The Night Strangers Part 26

Chapter Twenty.

Emily knew the communal greenhouse from those afternoons that spring when she had picked up the twins there after school-when, ostensibly, they had been learning about plants and herbs with some of the women at Sage Messner's. But she had never been inside it at night and she had never seen it so crowded: In her mind, it was always just her girls and two or three older women, and the skies high above the gla.s.s ceiling were likely to be blue.

Not now. The wind and the rain were lashing the great panes of gla.s.s against their metal framing, and there were at least three censers burning what John had told her with unrestrained pride was frankincense Clary had transplanted from Oman. There must have been twenty or twenty-five of her neighbors present tonight, women and men she was likely to meet on the streets of Littleton and Bethel-the people she had viewed as an extended family of sorts throughout the last couple of months-though now they were all dressed in what looked like burgundy-colored choir robes. There were Anise and Clary and Valerian and Sage and Ginger-who gave Alexander a vaguely chaste kiss on the cheek and then insisted on looking at the wound on his upper arm, her eyes going back and forth between the puncture wound and Emily-and Celandine, the female trooper who had come to Emily's home that frightening night when Garnet found the skull in the dirt in the bas.e.m.e.nt. She saw her girls' schoolteacher. In addition, there were another three or four women Emily didn't recognize. And there were the men, their spouses and partners, and John quickly climbed into a robe and joined Peyton and Claude, where they stood beside a waist-high black marble basin, the column a spiral of interlocking carved vines. There was something unrecognizable about all of them this evening, something far more profound than the reality that they were dressed in red robes: They'd stood and swayed and stomped their feet in a barely controlled frenzy when Anise and John had first nudged the girls into the greenhouse. They were all a little giddy, and Emily couldn't decide if it was more like a religious rapture or the adrenaline rush that accompanies a nighttime bonfire at a beach in high summer. Some of the a.s.semblage were drinking from identical ceramic goblets with leaves carved into the cups and the stems, dunking their goblets into that basin as if it were a punch bowl.

The electric heaters were warming the greenhouse, but it was illuminated only by clay oil lamps with corked wicks and tall candles in hurricane vases in the corners. The blue flames from the lamps lined the floor and the edges of the tables, all of which had been pushed against the walls, and the flickering light seemed to lengthen all the shadows. It made everyone look about seven feet tall. And at the end of the greenhouse, where some of the group was gathering now in a great semicircle, beside a pane of gla.s.s that opened out, was a wrought-iron cauldron that had to have been at least three feet high, suspended on five squat legs that Emily thought were as thick as her ankles. Beneath it was a small fire, and she couldn't help but recall John's cryptic words: What do you think we plan to do with them? Cook them in a stewpot?

Her girls looked more stunned than terrified, but she knew how frightened they were and she thought there was nothing she wanted more than to be able to go and comfort them. No, there was something she did want more than that: She wanted out. She wanted to take her girls and run from this greenhouse and from Bethel. She would stop by Reseda's and get Chip and then leave northern New Hampshire forever. But two younger men she had never seen before-sons or grandsons of the herbalists, she imagined-stood on either side of her, each grasping one of her arms by the elbow.

The idea crossed her mind that Reseda and Holly were involved. Clearly they were herbalists. But had they convinced Chip that he was possessed and brought him to Reseda's greenhouse so it would be easier to abduct the twins? Or were those two women unaware of what the rest of the group was doing right now? Emily wanted Chip-the old Chip, the man who had overcome a nearly disastrous childhood and wound up an airline pilot-back and beside her.

She could feel her heart racing; if she weren't so determined to try to find a way to get her girls out of this greenhouse, she thought she might die. Literally, she might collapse with a heart attack. Her girls were standing on the other side of that ma.s.sive cauldron, Anise's and Sage's hands resting like great bird claws upon their shoulders. The twins were wearing their matching winter jackets, which they really didn't need because, despite the dampness and chill outside the greenhouse, despite the pane that was open to vent the cauldron, the heaters and the small fire were keeping the place almost toasty. But the girls were still in their pajamas, and Emily was struck by the sight of their baggy pajama pants between the bottoms of their parkas and the tops of their boots. She noticed that Garnet had tucked her pajamas into her boots, but Hallie hadn't bothered. Anise had allowed Emily to put on a pair of blue jeans, but she was still wearing her nightshirt underneath her coat.

