The Reincarnationist (35 page)

“W
hy don't you sit down and show me what you put in your pocket when I walked into the room.”

“Harrison, don't be ridiculous. Don't you realize who you are accusing of—”

“Rachel, please. Now, Mr. Lipper, what did you put into your pocket?” Harrison was trying to keep his eyes on Josh and look around the room at the same time. When he realized he couldn't, he opted to watch Josh and asked Rachel to take inventory.

“Is the Fabergé letter opener on the desk?”

“Yes, of course. Harrison, there's no way that Mr. Lipper would take—”

“There should be a small frame next to that, rubies, enamel.”

“It's here. Put down the gun,” she said. Her voice was shaking and Josh thought that was okay. It would make sense to Harrison that Rachel, with one of her clients being held at gunpoint by her lover, was nervous.

Harrison's eyes had not left his face, but Josh still couldn't read his expression, couldn't get a bead on him. “Mr. Shoals. I can show you what you saw when you
walked into the room, but to do so I'm going to need to put my hand back in my pocket.”

He nodded. “Fine. Do it slowly.”

Josh reached into his jacket pocket and found the box of breath mints, wrapped his fingers around it and pulled it out. He was taking a chance, but he'd learned from watching Malachai do his magic tricks that most of the time, people don't know what they've seen because they aren't looking in the right place.

“This is all it was. I'd be happy to wait while you inspect the rest of the treasures in the room, but honestly, I didn't take anything of yours.”

This was the truth, and Josh knew his voice presented it as the truth. He knew his face showed it as the truth. The stones had never belonged to Harrison. As Josh suspected, he had not even known they existed.

Harrison picked up the box of mints, shook it and listened to the slight rattle. He returned it to Josh and lowered the gun.

Rachel ran over to Josh's side as fast as she could, considering she was limping convincingly. “I'm sorry, Mr. Lipper.” She'd apologized, but the look in her eyes was gratefulness. That was when Josh realized that she was going to be all right now. She'd come to understand how her past was warning her about her present and what she needed to do with the information.

Josh waved her off, as if to say it was nothing and he didn't blame her. She was gathering up her bag and her jacket.

“Where are you going?” Harrison asked her.

She looked at him, held his eyes, shook her head. “You pulled a gun on him! You could have shot him. I don't belong here. This was all a mistake.” She walked to the door, to where Josh was waiting for her.

“What kind of game is this, Rachel? Did your uncle put you up to this? What kind of scheme are the two of you planning with the Bacchus?”

“My uncle? What does he have to do with any of this?”

“You didn't know he's the client I mentioned? Oh, please, don't insult me. I just want to know what's going on.”

“You have to believe me, I didn't know…I had no idea. My uncle's been talking to
you
about buying the Bacchus?”

“He's determined to own it. But we're at an impasse over—No, I'm not falling for this. You must know.
I'm
the one who's being played for the fool.”

“Harrison, it doesn't matter to me whether you believe me or not, but my uncle has no idea I've been here today.”

“Rachel?” Josh said in a quietly insistent voice. “We need to go.”

She walked through the door that he was holding open for her. Josh let her pass, then, just before he walked out, he turned and looked back at Harrison Shoals. “The frame isn't an original—you should do something about that.”

“The frame is unimportant.” Harrison shook his head, incredulous.

“Not to me. An original frame would have been quite a treasure,” Josh said, and walked out.

D
ownstairs, they quickly got into the town car that Rachel had come in and kept waiting so they could leave right away, in case Harrison tried to followed them or harassed them.

“Where to, miss?” the driver asked. “Home?”

She looked at Josh. “Where should we drop you?”

In his left pocket was the box of mints. In his right pocket, the stones pressed against his thigh, teasing him. Shoals had seen him put something in his pocket, but he hadn't focused on which pocket. Josh had bluffed, and it had worked. That's the thing about sleight-of-hand that Malachai had taught him. You know there's a trick happening, but you are rarely looking in the right place to catch it. He wanted to tell Malachai what a good teacher he'd been.

He had to rent a car and get up to New Haven, but first he needed to pick up his photographic equipment. Josh wanted to light the stones so that every mark was perfectly clear and distinct before they e-mailed the pictures to Rollins. He also needed to wrap up the stones carefully before he drove up to see Gabriella; they were too precious to be rolling around in his pocket.

