The Reincarnationist (25 page)

“What do you mean, right from the start?” Malachai asked.

“I didn't spend any time thinking about it when it happened, but the way I discovered the site was very strange.”

“You're the one who found the site? For some reason I thought Professor Rudolfo had,” Malachai said.

“No. I did. And I think how it happened is tied into the stones being stolen and the professor being killed, and
why someone broke into my apartment last week and my office on Saturday.”

While they ate, Gabriella told Josh and Malachai the story, starting with the priest finding her in the chapel at Yale. While she started recounting the first two digs, her fatigue and fear faded as she relived the excitement of those early days in Rome.

“So you didn't find anything at either of those sites?” Josh asked.

“No. Both were dead ends.”

“So you moved on to the third site?” Malachai sat straight up in that slightly formal way he had, his eyes focused on Gabriella.

“Yes…” Her words trailed off.

“And that was where you found the Vestal and the stones?” Malachai asked.

“Yes.”

“Are you going to go back?”

“To Rome?”

“Back to finish working on Bella's tomb?”

Josh wanted to correct him. It was Sabina's tomb. But he let it go.

“I don't know. I'd need to find another archeologist to work with me now that…” The sadness had slipped back into her eyes and she looked tired. “And if I go back, I'd want to take Quinn with me.”

“Is that a problem?” Josh asked.

“Right now it is, because of Bettina.”

“Bettina?” Malachai asked.

“She helps me take care of Quinn.”

“Is she leaving?” Josh asked.

“She's an aspiring actress, and her plan is to go part-time and try to get some work on the stage once Quinn starts school this fall. She wouldn't delay that to go to Rome with
me for six months, and I wouldn't take Quinn away from home with all the stress that will bring without having someone she knows and trusts with us. So I can't think about returning before I work out those child-care issues.”

Malachai leaned forward yet farther. “You must go back. It's imperative. You have a destiny with Bella. And with the stones.”

“The stones…” She shook her head. “I don't imagine I'll ever see them again.”

“How far did you get in substantiating their history or translating the engravings?” Malachai asked as he lifted his glass to his mouth.

Josh noticed how, even when he drank, his eyes didn't leave Gabriella's face while he waited for her response.

“Not far. There wasn't time. We'd only just found the tomb. Those are the kind of details that we'd typically wait to deal with after we'd finished the excavation.”

“Can you work on the translations without the actual stones from your photographs?”

Why was he badgering her? Josh wanted to stop him, to make him be quiet, to give her some time. He wanted to wrap her in his arms and offer her a safe harbor. He wanted too much. All things he couldn't have. Gabriella, the stones, proof of what was happening to him.

“I guess I can, but it seems pointless now.”

“It's not. The foundation is determined to find the stones. They matter to us probably as much as they do to you. And when we've secured them we're going to need to know how to use them.”

Now she was puzzled. “Do you think they have some power?”

“Going back to the beginning of the Phoenix Club, my great-great-great-uncle was certain they weren't just a legend, but had properties that could induce past-life
memories. I don't know if I believe that, but I can clear up one mystery. I'm fairly certain the papers your priest gave you have something to do with my great-great-great-uncle's research and efforts.”

“How so?”

Malachai poured what was left of the wine into his glass, took a sip and described the group of wealthy industrialists, artists and writers who financed an archeologist in Rome at the end of the nineteenth century who thought he had found a clue to where the stones were buried.

“What was his name?”

“Wallace Neely.”

Gabriella nodded vigorously. “Neely owned the site the tomb was found on. Rudolfo negotiated with his heirs. He was a very promising archeologist who had several successes but died tragically when he was only thirty-three.”

“Do you know how he died?” Josh asked her.

“He was killed in Rome a few days after he announced that he had made a marvelous discovery.” As she said it, she realized the coincidence.

“He was murdered?” Josh asked, astonished.

Now it was her turn to be stunned. “I hadn't realized…it's history repeating itself,” she said, her voice a whisper.

“Did you know this?” Josh asked Malachai.

“Some of it, but I didn't put it all together until now.”

“Do you know what discovery he made?” Josh asked Gabriella.

“No one knows. Rudolfo and I were sure he must have cataloged his finds, but his records have long since disappeared.”

“Maybe he was killed for what he discovered, too,” Josh suggested. “If that happened then and this happened now—”

Malachi interrupted. “Things are not always what they
appear to be. Remember that.” He reached out to Josh's ear and pulled out a silver dollar.

