The Hypnotist (28 page)

Iris Bellmer was bewildered and overcome with remorse. She’d let Malachai hypnotize her with his soft, smooth voice, using her own damn snow globe. Sitting at her desk, trying to make sense of what she’d done and calculate its ramifications, she stared out the window at the tree that filtered the view of the street. The wind was blowing, and one branch kept tapping on the glass almost as if agreeing that what she’d done was unforgivable.

Closing her eyes, she practiced deep breathing for five minutes, inhaling to the count of five, holding the breath to the count of five, then following the same pattern of exhaling, holding and then starting all over again until finally she felt calmer.

When Iris opened her eyes again she knew what she had to do: stop Malachai Samuels from doing anything illegal with the information she’d given him and let James Ryan know that she’d released information about his past-life memories without his approval.

She called her patient first. Ryan’s phone rang three times before his voice mail picked up. Iris had prepared what she was going to say, but to him, not a machine. She just identified herself and asked him to call her at his earliest convenience.

What she had to do next would be more difficult. How could she convince Malachai of anything? What could she say to him that would stop him from interfering with their patients’ lives?

Opening her door, she took a step out into the hallway, surprised to see Malachai and Beryl standing close together talking at the far end. Should she confront him with Beryl there, or wait? Before Iris had a chance to decide, Malachai turned and walked in the opposite direction as Beryl started toward Iris. Should she go after Malachai? He was almost at the staircase that led to lower-level library.

“Are you all right?” Beryl asked.

If Malachai heard his aunt, he didn’t turn around. How many more steps till she could be sure he wouldn’t be able to hear her?

“Iris?”

“Yes?”

“Is something wrong?”

Iris heard a door shut in the distance—the door to the library. She nodded. “Yes.” It came out in a whisper.

As he walked up the museum’s grand marble staircase, the pull of the palace reached out to Lucian, but it wasn’t a night for sentiment. Passing through the medieval galleries, heading for the American Wing, he was blind to the artwork for the first time that he could remember. Tonight he was going to solve more than one mystery, and as much as it might cause him personal pain, there’d be relief to finally get to the truth. Hard, cold knowledge was the only thing he could trust. The past few weeks had all been a game, and he’d been played. He clenched his teeth against the thought of that and his unremitting headache.

Golden light flooded the Charles Engelhard Court, a glassed-in garden on the park that was home to large-scale sculptures, leaded-glass windows and architectural elements from the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. There were already at least a hundred guests milling about the three-story atrium, but the space was far from crowded. Lucian recognized and nodded to members of the board of directors. Top-tier museum patrons were there, as well as descendants of the families who had bequeathed the paintings to the Met.

In the center of the room an area was cordoned off by a
twelve-foot opaque screen. Behind it, Lucian found Marie Grimshaw repositioning five empty easels. When she saw him she forced a smile. He had the sudden urge to tell her he was sorry—but for what? Everything had turned out the way she and Tyler Weil wanted it to—the paintings rescued, Hypnos safe.

“Congratulations, Agent Glass. In a career dedicated to protecting art, to keeping the treasures of the centuries safe, tonight should be a major celebration for you. Thank you.”

She was right. He should be reveling in what he and Matt had accomplished, but the surprise he’d suffered earlier this afternoon when Oliver Canton finally gave him the name of his accomplices had ruined that. One name meant nothing. The other meant far too much.

Afterward, Matt had tried to convince Lucian to have a drink with him. To talk about what had happened. Lucian had refused and sat in his office on the computer ostensibly working but just staring at the screen trying to figure out how to deal with the information and its ramifications. He’d been made a fool of. He’d wanted to believe something so badly he’d risked his credibility, his job and his fucking sanity.

He’d forced himself here, not for the celebration, but for the confrontation. He’d even dressed for the magnitude of the event, wearing black slacks, not jeans, a jacket made in Italy and suede loafers that replaced his everyday boots. The only item that was the same was the Glock in his shoulder holster.

There were two bars set up at opposite ends of the gallery. The one with the smaller crowd backed up to a Frank Lloyd Wright living room that had been transplanted to the Met in 1982. Since Lucian was officially off duty, he ordered vodka on the rocks and, while the bartender made it, he stared out the windows into the park’s lush green backdrop. A familiar sense of loneliness overtook him as he remembered someone who
was gone, whom he’d almost been able to reach out and touch. Emeline had raised the specter of Solange’s ghost, put flesh on her bones and blood in her veins. It was a mean trick. She should have stayed a memory. Even if he’d mythologized her, as a myth she’d done him no harm.

He could smell her, as if she were right there. It was the curious mixture it seemed he’d been smelling all his adult life, either in reality or in his imagination—that particular mingling of lilies of the valley with turpentine and linseed oil. Solange’s scent.

But it was Emeline approaching, leaning on her father’s arm. More sickly looking than ever, Jacobs was probably leaning on her but disguising it well. The man’s navy suit hung on his frame, his illness all the more obvious for the excess fabric.

