Seduction

Twenty-two

Jac didn’t tell Theo about the scene that had just played out in her mind. First, she needed to understand it herself.

In Paris this past summer, she’d had several hallucinations over a week’s period, all triggered by a certain scent. Had she just stumbled on another scent that would induce visions?

The Paris reveries had progressively told a story that seemed so plausible. There were so many details that fit in perfectly. But the mind could do that. It did it in dreams, didn’t it? In the fantasy that had just played out, her mind had inserted the Celtic ring she’d seen in the Metropolitan Museum.

But over the summer, she’d always felt as if she were the person she was watching. That the images and the feelings were part of her. Not this time. Jac had been seeing the scene through a strange man’s eyes. Been inside his mind, but she wasn’t him. Wasn’t any part of him.

“Jac? Are you all right?” Theo asked.

“Yes. Why?”

“You were just staring off into space. I said your name twice.”

“Sorry, just lost in thought. I was trying to remember what I’d read about amber. I think that’s what the bits of stone you just burnt are. It has some curious properties. Farmers actually burn it to make fruit grow faster. But I’m not sure what else it can do.” She looked closely at the pyre. Rooted around in it with a stick. Pushing aside burnt twigs, lumps of coal and charred pine cones, she found more of the bits of brownish stones.

“This looks like a ritual fire. But it can’t be from Celtic times. It can’t be that old.”

“No, Wiccans still use these sites.”

“Reenacting Celtic ceremonies?”

“So my aunt Eva says. She learned to weave from one woman who practiced Wicca. She’s got endless stories if you’re interested.”

“I’d love to hear them.”

“Why don’t you come back to the house with me? You can stay for dinner. She asked me to invite you when I left this morning and I forgot.”

Minerva was sitting on the couch in the great room reading a book, taking occasional sips of something tawny from a glass. Eva was at her loom, weaving the marvelous blue-green cloth.

They both looked up when Jac and Theo came in.

The two sisters were alike in many ways: both had fine skin with a minimum of wrinkles and cornflower-blue eyes. But Eva was more like a delicate bouquet of lily of the valley in a antique porcelain pitcher, while Minerva was a dozen long-stem bold, black-red roses in a rock crystal vase.

“Help yourself to drinks,” Minerva said.

“A martini?” Theo asked Jac.

“Vodka and tonic if you have it, please.”

Theo walked over to the bar.

“Did you two have any luck today?” Minerva asked.

Theo filled his aunts in on the afternoon as he made drinks.

“This is a doomed exercise. Didn’t you learn anything from your grandfather?” Eva said. “There are too many caves. Too many ruins. Too much time has passed. You need to-”

“Eva, all those things are true, but nothing is impossible,” Minerva interrupted.

“You and all your possibilities.”

Jac had sat down on the couch opposite Minerva and was rifling though a book she’d found on the coffee table. The Red Book was a facsimile of Carl Jung’s famous journal containing his mandala drawings from 1914 to 1930. He’d undertaken the project to explore his own unconscious. She was studying the intricately detailed illuminations when she thought of something. If there had been one clue about the hidden journal in the library, perhaps there was another.

“Are the books in the library catalogued?” Jac asked.

“Yes.” Minerva answered first. “And the catalogue goes back to the mid-nineteenth century. The bulk of the titles were amassed by our great-grandfather. He bought up everything he could on the occult, magic, witches and mythology.”

“He was the one involved with the Phoenix Society?” Jac asked.

Minerva nodded. “He wrote a few monographs about the most important spiritualists of the time.” She rattled off a few names, several of which were vaguely familiar to Jac. “He infused our grandfather Henri with the same interests. When Henri was a boy, he attended his father’s séances, here in the house, he used to tell us how people sometimes came from as far away as London to attend. When we were children he experimented with-”

“Please, Minerva,” Eva interrupted. Her voice, usually so sweet, was suddenly tense.

“What kind of experiments?” Theo asked. “I’ve never heard about this.”

