The Reincarnationist (26 page)

New York City—10:30 p.m
.

R
achel arrived at Harrison's apartment after walking up and down the block outside his building, fighting with herself for almost fifteen minutes about whether or not to meet him as planned. The sound of his voice on the phone, inviting her over, worked on her like a magnet. It was so damn stupid, but she'd never felt that kind of pull to a man before. Her uncle teased her about it and she regretted confiding in him. Maybe she should stop being afraid, give in and see where it took her. Chalk up her fear to naiveté—certainly not with men, not with relationships, but with love.

As she paced she mentally listed off all the reasons she'd logically be drawn to him: he was an art consultant who dealt with paintings, sculptures, antiques and jewels for collectors. All beautiful things. He reeked of taste. Of culture. He was good-looking. And perhaps more than anything else—even though it made no sense—Harrison was elusive. She couldn't quite reach him—not the secrets of him that she sensed were many and were buried
deep. And Rachel found that more attractive than she would have imagined.

Upstairs, Harrison greeted her at the door with a chaste kiss on the cheek that was somehow erotic because of the way he held her upper arm so tightly. As if he was holding back, but barely.

“I'm just finishing up a meeting. Come in, it won't take too long.”

Rachel thought he was going to leave her in the living room while he returned to his office, but he brought her with him.

His apartment was both his home and office. Smart and sleek, decorated in tones of gray with silver accents, the penthouse boasted large floor-to-ceiling windows that looked out over a nighttime city that sparkled like diamonds.

Harrison poured her a Scotch just the way she liked it: expensive and neat. He gestured to a chair to the left of his desk while he returned to the phone call he'd interrupted to let her in.

She sipped the drink, caressed the seat's baby-soft leather and tried to keep her eyes off of him. At one point, he caught her staring and smiled.

After a few volleys of conversation that referenced an expensive painting, Harrison opened his top desk drawer and pulled out some papers, and in the process Rachel spotted a very small black gun.

The crazy sensations assaulted her. The humming and the music that wasn't really music lulled her, pulled her from the sights and sounds of his office in that moment and took her somewhere else. Instead of sitting in the glass-and-chrome library looking out over the city, she was suddenly in a wood-paneled library with windows that faced a hillside. On the wall were Renaissance paintings, good ones, and the man who sat at the desk, exactly
where Harrison had been sitting minutes before, was someone very different.

He was attractive, but in his fifties. No jeans and Armani jacket, but rather some kind of formal, old-fashioned suit. And they weren't alone anymore. Standing to the other side of the desk was a poorly dressed young man with mean eyes and greasy hair.

The man who had taken Harrison's place looked at her seductively. On the desk in front of him, on the tooled-leather blotter, a small black revolver gleamed in the lamplight. He never looked at it while he carried on his conversation with the thug, but it was a bigger presence than any of them.

“We can't be responsible for a robbery, can we? In fact, we should offer a substantial reward for any information leading to the capture of the thief or the thieves.” He nodded knowingly.

She needed to get away. From both of the men. From the gun. But she felt trapped, as if time had turned into metal straps that were holding her back. She tried to speak, but it felt like she was pushing rocks out of her mouth. All that she managed was a mangled cry, and then everything changed back to the way it had been before, except for the panic she was experiencing.

Harrison was worried. Solicitous. Talking to her softly, asking what he could do, how he could help. Rachel asked him why he had a gun, and he convincingly said he needed protection with all the paintings and jewelry that he brought in and out of his office. It made sense. But the feeling that she was in danger, in a very real way, stayed with her even as she sat there and drank with him and talked with him.

When he reached for her again and kissed her, she was surprised to find herself moving toward him, not moving
away. Wary but pulled by a curiosity and force she didn't understand. How could the darkness in him and the shadows that surrounded him work like an aphrodisiac?

When, smoothly and expertly, he proceeded to seduce her, she didn't stop him.

With his head on her breast, whispering to her, touching her so lightly his fingers felt like feathers on her skin, she convinced herself that she was being crazy. That there couldn't be anything wrong with a man who could make her feel that way. And then it happened.

A quick flash.

The other man had taken Harrison's place again.
He
was making love to her now. But not as gently. Not as carefully. He was greedier, hungrier. In the background, distracting her, were colors—but connected to what? She couldn't tell. She saw the deep verdant emeralds, night-sky blues and rich-wine reds, all so beautiful she couldn't stop looking at them, not even for the man who was inciting pleasure and pressure between her legs. But what were they? She tried to focus, to figure it out…and then she was back in the present, with Harrison, as he brought her to a finish that shook her whole body and she slipped back into the colors and vanished inside of them.

I
t was two o'clock in the morning. The window was open, and the breeze offered a soothing embrace. One lamp shone down on the desk, but the rest of the room was shrouded in darkness. He'd had the idea that he would try to block himself off from his reality and create a separate physical existence for this experiment.

The six stones were laid out on a deep blue velvet cloth that covered the blotter. The emeralds, sapphires and ruby glowed.

