Seduction: A Novel of Suspense (10 page)

But for the rest of the afternoon and all of that night, the band of burned skin on the forefinger of her left hand stung. Two days later at the airport on her way to England, when she handed the flight attendant her boarding pass, Jac noticed the discoloration was less pronounced, but it was still there.

With the tourist season over, there were but a dozen passengers on the ferry. The boat rocked in the choppy sea and the wind blew wildly, but Jac was enjoying the crossing. She’d spent a few days in London, first sleeping off her jet lag, then doing more research. This morning she’d taken a pleasant four-hour train ride to Poole and then a short taxi to the ferry station. The three-hour-and-forty-five-minute trip to the island was half over. Jac had been alone on the upper deck the whole time until a few minutes ago when a woman joined her. She appeared to be in her mid- to late sixties. A silk scarf, tied under her chin, kept her auburn hair from flying in the wind. Under her rust-colored cashmere jacket, she was wearing a matching sweater. Black slacks and low-heeled black boots completed the outfit. Very well dressed for a boat ride, Jac thought.

As the woman walked toward a seat, the boat pitched and she stumbled.

Jac was out of her seat quickly. Reaching the woman before she fell, grabbing her arm, offering support.

“Are you all right?” Jac asked.

“I’m fine, dear. Thank you.” Then she looked down and noticed her bag’s contents had spilled and were rolling about. The boat was still pitching.

“Let me help,” Jac said, and knelt down.

There was nothing unusual about the wallet Jac handed back to her. Or the silver comb and mirror. All expensive, but ordinary.

“I was thinking of getting some tea,” Jac said as she handed back a tube of lipstick. “Would you like some? Or coffee?”

“That would be delightful. Tea, please, with lemon, no sugar.”

When she returned, the woman was seated and looking out at the passing seascape. She exuded both strength and stature. Like a woman who knew her own mind and ran her own life. The kind of woman you’d expect to have a high-level job in a cosmetic or publishing company. Who had fresh flowers on her desk. Whose pearls were real. Who didn’t suffer fools.

“Thank you for jumping out of your seat,” the woman said, after she had taken a sip of her tea. “That could have been a nasty fall.” She shook her head. “I’ve just returned from seeing my daughter and am afraid I’ve let it get to me.”

Jac wasn’t sure what to say, so she drank her tea.

“It’s her husband who has me so rattled,” the woman continued. “We’ve always been oil and water. My daughter rebelled against her iconoclastic mum and married a minister. Righteous and full of his faith to the point of lunacy, if you ask me. Olivia doesn’t seem to notice how narrow-minded he is. Of course, he thinks I’m a terrible influence.”

“Why?”

“Fear of the unknown can be a powerful force.” The woman took a long sip of tea.

The fog had thickened. Jac couldn’t see in front of them or behind them anymore. It was as if all the clouds in the sky had lowered and surrounded the boat. Her skin was damp with it, her curls already tightening. The smell of sea and salt was as primordial in its way as the forest had been in Connecticut the afternoon she and Malachai had been caught in the thunderstorm.

“Have you ever noticed how you can spot a stranger as soon as you see one?” the woman asked. “I don’t mean a stranger as in someone you haven’t yet met—like us—but someone who will forever remain a
stranger to you? Someone you know you’ll never be able to understand or communicate with. It’s actually the very same ability that helps you quickly identify kindred spirits.”

“Yes, I have noticed.” Jac nodded.

“So it’s happened to you?”

When Jac had first met Theo Gaspard seventeen years before, she’d felt that instant bond. And years later when she’d met Griffin North she’d felt it again. They’d connected to each other in some deep, unfathomable way almost instantly. It was a connection she was still struggling to break. They couldn’t be together. They didn’t belong with each other. She had to find a way to stop mourning what was not meant to be.

“When it does happen, you need to trust your instincts,” the woman said.

“Why did you say that?” Jac was startled. It was almost as if the woman had been reading her mind.

“No magic, I’m afraid. I’m a therapist. I know how to read people. I was watching your expression,” she said. “If I said something that disturbed you, I’m sorry.”

