Spirit and Dust

10


I WAS REALLY not dressed for breaking into a graveyard.

Spring Creek, Minnesota, was a small town about an hour from the Twin Cities, and the cemetery lay on the outskirts. We’d parked in the lane in back of the place and crept through grass that crunched with frost to reach the perimeter.

I shivered in my borrowed coat and gazed up at the fence that Carson expected me to climb—brick and iron, and about nine feet tall. The moon was still bright enough to see the points on top of the bars. Were people in Minnesota that desperate to call on their dearly departed outside of visiting hours?

“Can’t you just pick the lock on the front gate?” I whispered, even though we were the only people within miles. But voices carried, and I didn’t want to accidentally wake the dead.

Carson didn’t deny that lock picking was in his skill set. “The front gate is too obvious. There are probably security cameras. And I’m not sure we weren’t followed.”

“You think we were followed?” The only thing worse than the people I knew would cause trouble—Maguire’s goons, Taylor and Gerard, any local police officers or security guards—were the nameless, faceless “others” who had kidnapped a young woman and shot her bodyguard in cold blood.

“I took precautions,” Carson assured me. “But I’m not a hundred percent certain.” He crouched and offered his linked hands like a step. “Come on. I’ll boost you up.”

I eyed the spikes on top of the fence—dull and mostly for show, but still spikes. Then I eyed Carson, judging the estimated levels of sight line (his) and hemline (mine). “You have got to be kidding.”

“What?” There was a challenge there. “You were never a cheerleader?”

A ridiculous question, and from his glance at my Hello Kitty skull T-shirt, he knew it.

“Were you?” I doubted it. One, I couldn’t imagine that interning for a crime overlord left much time for the NCAA. Two, he wasn’t pretty enough. He wore clean-cut like a disguise, but there was a no-time-for-nonsense intensity to his gaze and an older-than-he-should-be hardness to his jaw, as if he’d had to toughen up in a hurry.

Again with the challenging lift of his brow. “You don’t believe I spend my Saturdays cheering the Gophers to victory?”

My snort fogged in the cold. “You’d have to manage to be cheerful first.”

Then the corner of his mouth quirked up—not as far as cheer, but just a hint of shared humor and a slash of handsome guy-dimple.

Sainted Mary Magdalene. If my lungs weren’t half frozen, my breath would have whooshed right out of me.

No, he was not pretty. He was worse. Devilish.

There was a bodiless sigh from the darkness. “I would greatly appreciate it if you two stopped flirting and got on with this unseemly business.”

Mrs. Hardwicke, our ghostly chaperone, was still along for the ride. She faded out when I didn’t give her my attention, but she always managed to pop back in when she had something to say.

“Fine,” I said. At Carson’s bemused look, I explained, “Mrs. Hardwicke is impatient.” No reason to mention the flirting part. At least I couldn’t blush with ice in my veins. I put my toe in his clasped hands and warned, “Do not look up my skirt.”

“Eyes down,” he promised soberly. “Scout’s honor.”

I only cared on principle. I rebelled in a lot of ways, but indecent underwear wasn’t one of them. I’d talked to one too many shades who’d died embarrassed because of not listening to their mothers on that score.

I grabbed the bars of the fence for balance. On Carson’s count, I jumped while he lifted me like I weighed nothing. Somehow I managed not to skewer myself on the pointy top, then got a toe up on the horizontal rail, eased over, and dropped to the other side.

Carson, as far as I could tell, just vaulted across. Maybe he really was a Jedi.

“Which way?” he asked, blowing into his cupped hands.

“Give me a sec.” I flexed my own fingers to get the blood going, and with it, the intangible me. I pushed my psyche out like a sixth-sense radar net and got my bearings.

The graves around us were relatively new. Here and there the soft echoes of souls lingered, damped by the earth. Later, as dust returned to dust, the last remnant traces on this side of the Veil would unravel and vanish.

“Is this weird for you?” asked Carson. “Being in a graveyard?”

It was my turn to raise a brow. “Weird compared with what? Talking to Alexis’s dead grandmother in the backseat of a Ford Taurus?”

He gave me that point. “When you put it that way …”

I tucked my hands into the coat pockets, wrapping my right hand around the mausoleum key. An electric tingle washed over me, carrying subtle information, like flavors I could taste but had no words to describe.

