The Night Strangers Part 18

"No. Not really."

"That's surprising."

"I mean, they haven't been strangers. I've been to John and Clary Hardin's house for dinner. And Anise is constantly feeding us," you tell him, although ever since you saw the effect of her baked goods on some ants on your walkway, you have done all that you can to prevent your family from eating any. You have certainly eaten none yourself. If you could be absolutely sure that Emily had not already been commandeered into the group, you would share with her your suspicions. "And, of course, Reseda became our real estate agent after Sheldon died," you continue.

" 'Course she did. She saw you had twins. You may recall, she was not my first choice in a real estate agent."

"And you did not come to the closing."

"I try to steer clear of them-the women. They showing interest in your girls? The twins?"

"I think my girls see a lot more of them than I do. My wife has them go to their houses all the time after school." Again, there it is: that vague fear that Emily already is one of them.

At this Hewitt sits forward in his chair and grasps the edges of the kitchen table with both hands. "They think they're witches."

You have had this idea, too, but not in such a literal sense. In your mind, it was always hyperbole. Exaggeration. Even, early on, condescension. "Go on."

Hewitt repeats himself, enunciating each word perfectly, no contraction this time: "They think they are witches. That is what they believe. They call themselves herbalists, but it's all witchcraft. Most of what they do is harmless. But not all of it. Not all the time."

"How big is the group?"

"How many have you met?" he asks, his voice growing a little more urgent. You realize he hasn't answered your question.

"I don't know. Maybe five or six."

"My mother was one. She was always in that greenhouse. Always."

"You said most of what they do is harmless. What isn't?"

He looks straight at you, his eyes locked on yours. "They're crazy," he says, his usually laconic voice growing urgent and intense. "They believe in blood sacrifice. I would not put it past them to try again to kill a child."

"One of my girls?"

"One of your girls. That's why I should never have let you buy this place."

"Tell me the truth: Why was your mother hiding knives and hatchets all over the house? Who was she afraid of?"

"I told you, I didn't know she was hiding those things."

"She wasn't trying to protect you and your brother?"

"No. She did that long after my brother was gone. She was probably trying to protect herself."

"From?"

"Who do you think?"

"Well, the women. The herbalists. But you said she was one of them."

"She was until they took her son. My brother."

"Your brother slashed his wrists."

"I don't think so. I think something went wrong."

"With a ritual?"

"A ceremony. While they were making one of their potions. I'll never know because Sawyer died and my mother would never talk about it. She was never the same after that night. How could she be? She saw her son slaughtered-and there is no other word for it. But she was there. Had to be. And even if she wasn't, she was the one who led him there in the first place. Her own boy. I don't know what went wrong that night or whether the other women knew he was going to die. I believe Clary Hardin was there. Sage Messner, too. And Anise. And I know for sure that my mother's guilt drove her mad."

You want to rea.s.sure him that you are no stranger to the notion of guilt driving a person mad. You feel that pain in your side and know instantly that Ashley is present. You are imagining her in the den with her dolls-no, that's not right; those are your daughters' dolls-when you see her standing in the doorway to the dining room, the sunflowers towering over her. She is listening intently. You nod at her. You have to restrain yourself from waving.

"Their potions are an inexact science at best," Hewitt continues. "The women think they have more control over them than they do. They all seem to have more confidence than they should in what they steep and stew."

"Why would they want to kill one of my girls?"

"Most of their potions and tinctures come from plants. You've seen their greenhouses. But not all. Some potions demand animal parts, too. Or blood. Sometimes it's animal blood and sometimes it's human blood. And sometimes it's a heart. I know of one tincture that demands a deer heart. I know of another where they use the hearts of bluebirds. Yup, bluebirds. I don't know what they did to Sawyer the night he died, but I presume they did not cut out his heart. Even in a part of New England as rural as this, I think someone in the medical examiner's office or the funeral home would have noticed. But they did need his blood."

"And my girls?"

