Brendan’s encouraging presence, Katrina displayed a dramatic concentration on the machine, and the resulting falls of the dice were impressive, 31 percent above chance.
At one point Brendan stepped close to Laurel to murmur into her ear, “I think we’re in business.”
Laurel saw Katrina’s face cloud, and at that moment, the slowly rotating dice machine suddenly went wild, flipping crazily around on its stand.
Laurel stared in shock. Did that really just happen?
“Whoa!” Brendan leaped to shut off the machine as Katrina cowered back, wide-eyed. “Sorry about that. What can I say—they’re fifty years old …”
Katrina slid an oblique look at Laurel and Laurel wondered if they weren’t taking on more than they could handle.
They finally dismissed Katrina, who tendered Laurel another malevolent glare at as she left.
Brendan turned to Laurel and he didn’t have to speak. They had tested over five hundred students in three weeks, and there was no one besides Tyler who was even close. And even Laurel felt a rush: What are the chances that we’d find two so quickly?
Brendan leaned on the lab table. His eyes were alight. “I say we do it with just the two of them, if we can get them to agree. We can’t just keep running tests forever. And their scores really are exceptional.”
“What about controls?” Laurel countered.
“We’re the controls,” Brendan answered immediately.
“No, I meant—”
“So did I. Non-psi-gifted subjects. That’s us. I think we should keep this as small and controlled as we can. We add more people and we risk losing the quality of subjects.”
Now that the prospect of actually moving into the house was looming, Laurel found herself dragging her feet, metaphorically speaking. “How much do we tell them about the history of the house?”
“We definitely let them know that we’re going into a house that has a history of poltergeist activity. Absolutely.” He paced the room, planning. “Maybe we show them the police report to set up expectation. Otherwise …” he trailed off, turning to her, “otherwise, I think we say as little as possible, at least at first. Let them pick up on the history—or not.”
Laurel opened her mouth to protest and he cut her off. “I know what you’re going to say. I know you have doubts. But Mickey—one week. Just a few days even. Even just walking through the house with those two. At the slightest hint of anything dangerous we’re out of there, I swear to you.”
He picked up Katrina’s and Tyler’s test scores. “But with subjects like this—how can we not at least try?”
CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE
There was always an odd feeling to Laurel about having just one or two students in a classroom, and it was even more odd to have two professors to two students; there was something almost illicitly intimate about it. Tyler slouched at his desk, openly checking Katrina out. Katrina sat straight in her chair, as if on another plane, pointedly ignoring him. No one was fooling anyone: There was an energy about these two that made the atmosphere fairly crackle. The sun slanted through the leaded windowpanes and flame trees were in full color just outside, blazing the red of a molten sunset and adding to the charge of the atmosphere.
Brendan clapped his hands together in a jolly, archaic gesture. “Well. First of all, thank you for the time you’re already put into this project. Your contributions have been very helpful.” He glanced at Laurel. “In fact, you were our high scorers.”
Laurel watched as the two students absorbed this. Katrina blinked rapidly. Tyler looked at Katrina, then at Laurel, speculatively. She had the feeling that he was assessing something about her, and trying to position himself to use it.
“So we’re psychic, that’s what you’re saying?” Tyler finally drawled.
Laurel answered evenly. “What we can say quantifiably is that you both scored significantly above chance in your forced-choice testing. That was the laboratory definition Rhine used for ESP abilities, and that’s the definition we’re using for the purposes of this study.”
Again, Brendan looked to Laurel. “There’s another project we have in mind that we’re interested in using you for, if you agree. It would be full-time for three weeks, full work-study pay—or credit for a full five units.”
That last clearly got Tyler’s attention. “A whole class credit for three weeks? What’s the catch?”
“The project involves moving into a house that has a history of psi activity.”
“You mean, it’s haunted?” Katrina asked, with her honeyed drawl.
She’s not as detached as she looks, Laurel realized.
“There have been various reports to that effect,” Brendan answered.