“I'm going to the foundation, but let me drop you off first. Where are you going?”

“I guess back to my uncle's.”

“Is there somewhere else you can go? I'm not sure that's a good idea. Not yet.”

A veil of worry clouded her eyes. “You don't think my uncle would—”

“I don't know, and that's why I want you to go someplace that is completely neutral. Just for a few days, until we can make sure.”

“I thought this was about me and Harrison, Esme and Blackie.”

“It was—it is—but…isn't there someplace else you can go, just for a few days? I promise I'll help you figure all this out as soon as I can. In the meantime, you have to stay safe.”

“It's not possible that my uncle has anything to do with this. He's not a violent man.”

“I'm sure you're right, but I don't want you to take any chances. You're safe now, Rachel. I want you to stay safe.”

She gave the driver the address of her closest friend and turned back to Josh. “If I am safe it's because of you. Harrison pulled a gun on you. Over a painting. How could I have been attracted to him?”

“You're not the first person to be seduced by power.”

She smiled ruefully, “No, I'm not. Esme was, too. That's why I need to figure all this out. So it doesn't happen again.”

When the car pulled up in front of Rachel's friend's apartment on York Avenue and Eighty-Eighth Street, she leaned forward, threw her arms around Josh and hugged him.

“You're in danger, aren't you?” she asked.

“No, this isn't about me.”

“But you're the one taking all the chances. Please, be careful. Okay? I just found you.”

Fifteen minutes later, Josh opened the door to the foundation's basement, which had been turned into a state-of-the-art, temperature-controlled library, and where he stored his equipment. He shut the door behind him and was just going to pull the stones out of his pocket when he saw Malachai standing on a ladder, inspecting a row of books on a high shelf. He turned at the noise. “Thank goodness, Josh, I was so worried,” he said, and climbed down. “Where have you been all day? I expected you to come back or at least call after your plane landed.”

On the large table in the middle of the room, Josh noticed a dozen dusty books were open to various pages. They were all titles from the mid 1800s on different methods of inducing past-life regressions.

“How did it go with Rollins? No, first tell me, how is Gabriella?”

“In terrible shape. And all alone. I wish she'd call her father so he could be with her. But she's stubborn. I don't know how she's holding it together. Panicked about her daughter, working with Rollins, trying to come up with the damn mantra.”

“Are they getting the translations done?”

“Rollins is still stumped on a few markings, but he should meet the deadline.”

Using an index card, Malachai marked the page he had been studying in one of the books and shut it. “Imagine what it would be like if the mantra worked. To be able to remember who you'd been before, not just fragments, but the entire story. To push back the curtains of the present and peer into the past. Have you considered the man who will wind up owning the stones? He'll be one of the most
powerful men on earth, Josh. Damn it, we should have had them here.” His eyes narrowed. “We were so close.”

“Haven't you ever considered that it's all just a myth, and that the mantra is nothing but a collection of sounds that doesn't do a thing?”

“Still not a true believer?”

“I need just one thing in black and white. If I could have just photographed one aura, captured it on film…”

“Finding us here at the foundation, where Percy once lived? Knowing about the tunnel into the park? What about the little girl at the site of the excavation in Rome? Those weren't proof enough for you? What kind of magic was that, then?”

“The story of the tomb was all over the television and in all the papers. Natalie could have heard people discussing it anywhere. As for the tunnel, I had spent hours in your company before that happened—you could have hypnotized me.”

“Without you noticing? I think not. And have you forgotten that you're not a good subject? As for Natalie, yes, she could have heard that a woman's body had been found in the tomb, but how would she have found out her name was Sabina? The same name you came up with. A name no one else had even whispered. Pulled it out of thin air?”

Josh shrugged. “I'm sure I was thinking about her name at some point. Maybe it was ESP. Maybe it's all been ESP.”

“Or maybe it's reincarnation. Beryl and I believe we've heard proof over and over. Living proof. You, Josh, you're living proof. But if we had the stones in our hands we'd be able to convince even the nonbelievers.” Malachai's eyes were shining with the possibilities. “People like me, who've never been able to remember, would be able to look back and find the answers to help them go forward.”

