The Collector of Dying Breaths Read Online Free

grandfather’s feet and learned the art of mixing perfumes. Where he’d read to her, teaching her about mythology and history and magic. Where her father had spun his tales about the imaginary future he wanted them all to have. Where she and Robbie had played with their own fragrances. And where she’d spent much of the last ten months working with Robbie on a series of scents based on nineteenth-century formulas created by Fantine L’Etoile, the first and only other female perfumer in the family’s history.
    After their mother’s suicide when Jac was fourteen, she’d been sent to a Jungian clinic in Switzerland for a year. Afterward, seemingly cured of the hallucinations that had plagued her, she’d gone to live with her aunt and uncle in New York City. Robbie had remained here in Paris with their father. Through the years, brother and sister had remained close no matter how far apart they were. Remained each other’s constants. This last year, working side by side, they’d become even closer.
    Jac sat down at the organ. Closed her eyes. Conjured the Scent of Us Forever. Then she began to gather the ingredients. Cinnamon, jasmine, patchouli . . . all the individual notes that Robbie had combined to suggest the mischievousness of their childhood with the mystery of their future.
    As Jac mixed, the relief of doing something other than watching Robbie suffer soothed her. With each new essence she dripped into the bottle, the perfume grew, assuming greater complexity. She was lost in it. Floated on it. Disappeared into it.
    Often a perfume smells slightly different on whoever is wearing it, but the Scent of Us Together reacted drastically differently on Jac’s skin than on Robbie’s. If you smelled them each wearing it, you’d never think it was the same. Related—but unique to each of them.
    “Like us,” Robbie had said when they’d first noticed it.
    Returning to her brother’s sickroom, bottle in hand, Jac found him still sleeping. She put the mixture on the dresser and turned to go.
    “Jac?” Robbie’s voice, once deep and musical, was thin and frayed now.
    She went to his side.
    “What you do . . . the past-life memories you have . . . you know they are real,” he said. “Don’t you?”
    She shrugged, refusing to commit.
    “With everything that’s happened to you, are you still a skeptic?”
    Suddenly Robbie reminded her of their father. The dreamer.
    Jac sighed. The last thing she wanted to do was fight with him now, and she told him so. But he didn’t back down. Despite how ill he was, he raised himself up on his elbow and looked into her eyes.
    “You won’t ever find any peace until you accept . . . there’s more than just . . . just the here and now. Souls live on. As long as we need them. As long as we love them.”
    A new fit of coughing silenced him. Jac got a glass of water and held it while he took tiny sips. Then, instead of lying back and resting, he started again. “You can access deeper memories than the rest of us. You’ve proved it . . . You need to use it to . . .” He stopped to catch his breath and then drank more of the water.
    “Robbie, you need to rest and—”
    He interrupted. “So many things still to tell you. There is magic—it’s what we call something we don’t understand. Don’t dismiss it, Jac . . . please. Accept it, all right?”
    Even with interruptions, the speech had exhausted him. He fell back against the pillows.
    “All right. I can tap into past-life memories.”
    “But you don’t believe it. You still think you might be crazy. I can hear it in your voice. Why, Jac?”
    “I don’t know,” she said, and it was the truth.
    Jac hated herself for not being able to convince him that she believed him and give him some peace. Why was it still so damn hard for her to accept she had access to past-life memories? She’d found proof her brain wasn’t manufacturing hallucinations. Why still doubt what she had lived?
    Over the last couple of years,