Finally John worked his way through the crowd until he was standing beside her, while Anise stepped forward and smiled at everyone as if she were hosting a c.o.c.ktail party and wanted to welcome her guests. She pulled her robe tight around her neck, and Emily noticed that, unlike the other robes, hers had a silver clasp. She couldn't make out the design from where she was standing, but she had a feeling it was some kind of ivy.

"Welcome," Anise said, spreading her arms and smiling. "The earth is with you!"

"And with you!" responded the gathering.

"We merge blood with seed!" she cried, staring down at the dirt floor, enraptured.

"We merge seed with soul!" they replied.

"And soul with earth-"

"To be born anew!"

"Yes," agreed Anise. "To be born anew." She looked up and gazed at the gathering and shook her head in wonderment, and everyone watched her expectantly. "We did it. You did it. We have earth. We have twins. And we have ... our recipe." Valerian held open before Anise a thick book, and Emily thought it resembled the one that Anise had given Garnet, and the crowd in the greenhouse murmured their approval.

"To the earth and seeds!" John cried out in a toast, raising his goblet, and everyone drank with him. "To the twins!" he added. "Hear, hear!"

"To the twins!" the gathering shouted back, a loud and powerful and almost orgiastic chorus.

Emily craned her neck to read the t.i.tle of the book, and her heart sank: The Complete Book of Divination and Mediation with Animals and Humans. She watched the flushed faces of the adults as their eyes darted back and forth between Anise and her girls and started to cry. Anise noticed but was unmoved. Then she pulled from a pocket at the front of her cape what looked like a bouquet of Italian parsley, but Emily was confident it was instead a plant that was both venomous and rare-something discovered or bred by these women from seeds they had found in some exotic corner of the planet. Anise pulled off the leaves and dropped them into the cauldron, as if they were merely bay leaves for a stew.

"John," Emily whispered, her voice urgent and quavering, "please, let us go. If we can help you, we will. You know that. But, please, please let us go. I'm begging you: Please don't hurt my girls."

John's eyes looked a little watery, too, and his profile a bit less regal: She wondered if perhaps he was weakening. But it was only age. His hands were clasped behind his back, and he smiled and shook his head firmly. "This is hard for all of us. I understand. I really do. But we only need one and it will all be over soon."

Emily recalled what Reseda had told her, but still it seemed too cruel to be true. "You only need one ... what? One of my children?"

He nodded. "It's a very intense ritual, a very complicated process. A complicated recipe. You need the right person-the right genes-and the right plants. You need a twin, and, according to the formula, the blood has to have been forged by a great trauma." He raised his eyebrows and breathed in deeply through his nose. "Tansy never forgave us-or herself. But our intentions were good, Verbena. You have to believe me. And the fact is, it worked with Sawyer. It was awfully effective. I am so sorry about what happened to the boy, but the tincture worked. Sadly, nothing from nature lasts forever, and now we need, well, boosters. We need more."

"Did you kill Sawyer? Are you saying he didn't kill himself?"

"You must think we're absolute fiends," John said, and he actually chuckled. "Besides, I'm a lawyer. You can't possibly believe that I would confess to something like that! Now, you should pay attention," he admonished her. "We both should."

Celandine was approaching Anise with a potted plant, the leaves cochleate and yellow as daffodils, with one spear-shaped bulb rising from the center. The plant was perhaps eighteen inches tall and the bulb the size of a grown-up's fist. Clary Hardin and Ginger Jackson fell to their knees, their heads thrown back, nearly swooning with antic.i.p.ation, as did another pair of women Emily didn't recognize. They dropped their goblets onto the ground and spread wide their arms in ecstasy.

"They've been waiting a long time for this moment," John murmured. "Many of us have. To be so very, very close to the end and get a second chance? What a delightful notion!"

Sage Messner began herding the twins forward, edging them closer to the cauldron. Then the girls' schoolteacher, Mrs. Collier-Yarrow Collier, Emily remembered-knelt before the children, handed them each a goblet, and said in a voice as soothing as a lullaby, "Enjoy this. Drink, girls, drink up."

