by M. J. Rose
She made her way back upstairs and to the living room, where Serge mixed cocktails every evening at six PM.
He was there lighting a fire and looked up when he saw Jac. His face was pale.
“Are you all right?” she asked.
He nodded, but it was halfhearted.
From behind, she heard Melinoe enter the room. She’d changed for dinner, and her pink silk sheath rustled as her high-heeled shoes clicked on the marble floor when she crossed the room.
“I need you to make sure everything is secure,” Melinoe said to Serge.
He nodded and left.
“Where’s Griffin?” Jac asked.
“All in good time,” Melinoe said.
Spinning around, Jac tried to identify what she was smelling. It was the scent of fear. It had come from Serge. Something was wrong. Jac was certain of it. Instantly cold shivers of panic took over her body.
“Where is Griffin?”
“Jac, I need you to finish what you came here to start.”
“Where’s Griffin?”
“Doing a little banking for me.”
“What does that mean?”
“He’s my security deposit on the formula. When you complete it, you and he can leave.”
“What are you talking about? Where is he?”
“This house has secrets you haven’t found yet. Yes, there’s René’s laboratory. And the crypt. Those are your discoveries. But you haven’t stumbled on the charming medieval dungeon. They had them in the Middle Ages, you know. Very elaborate ones. Ours is the size of a bedroom. With all sorts of medieval wonders. Would you like to see?”
Jac knew that Melinoe was eccentric and dangerous. Why hadn’t she realized how foolhardy it was to stay here? She knew the answer. Jac had wanted the elixir as badly as Melinoe. And now? What had Melinoe done?
“Is Griffin there?”
“Insurance that you’ll finish what you started.”
“Why wouldn’t I? You don’t have to threaten me or hurt Griffin—I’ll finish the formula,” Jac lied.
Melinoe stood. “Correctly? Or you’ll corrupt it?” She walked to the door. “Aren’t you coming? Don’t you want to see where Griffin is?”
As Jac followed Melinoe, she watched the light reflecting off the silver heels on the other woman’s suede boots. It was something to do to keep herself from screaming. There was no reason to panic yet. This was just some strange game Melinoe was playing.
They walked through the first floor to the kitchen into a pantry where Jac had not yet been. Off that was a hallway.
“This was where the kitchen staff lived,” Melinoe was saying as if it were a normal evening and she was showing her house off. “The rooms were small, but at least they were warm—all of them have small fireplaces.”
The dialogue was ridiculous.
“And here we have the staircase that led to the cold storage below.”
Like the steps to the wine cellar, these were narrow and not easy to navigate.
One flight down and it was chilly. A second flight down and it was cold. They must have been on the north side of the house, where the sun heated the stones the least.
“In olden times, food was kept down here because of the natural chill, which they exaggerated by building thick walls.
“Now through here . . .” Melinoe opened a thick wooden door that creaked as the hinges moved. “We believe this part of the château dates back to the mid-twelfth century, before the current building was erected. This cellar was part of an older structure replaced by the château in the fifteenth century. As was the custom, the builders followed the previous footprint, even utilizing the old foundation.”
A short hallway ended at a rusted iron gate. There was a key in the lock, but the gate was open. Beyond it was another staircase.
Jac held back. She smelled something foul.
“Come,” Melinoe said, grabbing Jac by the arm, fingers digging into her flesh. “We’re almost there. Just one more flight.”
Jac descended the staircase. For some reason she found herself counting the steps. There were sixteen of them. She was freezing now. Her teeth were chattering. A combination of cold and fear.
At the bottom of the stairs was a second gate. This one was closed. Behind it was a circular room ensconced in darkness until Melinoe swung her battery-operated lantern on a small section of it.
Jac gasped.
She was looking at a medieval Judas chair—triangular-shaped with a very pointed tip that impaled and either rectally or vaginally raped the victim forced to sit on it.
Melinoe swung the light to illuminate a different section of the torture chamber. Here was another chair, this one covered with spikes. Once you sat down, the pinpoints penetrated your flesh—all over your back, arms, legs—left there long enough, you’d bleed to death.
Melinoe revealed another corner, and Jac saw a head crusher—used mostly to extract confessions. A horrific, inhuman device.
Then the light moved again, illuminating a wooden stockade similar to what witch hunters had used in Salem. Griffin’s head and hands were coming through center and side holes. There was a gag in his mouth, which seemed redundant. They were so far underground, Jac couldn’t imagine his screaming could have been heard by anyone upstairs.
“This is crazy!” Jac felt for her cell phone—then remembered it was in the bedroom charging. But even if she’d had it, there would be no signal this deep underground.
What was she going to do?
“Please understand, I don’t have any interest in hurting your friend. Just finish what you started and complete the formula. Once you have, I’ll release the locks and both of you can leave of your own free will.”
“The formula is useless. The breaths are poisonous!” Jac cried. “Let Griffin go.”
“You have no proof that the breaths are poisonous.”
