Spirit and Dust

17


WE MADE GOOD time down the interstate, in our second stolen car of the day. I was so worried about losing the lead on Alexis, so worried about getting to the jackal ahead of anyone else, that one more auto theft didn’t seem that big a deal.

I had thought the headache might be the result of the sextuplet of promises duking it out in my subconscious, but at some point I’d felt one geas knit seamlessly to the other. Alexis’s life came first. But as the clues came together I was convinced that the trail of the Jackal paralleled the trail of Alexis’s kidnappers.

Three Cokes and a thirty-minute nap had banished the migraine by the time we got out of the Chicago traffic. On the open road, Carson drove fast, but not obnoxiously so.

The low-slung bucket seat of the muscle car made me feel like I was reclining on the pavement. “If you showed up at my house in this car,” I said, “my aunt would never let me go out with you.”

Carson glanced at me, then back at the road. “Does she have something against muscle cars?”

“No. Just Corvettes. I think a guy with a Corvette broke her heart once.”

I unfolded—again—the note that Carson had given me from Elbows. “From your boyfriend,” he’d said, once we’d boosted our ride. Elbows apologized for not finding a name, just that the query looking for the field notes of Oosterhouse’s expedition had come from someone with an OI student ID. It kept this Michael Johnson guy in the running.

“Let’s talk about this,” said Carson, picking up the torn pieces of the card with the ear from the car’s cupholder. I’d shown them to him when I’d caught him up on my adventures, and he’d confirmed that it was an eavesdropping spell he’d seen before. My cousin Phin would call it representational magic. Apparently the Maguire operation called it convenient and electronically un-detectable.

“You think the same guys who kidnapped Alexis are responsible for this and for the attack in the cemetery?”

“There’s magic involved in all three things.” I counted them off on my fingers. “The kidnapping, the attack, and the ear spell. Either it’s all one group or the Midwest is overrun by roving gangs of magicians.”

He actually considered that possibility, then discarded it. “And you think they’re related to the Brotherhood of the Black Jackal that your aunt told you about?”

“They have the Institute in common, and it’s hard to ignore the jackal-y theme.” I turned in my seat to face him, the better to make my case. I’d take a hazy theory over clueless stumbling any day. “This is what I think. Oosterhouse’s secret society … say it’s less Dead Egyptians Society and more Magic Fastball Club. And the guys we met in the cemetery somehow found out about it and revived the tradition.”

He looked doubtful. “So a bunch of students stumble across a reference to Oosterhouse in their studies and start experimenting with magic?”

I shrugged. “Why not? Half my dorm mates are experimenting with something or another.”

He slid me a curious glance, then looked back at the road. “What are you experimenting with?”

“A life of crime.” I didn’t want to think about school right now. Especially midterms on Monday—and the fact that I hadn’t studied for them.

Carson ventured his own theory. “Maybe this Brotherhood never really died out. Just went deeper underground.”

“Aunt Ivy did say the one thing she was sure of was that the Brotherhood did exist. And that we had to stop them from getting the Jackal.”

He let that sink in while he passed a slow-moving minivan. “Did she specifically say that it was some kind of weapon of mass destruction? Maybe it’s just power, not inherently good or bad.”

“Don’t give me that ‘magical artifacts don’t kill people, people kill people’ business,” I said. “You can pry my Goodnight Farms magical bath products out of my cold dead fingers, but I’m one hundred percent in favor of Nazi-face-melting artifacts control.”

An awkward pause sucked the air out of the car. I was actually relieved when Carson called me out. “Are you seriously going to turn this into a debate about the Second Amendment?”

It was ridiculous, considering him, organized crime management in training, and considering me, unpaid psychic consultant for the FBI. But I pretended it wasn’t. “I’m from Texas. Everything is about the right to bear arms. It’s kind of annoying, no matter which side you’re on.”

I caught him smiling at that before he turned serious again. “What about this Book of the Dead that your aunt couldn’t find?”

