Free The Night Strangers by Chris Bohjalian Page A

mean, if you’re busy, I can probably figure it out myself,” she continued. She knew that sometimes she made people uncomfortable when she grew quiet. They feared she was about to have a seizure and go into a trance. Especially lately. But often it was just easier to say nothing and let everyone else do the talking, the deciding, and the … worrying. And it was nice to daydream. She liked the visions that sometimes marked the seizures. She wondered if her dad now had them, too.
    “Oh, I’m not doing anything important,” he said finally.
    “Cleaning?” she asked. “Organizing?”
    “Something like that. I keep expecting to find a secret compartment back there.”
    She nodded, intrigued by the idea that there might be one. She understood why her father might have such a suspicion. Sometimes she found strange things in this house and the barn and the greenhouse.
    Abruptly he stood to full height and rubbed his hands together, a habit of his when he was excited about something. “Well,” he said, his voice robust and happy. “What have you got there?” Then he placed his palm on her back and escorted her to the dining room table, where together they tackled the two pages in the workbook.
    R eseda Hill stood in her greenhouse a few steps in front of Anise, inspecting the scapes on the coral root she had transplanted earlier that winter. She kept the plants and spices for cooking cordoned off from the herbs for healing. Basil and parsley had no business mixing with hypnobium, belladonna, or amalaki. Her tomato seedlings in late April, prior to being transplanted into her vegetable garden, would not do well near the pungent aroma from the angel’s death. The greenhouse was pentagonal and divided in half: On the right side, as one entered, were those herbs and spices that were common to any chef with even a modicum of culinary education; on the left side were those rare tropical plants from South America and India that only experienced healers, herbalists, and shamans were likely to use. In the center of the pentagon was a fountain with a stone creature holding a vase that dribbled water into the catch basin. The creature stood about three and a half feet tall, half man and half goat, with great, batlike wings on his back and a trim and pointed Vandyke running from his chin to his ears. Reseda did not bring it home from a compound in Barre, Vermont, that sold mostly (but not exclusively) tombstones and have it transformed into a fountain for her greenhouse because it bore a distinct resemblance to Baphomet. The truth was, she wasn’t a Satanist or attracted to most satanic rituals; but she was a bit of a bomb thrower, and she liked the idea that designing her greenhouse in the shape of a pentagon and placing what looked like a stone demon smack in the center would fuel rumors among the sorts of people who were never going to be her friends anyway. Besides, she liked goats and she liked handsome men with their shirts off. She thought both were cute in a diminutive sort of way.
    “I find the twins very interesting,” Anise was saying, her parka draped over her folded arms.
    “You’ve spent too much time with horror movies and pulp paperbacks. You always find twins interesting. I’m a twin. The world is filled with twins. Trust me: We’re not interesting.”
    “These ones are prepubescent, and they have been traumatized. They’re like the Dunmore boys. You know the tincture. You know the recipe.”
    Reseda bent over the patchouli and rubbed one of the egg-shaped leaves between her thumb and forefinger, breathing in deeply the perfume. Patchouli made her feel young. “The Dunmores were well before my time,” she said after a moment. “Besides, it was the girls’ father who was traumatized. We don’t know if Hallie and Garnet were.”
    “You’re not a mother; I am. Their scars are different from their father’s, but nearly as deep.”
    “The pair struck me as rather resilient.”
    “I’m sure they