Spirit and Dust

20


THEY BOTH TURNED at the sound of my voice, McSlackerson with shock and dismay, and Carson—his gaze lit with undiluted relief that brought a totally inappropriate flush to my face.

McSlackerson was easy to read. He must have realized the attempt to grab me had gone wrong and stalling Carson—why else would the thief still be there?—was no longer necessary. His hand tightened on his messenger bag and he raised it up high. “If you come any closer, I’ll drop this, and the jackal will break.”

Would it? Would he, after all this trouble to get it?

“What would the Brotherhood say?” I asked, drawing his attention.

His brows shot up. “Oh, you know about that?” He glanced from me to Carson. “You two do work fast.”

“Shut up,” growled Carson.

Cleo was studying the situation, walking freely around us, invisible to the guys. “I don’t think the statue will break. He wrapped it most carefully.”

“He wrapped the artifact up,” I relayed, relishing the flare of alarm in McSlackerson’s eyes and the complete lack of smirk on his face. “It might take a bump or two.”

Anticipation made Carson almost smile. Yeah, that looked personal, all right. We would be quite a team if one of us stopped keeping secrets from the other.

He launched himself after McSlackerson, who had started running. Carson caught up with him in a few long strides and took him down in a flying tackle. The bag fell out of the thief’s hand just a few inches off the floor.

The two guys, however, hit the ground with a bone-jarring crack and slid across the tile to crash against a pillar holding a Meissen vase. The pillar rocked, and I held my breath. This could be a bad day for vases.

“This is the most exciting thing that’s happened since I woke up in this place,” said Cleo.

McSlackerson heaved Carson off him, flipping him with an abruptness that smacked Carson’s head against the floor. It stunned him and gave the thief time to struggle to his feet.

He was going for the messenger bag, and I moved to head him off. But Carson was on it. He grabbed the wires leading to the alarm on the pedestal where they’d crashed, then, with a huge stretch, he just barely got a finger on the thief. But it was enough. McSlackerson stiffened and dropped to the floor.

“What did you do?” I gasped, staring at the guy as he lay twitching like a dog chasing rabbits in its dreams. “Did you just magically Taser him?”

“Something like that,” wheezed Carson, still on the ground. “You wanted to know if I could whammy someone.”

“But he still lives,” said Cleo, petulant with disappointment.

“Yeah,” I murmured. “But he probably wishes he didn’t right now.”

“Is the magician going to cut out the knave’s heart?” she asked hopefully.

“No!” I snapped, because I was a little unnerved by the way Carson had just dropped the guy in his tracks. “There will be no removing of hearts or any other body parts.”

“Tempting,” said Carson, standing up with a groan, “but there’s no time for that. I don’t know how quickly the zap will wear off. Grab his bag and let’s get out of here.”

“He stabbed a guy!” I protested. “We can’t let him get away.”

Carson looked at me, raising his brows. “You want to stick around and answer questions? More police will be here any minute. I don’t think they’re just going to shake our hands and let us go.”

He was right. We’d been lucky, or the Brotherhood had been effective in delaying law enforcement, but either way, we were out of time. There was heavy-duty mojo at work here, something the police weren’t going to be able to handle. And neither was I, if I ended up in jail.

“Drag him over here,” I said, pointing to a bronze Degas ballerina. Carson set his jaw, like he might argue, but then he grabbed McSlackerson by the collar and hauled his limp carcass across the room. Cleo moved primly out of the way, which was sort of funny considering she didn’t have an actual body.

“Are you going to sacrifice him to your goddess?” she asked. “Normally I’d suggest a bull or a goat, but it seems a shame to waste the blood of your enemy if it might get your power back.”

“What is it with you and the bloodshed?” I asked. “Are all Egyptian women this way?”

“I would not know,” she said, with that casual arrogance of hers. “I am the daughter of—”

I rolled my eyes and unbuckled my belt. “The daughter of Isis. I remem—”

And then I did remember. It would have dawned on me sooner, except that I’d been in the middle of freaking out about losing my superpower.

“You mean you really are Cleopatra?”

“Of course.” She looked down her aquiline nose—I’d never have a better chance to use that word—as if she weren’t a foot shorter than me. “Who else would I be?”

