Seduction: A Novel of Suspense (19 page)

Moving closer to her, he spoke softly, as if he didn’t want anyone else to hear.

“You need to see something,” he said. “Come with me.”

It wasn’t a request. It was a demand. And there was a hint of desperation in his voice that she couldn’t ignore.

He took her hand. His touch was urgent. And Jac felt as if something important were about to happen. But all he did was lead her to his worktable, and sketchbook. She’d seen him sketching in the dining room and during other classes. Now that she thought about it, she realized he was never without that book.

Opening it, Theo flipped through some pages. Jac noticed elaborate, detailed and complex drawings, but they went by too fast for her to decipher. Finally he stopped on a page close to the middle and shoved it at her.

“Look at this,” he whispered.

Jac’s sketch was nowhere as experienced or sophisticated as this one. Theo had real talent. But the composition was the same.

In Theo’s drawing an owl was encircled by stones.

“I don’t understand,” she said.

“This was what I dreamed about last night. And look . . .” He flipped to an earlier part of the sketchbook. “I’ve drawn it before. I’ve drawn it for years, Jac. It’s a place I know. From home.”

She didn’t know what to say.

“Have you ever looked through this book? Did I leave it somewhere?” It wasn’t an accusation. He seemed to be genuinely asking.

“No. It’s your private property. I don’t go snooping through other people’s things.”

“Don’t be upset. I won’t mind if you had. In fact I’d be relieved.”

“Why relieved?”

“It would explain what’s happened.”

“Well, I didn’t. I’ve seen you carry your sketchbook around, but I’ve never seen inside it.”

“How could this happen then?”

Jac shook her head.

“You had my dream.”

“That’s not possible.” But she was staring at the drawing. At the details. They hadn’t each just drawn similar random rocks. They were identical. The stones’ shapes and contours were the same.

That afternoon, in therapy, Jac told Malachai about what had happened.

“Have you and Theo talked to each other much before today?” he asked.

“No, not at all. I saw him once on a walk . . .” She was remembering the odd way he’d looked at her the first time when she’d come upon him sitting in her favorite spot.

“Did you do any reading in your mythology books that could have suggested that image?”

“Not that I can think of, no.”

“Did it seem familiar to you when you were drawing it?”

“No. In fact I was thinking that I didn’t remember dreaming it at all.”

They spent another few minutes searching for a clue but couldn’t find any.

“You seem almost pleased that I can’t find a connection,” Jac finally said.

“Why would I seem pleased?”

“You’ve been talking about how you want me to open myself up to the collective unconscious and accept that I might be more influenced by it than I realize. You keep saying you think that the keys to my hallucinations are there. You think that’s what this is.”

“You’re not pleased, though, are you?”

“No. I’m frustrated.”

“Why?”

“I don’t know. It’s all silly anyway. It’s just a coincidence,” she said, shrugging.

“I don’t want you to think of anything as ‘just’ a coincidence,” Malachai reminded her. “Have you been noticing more of them lately?”

“No.”

“Are you paying attention? Writing them down?”

She shrugged again. “Why can’t it just be a coincidence? You said there are some.”

“Certainly, there are chance occurrences. But few things are of random causality, especially when you’re in therapy and your defenses are down. Jac, I can give you logical explanations for what happened today. Maybe Theo was in the library with his sketchbook open to the drawing of the rock circle and you might have walked by and seen it without realizing it. Your unconscious could have stored it on a subliminal level. But even so, that wouldn’t mean it was coincidence that you drew it today. Jung didn’t believe in accidents. He proposed that resonance happens because we are functioning on more than our conscious level. I’d like you to think about the idea that there is a force we don’t see but it ties matter, energy and consciousness together. Mystics have always been aware of it, from the Egyptians to the Sufis to the Native American Indians. In the twelfth century alchemists called it magic. They could see it. Jung postulated that modern man has trained himself not to see magic and to conform. It’s how traditional religion has influenced us in order to exert more control over us.”

