Kaylee’s face was white as a sheet. “Just being in the office,” she said. “Being in Professor Shaver’s office in the behavioral science building.”
“That’s at least a fifteen-minute walk from here.” She shook her head. “You don’t remember anything after that?”
“No.”
“Have you been up here before? How did you know how to get to the roof?”
It wasn’t an off-limits part of campus, but it wasn’t widely known outside of the architecture department either. They didn’t want random freshmen throwing water balloons off the top of the building.
Even though that had totally happened.
“I, uh, I came up here once for a reception thing last year. And I actually remember thinking” —she looked toward the edge and her eyes started to water— “falling off the side of this building would totally be something my clumsy self would do. I’ve literally had nightmares about it.”
“Really?” It couldn’t be a coincidence. There was no way.
Kaylee had tears running down her face. “I’m so confused. I don’t know what’s happening right now. And I feel kind of sick.”
Katherine pushed back the urge to ask the young woman about all her symptoms at first, but then she realized she might not have another chance. “Tell me how you’re feeling. Talk to me.”
“Nauseous. Thirsty. Cold, but that might be from the wind.”
The breeze had turned sharp on top of the marble building, and the cold cut through Katherine’s long-sleeved blouse even though the sun was shining.
“Kaylee, what were you doing this morning? Walk me through it.”
“Just grading projects for Professor Shaver. Greg and I trade off helping in his Intro to Psych class, and it was my turn to grade papers. He and Greg were in class; then they got back and…” She blinked rapidly. “I don’t remember much after that. They were unhappy though. There was something going on.”
Katherine pressed her. “Did it have to do with the biofeedback study?”
She shook her head. “You know I can’t talk about that. I can’t—”
“Three students, Kaylee. And now you.” Katherine felt a flood of panic in her chest. If she hadn’t seen the vision of Kaylee, the girl could be dead. People would have speculated why such a seemingly happy girl had chosen suicide, and they would never know that something had been affecting her mind.
Was she losing it? Val’s suggestion of a ghost haunting these students didn’t seem that impossible. What could it be? Possession? Hypnosis? What the hell was making normal kids do things they’d never do in their right mind?
She wished Toni were here. She wished Megan were here. Megan would be able to soothe Kaylee, and Toni would be able to ease her panic. All Kaylee had at the moment was a reluctant seer who’d never been particularly good at understanding feelings.
“Listen,” she told the girl. “I’m going to give you my phone number, my personal number, okay? I want you to call me.” She heard voices on the stairs. “Will you do that? Will you call me later?”
Kaylee nodded. “Okay.”
She stood and hobbled over to the girl. “They’re going to want to know what happened and why you’re up here.” She caught Kaylee’s eyes and held them. “You tell them whatever you want. You might have come up here for the view. You might have needed time to think about a personal problem and you had a dizzy spell. You tell them whatever you want, okay? I will follow your lead.”
Kaylee nodded. “Okay.”
“Professor Bassi?” A security guard shouted from the door. “Professor Katherine Bassi?”
Katherine nodded at Kaylee and squeezed her shoulder. “We’re over here!”
Chapter 20
“She ended up telling the security officers that she’d gone up to think and had unexpected vertigo when she got too near the edge.” Katherine refilled Toni’s and Megan’s wineglasses.
Baxter was sitting on the deck with them, but he was drinking a gin and tonic as he stared out over the ocean. “And she said she didn’t remember anything?” he asked. “Nothing about how she got up there, who was with her, nothing?”
“Nothing.”
Toni raised a hand. “Roofies?”
Katherine frowned. “It’s possible, I suppose. I don’t know much about the drug, but doesn’t it incapacitate you?”
Megan nodded. “Yes. We had a whole in-service on the effects of Rohypnol about ten years ago with some alumni and all the girls active in the chapter of our sorority at school. They did a big campus-wide push to raise awareness of the effects. If someone had dosed Kaylee with Rohypnol, no way would she have been able to walk across campus and up to the roof of that building on her own.”
Toni rolled her eyes. “You were in a sorority in college. Why am I not surprised?”
Megan’s smile was tight. “Didn’t expect you to understand.”
“Let me guess, y’all raised a lot of money for charity doing bathing suit car washes?”
Megan smiled sweetly. “Don’t be silly. We did car washes in cutoffs and wet T-shirts. We saved the bathing suits for all the beauty pageants we were in!”
Toni snorted. “Right.”
“Like I said, I wouldn’t expect you to understand.” She turned to Katherine. “The sister who started the awareness drive on campus is an ER doctor in Atlanta. I can ask her if there are any new drugs she’s seen in the college population that might produce the effects you saw in Kaylee.”
“Yeah,” Toni said. “And I’ll ask my cousin at the police department if they’ve seen anything either.”
“Pretty sure a doctor’s gonna have a better take on that,” Megan said under her breath.
“Pretty sure we don’t need to turn down anyone’s help for this since we have no fucking clue what we’re doing,” Toni said. “But that’s just poor, uneducated me offering my useless opinion, I guess.”
Katherine raised a hand between them. “Both perspectives would be great. A doctor would be very useful, and your cousin is local, Toni. He might know about things that are common around here that a doctor wouldn’t.”
Toni and Megan glared at each other.
Baxter leaned his arm on the wide wooden armrest of
