Seduction: A Novel of Suspense (24 page)

They would begin by meditating, opening themselves up to their connections, as he described it. And then Theo would lean forward and begin to kiss her.

Jac had kissed people before—as a thank-you, a good-bye, a hello, or a show of comfort or support. But those first kisses between them were none of those.

Each was an invitation to a world that was dark in the light and light in the dark. Each began with their lips pressed together but moved throughout her body. Each altered her so that she became feeling, not thought. His kisses found the parts of Jac that were waiting, dormant, and ready to bloom. They set off tiny sparks through her body. Her skin became so sensitive that if he just put one fingertip on her neck she’d spasm. He was the first boy who had ever touched her. Until Theo she hadn’t known the secret ways her body worked. Or the wonder of how someone else’s body could affect hers.

That May day she smelled Theo’s cologne of eucalyptus, honey, cinnamon and oakmoss laced with the lily of the valley and rosemary. The scents combined in a heady mix that made her feel as if she were floating, being held aloft by stem-and-leaf arms. She wasn’t sure if the flowers were kissing her or Theo was. But it didn’t matter. Those first kisses fed her. They began with taste. Sweet like honey, and fresh like mint. They gave her sustenance in a way that no food ever had, were delicious in the way only something you’ve never tasted before can be. They were both gentle and passionate. As light as the fragrance of the lilies and as deep as the color of the green rosemary. Those kisses were as much about discovery as they were about destination.

On previous days he’d brought wine or a joint. On that day he had brought neither. Instead he extracted a folded envelope, opened it and showed her what was inside. The dark and powdery irregular disk looked like dried leather and smelled of mold. He broke off a small piece and gave it to her. Then broke off an equally small piece, put it in his own mouth and chewed. She was frightened but also curious. And she wanted to be his companion on whatever journey he took.

As the mushroom invaded her bloodstream and altered her consciousness, Jac’s hearing became more attuned to the sounds of the forest. She listened to a chipmunk scurrying across a log, a bird chirping and water dripping. Her sense of smell, always intense and precise, was even more exaggerated. Resins, molds, the spicy and sharp scents of the woods, assaulted her.
The Perfume of Dark,
she thought, automatically playing the game she and her brother had indulged in for years.

“Shut your eyes,” Theo whispered.

He did. She didn’t. She wanted to be able to see. She watched Theo reach out, find and take her hands. As soon as he touched her and their connection was made, strange things began to happen. First she felt a warmth coming from the stones, as if heat were emanating from their cold surface.

Then the air around Theo began to waver, as if affected by another frequency.

They each had been given mantras to help them meditate and were told they were private—to hold close and keep secret and speak only inside their own minds. But Theo was chanting his, low and under his breath and just loud enough for her to hear. She listened to the foreign sounds. Felt compelled to mouth them also. She was chanting his mantra. Except the words didn’t sound Indian. They didn’t sound like any language she’d ever heard. These words had tastes.

Honey. Berries. Malt.

“Budh Vid Dru Budh Vid Dru Budh . . .”

Tastes of something bitter and burnt. Charred toast? Marshmallows crisped to ash?

Jac didn’t think this was the mantra the teachers at Blixer had given Theo. If it was, he was breaking yet another rule by speaking it out loud. Did that even matter anymore?

Jac felt the mixed emotions that came with doing something forbidden and risking danger all at the same time. She was exhilarated and scared. Theo had told her they were exploring Carl Jung’s shadow world. In search of something that would explain their strange connection to each other. That they needed to go beyond reality into the darkness where mystics and shamans quested for answers and find their own.

For several minutes, or a half hour, or even an hour—she didn’t know—the two of them sat on the pine-needle carpet and chanted. The sound became the wind. The birdsong. The rustle of the leaves. The roar of a distant waterfall.

Peace descended on Jac. Energy flowed out of her and into Theo through the tips of her fingers on her right hand into the tips of his left and back into her from the tips of his fingers on his right hand into the tips of her left. Centuries of understanding moved in them. She saw moving mandalas made of brilliantly colored yarn. Elaborately woven designs like the sacred Buddhist art she’d seen in books in her grandfather’s library and that Malachai used in their therapy sessions, but now come to life and given dimension.

