the already open drawer, approached, and handed it over to her with a bizarre formality.
This is absurd, she thought, as she opened the file. I’m a hostage and they’re standing around discussing it as if we were in a lab—
Then she froze. What she was looking down at were test charts: the familiar charts for Tyler and Katrina, the initial results of the Zener card tests.
But there was a third chart, and the scores were higher than Tyler’s or Katrina’s. She stared in disbelief at the numbers before the name of the test subject finally registered. She was looking at her own chart.
She paged through the charts again, thinking there must be a mistake. Even as she did it, she was remembering the tests she ran with Tyler, and Brendan’s strange, distant responses when she asked about the scores. Nothing there, he’d said. Perfectly average. Right at statistical chance.
But the scores told another story. Her own psi levels were 85 percent above chance, higher than Tyler’s, off the charts.
Her head was ringing—and Uncle Morgan’s voice whispered in her ear: Runs in the family.
She looked up, and Brendan was smiling at her sadly, and with a touch of awe. “What are you going to do?” she managed.
“But you know that, Dr. MacDonald,” Dr. Anton said with exaggerated patience. “The group was very close this afternoon, before you interfered. We’re going to finish what the group started. Make contact. The same as the first group did.”
“How do you know that?” she said automatically, curious in spite of herself.
Dr. Anton smiled at her. “Victoria Enright,” he said.
For a moment Laurel flashed on the dingy green halls of the asylum. “You visited her,” Laurel realized. “You were the one.”
“She’s actually quite accessible with the proper techniques.”
Laurel remembered that Anton had been a hypnotherapist. “You hypnotized her.”
“Yes, a very pliant subject. She told me all about their séance. It is truly a loss that none of their recordings survived.”
She tried to keep her voice steady. “Not all of their group survived, either. And not one of them is still sane.”
“Ah, yes, this extravagant theory of yours,” Anton sounded amused. “Do you really believe that whatever happens tonight will drive everyone in this house mad?”
“You’ve seen how Victoria is,” she said, and she heard her voice shaking. “Did you meet Rafe Winchester?”
He smiled faintly. “Oh yes.”
She felt a chill of unease at the insinuation on his face. “What did you do to him?”
“He’s somewhere he can’t interfere,” Anton said lightly. “Amazing that the old fellow has been the self-appointed guardian of the house for all these years. Who would have thought we could have found the house so easily, if we’d just followed that particular trail?”
“So you know about Rafe, and you know about Victoria—” She was not going to mention Uncle Morgan, but Anton added—
“And your uncle, of course, yes.” He met her eyes and she knew that this man would stop at nothing, let no one stand in the way of his goal.
She swallowed. “So—then how do you explain what happened to the original group?” She was keeping him talking, but she was also genuinely curious.
“Simpler minds in a simpler time, unprepared for the expansion of consciousness they experienced.”
His clinical detachment frightened her. He really only sees people as lab rats, to be used for his purposes. Aloud she asked, “What makes you think this group is any more prepared for what they might see?
He looked at her, puzzled. “But as a scientist, how can you not go forward and learn for yourself?”
Laurel nodded thoughtfully … and lunged for the staircase, running as hard and fast as she could for the door.
CHAPTER FIFTY-SIX
Brendan bolted after her, grabbed her around the waist. She flailed out at him, punching and kicking, but Anton seized her arm from behind, twisting her around, and both of them tackled her, holding her struggling and screaming between them, only Anton’s hand was clamped hard on her mouth and all she could hear was her own muffled grunting.
Brendan held her down on the floor as Anton duct-taped her mouth shut and tied her hands with some silky rope. The agony of having Brendan’s hands on her like that forced tears to her eyes and she clenched her eyes shut, clenched her jaw, her legs, her body… . She was sick with fear, that they would leave her upstairs, trussed and helpless, possibly to die. But instead of tying her to the chair, or a pillar, the two of them hauled her