“It’s ancient history,” Minerva said, then looked at her sister, but Eva had turned away and was facing the window.

“Is it a secret?” he asked.

“It’s not a secret so much as something… your Aunt Eva has always preferred we don’t talk about it. But Eva…” She looked back at her. “Seventy years have passed.”

Theo got up and went over to his aunt Eva. He pulled a chair up to the loom, close to her, and then took her hand and held it gently. “I’d like to know what happened. Especially if it’s something that hurt you.”

Eva took a sip of her drink and then stared into the liquid for a moment. Sighing, she lowered the glass onto the side table, picked up her spindle, held on to it with both her hands as if it were ballast and began to talk.

“Our grandfather believed that children were more sensitive to spirits than adults. That we were more closely connected to the world we’d just come from-the world of souls: some recently dead, some dead for longer-all waiting to be reborn.”

“Not unlike Jung’s theory of a collective unconscious,” Minerva added.

“You connect everything back to Jung,” Eva said, as if even bringing up the unconscious were blasphemous.

Minerva laughed. “Because everything connects back to it.” She smoothed the fabric of her long red skirt over her knees. “I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to interrupt.”

“Our father was a banker,” Eva said. “Uninterested in the world outside the bank.” She looked at Theo and exchanged a look with him that Jac wasn’t sure she understood but guessed had something to do with his brother. “He spent more than half his time in London. Long stretches when our grandfather was the only male in the house. Long stretches when he supervised us. Our mother was here of course, but she seemed happy to let our grandfather oversee a large part of our activities,” Eva said, and then stopped. She picked up her glass again. Took a sip of her drink. Then another. “Is it really necessary to do this?” she asked Minerva. “There’s nothing to come of it.”

“Theo wants to know. I’ll tell him, all right?”

“Would it matter if I said I’d prefer you not to?”

“Yes, I said that if you really didn’t want me to-”

Eva interrupted this time. “But you’re a stone turner. And this one hasn’t been moved in decades. You said that yourself. I know you. You’ll just hound me until I say it’s all right, so just go ahead.”

“It was exciting to be included in our grandfather’s world,” Minerva said, picking up where her sister left off. But whereas Eva’s voice had been full of trepidation, Minerva’s was unfaltering and almost excited. “It made us feel special. We did things none of the adults in the house knew about. Magical things. He said they were our secrets. Between him and us and no one else.”

“What things?” Theo asked.

“We had midnight séances with a Ouija board while everyone else in the house was sleeping. Grandfather Henri said we were more receptive than any adults he’d ever worked with. It was heady praise. He needed us, flattered us, and we were his for the taking.”

“Did the séances work?” Jac asked.

“Oh yes. We’d receive messages from…” Minerva waved her arms wide, encompassing the sea outside the window. “From whoever was out there who wanted to communicate with us.”

“But people just push the little marker around, spelling out words,” Theo said. “You don’t believe spirits were really talking to you, do you?”

“Spirits like ghosts, no, of course not. But we tapped into some kind of force,” Minerva said. “I know as well as anyone how the unconscious influences us in ways we are aware of and others that are still a mystery to the most brilliant brain researchers. Thought can power movement. I was six. Eva was eight. We simply weren’t capable of spelling out the messages that came through on those nights. That was what was so exceptional about what happened.”

“But your grandfather knew how to spell multisyllabic words and write complex sentences, right?” Theo asked, suspiciously.

“His hands never touched the board,” Minerva said, as if she were that six-year-old again, full of wonder. “Only we children had our fingers on the pointer,” she explained. “Grandfather was in charge of writing down the letters the pin stopped on. He saved all the transcripts from our sessions.”

“Do they still exist?” Theo asked.

Minerva nodded. “They do.” She turned and looked over at the ornately carved credenza in the corner. “If you want to read them-” She stopped speaking suddenly.

“What is it?” Eva said nervously.

