The Collector of Dying Breaths (18 page)

Closier was writhing beneath my tongue, and I played with her a little bit longer, knowing that the more I waited, the greater would be my release. Finally she arched under me. Then came that odd tightening of her muscles, and I knew she was caught up in her own pleasure and enjoying “la petite mort,” as the French call it. So apt a name for it too. For is it not a little death? A short time when your thoughts disappear and you become nothing but your own body.

I had heard men and women talk of romantic love and wondered what that must be like. I knew other kinds of love. For Catherine, my savior, the strong, willful, intelligent woman who I believed I would die to protect. For my creations. For Serapino, my beloved teacher, protector and family. But passionate love? No, that compartment of my heart had never opened. I satisfied myself with moments such as the one I was enjoying with Closier.

As I slowly entered her body, gliding in on her slickness, I felt the red hot-blooded warmth of her engulf me and surround me and throb to welcome me. It did not take long then. From her breathing I knew she had already exhausted herself, and I remembered she was not easy to please twice in one session.

I thrust into her deeply, again, and then again, and then let go with wonderful abandon, feeling elation and release.

As she cleaned up and I poured her a bit more wine, I asked her when the court was next leaving Paris. I was pretending to have forgotten that she’d been about to tell me something before our trysting began.

“The prince wants to go to Fontainebleau,” she said and then remembered that she had gossip to share. “The most interesting development, René. The prince has been to visit Catherine every night for the last week and he has been more passionate than ever. I can tell from the look in her eyes.”

“Really?” I asked, trying to sound only mildly interested.

“Yes, and Catherine is giving you the credit. She says it is your perfume, René. She has told me he is more aroused with her and that he does things to her that he never did before.”

“The things I do to you?” I leaned forward and kissed her lightly on the cheek—in that moment so pleased by the news I needed to express myself.

She giggled and then continued. “There’s more gossip too. Diane de Poitiers seems to have taken to her bed because of it. She sleeps and sleeps. The doctors have been called, but they can’t find any malady.”

“How upsetting,” I said, feigning surprise and then curiosity. “She just sleeps?”

“They are saying that the prince must have turned away from her or that she’s found out about his new passion for his wife and it’s depressed her so much that she is looking for solace in dreams. Why are you smiling at this news, René? What is your secret? You have the most inscrutable eyes. I can’t tell what you are thinking at all.”

I didn’t tell her, but at that moment I was thinking about Ruggieri and that I had bested him in this round of the dangerous game we were playing against each other.

Chapter 21

THE PRESENT

THURSDAY, MARCH 20

BARBIZON, FRANCE

He’d called her an hour ago—the last voice she’d expected to hear, the only voice she’d wanted to hear—and told her that he was at the inn in town and wanted to know if she could meet him. Jac had been expecting Griffin to send her the results in an email or via a package. Not to bring them to her in person.

When she asked why he was in France, he said he’d explain everything when he saw her.

And now they were in the lobby of the hotel, and she was smelling his wonderful lemon-and-honey-and-musk scent and wanted to cry. Why did she have to keep losing this man?
This
was who she was meant to be with. And yet he’d caused her more pain and longing, more lost lonely nights than anyone else in her life. She should hate him. But she couldn’t. He was in her blood.

Jac’s whole body vibrated like a violin string, reverberating from just this one brief embrace. Griffin let her go. She didn’t want him to. She wanted to stay within the familiar world created by his arms. Wanted to keep smelling his skin. No matter how much time passed, no matter how long it had been since she’d seen him last, as soon as they were together, she felt connected to him. No man had ever affected her on such a deep visceral level. Never had she met anyone who just glancing at across a room made blood rush to her face and heat her skin.

It was chemical. No, alchemical. Their connection was a combustion. Separate elements, when combined, caused a unique reaction. Just looking at his cheekbones, at the fine skin. His full lower lip. The thick hair shot through with gray. The hooded eyes. She always wanted to laugh at her first response to seeing him after any time had gone by—she actually felt weak. The word “swoon” had been created for this response, she thought, not for the first time. This man’s unintentional physical power over her scared her.

“I thought that it would be better to explain all this in person,” he said and smiled. “Would you like to have a glass of wine?”

“Yes, I would. I’m still in shock that you’re here, in Barbizon.”

“You need help, don’t you?”

He pulled out a chair.

Jac was caught off guard. She had never doubted that once Griffin had loved her. She’d been sure of it. At least for a time. And she had never doubted that he was attracted to her still. The week they’d spent in Paris, searching for Robbie, had proved that to her. But she had no idea if she was important to him. Or how deep his affection still went. She didn’t know if he thought about her the same way that she thought about him. He had been the single most important romantic relationship in her life. The one by which every other was measured.