“I don’t know.” I closed my eyes, trying to recall exactly what the guys had said at the mausoleum. “In the graveyard, the Brotherhood was looking for something, but it wasn’t the Jackal. They said if they couldn’t find it, the Jackal wouldn’t matter, and Alexis would be useless. Maybe they’re still looking for the book.”

He took the flash drive out of his pocket and handed it to me. “Do you think there’s a clue to the book on there?”

I looked into the mummy’s nonexistent eyes, then back at Carson. “I’m sorry. I can only talk to the real dead, not the plastic kind.”

“Cute. But maybe Alexis found a clue in her studies—the ancient world seems to be the connecting thread. She knows about magic, so she might look at information differently from other students. Some link that’s been missed for eighty-odd years.”

“Eighty years is a long time.” Also, what were the odds she found something my aunt couldn’t?

“Alexis is genius smart. She was on college week on Jeopardy!” He glanced at me. “Maybe she knew these guys, but when she found out what the jackal was, she refused to give them information about it.”

The theory held together loosely, but there were still a lot of unraveling threads.

“Did you really not know she was thinking of going to grad school at the Institute?” I asked.

“No. She didn’t tell me.” Carson had his game face on, but he couldn’t quite hide that her silence bothered him. A lot. “Maybe she thought I would tell Maguire.”

I left that thread alone. We drove in silence, Carson passing another car at faster-than-posted speed. I assumed he knew what he was doing, because we couldn’t afford to get pulled over. There was almost certainly an APB out for me, or him, or both of us by now.

“So what did the Brotherhood overhear?” he finally asked.

It took me a second to rewind as far as the eavesdropping spell. “That the jackal—or a jackal—is in St. Louis. Which, since the spell was in the book, they knew already. Now they just know we know.”

Carson was quiet another long moment. “Did Tweed Jacket call you by your name?”

Oh yeah. Now they knew that, too.

“Just my last name.”

Whatever he was thinking made him flex his hands on the wheel. I tried to let it pass, but all I could imagine was my family caught between the Maguire operation and the Brotherhood of the Magical Jackasses. I hoped Saint Gertrude had reinforcements, because it was going to take a truckload of angels to protect my nearest and dearest.

“What?” I demanded. “What are you thinking?”

Another eternity went by before he let me know. “We’ve been wondering why they asked Maguire to get the jackal, when they know more about it than we do. Maybe they need his resources. Especially if this is a group of students.”

“And Maguire has lots of resources,” I said, not seeing what that had to do with me.

“Money, magic, and muscle,” Carson agreed. “But by killing Alexis’s bodyguard and kidnapping her, the kidnappers made sure we got one more thing: a psychic who could talk to the dead.”

I shivered despite the warm air blowing through the vents. “How could they have known about me?”

“There’s this new invention called the Internet.”

I didn’t give that the answer it deserved because he was driving. “How did they know Maguire would grab me?”

Carson had an answer for that, too. “It’s not a secret that Maguire likes things his own way. But even if you’d stuck with the FBI, you’d be on Alexis’s trail.”

I stared at him, my brain stalling on the implications of that theory. “But why?”

“That, Sunshine, is the face-melting question.” He looked at me—held my eyes with a sober intensity that made my heart race in a way that had nothing to do with him taking his eyes off the road at eighty bajillion miles an hour. “Maybe I should drop you off at the next police station. You can call your junior G-man from there.”

That was so not an option. I was way past any magical compulsion now. This was all me.

“Maybe you should shut up and put your eyes on the road,” I said.

Carson almost smiled, and as he turned his gaze back to the highway, he moved his hand like he would take mine, squeeze it, say we were in this together.

Instead, he just reached for the radio and turned up the volume on some vintage Kings of Leon.


St. Louis’s Forest Park was home to the zoo, a couple of museums, a theater, some sculptures, a greenhouse, and lots of winding paths. The lanes were full of strollers and joggers and the air was crisp and the afternoon sun set fire to the autumn leaves. It was exactly what fall should be, except for the part where lives were at stake.