Jac appreciated that Malachai never spoke down to her. Like her grandfather, he made her feel they were intellectual equals and there was no subject she wasn’t capable of grasping despite her age. And she did understand what he was talking about, she just didn’t believe it. She was certain there was randomness operating in the universe. That not every accident contained meaning. It would be too exhausting to live otherwise. If all those connections between people were
threaded together, they’d create an impassable web. You’d be trapped in causality, in fate.

Later that afternoon Jac was in the library studying when Theo stopped by her table and asked her to take a walk with him. She hesitated. Something about his intensity made her unsure and maybe a little afraid. But at the same time she felt pulled to him. And her excitement won out over the fear.

On the path down to the lake, he said he’d been confused about their drawings and that he’d discussed the incident with Malachai. “Did you tell him too?”

Jac hesitated. “We’re not supposed to talk about details of our therapy sessions.”

He looked at her incredulously. “Do you actually follow their rules?”

She nodded. “Since I’ve been here I’ve been better. They must know what they are doing. I don’t want to mess that up.”

“But there’s no way your telling me what Malachai said about the drawings could mess up your progress. Think about it. You and I had the same damn dream, Jac. In my case, it makes sense. I was dreaming about a ruin that’s near my house. But have you ever been to the Channel Islands?”

She shook her head.

“So you’ve never seen the archaeological sites there but you drew one of them exactly. Don’t you think that’s more important than the rule that we’re not supposed to talk about our sessions?”

“I . . . I don’t know.”

For a few moments they trod on in silence up the mountain path. There was a slight breeze and Jac could smell wildflowers and Theo’s unusual cologne.

“You can’t think a rule is more important than what happened to us, can you?” he asked again.

“I guess not.”

“So did Malachai say anything to explain what happened?”

“No, not really. He talked about the collective unconscious.”

“With me too.”

“What do you think it means?” she asked.

“We share something.”

“What—that we’re both slightly insane?”

Theo laughed. Like his voice, his laugh was deep and poured like syrup. “Neither of us are insane,” he said. “But we are both too aware.”

“What do you mean?”

“I think we’re more attuned to certain things than most people. That we have a sort of sixth sense. I’ve read about a lot of people through the ages who’ve been singled out, branded insane or called witches or worse. During the time of the Cathars and through the Inquisition they were burned at the stake. In early America they were stoned to death or hanged. All for just having a little bit more sensitivity. For being just that much more psychically aware. For being capable of tapping into an unseen river of information that others don’t even know exists. Some of us can see the future, others can remember the past.”

“It sounds like science fiction.”

“It’s anything but. It’s tragic. So many people institutionalized just for being different. Maybe none of them—none of us—are crazy at all. Maybe it’s those who don’t have any special ability who should be singled out. Maybe they are just scared by how much we know and can sense, and that’s why they’re frightened of us.”

“I’m not sure I understand what you’re talking about.”

“I don’t understand it all either, but Grandfather has always told me that throughout history, too many men have wanted to destroy what threatens them, but that mysteries abound despite these narrow-minded souls. That’s how he always phrased it too. ‘Mysteries abound.’ ”

“You think we, you and I, have some kind of psychic ability?”

“Jung believes everything happens for a reason, right?”

She nodded.

“That an action once taken lives on. Yes?”

“Yes.”

“He also said there is a record in the universe and that if we’re attuned to it, we can go back and see it, hear it again, use it.”

They’d reached the lake. It was a clear day, without any clouds, and the watery surface reflected the mirror images of the surrounding landscape so perfectly it seemed as if there were trees growing in the pool
of liquid. Jac stood at its edge and stared down at herself. This watery Jac was almost identical. Almost. The real Jac would never have broken the rule about discussing therapy with another student.

“Why are you here?” she asked him.

“At Blixer?”

She nodded.

“I’m guilty.”

“Of what?”

