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