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Authors: Barbara Hambly
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there with chocolate and gin and that adorable saxophone player at the Grove. Frank really does serve excellent booze at his parties, except for the gin, and God knows what possessed me to drink three glasses of it last night...Cigarette?” She batted eyelashes like enameled wire.
Nadi Neferu-Aten looked thoroughly affronted. Norah sighed as she slipped through the swinging door to the kitchen. At least the only drugs Christine had proffered so far were tobacco and caffeine.
When she came back bearing a tray of coffee things, a small teapot for herself, and three glasses of iced mineral water—at a guess, the only thing the Sabsung Institute considered pure enough for the well-being of its attendant souls—Alec was saying into the telephone, “...police have requested that we not discuss it. No. Yes. Yes, I’m familiar with the First Amendment to the Constitution.”
In the front room Christine was curled up on the divan, looking slightly sulky with Black Jasmine in her arms; Chang Ming had made fast friends with the elder of the two attendant Graces and was grinning happily in the enamored woman’s lap. On her way through the kitchen Norah had glimpsed Buttercreme’s little face peering reproachfully around the corner of the stove.
“...transmission of souls down through the ages,” Nadi Neferu-Aten was explaining. “This was why we selected the house at the top of San Marcos Avenue in the first place, not only for the calm of its setting but because it is mystically impregnated with esoteric vibrations necessary to meditation and the clearing of the mind.”
Norah had already surmised that Neferu-Aten and her retinue were members of the cult up the street. Not only were the Grecian draperies unmistakable—although she had heard such things were by no means uncommon in southern California—but the three women had appeared on foot, and the fragile sandals they wore would never have made the climb up from Highland Avenue.
She set the tray down and poured herself some tea as Neferu-Aten continued. “I, for instance, so clearly remember my incarnation as the high priestess of Isis in the days of the ancient pharaohs that I have retaken the name for my own, feeling far more comfortable with it, as if I had come home. With experience in the clarifying procedures of the institute, Precious Peony here and Kama Shakti have come to feel the same.”
The two attendant Graces nodded eagerly. The younger—the fair one—left off twisting her fingers nervously and picked up the water glass in two hands, those strange, hungry eyes not quite seeming to see anything but her leader. Norah wondered what Nadi Neferu-Aten had been called before she’d remembered her days as a priestess of Isis.
“But this process of purification, this physical and spiritual freeing, has made many of us—myself included—sensitive to emanations from the astral plane.” The counselor leaned forward, her blue eyes grave. “Last night Kama Shakti had a terrible premonition in the form of a dream about this house. I, too, slept uneasily, feeling something was severely amiss. There is some danger here, Miss Flamande, some evil...” She paused, looking around at the long room with its black and cream silk furniture, its gaily colored Chinese bric-a-brac and brass-inlaid gramophone, frowning as if trying to identify something that troubled her. “Scoff if you like, but—”
“I wouldn’t dream of scoffing, darling,” Christine said airily, starting to sit up. “Only in about half an hour we’re going to have reporters and police all over us like ants at a picnic, so I really can’t—”
“What danger?” Norah asked quietly.
Christine looked at her in surprise.
Kama Shakti, the plump and elderly one, frowned for a moment, then replied slowly. “It was something about... about the dogs barking. Something trying to get in. Something waiting, crouched in the dark. Something...old...”.
Nadi Neferu-Aten raised one long-fingered
Nadi Neferu-Aten looked thoroughly affronted. Norah sighed as she slipped through the swinging door to the kitchen. At least the only drugs Christine had proffered so far were tobacco and caffeine.
When she came back bearing a tray of coffee things, a small teapot for herself, and three glasses of iced mineral water—at a guess, the only thing the Sabsung Institute considered pure enough for the well-being of its attendant souls—Alec was saying into the telephone, “...police have requested that we not discuss it. No. Yes. Yes, I’m familiar with the First Amendment to the Constitution.”
In the front room Christine was curled up on the divan, looking slightly sulky with Black Jasmine in her arms; Chang Ming had made fast friends with the elder of the two attendant Graces and was grinning happily in the enamored woman’s lap. On her way through the kitchen Norah had glimpsed Buttercreme’s little face peering reproachfully around the corner of the stove.
“...transmission of souls down through the ages,” Nadi Neferu-Aten was explaining. “This was why we selected the house at the top of San Marcos Avenue in the first place, not only for the calm of its setting but because it is mystically impregnated with esoteric vibrations necessary to meditation and the clearing of the mind.”
Norah had already surmised that Neferu-Aten and her retinue were members of the cult up the street. Not only were the Grecian draperies unmistakable—although she had heard such things were by no means uncommon in southern California—but the three women had appeared on foot, and the fragile sandals they wore would never have made the climb up from Highland Avenue.
She set the tray down and poured herself some tea as Neferu-Aten continued. “I, for instance, so clearly remember my incarnation as the high priestess of Isis in the days of the ancient pharaohs that I have retaken the name for my own, feeling far more comfortable with it, as if I had come home. With experience in the clarifying procedures of the institute, Precious Peony here and Kama Shakti have come to feel the same.”
The two attendant Graces nodded eagerly. The younger—the fair one—left off twisting her fingers nervously and picked up the water glass in two hands, those strange, hungry eyes not quite seeming to see anything but her leader. Norah wondered what Nadi Neferu-Aten had been called before she’d remembered her days as a priestess of Isis.
“But this process of purification, this physical and spiritual freeing, has made many of us—myself included—sensitive to emanations from the astral plane.” The counselor leaned forward, her blue eyes grave. “Last night Kama Shakti had a terrible premonition in the form of a dream about this house. I, too, slept uneasily, feeling something was severely amiss. There is some danger here, Miss Flamande, some evil...” She paused, looking around at the long room with its black and cream silk furniture, its gaily colored Chinese bric-a-brac and brass-inlaid gramophone, frowning as if trying to identify something that troubled her. “Scoff if you like, but—”
“I wouldn’t dream of scoffing, darling,” Christine said airily, starting to sit up. “Only in about half an hour we’re going to have reporters and police all over us like ants at a picnic, so I really can’t—”
“What danger?” Norah asked quietly.
Christine looked at her in surprise.
Kama Shakti, the plump and elderly one, frowned for a moment, then replied slowly. “It was something about... about the dogs barking. Something trying to get in. Something waiting, crouched in the dark. Something...old...”.
Nadi Neferu-Aten raised one long-fingered
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