“I can’t believe I didn’t remember this before.” She looked at Theo. “Old age is a cruel master. Theo, what was the name of the spirit Hugo wrote about in the letter in the book of poetry?”

“The Shadow of the Sepulcher.”

“That’s what I thought.” Minerva looked at Eva. “You don’t remember either?”

“What?” Eva asked, as if she had no idea.

But Jac thought she saw the truth flicker across Eva’s face. As if she had remembered something but it had exacerbated her discomfort.

“Eva, what was the name of the spirit we talked to?” Minerva asked.

She shook her head. “I don’t know. It was so long ago.”

Jac was sure that Eva was lying. Why couldn’t Minerva see it too? Or did she and was just acting as if she didn’t, drawing her sister out this way for reasons of her own?

“The spirit we talked to was named the Shadow of the Tomb, wasn’t it?” Minerva asked.

“I thought he was just called the Shadow. Like the radio character.”

Minerva shook her head, then turned to Theo. “I’m sure of it. The spirit we talked to when we were children had a name. He called himself the Shadow of the Tomb.”

“Did my grandfather know that?” Theo asked.

“By the time our brother was born, our grandfather had died and we never played with the Ouija board again. But I can’t believe I didn’t make the connection when Alexander showed me the letter. Or that you didn’t,” she said to Eva.

“Theo, you shouldn’t be getting mixed up in this, that’s all there is to it.”

“Eva, everything will be fine,” Minerva said. “It’s a good thing to release this ghost.”

Eva shook her head. “It’s never a good thing to release a ghost.”

“You know there’s a possibility,” Jac said, more to Eva than Minerva, wanting to reassure the elderly woman, “that your grandfather found the Hugo letter and, knowing the name of the spirit, told you that’s who you were talking to. It’s even possible that the board never spelled out that name at all, but he guessed that name based on what he’d read, and you only think you wrote it out.”

“Very clever of you,” Eva said, shaking her head. “I think that’s exactly what happened.”

“Ah, so you are a skeptic,” Minerva said to Jac. “I’m surprised, given your interests.”

“My skepticism is why I wrote my book, and what the TV show is based on. I search for the kernels of reality that get blown up into legends and myth. I wanted to expose how truth gets exaggerated and how we fool ourselves into believing in dreams. It’s ironic that the opposite happened. Knowing there is even a little truth to these stories gives people hope.”

“You sound as if you wish you were like them,” Theo said.

“Sometimes I wish I could be. It would be a relief to believe without so much questioning.”

As if he were suffering from the same illness, Theo said, “It sounds like a simpler way to go through life.”

Minerva was searching Jac’s face intently. Jac had been to enough therapists to recognize the peering gaze.

“What do you hope for?” Minerva asked.

“That I’ll find answers.” Jac felt sadness surge through her. She was suddenly homesick for her brother-the whimsical, creative mind that embraced the unknown without being wary of it. If she could just move a few steps in his direction, just open herself up a little to the infinite possibilities he talked about, maybe she’d be more fulfilled, less restless. Around him she could sometimes forget about all she doubted. Once, he’d almost made her believe she’d find her âme sœur, her soul mate, hadn’t he?

Except she knew there was no such thing. Or if she was being even more cynical, maybe there was such a thing, and she’d lost hers forever when she lost Griffin North.

Eva was talking to Minerva now. Jac picked up on the conversation in midsentence. “You know that’s what happened. Minerva, you know how obsessive our grandfather was about the library.” She was smoothing down the nap of the fabric on the chair. “It makes complete sense that he found the Hugo letter and it influenced him, doesn’t it? After all, our brother found the letter. Why couldn’t our grandfather have found it before him?” She stared down at the cushion and ran her hand across it again. “Then he would have known that name and suggested it to us, putting it in our head. It’s possible, don’t you see?”

Minerva gave a weary sigh. “Yes, it’s all possible.”

“He never should have involved us.” She looked at Jac. “We were just children.”