It had been written that these jewels would open up a doorway from the present to the past, but all the ancient texts alluded to the magic process in elusive terms. He felt as if he were adrift on the sea in a boat that kept him afloat, but that he did not know how to steer.

Every religious ceremony has specific steps. Just as a Mass was not an arbitrary group of prayers and actions, there was a set of steps attached to these stones, as well. A process. Instructions. But what were they?

Professor Chase's papers hadn't revealed anything. Neither the notes that had been taken from her apartment in Rome, nor those that had been stolen from her office
in New Haven. There was no indication that she had any idea what the markings on the surface of the stones were. He needed her to translate them.

If she could.

Chase was renowned for her knowledge of ancient languages. Of course she could—or she'd know who could. She was his key to how to harness the stones' power: a dangerous, awesome power.

Weren't the highest echelons of the Church worried about the magic of the stones? And for good reason. If man discovered that Nirvana was within his reach—if it was in his own hands, not in the hands of God—what authority would the Church hold over him?

He had waited a long time, but the wait was almost over. From the first step of the plan, years ago when he got the diary excerpts to Gabriella Chase and Aldo Rudolfo, he'd patiently waited, and now those seedlings were mature trees that would soon bear fruit.

There was a lot to do now in a very short period of time. He sighed. It was a long and deep expression of desire and fear and trepidation. He hated involving other people. Risking the safety of innocents was an affront to his morals, but he was out of choices.

Three men had died so far, and he'd have to live with that forever. Blood stained his soul. Would probably stain it deeper before this quest was over. But didn't all great efforts require sacrifice?

He'd give the gods one last chance to reward him before he moved on to the inevitable and heinous next step.

Separating the six stones into two groups, he held the emeralds in his left hand and the sapphires and the single ruby in his right. Shutting his eyes, he focused on the feeling of them, the sensation of their edges biting into his flesh. There were so many historians, so many col
lectors, so many religious men who would pay him all of their fortunes for what he was holding, but no amount of lucre could entice him to give up this treasure.

Concentrate,
he told himself.

Concentrate on the stones.

He knew how to pray. He knew how to meditate. He knew the power of emptying your mind of minutiae and letting nothingness come to the forefront. That kind of meditation was not a miracle. Not holy. But it had always had a mystical and magical effect on him. It took him away, it settled his ghosts.

The Father. The Son. And the Holy Ghost.

He almost laughed at the perfection of the phrase in this context, but instead concentrated on wiping his mind clean.

First the cleansing.

Then the emptiness.

Stay with the void.

Experience the hollowness.

Now let the colors swim.

Blood-red slipping into ruby, turning scarlet, soaking up darkness and developing into a royal purple. Then reversing it. Seeing the purple, adding light to it so it transformed to lavender, then rose, then blanching the color so it tinged to pink, pushing in light so it was the merest pale, blushing white. Now reversing the process, pushing some color back in, graduating the roseate tone to vermilion, dissolving it to dark wine-red, burning it into inferno red, sliding the embers into sunset's glow and then a glowing torch's orange.

He was deep into the meditation.

See yourself. See who you were. Know who you were
.

He repeated it.

See yourself. See who you were. Know who you were.

There was a blue-blackness now like a cold night sky.
He swept through it. It was the sky over every country, every age. The answers were there, deep inside the galaxy, he knew that, now to just reach for them.

What was the secret of the stones?

Nothing came to him. No words, no sensations, no knowledge.

What was the secret of the stones?

Again, nothing.

His eyes opened, then his hands, and the stones spilled out onto the velvet cloth. The colors flashed at him, teasing him, promising him more than he might ever know unless he took action.

He'd tried it every other way; now he had no choice.

He turned his eyes to the computer screen and with weary fingers typed in a name, sure that at some point the young woman had been online and left her footprints in cyberspace. It only took seconds for the invisible vaults of information to open and give him what he needed.

Yes. Perfect. He had his key. She'd take him inside, where he'd find a very different treasure. One he could use to trade with: a life in exchange for information.

For mere words.

For sounds that meant nothing out of context.

It wouldn't be hard for a mother to make that choice.

Would it?

New York City—Tuesday, 2:00 p.m.

T
he next morning, Rachel Palmer had sounded so distraught on the phone that Josh agreed to meet her. She suggested the American Wing at the Metropolitan Museum of Art. He always felt at home and comfortable there. Josh was a city kid, and he and his father had spent endless afternoons at the Met over the years. But Rachel's anxiety was pervasive and cast a pall over the afternoon.

“If someone is here, watching me,” Rachel said as they walked through the sun-filled gallery, “this doesn't look very suspicious.”

“Who would be watching you?”

“I'm going to sound paranoid.”

“I won't take it personally.”

She smiled. “My uncle Alex.”

“He's having you followed?”

“I think so.”

“Why?”

“He thinks I'm in danger.”

“Well, isn't that what you think, too?”

