Seduction

Forty-one

While Jac had been reading, Theo had kept the fire burning, and fragrant and sweet smoke had filled the cave. Was she getting drunk on the smell? More than once she’d felt reality waving away and had managed to keep in the moment only by touching the scarlet-threaded bracelet on her left wrist, letting go just to turn a page. Now, without the book to concentrate on, she rolled the silk against her skin and tried to focus on what Theo had just said.

“I’m sorry, what?” she asked.

He’d been leaning over her shoulder, looking at the pages. Now he was standing, his body shaking, swaying slightly. The fire flared just then, and in the light, Theo’s eyes burned brighter. Had she ever seen a face so twisted with pain and desire at the same time?

“Is it… is it possible? What Hugo wrote?” he asked, speaking slowly.

“You mean was the Shadow real? Victor Hugo thought he was.”

“Would you be able to resist that offer, Jac? If you had the chance to bring someone you loved back from the dead?”

The book was still open in her lap. She couldn’t close it, not yet: she was too moved and confused to know how to react. In the shadows of the cave, farther back than they had yet explored, she could sense, no, she could see shapes moving, circling around another fire. She could hear far-off keening, and chanting. A woman crying. A man shouting.

Jac pushed the thread up an inch on her skin and then down.

“Imagine if it was possible,” Theo was saying, “to bring someone back from the dead. If the Shadow really talked to my ancestor… if he really talked to Hugo… if the Shadow is real… just imagine!”

The smoke grew heavier. The scent sickly sweet now. Jac coughed. It was hard to breathe.

“The Shadow is real,” a different voice said from farther away.

Jac recognized Ash’s voice. How had he gotten here?

“And he’s here. The Shadow is here.”

Ash was coming closer to where she and Theo were sitting.

“Can’t you smell him? He’s real.” Now Ash was so close to Jac, his breath was warm on her skin.

Why was she shivering? It was so warm in the cavern, how could she be cold? Ash’s breath was warm. The fire was warm.

There was a moment of quiet. And then Jac felt the slightest breeze as Ash reached out for her. She thought he was going to embrace her. Wasn’t sure why here or why now in front of Theo, but his hands were coming closer, his fingers outstretched.

“The Shadow is going to bring Naomi back from the dead,” he said, and then Ash’s fingers went around her throat, not to pull her, not to kiss her, but, she was sure, to kill her.

The fire blazed. The scene was waving and she felt herself slipping into a hallucination of smoke just like this smoke. Of a cave just like this cave. But not in the present. She was going into the past.

Behind her, Theo was shouting, “Stop! Stop!” She heard it doubled. Was it two men shouting the same words? Or were the words echoing through the cave? Despite the pressure on her neck, Jac held on to the red thread and kept herself where the pain was, where it was hard to breathe, in the present. She knew that if she didn’t, she would be lost. Finally and completely lost.

And then the hands lifted. No fingers were gripping her neck. She touched the place where it burned, where he’d been twisting her skin, and gulped for air and started to cough.

“What the hell were you trying to do, you idiot?” Theo was screaming at his brother.

Jac turned around.

Theo had pulled Ash off her and had him pinned up against the wall.

“Are you crazy? Trying to reenact a drugged man’s ramblings? Hugo was mad when he wrote that journal!” Theo screamed.

“Don’t interfere. Don’t you dare. Not again,” Ash shouted, and he pushed back at his brother and threw him off. “Naomi wouldn’t be dead if you hadn’t been so pitiful. If she didn’t feel so sorry for you, she would have left you sooner and she’d be alive now. Alive and living with me. Happy. I don’t destroy people, Theo.”

He punched Theo in the face. Theo threw the next punch, but Ash got out of the way and then reached out and grabbed Theo. Locked in an angry embrace, the two of them wrestled, pulling and pushing at each other. On the walls of the cave, their shadows fought as well. Leaping and springing forward and back.

Jac was trying to understand. Had Ash been lying all this time? Had he actually been in love with Theo’s wife, not just helping her? Had he been having an affair with her?