“Communicating with someone you believed was a spirit must have been frightening.” Jac was remembering her own childhood visions. “When we’re children the unknown takes on huge and terrifying proportions.”

Eva nodded vigorously.

“I wasn’t frightened,” Minerva said somewhat wistfully. “I was in awe.”

“You were frightened. You just don’t remember.”

Minerva stood and walked over to a section of bookcases on the wall opposite the fireplace. The lower third were fitted with drawers, not shelves. Minerva pulled one open and began to search through the contents. She withdrew several worn leather-bound journals. A box of what looked like stationery. Sticks of sealing wax. A handful of fountain pens. Several brass and silver seals. A few sheets of blotting paper. A crystal inkwell. A treasure trove of writing instruments from a bygone era.

Minerva was still extracting things from the drawer. A stack of envelopes tied with a burgundy ribbon. Bottles of ink.

“What are you doing?” Eva asked. “Everything is carefully arranged.”

“Yes, and I’ll put it all back. I wish you would relax.”

“Yes, I’m sure you do.” Eva sighed. “But I won’t know where anything is if you don’t put it back exactly the way it was,” she continued.

“You haven’t needed anything in here for at least fifty or sixty years.”

“And how do you know that?”

Theo shot Jac an amused look. Living with his grandaunts, he must have heard hundreds of these conversations.

“There’s nothing to come of reading through those conversations now,” Eva said.

“That’s not what I’m getting,” Minerva said. She’d finished emptying out the drawer and now was lifting it out of the credenza.

“Then what are you doing?” Eva asked. “There’s nothing left in there.”

“But there is. Grandpapa showed me this hiding place. There’s a compartment here, under the drawer. I always thought you knew too. This is where he used to hide the board after Papa became so adamant about our not being included in the experiments anymore. Whenever our father came home from London,” Minerva said to Theo and Jac, “the board would go back in here for the duration and then come out again as soon as he left.”

Minerva pulled a long box out of the hiding space and carried it over to the sitting area.

Eva let out a small moan. As if the sight of it caused her pain. “It was there all this time?” Eva was agitated. Her voice was tight and stressed again. “Get rid of it, Minerva.”

Minerva looked at her older sister and frowned. “You are being ridiculous.”

“I want you to get rid of that thing.” Eva’s voice was raised. Her hands were clenched into fists.

Theo looked surprised, as if this level of bickering was not what he was used to.

“I honestly think that what you believe you remember about all this is an exaggerated childhood memory. Maybe if we look at it, the experience might be cathartic,” Minerva said.

“Cathartic? Why are you so hell-bent on revisiting this chapter of our lives? It’s a mistake. I’m warning you.”

Minerva unfolded the board. Fully opened it was about two feet long and eighteen inches wide. In the upper right-hand corner the word yes was printed in black ink. In the upper left was the word no. A semicircle of all the letters in the alphabet filled the center. Underneath that, along the bottom, were the numbers 0 to 9.

Some of the black paint had flaked off, so while the letters and numbers were legible, they looked battle-scarred. The board was mostly smooth but in spots the shellac had worn off and raw wood showed through.

“Our grandfather made this,” Minerva said, running her finger over a portion of the surface where the shellac was still intact.

Eva stood up and walked to the bar, poured two inches of clear liquid from a decanter into her glass, added two ice cubes, took a sip and then another, and then stood there watching her sister.

“And made quite a mess with it too. The abusive bastard,” Eva muttered, surprising even Minerva.

Theo looked from one of his aunts to the other. “What happened?”

Eva answered, “He put us at the table night after night and had us commune with ghosts. It scared us both. Terribly, even if my sister has forgotten that. She was so young… it was so unfair. On the nights we played with the board she used to have nightmares, and I’d have to shake her awake so she’d stop crying out in her sleep. But it didn’t matter to him. Night after night he’d have us sit at that table and play his game. Sometimes nothing would happen. Other times… I don’t know…”

“I don’t understand it still, but our hands moved as if by magic, spelling out streams of words we didn’t even understand,” Minerva said.