“Maybe the museum will have a café,” I said, stretching five hours of driving out of my back as we walked through the parking lot.

Carson gave me a look, sort of droll, sort of disbelieving. “What happened to the milk shake and french fries you ate two hours ago?”

“That was two hours ago.” Thinking about food helped me not think about kidnappers and killers.

Our destination was a large Art Deco building, set on a hill that swept steeply down to a lawn and an ornamental lake. I was already viewing it anxiously, hoping the jackal was there, praying the Brotherhood was not. The knot in my gut made another tight loop when I saw the banner fluttering across the museum’s facade.

THE ART OF POMPEII.

Great. Just to make absolutely sure this situation sucked as much as it could.

“What’s wrong?” Carson asked when I didn’t immediately follow him up the steps.

“Freaking Pompeii. That’s what’s wrong.”

He didn’t ask. Maybe it was self-explanatory. Artifacts of large-scale death are a pretty obvious problem for me. “Let’s just go in, reconnoiter, look for any clues. We’re not sure the jackal that’s here is the actual Jackal.”

“Okay,” I said, pushing aside my nerves. Some of my nerves.

“Just stay under the radar,” he said. “I’m sure by now there’s an APB out on a giraffe-legged goth member of the Weasley family.”

“Gazelle,” I corrected him. Like I could play it cool with that much adrenaline zipping through my system.

“If any cops look at you cross-eyed, nudge me, and I’ll do my thing.”

“Anything else, Jedi Master?”

“Yes. Assume there are security cameras and don’t strike up any conversations with people no one else can see. Try to look like we’re just a couple of normal people out on a date or something.”

How the hell was I not going to think about all those things? Did he not realize how much stuff was in my brain all the time?

But I just said, “Sure. Life-and-death situations make great first dates.”

“Think of it this way,” he said, grabbing the door handle and giving it an effortless pull. “It’s better than a graveyard.”

Inside, the lobby was a soaring marble vault, all curves and columns and clean lines. The soft voices of patrons sang in the barrel arch of the ceiling. Admission was free, but Carson put some money in the donation box. I knew he was keeping our cover, but it didn’t feel contrived. I supposed he was a civic-minded and generous crime trainee.

“Where do you want to start?” he asked.

A sign warned that the museum would close in an hour. “We don’t have much time.” I looked for some clue to the layout of the place. Sculptures and bronzes stood sentry in the main hall, keeping the ancient and pre-Renaissance art from mingling with the post-Enlightenment stuff. I glimpsed a hall of white marble statues and nodded. “Let’s try this way.”

We passed a security guard, and I slipped my hand into Carson’s, entwining our fingers. He shot me a startled glance, and I said, “We’re on a date, remember? That was your idea.”

He glanced, almost imperceptibly, over my shoulder, then smiled. “One of my better ones.” He bent his head close to mine, murmuring into the space behind my ear, “Security camera in the corner.”

When he straightened, it took me two swallows before I could get my voice to work. “You better not be making that up,” I said, covering flusterment with a whitewash of grumpy. “Or I’ll kick your ass when this is over.”

He didn’t grin, but there was a devilish gleam in his eye and he kept hold of my hand as we passed a row of Roman statuary. “You already kicked my ass when this started.”

I gave the cracked marble figures the once-over for any psychic hot spots or auras, playing it cool, like the scratch of his chin on my neck didn’t dress me up in goose bumps. “That wasn’t your ass.”

He laughed, a surprised guffaw that drew stares and a “Shhh” from the docent in the corner. Which made me laugh, which earned a basilisk glare, which made it harder to smother the hysteria and, jeez, maybe I was punch-drunk from lack of sleep and too much soda.

“Nice job if you get us kicked out,” said Carson, no longer laughing as he hustled me into the next room.

I was still giggling, which made it that much further to crash when I sputtered out, like a jet reaching max altitude.

The dusty weight of death pressed down on me like a ton of ash. Old and communal, preserved and petrified, it filled up my lungs, coated my throat, and choked off my breath.

