Seduction: A Novel of Suspense (37 page)

“The pile of stones I’ve been obsessed with my whole life,” Theo said.

“My home,” Jac said, not realizing she’d said the word
my
. She was picturing it in her mind now, not seeing the ruin deep in the forest, but a home fragrant with food cooking on the hearth, a man and his wife making love.

Jac started to shiver. She had come to Jersey to get away from Malachai’s incessant talk of reincarnation. Ruefully, she thought of Oedipus and the futility of trying to escape your fate.
But she didn’t believe in fate
. She looked at Minerva. Jac felt as if she was standing on the edge of sanity. Was there a whole episode of her life that she knew nothing about?

“Did Malachai believe that I had Theo’s memories at Blixer and they somehow caused the accident? Is that why he wiped the incident from my memory like erasing chalk from a blackboard?”

“Yes. Malachai hypnotized you, but to protect you. He wanted to block you from having any more past-life regressions until he could understand better what had happened. He was afraid of how dangerous they were for you. He said that you were lost in memories, Jac. In Theo’s memories. That he couldn’t get you back. Like you were today. It scared him. He’d never seen anything quite like it. It’s one thing to remember fragments of your own past life, but to remember someone else’s . . .”

“And he told you all this tonight on the phone? Before he told me?”

“I’m a therapist. I’m here with you now, and something happened to you today that concerns me medically.”

“But if he hypnotized me to stop me from having past life memories, why is he so convinced I was having them in Paris this summer?”

“You’ll have to ask him. I don’t know anything about this summer,” Minerva said.

“But you think that what he described is what happened to me again today?”

“I do.”

“You said Malachai has never heard of anyone having someone else’s memories before. Have you?” It was Eva asking.

“No. But I’m not an expert,” Minerva said. “I haven’t studied reincarnation or regression the way Malachai has.”

Jac stood up. She didn’t know if her anger was greater than her fear. Or which made her stumble. She would have crashed into the glass coffee table if Theo hadn’t grabbed her by the arm and steadied her. Only hours ago she had believed he’d been the one in trouble. The one who was damaged. The one who needed help. Now he was helping her.

“Where are you going?” he asked.

“I need to call Malachai.”

 • • • 

“You were in danger,” Malachai said on the other end of the phone. “You weren’t yourself. You became belligerent. You pushed Theo away, he fell—and then you threw yourself off the cliff.”

“How do you know this?”

Jac was sitting on a green couch in the library. The tweed weave was made up of more than just one color yarn. There were three or four shades of blue from cobalt to turquoise. And there were three shades of green: emerald, lime and pine. A turquoise thread had come loose, and Jac tried to tuck it back as she listened to Malachai explain his actions.

“In the days before the incident, I’d become concerned. Your attitude was changing. You were becoming rebellious in a way that didn’t fit your progress or personality. I was fairly sure that Theo had drugs and was sharing them with you. And when you didn’t come back from your walk on time that day, I went looking for you. When I finally found you, you were in a deep state of regression. I saw what happened. Saw you jump. Saw Theo go after you. When you came out, you weren’t yourself. You were the person whose life you were remembering. And you remained in that state for a long time, and I couldn’t bring you back.”

“Why do you think I was remembering a past life that wasn’t my own?”

“Because of the regressions I’d done with Theo. Because of the drawings you did.”

“So who exactly was I?”

“I was never sure.”

She heard a hesitation in his voice. “What aren’t you saying?” He’d sounded almost flustered, and she’d never heard him like that before. Malachai was the master of control.

“I’m telling you what I know.”

“Tell me more than you know. Tell me what you think.” Jac had wanted to scream it. It was all she could do to keep her voice under control. “Why weren’t you sure who I was channeling—”

“Regressions aren’t channeling, that’s—”

“I just found out you hypnotized me when I was fourteen years old and I never knew it. I’m not really interested in semantics right now, okay?”

“Jac, please—”

“Why weren’t you sure who I was?” she interrupted.

“You weren’t speaking English.”

“So I reverted back to French. Why is that unusual?”