“Whenever I got upset and asked if we could stop, he would get angry at me. He told us we were very special, that not everyone could converse with the dead.” Eva’s face was pale. The skin around her mouth was drawn and pulled tight. Her fingers gripped her glass so tightly her knuckles were white. “I would lie in bed for hours after a session, unable to go to sleep, wondering if that was true. And if it was, were they going to come and get us and take us into the place on the other side of the board?”

“It was exciting to stay up late with Grandpapa,” Minerva said. “He was so proud of us, don’t you remember that?”

“Not at all. Proud? No.”

“When did the séances finally stop?” Theo asked.

Minerva answered quickly. “When we were nine and eleven.”

“They stopped because our grandfather died,“ Eva said very softly. She took a long sip from her glass, then got up, walked over to the fireplace, picked up a poker and shoved a log so hard sparks sputtered out.

There was something not being said. Jac knew silences like these. Had lived with them in her own family, when her mother was having an affair and her father had found out. Those silences had grown longer as the marriage broke apart piece by piece. Until her mother decided to embrace that silence forever.

“And the last time you used the board was the night before Henri died?” Theo asked.

“The night he died,” Minerva said.

Without any explanation, Eva turned and walked out of the room. Jac listened to the sound of her retreating footsteps and the ice tinkling in her glass.

Minerva stood by the table, looking down at the wooden board as if it alone would resolve the tension.

Jac had thought Eva had left for the evening, but her footsteps on the parquet were returning. When she came back she was holding two glasses. In addition to her drink, she carried a small juice glass about three inches high with a floral pattern etched around its ring. It was a sweet-looking glass, the kind you’d fill with orange juice and drink in a sun-filled kitchen while fresh croissants cooked in the oven and coffee brewed.

“You’ve always wanted to do this,” Eva said, holding the glass out to her sister.

“But you don’t want to.”

“No, I don’t. I don’t need the memories. But I need you to see that nothing will happen. You’ve always wanted to believe that we’d tapped into that cosmic collective unconscious you’re forever talking about. You have held on to the belief that he was giving us some kind of gift. Once and for all you will know he manipulated us, Minerva. And you will forgive me.”

“There is nothing to forgive you for.”

“Don’t lie to me. Ever. It’s disingenuous and does not become you.”

“What are you talking about?” Theo asked.

Neither sister seemed to have heard him.

“Why would he have manipulated us?” Minerva asked Eva. “What are you talking about?”

Now the positions were reversed. She was the less sure sister, the one who seemed nervous.

“To scare us,” Eva whispered.

“Why would he want us scared?”

“You of all people should know the answer to that. You are a therapist. Are you really that blind to your own family history?”

Jac felt that she was intruding. That she shouldn’t be there. She was also confused about why this conversation was happening now. Theo had told her the two sisters had lived in this house together for the last twenty years. Eva had never married, never left. Minerva had married and moved to London and had a child, but after divorcing her husband she’d moved back to Wells in Wood in the 1990s. Was it really possible these two women had avoided this conversation for so long?

“Why did he want us scared?” Minerva asked again. Jac heard a young confused girl in the old woman’s voice.

“You really don’t know?” Eva sounded astonished.

“No.”

“He scared us so he could hold us under the pretense of comforting us. He’d been doing it to me all along. I’d become too mature for him. He was shifting his interest to you.”

Minerva stared at Eva, horrified by the suggestion.

Jac could see that she didn’t believe her.

For a few moments there was silence. Minerva got up and walked over to the windows. She stood, staring out into the darkness. The quiet continued for several more moments.

Eva was still holding on to the glass. “We need to do this, Minerva. I need to show you. We should have done it years ago.”

Minerva didn’t turn around.

