The Night Strangers - Chris Bohjalian [111]
“Crumpets,” she answered evasively, her voice uncharacteristically light. “Always vegan. Always delicious.”
“I’m serious.”
“I am, too.”
“I don’t see what good could possibly come from poisoning him.”
“Me, neither,” said Anise, and she put down the mister on one of the gardening tables and stroked the stone Baphomet’s beard. “Do you ever find it odd how out of touch a pilot is with the earth? Oh, they see how beautiful it is from twenty or thirty thousand feet. But their whole purpose is to separate themselves from the soil. To be above the ground, rather than one with it. You grow beautiful things, Reseda. That pilot never will. I’m really not all that interested in him.”
“But you have been constantly filling the Lintons’ refrigerator. Bringing them small confections with his name on them.”
“I’m a one-woman Welcome Wagon. You’re a real estate agent: That should make you happy.”
“Just because you put the captain’s name on it doesn’t mean he’s the only one eating it. I am sure the girls have eaten some of your … confections.”
“Perhaps. But it’s not like they’re hash brownies. Anything special in them would demand, well, repeat exposures.”
“Hallie had nightmares.”
“We all have nightmares,” Anise said, dismissing her concern. “I find both girls very interesting. Don’t you? I find them curious. Or do only the dead inspire you these days?”
“I worry about them,” she said, ignoring the dig. “They have endured an awful lot.”
“I agree. And that’s what makes them so … special. So receptive. It changes the brain chemicals. You know that as well as anyone.”
“You’re not trying to up the level of trauma?”
“Maybe a little. But mostly I’m just an observer. I’ve been watching them. We all have. I had them working at the communal greenhouse again this afternoon. And I know you’ve been watching them, too,” Anise said, and she turned to Reseda, though she did not meet her eyes. “Oh, don’t look at me like that. You pretend you’re above that sort of thing: It’s too dark, it’s evil, it’s cruel.”
“A boy died. That seems to me far too high a price.”
“You weren’t there. You don’t know what happened. You’ve only heard the story from Clary and Ginger.”
Reseda gazed at a pair of water droplets descending the glass window near the steamer. “I know what Clary saw,” she said.
“You know what Clary thinks she saw,” Anise corrected her. “You know what Clary recalls. There is a big difference, Reseda. Remember, I was there, too; you weren’t.”
“I don’t want you to try again. They’re little girls.”
“If it makes you feel any better, I don’t even know which one we would use. I really don’t,” Anise said, and she strolled over to a long table with cooking spices, inhaling the aroma from the basil. “But you know something?”
Reseda waited.
“If you were my age—good heavens, if you were Clary’s and Ginger’s and Sage’s age—you would view the twins more the way I do. You really would. It’s human nature.”
“Tell me: What are you feeding the captain?”
Anise smiled, but then she shook her head and her eyes grew narrow and reptilian. “You really think I’m a witch, don’t you?”
“Are you?”
“I just like to bake,” she said, refusing to answer the question. “That’s all. I just like to bake.”
Garnet had both books that Anise had given her sister and her open on the rug in the living room. She was lying on her stomach before them, near the warmth from the radiator, resting her chin in both hands. The books were so old and so heavy that the pages wouldn’t flip shut when she laid them flat on the floor. Whole sections had thick pages with nothing but handwriting—somebody’s cursive lettering. Recipes and formulas and diagrams, and some beautiful watercolor illustrations of flowers and ferns. They were more like scrapbooks than published books, she decided. They smelled a little musty and a little like one of the plants from Sage Messner’s greenhouse: maybe the one that had the red leaves that were shaped like the points on the wrought-iron fence by the cemetery. She found a picture of it in the book that had been presented to her, The