“No.” She rose, marched across the small space and took the maroon terry cloth robe off the hook. She slipped into the robe and quickly tied the sash. Feeling more in control, she shoved her hands into the pockets and contemplated the camera. “Maybe.”

“Go on.”

“Tonight I turned on the hologram projection in my sleep.”

“I thought I explained that the oracle talent is linked to the dreamstate.”

“Shut up, Rancourt. I do not want any more lectures about the oracle thing. Got it?”

“I’ve spent a good portion of the past five years studying the dreamstate. I’m just trying—”

She held up a hand, palm out. Harlan closed his mouth. She gave him a cool, approving smile. “That’s better. As I was saying, I don’t know much about the camera except that my mother must have seen it at some point, because I’m sure it’s the same camera as the one in the painting in our Fogg Lake house. I did not understand what the artifact could do until that night in the garage when I was able to use it as a weapon.”

Harlan studied the camera. “You iced the killer’s aura—”

“Temporarily,” she said quickly. “He survived, remember?”

“Think you could have made it permanent?” Harlan asked, as if the answer was of purely intellectual interest.

“You mean, could I have killed him?” She closed her eyes. “Maybe.” She opened her eyes. “I’ve been trying to avoid thinking about that. It’s not exactly the sort of thing you want to discover about yourself. The ability to crush someone’s aura makes me one of the monsters, doesn’t it?”

When Harlan did not respond, she tore her gaze off the camera and looked at him. He watched her with haunted eyes.

“I don’t know,” he said finally. “Does it?”

She understood then that he had asked himself the same question. “I suppose,” she said slowly, “it’s no different from possessing a gun or a knife. Intent matters.”

“In your case, you used the camera in self-defense. And you didn’t actually kill a man.”

“But I could have. I think.”

“You didn’t,” Harlan said. “Be grateful. Killing exacts some serious psychic pain. Even with the best intentions in the world, you pay a price—unless you’re a blank. That is, a true sociopath.”

“Neither of us is a blank.”

“No. Now, I suggest we leave the philosophical questions for another time. What we need to talk about now is that you took the holographic image of the Speed Date Killer at the same time you were intuitively trying to use the camera as a weapon.”

“So?”

“The fact that you figured out how to use the camera to save your life means that if there are other holograms on the artifact, you can probably access them.”

“How?”