Sixty-three

PARIS, FRANCE

SUNDAY, MAY 29, 5:15 P.M.


The precious artifact was wrapped in a sheet of ordinary bubble wrap and secured in Jac’s pocketbook. It was a good one that she’d bought years ago and still used. The more battered the leather, the better it looked. Like Griffin, she thought. He was bruised, wounded, stitched up, and stapled but had never been more special to her.

He’d been moved from the intensive care unit to a regular room. Was sleeping. Had been since she’d arrived a half hour before. She was waiting for him to wake up. Because she needed him to do something.

Jac was going to ask Griffin to sniff the residue of pomade in the Egyptian jar. If nothing happened to him, she’d know Malachai had been wrong. Her hallucinations weren’t past life episodes-she was crazy after all.

But if Griffin had hallucinations and remembered the two of them in the past… if the scent provoked his memories and he could recollect them loving each other through time… then they had to be âmes soeurs.

“Once upon a time,” she whispered to Griffin, retelling the story she and Robbie had been told by their father, “in Egypt in 1799, Giles L’Etoile discovered an ancient book of fragrance formulas. One for an elixir that enabled people to find true soul mates. After he’d smelled the scent, he was never the same. The book and the fragrance have been lost, but once upon a time in the future another L’Etoile will find them and-”

Griffin opened his eyes and smiled at her.

“What were you saying?”

“I was telling you a story.”

“Will you tell me again? I missed most of it.”

She nodded. “Later.”

“Did you go home and sleep?” he asked.

“I tried.”

“How’s Robbie?”

Jac reassured Griffin that her brother was fine and would be coming over soon. She’d seen Robbie before she left but hadn’t told him about the jar she’d found. Or the scroll. There’d be time for that. First she needed to find out what was happening to her. What the images meant. Whether she was having memories or was crazy again.

Griffin’s cell phone rang. He looked down at the LED readout. Smiled. “It’s my daughter.”

“Take it. I’ll get some coffee.”

As Jac walked to the door, she heard Griffin answer. Listened to the catch in his voice as he said his Elsie’s name. She shut the door with a shaking hand. Leaned against it. Jac was remembering her father saying her name. She was thinking about her parents’ separation. Her loneliness. Robbie’s unhappiness. The way her parents’ bitterness ripped apart their days, cast their lives into shadows.

“Where is the chapel?” Jac asked one of the nurses bustling by.

For the few minutes it took to get from Griffin’s room to the simple chapel on the lower level, Jac didn’t think about anything. She willed her mind blank. Simply put one foot in front of the other and propelled herself forward. Only when she reached the small stone sanctuary and sat down on one of the wooden pews did she let the torrent of complicated thoughts twist into her consciousness.

At the feet of a lovely and serene marble Madonna, a dozen votives burned in small ruby holders. On either side of her, vases of lilies lent their perfume to the paraffin scent. Afternoon light poured through the cobalt stained-glass windows, casting melancholy reflections of the same sad blue that always filled the mausoleum where her mother was interred.

You know what to do.

The voice came from the shadows of the dark little prayer room.

Jac hadn’t expected her mother’s voice here. She’d never heard it outside of the Sleepy Hollow Cemetery.

And it’s the right thing to do.

“You don’t know anything!” Jac shouted. Shouted it before it occurred to her she was speaking out loud. She’d never spoken to her mother’s ghost. Never allowed that the manifestation was anything other than her imagination playing tricks.

There was nothing wrong with asking Griffin to smell the pomade. If Jac was crazy, then Griffin wouldn’t remember anything. If she wasn’t, then he’d remember the things she had. They’d find out they’d been together before.

But in both of those lives, he died for you. As Giles, when Marie-Genevieve’s husband discovered them together early that morning in Paris. And as Thoth, in Egypt, by swallowing his own potion.

“So what?” Jac asked.

The chapel, filled with the scent of sadness and prayers, was silent.

Jac went over it again. Thought it all through. He’d died for her twice in the past. And just two days ago, Griffin had almost died for her again. If reincarnation was real, if they had lived these lives by each other’s sides, they were in a karmic treadmill.

Twice she had taken him as a lover when he wasn’t free.

Twice he had died because of her.

Griffin was off the phone when Jac returned to his room.

“How is Elsie?” she asked.

“They landed in Paris. She’ll be here in an hour.”

Jac gripped her purse to her chest.

“She’ll be so happy to see you. And it will be so good for you to see her.”

Griffin nodded and started to say something.

Jac interrupted. “I’m going to go…” She gripped the bag tighter. She loved this man. Wanted him still. But she knew what she had to do. “I think I should-” she broke off. How could she say good-bye?

She stared into Griffin’s eyes. Tried to speak without words. She knew she was failing.

“Thank you for everything. For helping Robbie and me. For saving my life. I can’t ever…” Her voice quavered. She squeezed her bag tighter, heard one of the bubbles pop. “Go home with your wife and your little girl, Griffin. You told me yourself you weren’t sure it was over. Give it another chance.”

“But-”

She knew what he was going to say and interrupted. She didn’t want to hear it.

“You can’t figure anything out with me around. And you need to. Not so much even for Elsie’s sake or for your wife’s. For yours, Griffin.” Jac wanted to reach out and take his hand and feel his flesh, but she knew if she did, she would never let go.

“Ciao,” she whispered. He had saved her life. Now she had to give him a chance to save his own.

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