In spite of everything, I gave a giddy laugh. I was talking to a remnant of Cleo-freaking-patra. No wonder she was such a vivid shade. Even this tiny piece of her, tied to some artifact, was fed by the epic legend of memory.

“Well, that explains a lot,” I said, trying to keep my cool. “The arrogance, for one thing.”

Carson, with McSlackerson still hanging from his grip on his collar, looked between me and the space that Cleo occupied. “Do you think you can cut short the confab with your invisible friend so we can get on with this?”

Cleo’s painted brows arched to the braided black bangs of her wig, then lowered into a scowl. “He is very impertinent, your magician.”

“Yes, he is,” I said, but I got busy binding the thief’s arms around the base of the statue with my thin studded belt. I was momentarily grateful my remnant sense was wacked out, because I didn’t want to know what Degas would think about knave drool on his little ballerina’s slippers.

Carson sighed loudly and started going through McSlackerson’s pockets. “I don’t even want to know.”

“Her Highness says you are impertinent.” I cinched the belt around the thief’s wrists tight enough to make him groan. It wouldn’t have to hold long, and I didn’t really care about cutting off blood circulation.

“Still,” said Cleo, studying Carson from behind. “I can see why you keep him around. He is very manly, as well as adept. Power is very attractive.”

“She also says you’re a dish,” I relayed. And I didn’t bother to deny it.

“That’s nice,” said Carson. His rifling had turned up a wallet and cell phone, and he started flipping through the log of recent calls.

Something under McSlackerson’s cuff caught my eye, and I pushed up his sleeve. On his forearm was a tattoo of a jackal, lean and pointy. I’d seen it in Egyptian art and hieroglyphs too often to mistake it for anything else. “Look at this.”

“Appropriate,” Cleopatra said with a sniff. “Jackals are scavengers and thieves.”

I brushed the inked skin with my thumb and got a shock of remnant energy so strong my whole arm tingled. It hurt like a smack to the funny bone, even through the numbness of my psychic senses. I gasped, half in pain and half in relief to feel anything spirit related.

“Check this out, Carson. I wonder if this is some kind of membership badge for their brotherhood. There’s something weird about it, some kind of psychic punch.…” I turned to see why he wasn’t answering. “Are you even listening to me?”

Carson was staring at McSlackerson’s phone, and whatever he saw there put an unhappy knot between his brows.

“What?” I asked.

“Nothing,” he answered. Except it was obviously something, and he wasn’t telling me.

“He’s lying,” said Cleopatra, in a darker tone, the girlish veneer slipping away to show the formidable young woman she’d been. She turned her gaze toward me, and I understood how she’d swayed such powerful men, reclaimed and ruled the kingdom of Egypt. “Be careful, priestess. I think he cares for you, but he may care for something else more.”

The way she said that made me wonder how much she recalled of her own life. Despite the time pressure, I had to ask, “Do you remember them? Caesar and Antony?”

“No. They came later.” I understood what she meant—any memories of those men belonged to some other remnant. Still, there was a heaviness to her sigh. “But men are the same always. Do not doubt they love, and do not doubt their love won’t matter.”

There was a bang from the front of the museum, the crash of one of the doors slamming open, and the sound of running footsteps. The open chambers of the museum carried the warning clearly. Carson put the phone in his pocket and grabbed the thief’s bag. “We have to go. Now.”

McSlackerson, maybe warned by the same noises, flexed his bound fingers. He must have been faking unconsciousness for who knows how long. But he was tied up, and there wasn’t a reason for my heart to pound against my ribs.

No reason except the daughter of Isis.

“Cleo—” I warned.

Too late. The thief’s fingers closed on an intangible fold of her linen shift. Cleopatra gave a start of surprise, then shock, then fear. And then she vanished.

I watched Cleopatra disappear, grabbed at her with my psyche and felt the worst sort of nothing—the freaky Novocaine numbness where your brain knows something awful just happened and your senses try to deny there’s a hole where your wisdom tooth used to be.

The last pharaoh of Egypt. It didn’t matter that I knew it wasn’t all of her, or that there were who knew how many other remnant versions all over the world. This one—this unique moment in this amazing woman’s life—had just been used up like a Kleenex for this guard-stabbing, priceless-artifact-stealing, mafia-princess-kidnapping a*shole to spit out his gum.

