The Collector of Dying Breaths

by M. J. Rose

  He laughed softly and, understanding the tone in her words, responded.

  “I was a fool. But I supposed every man has to play the fool at least once in his life. She is a magnificent narcissist, Jac. A marble statue not quite a woman. I think I believed I could play Pygmalion and, to overuse a cliché, melt the ice in her veins. Instead she turned my blood cold.” He was quiet for a moment.

  “She’s asked me to take over and finish what Robbie started,” Jac said. “To work on the collection of breaths and see if I can re-create the elixir that is supposed to be used with them to allow the souls to reincarnate.”

  “Wouldn’t it be something if it could?”

  “Do you think it’s even possible?”

  “I was willing to spend my savings to buy that collection and test the theory. If it is possible to absorb a soul—to host it—to reincarnate someone—it would be . . . If it’s possible we could preserve souls. Not just access them but save them and then reanimate them so people could fully remember their previous lives . . . what an amazing thing that would be.” He was breathless. “Are you considering taking on the project?”

  “No, but . . .” She hesitated for a moment as she pictured the test tube she’d hidden in her bedroom where no one would stumble on it. She hadn’t been able to scatter his ashes—how could she discard the container that might actually contain his soul?

  “What?”

  “Robbie was so immersed in the work he was doing with Melinoe, he had the nurse who was here with us save his own dying breath,” Jac said.

  “He did?”

  “He did, and I have it . . .” She paused . . . seeing Robbie . . . her beautiful vibrant brother . . . so ill . . . She shook her head trying to make the image disappear. “But don’t worry, I’m not going to accept Melinoe’s offer.”

  “I wasn’t going to ask you to refuse her,” Malachai said.

  “You weren’t?”

  “No, I think you should accept.”

  Jac was shocked. She’d fully expected him to warn her off the idea. “You’re always so worried about me, though. As if I’m one of the figures you collect—that someone might jostle the shelf and break me.”

  “I’m not worried about you spending time with her. Melinoe’s not a murderer, Jac. She’s just a thief.”

  When she got off the phone, Jac was puzzled. Last year he’d tried to talk her out of taking on a project on the Isle of Jersey for her TV show, but she’d gone anyway. Was Malachai using reverse psychology now so that she wouldn’t go? She wouldn’t put it past him. As much as she loved him, she wasn’t oblivious to the fact that he was manipulative and Machiavellian.

  But wouldn’t this elixir be critical to his studies? Wouldn’t he sacrifice anything to get it?

  Now there were two puzzles. What did Malachai really want her to do? And if she went back to Belle Fleur, what was she going to find?

  Jac needed to clear her head. She shrugged on a jacket and left the house. It had rained while she was on the phone, so the streets were wet and there was a fresh smell in the air that suggested spring was coming. She stuck her hands in her pockets, walked the two blocks to the Quai Voltaire and then over the bridge and through the entrance to the Louvre. Here kings and queens—including Queen Catherine—had lived for centuries before it was conscripted into a museum. Turning left, she walked into the Tuileries.

  It was five thirty and dusk was falling, but Jac wasn’t alone. There were people milling about, walking their dogs, strolling with baby carriages or young children. Others hurrying across the park. There was a group of teenagers in soccer clothes, sweaty and high on the excitement of the game they’d obviously just played. And then there were the lovers. She avoided looking at them. Or tried to. But Jac was always drawn to watching lovers in Paris. She believed that it was an homage to the city to declare your love, and that if you lived in Paris and you were in love—whether you were seventeen or seventy—that it was your duty to show your passion. That it gave you entry to a different kind of city. Almost like a magic ticket that allowed you to leave the Paris of traffic and noise and tourists and enter into the city of lights and sights and scents and for a time exist on another plane. Jac had never fallen in love in Paris. But once, for a week, she’d been there with Griffin. When he had come to help Jac find Robbie. They hadn’t enacted all the rituals, though. They’d never kissed on the bridge. Never walked hand in hand through the gardens. Hadn’t strolled by the Seine at night and listened to strains of “La Vie en Rose” that played on the sightseeing boats cruising the river. They’d never bought one of those silly locks and locked their love on one of the bridges.

  Their passion had erupted in the dark. In the few minutes stolen between searching for Robbie, bursts of momentary escape from worry.

  By the time Jac reached the allée of chestnut trees, there were fewer people in the park and twilight had descended. She kept walking, hearing the gravel crunch underfoot. All sounds of the traffic were muffled, and there was a stillness in the park that was reassuring. Until she realized someone was following her.

  Chapter 14

  This area of the Tuileries was deserted. Jac kept moving at a steady pace, hoping the sense someone was following her was all her imagination. She didn’t dare turn around. She passed through the outdoor seating areas of two cafés that were open only during the day. Now just empty chairs and tables. She kept walking, not changing her pace. It could just be someone heading in the same direction. But what if it wasn’t? What if this was someone from the Chinese Mafia? . . . What if this was her reckoning?

  Damn, she was supposed to have let Marcher know when she was coming back so he could have her watched, and she’d forgotten.

