The Book of Lost Fragrances: A Novel of Suspense (39 page)

“I came to help you.”

She was going to argue, but there was a sincerity in his voice that stunned her.

“You know what I don’t understand,” Griffin asked Malachai. “Don’t you already have methods to regress patients? Even if the shards were impregnated with enough fragrance to induce a past-life experience, why would another method be so valuable?”

“We use hypnosis, and it does indeed work most of the time,” Malachai replied. “But the memory tools are more than a way to regress someone. They’re a piece of the history of reincarnation. The stuff of legends. Surely you, Griffin, of everyone, would understand why that is so enticing.”

“Knowing the past, knowing who you were—you can make it
too
important, can’t you?” Jac asked.

“Too important? We live in darkness. We stumble and fall. We don’t know which way to go. Memories of the past would light the path to the future . . .”

As he spoke, Jac was seeing the labyrinthine corridors they’d been trekking through all afternoon. Smelling the shadowy corners and dry dust of millions of bones. The damp, dead world. The false exits. The cave-ins. Edges falling off into darkness.

“If someone said, ‘This is who you were, and this is the mistake you made then,’ you’d have a choice not to make that mistake again,” Malachai continued. “And by not making it again, you will be freed from the burden of it in your next life. If somebody offered you that chance at peace, wouldn’t you take it?”

His voice was soothing. She remembered how he used to sit and talk to her at Blixer Rath and how much he’d helped her. She didn’t believe in reincarnation. Didn’t care about past-life karma. But she wanted his assistance. Desperately. Maybe if she told him that the terrible psychotic episodes had returned, he would save her again. Guide her to understand what the hallucinations symbolized. But if she admitted what was going on, she’d return to the person she’d been then. Different from everyone else. Never fitting in. The girl on the outside looking in.

Malachai was studying her. “Jac, you’ve had moments of envisioning the past, haven’t you?”

“So you think we’re absolutely fated to repeat our past?” She asked a question instead of making a confession.

“No. We have free will. We have choices. But if we had a map, we could make more educated choices. We could help ourselves to make this turn rather than that turn. We could do better in each life.”

The images that had flown at Jac while she was with her brother and Griffin in the underground caverns were returning now with no inducement. Brushing up against her, their ghostlike wings grazing her skin.

Jac shut her eyes.

“You must be exhausted,” Malachai said. “That’s not good for you. It’s a trigger.”

She glanced over at Griffin. He’d picked up on the comment. Damn. “Is there something wrong, Jac?”

“No,” Jac answered before Malachai could say anything.

“What did Robbie mean when he asked you if you saw something in the tunnel?” Griffin asked.

“Saw things? In the catacombs? What happened, Jac?” Malachai’s tone was urgent. When Jac didn’t answer him, he asked Griffin. “What happened down there?”

“When Jac took the pottery from Robbie—she had a reaction. Her eyes went glassy. She didn’t hear what I was saying for about thirty or forty seconds. She was just looking off into space as if she were looking at someone or something that wasn’t there.”

“Stop it!” Jac screamed as she stood, stunning everyone in the room. “Nothing happened to me! I’m no different from you.” She turned from Griffin to Malachai. “Or you. I’m fine. It was just frightening. Robbie’s used to it—he’s been exploring those caves since he was a teenager.” She turned back to Griffin. “You’ve been crawling around in Egyptian tombs most of your adult life.” Now her gaze returned to Malachai. “You see the machinations of my brain as clues to some mystery you’re forever trying to figure out. There’s nothing going on. Nothing is wrong with me except for the horrible fact that my brother’s life is in danger. Someone who no one can identify died here five days ago, and two people just attacked us and tried to steal some worthless ancient pottery Robbie found in the mess my father made of our lives.”

Griffin and Malachai were both watching her with concern and care. She hated their intensity. Their scrutiny. Her father used to look at her just like that when she was young. When she saw things and heard things that weren’t there. When she was, to use her mother’s word—the word she used to describe both of them—“ca-
ra
-zy.” Audrey would laugh when she said, it too. “Ca-
ra
-zy.” Making three syllables out of a two-syllable word and laughing. As if it were wonderful to be different. Not the disaster of her life.

