Seduction

Fourteen

Upstairs in her room, as Jac undressed and got ready for bed, she went over the scene in the bar and tried to order her various reactions and impressions. That the two brothers were battling each other was obvious. She could almost smell their aggression toward each other.

Jac’s grandfather had trained her to sniff the air for emotions. He believed powerful feelings affected a person’s body chemistry and that if you were sensitive to it, you could smell those changes. It was just one of his theories. He was always proposing new ideas about aroma or reintroducing ancient ones. Not only was he a perfumer, he was also a student of Egyptian mystery schools, Greek philosophy, alchemy and the magicians of the Middle Ages. He also studied the Egyptian Book of the Dead, the Gnostic bibles, the Kabala.

“Perfume is magic. It’s mystery. We re-create the smell of a flower. Of wood. Of grass. We capture the essence of life. Liquefy it. We store memories. We make dreams,” he told her once. “What we do is a wonder, an art, and we have a responsibility to do it well.”

Jac had never forgotten how he tried to hide his disappointment when she told him that she wasn’t going to become a perfumer. He loved mythology and he said he was proud that she’d chosen a subject that fascinated him too. But she could see through his words to read the letdown on his face. Jac knew he’d dreamed of her and Robbie together wearing the mantle that her ancestors had borne for almost three hundred years.

How fascinated he would have been with the house she’d visited tonight, Jac thought. And how curious Grand-père would have been to hear the story about Fantine, the exiled perfumer from Paris, who lived there and cooked up scents to fill her husband’s jeweled flacons.

Robbie would be just as intrigued. Suddenly she was homesick for him. She tied her robe around her and walked toward her bag to get her phone. To call him. Just then, the cell began ringing. Jac was startled but not too surprised. They were close and often sensed when one was thinking of the other. But glancing at the LED readout she saw it wasn’t Robbie. It was someone else who would be just as interested in the house she’d visited and the people she’d met, but for very different reasons.

“Good evening, my dear.” Malachai’s mellifluous voice came over the line. “I thought I’d check in.” After their repeated arguments about her making this trip, she half expected him to launch into a tirade that she come back, and when he didn’t, she relaxed and told him about the house and Theo’s aunts.

She was glad the tension between her and Malachai was behind them.

“I was surprised when Minerva told me she knew you. You didn’t mention that.”

“I didn’t? I thought I had. Yes, I knew her and her brother and I studied with her husband at Oxford. He was a fine therapist and so is she. But tell me, Jac, how do you find Theo?”

Brooding and disturbed, she wanted to say but didn’t. No need to bait Malachai. Instead she chose a less provocative way of describing her childhood friend. “War-torn, I think. He said he hasn’t been able to really get past his wife’s death.”

“Did he tell you how she died?”

“No.”

“I did a little research.”

“Why am I not surprised?”

“Would you like to know?” Malachai asked.

“Would it matter if I said no?”

He laughed.

Sometimes, like tonight, his laughter had a tone in it that reminded her of a character named Waldo Lydecker in the 1940s black-and-white murder mystery Laura. Played by Clifton Webb, the acerbic Lydecker loved Laura in his own twisted way, more than he could cope with. He had an imperious laugh. As if he stepped down to laugh. She didn’t like it from the character in the movie, and even less from Malachai.

“His wife drowned, Jac.”

“How horrible.”

“Yes. It was horrible, truly horrible.”

There was silence on his end.

“Malachai? What aren’t you saying?”

During the pause that held for another two or three seconds, Jac flashed on Ash talking about concerns for her in regard to his brother.

“It was ruled an accident,” Malachai said, putting emphasis on the word ruled.

“Yes?”

“She’d recently started seeing a therapist and rented a flat in London.”

“What does any of that mean? People who rent apartments or see therapists never get in accidents?”

“There was some suggestion she committed suicide.”

“Even if that is true, how is that going to scare me away from looking for a cave used by Druids?”

“When the two of you were at Blixer Rath you were uncharacteristically sympathetic to Theo.”

“So you’ve said. But I still don’t understand your point.”

“I think he has unresolved issues, and I don’t want you to become entangled in them. Just promise me that if you have any concerns, you’ll come home.”

“I promise I’ll call you. Is that enough?”

“At the first sign?”

“Yes. All right?”

“Yes.”

“Now I have a question for you.”

“What is it?”