Eva stood and walked to her sister. “It won’t go away. We’ll just be putting it off.” Eva took her sister by the arm, turned her around and led her toward the card table. Minerva didn’t fight her.

“Theo, come and sit down,” Eva said. She looked at Jac. “You’ll join us, won’t you?”

Eva and Theo sat on either side of Minerva. Jac faced her. Once all four of them were seated, Minerva looked around the room as if she was searching for something.

“What is it?” Eva asked.

“If we are going to do this…” She got up and shut off the electric lights. Then taking a box of matches off the mantel, she lit the tapers in the candelabra. The slight smell of sulfur wafted through the air. Minerva carried the flickering flames with her toward the table. A nimbus of iridescent light haloed each candle. Suddenly the present receded into the past and Jac felt as if she’d stepped into another era. The room had been made for candlelight, she thought. For this soft glow and these shadows. For alcoves where mysteries could hide.

“This is how I remember it looking,” Minerva said, as she set the candelabra down.

Eva gave a sour laugh. “Yes, like a stage set. Our grandfather was very much the dramatist. He played the role of a mystical seeker of wisdom so well. It was so very exotic. Other children had grandfathers who were farmers or storekeepers or bankers, but ours was an eccentric.”

“How did he die?” Theo asked. “I don’t think I know that. Is it possible you never mentioned it?”

The candlelight flickered on the walls.

Almost involuntarily, it seemed to Jac, Minerva glanced at the door to the hallway and the sweeping marble staircase.

“He tripped and fell down the stairs-” Minerva said.

Eva interrupted her sister, her voice ghostlike and far away. “And he broke his neck. He died instantly.”

“How terrible,” Jac said, “for both of you.”

“Yes, terrible,” Eva said in the same distant voice. “Grandfather’s death was terrible in every way. Except one.” She paused. “There were no more séances.”

For a long moment there was only the sound of the surf beating against the rocks.

Then Eva put the glass on the board and gave instructions. “All right. Everyone put one finger on the glass. Like this.” Her movements seemed tentative, as if she expected to be burned by its surface.

The glass was cool and smooth where Jac touched it and almost felt as if it were vibrating. Theo placed his forefinger next to hers. In his other hand was a pen poised expectantly over a pad of paper.

Minerva hesitated. “Eva, are you sure?”

“Aren’t you the one who always says we should confront our ghosts?” She laughed bitterly.

Minerva put her finger on the glass and completed the fourth.

The candles flickered. A breeze floated through the room, and with it came a cacophony of scents. There was the candle’s paraffin. Eva’s lily of the valley perfume. Minerva’s spicy Oriental. The eucalyptus, honey, cinnamon and oakmoss in Theo’s scent. Mixed in with all the perfumes and cologne, Jac smelled age. Burnt wood. Ash. Mold. Years passing. She felt as if she were speeding through a tunnel of scent. Aware of each as it whooshed by her.

“Is there… is there anyone here with us?” Eva asked in a hesitant voice.

“That’s exactly what Grandpapa would say,” Minerva said softly, almost as if she were a little in awe of her older sister.

“Is there? Is there anyone here with us?” Eva repeated. Her voice was a bit bolder now.

The glass didn’t move.

Eva repeated her question one more time. Now she sounded almost gleeful. As if she was proving her point.

Jac saw Theo’s eyes were focused on the board. So were Minerva’s.

For the fourth time, Eva repeated her question. Now it was mocking, strident. “Is there anyone here with us?”

The glass stayed on the edge of the board. Eva’s mouth turned up into a smug smile.

Theo seemed disappointed.

Minerva wasn’t paying attention to any of them but staring down at their fingers on the top of the glass. “I know you are here,” she whispered in a voice devoid of suspicion. “I can feel you. I remember you.”

And with that the glass began to tremble.

At first Jac thought it was Eva’s anger, which contorted her face, that was making the glass move. But no, her finger wasn’t shaking. None of their fingers were pushing it. That was totally clear to Jac. The glass really was moving, pulling them along with it.