"They're twins. That was what was so important about Sawyer. Could have been me, you know. But the recipe, it seems, only needs one twin: And for some reason they picked him and not me. Maybe"-and here he waved one of his arms dismissively-"they liked his blood more than mine. Or maybe they thought he wasn't as far along as I was."

"Far along?"

"p.u.b.erty. The twin is supposed to be prep.u.b.escent." He turns around abruptly and glances out the window. Churning up a trail of dust on the gravel and dirt driveway is Anise's old pickup. When he looks back at you, his face has become ashen. He shakes his head ever so slightly, and you rise to go and greet Anise. You watch her gaze curiously at Hewitt's automobile as she exits her truck, and then welcome her into your house. She has brought a ca.s.serole dish and a plate of brownies.

"You have company," she says in the doorway. "I hope I'm not intruding."

"Not at all."

"I've brought you a ca.s.soulet-vegan, of course."

"Of course."

"It begins with dried haricot beans. But you'll recognize lots of other vegetables. And the thyme and rosemary and bay leaf are from my greenhouse."

"That was sweet of you. Thank you."

She bustles past you into the kitchen without asking. "Hewitt Dunmore," she says when she sees him, her voice flat and unreadable, her lips curling up into a withering smile. She places the brownies and the ca.s.soulet on the counter. "It has been aeons. How are you? How is life in the big city?"

"I wouldn't call St. Johnsbury a big city."

"Oh, but it dwarfs Bethel. You must love it there. You never, ever seem to come back here."

He remains silent.

"So, tell me: What has brought you back today? Old home week? Leave something behind in the house?" she asks, her face hard, and she rolls her eyes toward the door to the bas.e.m.e.nt.

"I happened to be driving this way and thought I would see the old place," he says, his voice a little shaky.

"That's all? Really?"

He looks down at the tabletop, a small child being chastised. "Really," he mumbles.

"First time back?"

"First time."

"Well, I know the captain appreciates visitors enormously."

"Actually, Anise, I was just leaving."

"Oh, I'm so sorry."

"Errands," he says vaguely.

"Well, I hope you two had a nice visit."

"No complaints," Hewitt says, reaching for his cane and standing. He clumsily pushes his arms through his jacket sleeves. And then he is gone, limping along the front walkway to his car.

"I'd say he's a bit strange," Anise remarks, her voice a little conspiratorial-as if you two are the closest of friends. "Wouldn't you?"

"I don't think I'm a real good person to make that call."

You watch Desdemona pounce upon the circular plastic ring from a milk carton. Accidentally she bats it underneath the stove.

"Are your daughters cat people?"

"Not especially. I think they are ambivalent about Desdemona," you tell her. "When they were younger, they played with her more."

She seems to think about this. Then: "How is your stomach? That injury must be pretty well healed by now."

"It is, thank you. I feel pretty good."

"I suppose they still have you on some antibiotic?"

"Not anymore."

She nods, offering no opinion on whether she approves of antibiotics, but you have a feeling that she would have prescribed instead a tincture made from some exotic herb that she grows in her greenhouse. The idea crosses your mind that these women steer clear of doctors, but you don't honestly believe this. After all, isn't Valerian a psychiatrist?

Anise hands you one of the brownies. "I baked them this morning," she says. "Try it."

You take it and stare at it for a brief moment. When she senses your hesitation, she delicately breaks off a piece and puts it into her own mouth. "I am a fiend for my own cooking," she says when she has swallowed it. The gesture is oddly intimate.

And so you take a breath. But still you can't bring yourself to take a bite. "I had a big lunch," you tell her.

She nods. "Suit yourself," she says slowly. "I'll be seeing your girls later today. They can tell you what you missed."