“Why did you keep the information about Theo’s family from me? I found out tonight that one of his ancestors was an original member of the Phoenix Club. The whole family seems to have believed in reincarnation and various aspects of spiritualism. In all the times we talked about me coming here you never mentioned any of that. Why?”

“Doctor-patient confidentiality.”

“Which part was confidential? That his family history intersected with yours? That you knew members of his family?”

“Discussing any part of a patient’s background is unacceptable, Jac. You know that. If I talked about one patient to you, you would never trust that I didn’t talk to another patient about you.”

“Did you also know Theo’s grandfather?”

“Yes. I met him first when I was a boy living in London. They had a house in town in those years as well as in Jersey, and owing to the Phoenix Club connection our families saw each other fairly often. Alexander was quite a bit older than me, but it turned out we had many of the same interests. There was another sister too. A very nervous sort. I can’t remember her name. “

“Eva.”

“Ah yes, now I remember. Their grandfather had been quite obsessed with exploring the unknown and included the children in his experiments. Alexander and Minerva took to it all but I seem to recall hearing that Eva was a bit traumatized by it, and his death affected her badly. There were allusions to an accident.” He paused. “But no one ever talked about what had happened exactly.”

“I can’t believe you didn’t tell me any of this before I left.”

“It was confidential.”

In the background Jac heard voices on Malachai’s end.

“I have a patient, Jac. I have to hang up. But call me, please. Keep me posted, yes?”

“Yes, I will. As long as you promise to stop worrying.”

“Just humor me and check in every day. This is a good time, all right?”

She started to argue but he cut her off.

“I can’t keep my patient waiting. Take care, my dear.” And then he hung up.

Jac poured herself a glass of water and then called Robbie, but her brother’s cell phone went to voice mail. She left a message, told him she missed him and then slipped into bed. The sheets were high-quality Egyptian cotton. Cool and crisp, they smelled of fresh air. She was relieved. Some hotel laundries used terrible commercial scents. There’d been nights when lighting her candle and spraying the bedding with cologne didn’t camouflage the smell, and she’d slept with the window open even when it was too cold.

She’d left the window open tonight too. But not to chase away any odors. Rather to invite in the mild breeze and the sea air.

The pillows, mattress cover and comforter were goose down and Jac didn’t feel as if she was lying in the bed so much as floating on it. Even for a quality hotel, the bed was luxurious beyond expectations. She closed her eyes and in the dark, listening to the sea pound the shore, she let her mind ride the waves.

Picturing Wells in Wood, she walked into the front entryway. Saw its hundred niches filled with fragments of ancient art and medieval relics. She’d learned the memory game from her grandfather. The ancient Greek mystery schools had taught that if you put each memory in a certain room in an imaginary mansion, you could store them there and revisit them at will. Now, Jac revisited the dining room. Looked at the murals again. Then faces of the people around the table. Eva, Minerva and Theo. She thought about how he’d changed since she’d first met him. And how he’d stayed the same. She remembered back in time. In Switzerland.

Although Jac had been miserable when her grandmother left her at the Blixer Rath clinic, the beauty of her surroundings hadn’t been lost on her. Paris was noisy, crowded and smelly compared to the Alpine retreat. The closest neighbor was five kilometers off and the silence of the Alps reached out to her and offered soothing solitude right away.

There were seven other young adults, from twelve to seventeen, already in residence. Full capacity was twelve. The staff consisted of three doctors and two teachers: an art and music teacher who painted and played both the piano and violin, and a science, math and humanities teacher. In addition some of the therapists taught certain classes. The staff consisted of a cook, a gardener and two women who cleaned and did laundry. Almost as many people worked there as came for help.

In the mornings after breakfast the students went to classes. The doctors preferred the term students to patients. “You’re not here to take medicine and get better,” Malachai had explained on Jac’s first day. “You’re here to study your psyche, learn from it and then use those lessons to develop coping skills.”

Each student had his or her own curriculum. Sometimes there were others in your class, but just as often you were one on one with the teacher. Jac’s first class of each day was mythology, followed by a drawing class, then a piano lesson and geometry.

No one explained why she was taking those particular classes as opposed to others, and when she asked, Malachai cryptically told her they were the classes she needed.

During the afternoon each student worked individually with her therapist for ninety minutes. The rest of the time was theirs to do with as they pleased.