Racing, the juice glass slid back and forth across the board, stopping at letters so fast that Theo-who had offered to write them down with his right hand-could barely keep up.

I… T… H… A… S… B… E… E… N… A… V… E… R… Y… L… O… N… G… T… I… M… E…

Under her breath, Minerva whispered each word as she figured it out.

Jac was trying to work them out, but Minerva was faster.

“Yes,” Minerva said, “it has been a very long time.”

A… B… A… N… D… O… N… E… D… M… E… A… N… D… O… U… R… G… A… M… E…

The logs crackled in the fireplace. Heaved, then hissed. The room filled with the scent of damp earth. Of smoke. Of fire.

Minerva’s face was a study in exaltation. Eva was pale and looked unwell.

“Who are you?” Minerva whispered.

Y… O… U… K… N… O… W…

“Yes, I know. But say your name. Grandpapa always made you say your name.”

S… H… A… D… O… W… O… F… T… H… E… S… E… P… U… L… C… H… E… R…

The glass was moving too fast. Minerva had stopped saying the words. Jac leaned over to read what Theo had written down on the pad.

Shadow of the Sepulcher.

“You gave us a different name before,” Minerva said. “What was that name?”

O… F… T… H… E… T… O… M… B…

“Why did my grandfather want to reach you? What did he want from you?” Minerva asked.

H… E… W… A… N… T… E… D… M… Y… A… N… S… W… E… R… S… T… O… K… N… O… W… S… E… C… R… E… T… S…

“What secrets?” Minerva asked.

Suddenly the glass stopped moving. Jac thought the air in the room and the flames in the fireplace had stilled too.

And then suddenly, the glass took off. Skittering across the board as if it had some kind of palsy. Theo barely kept up as he tried to catch every letter.

A log in the fireplace cracked and crashed. A window frame creaked. The glass kept racing. A door slammed. The glass zigzagged back across the board. A high keening seemed to seep from the floor, almost as if the house were moaning.

“It’s the wind,” Eva murmured, but she sounded as if she were trying to convince herself. “It’s just the wind.”

Jac watched the glass jerking from right to left and then back again. Beneath her fingers, it felt alive. With a mind of its own.

After another twenty or thirty seconds, the glass slid all the way to the left, past the edge of the board, right off it and onto the table and then off the table. They all lost touch with it. It should have fallen. But it didn’t. Not yet. For a few seconds the simple floral-patterned juice glass floated in the air.

Another moan escaped from the parquet. The glass fell and crashed. Dozens of shards caught in the candlelight, sparkled.

On the other side of the room, a framed photograph fell off the wall almost at the same time. Smashing on the floor, its glass shattered too.

Eva let out a small shriek and began to whimper.

Minerva leaned over and put her arms around her sister, speaking to her softly, trying to comfort her. Eva was crying now. Like a child, Jac thought.

Theo rose, hurried across the room and switched on the lights. Then he picked up the photograph and stared down at it. His brows knit. His eyes narrowed.

Jac walked over to look.

It was a very old and faded back-and-white photograph. A man wearing a formal suit stood on the rocks, looking off into the distance. Behind him was a view of the sea. Something was not right with the image, but Jac couldn’t figure it out for a few seconds. Then she realized. His right foot was positioned strangely. Bent at the ankle, it was angled in an unnatural way. It couldn’t have been easy to balance on the rocks to begin with-but even more difficult to do it with a foot positioned like that, pointing down.

Along the bottom of the image were four words written in script in faded ink.

Victor Hugo in Exile.

Minerva was helping her sister, who was still crying, out of the room. Once they had left and were well out of earshot, Jac asked Theo what the glass had spelled out in that last burst of frenzied activity.

Still holding the photograph, Theo went back to the table. As he figured out the words, he read them.

He scared… you to… comfort you. That was how… I seduced him. I have other ways to seduce other men. Some have succumbed… some I have lost. I will not lose you.