The Collector of Dying Breaths

Chapter 33

THE PRESENT

MONDAY, MARCH 24

BARBIZON, FRANCE

Griffin called Jac from New York later that morning.

“I’m taking a six PM flight. I’ll be in Paris by morning. I have a meeting in the afternoon, and then I’ll take a car to Barbizon. I should be there by early evening.”

“It will be good to see you.”

“You sound tired,” he said.

“It’s nothing.” She had almost told him what had happened during the trip to Wales. It wouldn’t be fair for him to be stuck on a plane with nothing to do but think about the situation and stress over it.

“You sure?” he asked.

“I don’t remember you being such a worrier when we were in college.”

“I was at that age when you think you are immortal and nothing can ever happen to you.”

“Well, we know that isn’t true anymore,” Jac said.

“Oh yes, that we do know,” he responded, his voice dropping into a deeper register as if he was reflecting on his own tragedies. Of course he had them, Jac thought. His ruined marriage. His parents’ deaths. And his own mangled career as a scholar that had been destroyed when he’d been accused of plagiarism by his own father-in-law. Even when Griffin was able to prove that the printer of his book had left out the two critical pages of footnotes, it was too late. His reputation had been tarnished. Four years later he was still rebuilding, repairing, fighting to regain some measure of the success he’d had before.

“How was New York?” she asked.

Griffin had gone to see his daughter, but that meant he would also have seen his wife. They were separated but not yet divorced. Jac hadn’t been able to stop herself from worrying that being back with them both, he’d have second thoughts about the breakup of his family. Even though he’d told her there was no possibility of a reconciliation. They’d tried to do that before and had failed.

“It was wonderful to see Elsie,” he said.

“How was her birthday party?”

“Terrific.”

“And Therese?” Jac was mad at herself that she’d asked.

“Fine. She was fine. I can hear the uncertainty in your voice, though. We’re not getting back together, she and I. Trust me,” Griffin said, making her smile.

She almost said she was sorry, but she really wasn’t, and he’d know that. “I do,” she said instead.

After getting off the phone, Jac walked out of her bedroom and ran smack into Melinoe, who was strolling down the hallway.

“I was just coming to talk to you,” she said.

“You were?”

For some reason Jac wondered if Melinoe had been lingering outside the room and listening to her calls.

“If you have a few minutes, would you join me in the library?”

“Of course,” Jac said and walked with her hostess down the formal staircase and across the marble-floored foyer.

Unlike the rest of the château, where the artwork, collectibles and objets d’art demanded your attention and were distracting, the library, which was Serge’s domain, was calmer.

Serge was already in there, sitting on the leather couch. Laid out in front of him were three amber bottles and a green crystal skull.

Jac recognized them instantly. The ingredients that Chester Bruge had shown them only twenty-four hours ago.

She sat down in one of the chairs opposite Serge. Melinoe sat beside her brother.

For Jac, seeing the items out of context here at the château was disconcerting and frightening.

“How did you get them?” Jac blurted out.

“We borrowed them,” Melinoe said before Serge could answer.

“But when?”

“Yesterday,” Serge said. He was looking down, staring at the bottles with a sorrowful expression.

A lot of time had passed between the moment when Bruge fell and Serge went rushing to the elderly man to help him and the moment when Jac returned to the path with the limo driver. What had happened during those thirty minutes?

“These ingredients are useless to everyone but us. We couldn’t just leave them there in the shed once we knew what had happened to Bruge,” Melinoe said as if it were the only logical conclusion.

“You went back inside after he collapsed?” Jac asked.

“I was going to try to convince Bruge to let us have portions of each one in exchange for telling him what we were working on and offering to include him in the project. I’m certain he would have agreed,” Melinoe said.

“But we will never know,” Jac said.

“No.” Melinoe’s face betrayed no emotion except for the hint of stubbornness and the defiance in her eyes that was always there.

Jac had never seen the woman soften. Not even what Jac had heard on the other side of Melinoe’s bedroom door had been tender.

“I would think you would be excited,” Melinoe said to Jac. “Now, you can create the perfumer’s potion using all authentic materials.”

Jac was staring at the fluorite skull. Remembering how proud of it Bruge had been when he showed it to her. And now it was here. Stolen, as the kindly man lay dying.

“You will begin tomorrow, won’t you?” Melinoe half asked, half ordered.

