“No.”
“It’s not from Leish’s book. Tyler said he Googled ‘poltergeist’ and that’s what came up.” Brendan looked at her curiously. She lifted her hands. “He just
happens
to come up with a theory of Leish’s that neither of us has ever seen, and that’s the one he
happens
to bring here?”
The corners of Brendan’s mouth quirked. “Well, if you think about it, we did choose these two for their psi ability, didn’t we?”
She stared at him. “Are you being serious?”
“I don’t know,” Brendan said. He sounded tired, and she noticed again that he had dark circles under his eyes. “Might be good for the atmosphere.” She stared at him in disbelief. “We want them psyching themselves out, don’t we? We’ve only got three weeks, and we’re not here for our health. It can’t hurt to have them amped up.” There was an edge in his voice, too, and she wondered about that.
Laurel took the article back from him and read aloud: “ ‘The poltergeist ultimately takes complete control of reality. And like drug addicts, the human percipients cut their ties to the world and become addicted to the whims of the poltergeist.’ ”
She looked up from the article, at Brendan. He looked at her, puzzled. “What’s bothering you about it?”
If she were completely honest about why it was bothering her, it was that she had a queasy feeling about Leish suddenly showing up like that, randomly.
Above them there was a scream, then muffled pounding in the floor. They both froze and looked up, and for a suspended moment Laurel knew exactly what Brendan was thinking—that something was finally happening … something. And she saw his excitement—the almost rabid look in his eyes—before they both ran for the stairs.
CHAPTER FORTY-ONE
Upstairs, Katrina paced in the little lounge with the slanted ceiling. She was beside herself, on the verge of hysteria. Brendan had bolted into the room just ahead of Laurel, and now he took Katrina by the forearms, stopping her wild circling. She was hyperventilating and trembling, her eyes dilated.
“Calm down, Katrina. Just tell us what happened.” Brendan glanced at Laurel.
“My room. In my room,” the girl gasped.
Brendan crossed the lounge in three swift steps and strode down the hall toward Katrina’s room, Katrina trailing fearfully behind. Laurel followed with a building sense of anger.
They all crowded into Katrina’s room, looking around them. The mirror above the hearth was cracked, as was all the glass in the framed prints.
Katrina was talking very fast, and her eyes were dilated with excitement (and pot, Laurel realized). “I’ve been outside since this morning. I just came back to my room and …” She gestured grandly.
Laurel stared at the mirror and for a moment she was back in her dream …
the sound of the mirror shattering behind her …
She shook it off, pushed it away.
Laughter rang out behind her and she snapped back to the present. She turned to see Tyler hovering behind her in the hall. He looked past her to Katrina and started clapping, slowly. “Good one, baby doll. How many points does she get for that, Professor Cody? ’Cause I definitely think she’s winning.”
Laurel had to turn away to cover a smile, but Katrina caught it and shot her a look of pure fury.
“You don’t believe me and I hate you. I didn’t do it. I didn’t.” She burst into tears.
What a little liar,
Laurel thought, with a viciousness that startled her.
Just as Katrina was obviously angling for, Brendan stepped to the bed to soothe her, crouching in front of her, holding her shoulders. Laurel was appalled at the wave of jealousy that washed through her.
“Katrina, it’s fine, you’re doing just fine.” Brendan squeezed the girl’s shoulders lightly. “All we have to do is check the monitors—” he stood and stepped to the camera, but stopped, looking at it.
Katrina sniffled from the bed. “I … I turned it off when I changed my clothes earlier … I forgot to turn it back on. I’m sorry,” she said winningly.
Laurel shook her head in complete disbelief.
Brendan took out his EMF reader and stepped to the wall to hold the device close to a shattered picture frame. The device was silent. To tell the truth Laurel had never understood what electromagnetic levels had to do with anything and was skeptical that it meant anything real.
“The levels are normal,” he said in a neutral voice, and moved to the other frames one by one to check. “Three … three point three …” He shook his head. “Nothing.”
And again Laurel heard the disappointment in his voice.
He turned to the girl and said heartily, “Katrina, I want you to journal this for me, okay? Fill out your mood sheet, and an incident description page. Tape record your thoughts and feelings, if you want. When you’re through, bring it to me and we’ll talk about it.”
