Finally Malachai rushed out, dragged her across the moat and pulled her into one of the stone huts, where they waited out the rest of the storm. She remembered he’d helped her take off her sneakers. The rubber soles were burnt and her socks were singed. But her skin was untouched. He’d said he didn’t think any electricity had been conducted up into her.
But wasn’t the proof of its power slowly seeping out of her? And didn’t it mean there was now one more loss to mourn?
As Jac zipped up the dopp kit, she remembered the terrible sadness she’d felt just before the storm struck. And the beautiful but bitter scent. A primordial scent like the forest. Like the stars. She’d recognized it but didn’t know it. If such a thing was possible, it seemed the scent was in her DNA. That she knew it on a very subliminal, primitive level.
Malachai said he hadn’t smelled anything. Hadn’t even really seen what had happened to her because the lightning had blinded him too.
Jac scooped water in her mouth and used it to swallow two painkillers. Then washed her face. Brushed her hair. Put her robe back on and belted it tightly.
Even if the cramps abated, she wasn’t going to be able to sleep again so she didn’t go back to the bedroom. Instead she ventured downstairs. She’d do what Robbie always did, make a cup of tea. Just thinking about her brother helped. She’d call him. Tea and then phoning Robbie. A plan. And right now, she needed one.
The mansion was designed in the gothic revival style of the mid-1800s, so though it was glorious during the day, at night it was ominous. Walking along the dimly lit hallway, she listened to floorboards creak under the carpet and watched her shadow’s progress on the walls.
The grand staircase was two stories high, and she felt dwarfed walking down the steps. Dark oak gothic arches framed the melancholy family portraits that hung at even intervals. The dead relatives’ eyes all seemed to follow her as she made her way to the ground floor.
In the kitchen, Jac turned on the kettle. While she waited for the water to boil she stared out the window over the sink. Weak moonglow illuminated towering trees bending in the wind. Leaves were flying, even though it was weeks until fall. Jac watched a ten-foot limb break off and sail though the sky, toppling a stone angel off her perch, before crashing into the reflecting pool.
The library was slightly more welcoming. Here at least heavy damask drapes covered the windows and offered a buffer from the relentless sound of the storm.
Jac’s hands were shaking. On the bar, next to the fixings for the martinis Malachai had made the night before, was a bottle of Armagnac. She poured some into her tea and took a sip. The smell was pungent and bracing. The liquid, warm and reassuring.
In this room, like the rest of the house, there was no sense of the present. Modern accoutrements were designed to maintain the conceit that you’d stepped back in time, into another century. Upon first arrival, Jac had found it odd, slightly disconcerting. But now it was an appreciated escape from her reality. As was the scent of leather. The aroma was warm, masculine and dark. Creating a leather-a cuir de Russie scent-was a rite of passage for every great perfumer. The leather in this library reminded her of her grandfather’s Russie. The House of L’Etoile still produced it, and even though it was marketed as a men’s cologne, Jac often wore it.
As she sipped her tea, she examined the bookshelves, reading the gilt lettering on the spines, imagining the people, through the decades, who had amassed this collection and read these volumes.
A glow emanated from behind a pile of books on the partners desk and she walked around to see what was causing it. It was Malachai’s state-of-the-art laptop. A stark exception in the perfectly preserved nineteenth-century room.
The screen showed a search engine page. Jac sat in the comfortable leather desk chair, put down her tea, typed lightning strikes and hit the return key. Within seconds the first of hundreds of thousands of results appeared. Scanning, she clicked on the tenth item, titled “The Body Electric” and read the harrowing story of a woman named Anne Downy who’d been part of a group of kayakers all hit by lightning.
Not everyone in the party had survived. Those that had had been severely injured.
“As millions of volts of electricity pass through the body, brain cells are burned, ‘insulted’ or bruised, which can result in cerebral edema, hemorrhage and epileptic seizures. Passing down through the body, the electricity hits the soft-tissue organs-heart, lungs and kidneys…”
A word leapt out at her. She jumped ahead.
“And when pregnant women are hit, either spontaneous abortion occurs, or else they carry the baby to full term but after delivery the infant dies.”
Jac closed the laptop. Then her eyes. The idea of the miscarriage was too large and complicated to grab hold of. She didn’t know how to absorb it yet.
She stood quickly, wanting, needing to get away from the computer. In her haste she didn’t see Malachai’s briefcase on the floor and tripped over it. It fell open and spilled its contents on the rug.
Bending down, Jac picked up the papers, stuffing them back inside the case. Outside the wind continued to howl and the rain to fall. Each time more thunder broke, she involuntarily shuddered. She tried to tell herself that the worst was over now. Or the best. That it didn’t matter that she might have been pregnant. Dwelling on it wouldn’t resolve anything. This too shall pass, she intoned silently, repeating her mother’s oft-used phrase.
This too shall pass.
Jac wasn’t paying attention to the documents she put back in the briefcase until her own name jumped out at her from an envelope she was holding.
Jac L’Etoile
c/o Malachai Samuels
The Phoenix Foundation
19 West 83rd Street
New York, NY
The script was heavily slanted, indicating someone left-handed. In mythology being left-handed was associated with Lucifer and black magic.
Turning the envelope over, she saw it had already been slit open. An almost surgically clean cut made with a letter opener. Like the lapis lazuli one Malachai kept on his desk at the Phoenix Foundation, she thought. But why would Malachai open a letter addressed to her?
Jac glanced at the return address.
Wells in Wood House, Isle of Jersey, England
The words were engraved on the expensive, heavy stock. A memory teased her but remained elusive.
Who was it from?
Pulling out the single sheet of paper, she scanned the writing-not yet reading-just searching for a signature.
Theo
Without a last name. She hadn’t known his last name back then either. None of the patients at the Blixer Rath clinic knew each other’s surnames. The institute’s policy was to protect their patients’ privacy.
Jac hadn’t thought about him in years, but now she recalled the strange and wonderful boy she’d met seventeen years ago. How amazing that after all this time, Theo had found her.
It had been summer. The first time she’d seen him, Jac had been walking on one of the mountain paths when she’d turned a corner and found him sitting on the promontory that was her secret place. He was looking out over the countryside and didn’t know she was there until she stepped on a twig.
Theo wasn’t handsome as much as striking. Tall and skinny. His sun-streaked hair was pulled back off his face in a ponytail that exaggerated his already prominent cheekbones and broad forehead. The eyes that were unabashedly examining her were a pale blue, watered down as if tears had drained them of most of their color. He had a haunted expression on his face.