The Night Strangers - Chris Bohjalian [165]
“Send her away,” hissed one of the women Emily didn’t know.
“We don’t need her!” added Lavender Millier.
“No, I would rather she watched,” said Anise simply. Then she looked directly into Emily’s eyes, brusquely wiped the tears off her cheeks, and added, “Now: I must insist you behave.” Then she released her and went to Hallie and Garnet, kneeling beside Mrs. Collier so the girls were actually a little taller than she was. She seized the goblet from Garnet and took a sip, gazing at the girl and smiling. After that she took a sip from Hallie’s chalice, too, running her tongue over her lips after she had swallowed. When she was finished, she stood up and turned back toward Emily. She raised her eyebrows high above her eyes as if to say, See? Satisfied? I’m still standing. Then she motioned for the girls to drink up, and, much to Emily’s despair, they did, draining the two chalices that had been given them.
“Thank you, girls,” Anise said. “That was very grown-up of you.”
The twins glanced at each other and then at Anise and Sage and their schoolteacher. Emily thought Garnet looked like she might collapse, and she wondered what the group would do if her daughter had a seizure right now. She studied both girls and decided that Hallie looked a little wobbly as well; whatever was in that goblet had acted quickly. When Anise asked them to take off their snow jackets, both twins fumbled spastically with the zippers.
One of the women Emily didn’t recognize, a petite, square-faced blonde her age who would have fit in well at a Junior League luncheon back in Philadelphia, approached Anise and bowed her head ever so slightly. Then she gave the woman a leather sheath, from which Anise pulled a long, ancient-looking dagger with a T-shaped handle that appeared to be made of dull iron. It looked vaguely Celtic to Emily, and had a moonstone nearly the size of a golf ball at the edge of the grip and smaller ones along the handle.
“Blood meets seed,” Anise cried out.
“And seed meets soul,” the herbalists proclaimed together.
With two fingers and her thumb, Anise snapped off the bulb from the yellow plant, and the sound was reminiscent of a cat’s squeal immediately before a catfight. Then she took the bulb and held it above the black cauldron and slashed it open lengthwise with the knife, and a white milk waterfalled into the pot, and the smell—gardenia-like, and yet somehow it conjured for Emily the image and aroma of a just washed baby—overwhelmed the incense in the greenhouse. Then Anise dropped the empty husk into the mixture, too, and stirred it around with the tip of her dagger.
“And the last ingredient?” Valerian asked, though it was clear that she and all the other herbalists knew precisely what they would add next. Still, Anise glanced once at the grimoire that Valerian was patiently holding open for her. Then she signaled for the psychiatrist to shut the book.
“And so we finish,” Anise proclaimed. “To those we once were—”
“And to those we shall be!” the herbalists finished.
“To the youth of the earth and the power of the seed!”
“To the youth of the earth and the power of the seed!” they repeated.
Anise raised the dagger over her head, and Emily realized that these people who posed as her neighbors and friends were about to execute one of her children—slaughter a ten-year-old girl. And so she screamed for her girls to run, to run away, as she threw herself violently at Anise, dragging those younger men with her. She was aware of the two of them and John Hardin trying (and failing) to pull her back, but she was enraged and fell upon the woman—the witch, she heard in her mind, the witch—tackling her onto the greenhouse floor, all the while howling for her children to flee. She’d reached for the knife,