“I don’t know, that’s just how I feel. All the time. I can’t get through a day without a sense of foreboding that I am going to cause a crisis, a catastrophe, some awful event. I am fairly obsessed with the idea that everything is going to come tumbling down because of me and there’s nothing I can do to stop it. That it’s just bloody inevitable. It makes me unable to function and all I want—” He broke off. He’d been about to say something terrible. She was sure of it. And she was almost glad he’d stopped himself. But she wasn’t sure why.

“Not one therapist has been able to help me. And I’ve seen dozens.”

“I didn’t mean to pry. I’m sorry.” She’d picked up a rock before and now she threw it at her reflection. Watched herself ripple into unrecognizable shimmers of colors. She no longer saw the girl standing on the shore. Just streaks of blues and pale yellows.

“It’s an odd thing to be inexplicable to the psychiatric community. Makes one feel quite out of it. I don’t usually talk about it with anyone but the shrinks. But it makes sense to tell you.” He’d said it as if he was surprised by what he’d just realized.

The lake’s surface had flattened out, and there she was again. She nodded. Her twin did also. “No one could help me either. That’s how I wound up at the Clinic of the Last Resorts.”

He smiled. “Love the moniker.”

She smiled back.

“What’s your affliction?”

“I had episodes. Hallucinations. They tried everything on me from drugs to electric shock. Nothing worked. So my grandmother brought me here.” She paused. “I haven’t talked to anyone but the doctors about it till now. But they’re all on the outside watching, trying to interpret,
to diagnose. Malachai’s more understanding than most. But telling you . . . it’s different. It’s better.”

The sun had started its descent for the day, and orange flames licked the water’s surface. The fire was consuming her other self, the one in the lake. And Theo’s too.

“Are you cold?” he asked.

“No.”

“You’re shivering.”

“I just suddenly got scared.”

“Not of me, are you?” he asked.

His voice was serious, but there was levity in his eyes too, and it was contagious.

“Should I be?”

She’d never really flirted with a boy before. It was actually fun. Jac knew she was serious. Too solemn, her mother had always warned, even though Audrey was no different. Theo was even more serious. There was a cold darkness around him that Jac could almost feel. He’d told her one secret about himself, but she was certain there were more.

“No, I don’t think so,” he said finally, taking so long she had to remember what the question was.

“Were you really thinking about how to answer that for all that time?”

“I was,” Theo said.

“Of everyone here, I don’t want you to be afraid of me. But I’m not easy. Everyone always tells me that. Even my mother isn’t always comfortable around me. My brother used to run away from me all the time when he was little.”

“People don’t talk like this,” Jac said suddenly.

“What do you mean?”

“I don’t know. The way we’re talking just seems different.”

“It is. We’re not playing games. We don’t have the time. You and I. We need to make the most of however long we have here. We need to find out where we fit in.”

And then before she knew what he was doing, he leaned down and kissed her on the lips.

It was her first kiss and her whole body shivered, but not because she was frightened. It was as if a hundred perfume bottles all spilled out at the same time. As if the fragrance notes were meeting in the air and mixing and mingling and turning into music. She was suddenly attuned to scents and tones and sounds and tastes and touch in a brand-new way. With senses that had been sleeping until this very moment.

They were inseparable after that until the night of the accident that happened four weeks later. She’d awoken in the infirmary not remembering anything. She’d asked for Theo but the nurse had told her he was gone. Gone? Without either of them having a chance to say good-bye or give each other information on how to find each other in the real world?

Or the other world, Jac had thought. Because maybe Blixer Rath with Theo there, with the two of them together, was the real world.

After leaving the castle, I didn’t return to my own house, which I knew would be noisy and full of visitors, but rather retired to Juliette’s. I craved undisturbed sleep and since there were no children underfoot at her house and no current infestation of friends from Paris, I knew I’d find quiet.

I slept for most of the day and when I awoke it was nine o’clock in the evening and I was ravenous. It had been more than twenty-four hours since my last meal.

It was dark outside and in. When I’d arrived Juliette had told me she’d been invited out to a dinner but would cancel on my behalf if I wished. I’d insisted she go. I didn’t need company—just rest.