“I wondered if you had ever seen anything, or heard anything, about a Folger House.”
Laurel didn’t know why she was asking the librarian, except that for Whatever reason she trusted her. At least, she trusted that the librarian had no vested interest in the research Laurel was doing, the way that others in the department would have.
“I haven’t been into these files,” Ward said.
“But … maybe someone else has asked? I just wondered if you had ever seen anything or heard anything about a Folger House … if it was familiar at all.” Laurel was painfully aware that she was grasping at straws.
Ward looked at her through the thick owl glasses. “Folger. No. Never heard of it.”
“Well … thanks,” Laurel said. “Enjoy your weekend,” she added with effort.
“Oh, I will.” Ward walked off with a bit of a spring to her step, leaving Laurel with the sneaking feeling that the dour librarian had a more active social life than she did.
Laurel stood in the middle of the tables. Though she did not hear the door close, she knew Ward was gone by the sudden absence of energy—the dim, cool, faintly moving air surrounded her and she was alone.
Alone with seven hundred boxes of unfathomable mystery.
She felt like crying, something very near defeat. She knew she had already spoken the word “Folger” aloud far too many times, was being far too obvious about her intentions. And she now had only a week until she had to meet with Dr. Unger and she had nothing. Nothing.
She looked around her at the aisles and aisles of bookshelves, the hundreds of file boxes with their frustrating chaos.
Their carefully engineered chaos.
How many weeks had she been doing this, now? And what had it gotten her?
The book seemed more and more like an elusive dream. The truth was, she was looking for something she’d probably never find. She was like the poltergeist investigators, wanting so much to find some proof that they chased the most intangible wisps.
Yet a defiant voice rose from somewhere inside her: Somebody else thinks there’s something real, there. Kornbluth, Anton—whoever stole my notebook …
But where? Seven hundred boxes and she’d been through thirty-two, and she was no further to finding anything remotely like a pursuable topic. What chance do I have, after all?
“Might as well hire a medium,” she muttered to herself.
And that thought stopped her still.
Well, who needs a medium? she thought recklessly. “It runs in the family, doesn’t it?” she said aloud into the cool silence.
It runs in the family, her uncle agreed, inside her head.
Everyone has inherent psi ability, Dr. Leish added, also inside her head. The more pertinent question is—do we have the courage to claim it?
Laurel stood, and surveyed the shelves filled with file boxes. “All right, then,” she said under her breath. “If everyone has it, let’s see what we’ve got.”
She walked slowly to the middle of an aisle and stood, closed her eyes and took a breath, uncertain how to proceed.
“You have to pay attention,” her uncle whispered in her head.
Great. Attention to what?
“The Folger House,” she said aloud, her eyes pressed shut. “Anything on the Folger House. I need to find it. Where is it?”
She could hear the distant whir of a fan, the cool rush of air on her face from above.
It’s here somewhere. There are records for everything else. It’s as easy as opening one of these boxes.
She pictured herself lifting a lid, seeing the word folger on top of a page.
Leish’s voice was in her mind again. “Perhaps what we call reality is simply an agreement that the less imaginative among us have decided upon.”
She took a step in the aisle without opening her eyes, and paused … her whole body relaxed, but poised … listening with something other than her ears.
She took another step, and then another, hands hovering by her side, working her way down the aisle, moving with a slow, trancelike step. At the end of the aisle, without opening her eyes, she moved deftly around the end of the shelving, surprised at how clearly she felt the presence of the shelves. In her mind’s eye she could see the boxes around her as if they were in a white room, with indistinct contours, as if the walls were actually a fog of white. Time had stopped: she was suspended in a sense of being that was beyond physical; her body seemed to have lost its boundaries, and she registered the information in the boxes like touch on