The dank breath of the tomb flowed into her mouth.
Dragging herself from the embrace, Lisette felt a scream rip from her throat...
... And Danielle was shaking her awake.
•III•
The business card read Dr Ingmar Magnus, followed simply by Consultations and a Kensington address. Not Harley Street, at any rate. Lisette considered it for the hundredth time, watching for street names on the corners of buildings as she walked down Kensington Church Street from the Notting Hill Gate station. No clue as to what type of doctor, nor what sort of consultations; wonderfully vague, and just the thing to circumvent licensing laws, no doubt.
Danielle had lent her one of his books to read: The Self Reborn, put out by one of those miniscule scholarly publishers clustered about the British Museum. Lisette found it a bewildering melange of occult philosophy and lunatic-fringe theory—all evidently having something to do with reincarnation—and gave it up after the first chapter. She had decided not to keep the appointment, until her nightmare Sunday night had given force to Danielle’s insistence.
Lisette wore a loose silk blouse above French designer jeans and ankle-strap sandal-toe high heels. The early summer heat wave now threatened rain, and she would have to run for it if the grey skies made good. She turned into Holland Street, passed the recently closed Equinox bookshop, where Danielle had purchased various works by Aleister Crowley. A series of back streets—she consulted her map of Central London—brought her to a modestly respectable row of nineteenth-century brick houses, now done over into offices and flats. She checked the number on the brass plaque with her card, sucked in her breath and entered.
Lisette hadn’t known what to expect. She wouldn’t have been surprised, knowing some of Danielle’s friends, to have been greeted with clouds of incense, Eastern music, robed initiates. Instead she found a disappointingly mundane waiting room, rather small but expensively furnished, where a pretty Eurasian receptionist took her name and spoke into an intercom. Lisette noted that there was no one else—patients? clients?—in the waiting room. She glanced at her watch and noticed she was several minutes late.
“Please do come in, Miss Seyrig.” Dr Magnus stepped out of his office and ushered her inside. Lisette had seen a psychiatrist briefly a few years before, at her parents’ demand, and Dr Magnus’s office suggested the same—from the tasteful, relaxed decor, the shelves of scholarly books, down to the traditional psychoanalyst’s couch. She took a chair beside the modern, rather carefully arranged desk, and Dr Magnus seated himself comfortably in the leather swivel chair behind it.
“I almost didn’t come,” Lisette began, somewhat aggressively.
“I’m very pleased that you did decide to come.” Dr Magnus smiled reassuringly. “It doesn’t require a trained eye to see that something is troubling you. When the unconscious tries to speak to us, it is foolhardy to attempt to ignore its message.”
“Meaning that I may be cracking up?”
“I’m sure that must concern you, my dear. However, very often dreams such as yours are evidence of the emergence of a new level of self-awareness—sort of growing pains of the psyche, if you will—and not to be considered a negative experience by any means. They distress you only because you do not understand them—even as a child kept in ignorance through sexual repression is frightened by the changes of puberty. With your cooperation, I hope to help you come to understand the changes of your growing self-awareness, for it is only through a complete realization of one’s self that one can achieve personal fulfillment and thereby true inner peace.”
“I’m afraid I can’t afford to undergo analysis just now.”
“Let me begin by emphasizing to you that I am not suggesting psychoanalysis; I do not in the least consider you to be neurotic, Miss Seyrig. What I strongly urge is an exploration of your unconsciousness—a discovery of your whole self. My task is only to guide you along the course of your self-discovery, and for this privilege I charge no fee.”
“I hadn’t realized the National Health Service was this inclusive.”
Dr Magnus laughed easily. “It isn’t, of course. My work is supported by a private foundation. There are many others who wish to learn certain truths of our existence, to seek answers where mundane science has not yet so much as realized there are questions. In that regard I am simply another paid researcher, and the results of my investigations are made available to those who share with us this yearning to see beyond the stultifying boundaries of modern science.”
He indicated