In Jac’s bag was a bright-green leather notebook from Hermès. Her mother had bought it for her on her thirteenth birthday. “To write down your dreams and your nightmares,” she’d said. “Because if you write them down you make them real, and then you can control them instead of the other way around.”

The trick hadn’t worked for Audrey. Not even her own poetry had saved her. Nonetheless, Jac continued doing what her mother had suggested. And when she got to Blixer Rath, Malachai had encouraged her to continue keeping the dream journal. He’d even added a suggestion: to also keep a running list of the coincidences she encountered. So she’d turned the notebook around and going back to front, started to list them.

“One day,” Malachai had told her, “you’ll be able to read over your lists and see your life’s path. At each important juncture you can look back and understand what brought you to the next point. But understanding your journeys isn’t the only goal; you need to be in the
moment and live them. When you are well enough to do that, my job will be done.”

Every year, Jac bought a refill for the Hermès journal from their store on Madison Avenue. She had eighteen of them in a steel filing cabinet at home. These days, in the front of the books, she kept ideas and notes about myths for her work. In the back she still listed coincidences. Even if she never went back and looked through them, it had become a habit.

Somewhere far off, a foghorn sounded and resonated across the water. A cry of warning. More human-sounding than machine.

“What kind of therapy do you practice?” Jac asked.

“Jungian.”

She wasn’t surprised. Things the woman spoke of had suggested it. “I thought you might. Jungian therapy is something that’s been part of my life for a long time,” Jac said, just as the foghorn sounded its warning again.

Despite her years of traveling, she was still a nervous traveler. Not so much because she was afraid of planes crashing, trains derailing or boats sinking, but because the idea that she was on an unknown path, filled with endless potential wins, wonders and disasters, overwhelmed her.

“Are you visiting Jersey on vacation?”

“No, for work,” Jac said, brightening.

The woman’s bracelet had worked its way out from under her sweater.

It was three braided ropes of blackened twisted gold. It looked very old and reminded Jac of the Celtic artifacts Bullock had shown her.

“Let me guess,” the woman said, appraising Jac. “Most people who come to the island for business are in finance . . .”

From her research, Jac knew Jersey was one of the few offshore banking capitals of the world. Although there were fewer than 90,000 inhabitants, the island had forty-five banks and 32,000 registered businesses. There was in excess of 189 billion pounds deposited on the island at any one time.

“But no . . . finance is too soulless for you. I should know, my family
owns a bank. My father ran it. His father before him. My nephew runs it now. Cold, cold business. You try to be stoic like that, but you don’t manage it well, do you?”

Jac noted the shift from the business to personal and laughed. It was the best description of herself she’d heard in a long time. Exactly the kind of thing her brother would have said about her.

“Ah, I know what you’re doing here,” the woman said, still trying to figure it out. “You’re chasing your fate.”

“What do you mean?” It was such a curious comment, Jac thought.

The older lady smiled. Her green eyes twinkled. She was enjoying herself immensely now.

“Well, you aren’t wearing a wedding ring or any jewelry. So it appears you’re unattached. Not much luggage. You haven’t pulled out your cell phone the whole time we’ve been on the boat. No checking for texts or emails means no urgent, pressing matters, business or personal. No strings tethering you to people or places. That’s the obvious part. The not so obvious part is that you have all the hallmarks of a seeker. I’ve known a few in my time. I’ve even been flattered to have been called one. You chase special knowledge. You find threads of connections and then share them with the people who need them. I can read it in the way you’ve been looking out past the boat’s railing, how you looked at me, the questions you ask, but more importantly, the ones you don’t.”

Jac was slightly uncomfortable that a stranger was analyzing her but she was also intrigued by how perceptive the woman was.

“Don’t mind me. It’s an occupational hazard.” Opening her pocketbook, the woman reached inside and then handed Jac a small card. It was heavy stock, engraved with a heraldic design of a large bird that could have been a phoenix or an eagle. Under that was her name—Minerva Eastmond—with a phone number and an address in St. Helier’s Parish, Jersey, Great Britain.