Lucian’s hand gripped his glass as he fought the urge to throw it in the man’s face, battled with the overwhelming desire to beat him to a bloody pulp right here, right now. And Emeline? He had to force himself not to turn away.

Emeline and her father had reached the bar. Her scent was so pervasive. She’d never used Solange’s perfume before. Why tonight? To continue the farce?

As she smiled at him, a faint blush rose in her cheeks. She was wearing cream-colored, wide-legged silk pants with a narrow, fitted blouse of the same fabric. On her feet were flat ballet slippers in the same shade of cream with gold strings tied in a bow. Her hair was sleeked back and pulled into a chignon, almost as if she was showing off her scar. In her ears were round diamonds that caught the light and reflected back the sunset’s glow.

Reaching up, she brushed Lucian’s cheek with a kiss that would appear innocuous to anyone watching—including her father—but wasn’t, and then whispered that signature line
Solange had always used on greeting. “I very much missed you.”

Lucian couldn’t help noticing the swell of her small breasts. Despite everything he knew and all the emotions roiling in him, he was still overwhelmed by an urgent need to touch her skin—to make sure it was warm, not cold—to reassure himself that she was real, that she was still here, that she was not about to evaporate into the past. His heart hadn’t caught up to his head yet.

Coming here had been a mistake. He suddenly knew how the men he had put in prison felt. This wasn’t the place to pose the questions he needed to ask or to hear the answers he was almost afraid to learn. He needed to get out.

“Good evening, Lucian,” Jacobs said formally.

“Good evening, Mr. Jacobs, Emeline,” Lucian responded. His own voice sounded forced. He wasn’t managing this very well. “Would you like drinks?”

Emeline told the bartender she’d take champagne and Jacobs asked for gin. “No rocks,” he muttered, and Lucian noticed Emeline stiffen.

He knew, because she had told him, that Jacobs’s daily promises to stop drinking never lasted long past each evening’s cocktail hour, despite the fact that the liquor was killing him.

Around them, as more and more people poured into the luminous stone-and-glass gallery, the sounds of tinkling crystal and excited voices rose and hovered in the air along with the mixed scents of flowers, burning candles and perfumes. Satins and silks shimmered in the twinkling light from the votives scattered around the room on the cocktail tables. Diamonds hanging from earlobes, necks and fingers glinted; sequined jackets and beaded handbags shone.

The festivity was an affront to what he knew about the two
people standing beside him. Lucian wanted to climb up on a bar and scream at them all to be quiet, to honor the memory of a dead girl and take revenge on the man who was responsible for her death.

The bartender delivered the Jacobses’ drinks just as the string quartet stopped playing and the museum’s director, Tyler Weil, stepped onto a platform to the right of the screened-off area.

Weil scanned the audience, found who he was looking for and motioned for Marie Grimshaw to join him. Then, picking up the microphone, he welcomed everyone.

Beside Lucian, Emeline took his arm and pressed close to him. She smiled up at him, and he was struck by her enigmatic expression. She looked as if she was trying to be happy but at the same time was struggling with where she was, with who she was, with trying to assimilate it all. The stress was no doubt real but its source was not what she’d led him to believe. Before tonight he would have been empathetic about her dilemma. Now he knew it was a lie.

The lights in his office were off except for a table lamp, and so Beryl’s face was in shadow, but Malachai could read her expression from the way she was gripping her cane—not for support but like a weapon.

“How dare you laugh at me?” Her voice strained with rage.

“But what you’re saying is surely a joke, isn’t it? What can you think I’m planning? Betraying our patients? Relax, Beryl, please. I’d never do anything to risk the reputation of the foundation.”

“You wouldn’t? But you have. I can’t allow you to do it again. I can’t take a chance you’ll put us back in the news and harm us further. I’ve called our lawyers, Malachai. As of an hour ago your name has been removed from the deed of the building, I’ve stopped your salary and you are no longer co-director of the institute. You’re on a temporary leave of absence.”

He stood up quickly, his hands clenched at his sides, a muscle twitching in his neck. “You can’t do that.”

“I most certainly can. I’m the chairman of the board, and I have the unanimous support of the other board members.”

“I’m a member of that board.”

“You’ve been outvoted.”

“Whatever it is, you owe it to me to listen to what—”

“Here’s what I’m offering you,” she said, not waiting for him to explain. “If you stay away from Veronica Keyes and James Ryan and make no attempt to use therapy or hypnosis to delve into their psyches to find out more about this sculpture you’re obsessed with, then six months from now you can come back to work and start receiving your salary again. Six months after that, your name can go back on the lease. And six months after that, if everything is still status quo, you can resume your duties as co-director. I’m serious, Malachai. I’ve put up with more than I can stand—and I can’t stand that well anymore.”

“You bitch.” He said it low and deep, and the single word rushed out of his mouth so quickly and came at her so hard she flinched as if it were a physical blow.