When Jac got to Blixer, the seven students there had been together for at least three months and had all bonded. Jac didn’t fit in. The problem wasn’t theirs. It was hers. The others tried to include her, went out of their way to be welcoming. At night, after dinner, they rehearsed scenes from Greek plays and once a week held a performance the entire staff attended. Malachai, their drama coach, encouraged Jac to join in. Trying to connect to the other students was some of the hardest work she did at Blixer. She gave up after a few lukewarm efforts.

The problem wasn’t just that Jac was in mourning and homesick for her brother. She’d never had an easy time with other kids. At school in Paris, they used to gossip that she was a snob and aloof. They thought she was odd because she didn’t have any close friends. But she wasn’t a snob and she did have a close friend-her brother. She and Robbie were content in each other’s company. Tied to each other by their love of scent and the training they were getting from their grandfather and father in the family business, they lived in their own world.

The year she was in fifth grade, Jac resolved to make friends, but after two months of concerted effort, she admitted to Robbie that she’d failed. She tried to talk about the topics and go places that interested the other girls, she told him, but her tastes weren’t simpatico with theirs. They weren’t interested in perfume and paintings and gardens. Most of them liked to read but weren’t as passionate a reader as she was. Perfumes were built on stories, on dreams, her grandfather had told her. He was a wonderful storyteller. So was Jac’s father. Robbie was like him, in the best ways. When her experiment had failed, Robbie told her that it didn’t matter about the other girls. She had him, and he’d always be her friend.

While she was at Blixer, Jac called him once a week, which was all she was allowed. They’d decided to read the same books while she was away, and Robbie was becoming almost as obsessed with mythology as she was.

Jac had been at the clinic ten weeks when Theo showed up. He was the first new patient to arrive since she’d been there. Like her, he didn’t seem to have an easy time getting to know any of the others. Another loner, she thought. But that didn’t make her any more curious about him. During his first two weeks there, they didn’t speak to each other except for an inconsequential excuse me or good night. There was the one encounter in the woods, but if anything it made Jac stay farther away.

Then at the end of his second week, something occurred in art class that threw them together.

Blixer Rath was a Jungian-based clinic, so there was a strong emphasis on archetypes and symbolism. Every art class began with a “dream drawing warm-up.”

When Jac couldn’t remember her dreams, Miss Snell, her teacher, suggested she do a few moments of deep breathing before trying to recall the imagery. Once Jac was relaxed, something always came to her, but she didn’t always remember dreaming it. Which was what happened that day.

Jac saw herself in a dark wood. She was taking oval-shaped white rocks, each the size of her hand or larger, from a pile and placing them in a circle. In its center sat an owl. The bird, still and silent, watched her intently. Once she was done and the ring complete, he began to speak to her in a language Jac could neither identify nor understand.

The L’Etoiles were Catholic but not religious. “Lapsed,” her mother used to say with a little laugh, and then as a postscript add a “thank God!” But Jac had been to church often enough to recognize the rhythm of the owl’s chanting and know it was either a blessing or a prayer. Except instead of the owl’s liturgy being comforting, it was ominous.

Jac opened her eyes. The dark forest was gone. She was in the art studio with the sun shining through the long slanting skylights, casting the room in a warm golden glow. Using a combination of soft and hard charcoal, she started to draw the stones. Concentrating deeply, she wasn’t aware of what the other students were doing or the passage of time.

She hadn’t yet attempted the owl, when suddenly it appeared, a shadow in the middle of the rocks. Without her drawing it. It took her a second to realize that someone was behind her.

Jac spun around.

Theo was leaning over her shoulder, looking at her drawing. Somehow his shadow had for a moment taken on a shape that conformed to the owl she’d seen in her dream.

He was standing so close that she could smell him. It was easy enough to pick out the notes of eucalyptus, honey, cinnamon, oakmoss and another ingredient she couldn’t identify.

“What are you sniffing at?” He had a British accent and he sounded almost insulted.

“Your cologne. I don’t recognize it.”

“Why should you?”

“My family is in the perfume business.”

“How odd,” he said.

“Why?”

“That’s my question,” he said tersely.

“What do you mean?”

“Why did you draw that?” He pointed to her sketch.

She shrugged. She didn’t know.

At sixteen he was already over six feet tall and very thin. He was all angles and planes except for his almost heart-shaped mouth, which softened his expression. He was wearing what he always wore: jeans and a white shirt. She noticed his skin, where his collar was open, was golden.

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.