And then she realized she wasn’t just looking at them, she was inside them. She was the red thread, Theo was the blue. They were each creating patterns as they circled each other, moving closer and closer to the center, where she knew they would become the very oneness the drawings were supposed to help the viewer find.

Sitting together in the sun, in the woods, Theo was taking her on a journey into the cosmic soup of eternity.

As these thoughts welled up in her, she felt as if she was finally understanding concepts she’d always been confused by. And being introduced to thoughts she’d never even contemplated before. Time was disappearing. In this new dimension everything that had ever happened to her and to Theo existed on the same plane. All their histories were present in the same moment. The two of them were connected through all these events, tied to each other through their overlapping pasts. Tangled up in the threads of each other’s lives.

And then he let go of her hands and broke the connection.

In a great rush all the sounds and smells and sensations left her.

Theo had left her too. He’d risen up and was running away from her, running through the woods. Fast, as if he were being chased. She ran after him, calling out his name.

She couldn’t catch up, but she managed to keep her pace steady so he remained in her sight.

At first she was so intent on following him that she didn’t focus
on where they were going. Then she realized they were going up a staircase of rough stone carved in the mountain. Up. Up. Farther up. She hated that she couldn’t see where the steps were leading. All their hikes before had been on sloping hills with gentle inclines. But this landscape was different. They were on a rising path that hung out over the forest. At every turn Jac saw a threatening edge. But she kept going, following him.

And then he stopped. He’d reached the summit. He dropped to his knees. Knelt on an outcropping of rock. His head dropped into his hands. His back shook. He was in some kind of crisis. She barely heard his choked sobs over the sound of the rushing water. No, they weren’t sobs, they were two words he was saying over and over.

“I can’t,” he said, as he beat his fist on the dirt. “I can’t. I can’t.”

The heartbreak of a lifetime in just two broken words.

Slowly she climbed the last half-dozen steps, trying not to look at what lay beyond. How far a drop was it? If he fell would he survive? Would she? Panic washed over her. She couldn’t keep going. But she couldn’t leave him there. Her breath was shallow. Jac could feel her heart racing. She forced the last few steps and finally reached Theo.

The rock where he was kneeling was hanging out over a large pool of cool blue water being fed by a waterfall. Dizziness overwhelmed her. What if she lost her balance? Tumbled headfirst into the water? She retreated two steps. Three. Four. She was starting to panic. Wanted to run away. But she knew she couldn’t. She had to get him away from the edge.

Using the method Malachai had showed her, Jac took a deep breath, inhaling to the count of four. Held the breath in to the count of four. Then exhaled to the count of four. Then held to the count of four. And then repeated the exercise.

If she couldn’t control her anxiety, she wasn’t going to be able to help him. And he needed help. He had stood up now and was perched even closer to the edge of the rock.

Jac pushed herself back up those four last steps and approached Theo. Should she talk to him or not? Was he even aware of her? If she startled him, he might try to get away, fall over the edge, somehow
take her with him. For a moment she was absolutely certain that his action was going to be her destruction no matter what she did. That by being with him she had doomed herself. But that was crazy.

Go, grab him, pull him backward, save him.

No, run the other way, down the hill and away from here. Save yourself.

It was as if she had two totally separate sets of emotions fighting a battle inside her.

Jac watched his hair wave in the breeze, his long, lithe body shake with sobs.

“Theo?” she whispered. “Theo, it’s me, Jac.” She inched closer. “We have to get off this ledge.”

She didn’t look down, just kept her eyes on him.

“Theo? We have to get off the ledge. Take my hand.”

He didn’t respond.

She crept closer, then reached out and very gently and slowly took his hand. He didn’t resist, but his fingers were icy. For a few moments both of them stayed like that, rooted to the spot. Her hand holding his. A skin-and-bones, flesh-and-sinew connection. She clung to his hand to bridge the gap between her fear, his survival and hers.

“Theo, what is wrong?” she asked.