Jac wanted to, but using pilfered ingredients was an impossible way to begin formulating the elixir. Except what choice did she have? She needed to know if this goal was achievable as much as Melinoe did. They were sisters in this quest-for different reasons, but each as desperate as the other to prove that the impossible was possible.

“You are worried about how we got these, aren’t you?” Serge asked Jac.

Melinoe put her hand on her brother’s arm. “Serge, it’s pointless to have this conversation,” she said. “We had a goal. We achieved it. The circumstances were unfortunate, but now we need to move on. We always do, don’t we?”

“We always have, but these circumstances are different,” he said.

Melinoe’s fingers caressed her brother’s forearm, as if trying to calm him. “Not so different. You’ve handled far worse. You know you have. You are the strongest man I know. This is not like you.”

Jac wasn’t sure she understood the subtext running under their conversation, but she knew there was more to it than Melinoe helping herself to the ingredients while Serge tried to assist Bruge.

Had they been involved in a similar situation before? Was Melinoe referring to the awful murder-suicide of their parents? Had witnessing death brought back the horror of that long-ago tragedy?

Whatever Melinoe was saying, it was having an effect on Serge.

He squared his shoulders, looked at Jac and said: “Let’s concentrate on moving forward. How long do you think it will take you to make up a formula?”

“From the description, a couple of days. The problem is what to do with it once we have it.”

“Has Griffin been able to translate the engravings?” Melinoe asked in a tone that assumed Jac had heard from him.

“Not yet, no. He’s searching for a key to unlock the cryptic language. I might have found something to help him, though. I noticed similarities between some drawings on Bruge’s wall and the engravings on the bells… I was hoping that Griffin might get a look at some of his books…” She trailed off.

“There are other versions and copies of those books. I’ll get them so they’re waiting for him.”

It sounded as if Melinoe knew when Griffin was coming back. But how could she unless she was listening in on Jac’s conversations? Had she been lurking outside her bedroom after all?

Jac was trying to figure out a way to trick Melinoe into revealing what she knew when Serge asked, “Jac, do you know when he is coming back?”

“Yes, tomorrow, I think. Or maybe the day after.”

Melinoe paused.

“Jac, I think it’s time to tell you that your brother did have an idea of what to do with the breaths,” she said conspiratorially. “Robbie was going to pierce the cork in the bottle with a syringe and feed in the potion. He wouldn’t corrupt the breath that way. Then the mixture could be inhaled.” She paused again. “Serge, we might need to get some medical supplies. You can take care of that too, can’t you?”

“Yes, of course.”

Melinoe was still caressing her stepbrother’s arm. As if he were a wild cat, Jac thought, and Melinoe was his eccentric and slightly mad owner, soothing him, hypnotizing him with her touch.

And he’d responded. Jac could see it in his face.

Jac stood up. The atmosphere here was suffocating. Melinoe’s passion and her desires weighted down the very air as if she were wearing an overbearing perfume that she applied too often and too heavily. For a moment Jac thought about leaving La Belle Fleur. Except there was no alternative but to stay if she wanted to re-create the formula. And she did. As much as Melinoe. Maybe more because now that Griffin was back in her life again, Jac was desperate to know what had happened to René le Florentin and how the ancient perfumer’s existence and hers were connected.

“I think I’ll go to the laboratory and go over the list one more time tonight and then get an early start. Let me take these…” She pointed to the containers on the desk.

“Serge, help her,” Melinoe said.

“No,” Jac said even though Melinoe was right. She really shouldn’t try to carry them all herself. But Jac didn’t want anyone to go with her. When she was there, alone, the small room offered itself to her differently. The communication with the spirit who had used it before her was more direct. The perfumer whose life she was piecing together revealed more of himself to her when they were alone.

“Here’s the box I packed them in to bring them here. You can use this to take them downstairs,” Serge said.

Very carefully Jac carried the box out of the library and headed in the cellar’s direction. With each step her excitement grew.

Jac knew that this time there was no hypnotic drug she was inhaling. Her visions weren’t induced by any specific material. It was more that the laboratory itself was the portal. She’d had other memory lurches outside of the cell-like room-when Serge had showed her the folly and in her own bedroom. But it was in the underground cellar that her path to René le Florentin was strongest and where she could channel him the easiest. And where she felt the closest to him.

She was confused by how feelings for him overwhelmed her. Deep abiding love. Passion. So visceral that when she came out of the trance she wanted nothing more than to put her hands in between her legs and bring herself to orgasm to relieve the longing.

Jac climbed down the stairs, cradling the box, holding tight to the handrail. The darkness waited for her… He waited for her.