For all Theo’s psychological issues, had he been right in his suspicions? Had Ash seduced Naomi? Had Naomi betrayed Theo?

The brothers were an even match. And each time one of them got the advantage, the other managed to turn it around.

Ash grabbed Theo, spun him around and threw him against the wall again. Theo pushed him off with so much force Ash stumbled backward and fell.

Theo jumped on top of Ash and kept him pinned to the ground.

Ash’s head just missed the pyre. The fire was raised off the floor but only by six inches.

Ash broke free and rolled to get away but moved dangerously closer to the flames. Ash’s hair caught fire. Feeling the heat, his energy surged. He rolled in the other direction, batting at his head, extinguishing the charring, and then, getting to his feet, he threw a punch. This one caught Theo by surprise, and he stumbled.

The two of them struggled for the next few minutes, neither gaining an advantage, first one in control, then the other. Then Ash pushed Theo far enough away to take off, running farther into the cave, into the unexplored next chamber where Jac had thought she’d seen people in robes. Where she thought she’d seen a woman standing, crying over a burning bier.

Theo followed Ash.

Jac ran after both brothers, into that innermost, deepest chamber.

The enclosure was smaller than any of the other rooms. The ceiling was barely six feet high. The walls curved inward and were smoothed to a polished finish. Every surface was decorated with paintings. The processions that had begun in the outermost entranceway to the cave with the half-man half-cat culminated in this room.

The two brothers tumbled over one another.

Jac hovered by the door, wanting to go in, to break them up. Not knowing how she could.

Ash was on top of his brother now, his hands pinning him down. Bucking, Theo threw Ash off, then jumped on him, pinning him with a firm grip. Finally subduing him.

Theo was out of breath, gasping for air. So was Ash.

“You stupid fool,” Theo said. “You’re insane! Do you know that?”

With his arms restrained, it seemed the fight was going out of Ash. He stopped resisting. Lay still. Theo took a breath.

And then with a burst of sudden energy, Ash jackknifed and threw Theo off, smashing him into the wall. Jac heard the impact. She gasped.

Now Ash held Theo to the wall, the two of them exhausted, out of breath and energy. But the brothers’ anger was fierce. In such close quarters, if they started fighting again, one shove could result in a fatal head wound.

She had to stop them. But how?

Jac’s right hand was clasped around her wrist, covering the bracelet up as if protecting it from the destructive energy in the cave. There was something beyond what was here and now. In the shadows of this room were the answers she needed in order to understand what had happened to her since she’d arrived, and maybe even longer than that. Jac knew that something more important than her work had brought her to Jersey. That she’d needed to come here to help Theo. Destiny or fate or magic or alchemy or the collective unconscious or a mystical secret, whatever Theo’s grandaunts or Malachai wanted to call it, had brought her here.

What if our souls are connected to each other and flow together in and out of time like a giant woven tapestry? What if it was that simple and that real? The laws of physics state that energy cannot be destroyed, and we are made of energy. When each of us dies, that energy reenters the atmosphere. What if it does become part of the collective blanket of souls? Threads of energy that connect us each to the other. What if it is our obligation to follow them, despite the knots and tangles, through to the end?

Jac was certain that as long as she had the red thread Eva had tied around her wrist, she could venture out and search for the answers she sensed were waiting and work her way back.

Maybe if she took this psychic journey she could discover who she was to these two men and who they were to each other.

When she was younger, Theo had saved her life when he pulled her out of the lake. Tonight he had saved her life again when he pulled his brother’s fingers from around her throat.

Owing him for both, she also owed herself whatever knowledge there was to be gathered. Maybe it was time to learn why she was so afraid of this ability she’d had since childhood. Instead of running away from this gift or this curse, the moment had come to understand who she was and what it was.

Jac closed her eyes. Inhaled the fragrant air, identified the sweet notes of the amber resin that wasn’t supposed to have a scent. Inhaled again. Took the drug into her lungs. Felt the dizziness. Saw the room wave around her. Saw the shapes begin to change. Began to think another’s thoughts…