“The remnants here”—I gestured around us—“are all sleeping. Proper burials are like that. Most spirits have someplace better to hang out. What’s left are the memories of loved ones visiting. They blend together, and it’s kind of pretty, actually.”

It was more like an abstract watercolor than a patchwork quilt. But with the key in my hand, I could sense which part of the psychic finger-painting we needed. Like called to like, and key called to lock.

Through the graveyard came the soft sound of metal on metal. I jumped and Carson did, too, but there was no way to tell where the noise had come from.

“You heard that, right?” I whispered, unsure and scared, despite all my big talk about the sleeping dead. In searching the dark, we’d ended up back-to-back, so nothing could sneak up on us through the silver-iced headstones and the black moon shadows beneath.

“Yeah.” His low answer vibrated through my shoulder blades. “But it could be a mile or more away. Sound carries at night.”

“Okay.” I made a tight fist around the key in my pocket. “But let’s hurry anyway.”

He swept out an arm, inviting me to take the lead. “Lay on, Macduff.”

Dude. He’d just quoted Shakespeare and given me the reins of this crazy train. It was a good thing I had more important things to figure out than the mystery of this guy. He was so much more than just the hired muscle.

I led the way through neat rows of modern marble headstones on to where the markers got more worn and more eclectic and uneven. There were a few small crypts, but we were headed to a sandstone building with marble accents and topiary guardians beside the door. A miniature mansion for the dead.

I stopped a few feet away, checking the place out with my other senses. Carson’s vitality made a distracting gravity well in the spiritual landscape. I adjusted for his presence like a pilot adjusts for wind speed. That wasn’t just me being girly. I had to do the same thing with Taylor, but I was used to him. Working with him was like a preset on my psychic radio.

“Hand me the key,” Carson said, before I could get too worried about Taylor and what was happening back at the Maguire mansion. I gave Carson the key as ordered, happy to let him take the lead in the tomb-robbing part. At the door he took a small flashlight from his coat pocket and used it to find the keyhole. Turning the key took some effort, but it finally gave way with a loud clunk of the tumblers.

The door opened smoothly. I held my breath as a swirl of air rushed in, pulling the dead leaves around our feet with it. But nothing deathly wafted out, and I allowed myself a sigh.

“At least it doesn’t look like Dracula is buried here,” Carson said, echoing my relief. I peered over his shoulder as he passed the flashlight beam over the vaults, which were sealed with smooth stone and marked with the names of those resting inside. The chamber smelled of metal polish and cold marble, with a whiff of classic floral perfume that said our Mrs. Hardwicke was around. It was clean, but felt echoing and empty, even to my remnant senses. Everyone there was long gone or sleeping deeply.

I slid around Carson and went in, my footsteps ringing. He followed my movements with the flashlight. The walls weren’t all marble—there was a stained-glass window at one end of the building, and another over the door.

“What are we looking for?” Carson asked.

A good question. “Something that doesn’t belong here, I guess.”

The beam swept over the marked crypts. Big family. Old mausoleum. Lots of crypts. Carson voiced what I was thinking. “Where do we start? I’m not breaking into a grave unless absolutely necessary. I didn’t bring a sledgehammer.”

“Give me a minute.” Alexis’s grandmother was just a faint glow in the shadows of the chamber, but the misty aura took on her familiar shape as I gave her my attention.

“Do you know when Alexis was last here?” I asked her. Was it too much to hope that Alexis had been wearing Mrs. Hardwicke’s pearls when there? If she’d been there. I was beginning to doubt the genius of this plan.

Disappointment laced her tone. “The last time I was here with Alexis, I was alive and she was just a child. In my day, people visited their dearly departed. I brought flowers for Mr. Hardwicke twice a month.”

She nodded at a marble-sealed crypt, about head high. The marker read JAMES HARDWICKE III. BELOVED HUSBAND AND FATHER. There was a brass sconce next to it—I thought it was some sort of lamp. There were more, spaced evenly between the vaults. Then I realized they were empty vases for flowers.

Mrs. Hardwicke sniffed her disapproval. “I think it’s clear that no one has been here in quite some time.”