  She pulled out her cell phone, found Marcher’s name on her favorites list and tapped it. Marcher had said it was unlikely the vendetta against her brother would extend to her, but . . .

  “Jac? Are you all right?”

  “I’m in the Tuileries—”

  “You were in Barbizon,” he said in surprise. “You were supposed to—” He broke off, suddenly concerned. “What is it?”

  She lowered her voice. “I think I’m being followed.”

  “Where are you exactly?”

  She described her location.

  “Okay, I’m going to put you on hold, but keep talking as if I’m still here, talk to me as if I’m your mother or your boyfriend . . . inconsequential things, tell me what you did today.”

  For the next few minutes Jac did as she was told, kept talking about nothing to the silence. And then he was back.

  “There is a gendarme less than sixty seconds away across from the Crillon Hotel. Turn right and start to walk toward the Rue de Rivoli exit. Don’t hurry and don’t stop talking to me. Be animated. I want you to argue with me, fairly loudly.”

  “What?”

  “Please, Jac. If you are being followed, I don’t want him to think you’ve noticed him. So here we go. How dare you question where I was tonight? Argue with me, Jac. Pretend you are fighting with your boyfriend. Accuse me of lying to you.”

  Jac did as she was told. “You’re lying to me,” she said, raising her voice slightly.

  “I am not. I was at work. You are so suspicious.”

  “You weren’t at the office. I called and your assistant said you had left hours ago.”

  “She was wrong. Haven’t you ever heard of someone being wrong before?”

  It was a surreal conversation.

  “Are you telling me that you just flat out don’t believe me?” Marcher shouted into her ear.

  “Yes!” Jac raised her voice too.

  “You have to!”

  She saw the policeman now—he was only about thirty feet away. She felt the knot of fear inside her begin to unclench, but the adrenaline that was running through her veins didn’t stop pumping.

  “T
hat’s the worst thing to do,” Jac said. “Never tell me what I have to do. You just make me want to do the opposite. Don’t you understand that?”

  In other circumstances Jac would have laughed—it was what she had just been wondering about Malachai. In pretending to have a conversation, she had, out loud, explained one of the guiding principles, right or wrong, of her life. She had always done the opposite of what people expected of her. Everyone had thought she’d be a perfumer, but she became a mythologist. The TV show had been a success and people had expected her to ramp it up and take it to the next level. She’d kept it small. Griffin wanted her to fight for him. She’d walked away. Last year, Malachai begged her not to go to the Isle of Jersey searching for Druid ruins. She decided searching was exactly what she needed to do.

  “Go up to the policeman and tell him your boyfriend is in your house and you are afraid to go home alone,” Marcher told her.

  She did.

  The policeman nodded. “You’re all right, Mademoiselle L’Etoile. The man who was walking behind you turned left when you turned right. He’s gone now.”

  Jac looked. There was a woman walking a Maltese dog. A father and son riding bicycles. An elderly man with a cane making his way down the path.

  “Jac?” It was Marcher on the phone.

  She told him what the policeman had told her.

  “Let me speak to him,” Marcher said.

  Jac handed the policeman the phone. He listened for a few minutes and then handed the phone back to her.

  “Officer Passey is going to escort you into the Crillon,” Marcher said. “I’m getting in my car now and will pick you up there in twenty minutes. Go to the bar, have a cognac. I’ll call when I’m out front.”

  As Jac walked with the policeman across the street, toward the hotel where she’d once had breakfast with Griffin, she thought it was an odd coincidence that she was feeling just as panicked now as the last time she’d been here. Eighteen months ago they had been trying to find Robbie and keep him safe; now he was gone, and she was the one who might be in danger. Suddenly her fear gave way to anger. Anger that Robbie had died. That she was alone. That she was floundering. That Malachai might be manipulating her. That her life had become all about dreams and visions and sadness and loss and talking to ghosts.

  Or had it always been like that?

  Jac ordered the cognac. While the bartender poured it into a lovely crystal glass, she played with the scarlet cord tied around her wrist. He placed the glass in front of her. As she took a sip and felt the burn and then the warmth, she examined her surroundings. In the mid-eighteenth century King Louis XV had commissioned this building to house government offices. Benjamin Franklin had concluded the French-American treaty that recognized the Declaration of Independence here. Everywhere in Paris there was history built on history. Nothing ever died. It was transformed and transmuted. Like Robbie had said about people’s lives. She wasn’t sure if she was remembering him saying it—or if he was whispering it to her again, here in the bar.

  Energy can’t die, Jac. It can only be transformed. And our souls are energy. So when we die, that spirit that is us is transformed.

  Jac wanted to transform. She wanted to stop trying to escape her own past and instead finally face it and fight it and find out what it was and come to terms with it and then move on.

  She knew it then. Like it or not, finishing what Robbie had started was something she was going to have to do. It was the only way to truly leave the past and move on, and moving on was the only way she was going to have a life.

  Her phone rang a few minutes later, and Jac was surprised to see she’d finished her cognac without realizing it. She left a twenty-euro note on the bar and walked out to the street in front of the hotel.

  Marcher was waiting for her in his car.

  “You feel okay?” he asked when she was seated with the door shut.