They both looked across the greenhouse at their mother, wondering what they should do, and so Emily violently shook her head. They looked tiny to her, more like big dolls than small children. Even in their winter coats they appeared waiflike. "Don't," she yelled to them, hoping she sounded more resolute than panicked-because she knew she was panicked. But she knew also that whatever herbal potion these women had prepared for her children would only harm them. She was as sure of that as she had been of anything in her life. "Don't drink it!"

"Verbena, that's enough," Anise said, speaking to her for the first time since they had arrived at the greenhouse, and the two men tightened their grips on her arms. Her voice was absolutely inscrutable to Emily. Then she crossed the greenhouse and placed her long, cold fingers on Emily's cheeks and looked directly into her eyes. For the briefest of seconds, Emily was brought back to that first Sunday morning when the woman's rusted pickup truck had rumbled up their long driveway and she had appeared with a ca.s.serole and brownies.

"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 pet.i.te, 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, unsure what she would do with it if she wrestled it from the woman, when she was violently lifted up and off of Anise, her arms wrenched so far behind her that she feared one of her shoulders had been ripped from its socket. She turned, and there was Alexander Jackson and there was his heavy fist coming toward her face, and then all was black.

You had stood over each of the beds in the girls' rooms on the third floor of the house, the pearl-handled knife in each case raised in your hand high over your head. And yet each bed was empty. Emily had vanished as well, the bed still made (and the knife, fortunately, still held by duct tape to the horizontal slat on your side). Her station wagon was in the driveway, which suggested that, when they left, they had left in someone else's vehicle.

You wonder if they left because of the blackout. You noted in the kitchen that the digital clocks on the microwave and the oven were dark, and then in the girls' bedrooms that the automatic night-lights were off. But again, someone would have had to have picked them up.

Since they are not with Reseda, the Hardins are the most likely possibility. And so you drive to their place, peering at the tortuous road before you, the wipers on Holly's compact battling to keep up with the downpour and the lights no match for the darkness. But then, as you are approaching the Messners', you spy a conga line of cars parked off to the side of the road and snaking their way up the driveway.

Of course. You are not alone in wanting the twins. You know what the captain knows and he knows that the herbalists want them for ... something. You crush the brakes hard and park.

Reseda hadn't realized that John and Anise were taking the twins that very night. She presumed they would wait for the new moon, since the book suggested the tincture should be prepared when the moon was waxing, and now it would be waning for three more days. She knew only that the twins were in danger because Ethan Stearns had attached himself to the pilot.

Yet as she was approaching the Lintons' driveway, before she had even pulled in, she saw headlights. She saw Holly's car speed from the driveway onto the two-lane road, nearly sideswiping the mailbox in the process, and race away from her toward the village of Bethel. He must have accelerated to eighty or ninety miles an hour. Maybe more. Briefly she considered going to the Lintons' as she had planned, but either they were already dead or they weren't there. And she guessed it was the latter because Holly must have reached them by phone. She saw no lights on down the driveway.

And so she accelerated, hoping she could keep up with the captain, but she wasn't sure she would succeed as she watched his red taillights disappear into the night. But she drove on as quickly as she could, the engine so loud that she could hear it even over the pounding drumbeat of the rain on the roof of her car. And then, as she was nearing the Messners' home, she felt a powerful spike of unease rise up side by side with her frantic worry for the twins: In her mind she saw tall pillars of cedar mesa sandstone spiking straight into the air in the Southwest. There was an enormous amount of activity just beyond her aura, and she had the sense, despite the electricity in the air from the storm, that a gathering was nearby. She felt the presence, inchoate but organizing, of a crowd. And so she pressed hard on the brakes, the car swerving slightly on the slick pavement, and discovered instantly that she was correct. There was Holly's car, empty, the front door wide open, the downpour saturating the seat and the upholstery on the inside of the door. It was last in the line of vehicles, most of which Reseda recognized. The Messners' house was dark, but even through the storm she could see a weak penumbra of light emanating from the south side-the side where the large communal greenhouse was built-and so she started running across the yard, the rain-soaked gra.s.s saturating her canvas sneakers.

