The Night Strangers - Chris Bohjalian [158]
She deserves friends, someone said bitterly, and Reseda knew this was the girl’s father. Even now he was out there somewhere, angry and poised for a fight.
“This will be a long evening,” Holly murmured, her voice a wisp, and Reseda nodded. She had been so focused on Ashley Stearns’s imminent death that she had nearly forgotten Holly was beside her and might hear Ethan, too. Still, Reseda opened a vial with an oil composed of valerian leaves and retreatus and put a line of drops along the captain’s upper lip so he would inhale the potion as he breathed. She pressed her fingers against his temples and asked to speak to Ashley. She feared briefly that the girl’s father was going to act as a buffer spirit, a barrier, and he might have tried, but the child had heard her instantly and come forward.
I can’t talk to most breathers, she said.
“You can talk to me,” Reseda said gently.
If Ashley’s mother had died in the crash with her, Reseda would have sent the child to her—instructed her to go home with her. But her mother had survived, and that was a part of the problem. And while her father had died that afternoon, he may have been the very reason why the girl had not gone on but had instead remained attached to the pilot; her father had stayed, and so she had stayed with him. Consequently, that afternoon Holly had researched which of the child’s grandparents were living and which ones were dead. She’d learned that Ethan’s mother had passed away from cancer last year, which meant that Ashley had known her. That woman might be the spirit guide the child needed, the escort who could take Ashley by the hand and lead her to her destined next life. So Reseda had Holly fill the air of the greenhouse with fresh, pungent ayahuasca and enticium leaves, sprinkling the plants like confetti, while she summoned the spirit of Ashley Stearns’s grandmother.
It might have been possible to find places to hide in the attic if they had had more time. There were boxes, some empty and some filled with old blankets and quilts or half-filled with ancient high school yearbooks and aviation manuals. Perhaps they could have buried themselves in a couple of them. But it hadn’t crossed either of the girls’ minds that whoever was in the house would think to search the attic. And so the best they could do now was to crouch together behind a tall cardboard wardrobe container near the window where they had been standing. They both understood it wouldn’t take long for them to be found.
And then? Garnet didn’t imagine she would fight, but she thought Hallie might. And as scared as she was, she believed that struggling was a bad idea. As she had told her sister earlier, the women—and whoever was now in the house—wanted them. They needed them. It didn’t make sense that they would hurt them. But, then, there seemed to be a whole world of things swirling just beyond their understanding. She saw in her mind the jawbone and the skull she had found in the basement in this very house, three floors below them. She wondered where her mother was now; she was no longer yelling out their names, which might mean