She brushed at the wetness in her eyes and nodded.
“Good girl.” He turned to Tyler. “Mr. Bradford, I’d like you to take a camcorder and film”—Brendan looked around at the smashed glass—“the damage.”
“Sure,” Tyler shrugged lazily. “It’s your party.”
It’s someone’s party,
Laurel thought. She looked toward Katrina, who stared back at her stonily.
Laurel turned and walked out of the room.
She walked down the stairs, through the dining room, and into the great room, and stopped in front of the monitors. She looked up at the wall, at her reflection in one of the cloudy mirrors.
Then she looked at the monitors.
So Katrina just turned off the camera, so she could smash the glass and win points with Professor Cody. Can I prove that?
She stepped closer and found the Reverse button. She backed up the recording and hit Play …
And saw Katrina standing in a baby doll nightgown, standing in front of the closet, reaching in to choose a sweater and pants … turning toward the bed … then stepping forward and shutting off the camera.
Exactly what she’d thought she’d find.
It’s a good cover story: shutting off the camera so she could dress in privacy.
Laurel reached forward and shut off the recorder.
This whole experiment is completely out of control already. Is there any salvaging it, really? Is there any reason to stay, and let it be hijacked by a spoiled rotten Southern princess?
And the answer came to her in a flash.
Uncle Morgan. No matter what else is happening, I have a chance to find out what happened.
A voice spoke behind her. “Okay. Let’s hear it.”
She turned to face Brendan. He was silhouetted in the light coming through the tall windows. “I know you’re having trouble believing—,” he began.
“I’m not sure that there’s any point in continuing this study,” Laurel said in a low, brittle voice. “Not if all she’s going to do is make things up.”
“We don’t know that,” Brendan said, his voice equally low.
“Oh, really? ‘Ah turned it off when Ah changed mah clothes earlier and Ah forgot to turn it back on?’ ” she mimicked Katrina savagely, Carolina accent and all, and was gratified to see Brendan flinch. “It’s completely obvious that she did it herself.” Laurel could see from the uncomfortable reluctance in Brendan’s face that he agreed with her, but she kept going, anyway. “Tyler gave her a whole blueprint with that article. They were out there reading it not twenty minutes before this happened.”
“Okay,” Brendan said, soothingly this time, which infuriated Laurel all the more.
“No, it’s not okay. They got high, they read Leish’s article, and they staged a manifestation.” Her voice was rising again. “And what you don’t see is that you’re encouraging it. We’re not anywhere near the level of scientific objectivity we need to be to make this study viable.” She saw him recoil again, and felt a mean triumph. She couldn’t resist twisting the knife. “Unless it’s now just a study about Katrina acting out. Which you’re rewarding her for doing, you know. So of course she’s making things up to please you.”
Brendan’s face reddened. “To please me? What does that have to do with anything—”
Laurel found her voice rising for no reason she could name. “Oh,
please
. Don’t pretend that you haven’t seen—”
“What is this, some feminine intuition—”
“Practically on her knees every time you walk in … and you’re feeding into it. ‘Journal this
for me,
Katrina—’ ”
“And I’m supposed to pretend this has anything to do with reality—”
They were almost screaming at each other, toe to toe, and Laurel suddenly had the sense that she was not entirely herself, that someone else was screaming through her.
She caught a glimpse of them both reflected in the mirrors and it did not seem to be Brendan but a tall, lean blond man.
Laurel gasped and started back, away from him … and then the feeling was gone, and so was the anger. She looked at him shakily. “What are we doing?”
Brendan sagged. “I don’t know.” Laurel was walking, first in circles, then suddenly out of the great room—she had to be out of the room. She walked into the glazed brick entry hall. Brendan followed her.
“I’m sorry. I don’t know what that was,” he said.
She sat on the bench, across from the odd family portrait, and looked at him. All the blazing anger she had been feeling just a moment before was gone, completely evaporated, as if the rage had not been her own. Brendan looked faintly puzzled, as if he was experiencing the same confusion. Laurel took a breath and groped back to the point she had been trying to make, with less heat.
