Seduction: A Novel of Suspense (36 page)

“I think you should stay here tonight,” Minerva told Jac, as she watched her.

“I’m fine to go back to the hotel.”

“Yes, you are now. But something happened this afternoon, and speaking as a doctor, you would be best served staying over. I don’t think you’ll have any kind of relapse or reaction, but if you do, there should be people around.”

“I appreciate it but—”

“My sister’s right, Jac,” Eva agreed. “We really can’t let you go back to an empty hotel room.”

“If I stay, then I want you to help me figure out what happened,” Jac said to Minerva.

“There’s time for that tomorrow. What you need now is food and calming rest and a good night’s sleep.”

“And I’ll get it once I understand what happened.”

“I don’t think—” Minerva started.

Jac interrupted. “Please? I feel a little crazy right now. I need to know.”

“All right.” Minerva’s voice sounded soothing. But at the same time Jac heard some reluctance. Why would that be?

“Theo, help me clean up,” Eva said. “We’ll let you talk.”

Together the two of them picked up the dishes and cups and took everything to the kitchen, and then Eva came back.

“I have something to give you,” she said, and pulled a twisted length of silken red thread out of her pocket. “Give me your wrist.”

Jac obediently held out her hand.

“This is your lifeline. My sister pulled you out of the state you were in by having you grab on to her voice as if it was a rope. I want you to have your own rope in case she’s not around. You can use it if you feel yourself starting to float off.”

The cord was dyed the most brilliant scarlet Jac had ever seen.

“Is this Wiccan?” Jac asked, as she watched Eva tie the ends of the thread. She’d been collecting bits of thread and ribbon all her life and felt an instant kinship with the bracelet. As if she’d been waiting for it, but that made no sense either.

Eva laughed. “No. It’s a mystic kabbalist tradition. It’s called a
roite bindele
and was said to ward off misfortune and the evil eye. A client of mine asked me to make one for her years ago and told me all about it. I’ve been weaving them ever since.”

Jac touched the thread and ran her finger down its silken length. “The evil eye . . .” she repeated.

“The evil eye itself goes back over five thousand years to ancient Babylon—” She stopped. “Oh, you know all that part probably, don’t you?”

Jac nodded. “I do. Every culture had its version. It’s universal. One of the things that is most fascinating about studying mythology is how so many of the stories and symbols are the same through the centuries and cultures. Just renamed and slightly altered.” She looked up from staring at the red thread into the woman’s eyes. “Thank you for this.”

Eva smiled. “Now I’ll leave you to Minerva,” she said, and ambled out of the room, favoring her right leg just a fraction.

“Why don’t you move over to the chaise?” Minerva said. “It will be more relaxing for you.”

Once Jac was settled, sitting up with her feet stretched out in front of her, she drew the cashmere shawl over the lower half of her body like a blanket. She was still chilly.

Minerva pulled up an armchair and sat.

Jac was aware that the furniture had been reconfigured to resemble a therapist’s office.

“Okay, let’s go to work. You might want to shut your eyes. It sometimes helps.” Minerva smiled.

Jac did.

“Good girl. Let me lead you in a deep-breathing exercise to relax you.”

Minerva talked Jac through a series of steps that were the same as the square breathing Malachai had taught her so long ago at Blixer Rath.

“Breathe in one, two, three, four . . . Hold for two, three, four . . . Now breathe out slowly for two, three, four. And now hold for two, three, four . . . and again . . .”

Jac felt her body giving up the last of the tension she was still holding in her neck . . . her shoulders . . . the backs of her knees. She was getting soft, letting go.

“Now, tell me, what is the last thing you remember before we found you at the ruin?” Minerva asked.

“Being in the cave. Theo finding the journal.”

“All right. Very good. Let’s stay in the cave for a while. Look around. Do you see Theo? Look down at your feet, your hands. What do you see?”

Jac described the cave and the strange meteor rock with the cubbyholes filled with totems and bones.

“Tell me about the totems.”

“They were roughly carved figures, little, half-man, half-animal, like on the wall paintings. I found one that was a man-cat. It was wet and I was rubbing it, and it had this amazing odor.”