“Yes. But his reasons are specific. He's done some research and uncovered a scandal or two surrounding some artwork and jewelry Harrison's bought and sold over the years. It's worrying him, although it's nothing out of the ordinary, considering the business he's in. It makes me think he's not telling me everything he knows about Harrison.”

She stopped in front of the big, hulking marble sculpture of the
Struggle of Two Natures of Man.

“He's changed so much since my aunt died. I know that happens, of course, but this isn't just mourning.”

“What else could it be?”

“Alex is obsessed with reincarnation. Always has been. You know he tried to buy the Phoenix Foundation a long time ago? Anyway, it's been much worse since my aunt's death, and then I made the mistake of describing what happened with Harrison. Now Alex believes I'm experiencing past-life memories and is obsessed with the idea that Harrison could be dangerous. And although I haven't told him, I think he's right.”

“You've had another episode?” Josh asked.

She sighed and described going to Harrison's apartment the night before, seeing the gun and spiraling backward. “But there's nothing specific I can tell you. I don't know who the men were. Or where we were. Nothing, really—just pictures and a few phrases.”

They'd left the American Wing and were strolling through a series of galleries filled with religious artifacts. He noticed a huge ivory cross, a triptych of the Annuncia
tion and birth of Jesus, and a glass case of reliquary objects. Josh had been there before so often they were all familiar.

“The problem is that no matter what I tell myself, and how determined I am to stay away from him, I feel drawn to him. As if this is out of my control. And I don't like being out of control.”

“I'm sure you don't,” he said as they passed over the threshold into the hall of Arms and Armor. Gleaming silver knights—their spears held aloft, banners flying above their heads—sat atop stationary horses in their own elaborate silver mesh suits.

“My father and I used to come to this hall when I was a kid…It's been years since I've been back,” Josh said, remembering being here with Ben. It was magical then and still was, because, while everything around him had changed and altered, these knights were still there, in position, lifelike and waiting to hear the call to battle that would never come.

It was a different kind of stepping back in time, a safer kind, and he half expected to hear his father's voice, so Rachel's caught him by surprise.

“Here's the deal, Josh. How much would you charge to hypnotize me and put me through a series of past-life regressions so I can get to the bottom of this mess?”

“It's not a question of money. The foundation only—”

“What? Kids' pain is more important?”

“No, but—”

“This morning he drove me to work,” she interrupted again. “When I was getting out of the car, I looked down. My shoes were old-fashioned boots with tiny buttons running up the front, nothing I've ever owned or worn. And the car had turned into a horse-drawn carriage. Harrison was wearing a morning coat.”

“And then what happened?”

“I heard my name called, and it was all over.”

“Which name?”

“What do you mean?”

“What name did you hear?”

“Rachel. What name could I have heard?”

“Your name from the past.”

“So you believe me?”

“I believe that you are seeing what you say you are seeing.”

“And you'll help me?”

He shook his head. “I told you that the foundation—”

“I'm not asking to work with the foundation. I'm asking to work with you.”

They both turned as two boys—between eight and ten—ran wildly into the gallery, shouting as they pointed out the swords and shields and helmets to each other.

“I want to be that one,” screamed the smaller.

“And I'm that one.”

“We're knights!”

“What are we going to fight for?”

“To kill the bad guys!”

The children who'd described their past-life experiences to Malachai and Beryl never explained how they knew when someone they met in the present had been someone they'd known in the past. And they didn't doubt their feelings. Children didn't need to be convinced. They didn't need to educate themselves about the concepts of reincarnation in order to believe that what they were feeling was real. They didn't become obsessed by the philosophy of their nightmares; they just experienced them.

Rachel turned away from watching the boys and back to Josh.

There was something there. He felt it. Almost im
possible to detect, but palpable. And different from what he expected. Since the accident, he'd come into contact with many women, and he'd looked into their eyes—the way he was doing with Rachel—searched for some glimmer of familiarity, and waited; but she was the only one with whom the connection existed. And persisted. She wasn't Sabina, but she was someone he'd known.

Selfishly, he realized that he wanted to work with this woman and find out if his life and hers intersected. Where they intersected. What it might mean to him, how it might help him.

“It's happening,” Rachel said in a soft, low voice.

“What?”

“My body is humming and I hear that far-off music, but it doesn't have anything to do with tones or keys or chords or melody. It's pure rhythm.”

“Where are you?”

“With you. In the museum, of course.”

Josh wasn't sure if she was in the present or the past. Before he could ask, she said, “Can we go? Isn't it time for tea?”

“Tea?”

He knew what was happening.

“Yes, of course. Where would you like to go?”

“Home,” she said, surprised, as if he should have known that. “Where else would we go?” She seemed to know him so well. But who was she seeing?

“To a coffee shop? A hotel?”

“Delmonico's.”

“I don't know where that is.”

“Of course you do. Why are you teasing me?”

“I wasn't. I haven't heard of it. Is it nearby?”

She blinked and shook her head as if she were trying to find focus. “You haven't heard of what?”

“Delmonico's.”

“What's that?”

Josh knew then for sure that whoever had suggested tea hadn't been Rachel Palmer.