“It’s a crazy coincidence that you’re here today,” she said and watched his face. Did he remember they’d met on this very date when she was seventeen years old?

“There are no coincidences.” He smiled.

“It’s troublesome that both you and my brother got to know Malachai. I can’t seem to escape him and his belief system.”

“Well, I’d tie it back to Jung myself. I was already quite familiar with the theory before I met your good doctor.”

“So if it’s not a coincidence, then you chose today on purpose?”

“You ask questions you don’t need to ask. You always have. You never have faith.”

“What do you mean?” she asked.

“I’m here. Do you really need to ask why?” He pulled something out of his pocket. “But this should answer your concerns.”

Jac looked down at the long thin package wrapped in silver paper with a silver satin ribbon. With fingers that shook just a little, she untied it and found a velvet jeweler’s box. Gingerly, she opened it.

Inside were two battered silver disks hanging on a silken cord. Each was shaped like a rose petal and studded with very small rubies that sparkled like drops of blood.

The smaller of the petals hung over the larger.

The first was engraved with the words:
One Day
.

The second with:
At A Time
.

“I had it made for you.”

She turned to him and took a breath. She wanted to ask exactly what message he was trying to give her because she didn’t want to misinterpret anything. Instead she simply said: “It’s very beautiful.” She hoped she didn’t sound as moved as she was.

He lifted the amulet out of the box and slipped it over her neck.

She felt as if she were a warrior in a myth putting a mantle on. Preparing for battle. She told Griffin that.

“What battle, Jac? I hope not with me.”

“Maybe with you.” She laughed.

And he laughed with her. “Seriously,” he said. “What battle?”

“I don’t know actually. I’ve walked into something here at the château, and I’m not sure what it is or what to make of it.”

Over a bottle of rosé, she told him about the house and the laboratory. About Serge and Melinoe and how Malachai seemed so keen that she should come that she’d almost not come.

“Robbie told me a fair amount about the breaths and the bell coverings,” Griffin said, “but very little about the history or the people involved. We were so focused on the translations we didn’t get to the rest.”

Jac heard the wistfulness in his voice. “You miss him too, don’t you?”

“Yes. But it’s not as hard for anyone as it is for you. He was all the family you had, and now you’re alone.”

She nodded. Yes, alone. She thought about it every morning when she woke up. Every night before she went to sleep. Once they had been a family—brother, sister, mother, father, grandparents—and now they were all gone. Only the people on the edges—cousins and aunts and uncles—were left. Yes, she was forging deeper relationships with them, but it wasn’t the same.

“I’m alone, yes. But it’s not as difficult as I would have imagined,” she said, and then she told Griffin the secret that she hadn’t told anyone:

“I’m not sure if he’s really gone.”

“Of course he isn’t. You’ll never really lose him.”

“No. That’s not what I mean. I actually feel him, Griffin. Some part of him hasn’t left. It is as if Robbie’s hovering. Sometimes I can even hear him talking to me. He’s waiting for something.”

She could tell from the expression on his face that Griffin was worried about her now.

“It’s very understandable that you’d feel he was still with you,” he said slowly.

“I know what you think—at first I thought that too, that it was just my imagination creating a presence for me because I wasn’t ready to lose him. So I could have him with me and not have to say good-bye. When I let the people from the mortuary take his body away, I remembered how he used to talk about our mother’s death. That it was only a death of her body. Not her soul. Robbie believed in reincarnation so completely. He used to call the body an envelope for the soul.”

The waiter came over and asked if they’d like to order lunch. The interruption brought her back to the reality around her with a start.

“You okay with just the wine for a while longer?” Griffin asked.

She nodded.

He told the waiter they needed more time. Once he was gone, Griffin pulled Jac closer to him and touched her cheek with his fingers. She felt the familiar roughness. His skin was callused from spending half his life on digs. She shut her eyes as a knife of longing cut through her. Jac didn’t want to want him. But it seemed as if she were preprogrammed against her will to react to him.

“What are you really doing here? Why did you bring me a gift?” She knew her voice sounded angry. She didn’t care. Half of her hated him for walking away from her all those years ago. For throwing out a life that they could have been sharing. Children that would have been theirs. And then a second knife went through her as she thought about the miscarriage she’d suffered eighteen months ago. A chance encounter with him after eleven years that had resulted in a pregnancy he’d never found out about.
She’d
been the one to push him away, on no uncertain terms, because they weren’t good for each other. Not in any lifetime.

“I’m here because your brother asked me to help him solve a mystery and I agreed. Now you’ve taken up the same quest, and I know he’d want me to help you.”

“So this is all about Robbie?”

“No, not all of it.” He smiled. “And you know that.” Griffin drank more of his wine. “Jac, I need to tell you what happened after I left you in Paris and went back to New York. I tried everything I could to put what happened in perspective. I told myself it was an event out of time. That because we were searching for Robbie, our emotions were strained. But those were just rationalizations. Our coming together after so long was . . . Jac . . . it was a miracle. I had forgotten what it was like to be with someone so completely. To not hold back.”