Until that moment, Josh had planned on taking the stones out of his pocket, showing them to Malachai and telling him about Rachel remembering Esme's life and death on the ship. But the hunger in his mentor's eyes worried him. What if he snatched them away and wouldn't let Josh have them back? What if he was more desperate than the man who was orchestrating all this madness?

No, wouldn't anyone do the right thing in those circumstances? What were a handful of emeralds and sapphires in exchange for a child's life? Even that particular handful of stones. But proving reincarnation had been Malachai's work for much longer than it had been Josh's distraction. Knowing for sure would explain his life, but for Malachai it would be vindication of a life devoted to that one subject.

Men are monsters all.

Who'd said that? Percy? Yes, Percy, discussing his uncle Davenport Talmage, the man who had poisoned him and sent his sister to her death. Esme…who died as a result of her uncle's greed. Rachel had an uncle, too…. Was it possible that Alex was just as greedy and more involved in all this than anyone had guessed?

“Have you thought about tomorrow?” Malachai said, interrupting Josh's conjecturing. “I want to go with you. Follow you and Gabriella. The two of you can't do this alone. What if something were to go wrong?”

J
osh arrived at Gabriella's house just after eight that night. He didn't notice until he'd followed her into the living room and she was in the light, but in the past fourteen hours, so much life had been drained out of her. It wasn't just how pale she was or how deep the hollows were under her eyes. Gabriella seemed to have faded, the way old snapshots do. She tried for a small smile at seeing him, but it turned on itself and wound up being an anguished grimace. Even the room exhibited her anxiety—there was a coffee mug precariously close to the edge of a table; an apple with a single bite taken out of it that had already turned a soggy brown; a sweater that lay trampled on the floor where she must have just dropped it when she took it off and never bothered to pick it up.

Neither of them spoke. She was waiting to see what he'd found, and he was in a hurry to show it to her, believing his discovery would at least offer her a whisper of hope. Her eyes never left his hands as he opened his backpack and pulled out the manila envelope. She held out her palms as if she were a child begging for food, and, one by one, he placed each stone into her cupped palms:
an emerald, an emerald, a sapphire, an emerald, a sapphire and a ruby. Clutching the gemstones to her chest as if, together, they made up her baby, she sank down to the floor and wept.

Sitting down beside her, Josh took her in his arms, held her and just let her cry. But in less than five minutes she was back on her feet, determined and again in control.

“We must photograph these…right away, and e-mail them to Rollins. He's waiting. It's taken him all this time to get the other six done. I don't know…if he can do this…it took him twenty hours to do the first half…. What if these are different markings, and he can't—” She stopped herself, biting her bottom lip, which by now was badly bruised.

“I brought my equipment. I can set up in your dining room and get the shots done in less than ten minutes.” It wasn't relief Josh saw in her eyes, only a lessening of panic, but at least he could give her that, he thought.

* * *

After Josh shot the stones from several angles and downloaded them onto Gabriella's computer, she e-mailed the file to Rollins. Within fifteen minutes, he called to let her know he'd gotten them, had been able to open them, and was ready to get to work.

After she hung up, she looked more depleted than she had when Josh walked into the house.

“Something wrong?” he asked.

“He said the marks are different on these stones. None of them repeat from the first group. It's going to take him the rest of the night and into the morning to decipher them. If he can do it that fast…” Like so many of her sentences lately, this one didn't end but just faded out.

“He'll get it done, Gabriella.”

“Will he?” She shook her head vigorously. “You don't know. Neither of us does. I can't stand it. Being out of
control like this is the worst part. I want to do something…She's my daughter, and I want to do something to save her…” Gabriella ran her fingers through her hair, which was by now a tangled disarray of curls. “Oh, God,” she moaned. “I want to do something. Anything…”

“I know. And you have. You found the one person who can help you, and he will. Listen to me…”

She hadn't been looking at him, but now she turned and faced him. He'd seen the expression in her eyes when he'd been in the Middle East photographing the mothers of children who had been unwitting victims of terrorist activity. It was a different expression of grief than he beheld in the faces of the mothers whose sons or daughters had been soldiers. In those deaths, the mothers had clung to their children's heroism with a tenacity that was like the silken threads a spider weaves: so fragile-looking, but so impossibly tensile and strong.