“Can you remember that smell now?” Minerva asked softly.

Jac could smell the amber totem and it prompted a stream of images. She watched the movie going on inside her own head and recounted the action. It was a complicated story about a small family—a mother, father and son. And even though she didn’t know them, Jac felt the emotions of these people. Every pang of angst, every explosion of anger, every touch of love.

These images, these people and their crisis were not at all familiar. She didn’t sense the story had come from her deep memory. Instead it was foreign to her. It had come from someplace else.

Jac was overwhelmed by the pain of the man whose drama she was watching. “I’m in a cave. The gods are giving me some kind of vision, so I know what to do on behalf of my community. But the weight of this responsibility is too heavy. I would rather die than accept this mission. I must be wrong, must have misunderstood the message. This can’t be right. Cannot be what is expected of me.”

When Jac opened her eyes, Minerva was still in the chair, leaning
forward, still listening. She didn’t say anything at first. It was Theo, who must have come back into the room at some point, who spoke first.

“You saw all that?”

Jac nodded. “Yes.”

Theo shook his head, incredulous. “I don’t understand this,” he said. “But I know that story.”

“What do you mean?” Minerva asked.

“It sounds familiar to me. Everything Jac said, it was almost as if I was anticipating it.”

“What is going on?” Jac asked. “How could I imagine a story that Theo would remember?”

Minerva looked from Jac to Theo. “This might have happened before.”

“What has?” Jac asked.

“I need to make a phone call,” Minerva said, standing.

“Now?” Theo asked. “What in the world—”

“I need some information first,” Minerva said. She looked at Jac. “You’ve done a very good job. And I promise I will help. Let me just go and make this call, and then I’ll explain. Don’t worry. It’s going to be all right.” She left the room.

Theo looked at Jac, and she thought his eyes looked even paler, sadder. Sweat had broken out on his forehead. He kept clenching and unclenching his hands.

“Do you have any idea what is going on?” he asked.

She shook her head. “No. Theo, you did find the journal, didn’t you? I didn’t imagine that?”

The clouds in his eyes lifted. “Yes.”

“Can I see it?”

Theo was back in a few seconds. Carefully he handed her the notebook.

Jac touched the worn leather. Opened it. In the dark cave she hadn’t been able to see it well. Here in the bright light, it was far easier to examine the tight slanting script. She reread the first paragraph, then skipped ahead to the end. The pages were numbered up to twenty-five.

Jac was one of those people who always read the end of a book first.
Not the whole last chapter, but the final five or six lines. She needed to know about the journey she was about to take. To know if it was going to end happily or sadly.

Her brother had once asked her why. After thinking for a minute, she told Robbie she wanted protection from surprises. She’d had too many of them in her life, and they’d brought too much grief.

The last three words on the last page, though, brought a different kind of surprise. She showed Theo.

“This isn’t the only journal,” she said. “Look.”

Theo peered at the words. “Translation, please?”

“
This story continues in the next volume
,” she said. “So there must be another notebook.”

“I didn’t see one.”

Once you found this one, did you keep going through the rest of the cubbyholes?”

“No, the cave was flooding.”

“We’ll have to go back.”

“
I’ll
have to go back.”

“I’m going with you.”

“We can talk about that later. For now we can read and translate this one. Something to do while we’re waiting for the sea to comply and—”

Minerva had come back into the room. She was holding a phone. “I just talked to Malachai. He’d like you to call him after we talk, Jac.”

“What does this have to do with Malachai?” Jac asked.

Theo stood up to go.

“No, stay, Theo,” Minerva said. “You should hear this too.” She waited until he was seated and then took a long measured breath. “Maybe Eva should too.” She left the room and got her sister.

When everyone was assembled, Minerva began. She addressed Jac and Theo. “At Blixer Rath, Malachai and the other therapists were proponents of Jungian therapy, and as such they believed in the collective unconscious.”

“We know this already,” said Theo.

Jac nodded. What she’d learned at the clinic had helped her. The theory that the unconscious incorporated memories, instincts
and experiences that are common to all humans for all time was at first hard to grasp. But then she began to understand and see how knowledge was inherited and incorporated into her own dreams and actions. That personal understanding of Jung’s theory had been instrumental in her healing and had then cemented her fascination with mythology. It was the cornerstone of her decision to become a mythologist.