His only answer was to take a single step closer to the ledge, pulling her with him.

She didn’t want to, didn’t mean to, but she let go of his hand. She couldn’t follow him. But if she didn’t, what would happen to him? She should grab him again, keep talking, and try to get him to retreat. But to do that she’d have to step out farther on the rock.

The sky rapidly and unexpectedly turned gray. Even though Jac knew the clouds had moved in front of the sun, it seemed as if Theo himself were sucking up the light. She was worried that in this sudden darkness, she might lose her footing, might step off the ledge.

But she wanted to step off the ledge.

Suddenly Jac wasn’t afraid of the dizzying height. Instead, she wanted to accept its invitation and jump.

What was wrong with her? Whatever drug Theo had given her was producing hallucinations worse than any she’d suffered at home.
Those were confusing but at least linear. They were fragments of made-up stories. This was just terrible chaos.

The sun was still behind the clouds. Jac was cold. Spray from the waterfall was blowing back on her. Soaking through her clothes. The rocks below her feet were slippery. Wet rocks, wet soles. Easy to fall. Wanting to fall. Fear. Longing. The push-pull of conflicting needs.

The part of Jac that was worried about the fall was not afraid of the water. She was a good swimmer, having spent endless hours at the beach in the south of France with her grandmother and brother. She loved the surf. The smooth sand. Even the waves when they were a little rough. She reminded herself of that now. Even if she did fall, it would be into water. She would swim. The drop really wasn’t that far.

There was no other option.

Reaching out, Jac took Theo’s hand once more. They were connected again. She felt safer. Then more terrorized. Safety. Terror. All that kept her from falling was his hand. What propelled her forward was his hand. Where their cold skin was touching felt suddenly hot, like molten metal, bonding them, soldering them. Even if she wanted to let go, she couldn’t anymore. They had merged.

Maybe he would jump and decide her fate for her. She was incapable of action. As desperate to step back as to step forward. To throw herself over the edge. To back up away from the edge.

Theo was talking to her now. Saying something, but she couldn’t make out what. The waterfall was too loud. It was too beautiful. She pulled away. Finally free. His fingers were no longer clutching hers. The water was coming up to meet her, and then it was cold. So very cold.

Jac didn’t remember what had happened when she woke hours later in the infirmary at Blixer Rath. The images in her head were a mixed-up jumble. She knew she’d fallen. Had she really jumped? Why would she have done that? Yet that was what she remembered. That and the cold. The terrible cold of the lake. Of endings. Of loss.

There were no memories at all about how she got out of the water and back to Blixer. Or what had happened to Theo.

The nurse took her temperature and seemed relieved. When Jac asked why, she said the doctor had been worried about hypothermia.

Jac fell asleep again and when she next woke up, Malachai Samuels was sitting beside her bed. For fifteen minutes he asked her questions about what had happened. But she couldn’t remember most of it. She was tired. Her head hurt, she told him.

Had she hit her head?

She didn’t know that either.

When she woke up next it was daylight and her headache was gone. When the nurse came in to check on her, Jac asked about Theo and the nurse said he was fine. But she said it in an odd way that made Jac suspicious. When Malachai returned to visit with her that afternoon, she asked him about Theo too.

Theo had gone home, Malachai said.

“When will he be back? I need to talk to him about what happened. He’ll be able to help me understand.”

“He’s gone home for good,” Malachai said. “He’s not coming back.”

She’d asked Malachai if she could write to him and thank him because she’d finally remembered it had been Theo who’d jumped in after her and pulled her out and then half dragged, half carried her back to the clinic. But Malachai had said no, that it was best if she not write him just yet. He was having a hard time.

What did that mean? she’d asked.

“It’s confidential, Jac. I can’t talk about another patient with you.”

“He’s not another patient, he’s my friend.” She felt tears pricking her eyes but held them back. She never cried.

 • • • 

Since Jac arrived in Jersey, she hadn’t talked to Theo about his last day at Blixer Rath seventeen years ago. But she needed to now. As they continued walking on the beach, she said, “I felt lost without you after you left Blixer.”