like screaming, just to break his impenetrable wall of calm. Instead she tried a different tack.
“Don’t you want to know where I was, today?”
“Where were you?” he asked dutifully, without a hint that he’d even noticed she was gone.
“Dorothea Dix.”
He looked at her blankly, and finally it registered. “The asylum? In Raleigh? Why?”
“I found Victoria Enright. She was institutionalized in April 1965, with a diagnosis of catatonic schizophrenia.” In her mind Laurel saw Victoria again, slumped in her chair, hollow-cheeked, eyes dilated with horror …
“You left the house?” Brendan said, with a flare of ire. “We agreed not to do that.”
“Brendan, are you not listening to me? Victoria Enright participated in the Folger Experiment in 1965, and she has been in a mental institution ever since.”
Brendan sat on the edge of the peacock-covered love seat.
“Mickey, first of all, you don’t know that this Victoria Enright had anything to do with the Folger House. She was in a photo in a yearbook. What does that prove? You’re making huge logical leaps.”
“It’s not just Victoria,” Laurel said. “It’s all of them. We know Leish died. Rafe Winchester—”
“You aren’t really going to tell me that Rafe Winchester is at Dix, too.”
“Pastor Wallace is Rafe Winchester.”
He stared at her incredulously. “How do you know?”
She hesitated. “The yearbook photo.”
“The yearbook photo,” he said again, as if that ended the discussion. “That’s all the proof you have of all of this? A forty-two-year-old photo?”
“He’s the right age. He knows about the experiment.” She knew it sounded flimsy.
Brendan stared at her through the dim of the library, and his voice was suddenly gentle. “All right, stop. You are now officially freaking yourself out over nothing. This is not proof—it’s wild speculation, Mickey.”
“We can’t take a chance. We’re responsible for the well-being of two students. We’re shutting this down.”
His face closed and he stood. “You can leave if you want to. But I’m not.”
He started for the door and she turned on him. “We can’t keep these kids here when we don’t know what might happen.”
He halted by the door, in front of the ship in its glass case. He was looking at her with interest, now. “So you really think we’re in danger? From what?”
She stopped short, confused. Was she really thinking there was a … not a ghost, but some kind of danger, evil—in the house? Something that could actually cause madness, even death?
“I … didn’t say that.”
“What, then?”
Yes, what?
“People died here. Paul and Caroline Folger. Leish …”
“But that was over forty years ago,” he said patiently.
“Leish died while doing the exact same thing we are doing.” She was aware that her voice was rising, and that it made her sound unbalanced.
“We don’t know it was while he was engaged in the experiment. You’re making it sound like he died at the house, and you don’t know that.” He laughed, but there was no mockery in the sound. “Laurel, you’ve read all the same literature I have. People don’t get hurt by poltergeists. They certainly don’t get killed by them. Something may have happened, maybe even something terrible, but that part of it was human, not supernatural. What could that possibly have to do with us? I just don’t see where you think the danger is, here.”
“Victoria …” She swallowed, felt her voice breaking. “She’s been catatonic for over forty years… .”
His voice dropped, soft and comforting. “I’m sure it was unpleasant to see her. But mental illness is biochemical, Laurel. You don’t develop schizophrenia from trauma. You know that. Whatever is wrong with her has nothing to do with this house, or with us. She can’t do us any harm.”
“The pastor can. Whoever he is, he’s not stable,” Laurel said, grabbing on to something tangible. “It’s not safe for any of us, having someone like that wandering around.”
“A sixty-year-old man? How much of a threat can he be?” he said lightly.
But Brendan had not met the man, had not felt the madness emanating from him.
“You didn’t meet him.”
“No, I didn’t. In fact I haven’t even seen him,” he said pointedly.
She felt suddenly short of breath. “Are you saying I made him up?”
“Of course not,” Brendan said reassuringly, but it sounded hollow to her. She looked in the direction of the great room, where the students were.
“You can’t afford to be dismissive when we have two students working for us,” she repeated. “We’re responsible for their safety.”
“First of all, I haven’t seen anything remotely like danger in this situation, and second, Laurel, they’re adults. Being here