Two years ago Jac was still fighting the possibility that she could access her own past lives, much less anyone else’s. But a few months ago she’d stopped arguing with Malachai and her brother, who both believed she was a memory tool-that rare person who could access not only her own past lives but other people’s. Taking the time between seasons of her cable TV show to work with Robbie building fragrances in Paris had opened Jac’s mind to the idea that she didn’t have to understand in order to acknowledge other realms and constructs. She’d listened to her brother talk about Buddhism, reincarnation and karma, and being in the moment with a more relaxed mind. She’d almost reached a place where she believed that if this was her ability, she could deal with it. Even if she didn’t like it and still wished she could shut it down.

When she’d told Robbie that, he said he was certain she’d be able to control it once she fully accepted it, but that there was still something in the past she needed to know. And once she did, she’d be able to make her own decisions about opening herself up to this other dimension.

Jac turned on the light in the cellar and made her way to René le Florentin’s laboratory. There was no electricity in this room. Since it had remained hidden for so many centuries, it had never been wired. Jac was glad of that. She put down the box, lit the candelabra that René had used, then closed the door and ensconced herself inside René’s world.

She unpacked the box, placing each new bottle on the shelf amid the others. Sitting in his chair, at his desk, Jac stared at the worn wooden table where he had mixed his elixirs and worked on his brews.

There was no reason to wait till tomorrow, was there? The night was quiet around her. No one cared that she was down here. She had everything she needed to begin.

Each beaker had been one René had used in building this same formula. Each glass was as cool in her hand as it had been in his. Each pipette and measuring device was one he had touched. Every action she took was mimicking his. After a gap of almost five hundred years.

Take of good brandy, a half of a gallon…

Jac poured René’s brandy. The amber liquor gleamed as the river of it flowed from bottle to beaker.

… of the best virgin honey and coriander seeds, each a half of a pound…

The honey was new. It came from Provence and was scented with lavender just as it would have been in René’s time. As she poured the thick syrup, she remembered something Robbie had once told her: in Hinduism honey was one of the five elixirs of immortality. She felt her brother with her as she watched the slow journey of the glistening gold. He hadn’t gotten this far-hadn’t found the formula with all the ingredients-but he had believed.

This I do for you, she thought. Beside her, she could almost see him nodding.

Jac shook her head; this wasn’t the time to focus on the impossibility of what she was experiencing. Circling around her were the mysteries of the ages that the most learned of men and women had tried to understand. She knew sometimes the only answer to explain the unexplainable was that there was no answer.

Hard to accept for someone who preferred reason to fantasy.

Glancing down at René’s formula, Jac counted out the noted amounts of coriander seeds. Then added the cloves, henbane, nutmeg, aloewood and dragon’s blood. The scent of the concoction was more food than fragrance.

Now it was time to use the ancient essences that Melinoe and Serge had procured. For a moment Jac hesitated. What had happened in the woods in Wales?

There are no coincidences, Malachai always said in reference to reincarnation memories. But it meant more than that. Here in the dimly lit laboratory that had been built by René le Florentin to aid him in his search for a way to bring back the dead, Jac thought about the man who had collected these ancient ingredients. She’d seen when the branch struck Bruge, but not hard enough to kill him. It had been a serious blow to the head; she knew that because when she had gone back she’d seen the pool of blood. Serge had said the branch caused his fall, and when he hit the ground, it was the rock he fell on that bashed in his skull. And then in those moments after Bruge had fallen, while he lay dying, while they waited for the ambulance, Melinoe had gone back and stolen the last necessary ingredients.

Certainly she was wily and intelligent and seemed more than capable of acting that quickly. But there was another possibility that Jac hadn’t wanted to consider before. Didn’t really want to consider now.

Instead she opened the bottle of tutty, inserted a knife and began to scrape at the hardened ash. Tipping the bottle over, she spilled a half dozen curls of the substance into a small glass dish. She needed an ounce. Then she went back to scraping.

While she worked, her mind went over and over the accident in the forest. Surely Bruge was owed at least this. He was a man she’d only known for an hour, but he deserved homage. If his rare collection helped her re-create this elixir, he would have helped give her the greatest gift of her life.

After she had amassed a small mound of the dark chimney residue, she added a few drops of the brandy mixture and watched it liquefy.

Satisfied, she poured it in with the other ingredients.