“I have to take a bath.” She drained the teacup. “We need to go to the Buddhist Society tonight,” Jac said. “Robbie gave us the name of a lama there. The man Robbie’s been studying with. He’d been in the process of setting up the meeting. He’ll make it happen. And then we can all go back to our normal lives.”

She left the room and headed for the staircase. She was fine, she told herself. In control. She just didn’t know why her voice had cracked on the word
normal
.

As Jac walked upstairs, her legs felt so heavy each step was an effort. Her back ached. She gripped the handrail like an old woman.

In the bathroom, she turned on the faucets and added a healthy dose of scented bath salts. Then added more. She had to get the stink of the catacombs and the perfume from the pottery off her skin.

As the crystals hit the water, their fragrance slowly rose up to envelop her like a caress. She hadn’t looked at the bottle. It was Rouge. Her mother favored Noir. But Jac loved Rouge. The first important fragrance from the House of L’Etoile. Created by Giles L’Etoile. Inspired, her grandfather told her, by his trip to Egypt in the late 1790s. Rose and lavender mixed with of one of the most mystical scents that existed, civet.

For thousands of years, the musky ingredient had been harvested from the small mammals of the same name. Recently, animal rights groups protested, and perfume companies switched to a synthetic version. Most people couldn’t smell the difference. Jac could. But not in the bath salts.

Then something curious occurred to her. In her hallucinations, Giles L’Etoile died in Egypt. Marie-Genevieve had been heartbroken. It was why her father tried to arrange another marriage. Why she’d run away. Why she’d gone to the convent. So how could this scent have been created by Giles after he came back from Egypt?

Jac sat on the edge of the tub. She took off her shoes and socks. Why was she giving any credence to these daydreams? She was sick. The illness was back. She couldn’t trust what she imagined now any more than when she was fourteen. She slid out of her pants. Pulled her shirt over her head. Stripped off her underwear and then bunched up the whole pile. Shoved it in the knapsack, zipped it up, threw it in a corner of the bathroom and then sniffed the air.

She could still smell it. Under the odors of the dust and the stone, and Ani’s juniper, under the smell of mold and mud, she could still catch the ancient perfume from the pottery shards.

Naked, she pulled on a robe and grabbed the knapsack. Opening the door, she walked out into the hall and bumped into Griffin.

“What are you doing? What’s wrong?” he asked.

“I have to take these filthy things out of here. To the kitchen. I can’t stand the stink of them. Of those tunnels. It’s in my skin, my hair . . .”

Griffin took the knapsack from her hands and headed down the stairs. “Take your bath—I’ll get rid of it for you.”

Jac returned to the bathroom, steamy with the hot, fragrant water. She breathed in deeply as she slipped into the tub. Breathed in again. She smelled what was here now. She took the scents deep into her nostrils. Wisps of myrrh. Tempered by benzoin. And roses. Lush blossoms of immeasurable sensuality.

The water would have been too hot if not for the long day and the dirt and the stench.

Jac shut her eyes and soaked, hovered in a half-asleep state that deep exhaustion and sudden relaxation can bring on. And she kept her eyes shut even when she heard the bathroom door open and close and felt his hand on her skin, soaping her hair, massaging her scalp, then her neck and her shoulders. Kneading all the tension out of her muscles.

Griffin’s hands were like silk on her body. Wet silk that stroked her. Replacing the exhaustion with exhilaration. The mysterious incense-imbued rose was all she could smell. The steam was all she could see. It was as if Griffin wasn’t real. He was mist and memory and scent and sorcery.

He wasn’t one man making love to her—but several. Griffin, yes, but also the men from her hallucinations. The young French perfumer with whom Marie-Genevieve had been in love. And Thoth, the strong Egyptian priest who worked in Cleopatra’s perfume factory.

Jac couldn’t be sure whose hands she was feeling, whose breath was on her neck. It was all sensation now and an intoxicating mixture of exhaustion and intense pleasure and excruciating longing. A desperate need to stay with him longer. Destiny or circumstance—it didn’t matter which—had kept them apart again and again. Yet they were complete only together. As they were in this beautiful moment.

