Ms. Stafford's house looked nothing like what Ethan imagined a psychic's home might look like. There were no power crystals or hanging beads in the windows. No animal skulls mounted to the spidery trees on the front lawn. No black cats prowling around or ravens perched on the rooftop.

This was when Ethan realized he apparently didn't know the difference between psychics and witches.

In reality, the house was old and small but otherwise unremarkable. A pair of windows looked in on a living room and kitchen. There was a little porch with a patio chair. A red door and greenish-blue paint on the exterior tiles. Yellow leaves all over the lawn. No driveway. A cozy looking place you'd never look twice at.

"You sure this is the one?" he asked Violet as she pulled the Honda to a stop partway up the opposing sidewalk. "It looks... normal."

"Expected it to be made of gingerbread or something?"

Ethan rolled his eyes dramatically and sighed. "She's a psychic, Violet, not a witch. Tsk tsk. Amateur hour over here."

She laughed. "Excuse me, sensei. Now get the hell out of my car and go get that amnesia-saber."

"No need. I'm projecting in, remember? It's sort of like casting a spell..."

"When you come back and your physical body has a black eye, just remember this moment." Violet's smile faded as her eyes fell to the dashboard clock. It was 2:14 p.m. "Better hop to it. Midnight's ever closer, eh."

Whatever fun Ethan had been having wore off at once. He nodded soberly. "Just need a minute to concentrate."

"Yeah, I'll shut up for once. Good luck, Mur-dock."

The time it took for Ethan to project was getting shorter. He had only to stare at the mostly-bare trees on Ms. Stafford's lawn and imagine them as they would look in every season; seconds later he no longer had to imagine.

Even in the Worldmind there was nothing special about Stafford's home. It didn't glow or anything. Ethan had to remember that its appearance was based not only on Stafford's memories but also those of everyone who ever looked at it, including Violet. It was interesting to note that the house's colour shifted between green and blue, but the door was always red. When something was striking like that it was much easier to remember clearly.

Absently, he reached out and opened the passenger side door. It wasn't until he was stepping out of the car that he remembered that he had left his physical form behind, that the car was just a facsimile of the Worldmind. Looking back, he saw the Honda was gone. Once in a while a vague ghost of a car appeared in the spot Violet had parked, along with fuzzy visions of Violet and himself inside it—Ethan's and Violet's present memories, he figured. But since the Honda wasn't a permanent fixture of this spot, there was no reason the Worldmind would keep it here. He didn't let the disappearing car worry him. It was still here, in the real world. Violet was still here.

He crossed the road, trying not to let the odd sounds of cars passing by concern him. Moving cars rarely appeared on the road itself. He figured people had a clearer memory of car sounds outside their homes than they did actual memories of specific cars driving on the road. He didn't get run over during the crossing.

Leaves appeared and vanished and moved around on Stafford's lawn. Her door occasionally appeared open. Ethan looked over his shoulder as though expecting Stafford to show up. There were sometimes memory ghosts of kids playing in the next door lawn and couples walking their dogs on the sidewalk, but these visions faded away as quickly as they came. No, there were no real people here. No one to watch him breaking into someone's house—or the memory of her house, anyway. He was alone.

He turned back toward the house, and saw Stafford sitting in the lawn chair on her porch.

And then she was gone.

Ethan froze. He nearly broke out into a run, but kept his feet still. Was that really Stafford? Did she just project herself here to check up on things? Or was that merely someone's memory of her in front of her house?

It must have been a memory, he reasoned. People no doubt saw her out here any time she sat down. Yes, now that he thought of it, she had had a book in her hand. She wasn't even looking at him.

Even so, he was more on edge. He wasn't trained well enough to definitively know the difference between a memory ghost and an astral projection. Besides that, was it wise to just walk right in the front door like this? Obviously it wasn't Stafford's real front door, but being in the Worldmind it could be booby trapped with some sort of magical ward. A psychic magical ward.

He suddenly found himself missing Neil's Worldmind info dumps. He missed being able to ask questions. But there was nothing to do for it. He was on his own now.

Stafford reappeared in the patio chair, eyes down, several different books appearing and disappearing in her hands at once. Then she was gone again. It's not really her, Ethan told himself. She doesn't know I'm here. But if I don't hurry she'll catch me for real.

He put his hand on the handle of the front door, holding his breath (or the projection of his breath, if that was something he could hold). He felt no shock, he didn't burn up, nothing exploded. So far so good. Next he turned the handle and pushed the door open a crack. Still no booby trap. It appeared he was in the clear.

At first he took cautious steps forward, trying to make little noise, but then remembered that no one was here. No one could be here—not even a dog. Unless Stafford kept psychic pets. But Neil always said the Worldmind came from humanity's collective unconsciousness, so Ethan doubted he'd find animals here. Even so, he had the uncomfortable feeling he was being watched. Like the Worldmind itself was watching him. Maybe it was.

Damn it, not the time to have an existential crisis, he thought. He sped up his movements. Now where would I keep a fadeblade?

First he opened the closet next to the entrance corridor but found only coats shifting from hanger to hanger. He nearly reached in to probe around, but the possibility of "nicking" himself on a fadeblade kept him from being reckless. He pictured suddenly being ejected from the Worldmind, lost and confused in Violet's car.

