by M. J. Rose
“Did you?”
He nodded. “I discovered we all have secrets. You know most of mine.”
“I did, but . . .” She didn’t complete the thought.
After a minute, he said, “We need to go online. Do you have a computer with you?”
Jac fetched her laptop from the desk in the corner. “The house is wireless. Robbie saw to that. What are you looking for?” she asked as she handed it to him.
“Maps first. There are always maps. We need to figure out what’s down there and how to prepare for it. The more we know going in, the more likely we are to meet with success.”
For the next hour, they sat side by side on the couch. Said little. Read a lot. Most of the information was in English as well as in French, so Jac didn’t have to translate much.
The city beneath the city had first supplied Paris with all the limestone it needed for its grand mansions, wide boulevards and bridges. The hollowed-out earth and tunnels then became home to the bones of more than six million dead crowding cemeteries that couldn’t contain them anymore. Over the years, the catacombs had been utilized as makeshift resistance bunkers during the war, galleries for avant-garde artists, prisons and escape routes. All but a mile of them had been officially shut down—that mile was now a tourist destination. But the laws didn’t prevent determined cataphiles from continuing to go underground for all sorts of reasons.
“It’s illegal to explore the tunnels,” Jac said as she skimmed another article. “I don’t even want to read these stories about people who have gotten lost and never came out. There are one hundred and ninety miles of underground passages. Uncharted, and, for the most part, unmarked and dangerous.”
“I’ve crawled through pyramids. I know how to take care of us.”
“And find him? In all those tunnels?”
“He found a way to get you to the tunnel. He’ll find a way to lead you to him.”
According to the Greeks, the fates—three minor goddesses—appeared seven nights after a child’s birth. Their job: to determine the trajectory of the baby’s life. Clotho spun the thread of life that Lachesis measured and that Atropos cut after deciding how old the child would be and how death would occur.
And yet, even with the goddesses making the decisions, man had the freedom to influence and alter his fate. Jac believed everything in mythology was a metaphor. She didn’t believe in fate. But as she stared at Griffin, she wondered about the odd coincidence that he would be in Paris now. Griffin. An expert in exactly the kind of mission necessary to find her brother.
“There are no coincidences,” she could hear her brother saying. Someone else had said it to her recently too. She struggled to remember. Then it came to her. Malachai Samuels.
She glanced back at the computer. “It says most of the tunnels are over a hundred feet down. That’s what you said. When you dropped the candle. That the chute went down a hundred feet?”
“From the sound the candle made when I dropped it, absolutely.”
“That’s about five to seven flights of stairs, depending on how far apart they are, right?”
He nodded.
“Seven stories is twice the size of this building.”
“You don’t have to go if you’re uncomfortable. Let me do it. I’ve gone down deeper—it doesn’t bother me at all.”
“It’s Robbie. I’ll manage.”
“There are tricks to not panicking. One is, don’t anticipate what’s ahead of you. Not being able to see ahead of you—not knowing where the end is—can be the worst part.”
“I’m not afraid of heights; I don’t imagine I’ll be afraid of depths.”
“Or the dark?”
“No. I like the dark. It’s comforting.”
Griffin laughed. “Well, then, you’ll be happy. It’s going to be dark. There’s no natural light that far down. This article says that in the early nineteen hundreds, the catacombs were used to grow mushrooms.”
They made a list of what they’d need to buy in the morning.
Jac checked the clock on the mantel. It was ten. “The stores won’t be open for another twelve hours.”
Griffin followed her glance. “You should try to go to sleep.”
“I won’t be able to.”
“You’re not going to be any good to Robbie if you’re exhausted.” Griffin crossed the room and placed his glass on the bar. “I don’t think you should be alone in the house. I’ll camp out on the couch.”
“I’m not afraid to be alone.”
“No. I’m sure you’re not.” He almost sounded aggrieved. “But I’m afraid for you, and I’ll be able to sleep better knowing you’re not here by yourself.”