When she got to the greenhouse, she saw a window was venting steam from Clary's cauldron, a ma.s.sive wrought-iron pot that Reseda always viewed as a melodramatic affectation. But Clary loved it. A blacksmith had made it for the woman perhaps a decade ago, and she had an almost fetishistic attachment to it. Reseda gathered herself, unsure what she would say or do, and pushed open the gla.s.s door. She saw no sign of the captain, but there were the herbalists gathered in their robes, while one of the twins was teetering on her wobbly legs before the cauldron. They had pulled up the sleeve of her pajama shirt and were holding her naked arm above the kettle. Anise had the blade of the group's ancient boline poised at the crux of the girl's elbow.

"Anise, don't do it!" Reseda commanded, aware that her voice could be firm and it could be cryptic, but rarely-if ever-was it menacing.

John Hardin took a sip from the chalice he was holding and then handed it to Peyton Messner. "I am one hundred and three years old," he said quietly. "You know that, my dear."

"And all of your extra time was at the expense of a twelve-year-old boy. I know that, too."

He waved a single finger, correcting her. "All of our extra time," he said, and then he motioned with his arm at the Messners, his wife, and Anise.

She looked at the group-the whole group-at the way their eyes were glazed and their skin was burning with antic.i.p.ation. None of them would ever get any younger, that was a fact; but they all believed they could stall further aging for ... years. The first tincture, built from the blood of Sawyer Dunmore, had given all of them who had gluttonously drunk from the chalice an extra three and a half or four decades. For someone like Clary Hardin, the best to be hoped for now would be to survive another three or four decades feeling seventy-but she was prepared to strike that bargain, especially since, like her husband, she was in fact well over one hundred years old. Meanwhile, someone like Celandine, the young state trooper? She would remain thirty, and what woman wouldn't accept the energy and strength and firmness that came with being thirty for an extra third of a century?

"Where is Emily?" she asked.

Anise nodded toward the rear of the greenhouse. The woman was sitting in a wooden chair, slumped over, with Alexander standing behind her, his hands resting heavily on her shoulders. She stared at John, reading him, and saw in his mind what had occurred a few moments earlier: She saw Alexander throwing Emily to the ground and knocking her unconscious for a brief moment. The girls' mother was still stunned. John looked away, but before he did Reseda thought she saw also what had happened to Michael Richmond last month: She hadn't seen John's entire recollection, but she saw that the old lawyer had used the very same knife on the psychiatrist that Anise was about to use to slice open a little girl's arm.

"You can't do this," she said, speaking to everyone and to no one. She knew in her heart that they weren't going to listen.

"Enough!" Anise told her. "This is not your decision. It's ours." And then she took the boline and scored the child's arm from her elbow to her wrist, flaying the skin and allowing it to dangle over the cauldron as the blood spurted like a water fountain-Sage Messner, who had been helping to restrain the girl, dunked her mouth into the stream and swallowed a mouthful voraciously-before slowing to a steady rivulet.

"Blood meets seed!" Anise declared.

"And seed meets soul!" the herbalists raved.

And then as one they edged ever closer. The child was so drugged that she only looked down at her arm, a little curious as her blood trickled into the cauldron, but clearly she had felt very little pain. Still, Reseda rushed forward and wrestled the girl from Sage and Ginger's grip, pushing the child's thin arm into a V to try to stop the bleeding. But it was doing nothing, nothing at all. She needed a trauma dressing and st.i.tches. Eventually, the child's knees would buckle and she'd collapse onto the greenhouse floor. Still, Reseda wrapped her own arms around her, trying to protect her, as the circle of herbalists closed in upon the two of them.

"You're killing her," she said to them. "You're killing a child."

"Give her back to us, Reseda," John demanded. "You know you can't stop us. We're going to finish this. Besides," he wavered, his voice softening, "you're one of us. You're a part of us. You know that, too."

They had, she realized, become animals. They were selfish, insatiable, violent animals. They needed blood, and they needed enough for all of them. She wasn't going to be able to reason with them. Nevertheless, she said, "I'm not one of you. I was once. But I'm not part of this."

"Reseda, really. The child is losing blood fast and it's being wasted. Wasted! You're a New Englander, how can you abide that? Besides: The more she loses now, the less she'll have when we're finished and the less chance she'll have of-to use a term you're fond of-going home."

