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faster.
    She wasn’t sure how long she waited before she realized something was happening. As if emerging from a pool of shimmering water, a picture began to solidify. At first there were ripples and waves in the image. But soon she was surprised and delighted to find herself looking at a cluttered but brightly lit room. Along three walls were ornate bookshelves reaching all the way to the high ceiling. Several sliding ladders gave access to the books on the top shelves.
    The smell of old leather and mildewed paper made her nose wrinkle. As if she were standing in the center of the room, Jessica mentally turned to face a wide window that looked out on to a wrought-iron balcony. It was partially blocked by a counter and a cash register. To her right she could see a flight of narrow iron steps leading down to the sidewalk.
    The image tapped a buried memory cell. She knew this place! It was a used bookstore called the Book Attic down in the French Quarter. She’d spent many Saturday afternoons there in the parapsychology section. Had Aubrey also gone there?
    As she stopped concentrating on the image, it wavered. Too late, she tried to bring it back into focus, but it was gone.
    Feeling disoriented, Jessica sank into a chair and sat with her eyes closed. The image of the bookstore had been very real, but it proved nothing since she’d been to the place herself and could have summoned it from her own mind.
    There was a way, however, to find out whether she was fooling herself. Setting the book on the floor, she crossed to Aubrey’s desk and began to investigate the cubbyholes at the back. She doubted she’d get any vibrations from the assortment of pens, rubber bands and paper clips she found. But stuffed into the compartment on the extreme left was a crumpled paper napkin. The minute Jessica’s fingers came in contact with the crinkly paper, they began to tingle.
    The old fear leaped in her breast, and she snatched her hand back. For several seconds she sat staring at the napkin. This was it. Either she went on with the experiment or she backed off.
    Teeth clamped together, she drew the napkin out of the cubbyhole. In the center was an inch-high letter “H.” In the upper left corner Aubrey had scribbled four digits—3489. Part of a phone number? She looked for more clues. At the bottom he’d doodled a series of straight lines and filled them with circles and triangles. Her eyes were drawn to the patterns. They seemed to have some sort of pull on her, and she had the strange sensation that she was being physically tugged forward. Alarmed, she tried to look away. But she had lost the power to make a choice.
    The pool she’d seen before began to shimmer again. Only this time, she was in the middle of it. Drowning.
    “No.” The syllable was a gasp on her lips.
    Her senses spun, and vague shapes wavered around her. She grabbed for something solid, and felt as if her fingers were closing around wood. A doorframe.
    She seemed to be standing in a doorway looking into a room. She gasped again when she saw her brother lounging in a scarred wooden booth in a dimly lit bar. The image was so real, that she expected him to look up at her, but he went on sipping his beer. Putting down the glass he began to doodle on the napkin in front of him. The very napkin she now held in her hand!
    Another man was sitting across from him in the booth, bare elbows resting on the wood table. His T-shirt was torn at the neck. His dark eyes were red-rimmed; his thin, almost colorless lips slack; his long hair uncombed across his high forehead. On his cheek was a wicked, star-shaped scar. The beer glass in front of him was almost empty.
    Jessica shivered. She could smell alcohol and cigarette smoke and sweaty bodies. The air around her felt hot and oppressive. In her ears she heard a dozen low, jumbled conversations pitched above an acid rock tune blaring from the lighted jukebox in the corner.
    This wasn’t like the bookstore. She had never been