“She did this. Maybe
they
did this. They planned it.” She sounded incoherent to herself and his hand was on her neck, gently kneading it.
“Mickey. It’s okay. Really—”
She nearly melted at the touch of his hand on her neck, and all the sensations of the night before came back in a rush—the weight of his body on hers, the unbearable pleasure …
Didn’t happen. Not real.
She pulled away from him. “No, you don’t see. She’s sabotaging the experiment. Look, she’s been in my room. This morning she dumped all my clothes on the floor.”
He was instantly alert. “Wait, what?”
“She came into my room and dumped all my clothes onto the closet floor. First it was my robe, then the blankets, then every single piece of clothing in my closet—”
He was standing, jazzed. “Why didn’t you tell me?”
She stared at him in disbelief. “Oh, please. Because I know who did it. I
know
. There’s nothing supernatural about it—”
“You just decided that yourself?” He was agitated now, barely holding back anger. “Mickey, for Christ’s sake, you’re supposed to report
everything
. How are we supposed to conduct an experiment if you’re withholding information—”
“How are we supposed to conduct an experiment if you’re allowing student participants to fabricate data—”
There was movement in the corner of her eye and Laurel turned her head to look.
Katrina was standing on the landing of the stairs, in front of the bay window, looking down on them with sheer hatred on her face. When Laurel caught her gaze, she spun around and marched back upstairs.
Laurel shook her head, shook off the out-of-control feeling. “This is never going to work if we don’t stay objective,” she said aloud, and she didn’t know if she was speaking to Brendan or herself.
“Absolutely,” he said, and he sounded shaken. “From now on we go by the book No assumptions. Let’s just go back to straight, quantifiable testing.” He took a breath, and faced her with something like calm.
“But you have to report what happens to you, too. No holding back. Everything that happens, every action and reaction, are part of this study.”
CHAPTER FORTY-TWO
They did card runs that night. Brendan insisted on it. “We need to monitor the levels of psi daily, for consistency.”
Katrina’s scores were higher and higher. She seemed on fire. Every card run she performed was better than the last, and she preened under Brendan’s praise. Tyler did worse and worse; Laurel could see his frustration building even as he sat there. Finally he flung his cards across the room, without completing the run. The cards fluttered to the floor, enigmatic symbols.
“This is bullshit,” he raged. “We’re just passing time, waiting for something to happen that Miss White Sugar didn’t make up.”
Katrina rose, with spots of red flaming in her cheeks. “Just because nothing’s happening for
you
—”
Brendan was instantly walking between them, intervening. “Katrina, why don’t you take a break? Just step into the dining room and fill out your notebook about the tests you just completed.” She was unhappy, petulant, but he smiled at her and Laurel could see her melt. “I’ll come in and we’ll talk about them just as soon as you’re done.”
Laurel had to admit, he had the touch. Katrina lit up and moved through the door into the dining room without protest.
Brendan turned to Laurel. “Dr. MacDonald, I’d like you to test with Tyler.”
Laurel looked at him, startled. “What—”
“I want to mix this up; try a telepathy test. You sort through a deck of cards, and Tyler will write down his guesses of the cards you are looking at.”
There was a hole in the pit of Laurel’s stomach; she felt wrong about it in three dozen different ways, but nothing she could articulate.
Tyler looked at her from the testing table, a challenging look, and she walked over and sat down across from him. The lamplight was low, a soft haze around them.
He sat forward in his chair, and she realized he would be staring at her for the entire run. She reached for the first boxed deck and removed the cards. Her hands were trembling slightly. She forced herself to look down and think of nothing but the cards as she gripped the deck in her left hand and turned over the first card: a star.
After looking at the card she placed it face down, maintaining the original order, as Tyler wrote down his guesses on a pad.
Five runs of twenty-five cards each.
She turned over a card, and stared down at the black symbol, making the card the only thing in her mind. That part felt fine, for a while; it was a relief to lose herself in the imperative of the symbol: circle, square, star, cross, two wavy lines like water. With each run that she did, the symbols became larger, metaphorical, elemental. The circle, the square, the star, the cross, the waves: eternity, construction, celestial, religion, water.