“No, Jac. You weren’t talking French either. As far as I could tell, you were conversing in an ancient tongue. A mix of old Irish and Welsh. I wasn’t able to follow what you were saying, but it was clear you were devastated and in despair and didn’t want to live. You had jumped off the ridge trying to kill yourself.”

Jac took a deep breath. Tried to remember that day. Going out for the walk. The kissing and touching that at fourteen were monumental and astonishing. How they’d made a stone circle and sat inside it and Theo had given her a piece of mushroom. Finally waking up in the infirmary with Malachai by her cot.

There was a large gap. A chunk of her life that was missing. She’d never thought about it before.

“Tell me about today, Jac. Tell me what it was like in comparison to the regression episodes you had in Paris this summer.”

“I don’t want to do this, I want to—”

He interrupted. “Listen to me. I know how resistant you are. I’m not sure why. But I can tell you this. I have never worked with anyone who could remember for other people. You can. And Theo isn’t the only one whose past lives you’ve been able to access. From the work we did at Blixer, I realized you have a very unusual ability to remember for—”

“Is there more work we did that I don’t remember? How much of my memory did you get rid of?”

“We got permission from your grandmother to do two more hypnosis sessions.”

“And?”

“You were able to remember memories that corresponded to other students’ regressions.”

“This is impossible.” Jac cradled the phone and crossed her arms over her chest.

“After those sessions your grandmother and I decided that until we could understand more about your ability, we needed to put it on hold. It wasn’t a dangerous process. While you were under hypnosis, I suggested you stop having any more spontaneous past-life memories. I taught you to block them.”

“But you think I was having regressions all summer. How can that be?”

“I think the memories were so strong they simply, finally, broke through.” He let that sink in for a moment. “Jac, can you tell me what today’s episode was like in comparison to the episodes you had earlier this summer?”

She was still angry, still wanted to fight. But even more, she wanted to understand. Because there was a difference, and it did fit what he was telling her. And now her fear was stronger than her rancor. So she answered him. “Before I came to Jersey, when I was in Paris, I felt as if the scenes I saw were my own dreams. That regardless of whether they were past-life regressions or hallucinations, they tapped into what you taught me. What Jung called my own mythical pasts.”

“Quite right. Most people say regressions feel like memories. Something like rewatching a movie you’ve seen multiple times before.”

“Today, it wasn’t like that. What I saw didn’t come from me. Whether what happened earlier this summer was me remembering a past life or inventing one, it came out of my own psychic DNA. I can’t explain it—”

“You are doing extremely well. Keep going.”

“In Paris the stories made some kind of intuitive sense. What I saw today was totally foreign. It didn’t come from my core.”

“No, it didn’t. That’s right.”

“How do you know?”

“I believe it’s the same thing that happened to you when you were fourteen. An intense regression into someone else’s memory bank.”

“But how is that possible?” she whispered.

Once again she was faced with a dilemma. Believe in a psychic world that didn’t fit with her rational worldview, or accept that she might be losing her mind and had deeper psychological problems than she could even guess.

“We don’t know. As I said, it’s rare. Through deep meditation and hypnosis, receptive people can revisit their past lives in order to find their karmic crises and repair them. Experience again what was left unfinished. Learn what needs to be done. That’s not dangerous—that’s progress. It’s cathartic. Unusual but not unheard of. You know how many cultures revere those who are able to remember their pasts. But it’s almost unheard of to be able to remember someone else’s past life. We are not meant to take on other people’s psychic debts and crimes. We are not equipped to feel the weight of our own souls’ needs and theirs. I’m nervous, Jac. I didn’t want you to go to Jersey. I think you should come home.”

“What?”

“Come home, now. I told you before you left and I am telling you again, I think you might be in danger. Psychic danger. At Blixer Rath you remembered Theo’s past life. You were trapped in his karmic grief and almost couldn’t come out of it. You slipped back there today. What happens if you go there again and you really do get lost? What happens if you have a psychotic break? You can’t take that chance.”

