that I didn’t talk to another patient about you.”

“Did you also know Theo’s grandfather?”

“Yes. I met him first when I was a boy living in London. They had a house in town in those years as well as in Jersey, and owing to the Phoenix Club connection our families saw each other fairly often. Alexander was quite a bit older than me, but it turned out we had many of the same interests. There was another sister too. A very nervous sort. I can’t remember her name. “

“Eva.”

“Ah yes, now I remember. Their grandfather had been quite obsessed with exploring the unknown and included the children in his experiments. Alexander and Minerva took to it all but I seem to recall hearing that Eva was a bit traumatized by it, and his death affected her badly. There were allusions to an accident.” He paused. “But no one ever talked about what had happened exactly.”

“I can’t believe you didn’t tell me any of this before I left.”

“It was confidential.”

In the background Jac heard voices on Malachai’s end.

“I have a patient, Jac. I have to hang up. But call me, please. Keep me posted, yes?”

“Yes, I will. As long as you promise to stop worrying.”

“Just humor me and check in every day. This is a good time, all right?”

She started to argue but he cut her off.

“I can’t keep my patient waiting. Take care, my dear.” And then he hung up.

Jac poured herself a glass of water and then called Robbie, but her brother’s cell phone went to voice mail. She left a message, told him she missed him and then slipped into bed. The sheets were high-quality Egyptian cotton. Cool and crisp, they smelled of fresh air. She was relieved. Some hotel laundries used terrible commercial scents. There’d been nights when lighting her candle and spraying the bedding with cologne didn’t camouflage the smell, and she’d slept with the window open even when it was too cold.

She’d left the window open tonight too. But not to chase away any odors. Rather to invite in the mild breeze and the sea air.

The pillows, mattress cover and comforter were goose down and Jac didn’t feel as if she was lying in the bed so much as floating on it. Even for a quality hotel, the bed was luxurious beyond expectations. She closed her eyes and in the dark, listening to the sea pound the shore, she let her mind ride the waves.

Picturing Wells in Wood, she walked into the front entryway. Saw its hundred niches filled with fragments of ancient art and medieval relics. She’d learned the memory game from her grandfather. The ancient Greek mystery schools had taught that if you put each memory in a certain room in an imaginary mansion, you could store them there and revisit them at will. Now, Jac revisited the dining room. Looked at the murals again. Then faces of the people around the table. Eva, Minerva and Theo. She thought about how he’d changed since she’d first met him. And how he’d stayed the same. She remembered back in time. In Switzerland.

Although Jac had been miserable when her grandmother left her at the Blixer Rath clinic, the beauty of her surroundings hadn’t been lost on her. Paris was noisy, crowded and smelly compared to the Alpine retreat. The closest neighbor was five kilometers off and the silence of the Alps reached out to her and offered soothing solitude right away.

There were seven other young adults, from twelve to seventeen, already in residence. Full capacity was twelve. The staff consisted of three doctors and two teachers: an art and music teacher who painted and played both the piano and violin, and a science, math and humanities teacher. In addition some of the therapists taught certain classes. The staff consisted of a cook, a gardener and two women who cleaned and did laundry. Almost as many people worked there as came for help.

In the mornings after breakfast the students went to classes. The doctors preferred the term
students
to
patients
. “You’re not here to take medicine and get better,” Malachai had explained on Jac’s first day. “You’re here to study your psyche, learn from it and then use those lessons to develop coping skills.”

Each student had his or her own curriculum. Sometimes there were others in your class, but just as often you were one on one with the teacher. Jac’s first class of each day was mythology, followed by a drawing class, then a piano lesson and geometry.

No one explained why she was taking those particular classes as opposed to others, and when she asked, Malachai cryptically told her they were the classes she needed.

During the afternoon each student worked individually with her therapist for ninety minutes. The rest of the time was theirs to do with as they pleased.

When Jac got to Blixer, the seven students there had been together for at least three months and had all bonded. Jac didn’t fit in. The problem wasn’t theirs. It was hers. The others tried to include her, went out of their way to be welcoming. At night, after dinner, they rehearsed scenes from Greek plays and once a week held a performance the entire staff attended. Malachai, their drama coach, encouraged Jac to join in. Trying to connect to the other students was some of the hardest work she did at Blixer. She gave up after a few lukewarm efforts.