Reseda was moving among the mad-dog skullcap and the ashwagandha in her greenhouse, tending them with a bra.s.s watering can shaped like a crouching gargoyle (the water flowed from its large, round eyes) and a plastic mister with a falcon's head (in this case, the water emanated from its beak). She was listening more carefully than it might have seemed as Clary and Sage prattled on behind her about how far along her St.-John's-wort was and how healthy it seemed by comparison to theirs. She understood why they had come by this afternoon, and she suspected they knew that she knew: They were struggling mightily to mask their real thoughts with their enthusiastic blather about the state of her herbs. Moreover, Clary was blinking senselessly, which the woman believed (mistakenly) in some fas.h.i.+on shorted out the connection between her mind and Reseda's.

Finally, when Reseda turned off the spigot beside the greenhouse hose for the last time, Clary got around to the actual reason for their visit. "You know, Reseda," she began, hoping her voice sounded offhand, "Anise wants to try again. She thinks the Linton girls offer real potential after what their father went through. The trauma of the plane crash and all. So, we were wondering if perhaps you two could, I don't know, enter into a period of detente?"

"Anise was over here just the other day," Reseda said. "You make it sound like the two of us don't play nicely together in the sandbox."

Sage chuckled nervously and ran two dry, gnarled fingers underneath the first cerulean blossoms on the memoria. Neither she nor Clary was accustomed to speaking so candidly about Reseda and Anise's relations.h.i.+p. "Of course you do. You both do. But ..."

"Go on."

"Everyone knows you two aren't as close as we'd all like. I am about to be completely honest because-" And she paused here. Finis.h.i.+ng the sentence as she had originally planned would have meant acknowledging that Reseda knew always what they were thinking and this made it hard for Sage to trust her as deeply as she wanted. And so she switched gears and said instead, "Well, I think Anise is a little threatened by you. And I think you two sometimes work at cross-purposes."

"Thank you for being so candid, Sage. I appreciate that," Reseda said agreeably, and she meant it. "Anise doesn't know you're telling me this, does she?"

"No. But you can tell her. It isn't a secret."

"And what are you planning to say to Anise? I suppose, as part of your shuttle diplomacy, you're seeing her as well."

"We are," Clary admitted. "And we are going to ask her to do nothing without your involvement."

"She won't agree to that."

"You weren't there the first time we tried," Clary said. "It was horrible. Everything went wrong. Just ... everything. That wouldn't happen this time."

"Besides, it wasn't Anise's fault," Sage continued. "It was Tansy's."

Reseda watched a block of sun on Baphomet and strolled into the center of the pentagon. She closed her eyes and stared up at the ceiling of the greenhouse for a long moment, savoring the feel of the warmth on her skin. "Have you decided which twin?" she asked, opening her eyes.

"No," Sage told her. "But Anise is enjoying her afternoons with the girls and getting to know them."

"I am, too," Reseda said. "And I like their mother a great deal. Don't you?"

"She's very nice. But I can't say for sure if she'll ever be one of us."

"Move too fast and she won't be. I think it was a mistake to try and start calling her Verbena so soon. Same with the girls."

"The problem is that Anise doesn't think she has all that much time. And we have even less. I had given up before the Lintons came into our lives. I had absolutely given up. The first tincture is long gone. And then, magically, they appeared."

"I would not read too much into the idea that Emily contacted Sheldon Carter in the autumn and wanted to see a house. This was neither some cosmic plan nor one of mine."

"You don't have as much interest in the second volume, that's the problem," Clary told her, raising her voice slightly in her excitement. "You don't care as much for the blood potions. But the fact is, the tincture worked. Yes, the child died. But the tincture worked."

Reseda was struck by how old the pair seemed, how physically decrepit. They weren't, not really; the truth was, they were in absolutely remarkable shape for their age. But they were aging rapidly now, and that was what Reseda was sensing: their panic that, for them, time was running out. The tincture had worked forty years ago, but now they needed more. One of the Linton twins probably represented their last chance. "No," she admitted, "I don't care much for those potions. Those, in my opinion, are witchcraft."

"We know more now than we did with the Dunmore child. And we have you. This time nothing would go wrong," Sage said, pleading.

Reseda looked back and forth between the women. "I am more interested in their father."

"For a tincture?"

"No, of course not."