"Shut your face, you slut!" Frost snapped, flicking a pickle chip at her.
"Who's a slut, you bimbo?" Bri returned cordially, chewing. "Jimbo bimbo. Mumbo jumbo."
They both laughed: Frost shrilly, Bri gruffly.
Jackal Mac glared. "Quit with the freakin' noise," he said brutally. "You make me sick with that freakin' noise." He had been eating with fervent single-mindedness, the way Kaitlyn imagined a coyote might eat.
"I like to see girls have a good time," Renny said. He was eating with finicky precision, gesturing with a french fry. "Don't you, Mac?"
"You making fun of me? You making fun of me, man?"
Kaitlyn blinked. It was a non sequitur; she didn't follow Mac's logic. But it didn't take logic to read the sudden fury in his slitted eyes.
He stood up, towering over the table, leaning across to stare at Renny. "I said, you makin' fun of me?" he bellowed.
Renny let him have it with a hamburger in the face.
Kaitlyn gaped. The hamburger had been dripping with ketchup and Thousand Island dressing. Renny had thoughtfully removed the bun, so Jackal Mac got the full benefit of the condiments.
Bri shrieked with laughter. "What a pitch, what a pitch! Pitch, snitch!"
"Think that's funny?" Jackal Mac seized her by the hair and slammed her face into her plate. He began to grind it around and around. The giggles turned to screams.
Kaitlyn was now gasping. Frost plunged her long nails into a bowl of coleslaw and came out with a juicy handful. She threw it at Mac, but it scattered over the table, hitting Renny, too.
Renny seized a bottle of Clearly Canadian water- the fizzy kind.
"Time to go." Gabriel caught Kaitlyn by the arm above the elbow and neatly lifted her from the chair out of the way of a burst of carbonated water. Lydia was already scuttling out of the room.
"But he's going to kill her!" Kaitlyn gasped. Mac was still grinding Bri's face into the plate.
"So?" Gabriel piloted her toward the kitchen.
"No, I mean, really. I think that plate cracked; he's going to kill her."
"I said, so?'"
There was the sound of shattering glass and Kaitlyn looked back. Jackal Mac had stopped grinding Bri's face; Renny was now slashing at him with a broken Clearly Canadian bottle.
"Oh, my God-"
"Come on."
In the kitchen, Joyce was washing dishes.
"Joyce, they're-"
"It happens every night," Joyce said shortly. "Leave it alone."
"Every night?"
Gabriel stretched, looking bored. Then he smiled. "Let's go up to my balcony," he said to Kaitlyn. "I need some air."
"No, I-I want to help Joyce with the dishes." There was no point in trying to deceive him about such a minor thing, so she added, I want to talk to her a minute. I didn't have time earlier.
"Suit yourself." Gabriel's voice was unexpectedly cold; his expression was stony. "I'll be busy later." He left.
Kaitlyn didn't understand why he was angry, but there was nothing to do about it. She was a spy, she had information to gather. Picking up a dish, she said abruptly, "Joyce, why do you put up with it?"
"With Gabriel? I don't know, why do you?"
"With them." Kaitlyn jerked her chin toward the dining room, where yells and crashes could still be heard.
Joyce gritted her teeth and scrubbed viciously at a greasy pan with a soap pad. "Because I have to."
"No really. Everything's so crazy now-and it seems like it's against everything you believe in." Kaitlyn was getting incoherent-maybe the scare before dinner was still affecting her. She had the feeling that she should shut up, but instead she blundered on. "I mean, you seem like the kind of person who really believes in things, and I just don't understand-"
"You want to know why? I'll show you!" With a soapy hand, Joyce seized something that had been on the counter, underneath the Chinese take-out containers.
It was a magazine, the Journal of Parapsychology.
"My name is going to be in this! The lead article. And not just this." Joyce's face was contorted, it reminded Kaitlyn of the way she'd looked when she'd held Gabriel's bleeding forehead against the crystal, trying to kill him. Overcome by maniacal passion.
"Not just this, but in Nature, Science, The American Journal of Psychology, The New England Journal of Medicine," Joyce raved. "Multidisciplinary journals, the most prestigious journals in the world. My name and my work."
Dear God, she's a mad scientist, Kaitlyn thought. She was almost spellbound by the ranting woman.
"And that's just the beginning. Awards. Grants. A full professorship at the school of my choice. And, incidentally, a little trinket called the Nobel Prize."
Kait thought at first that she was joking. But there was no humor in those glazed aquamarine eyes. Joyce looked as insane as any of the psycho psychics.
Could he have hit her with the crystal, too? Kaitlyn wondered dazedly. Or could it be some sort of cumulative effect from being around it, like secondhand smoke?
But she knew that no matter what the crystal had done to warp and magnify the desire, it was Joyce's desire in the first place. Kaitlyn had finally discovered what made Joyce run; she had just seen into the woman's soul.
"That's why I put up with it, and why I'm going to put up with anything. So that the cause of science can be advanced. And so I can get what I'm due."
As suddenly as she had grabbed it, Joyce dropped the magazine she'd been shaking in front of Kaitlyn's eyes. She turned back to the sink.
"Now, why don't you take a walk," she said in a voice suddenly gone dull. "I can wash the dishes by myself."
Numb, Kaitlyn walked out of the kitchen. She avoided the dining room, went through the front lab and up the stairs.
Gabriel's door was locked. Well, she should have expected that, really. She'd managed to offend two of the three people who'd championed her tonight. Might as well try for a perfect score, she thought philosophically, and headed for the room she was to share with Lydia.
But Lydia proved to be impossible to offend or talk to at all. She was in bed with the covers pulled over her head. Whether she was sulking or simply scared, Kaitlyn didn't know. She wouldn't come out.