“Why don't you take a shower? I'll make us drinks and something to eat. You haven't eaten anything since last night on the plane, have you?”

“You can cook?” She was almost smiling.

“Surprised?”

“Yes, for some reason.”

“Well don't expect anything Cordon Bleu, but if you have some eggs I can—”

“You know, I don't think I can eat anything.”

“It's not a choice. You need to eat or you won't be any good to anyone tomorrow. So point me toward the kitchen.”

On the way he told her Malachai was going to follow them in his car the next day, in case anything went wrong.

“What if they have someone watching us? What if they see him?” she asked, her voice tight with new tension.

“He'll be very careful. It's safer this way. What if
something were to happen to me? Then you'd be alone with this monster.” He reached out and touched her cheek. “Go ahead. Go upstairs.”

She didn't go, not yet. “When this is all over…when Quinn is back home…back with me, I'll find the words to adequately thank you.”

The end of this ordeal still seemed far away. Ahead of them was an arduous path through a war zone where, he hoped, at the end was a little girl he'd never seen who would be reunited with her mother.

While Gabriella showered, Josh poured himself a few inches of Scotch and sipped it as he gathered the ingredients for eggs and toast. Now that he'd delivered the stones and Rollins had started on the translations and he was alone, he felt the full impact of what had happened to him that day. Meeting with Rachel, hypnotizing her, hearing her heart-wrenching rendition of Esme's past—Esme, Percy's sister, a woman it seemed he was somehow psychically tied to—lying his way into Harrison Shoals's gallery, taking apart the painting, finding the Memory Stones and stealing them, only to have a gun pulled on him. At least he'd been able to help Rachel break her ties to Harrison, a man who, if there was such a thing as destiny, was far too dangerous for her to have in her life. But there was still the question of Rachel's uncle. Was Alex a threat to her? Worse, was he a threat to Gabriella and Quinn? Should he call the police while Gabriella was upstairs and tell them about Alex—

His cell phone rang. He looked at the readout, saw it was Malachai and answered it.

“I wanted to check on you both. Is there anything new?”

“No.”

“What about the mantra? Will she have the mantra for the stones in time?”

“I think…listen, Malachai, you should know this—there are twelve stones.”

“What?”

“There are twelve Memory Stones, not six.”

“How do you know that?” His voice was tense.

“We'll explain it to you when you get here tomorrow.”

“No. I don't think so. Not after everything we've been through. I'd like you to explain it now.”

Josh had never heard that edge in Malachai's voice, but it didn't surprise him, so he explained what had happened.

“When did this happen? I just saw you. Why on earth didn't you tell me this before? Do you have them, Josh? Are they in your possession?”

Josh looked into the dining room where the stones were all still laid out on Gabriella's glass table. Light shone down on them and up through them, illuminating them from within. They glowed like underwater sea creatures, mysterious but alive.

And then, just as he was going to say yes, he had them, Josh felt a flicker of fear course through him like a current. A warning.

If he told Malachai the whole truth, would he get in his car and drive up to New Haven right then? And if he did, once he saw them, would Malachai be able to let go of them when he was so desperate for proof that reincarnation existed? When he was convinced that the stones were that substantiation? Could Josh take the chance and put Quinn at greater risk?

“Not yet. Gabriella will have them by tomorrow.”

“How did this happen?”

Behind him, Josh heard Gabriella on the stairs.

“We're going to eat something now, Malachai. We'll tell you tomorrow. I'll call as soon as we know where and when we're supposed to make the exchange and pick up Quinn.”

They ate in the kitchen. Josh watched her mechanically pick up the fork, bring it to her mouth, chew the food, repeat the pattern. He knew she wasn't tasting a thing, but that didn't matter. She needed the energy. When they finished, they took mugs of steaming, milk-laced coffee into the dining room and looked down at the emeralds, sapphires and ruby, watching them as if they might at any moment take flight. Except they weren't alive. They were useless chunks of rock dug from the earth, somehow transformed into treasure responsible for at least seven deaths that he knew of.

“I heard you on the phone when I came downstairs,” she said. “Why did you lie to Malachai?”

“I was afraid that if he knew we had them he'd drive up here tonight to see them—and then, once he did, I'm not sure he'd ever let them go.”

“You want these as much as he does, don't you?”

Josh nodded.