“We do. My brother died from an ancient toxin. He must have inhaled the breath by accident when he broke the bottle—”
“Your brother was visiting laboratories and asking chemists to make up synthetic ingredients. Whatever poison killed him must have been something he commissioned. There’s no proof it was from one of my bottles.”
Jac couldn’t take her eyes off Griffin. “You can’t do this!”
“I don’t have a choice. I know you are planning to leave, and I can’t let that happen. I’d finish the formula myself, but I’m not an expert and we don’t have enough of the ancient ingredients for me to make a mistake. I need you. I have no choice, so you have no choice.”
Melinoe wasn’t sane. There would be no reasoning with her.
Across the room, Griffin looked at Jac and shook his head, no. He always knew what she was thinking almost before she did. From his expression she knew he had zeroed in on the thought that had hit her so hard she’d gone weak and almost fallen.
They had not broken the karmic circle after all. Griffin was going to die, and it would be because of her. Because Jac had involved him in this madness. It was her fault again.
She’d thought about this over and over for the last two years. She had loved this one man without reason and without hesitation since she was seventeen years old. Through her own crises and losses, through years of never speaking to him or knowing where he was. When she wasn’t with him she felt she was only half a person, in limbo. When she was with him, she was complete in a way that embarrassed her. In a way that a woman with a career and friends and family and success is not supposed to feel. She was tied to him. At some distant point in time, their souls had imprinted on each other and they’d never been able to cut the threads of fate that connected them.
Death had only separated them from each other for a time.
And now here they were. Playing out the same scenario. Jac was tied to Griffin. And that bond had been his death sentence over
and over again.
It would end now.
“Yes,” she said. “Yes,” in a flat voice. “I’ll finish the formula,” she added, knowing that she might be signing her own death sentence if the experiment went wrong. “But you have to let Griffin go.”
“It’s almost been twenty-four hours. We’ll have dinner and then you can complete what you began. And then when I have what I brought you here for, you and Griffin will be free to leave.”
Chapter 45
“Dinner will be in a half hour,” Melinoe told her when they were back upstairs. “We never finished our drinks, did we? Shall we now?” she asked as if it were just another night.
“I need to go to my room first. I’ll be down shortly,” Jac responded, trying for the same tone, saying it as if she meant it.
Drink with them? Have dinner with them? Finish the formula now that she knew the breaths were poison? Jac felt as if she’d landed inside a surrealistic dream.
There had to be a way to get Griffin out of the antiquated dungeon where Melinoe was holding him hostage. Jac walked down the hallway to her room and stepped inside. She’d just do the most obvious thing and call Detective Marcher in Paris. Or was it better to start with the local police? Barbizon was a small town—the police were only a kilometer away.
Her bag was on her bed where she’d left it. She reached inside for her phone. It wasn’t there. Of course not—she’d plugged it in to charge it before she’d gone downstairs.
She ran to the desk. The cord was there and at the end of it—nothing. After searching frantically for a few minutes, Jac had to accept the obvious. Melinoe had taken Jac’s phone.
Panic sent surges of adrenaline through her like shocks. What to do?
There were other phones in the house, of course. In the library there was a telephone on the desk. Another in the kitchen. She’d just need to get to one of them. Just go downstairs as if she were planning on having drinks but detour to the kitchen. First, she needed to brush her hair, straighten her clothes, wash the dust off her hands and face. Present a less agitated exterior.
In the bathroom, looking at herself in the mirror, Jac saw a version of herself she hadn’t seen since Robbie had gone missing in Paris almost two years before. Her eyes were bright with fear, and her face was pale. She looked petrified. And she was. Melinoe was insane. She’d stolen from a museum and killed one person so far to achieve her goal.
Practicing Malachai’s breathing exercises for a full minute, Jac tried to calm down. She wasn’t going to accomplish what she had to if she was in free fall.
She needed to get to the telephone. Steal one minute and summon the police. Just one minute. If she could visualize her next moves, it would help. In her mind she watched herself head downstairs and then, instead of walking right—toward the living room, where she was expected—she hugged the wall and slunk to the left. Moving quickly but avoiding any rash movements, she got to the kitchen. Looked for the phone. Then pictured herself walking over to the phone—on the wall by the window.
The last of the evening sun was fading. Twilight was pushing it away. In Paris and New York the night was full of promise. But here in the château, isolated from other houses, from the town, this encroaching darkness was full of anxiety.
Jac opened the door to her room and walked out into the hallway. It was dark, and she wondered why the housekeeper hadn’t come around to turn on the lights yet. No matter, it was better this way. Shadows were perfect hiding places.
She reached the stairs and began her descent, praying Melinoe wasn’t going to come out and head up to her room at that moment.
Each step was a challenge. Jac’s heart was pounding. The simple trip down one flight of stairs was taking too long. But the fear was stretching out every minute.
This is how you live forever, Jac thought. You torture the seconds with worry, you anticipate everything that awaits you, you trouble time, and it becomes an agony of isolated, unconnected moments.
At the bottom of the steps, Jac repeated what she’d pictured herself doing. Instead of heading toward the library, she went left and then down another darkened hallway and found her way to the kitchen without incident.