“I’m not in danger, Griffin.”
He just nodded.
“You think I am?”
“I just don’t want to take chances.”
Jac looked at him. Held his eyes. Once she had imagined so many stories, all with him in them. Once she had thought that they would be together. Once she had believed in him the way she now understood no one should ever believe in anyone. Yes, she’d had great expectations for him. For him and for Robbie—and for herself, too. It might have seemed like too much pressure. Maybe she’d been wrong to want so much for him and to think that accomplishments defined a person. But he’d accomplished it all, hadn’t he?
“Why are you shaking your head?” he asked.
“Was I?”
“Like you were having an argument with someone.”
“You’re doing what you always wanted to, aren’t you?” she asked.
“For the most part, yes.”
“What I thought you’d do.” She smiled.
“You knew exactly who I wanted to be.”
“Then what was the problem, Griffin?”
“I couldn’t bear the thought of failing.”
“Failing?”
“Failing and being a disappointment.”
“To who? Me? Or you? Which one of us?”
He didn’t say anything for a moment. Then: “I thought you. Now I’m not sure.”
He came back to the couch and sat beside her. He put his hand on her shoulder and turned her toward him. “You ask impossible questions, you know that? Things people don’t ask. Frank. Forward. You haven’t changed.” He laughed. But it wasn’t joyful. “You want to go so far in. To know so much. Too much. You’re so damn curious.”
“Not me. I stopped being curious a long time ago.”
“Liar,” he said. And then he pulled her toward him and kissed her.
Jac felt more questions swirling in her head, demanding she not ignore them, insisting she take them seriously and focus on them. But the pressure of his lips was too distracting. She was tired. And, yes, scared. If she didn’t think, if she rested here inside his embrace for a little while, it would be all right. Wouldn’t it?
Griffin’s smell swirled around her. If she let herself, she could get lost in that smell. If she could forget what had happened between them—no, not forget, but let it go for now. Just for a little while. It had been so long since she’d felt this urgent pull. And she wanted to give in to it.
Except not with Griffin.
With anyone but him.
It had taken her so long to bring herself back from the brink where he’d left her. Was she strong enough to now take what she wanted without unraveling afterward? A mixture of want and fury pounded in her veins. Her fingers dug deep into his arms. Pulling him toward her, she hoped she was hurting him. Wanted the pressure to cause him pain, but from the way he leaned deeper into her, she wasn’t sure. Then his fingers were pressing into her flesh. There would be marks left on her skin tomorrow. Black-and-blue imprints of his touch. Long ago he’d gone away and had left invisible bruises that had never quite healed. But these would. These were only surface blemishes.
Her body was betraying her. For years Jac had stood up to the memories of this man. Kept them from tempting her. And now? Now she was giving herself up to every single sensation he elicit
ed from her.
Damn. Her body had not forgotten. Not his smell and not his taste. Not the way his hair curled at the base of his neck. Not the warmth of his skin. Not the way he enveloped her whole body in his embrace so that the rest of the world fell away and they were alone living out the minutes on the rims of their lips. Her craving to be next to him without clothes between them embarrassed her. This want was more primal and urgent than any she’d ever experienced. Ever even guessed at. Suddenly needing to feel him on her was more crucial than breathing. Her fingers moved to his shirt buttons.
Griffin didn’t stop her or help her. He allowed her to undress him. Watched her. She felt as if she was admitting something in each movement that he needed to know, wanted to know.
Jac whispered, “Do you remember what we were like?”
He didn’t answer.
She wanted him to talk. To center her. If she could get him to speak about who they had been, maybe it would prevent her from creating a new story with him. It was one thing to relive the past, but she didn’t want to open up a new path to the future. Not with this man to whom she’d given too much before—and who had squandered her gift.
“Is this what we were like before?” she asked again.
He kissed her until she was quiet.