  She nodded. “Yes, I’m fine. Did you find the man who was following me?”

  “No. I had two men near the park,” Marcher said as he pulled out and entered the traffic on the Rue de Rivoli. “One focused on you, the other on the people around you. There were three men and a woman in the vicinity. My officer couldn’t identify which of them might have been following you.”

  “I don’t suppose any of them were Chinese?”

  “That would be too easy, wouldn’t it? If the Triad is actually keeping tabs, the last thing they’d do is use someone identifiable. I don’t think it’s them. There still hasn’t been any chatter that Robbie’s death was deliberate.”

  “But they were pleased that he died.”

  “They were appeased that he died.”

  Jac shivered. “Robbie didn’t mean to hurt that man. It was an accident.”

  “I know. And they might even know. But the fact is Robbie was responsible for François Lee’s death and he was a high-ranking member of the Chinese Mafia.”

  “As you said yourself, it’s not likely that they are after me, is it?”

  “No, it’s not.”

  “So I’m just being paranoid.”

  “I wouldn’t say that. You are reacting as you should. But after tomorrow you won’t have to. I was going to call you tonight to tell you, but here you are. Tomorrow we are announcing that we are closing the investigation into your brother’s death—”

  “You can’t!” Jac interrupted.

  Marcher held up his hand. “We are announcing we are closing it and declaring that we accept that it was death by natural causes—strange causes, but natural causes.”

  “Even though you don’t really believe that?”

  “It doesn’t matter what I believe. There is no evidence at all that his death was deliberate. There is no evidence that he came in contact with anyone who might have found a way to infect him with what he had. Your perfume workshop was clean.”

  “Then why are you still unsure?”

  Marcher shrugged. “I’m a suspicious man. It’s my nature.”

  They were on the Left Bank now, driving down Saint-Germain toward the cross street that would take them to the L’Etoile residence.

  “What should I do?”

  “Go on with your life, Jac. Be cautious but not afraid. We are monitoring the Triad. We have an excellent man on the inside. If we hear anything, you will be the first to know.”

  “I might leave Paris for a few weeks,” she said.

  “You don’t need to run away.”

  “I’m not. Robbie left some unfinished business, and I think I’m the one who needs to finish it.”

  At home, she called Malachai. When he said he thought she was making the right choice, the excitement in his voice was real. Reassured, Jac telephoned Melinoe, telling her that she was accepting her offer and making plans to drive down the next day.

  And then she decided she needed to make a second call—in spite of all her misgivings and cowardice. If she was going to take on Robbie’s work, she needed all available information.

  Jac’s fingers started to tremble when she scrolled down the list of names in her phone. Her insides started to flutter. She tapped the call button, and when she heard his voice on the other end, she felt a rush of heat.

  “Griffin, it’s Jac.”

  “Hello.” His deep velvety voice that sluiced through her like warm honey. Damn. Just hearing him always did this to her. Despite everything—her mourning, her fear, her anger—she felt the first stirrings of arousal. Just from his voice. Just from hearing him say hello. Would she ever break the spell this man had over her? Ever figure out what subterranean connection there was between them? How could he turn on the switch in her brain that sent her endorphins rushing, made her breasts tingle and her womb throb all with just a hello?

  “Jac?”

  She realized she hadn’t spoken.

  “I’m sorry. Did I disturb you?”

&n
bsp; “No, I’m just sitting here on the couch, reading.”

  “You’re home? I didn’t mean to bother you at home.” Jac felt her cheeks flush. The last thing she’d wanted to do was call him at home. She’d thought it was his office number she’d called. Was his wife next to him? Was he sitting with his daughter? She felt ill. She’d never allowed herself to imagine this scene, and now she had intruded on it.

  “I thought you’d be at work. It’s only three in the afternoon.”

  “Actually it’s nine at night.”

  She was confused. “Where are you?” For a second she wondered if he were somewhere in Paris. That he’d known she was going to need him and had already come to her. Magical thinking, she knew, but they used to be like that with each other. She’d often just have to think of him calling and he’d call. The connection between them had scared him, but to her it had been proof of the rightness of their connection.

  “I’m in Egypt.”

  “I—I assumed you were in New York.”

  “I haven’t been in New York in a while.”

  She was surprised to hear that. When she’d last seen him, he’d said he only went on digs during the fall and winter because it wasn’t good for his marriage or his daughter for him to spend more time than that away.

  “Have you all moved to Egypt?” Jac knew she was asking more questions than she should, but she couldn’t stop herself.

  “No. Therese and Elsie are in New York.”

  Jac couldn’t bring herself to ask the next logical question. Had the reconciliation failed? If she asked and he said yes, she’d have to deal with that, and she wasn’t sure she could.

  She had always wanted to be with him—more than anyone she had ever met in her life. Felt that she belonged with him in a way that defied all logic. She was embarrassed by how much she had longed for him and how much of her life she’d spent fantasizing about him. Hated him for how deeply he had gotten inside her head and, to use a most apt cliché, under her skin. Griffin had imprinted himself on her. She’d discovered her sexuality with him. He was her first lover, her only real love.