“Did you throw him out when he needed help in order to protect me?” Jac remembered waking up in the clinic and finding out Theo was gone. How hurt she’d been that he hadn’t said good-bye. How strange it was that no one could give her a real reason he’d left.

“One of you had to go, and he’d been breaking the rules. He would have been asked to leave anyway. He was stealing liquor and getting drugs sent to him. He didn’t belong at Blixer Rath. And you don’t belong with him in Jersey.”

“But the real reason you had him sent home was to protect me.” She felt terribly guilty. What if because of her, Theo had not gotten the treatment he needed and deserved? If because of her, Theo had not been able to complete what might have been his best hope for healing? How would she be able to reconcile herself to that?

“The two of you were toxic for each other,” Malachai said. He was always so calm, so soft-spoken, and so erudite, but she thought his voice was straining now. If she could see his face, maybe she could read him better. Still, he was the king of enigmatic; if he didn’t want her to know something, she wouldn’t.

“One thing I don’t understand”—she laughed sardonically—“of the million things I don’t understand is that Minerva told me you hypnotized me to protect me from having any more past-life regressions.”

“Yes.”

“But you are convinced that my memories broke through and I had past-life regressions this summer in Paris.”

“Yes.”

“But why? Why in Paris? How do you explain that?”

“I think that the fragrance you found in your brother’s laboratory in Paris had something to do with it. You are extremely olfactory-sensitive. I’d guess that you smelled something today that affected you again, and that’s why you had a spontaneous regression.

“Jac, I want—”

“I don’t care what you want. You screwed with my head and never told me. You were my doctor and you kept secrets from me. You hypnotized me without my consent.”

“Stop. Think. Remember. I could never have hypnotized you without your consent. Your subconscious won’t allow it. We had hypnosis sessions all the time, didn’t we?”

“Yes.”

“Try to remember the one after the incident on the mountain. You went in and out of knowing who you were. You’d taken on Theo’s broken soul. After the incident you had crippling headaches. Do you remember those?”

“Yes.” And now she did. She had forgotten that.

“We worked on them in hypnosis, and I suggested to you that, because of the journey you’d taken, you not allow yourself to go into the past again. I wanted to give you the power to protect yourself.”

“And you think I still need protecting because of something I did while I was stoned when I was fourteen? This is all crazy. I’m here to study Celtic myths and I’m staying. This island is a treasure trove of historical ruins. The ones we saw today look barely disturbed and appear to me as complete as they were thousands of years ago. I’m not ready to leave.”

“What do you mean that they are as complete as they were thousands of years ago? How do you know that?”

Jac thought for a moment. It
had
been an odd thing to say.

“Tell me what you were doing today when you had the memory surge,” Malachai asked with new insistence in his voice.

“I can’t go through this again.”

He sighed. “Jac, I am sorry. I have never done anything for any reason except to try to help you.”

“You kept everything a secret.”

“The plan was always to reveal it to you. Your grandmother and I talked about it at length and she planned to tell you after you left Blixer and were back home.”

“She didn’t.”

“No. When you first returned from Blixer, she was so relieved at how well you had recovered and how healthy you had become, she wanted to give you some time. Then you chose to live in America, and she didn’t want to tell you before you left in case it caused you some kind of stress. We talked, she and I, several times over the years. She always made me promise that if she died without telling you, and if you ever needed to know, I would tell you.”

“And you never found a reason?”

“No, not till now, no.”

Jac picked at the aqua thread again, rubbing it between her fingers, pulling at it now. A little, and a little more until she had drawn it out. She wrapped it around her forefinger, like a ring. Of everyone in her life who was still alive, Malachai and her brother Robbie were the only
two people she truly trusted. They were both always there. Her constants. Her security. Now her confidence in Malachai was threatened. He’d kept something back from her. Something key and intrinsic to who she was.

“If you are totally determined not to come back, please, at least, indulge me for a few more minutes. If we can figure out what you did today to cause the regression, maybe we can figure out how to make sure it won’t happen again. What were you doing when it started? Where were you?”