“Several of the therapists at Blixer believed, as Jung did, in reincarnation, and that many psychological problems that appear to have roots in someone’s present life stem from past-life issues.”

“No,” Jac said involuntarily.

Minerva looked at her. “What is it?”

“This can’t have anything to do with reincarnation.”

“Why?”

“I don’t believe in it.”

Minerva was watching her. “I understand. I really do. But I’d like to finish explaining.”

Jac sighed, shifted on the chaise and crossed her legs at her ankles.

Minerva continued. “When you were both at Blixer Rath, some curious things occurred. Jac, you remember the drawings you did that turned out to be the same rock circles Theo drew? Those rock circles are here, in Jersey. You saw them on your walk.”

“Yes, of course.”

“There were some other occurrences you might not remember. Malachai told me he hypnotized you so you wouldn’t.”

“Why would he do that?” Jac was confused. Then disgusted. “How could he do that?”

“Is that even professional?” Theo asked on top of her question.

“It’s not fair of me to voice an opinion about that without knowing all the facts. I wasn’t there. But Malachai is one of the best therapists I’ve ever known. He told me just now he did it because he believed that if he didn’t, you would have a serious setback in your therapy, Jac, and he didn’t want that to happen.”

“What did he hypnotize me to forget?” Jac asked, her voice tense with anger.

“When you two became friends at Blixer Rath, Malachai was, at first, very pleased about it. And he encouraged it. He called and talked to me about it. Your mother, Theo, had asked Malachai to consult with me on your case. The summer was going so well for both of you. You were developing coping skills and learning to deal with your individual issues. The closer you became, the more rapid the progression. Until the day of the accident, the day that you fell, Jac. Do you remember that?”

“Of course. That was the same day Theo left.”

“Malachai sent me home even though I had nothing to do with it.” Theo’s voice was hard with fresh anger. “No one would even let me say good-bye. Or give me a good reason why I couldn’t. They said they were sending me home for breaking the rules, but I assumed they blamed me for the accident.”

“They did send you home because you’d broken too many rules too many times. Smuggling in wine and marijuana, mushrooms . . . what were you thinking?” Eva said.

“But they also sent you home because of what was developing between you and Jac,” Minerva said. “Friends were one thing, but Malachai believed you were trying to seduce Jac. And at that point in your therapy, both of your therapies, that could have been dangerous.”

“A few kisses and some grass?” Jac looked at Theo. For one moment the current mystery took second place to the memory of those innocent embraces in the woods. But his face was twisted in anger and his eyes were clouded over. His torment was so much more complicated than Jac could understand.

“No,” Minerva said. “There was something else. Something that he said even he hadn’t seen very many times. He told me tonight that on that day, Jac, you had a past-life regression so deep he had been afraid he wasn’t going to bring you out of it.”

“I don’t remember that, and even if I did, I still don’t understand what that would have had to do with Theo,” Jac said.

“You weren’t having your own past-life memories, Jac. You were having Theo’s. You were remembering someone else’s reincarnations.”

“Are you saying that I was remembering Theo’s past life? Not my own?”

“Yes. And that during the regression you became quite violent. That’s how the accident happened.”

“Have you ever heard of this before?” Jac asked Minerva.

“No. But Malachai thinks it’s possible that it happened again today.”

Theo got up from the chair and sat beside Jac on the settee. He put his arm around her shoulders, and only then did she realize she was shaking.

“What did you remember about who you were?” he asked.

“I was a priest. It must have been a pagan priest . . . a Druid . . . because he had a wife and a son. I kept thinking I should have been inside the woman’s mind . . . in her thoughts . . . but I wasn’t. It didn’t make sense. I was seeing what the priest was seeing. His wife was an herbalist. A witch,” Jac said. “Not a black witch. An important member of the tribe. I . . . he . . .” She faltered, unsure of how to talk about the person in the dream. “The priest,” she finally said, “and his family lived in a stone hut in an area that looked like the place where we were.”