She pulled off his shirt and unbuttoned her own. Unfastened her brassiere. Pressed her chest to his. Felt the cool air on her back and the hot skin against her breasts.
“Do you remember us?”
Griffin moved his lips down her neck and across her chest, and he left kisses on her skin like messages written in a language she could no longer decipher. He was telling her skin secrets. Her body understood. Her mind didn’t.
She wanted to use him so she could stop worrying about her brother for a while. It wouldn’t be wrong to use Griffin. He’d hurt her. He owed her this.
His lips were on her shoulder—he’d found the spot he’d been the first to find when she was seventeen years old. Lightly gnawing on it, he sent fiery shivers down her back.
Everything was a soft, inviting darkness. Not the cold black of the tunnel leading down into the earth where Robbie was waiting. This was a blood-lust darkness. If she could shine a light on it, she was sure it would be flush with deep maroon and suffused with the scent of roses and cinnamon and musk.
No one she’d been with other than Griffin had urged her body to give off that particular aroma. It was as if he excited some secret part of her self that opened and bloomed under his fingers and tongue and teeth and lips and cock.
Naked now, the two of them moved from the living room up to her bedroom and lay on her childhood bed, the powder-blue chenille bedspread soft under her. His body rough on top of her.
They’d always been aware of the need to be quiet. In college and grad school, they’d each had roommates in crowded, small quarters. When she’d taken him to her grandmother’s house in Grasse, they’d had to worry about making too much noise while the rest of the house slept. During the day, Griffin led her and Robbie on expeditions to archaeological sites, looking for remnants of the Romans and the Cathars. Breaking for lunch, they’d sit in the shade, hiding from the strong Provence sun. They’d eat honey that smelled of lavender smeared on baguettes filled with goat cheese and drink fruity rosé wine. When Robbie would take off to hunt for more shards of ages long gone, they’d lie on the grass and explore each other’s bodies, hurrying a little, so they’d be done before he got back.
Now they didn’t have to be cautious. The house was empty except for the ghosts of L’Etoiles who had lived here for almost three hundred years. Jac couldn’t imagine they would be shocked by anything she and Griffin were doing. They’d certainly seen and done worse over the years.
Suddenly an image flowered in her mind: a woman and a man making love here, in this house, in this room, almost as if they were superimposed over her. Their smells were all different. Sour and pungent. Musty sweat, face powder, and candle wax. Scents Jac didn’t remember her father mixing. Combinations she and Robbie never played with. Old-fashioned, from another time.
The woman—was it the woman from Jac’s hallucinations?—was crying. Holding onto the man, she wept on his shoulder. Her tears soaked his skin. Even as he pushed inside of her and filled her up in a way that she, too, had forgotten was possible—in the same way that Jac had forgotten that only Griffin could fill her, the man in the shadows whispered that he was sorry. That he was so sorry. That he never meant to cause her pain.
Or was it Griffin saying that as he thrust up inside of her? Jac couldn’t separate the picture and the smells and the words.
She heard screaming somewhere in the distance and then the wrenching sound of wood splintering and heavy footsteps and another smell—overwhelming everything else now—the smell of fear. Seeping under the door, through the cracks in the window, wafting up. A gun blasted. Panic shot through her with more force than the man’s thrusting. Fear that this time would be the last time. Reunited, were they about to lose each other again?
“Not now that I finally found out you’re alive,” Marie-Genevieve sobbed. Or was it Jac? Was she crying? Her tears? Someone else’s? Someone else’s words? She was feeling Griffin inside of her. It was Griffin, wasn’t it? Not Giles.
She was lost again as new waves of sensation swept over her. Bouquets of scent enveloped her. Roses. Cinnamon. Musk. She tasted her own salty tears and the sweet taste of his lips. There was no space between their bodies. No way of knowing where one of them started and the other stopped. His touch and his smells were a drug. They had once meant all this and more to each other. They had created a world out of each other’s bodies and yet had walked away from it. He had. He had left this. Let this go. Let her go. Let go of this magic that was more alchemical than any fragrance any perfumer had ever concocted. This was the scent of secrets, and as long as you could smell it, you would live forever.
