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the storm struck. And the beautiful but bitter scent. A primordial scent like the forest. Like the stars. She’d recognized it but didn’t know it. If such a thing was possible, it seemed the scent was in her DNA. That she knew it on a very subliminal, primitive level.
    Malachai said he hadn’t smelled anything. Hadn’t even really seen what had happened to her because the lightning had blinded him too.
    Jac scooped water in her mouth and used it to swallow two painkillers. Then washed her face. Brushed her hair. Put her robe back on and belted it tightly.
    Even if the cramps abated, she wasn’t going to be able to sleep again so she didn’t go back to the bedroom. Instead she ventured downstairs. She’d do what Robbie always did, make a cup of tea. Just thinking about her brother helped. She’d call him. Tea and then phoning Robbie. A plan. And right now, she needed one.
    The mansion was designed in the gothic revival style of the mid-1800s, so though it was glorious during the day, at night it was ominous. Walking along the dimly lit hallway, she listened to floorboards creak under the carpet and watched her shadow’s progress on the walls.
    The grand staircase was two stories high, and she felt dwarfed walking down the steps. Dark oak gothic arches framed the melancholy family portraits that hung at even intervals. The dead relatives’ eyes all seemed to follow her as she made her way to the ground floor.
    In the kitchen, Jac turned on the kettle. While she waited for the water to boil she stared out the window over the sink. Weak moonglow illuminated towering trees bending in the wind. Leaves wereflying, even though it was weeks until fall. Jac watched a ten-foot limb break off and sail though the sky, toppling a stone angel off her perch, before crashing into the reflecting pool.
    The library was slightly more welcoming. Here at least heavy damask drapes covered the windows and offered a buffer from the relentless sound of the storm.
    Jac’s hands were shaking. On the bar, next to the fixings for the martinis Malachai had made the night before, was a bottle of Armagnac. She poured some into her tea and took a sip. The smell was pungent and bracing. The liquid, warm and reassuring.
    In this room, like the rest of the house, there was no sense of the present. Modern accoutrements were designed to maintain the conceit that you’d stepped back in time, into another century. Upon first arrival, Jac had found it odd, slightly disconcerting. But now it was an appreciated escape from her reality. As was the scent of leather. The aroma was warm, masculine and dark. Creating a leather—a cuir de Russie scent—was a rite of passage for every great perfumer. The leather in this library reminded her of her grandfather’s Russie . The House of L’Etoile still produced it, and even though it was marketed as a men’s cologne, Jac often wore it.
    As she sipped her tea, she examined the bookshelves, reading the gilt lettering on the spines, imagining the people, through the decades, who had amassed this collection and read these volumes.
    A glow emanated from behind a pile of books on the partners desk and she walked around to see what was causing it. It was Malachai’s state-of-the-art laptop. A stark exception in the perfectly preserved nineteenth-century room.
    The screen showed a search engine page. Jac sat in the comfortable leather desk chair, put down her tea, typed lightning strikes and hit the return key. Within seconds the first of hundreds of thousands of results appeared. Scanning, she clicked on the tenth item, titled “The Body Electric” and read the harrowing story of a woman named Anne Downy who’d been part of a group of kayakers all hit by lightning.
    Not everyone in the party had survived. Those that had had been severely injured.
    “As millions of volts of electricity pass through the body, brain cells are burned, ‘insulted’ or bruised, which can result in cerebral edema, hemorrhage and