The problem wasn’t just that Jac was in mourning and homesick for her brother. She’d never had an easy time with other kids. At school in Paris, they used to gossip that she was a snob and aloof. They thought she was odd because she didn’t have any close friends. But she wasn’t
a snob and she did have a close friend—her brother. She and Robbie were content in each other’s company. Tied to each other by their love of scent and the training they were getting from their grandfather and father in the family business, they lived in their own world.

The year she was in fifth grade, Jac resolved to make friends, but after two months of concerted effort, she admitted to Robbie that she’d failed. She tried to talk about the topics and go places that interested the other girls, she told him, but her tastes weren’t simpatico with theirs. They weren’t interested in perfume and paintings and gardens. Most of them liked to read but weren’t as passionate a reader as she was. Perfumes were built on stories, on dreams, her grandfather had told her. He was a wonderful storyteller. So was Jac’s father. Robbie was like him, in the best ways. When her experiment had failed, Robbie told her that it didn’t matter about the other girls. She had him, and he’d always be her friend.

While she was at Blixer, Jac called him once a week, which was all she was allowed. They’d decided to read the same books while she was away, and Robbie was becoming almost as obsessed with mythology as she was.

Jac had been at the clinic ten weeks when Theo showed up. He was the first new patient to arrive since she’d been there. Like her, he didn’t seem to have an easy time getting to know any of the others. Another loner, she thought. But that didn’t make her any more curious about him. During his first two weeks there, they didn’t speak to each other except for an inconsequential
excuse me
or
good night.
There was the one encounter in the woods, but if anything it made Jac stay farther away.

Then at the end of his second week, something occurred in art class that threw them together.

Blixer Rath was a Jungian-based clinic, so there was a strong emphasis on archetypes and symbolism. Every art class began with a “dream drawing warm-up.”

When Jac couldn’t remember her dreams, Miss Snell, her teacher, suggested she do a few moments of deep breathing before trying to recall the imagery. Once Jac was relaxed, something always came
to her, but she didn’t always remember dreaming it. Which was what happened that day.

Jac saw herself in a dark wood. She was taking oval-shaped white rocks, each the size of her hand or larger, from a pile and placing them in a circle. In its center sat an owl. The bird, still and silent, watched her intently. Once she was done and the ring complete, he began to speak to her in a language Jac could neither identify nor understand.

The L’Etoiles were Catholic but not religious. “Lapsed,” her mother used to say with a little laugh, and then as a postscript add a “thank God!” But Jac had been to church often enough to recognize the rhythm of the owl’s chanting and know it was either a blessing or a prayer. Except instead of the owl’s liturgy being comforting, it was ominous.

Jac opened her eyes. The dark forest was gone. She was in the art studio with the sun shining through the long slanting skylights, casting the room in a warm golden glow. Using a combination of soft and hard charcoal, she started to draw the stones. Concentrating deeply, she wasn’t aware of what the other students were doing or the passage of time.

She hadn’t yet attempted the owl, when suddenly it appeared, a shadow in the middle of the rocks. Without her drawing it. It took her a second to realize that someone was behind her.

Jac spun around.

Theo was leaning over her shoulder, looking at her drawing. Somehow his shadow had for a moment taken on a shape that conformed to the owl she’d seen in her dream.

He was standing so close that she could smell him. It was easy enough to pick out the notes of eucalyptus, honey, cinnamon, oakmoss and another ingredient she couldn’t identify.

“What are you sniffing at?” He had a British accent and he sounded almost insulted.

“Your cologne. I don’t recognize it.”

“Why should you?”

“My family is in the perfume business.”

“How odd,” he said.

“Why?”

“That’s my question,” he said tersely.

“What do you mean?”

“Why did you draw that?” He pointed to her sketch.

She shrugged. She didn’t know.

At sixteen he was already over six feet tall and very thin. He was all angles and planes except for his almost heart-shaped mouth, which softened his expression. He was wearing what he always wore: jeans and a white shirt. She noticed his skin, where his collar was open, was golden.