Carson caught me around the waist when my knees buckled. He didn’t ask what was wrong, just, “What do you need?”

I needed to get my defenses in place. I needed all my concentration to push the force field of my psyche out, holding back the echoes of the crushing weight of rebel earth, the staggering impact of thousands of simultaneous deaths preserved by the very cataclysm that had killed them.

This was what flirting got me. I’d known the exhibit was there, but I’d blundered in unprepared anyway. I couldn’t blame anyone but myself.

“Daisy.” Carson gave me a shake, sounding honest-to-God worried. “Are you in there?”

“Yeah,” I wheezed. I’d gotten my feet literally and figuratively back under me.

The room had been set up like a Roman villa, to showcase the art in the mosaics and statuary. The pieces were all in excellent shape, but the scale of death they’d witnessed had soaked into the stone, so the fractures and patches showed on the psychic surface. On small platforms around the room were plaster casts made from the hardened ash molds of the dead, preserved where they fell when the volcano erupted. They were part of the whole display, like Mother Nature’s grisly art.

“Come on,” Carson said, steering me toward a rear exit. There was a sign that pointed to the restrooms, and in the empty hallway he propped me up against the wall and asked, “What just happened?”

“Stupid Pompeii.” I pushed off from the wall and staggered to the water fountain. My throat felt like I’d lived through the pyroclastic cloud.

He followed me, standing by until I finished my slurping gulps. “Daisy … I mean, what did you do? I felt that.”

That got my attention, and I straightened, wiping a drop of water from my lip with a shaking hand. “What do you mean? You felt the remnants?”

“No. Maybe. I don’t know.” He grabbed my hand and held it up between us. “When you choked and doubled over, holding on to you was like holding on to a live wire. I thought my heart was going to stop. And then I felt like I could breathe fire.”

I stared at him, wide-eyed, over our clasped hands. “What does that mean?”

“I have no idea.”

Maybe not, but he was thinking something. I could see the wheels turning down deep, where he kept the whole of himself from public view.

“Do you feel anything now?” I asked, and by Saint Gertrude’s many cats, I swear I only meant anything magical. I mean, literally magical. I did not mean, Do you feel how close we’re standing, or the way my arm is pressed against your chest and yours against mine? I most especially didn’t mean, Do you feel how my heart is going to stop if you pull me any closer?

“No,” he said, with a slow smile that addressed all the things I hadn’t meant but sort of did. “You’re a live wire, Daisy Goodnight. But whatever happened is gone.”

I was saved from having to think of a reply—or think at all—by an announcement over the loudspeaker that the museum would be closing in thirty minutes.

“We’d better hurry,” he said. But he hesitated just an instant before dropping my hand.

We dropped our pretense, too, half running back to the Ancient Cultures wing, through Greece, which was full of beautiful urns and pottery but contained nothing even vaguely jackal-y. “Where the hell is Egypt?”

“In Northern Africa,” said Carson. And he thought I didn’t take things seriously. At the juncture of halls, he glanced in both directions, then said with authority, “That way.”

We went through Mesopotamia, where a stone carving held the spirit echo of a mason. Art was like that, full of shades that had etched bits of themselves into rock or painted bits of their souls onto canvas, fed by the reverent awe of the museum visitors.

I didn’t have time for awe. I caught the ghostly essence of frankincense and myrrh and a whisper that quickened my pace, a hum that sang in my skull and down my spine. Death was my resonant frequency, and something beyond the next arched doorway was playing my tune.

I expected a ghost, but there were two. One was an Egyptian woman, complete with elaborately dressed black hair and exotic makeup. Her clothes were obvious finery, and a heavy bejeweled necklace covered more of her chest than her linen dress did. Her kohl-lined eyes stared in wide dismay at the other ghost, a middle-aged security guard with a crew cut and a thick neck, who looked every bit as surprised as she did.

Maybe because he was standing over his own body, which lay on the floor, blood spreading into a scarlet Rorschach blot across the white marble tile.