He kept moving, kept looking. The house was small and, he hoped, it wouldn't take long to search every room. He checked cupboards and cabinets and closets, hoping for that vague sense of emptiness that radiated from fadeblades. Stafford's house interior was about as conspicuous as its exterior. You'd never guess a psychic lived here. A teacher, certainly—there were books and pens and papers and teacups blinking around every surface and shelf—but there was still no sign of crystals or tarot cards or, well, memory swords.

The discordant beat of chillhop tunes and classical jazz filled the house, blending together and cutting out at random, making its own kind of remix. Stafford must have been quite the music lover. No lyrics, though, Ethan noticed. Probably to keep her focused on her reading. The books that bounced around her house were a diverse mix of paperback novels and heavy psychology textbooks. Nothing overtly psychic-y about any of them, but they were enough to confirm that this was, in fact, Stafford's house.

Most of the framed pictures on the wall were of classical art. Renaissance stuff, Ethan recognized. Less Judeo-Christian and more Greco-Roman. There were some photos of sculptures seemingly taken at museums as well. It seemed Stafford was either a classics nerd or an art history buff. Or maybe both. Ethan respected it even if he was more of a doodler than a proper artiste.

Some more investigating led Ethan to find photos of Stafford in casual clothes, surrounded by family or friends. Definitely her house, then. A framed photo in her kitchen cycled through pictures with captions like "Me and Dad in Banff" and "Jasika! BFF!!!". Ethan supposed this was one of those digital photo frames rather than just the Worldmind's usual habit of shifting things around, though the pictures did warp with less regularity than a real slideshow. The pictures would have been cute if they weren't featuring a teacher's private life while Ethan was invading her home. He felt like a creep.

He was about to turn away when he saw someone familiar in one of the photos—someone who wasn't Stafford.

Once again, he saw her with Uncle Vic. They were standing near each other with wine glasses in hand, smiling for the camera.

The picture came and went too quickly for him to read the caption. He waited for it to cycle back, but either the slideshow was too long or that specific photo was a less clear memory and the Worldmind wasn't shifting to it.

What the hell is it between those two? he wondered. There was nothing weird about how they stood in the picture. They weren't leaning against each other romantically or laughing like close friends. They looked more like work colleagues. Except Vic didn't work at Shirewood High.

After another minute of waiting for the photo to appear again to no avail, he gave up. He could figure out a way to ask Vic about her later. For now he needed to find a fadeblade before Stafford got back. He headed upstairs next.

Stafford's bedroom was the first one he entered on the second floor. He really felt like a creep now. For that reason he left her dresser alone—he didn't imagine a fadeblade would fit in an underwear drawer. But he did permit himself to peek in her closet.

A hazy flash of a musketeer costume made him close the closet door quickly, his cheeks burning. No fadeblades. He would have had those blank streaks in his vision if there were one in there when he passed his eyes over it. He didn't need to be so thorough as to figure out what other kinds of outfits Stafford had....

Get your head out of the gutter, Murdock. You're on a mission.

But the mission wasn't going well. There was nothing under the bed. Nothing else of interest on the second floor. No garage to check.

There was a basement though. Probably he should have checked there first, but entering a stranger's basement when they weren't home was creepy enough without being in a world where nightmares could attack you.

When he looked down the basement steps he was worried he'd be descending into a dark pit. On the contrary, it was nice and evenly lit. People don't tend to go into dark places, he reasoned, and when they do they don't remember anything visual, so there wouldn't be any memories of pure darkness. Well, that was one plus to all this Worldmind stuff.

Even so, he took his time going down the stairs. He kept his eyes on his feet the whole way since the number of steps was changing all the time. Nobody remembered exactly how many steps their stairs were.

At last he made it. And he was disappointed.

Maybe he should have been prepared to find nothing but mundane house stuff since everywhere else was perfectly normal, but the sight of laundry machines and cardboard boxes with "BOOKS" written on almost all of them left him feeling deflated. Rumpled clothes piled up and vanished in a laundry basket by the washing machine, and neatly folded stacks of clothes grew and shrank on the small table by the dryer. The squeaking of pipes and rumbling of machinery almost drowned out the constant sound of music, louder here than anywhere else in the house.

Damn it, where's all the psychic shit?

He kicked a box that must have been full of hardcovers and stubbed his toe badly. Miserably, he turned to go back up the stairs, but something caught his attention.

One of the boxes wasn't made of cardboard. It was a trunk, one of those old heavy duty ones that looked almost like a treasure chest. It was scuffed on the edges and a thick film of dust sat on its top.

He approached it and looked closer. A padlock with a four-digit code held the truck shut. The code was set to 0000 and tugging it did nothing. That would have been too easy, he thought with a sigh. Feeling around the box, he found that part of the lid was dented, making a small slit of a hole in the side. He knelt down and tried to peer inside the hole.

"There's nothing in there to see," came a woman's voice from behind him.

Ethan shot up and whipped around. He thought he'd been caught by Stafford. But it wasn't her—and it wasn't a memory ghost either.