“But
you're
not taking them.”

“Quinn's your child.”

“But I remember what you told me before Quinn was taken. You said all you wanted was some way to prove that reincarnation exists. You're the one who thinks he's going crazy, who's been obsessed for so long. Whose life has fallen apart. How can
you
let them go?”

Josh stared at the stones and considered how he'd found out about them. How Rachel had remembered something she hadn't been aware she'd ever known. And how the fabric of their pasts had been woven together in a way that defied logic. Shouldn't the way he found the stones—indeed, the very fact of these stones' existence—prove it for him once and for all? There were so many incidents and revelations in the past four months that should have been proof enough for him. Why weren't they?

For the same reason that interviewing three thousand children still hadn't been enough for Malachai or Beryl.

“You know,” Josh said, taking his eyes off of the glittering gems and turning to Gabriella, “tomorrow night at this time, you'll be here with Quinn.”

She closed her eyes as if in silent prayer. When she opened them, she looked down at the stones, too.

“I can't imagine what it was like, what you did today, taking these. You were almost killed in Rome, and yet you put yourself back in danger today.”

“We're way past that.”

She turned and stared at him for a long minute. Then she leaned in, very quickly, put her mouth on his and kissed him. It was intimate but asexual. An expression of gratitude. “I take it back,” she said. “What I said before. There's no way I'll ever figure out how to say thank you.”

“I don't expect you to. This has to do with so many things that I don't quite understand—karmic debts that need to be paid, plans that have to be lived out, despite our conscious wishes or wants. You and Quinn are part of it, but not the way I thought. I'm not making sense, am I?” He was embarrassed. It all sounded like sentimental lunacy when he talked about it out loud.

“Josh, do you think you and I are connected?”

“In some past-life way?”

“Yes.”

“I desperately wanted to believe we were. But no. Even when I'm with you, I can still feel her presence—she's still pulling at me.”

He stood up, walked the length of the room, got as far away from Gabriella as he could, but it didn't matter, he could still see her luminous golden eyes looking at him. Right then, more than he'd ever wanted to tell anyone anything, he wanted to tell her that whatever had hap
pened in the past didn't matter. That he could live without knowing how Julius's story with Sabina ended. That he could forget the nameless, faceless woman he thought was waiting for him. That he didn't need to keep finding proof or discover a method of photographing auras. That he didn't have to turn all these theories into irrefutable, black-and-white realities.

But he knew better.

Yesterday, he might have been able to walk away from his search.

Yesterday, Rachel hadn't yet reached into her unconscious and told him a story about a painting and a frame.

Yesterday, that same painting and frame hadn't yet offered up a treasure that they had been hiding for more than a hundred years.

Yesterday, he might have been able to walk away from the idea that some destiny was waiting for him.

One day had irrevocably doomed him to remain faithful to his past.

“Oh, God…” The words ended in a cry, as if she'd been pierced and was in pain.

“What?”

“Josh, we don't really know there aren't more of these, do we? What if there are? What if we give all twelve to this monster, and they don't work because—”

“No, that's not going to happen. He's not going to make you wait while he tries them out before he turns Quinn over.”

“But what if there are fourteen stones? Sixteen stones?”

“There were twelve.” He heard his own voice from a great distance, as if he were standing at one end of a long tunnel and someone at the other end had just said it.

“You're sure?”

“Yes.”

She stared at him. “Wait…you know…I think you might be right.” She stood up and walked quickly out of the room.

Josh followed her into the library, where she was pulling books off of the shelves, dropping them to the floor when they weren't the ones she wanted.

“What are you doing?”

“I think I remember something—I'm not sure. There may be some kind of proof.” She pulled another book off the shelf and flipped through the pages. “Yes…here it is. Here, come look.”

It was a drawing of a peacock, feathers splayed.

“What is that? Why is that significant?”

“This is a copy of a drawing found in a tomb in ancient Egypt. Ancient writings described it as a golden breastplate from India that would assist the wearer in reaching his next incarnation. In each of the peacock's feathers was a precious stone. Josh, there were twelve feathers in the peacock's tail. Twelve exactly. The peacock was an ancient symbol of rebirth. Reincarnation. The stones have ancient writing on them that we know is Indus. Maybe this was where the stones were originally from.”