“This is my office number and address,” she said. “If you need anything while you are here. A cup of tea, books on historic folklore, or just a friendly face. I have a lot of maps too. Old ones especially. The family has a large collection.”

“Thank you, I may take you up on that. I’m here to do a bit of exploring.”

“It’s one thing to be shown the path. Traveling it is something you can only do on your own.”

This whole conversation was surreal, Jac thought. “What made you say that?”

“We all share a consciousness. We breathe in each other’s air. Sometimes two souls can see each other’s shadows even when the sun isn’t out.” Minerva looked up at the fogged-out heavens. “It’s sunnier in Jersey than any of the other isles. But we’re having a bleak spell just now. A fog like this can linger for days. And if it turns cold, the damp can get in your bones. It’s almost as if after the summer rush of tourists, the island wants to rest, so she pulls closed the shutters and locks the door. It shouldn’t stop you, though. Sometimes I think secrets prefer the mist. We have a lot of hiding places here, not just our banks but the caves. They are our real treasure. That’s where the island myths are most alive.”

The deep sonorous foghorn blasted once more.

“We’re coming into port now,” Minerva said. “It’s good to come home.”

Jac searched the morass for any sign of land or buildings or boats, but all she saw was a thick gray wall of shadows.

Being haunted is frightening. That, I might have guessed. But I never could have imagined how debilitating and exhausting it would be. I feel as if I am being consumed, suffocated and overwhelmed. Oh, how much attention all the spirits crave. And how clever they are to tempt me, promising to imbue me with powers. I have become addicted to their adoration. Terrified by their intensity. What a sacred horror I feel in their presence.

Some of the spirits no longer constrain themselves to visit during the séances but now come to me afterward. By disturbing my sleep night after night they play havoc with my temperament. I cannot shut my window or my door on them. Walls are not barriers for these bloodless creatures. I cannot keep them at bay.

For the last four nights, one has been bolder than any of the others.

It begins with odd noises once the house has gone to sleep and all the lamps are extinguished. Floorboards groan, windows creak. My belongings stir even though the shutters are closed tight. Papers fly. And slowly a light fills the room, a brightness not of this world. In its center is the woman the islanders call La Dame Blanche.

She visited the table once last year and then not again till the day after I saw you on the beach. Since then she has returned each day.
And not just to the séances. This prehistoric coquette calls on me in my room, teasing me while I dream, causing me to awaken. Standing before me, this ancient temptress, who is as beautiful and skilled as any Parisian whore, offers me her favors. In exchange she wants what the Shadow wants—for me to write poetry in her honor.

I know I can never satisfy my longing for a ghost. The thought alone is madness! But I crave her. I want to experience her in the way that only mortals can experience each other—with taste and touch and smell. But she has none of these. She is shadow and smoke. Knowing that makes no difference. My passion won’t listen to logic. And so my poetry fills with her. My sleep has begun to suffer. Day after day, I find myself desiring to commune with the dead more than with the living.

And I am no longer alone in being aware of her. La Dame’s spirit is so strong she is seeping through the membrane between the corporeal world and the fantasy world. My barber claims he saw her skulking around our house late one night as he made his way home. The grocer’s boy claimed to have seen her while making a delivery early one morning when it was not quite light out. Terrified, he ran away and hasn’t been willing to make any more deliveries to us.

Have you heard the local legend of this Woman in White? She’s one of the Druid myths that the islanders are so fond of retelling.

About one and a half kilometers from my house at Marine Terrace an imposing menhir rises from the ground. This is one of the great standing stones of Jersey, dating back to Druid times. Of that there is no question. What is less certain is the legend connected to the stone. It is said to be the vessel for the lady’s spirit, her prison during the day, where she pays penance for her crime. Only at night is she allowed to roam the island; at the first rays of sun, she is sucked back into her jail.

La Dame murdered her child. In our séances she had admitted as much and claims she is the first woman on Jersey to have killed her own infant. Her punishment has lasted for the last three thousand years, and she imagines that her soul will be forever imprisoned in the great standing stone.