The Hypnotist

FORTY

Lucian opened the door. Emeline was wearing jeans and a white boat-necked T-shirt that had slipped off one shoulder, leaving it bare and making her look more vulnerable than sexy. Her eyes seemed bigger than usual, and the circles under them were too deep. Her pale blond hair was pulled back in a ponytail and wisps had escaped, falling around her face, which was even paler than he remembered. She looked as stressed as she’d sounded on the phone a half hour before when she’d called and asked if she could please come over and talk to him, just for a few minutes.

Only after he’d closed the door behind her and she was standing inside did he realize she was carrying a package: a rectangle about eighteen inches wide by two feet long, wrapped in brown paper.

She walked into his large, sparsely decorated loft and gravitated to the table where his sketchpads, cans of pencils and piles of drawings were.

“I didn’t know you still painted,” she said.

“Still?”

“My father told me he’d read you quit school after the accident.”

“I don’t paint anymore. Do you want something to drink?”

“A glass of wine?”

“Red or white?”

“Whatever’s open.”

In the kitchen he poured two glasses of red and when he returned, saw she’d put the package down beside the table and was looking at the drawings he’d done early that morning.

“Here you go,” he said, offering her a glass.

She took it, thanked him and then said, “I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to snoop.”

He smiled, shrugged. “My fault for not putting them away.”

“Who are these women?”

“My nightmares.”

Emeline searched his eyes. “What do you mean?”

He led her to the couch, where they sat down and he told her about his trip to Vienna, the attack, its aftermath and the dreams that woke him up, surprising himself that he was revealing so much. He’d only shared one part of the story with Dr. Bellmer, and a different part of it with Doug Comley. She was the first person he’d told everything to.

While Emeline listened, she nodded every few minutes and took sips of her wine. When he got to the part about seeing a therapist and trying to access his unconscious to find the women there, she took his hand. He wasn’t sure when it happened, but there was a moment when he was a separate individual talking to her and then he was connected to this ethereal woman who was, without even saying a word, offering a level of understanding unlike anything he’d known in too long a time.

“Do you believe what you’ve found out in the sessions?”

“I’ve racked my brain thinking about every book I’ve ever read and every movie I’ve seen-trying to remember where I first heard the stories my unconscious is offering up.”

“You want that badly not to believe it?”

“You’ve had to deal with the same thing, and you haven’t wanted to believe it either, have you?”

“Something has always stopped me. There’s a leap of faith I just can’t seem to make. The ramifications if it’s true…I don’t know…” She reached up and brushed her hair off her face. For a moment Lucian could see her scar, and then her hair fell back across her forehead and it was hidden again. “What I did…running away from you in the park the other day…it was very childish. I’m sorry.”

“Don’t let it bother you.”

“But it does. I wanted you to kiss me. I wanted everything that happened. It just seemed as if…I’m not sure…I got scared. I never get scared. But nothing is the same anymore.”

“It’s all right. You’ve been bombarded with bullying e-mails, there’s a chance someone is following you…you don’t have to explain anything to me. I know how stressful and frightening the threat of danger can be. At least Broderick finally okayed the detail and you’re under police protection now. They downstairs?”

She nodded. “My shadow army? Yes. And thank you. But none of that is an excuse.”

“I think it is.”

“Lucian, do you think I’m Solange? That her soul is in me?” Her voice was on the edge of cracking.

“I don’t know,” he said finally.

“That’s the best you can do?” She laughed. But it was a weak sound without any joy. In that moment everything about her looked breakable, and he had to hold back from reaching out for her.

“I’ve seen the wish for the reincarnation to be real in Andre’s eyes so often that I’ve wanted it to be true so I could bring back whoever he’d been before the accident. I’ve only seen a shimmer of that man, and only for a few seconds at a time. He rescued me…I wanted to rescue him…him and my aunt-” She broke off.

“But what do you believe?”

“I know things that I can’t possibly know. I know about you…” She was whispering, and when he leaned forward so he could hear her better he smelled her scent, vanilla with a twist of amber. Her lower lip was trembling and another lock of hair had fallen into her face. Reaching up, he moved the hair away from her eyes, this time not noticing the scar as he kissed her. He wasn’t thinking about who she was or wasn’t; only that she was someone he wanted to be with, someone he shared the unknown with.

When Emeline pulled away she was almost smiling. She reached out for the package and handed it to him. “This is for you.”

Ripping away the brown paper, Lucian looked down at a painting in a simple black matte wood frame, and the memory came back to him as sharp as a slap. It was the day before Solange had been killed. They’d spent the night together and he’d woken up with her smell all over him to find her standing behind his easel. He’d done a dozen portraits of her, but this was the first time she’d tried to paint a portrait of him. Not at all a realist, Solange created lush, dreamlike landscapes and was struggling to capture him. She had paint on her face and hands and in her hair and was clearly frustrated. He’d laughed at how hard she was trying and she got angry with him. They’d had an argument over him not taking her efforts seriously, and he’d spent a good part of the morning trying to talk his way out of his faux pas.

She’d only gotten it started that morning, and he hadn’t realized what she was trying for-but now he understood. Solange must have gone back to her apartment and worked on it all that night.

It was a portrait of his sleeping face layered with a dream-scape of a dark green-black forest that melded into a blue-black sky illuminated by a crescent moon. A double exposure that was beautiful, disturbing and deeply moving.

“You never saw it finished,” Emeline said. Not a question, a statement.

“How do you know that?”

She shrugged and the lamplight danced on her skin. “A guess. It was in her room on an easel. Everything in her room was left the way it was that day. Did you know that? They didn’t touch anything. It wasn’t until my mother killed herself, in Solange’s room, by the way, in her bed, that I finally got Andre to agree to let me have it cleaned out, redecorated.”

“But how did you know I never saw it finished?”

She shook her head. “I…I don’t know.”

He took a long look at the painting and then turned back to her. “Why are you giving me this?”

“You almost died that night, too, didn’t you? Andre never told me. I found some old newspaper articles online and read about it.”

“For a long time afterward I wished I had.”

“I felt like that, too, when I was in the hospital. I didn’t understand what death was, but I wanted to stay in that place,” she said softly. “You’ve never really stopped missing Solange, have you?”

He wasn’t looking at the painting anymore, but at Emeline. “I’m not sure I knew this before now, but what I thought was missing her has really been missing the part of me that loved her like that.”

Leaning forward, he kissed Emeline again. She let the kiss continue and continue, and after a time he pulled down the shoulder of her T-shirt and kissed her there and then pulled it up and over her head and then he undid her ponytail so that her hair spilled over her shoulders.

She sat naked from the waist up, looking at him with a sad expression in her eyes. “I know what you want and I want it, too, but please, don’t do this unless you’re sure it’s me you want,” she said.

“You think I’m looking for someone else inside you, but I’m not, Emeline.” He tilted her face up so their eyes met. “I’m just looking for you.”

She smiled but he could still see she wasn’t sure. Trust took time. He understood that. Lucian picked up her T-shirt and handed it to her. “But we’ll wait until that question doesn’t even enter your mind.”