Jac thrust her hips up. She met his movements with her own, her bones grinding into his. Their flesh smacking against each other. His face was hidden in her neck. His mouth on her shoulder now, again. That spot. Electricity shivered through her. His fingers dug deep into her skin. She was surrounding him, but he was all around her. There was no memory, and yet it was all memory.
“Are you crying?” he whispered.
Jac wasn’t sure. She didn’t want to know. Was this another psychotic break? What else could it be? This strange half dream. Hauntingly beautiful. Bitter green with sadness. Another time. Long ago. A woman and a man in this room. Love lost. Love found. Making love. Sorrow swelling as they faced some kind of tremendous terror.
She shuddered. Griffin mistook it for passion. He arched up again inside of her. And she was lost again. It was even darker and smoother. The smells were evening out into one commingled sighing scent, hotter, lusher. She was traveling the maze. He was at the center. Held out his arms. They moved in unison—practiced lovers who might have been dancing this way together for hundreds of years.
There would never be any more sadness. Never any more longing, because they would never again separate. This act sealed their fates. They were two woeful halves coming together. Forming a whole that left no room for air, for fire, for scent or stink, for water, for breath. They were together. Without thought or wisdom or words. They were together. As they had always been, forever, Jac thought in one moment of clarity as she was overwhelmed by the gift of oblivion that only such a deep and painful explosion could render.
Thirty-five
On the opposite side of Rue des Saints-Pères, inside the courtyard of the nineteenth-century apartment complex, a chestnut tree cast the navy-blue Smart car in shadows. William had secured the parking space from the concierge. Three hundred euros in exchange for the numeric code that residents used to open the heavy wooden gates. Only two families had cars, so there were three unused spaces.
Despite the privacy the tree afforded, Valentine kept the lights off and the windows rolled up. The electronic listening device had been mo
dified so its switches didn’t illuminate. Her headphones were state of the art. Even when William was in the car with her, he couldn’t hear what she was listening to. She had been trained to take every precaution.
The whole time she’d been sitting there, no one had come or gone. Everyone seemed to be in for the night.
Valentine shifted in her seat. Arched her back. Stretched her legs. She ran ten hours a week. Practiced martial arts another five. Her diet was macrobiotic laced with vitamins. Under François’s tutelage, she’d turned her body into an instrument. One that no one could take from her. Her only vice was cigarettes. And she allowed herself only eight a day.
Four hours in the car was nothing. Her longest stint had been nine hours. But that had been a success. So far, tonight had been anything but.
Valentine had followed Griffin North and Jac L’Etoile back to the mansion after their dinner at Café Marly. For a few minutes, she’d heard them clearly, then nothing. After an hour, a few sentences, then Griffin put on the stereo. After that, she’d heard only intermittent pieces of conversation. Nothing valuable. At least on the surface. Maybe later, when she could play it back, there’d be some clues.
It was hot and cramped inside the vehicle, but Valentine was trained not to let that distract her. She just listened. Because the subjects spoke only English, it was taking more concentration than usual. And proving more frustrating. Valentine was missing nuances of any of the conversation she did hear.
She’d understood the sound of their lovemaking, though. And for some reason, it had embarrassed her. It had been four years since she’d been with a man. And he had been the only man she’d been with since François had picked her up off the street and taken her to the hospital.
The knock on the window startled her. Instinctively, she put her hand on her knife. Like soldiers in the People’s Armed Police in China, she was trained in many killing techniques: shooting, knifing, hand-to-hand combat. Like François, she preferred knives to guns. The butterfly knife she wore on the belt around her waist had been his gift to her on her indoctrination into the Triad. Dragons were beautifully engraved on the blade. Leather strips, softened by years of use, wound around the steel tang.