The smells here were a reminder of normal. There was a chicken roasting in the oven. The aroma of chocolate wafted in the air. A hint of vinegar. Rosemary. Bread baking.
But there was something wrong. It was dark here and empty. There was food cooking, but where was the cook?
The door to the pantry was open, and Jac began to shake, thinking of Griffin down below where she stood now.
Stop, she told herself. Just stop thinking. Use the phone first, then you can go to him. Once the police are on their way.
Jac walked across the room toward the phone, plucked the handle out of the cradle, punched in the emergency code that was the same all over France. This nightmare would be over in minutes now. There was nothing Melinoe would be able to do—
Holding the phone to her ear, Jac waited to hear the ringing.
There was nothing but dead silence. Hadn’t the call gone through? She depressed the connector button. Let it go. Listened for the dial tone. Depressed the button again. No dial tone. What was going on?
The cook stepped out of the pantry. When she saw Jac, she looked startled.
“Can I help you, mademoiselle?”
Jac explained she needed to use the phone.
“Mais oui,” she said, nodding sympathetically, “but it isn’t working because of the power outage.”
“But the stove?” Jac asked.
“The stove is still going because it is gas.”
“How long ago did the power go out?” Jac asked.
“About a half hour ago.”
“Do you have a cell phone?” Jac didn’t have any time to waste now. The power outage couldn’t be a coincidence.
“I do, mademoiselle, but Madame borrowed it. Perhaps you might ask her?”
Jac nodded. Felt a wave of exhaustion. Melinoe had made it impossible for Jac to call for help. There had to be another way. Of course—it was so simple. Almost absurdly easy. Jac would just leave. Walk out the front door, take one of the horses, and ride into town to alert the police.
There were doors and windows everywhere.
“Other than the front door,” Jac said to the cook, “is there a back entrance to the château?”
“Of course, it’s through there.” She pointed to a hallway.
Jac ran. She reached the door in seconds, but the handle didn’t turn. She looked at the lock—it needed a key. Back to the kitchen.
“Do you have the key?”
“How stupid I am, of course it is locked. When the power goes out, the house is locked. Madame fears that with all the valuables here, an electric crisis could be manufactured and then the thieves would take advantage of the dark to take what they want.”
“How does it work—if there is no electricity—how does the house stay in lockdown?”
“I do not know,” the cook said. She was a thin, older woman with a heavily lined face.
“Can I get out through a window?” she asked the cook even though she was sure of the answer she was going to hear.
The woman shook her head. “Not without Madame unlocking it by hand. I’m not sure how it works, but when I came here she told me about it, and once a month she tests the system to make sure it is in good order.”
Chapter 46
“I was looking for you, dear,” Melinoe said as she entered the kitchen. She was wearing a white tunic and white leggings and had pearls in her ears, on her fingers and twisted around her wrists and throat. Iridescent and gleaming, the jewels made her seem to glow in the dark.
Carrying a lit candelabra, she cast a long, twisted shadow on the wall. Her eyes had an almost unearthly glint.
A she-devil, Jac thought, with those white w
ings on either temple and her wild Medusa hair fanning out and falling below her shoulders.
“Serge and I are waiting for you in the living room for cocktails. It’s a shame about the electricity, but we can dine by candlelight.”
With the most gracious of gestures, Melinoe hooked her arm through Jac’s and led her from the kitchen. At the door she looked back at the cook. “Lisette, we will dine at seven thirty as planned.”
“Oui, madame.”
Melinoe didn’t say anything to Jac as she escorted her out of the kitchen, down the hallway and into the living room, where a crackling fire and several wall sconces fitted with candles served to enliven the room. It was as if nothing were wrong here at all. The scene was no different than when Jac had first come to the château except for all the knowledge she now possessed.
Serge was standing at the bar, mixing a pitcher of what Jac knew were martinis, and the stirrer tinkled against the shaker with the same tiddlywink noise it had every night. So normal except . . . except . . . nothing was the same.
He turned, pitcher in one hand, glass in another, and poured. Then he offered the glass to Melinoe. As he did, Jac noticed that his hand shook just a little. He was worried. Stealing a hunk of ambergris was one thing. But now they were involved in a murder and kidnapping. He poured another glass for Jac and handed it to her.
She met his eyes and noticed they were slightly glassy.
“Do you feel all right, Serge?” Jac asked.
“I think it’s just a head cold coming on. I’ll be fine.”
“Are you sure? You look like you feel worse than that.”
“He’ll be fine,” Melinoe said with slightly too much emphasis on the last word.
“Of course I will,” Serge said as he poured himself one of the cold drinks and then sat down beside his stepsister on the couch. Melinoe reached out and stroked his hand. Soothing him as Jac had seen her do before. Then Melinoe leaned over and kissed him on the lips. She was a monster of seduction calming her pet. Jac could smell the sultry perfume she was wearing even halfway across the room. Serge’s eyes half closed. His hand faltered. A tiny bit of the liquor sloshed out of the glass and soaked into his slacks. Melinoe whispered in his ear. He straightened. Took a sip of his drink.