Anise was still holding the dagger, and so Reseda looked around for another weapon, her eyes scanning the tables and the floor of the greenhouse. On a wooden bench in the corner near her were a pair of one-handed garden clippers. There were shears just like them, it seemed, on most of the tables. The safety was open, which meant the clippers were splayed into a slender Y, ready to harvest herbs or trim dying leaves. With one thrust she could slam them into either John's or Anise's eyes, certainly blinding them and-if she drove the blades hard enough into the brain-in all likelihood killing them. The problem, of course, was that there were far more herbalists around her than only Anise and John. They would swarm upon her the moment she attacked either of their leaders, and she knew well how ruthless they could be.

Besides, she wasn't built that way; she didn't believe that she was capable of lodging the steel blades of a pair of garden shears in anyone's eyes. Not even to protect a child. And so instead she did the only thing she thought she could do. "I'm a twin, too," she reminded them.

"Yes, of course, you are. But you are also rather-and you'll forgive me if this sounds ageist-old for our purposes," John told her, his voice knowing and smug. "The tincture demands the blood of a prep.u.b.escent twin."

"And you have some," she went on, nodding at the cauldron. "You already have a lot. I know the recipe. Use what you've harvested from the child and then supplement her blood with mine."

John turned toward Anise, his eyebrows raised.

"We'll need a good amount, Reseda," Anise said, a crooked smile on her face. Reseda knew that Anise did not especially like her, but she was unprepared for how happy the woman was to augment the tincture with her blood.

"I understand."

Anise nodded and turned to Clary. "Put a compress on the child's arm," she said. "We have plenty of her blood already."

Only after Reseda had watched Clary Hardin press a white hand towel against the child's forearm for a long, quiet minute did she extend her own arm over the cauldron and allow them to roll up her sleeve and gouge a deep trench into the veins there. Anise made the incision, roughly and inexpertly, but Reseda didn't watch. She focused instead on the moonstone at the tip of the boline handle. The cut hurt every bit as much as she'd expected.

There they are. There are the playmates your wondrous daughter deserves, standing perhaps a dozen yards apart, separated by a cauldron, each in the arms of those self-absorbed breathers. You stand at the entrance of the greenhouse as Reseda, looking uncharacteristically shaky, stares at something far away. Her arm is held over that ma.s.sive black kettle, and the blood drips like water from a rusted-out rain gutter. They have not noticed you yet because they are focused only on Reseda and the girls, and they are in the midst of a euphoric chant about seeds and souls.

And so you charge, running across the greenhouse, oblivious to anyone and anything but the idea that Ashley will no longer be alone. But before you have reached the first of the girls, there is their mother, up and before you and throwing herself into your arms.

"My G.o.d, Chip!" she wails. "Stop them! They're going to kill them!"

For an instant, you recall something. Them. Garnet. Hallie. They're going to kill your children. The instant pa.s.ses, because they're not your children. Your child is Ashley. But that still doesn't give them or you the right to kill ... anyone. The whole notion has left you muddled, confused, and you find yourself staring at the knife as if you have no idea how it got into your hands. And just as you are starting to regain a modic.u.m of your focus and your anger smothers your momentary befuddlement, the men in the robes-some, it seems, very old yet strangely strong-have a hold of your arms and the knife, and the greenhouse is filled with their admonishments to drop it, to stop struggling, to be still. You cry out against them, but there are so many and they are so forceful that they are able to pry the knife from your fingers. Your eyes rest on the women on the far side of the cauldron, and they stare at you, even Reseda, whose complexion is growing pale-as if the color is literally draining from her face and streaming into the cauldron. She murmurs, "Bring him to me," and you are pushed forward so aggressively that only your toes are touching the greenhouse floor. She looks deep into your eyes across the black kettle and says, "I am telling you, she is gone. Your daughter is no longer here."

She has said this before, and she will say it again. She will- "I am telling you, your daughter is fine-but she needs you."