She sipped her wine. Kept her eyes down. Played with the silver petals hanging around her neck. She wanted to hear this, and yet she didn’t.

“Why didn’t you fight harder in Paris for me to stay?” he asked.

“Let’s not do this,” Jac said. “I appreciate that you are here now. I love my gift. I will gladly accept your help in translating the bell jars. But I don’t want to talk about the past. Or the future. I can’t.”

“And you can’t tell me why?”

“There’s nothing to tell. You’d said you weren’t sure your marriage was over. I didn’t want to fight your wife for you.”

“Yes, I know that’s the reason you gave me. But there was more, wasn’t there?”

Jac didn’t answer.

“Robbie told me about the reincarnation memories you were having in Paris and that you thought we’d been together in two different lives and in both I died because of you.”

“Robbie told you that?”

Griffin nodded.

Jac wanted to curse her brother for breaking her confidence, but she knew why he’d done it—he was so certain she was wrong and that she and Griffin belonged together.

“I don’t know that they were reincarnation memories. That’s what Robbie and Malachai believed.”

“But you believe they might be—enough so that you’re afraid that you’ve been bad for me before and would be again?”

“It sounds ludicrous when I hear it out loud.” And it did. Maybe even more so now that almost two years had passed since they’d been together in Paris.

“But it’s why you pushed me to go. To save me from you?”

“What difference does it make now?” she asked.

“I went back to New York not knowing you’d sacrificed so much for me. I think that makes a difference.”

“I can’t see how.”

Griffin leaned forward and kissed her. She tasted the wine on his lips. She smelled his cologne. She heard the barkeep popping a cork. Somewhere in the distance two men were talking. One second she was completely conscious of every sound and taste and smell, and then it all disappeared. Jac was aware only of the embrace. Of her life narrowing down to the pressure on her lips. Of the complete rightness of this kiss and at the same time the wonder of it.

She was remembering what she’d thought she’d forgotten. The way he held her when he kissed her, with his hands on either side of her face. The specific pressure of his lips moving on hers. The two-ness of them was woven into the fabric of who she was. This memory of him was so deep, she always had felt if she pulled the string of it and followed it, she’d wind up—where? The feeling of his palms on her cheeks, of his breath inside of her, of his hair brushing her face. It felt familiar in another way too. This was how the other women she’d been in the past had known him.

When he pulled back, she had to force her mind to make sense of where she was. Had to remind herself nothing had changed. She was still his poison.

“I’m not married anymore,” he said as if he were reading her mind. “And the only thing that you can do to harm me is to push me away again.”

She was shaking her head. She couldn’t go through this again. She’d wanted this man her whole life, but she was so frightened by the old visions, she couldn’t bring herself to act on her true feelings.

“I believe in ghosts too, Jac. I believe in the unknown. I’ve slept in the pyramids and am sure that there are things mankind used to know that we have lost. I believe in dimensions beyond this one. In secrets the universe has yet to give up. That there may be life in other galaxies. Not because of magic but because of deep science. But I can’t accept that two people who feel the way we do for each other can be toxic for each other. I’ve studied reincarnation for years. I’ve read ancient Greek treatises on metempsychosis and what Pythagoras wrote about the transmigration of the soul. I want to believe it—yet I remain on the fence. What I am convinced of, though, is this: even if there is reincarnation and we are absolutely reborn over and over in new bodies, our karma is not a
prison
. We are
not
doomed to repeat the past. We are invited to change our fate and repair past damages and write a new script. There is no logic to your scenario, Jac. What purpose would there be to coming back if we had no choice but to live a predetermined path? You can’t believe that even if we were together before and hurt each other, that means we’re destined to hurt each other again.”

“But we have. You almost died because of me in Paris.”

“I almost died because a criminal with a gun shot at you and I pushed you out of the way and was hurt. Jac, please.” He put his hands on her shoulders and pulled her toward him so she was twisted around, facing him again. “You can’t throw us away because of something you don’t even believe yourself.”

“I don’t want to . . .”

“But?”

She shrugged. She tried to think. The wine, the physical closeness of him, the surreal circumstances of him being here . . . everything was suddenly very complicated.

“How about we try it my way?” Griffin said. “Let me help you translate the formulas—if they even are formulas—and get to the end of what Robbie started. Then, when we’re done, we’ll figure out what’s next. Okay? Can you just give us that much of a chance? A little more time before you doom us forever?”

She was looking at him, into his eyes, seeing the one face that was the only face she ever wanted to see. That he was here again was almost a miracle. While she was trying to figure it all out, he kissed her again.