Now it was time for the last component. Jac reached for the skull casket. Opening it, she looked down at the momie. What had made someone think to examine the embalmed corpses and take the sap from the area between the brain and the spine and use it as a scent? Perfumers-even ancient ones-didn’t use human elements. But magicians did. So what did that say about René?

She was slightly nauseated as she scraped a clean knife over the residue. Unlike the tutty, it was too hard to even scratch. Over hundreds of years it had turned into a solid. And a few drops of brandy did nothing to soften it.

Stumped, she sat and stared at the black brittle.

What to do to get it out?

The purest method would be to heat the skull, but then she’d risk releasing elements from the fluorite into the substance and contaminating it.

She had no choice.

Using the same balneo-mariae that René had used, Jac heated the water in the lower section and then placed the skull inside of it. She watched the surface of the dark material, and within a few minutes could see it begin to glisten. Using ancient tongs she lifted the skull out of the water and put it down on the table. Then, using a clean knife, she dug into the substance. Finally it was malleable. Sticky. Viscous.

Once again, Jac felt nauseated. She wondered what René had thought of using such an element. A man who distilled roses and orange blossoms. Who reveled in the scent of lilies and surrounded himself with the most glorious scents from nature. What kind of desperation had made him spend the last years of his life so obsessed with bringing back the dead that he would resort to using the death blood of corpses?

It was while she was mixing the momie into the honey-laced brandy that she remembered something about the time she’d spent in Bruge’s alchemical laboratory. Serge and Melinoe had been looking at a book and talking only to each other. Was that when they’d been planning what happened next? Was the accident in the woods premeditated? But they couldn’t have accounted for the branch falling. Had they been planning on killing him some other way in order to steal the ingredients? Was Melinoe capable of something so egregious? Was Serge that much her puppet that he would have agreed to do that for her?

He was an intelligent man with one fatal flaw. His passion for his stepsister defied logic, but then again, passion always did. Great leaders have lost kingdoms over lovers. Was Serge capable of killing someone to please Melinoe?

Of course he was.

She was more than his stepsister. Melinoe had saved his life. She was his lover and his family in one.

So was that what had happened, or was Jac’s imagination running wild?

Serge could not have killed Bruge. Jac had watched him try to save the man’s life.

But it was time to concentrate on the elixir. Jac returned to René’s notes. She reread everything she’d done up to this point. The words swirled on the page. She was tired, but she wanted to finish. She wished Griffin were here. Maybe he’d be able to help her figure out what she’d seen in the rain, in the woods.

Griffin… The man she’d spent her lifetime missing had returned to her, but the dilemma that had confused her for the last two years still had to be resolved. Was she hallucinating or remembering past lives?

Even if they were reincarnation memories, Griffin said she didn’t have to accept the inevitability of them repeating themselves. If you believed in karmic responsibility, you could rectify your past mistakes and change the future.

She was drifting off. Not concentrating. Jac wished she had some coffee but didn’t want to leave the laboratory while she was this close to finishing. She dipped a clean spoon into the pot of honey and ate it. The sweetness would give her a burst of energy. Even if she’d crash harder on the other side.

Jac counted out the vanilla beans the recipe called for, and then read on.

… benilloes, number four; the yellow rind of three large lemons. Bruise the cloves, nutmegs; cut the benilloes into small pieces; put all into a cucurbit and pour the brandy on to them. After they have digested twenty-four hours, distill off the spirit in balneo-mariae.

She had forgotten to get the lemons. She was going to have to go back to the kitchen after all. But first she poured the brandy mixture on the other ingredients. Watched the swirl of colors. Breathed in the scents as they mixed together. The fragrance was so provocative. Like nothing she had ever smelled. It was the odd tutty and momie. She could only begin to imagine what the elixir would smell like after it was distilled and she added the final items.

The aroma had filled the small laboratory. René must have sat right here and inhaled the very same scent.

Jac needed to get the lemons… but she was slipping… the air was waving. She was letting go of the present and entering into the past. His past. She smelled not only the scent she was building but also another. An ancient one that René had created for himself and wore religiously. Oak moss, pine, musk. Sensual waves of scent enveloped her like a man’s arms. Like Griffin’s arms. No, not Griffin’s. René’s.

She closed her eyes. Her fingers gripped the edge of the desk as if part of her was resisting leaving, as if part of her knew that it was unsafe to go into that long-ago darkness because what she might find there might be dangerous. But she had to go. To see him. The mysterious, cautious, mercurial and determined René le Florentin. To learn from him. To feel the power of his passion for the woman he was in love with… passion for her.