I pressed her for useful information. “Did Alexis say anything when she hid the key in the safe? Did you sense her thoughts, like if she might have hidden something here?”

“No.” Her image turned watery, weakening. “I want to help Alexis, but this is more difficult than I thought.”

I realized I was the only thing keeping her coherent and aware. When I relaxed my psychic hold, she dissolved into a sigh of fog, but I could still feel her hanging about in a formless sort of way.

“What did she say?” asked Carson, sounding edgy, or maybe just uneasy. I mean, standing in the dark among the dead might get to some people.

“She doesn’t know when Alexis was last here,” I said. “Which only means that Alexis wasn’t wearing the necklace when she visited. We’re back to square one.”

“What about …?” He gestured with the flashlight toward the vaults that held the remains of Alexis’s maternal ancestors.

I took a deep breath just contemplating the heavy lifting it would take to get anything coherent from the scraps of memory that lingered there. Could I do it without getting my hands on at least one set of physical remains?

“There’s not much here to work with,” I told him. “Before I try to pull off a miracle, let’s look for signs of any disturbance, like if she hid something. You check the physical, I’ll cover the psychic.”

“Got it.” Carson began a systematic study of the marble-fronted crypts, running his hands and the flashlight over the seals and the ledges in front. That left me in the semidarkness, but I didn’t need light to read the spirits in the place and know they were undisturbed and unhelpful.

I ended up standing where Mrs. Hardwicke had disappeared. In front of me were two side-by-side crypts. Mr. Hardwicke III was in one. The other engraving said ALEXANDRA HATTERSLEY HARDWICKE, BELOVED WIFE AND MOTHER.

This was nuts. How could a girl like Alexis hide anything in one of the vaults? Even if it was unoccupied and unsealed, opening it would be a task for a heavy-lifting crew.

Then why come here? I put myself in her shoes, like I did with the remnants too old and tattered to read properly. She must have felt this was a secure place. She came here with her grandmother—maybe there were happy associations. They brought flowers.…

Bingo! The answer was staring me in the face. Or rather, I was staring right at it—the empty brass vase right above eye level, between Mr. and Mrs. James Hardwicke III.

“Carson, come here!” The vase would definitely hide something small dropped inside. I could reach the lip but not down into it. “Give me another boost, will you?”

He saw what I was up to and handed me the flashlight, then offered his linked hands as he had outside the cemetery wall. I stepped into them, grabbing his shoulder for balance.

He had nice, solid shoulders, and he took my weight without a quiver. I was only up long enough to get my hand in the vase and grab the object inside. I gave a soft whoop of triumph and Carson let me back down, then moved closer to see as I aimed the flashlight onto the treasure in my palm.

It was a plastic mummy, about three inches long, wrapped in white bandages, ready for the sarcophagus. Or maybe to come awake and start shuffling after Boris Karloff, I don’t know.

“That’s definitely not a jackal,” I said, not sure what to think. I was flummoxed.

Carson took it from my hand. “Doesn’t look like it’s been here that long. Maybe some visiting kid left his toy?”

“A kid couldn’t have put it in that vase, it’s too high.”

“Is that writing on it?” He twisted the plastic figure in the beam of the flashlight. “I think it’s an o and an i.”

Puzzle pieces were lining up in my head. Alexis, studying the classical worlds, like ancient Rome and Greece, from which it was just a short mental hop across the Mediterranean Sea to Egypt.

Ancient Egypt, with its mummies and tombs and elaborate burial rituals and pantheon of animal-headed deities.

“Carson”—I grabbed his arm in excitement—“it’s got to be a clue. Do you know who the ancient Egyptian god of mummification was? Anubis. The jackal-headed god.”

I saw him connecting the dots, too. “So you’re thinking this is related to the Oosterhouse Jackal?”

“If Alexis left this here,” I said, “it’s too much of a coincidence—”

That was as far as I got before Mrs. Hardwicke appeared so suddenly and so brightly that I shrieked and dropped the flashlight. Carson caught it before it hit the ground.

“Someone is coming,” said the shade, her form shivering with urgency and emotion. “And I’ve seen one of them before, with Alexis.”

“One of them?” I asked, and Carson looked at me sharply. I kept my gaze on Mrs. Hardwicke. “How many are there?”

“Three,” she warned. “And they know you’re here.”