She does need you. You are sure of this. A pitchfork leans against a gla.s.s wall, and the moment you spy it you rear up, bellowing like a wounded animal and breaking free from these old men. You grab it with both hands and jab at the crowd as they surround you. Once more you focus upon the children, standing a little stupefied with two of the older herbalists and their mother. And so you charge, the pitchfork a bayonet in your mind, only to be restrained again by the men and women in their robes. Their hands are everywhere upon your shoulders and waist and arms, and they are wrestling the pitchfork from your grip. And then abruptly they stop. You follow their eyes, but it must have happened so quickly that you are not precisely sure what occurred. Still, it appears that Anise and Reseda have collided and fallen to the ground as they tried to get out of your way. Or, perhaps, Reseda pulled Anise out of the way, trying to shield her, and the two women tumbled in a heap onto the greenhouse floor. Either way, when Reseda looks up at you, her face is oddly vacant. Almost bewildered. And then you understand why, as Anise is repeating "No, no, no!" over and over. Reseda's blouse is black with her blood, and extending from that beautiful, swanlike neck is the long, elegant handle of the boline. When she fell, she fell on Anise's hand and impaled herself on the knife.

"It was an accident, I swear!" Anise cries out, drawing the long blade from Reseda's neck as if she is prying a carrot from soil, and a geyser of blood sprays the two herbalists in the face. Then, ever so slowly because Anise is trying to pull her up by her shoulders-as if she believes that so long as Reseda is sitting upright the woman will live-Reseda chokes out one last rivulet of blood and collapses, a marionette freed from its crossbar and strings. John Hardin falls upon her, though she's already dead, as do Ginger and Clary and Sage.

And almost in that instant you see Reseda, alive and standing before you. She is offering you that unreadable smile, her blue eyes beckoning. She motions behind her, and there is Ashley, your beautiful daughter, the straps of her Dora the Explorer backpack looking a bit like suspenders against her summer shirt. She is grinning happily, her eyes alight, the way she did when she was beside you on the runway at Burlington International Airport and all that loomed was a fifty-five- or fifty-six-minute flight to Philadelphia. She waves. You wave back. And the moment you start toward her, all of the rage that has been burning inside you since Flight 1611 cartwheeled into the lake vanishes. You kneel before her and embrace her. Then, the sky brightening as if the sun is rising in June, you stand up and-still holding Ashley's small hand-follow Reseda into the welcoming daylight.

Somewhere very far behind you stands a pilot. An airline pilot. He looks a little haggard-they all look a little haggard-as one of his girls is led back to the cauldron. You hope someday there is someone back there for him, too. Someone just like Reseda.

Epilogue.

In all the years that you have lived in Bethel, you have to admit: Clary Hardin has never looked better. And while there are some people who presume that both she and her husband, John, have on occasion resorted to chemical injections and peels that minimize lines, you know them well enough to understand that they're just not the type. Neither is that vain. Both are wary of inorganic toxins. Verbena also looks considerably younger than her peers. Maybe she escaped the pressures of that Philadelphia law firm just in time. The two of you have a daughter in college now, but still Verbena's hair hasn't begun to gray. Oh, she hennas it. She likes that look, as do you. But you are confident that underneath that color not a single follicle has turned white, and this despite the crash of Flight 1611 and then the death of a child-the single worst thing that can happen to a parent-a decade ago. Verbena misses the girl. As do you. You miss her madly. You see the child in the cheekbones and the shape of the eyes of your remaining daughter, her twin, when the girl is home from college or when you visit her there.

But somehow you and Verbena both moved on. You survived. In the end, neither of you wound up like Tansy Dunmore. Thank G.o.d. You are, clearly, a survivor. You survived a plane crash, didn't you? Of course you did. Somehow, you survived even the stultifying guilt that had paralyzed you in the aftermath, the what-ifs, the visions, the ghosts.

Nevertheless, for months-for over a year, until well after the anniversary of the girl's death had pa.s.sed-you had indeed been smothered by mourning; it was all you had. No, that's not completely true. You had the herbalists and their strange concoctions and desperately needed friendship. They were constantly feeding both you and Emily. Their foods and their tinctures were what kept you both upright and functioning, their medicines were what made the memories bearable-and, then, what made the worst of the memories recede so far into the backs of your minds that it's almost as if they never happened.

And, yes, they needed you, too. Holly was especially devastated by her friend's death, but even Anise and Ginger and Sage-mature enough to have seen a great many of their own friends pa.s.s away-seemed to have been scarred by the accident that took the woman's life.

And your daughter's.

"What do you think, Chip?"