He was in the water with her now. His hands holding hers. Their fingers intertwined. She’d never let go. Never again. Nothing could force them apart anymore. Jac was melting in his heat, in the heat of the water. They would be melded together forever. Their lifelines commingling in her blood. They could die like this: wrapped up in each other, surrounded by each other . . .

In the midst of the waves of pleasure, she suddenly saw the Egyptian priest, with his lover, in a tomb, holding each other, fighting off sleepiness. Saw how they had drugged themselves. A joint suicide. Dying in each other’s arms, sharing a last kiss and all without fear because Thoth had promised . . . he had promised her . . . in their next life they would know each other again. And again and again and again.

“Jac . . .” Griffin whispered.

Her name sounded foreign. It brought her out of her dream. Sent shivers down her spine and sparks off inside her.

“Jac . . .” He said her name again, and then there was nothing, not air and not water, between them. They were together in a timeless dance that their bodies knew and their souls embraced. This was who they were. Even if it brought disaster. Or death. This was worth all of that. This was worth all.

Fifty-one

10:17 P.M.

Robbie sat in the dark cavern, leaning against a rock wall. He had turned off his helmet light. His eyes were shut. His mind was opened. Tired. Worried. Nervous. He listened to droplets of water hit a pool in the distance. Adjusted his breathing to the steady, even rhythm.

The well was eight feet away. The two people inside of it were quiet. He didn’t think they knew he was here.

Ani had obviously told them the truth about marking her passage through the catacombs with infrared ink. Her companion had followed the identifying marks.

“That means,” Griffin had cautioned before they’d all split up two hours ago, “that there could be someone else following the trail. Don’t go back. All right?”

Even before Robbie could agree, Jac had made him promise he’d stay away from the area near the well.

He’d promised he wouldn’t come back here. But he had. It was all right, though: he had an exit path mapped out. He was only two yards away from the warren hole that would provide passage away from this chamber.

Robbie had friends who’d become lovers. Lovers who’d remained friends. Was with more men than women because he was able to choose men who suited him better and made him happier. They were usually intellectually curious. Adventurers like his grandfather.

But the women he was drawn to had rips in their souls. Rebellious, angry, half-crazy women like his mother. His sister. They were always women who needed healing but couldn’t be healed.

Like Ani Lodro.

Every summer, Robbie attended a Buddhist retreat a few hours outside of Paris. Six years ago, she’d attended during the same two weeks he did. Fraternization among the students wasn’t encouraged. Meals were silent. There were no group lectures or activities. But he saw her everywhere he went, as if they were following in each other’s footsteps. She was always leaving the temple when he was going in. He was always outside at the same time she was. He’d be walking down to the river, she’d be walking up. For the first week, they didn’t speak to each other. She always kept her head down. He kept to himself.

Then one afternoon, while they were both walking the circular meditation path in the garden, a sudden and violent thunderstorm broke. Each of them took shelter in the peaked-roof gazebo.

While rain poured down all around them, Robbie finally looked at her and was stunned by the pain he saw in her wide, almond-shaped black eyes. He could sense the demons that sat on her shoulders. Saw the tension in the ropes of muscles in her neck. He felt her dire need to find peace. Without saying anything, they came together during the storm. Lying on the floor, smelling the cedar wood and her clean skin, Robbie made love to her. He’d always enjoyed sex. Luxuriated in it. He’d studied tantric sex—the Hindu discipline that is based on the worship of a man and woman coming together and experiencing bliss without orgasm. But he’d never experienced true tantric coupling until that day.

Robbie stood. Walked over to the well. He didn’t turn on his lamp. Didn’t want to really look into her eyes and see all that pain again.

“I searched for you,” Robbie whispered into the blackness.

He heard Ani sigh.

“What happened? Why didn’t you contact me?”

“I was in training.”

“Not to be a Buddhist nun?”

“No.”

“Training for what, then?” Robbie asked.

There was no answer.

“Ani?”

Silence.

“Who was the man who died in my workshop?”