“I want you to understand something else. If anything happens to me, or to Iris Bellmer, the directors have instructions to tell the police you are the prime suspect. You’re ill, Malachai. You’re obsessed to the point that it’s threatening your own mental health. My last stipulation is for you to see a therapist. Not a past-life therapist, but a psychiatrist. You need help, even if you can’t see it. You are a world-renowned reincarnationist and have everything a man could want in terms of prestige and money. It should be enough, but it’s not, and—”

“Don’t tell me what should be enough,” he interrupted. “You do not have any idea what is enough for me.” In one very smooth move, as if what he was doing was of no importance, Malachai opened his desk drawer and pulled out a silver and mother-of-pearl handgun that gleamed in the light cast from the torchiere.

Beryl watched her nephew, holding her breath, an expression of disbelief on her face.

Malachai studied her and then laughed. “Nerves of steel.”

“Don’t play with me, Malachai. There’s a policeman outside
in a squad car. You can kill me, but you won’t get away with it. I did you the courtesy of waiting until everyone was gone for the day so you could leave without embarrassment. Against advice I chose not to have you escorted from your own office. I can see now that I was still naive. I always underestimate you, even when I cast you as the devil.”

“The devil? Please, Aunt Beryl. I’m not going to harm you. I’m collecting my belongings to take with me. You don’t mind if I do that, do you? Or has the board voted that I have to leave my personal effects behind?”

“Take what you need and get the hell out.”

One by one he picked up other items from his desk: a deck of antique playing cards, a small tape recorder, three manila files, a leather-bound address book. When he reached for the two small black cassette tapes, Beryl anticipated the move, and her hand was there before his. He reached forward to wrest them from her arthritic fingers, fingers that were like the carved claws on the antique chairs.

“You are hurting me. It’s not a wise move, Malachai.”

For thirty seconds they stood, frozen in mid-action, hands clasped in animosity, standing on either side of the desk that had belonged to Trevor Talmage when he founded the Phoenix Club over a hundred and fifty years before—where he had been found murdered.

Malachai felt his aunt’s grip tighten, and before he even guessed what she was going to do, Beryl lifted her cane and brought it down on his hand, smashing his wrist. He couldn’t stop himself. He let go of her, grabbed his own hand…the pain was excruciating…and while he reeled from its intensity, he watched her pocket the tapes and limp to the door. She left leaning on the ebony stick as if the past few minutes had drained her of all her strength.

When she had the space of the room between them, she stopped and turned back. “A few other housekeeping issues. I called Nina Keyes. She knows everything and won’t allow you to see her granddaughter again. We’ve alerted James Ryan not to take your calls, either. Your bulldog, Reed Winston, has been paid off, and our lawyer has warned him that if anything happens we’ll give the police his name. I’m not sure what we’re going to do about the librarian you hired. He doesn’t seem to have figured into this insanity, but our lawyer is checking his references. If he’s legitimate I’m thinking of offering him a full-time job.” And then she walked out.

Malachai didn’t realize he’d bitten the inside of his cheek until he tasted blood. He’d only done that once before, the night his father had told him what a disappointment he was and that of his two sons, the wrong one had died. Spitting into his handkerchief, Malachai fought his rising panic.

This could not happen. It was unthinkable. He was the co-director of the Phoenix Foundation. Reaching down, he ran his finger down the mother-of-pearl pistol sitting on his open briefcase. The lamplight gleamed off the opalescent surface, illuminating the nacre’s subtle blue and yellow highlights. As he lifted the antique gun his right wrist throbbed, but he didn’t move it to his left hand. The pain was at least a distraction from the greater, more ruthless pain. Malachai put the gun up to his temple and felt the cool metal like a caress.

This gun had belonged to Davenport Talmage, and there was a rumor that he’d used it to kill his brother, Trevor, so he could take over the club, marry his brother’s wife and inherit the fortune that had gone to the eldest son.

Malachai teased the trigger. He realized the gun wasn’t loaded and, feeling like a fool, sank back into his chair, letting the weapon clatter to the floor. How could Beryl dismiss him? He
was her blood, her only family. Malachai shut his eyes and looked into a galaxy of blackness. He wouldn’t give up his position…or his quest. He’d talk Beryl out of this. He’d give her a day or two. He’d done it before, talked her in and out of all sorts of things over the years. He had that ability. Always had. Would again.

Snapping the briefcase closed, he stood and was surprised to feel his legs trembling. He couldn’t allow that. He was stronger than she was, stronger than all of them. Taking a deep breath, he refocused his energy.

He didn’t stop to turn and take a last look at his office because he wasn’t leaving for more than a few days. A week. Beryl would change her mind. He’d come too far to give up now; he had made too many sacrifices to give up…taken too many risks. He’d been shot, for God’s sake, and was still recovering! Yes, that was it. The painkillers. The perfect way out of this. Everyone knew how easy it was to get addicted to painkillers and act irrationally. Malachai had no doubt he could coerce his doctor to diagnose him and then convince Beryl it was just the painkillers that had clouded his reason and that he’d take a few weeks off and get straightened out. She’d want to believe that. She always wanted to believe that he wasn’t as evil as he really was. But he was. He knew it and he could live with it. Like Davenport. The youngest son had no choice but to do what he had to do to survive.