“Are you sure?” Theo pressed.
Semele shook her head. She wasn’t sure about anything. She thought the harp music had been a sign to go to Auteuil, but maybe they were meant to go to Russia instead, where Aishe and Andrej had settled.
She closed her eyes and tried to focus, her body tingling as she entered a state of hyperawareness. The stories of the past that Ionna had so vividly painted for her flashed through her consciousness, filling all her senses. The blue of the salon lived in the sky, the smell of the lime trees in Mme Helvétius’ courtyard wafted down the road, and the sound of Aishe’s harp echoed in the air.
The music grew louder. It sounded like the song playing at her mother’s house.
Semele opened her eyes and did a full 360, trying to pinpoint where it was coming from. “Do you hear that?”
“Hear what?” Theo looked around, clearly not hearing anything.
“Listen.” She began walking, following the melody. Every note beckoned her like a finger pointing the way.
A soft breeze picked up and the song intensified.
Semele realized it was Simza’s song, “Find Me in the Wind.”
She took off, running down several blocks, turning corners and dodging pedestrians. She didn’t hear the angry swears or Theo’s apologies in French as he tried to keep up.
She raced to the end of a street corner and found a lively outdoor market under a canopy of century-old buildings.
What had brought her here? Had there been music? Because she couldn’t hear it anymore.
Theo caught up with her, slightly out of breath. “What is it?”
Semele shook her head, her senses still tingling. Then she looked behind her. There was a vendor with ornamental seashells for sale, including jewelry and purses made out of shells.
Semele walked over to the table, to the shell that was calling her, a spiraling conch with a blue iridescence that dazzled in the sun.
She lifted the shell up to find her mother’s pearl necklace resting underneath. Her body froze in shock, and for a suspended moment she was unable to accept what she was looking at. This was the necklace her father had given her mother on their anniversary, the one with the heart locket. Now here it was under a seashell, on a table in the middle of Paris.
And she had found it. What was going on?
The vendor was a young Rastafarian preoccupied with his iPad. He finally looked over. “Mama, that necklace is brand new. I sell it to you for two hundred euros,” he said in French.
Semele picked up the pearls, too distraught to speak. Theo didn’t need to be told whose necklace she was holding.
“How did you get this?” he demanded in French.
The vendor shrugged. “Guy sold it to me. You want it or not?”
The man seemed oblivious; he was just a pawn. Theo quickly paid him and guided Semele away by the arm. She was in a daze as she held the pearls in her hand, barely able to walk.
Her cell phone rang. She answered with shaking hands, already knowing it was him. “Hello?”
“Dear girl, you’re not trying hard enough,” he said.
“Yes, I am!” Semele couldn’t stop the shrill in her voice. “I found the necklace!”
“Please don’t delude yourself. You’re running out of time.”
Desperation, adrenaline, and fear hit her in a heady mix. She started to shake. “Then tell me where you are and we can end this game.”
“Oh, this isn’t a game, Semele. It’s empirical evidence.”
Semele had no idea how to handle this deranged man. She just didn’t want him to hang up. The more he talked, she might get a clue to her mother’s location. “So this is an experiment?”
“All psychic events are fifty percent coincidence and forty-five percent fraud, fabrication, and selective memory. That leaves five percent that cannot be explained. A five percent we call the ‘something else.’ You are that something else.”
“I’m afraid you’ve got the wrong person.”
He chuckled. “And yet you found the necklace,” he said, throwing her words back at her. “Do you know what entelechy is? The sense the acorn has of the oak tree. Sixth sense is actually the first sense, but our conscious minds keep us separated from it. Entelechy is the first step to remembering.”
She had no idea what he was talking about. Her rage and frustration got the better of her. “You crazy bastard! Where is my mother?”
“About to die.”
Her breath caught. “No, please,” she begged, desperate.
“Did you dream about your father before he died? Call him without knowing why? You’ve had dreams all your life. Make no mistake, future events cast their shadows.”
“Please don’t hurt her.” She began to cry. This man would kill her mother if he had to. She was certain.
“That’s not up to me. I’m afraid talent such as yours requires extraordinary proof.”
“You don’t need proof.”
“Oh, the proof is not for me, Semele. It’s for the world. Right now I have you under a microscope. But soon I’ll be sharing you with my colleagues. There are many scientists back at the institute in Moscow who will be so fascinated to know that Nettie survived the war after her escape from Makaryev and that her granddaughter is alive. Nettie’s case study is infamous. But it will be nothing compared to yours. Your life is about to change, dear girl.”
Click. He hung up.
Semele looked to Theo helplessly. “He wants to experiment on me like they did to my grandmother.” She put her hands on her head and sobbed. She didn’t care that she was standing on a street corner in Paris having a complete meltdown. “I can’t do this—oh my God.”
“Semele,” Theo said firmly, taking her hands. “Look at me. He’s trying to get in to your head. Don’t let him. You’re going to find your mother. Believe that.”
Semele fought the hysteria threatening to overwhelm her.
“Go over everything he said,” Theo suggested.
She could barely recount the call. Evanoff had stolen Nettie’s life, and now this man wanted hers. Her terror threatened to suffocate her until finally something inside her pushed back, a survival instinct, a will to live, and it turned her fear into anger. The spark that was lit at Cabe’s bedside fanned into a flame. She would not let this man harm her mother.
The pearls grew warm in her hand. “He left this under a seashell for a reason,” she said. Then she realized. “It’s the shell that holds the message. The shell.”
She and Theo looked at each other and said the answer at the same time.
“Simza.”
Two of Cups
Within hours Semele and Theo were en route to Admont, Austria, the place Simza had stayed every winter and the only place during her lifetime where she could be found on the lungo drom, “the road with no destination.”