Gabriella looked confused.

“It's his hobby,” Josh told her. “Making magic.”

“It's not just a hobby,” Malachai corrected. “It's the preferable way to live your life.” He laughed. “Making magic,” he said, repeating Josh's exact phrase.

Outside the restaurant, Malachai said good-night to both of them, and Josh drove Gabriella home. The rain had stopped, but the trees still dripped and the roads glistened in the lamplight. After he pulled up in front of the lovely Tudor house on a quiet tree-lined street, Josh got out and began walking her up to the front door.

“You don't need to—”

He didn't let her finish. “Yes, I do. I want to make sure you get inside and are safe and sound before I leave.”

“It's nice of you to watch out for me.”

Josh heard her words as if he was underwater again; it took an extra second for them to get to him. Holding her glance, he tried to read it. He was sure it only took a few seconds of real time, but he didn't perceive it that way. It seemed to take ages to work through the pathos and foreboding in her expression and get to the longing.

He was so focused on her, the smell of jasmine and sandalwood crept up on him and he didn't have time to fight the lurch because he hadn't felt it coming.

Julius and Sabina
Rome—391 A.D.

T
he crowds lined the streets and watched as the procession moved toward the gates of the city. To them it was tragic drama, it was sport, it was spectacle. For the first time in forty years, a Vestal Virgin was going to be buried alive for violating her vows.

Sitting atop her funerary bed, which rested on a cart held aloft by six priests from the college, Sabina let her eyes follow a woman who walked along the dray, a baby in her arms, keeping them in sight every second of the long, slow march.

The dust rose up and got into the priests' nostrils, clouded their eyes and coated their skin. It was too hot to be walking this distance, too hot for them to be carrying this woman, so hot it was inflaming the crowds, whose voices rose to the heavens with their jeers and curses.

Julius feared that even on this holy procession, there would be violence. In the last month the emperor had
issued a proclamation commanding citizens everywhere to encourage all remaining pagans to convert.

“Encourage” meant different things to different people: more temples had been plundered, more priests had been attacked during religious services, more fires had been set and more buildings had burned down to their stone foundations. Romans who had prayed to pagan gods months before, now, either out of true faith or to curry favor with the administration, came at holy men with weapons. With every priest they subdued, the greater their control and power grew. That was what religion was about now: power.

Each night, Julius and Lucas had continued to meet and plot in secret, often joined by Julius's brother and fellow priest, Drago. This procession was part of those plans.

Nine weeks before, Sabina had stopped trying to hide the pregnancy. She would be buried alive as custom and law dictated, one week after her child was born, in a tomb they had built in the hills near the sacred grove.

No one knew that Julius was the father, so his punishment had not yet been meted out, and he'd been free to work on the tomb. They'd made a show of its construction: bringing in artisans to create an elaborate fresco and a detailed floor mosaic.

During the past week, as they put the final touches on her resting place, Sabina had sat nearby, nursing, cooing and smiling at her baby. But she wasn't the only one watching. There were spies everywhere. In fact, Julius was counting on them. So the digging was carried out during the day in plain sight of the bystanders who came to watch.

It had been so long since a Vestal had been buried alive, the citizens of Rome found great symbolism in the upcoming event. With the last Vestal's death would come the death of the old ways.

But once everyone had left and the sun had set, late each night under cover of the deepest darkness, there by the sacred grove, where Sabina and Julius had been meeting as lovers for so many years, where he had found out she was carrying the child who would be her death sentence, he and his brother worked on the secret of her grave until their fingers bled.

Pagans believed that after they died their souls were reborn and given a chance to right the wrongs they had done in their last life. As long as Julius could move the earth with his hands, nothing was going to stop Sabina from having a chance to be reborn in this life.

From her perch on the funerary dray, Sabina looked from her child to Julius, who walked on her other side. Now her eyes glittered with unshed tears. They'd be saying goodbye to each other soon. Their life together, the way they'd known it, would end. There would be no more meetings in the grove, no more nocturnal swimming in the pond. Julius wouldn't see her skin dappled with the moonlight under the oak trees that had sheltered them and hid them for so long.

Tomorrow both of them would start the next step of their journey.

He smiled up at her.
Courage
, he mouthed to her, knowing she couldn't hear him with the crowds jeering and shouting.

Courage, my love.

