The Book of Lost Fragrances

Twenty-three

PARIS, FRANCE

2:15 P.M.

Jac saw him before he saw her as he came through the café doors. His easy gait was the same; she remembered how gracefully he moved despite his height. Griffin’s mouth was set in a serious straight line, and his gray-blue eyes were the color of a troubled sea. But when he noticed her, he smiled-that same strange, satisfying smile she remembered that lifted a little higher on the right side. His hair was shot through with some silver, but still thick, and waves of it fell on his forehead. He tilted his head just a fraction to the left, and his eyebrows raised almost imperceptibly. With that one look, he managed to convey the depth of his concern for her, and she remembered what it had felt like to think that they’d belonged together.

In the past few hours, when she’d allowed herself to imagine this moment, Jac hadn’t pictured him wrapping his arms around her before they’d even spoken. Yet now he took her in his arms without hesitation and held her tight.

She breathed his smell. Impossibly, still the same.

“I’m so sorry,” he said as he let her go. “We’ll find him. I know we will.”

They sat down. Despite the jet lag and the shock of Robbie’s disappearance and the police having discovered an unidentified dead man in the workshop, something inside of her lifted. It was Griffin opposite her, holding on to her with his eyes. How could he still pull at her like this? As if no time had passed, when a lifetime had. When he’d left her, she was so lost and so angry that she’d never wanted to see him again. Now here he was, and she needed his help.

The waiter arrived, and they ordered coffee.

“I’m sorry,” Griffin said again.

“Why are you apologizing? Was there something you might have done to prevent what happened?”

He shrugged. “No. Probably not. But I was there. I’d just left.” His eyes didn’t leave her.

“How long have you been in Paris?” Jac asked.

“A few days.” He put his hands on the table.

The years of working with stone and sand had taken their toll, and she wondered how rough the tips of his fingers would feel on her skin.

“On business?”

“Of a sort. When Robbie found out my wife and I separated, he asked me to come help him with something.”

“You and Robbie remained friends? He’s never mentioned you.”

“We keep in touch. I’ve kept tabs on you, though.” Another smile. This one slightly sad.

“What were you helping him with?”

“He’d found something and wanted me to figure out what it was.”

“Stop being cryptic. You’re always so stingy with details.” Remembering this about him and how it used to frustrate her, she half smiled. Then her worry took over again. “What did he need help with?”

“He didn’t tell you?”

She paused, thinking back to the last time she’d seen her brother and their conversation in their mother’s crypt. “I think he tried to, but we were arguing.”

“He told me that.”

“Really?”

“We’ve been together twelve, fourteen hours a day since Thursday. There’s been a lot of conversation.”

“Then you know what kind of shape the House of L’Etoile is in?”

The waiter brought the coffees, and she drank hers too quickly and burned her tongue. The sting was a welcome relief from the roiling emotions.

“He was hoping his find would pay off a chunk of those loans.”

“What are we talking about? What did he find? Can’t you just tell me, for Chrissakes?”

“When Robbie took over from your father, the workshop was a mess. You’ve seen it?”

She nodded.

“He said it was as if your father had started looking for his memory and took the entire place apart trying to find it. In one of the piles, he found a small box filled with pottery shards. He did some research and found out they were ancient Egyptian. At that point, Robbie came to see me in New York, and I agreed to help. I’ve been able to determine the object was once a round pot from the Ptolemaic Dynasty that was filled with a waxy substance, like a pomade. Its bowl is decorated with hieroglyphics that tell a story of lovers who use its perfume to remember their past lives and find their ba, their-” He’d used the Egyptian word.

“Soul mates,” she finished for him, remembering the story her father had told her and Robbie. The ancient book of formulas and the fragrance found in Egypt over two hundred years ago. The lost L’Etoile treasure.

“Your family’s legend, Jac, it’s real. Robbie found proof of it.”

“Proof of what, though?” She ran her finger around the rim of her coffee cup, feeling the smooth, round edge. “Cracked pottery could be manufactured. Fakes were a big business even in the nineteenth century. A story like that would sell more perfume. There’s no scent that triggers-”

She broke off. Remembered what had just happened to her in the workshop.

Some therapists theorized that certain odors could trigger psychotic episodes. The scientists at Blixer Rath had conducted tests with her, but hadn’t found an olfactory response.

Griffin looked at her with fresh concern. He’d always read her so closely and reacted so quickly to her changing moods or thoughts. That he could still do this surprised her.

“What is it? Jac?”

When they were together one night, she and Griffin had sat in bed in the dark and told each other their secrets. His about his father. Hers about finding her mother. And the episodes. But she didn’t want to discuss her private demons with him now. Not after all these years.

“There’s no book of formulas.”

“Cleopatra had a perfume factory, Jac. It’s real. Mark Anthony built it for her. They’ve found it in the desert at the south end of the Dead Sea. Thirty kilometers from Ein Gedi. Ancient perfumes were found there.”

“There’s no soul-mate scent,” she said. “It’s all the stuff of fantasy. That’s what perfume is: magic and imagery. My ancestors made it all up to enhance the aura of the House of L’Etoile.”

Griffin’s eyes darkened. She’d forgotten that-how when the light shifted, they could lose their blue hue and turn to cold, impenetrable steel. “It wasn’t all made up,” he said intently. “The pot shards are authentic. And the chemical analysis of the clay shows it was impregnated with ancient oils.”

“Then Robbie should have been able to reconstruct the scent and prove what it can and can’t do. He has access to all the same oils and essences the Egyptians used.”

“Apparently there are some unidentifiable ingredients, Jac. The lab couldn’t isolate them, and Robbie can’t sniff them out. The inscription on the pottery lists the ingredients. That’s what we were working on.”

And as Griffin continued to explain, despite her conviction that any such fragrance was only a fantasy and that there was nothing logical about what he was suggesting, she found herself wondering again. What was that thread of scent she’d always smelled in the workshop? That unidentifiable odor that neither her brother nor her father could smell but that she could? And did it have something to do with her attacks?