The Book of Lost Fragrances

Sixty-one

PARIS, FRANCE

SUNDAY, MAY 29, 1:08 P.M.

Jac tried to force herself to get up and get away from the organ. To break the pull and escape the grip of the memories that weren’t hers yet were as real as if she’d lived them. But she couldn’t. There was more sitting on the edge of her consciousness. Something important she had to understand. The story wasn’t over. It hadn’t even begun.

Jac inhaled. Found the thread. Of the hundreds of bottles of essence and absolutes, she could read only some of the labels. She was lost in possibilities. Of all these ingredients, which ones combined to create her hallucinatory nightmares?

One by one, she looked at each label. This one? This?

Frustrated, she banged on the organ with clenched fists, like a child demanding attention. Bottles rattled, glass tinkled. Banged again. Under the perfume maker’s music she heard another sound that made no sense-an echo.

The organ was a solid mass of carved wood. How could it be hollow?

One by one, Jac removed every bottle from the organ. Soon there was no room to walk. Four hundred bottles-some dating back to the seventeen hundreds-covered the floor in a three-dimensional fragrant rug.

The organ was empty. A coffin. Years of oil stains had left an abstract design on the wooden shelves. Pressing and prodding, Jac knocked against each section until finally she found it.

A hidden recess.

Carefully she pried up the wooden square, revealing a fragrant, dark cavity. The fountainhead of the scent. Robbie’s Fragrance of Comfort. Jac’s nightmare.

Reaching in, she felt for what she couldn’t see. As she lifted it out, dozens of flecks of amber-stained linen cracked off.

It was a scroll. This was the source of the dangerous, exotic, mesmerizing scent.

Jac wasn’t sure she should, but she unrolled it. Inside was a pottery jar. White glaze. Turquoise and coral designs. Black hieroglyphics. This was an undamaged version of the shards that Robbie had found. She felt inside with the tip of her forefinger. There were vestiges of wax still lining its walls.

The air waved. The imagines beckoned. The scent embraced her in a horrific grip, wound around Jac, and pulled her in.