In her lap, her hands were empty. She was not allowed to carry anything into the tomb with her. The box was tucked inside a girdle, its bulge covered by her robe, its edges digging into her ribs: her dowry for her next life. The most treasured of all the treasures was going into the grave with her. For more than a thousand years the Vestals had stood guard over the sacred fire and what had been
hidden under its hearth; it was only right that Sabina would guard it in her next life, as well.

* * *

They had arrived at the tomb. It was time.

She looked over at her sister and the baby she'd entrusted to her. Leaning over, she kissed the child's soft cheek. “I'll see you soon, my little one.” Then she looked at her sister. “You remember what to do?” she asked Claudia, who nodded, too overcome with tears to speak clearly.

“If the worst happens, the treasure is worth a fortune. Neither of you will ever want for the rest of your lives.”

“Don't talk like that…nothing is going to happen. It's going to work out.” It was dangerous to say anything else.

Sabina put her arms around her sister and her baby and held them, feeling her daughter's little fists beating on her chest as she struggled to reach for her milk.

Finally Sabina let them go.

Julius and Lucas helped her off the dray and down into the tomb. Quickly they went over the plan—knowing the crowd was outside, and if they spent too much time underground it would be suspect.

Lucas left first, climbing up the wooden ladder.

Julius took Sabina's hands.

“Sabina—” he whispered.

She shook her head. “No, shh.” She put one finger to his lips. “There's all the time in the world for us, you'll see.” She sounded so sure of herself, he thought. So certain. But the tears running down her cheeks belied her optimism.

She stood up on her toes and kissed him, hard, on the mouth, trying to say everything that she couldn't articulate with words. Julius tasted salt on his lips but didn't know if it was her tears or his.

New Haven, Connecticut—Monday, 10:18 p.m.

“A
re you all right?”

His heart was ripped open. He was overwhelmed with sorrow and wanted to go back. To her. To Sabina. To their child.

“Josh?”

Gabriella's voice was coming from far away, and he knew he needed to follow it. Feeling the awful wrench of leaving, he panicked as Sabina's face dissolved in a great blue-green wave and he reached out for her.

“Josh?”

It was taking too long to reconnect to the present. He should say something, but he couldn't find the words yet. He nodded. Took a deep breath. “I'm fine.” He was shocked to see his hands on her arms. He'd reached out for Gabriella? The confusion only intensified when he realized he was glad he had. He wanted to be holding her. It felt right.

“Are you sure you're okay?”

“I have lousy timing,” he said.

“What do you mean?”

“Because…because you've had a horrific few days, because too much has happened, because it's late.”

“No, I'm okay, Josh,” she said, and from the way she looked at him, she didn't seem to be thinking it was too late.

They were in the shadows, protected from the street and from the glass windows on either side of the door where her baby-sitter or her father might be watching. Josh pulled her closer and kissed her. It was immediately intense. Too intense. He let her go.

“It's been a long time for you, too, hasn't it?” she whispered.

He nodded, and this time she kissed him.

The world fell away and he stopped thinking. He gave up the dream of Sabina for just these few minutes. His nerve endings came alive and his blood warmed. It felt so damn good to feel her body pressed against his, to know she was responding the same way he was.

And then the rain started again.

They separated, and she had a pleased but still hungry look in her eyes.

That was when he realized that hers had been kisses that he'd never had before. There was nothing familiar or known about the smell of her or her taste or the way they fit together. Her hair was soft on his cheek, but he'd never felt it before. He kissed her again. Fell into a darkness that was deeper than the night sky. Her fingers gripped his arms and she leaned far into him. A sadness started at the center of his pleasure, and the two emotions did battle. Giving in to one meant giving up on the other.

Josh had wanted her touch to be familiar to him. For so many nights and days and weeks and months, the search for proof of reincarnation, his past and the woman who inhabited it, had haunted him. Now Gabriella would
haunt him, too, tantalize him as something he couldn't allow himself to have. But for now, for one night, he could feel her skin on his skin and hear her breathless
oh
as sensations overwhelmed her. It wouldn't hurt anyone, would it? If, just for a few minutes, he hid inside her kiss?

The rain was falling and the wind was blowing, swirling around them, an embrace outside of their embrace, cocooning them in a whoosh of cool air that separated them from the rest of the world.

And then the sadness won the battle with the pleasure, and Josh let go of her. He couldn't stay. He couldn't do that to either of them.