door. In the dark of the back row, Laurel quietly rose from her own seat and followed her.
The side door opened into a hall with a men’s and women’s restroom. Another door on the other side of the door was just swinging shut. Laurel took three quick steps across the hall and caught the edge of the door just before it closed, then stood close to it, straining to hear anything beyond the door—steps, movement …
There was nothing.
Laurel pushed the door open cautiously …
It opened into a hushed, deserted hallway. There was a dark, glassed-in office to the left and a walled-in office to the right, and a long dim corridor with other doors leading to other rooms off it.
She could hear the murmuring of voices somewhere from the back—a meeting, maybe, with doors open.
But instead of calling out, or ringing the bell on the front table, she hovered quietly in the entry hall, looking around.
A narrow table beside the door held more informational flyers and brochures. On the other side of the hall a standing rack displayed several dozen display copies of books for sale, all with addictively intriguing titles: The Gift … This House Is Haunted! … Entangled Minds … Life Among the Dead … Seven Experiments that Could Change the World.
The murmuring of voices from the back room continued, but still no one emerged to check on the hall. Stepping quietly, Laurel moved further into the building, past offices and common rooms with exotically patterned rugs and lush indoor trees and arresting art from different cultures: shamanic masks and primitive fetishes. There was a quiet resonance about the place Laurel found unnerving—a quality of waiting, of listening.
Ahead of her a door opened into a room with comfortable and expensive high-backed couches and chairs. Laurel caught her breath at the sight of a familiar object on a dark mahogany end table: an original dice-throwing machine—a stand holding a long rectangular Lucite tube with seven dice in the bottom and a series of shutters through which the dice could fall. Even though the device was anachronistic and somehow naively simple Laurel felt the same strange thrill, seeing the real machine in front of her.
She backed out of the room and continued her illicit tour.
The intersecting hall was hung with black-and-white photos from the early days of the Duke parapsychology lab. Laurel passed by scene after scene of austerely dressed, serious scientists, in offices that were as uncluttered as the time, as formal and familiar as stage settings. But in none of them did she find Dr. Leish.
She turned and looked further down the dark hall, wondering. So where are the poltergeist shots? she thought wildly. If I keep going, will I find a photo of the Folger House? She had a sudden urge to laugh.
The last door of the hall was open into a long room lined with bookcases filled with many older and leather-bound volumes, the spines all affixed with what looked like new white library catalog stickers. Just inside the doorway stood an old-style walnut card catalog … Laurel couldn’t remember the last time she’d seen one. She glanced back down the dim hall with its gleaming floors—but there was still no sign of anyone. She quietly stepped into the library to the cabinet and scanned the file titles.
Well, why not?
She pulled open the F–J SUBJECT drawer and quickly flipped through the cards, looking for FOLGER, passing through a variety of wild subjects: FAE, FAIRY, FAKIR, FETISH, FIELD INVESTIGATION, FIR DIRECTOR. But the cards skipped from FIVE-FOLD KISS to FORCED CHOICE TESTING, with no entry for folger.
Laurel pushed the drawer back in, and tried FOLGER in the TITLES drawers and also the AUTHOR drawers—but no luck, either place.
Laurel slid the file drawer back in and turned—and jumped.
A man stood in the inner doorway of the library, watching her. Dark hair, thick dark brows, black trousers and sweater, expensive watch. Dr. Anton.
Have I been here that long? The lecture’s over? Laurel’s thoughts were fast, disjointed. Her heart had started beating frantically.
“Something you’re looking for?” Anton asked, his face expressionless as his dark eyes took her in with photographic intensity.
Laurel felt her face reddening, though she tried to keep cool. “I’m Laurel MacDonald. I got lost on the way back from the bathroom, and … well, then I’m afraid I was snooping.”
The dark-haired man studied her without speaking and Laurel had the uneasy feeling that he was reading her mind, or at least reading her. She tried not to