McSlackerson snapped the belt around his wrists and it crumbled to ash, the metal buckle tinkling to the floor. He looked from me, staring at him in shock and outrage, to Carson, holding the bag—literally—to the door, where police would be pouring through any second. Then he jumped to his feet and ran like the jackal he was.

Fury burned off the numbness. I started after him, but Carson grabbed me. “Leave him. Let’s go.”

He yanked me with him through a different doorway, to a dead end full of modern art. “Brilliant!” I said, strangling my voice down to a whisper. “We’re trapped.”

A whisper wasn’t good enough. Carson clapped a hand over my mouth and pushed me against the wall next to the connecting archway, flattening us there, out of sight.

“Calm down.” He breathed the words into my ear, hardly stirring any air, probably because there wasn’t any air between us—pressed together from chest to hip, our legs tangled up, his cheek against mine, his lips against my hair. Pressed any tighter and we would melt into the plaster.

Even though I knew it was simple expediency—maybe because it was expedient and efficient and all the things Carson was when something needed doing—my heart fluttered at the feel of his arms around me and his body against mine and his broad shoulders between me and the whole world.

The police charged into the next room, yelling things like “Clear!” and “He’s not here!”

“Think invisible thoughts,” Carson whispered, and I gave an infinitesimal nod. Which was all I could do, because he hadn’t taken his fingers from over my mouth. Maybe he didn’t trust me not to give us away.

Rubber soles squeaked in the doorway. If I could have drawn a breath, I would have held it.

Then someone said, “This is a dead end. He didn’t go this way.”

“He’s going for the back exit,” said another officer, and the footsteps retreated.

Carson waited a long moment before moving, and then only to put his hand on the wall beside my head. His breath—when he finally let himself breathe—skimmed my neck and raised gooseflesh. Even without magic, without my extra senses, there was an electric zing everywhere we touched. Which was just about everywhere.

“What about the security cameras?” I whispered.

“I shorted them out when I grabbed the wire to zap our friend back there.”

“Oh.” I shivered, for reasons I couldn’t quite untangle.

Be careful, priestess. Cleopatra’s observation became a warning. Power is attractive.

“Okay,” he said, as if shoring up his strength. He’d used as much magic as I had psychic energy and been in a fistfight. Still, his arms were steady as he pushed off the wall just enough to look down at me. If I hadn’t been propped up, the anguished relief in his eyes, from that intimate an angle, would have leveled me.

“When you passed out,” he murmured, searching my face, “I thought I’d hurt you.”

I couldn’t bring myself to tell him that he had. I wasn’t sure I could voice it at all and keep going. I felt stretched to a fragile filament. Admitting weakness might break me.

So I didn’t. “It takes more than some guy channeling a volcano to keep me down.”

His rueful laugh stirred my hair. “I know that’s right.”

He knew so much about me, and I knew so little about him. Who was he thinking of when he asked me about remnants and ghosts? Why did he pick his truths so carefully? Could I trust him a little, or not at all?

Carson stepped back, letting his hands fall to my shoulders and giving me an encouraging squeeze. “Ready for more running?”

“God, no.” But I got my legs under me anyway. Whether the cops managed to catch McSlackerson or not, we had to get out of there before they came back to secure the scene. “You owe me a helluva lot more than a milk shake and french fries.”


By some undeserved miracle, we were able to slink unseen through a fire door where the alarm was already shorted out. I figured we had just minutes, maybe less, to get out before officers were stationed at all the exits; it was dumb luck—and the distraction of chasing McSlackerson—that they weren’t guarded already.

We slid out the side of the building, then slipped around to the front, to get lost in the crowd that had gathered there. Four police cars blocked the drive in front of the museum, and uniformed officers stood sentry on the stairs. An ambulance waited, too, its doors ominously open, like a pharaoh’s empty tomb.

“Why is it taking so long to bring out the guard?” I fretted.

“They probably want to make sure his vital signs are steady,” said Carson. Maybe he was as certain as he sounded, or maybe he sensed how thin I was stretched and was trying to hold me together with hope. My ESP was blown like a fuse, Cleopatra had been erased, and the perpetrator had gotten away. But if the guard died, if we hadn’t been able to save him, then what was any of this for? I might as well go home and sell magic tea and candles like the rest of the Goodnight clan.

“Come on.” He touched my arm, trying to draw my attention away from the ambulance. “We’re out. We’ve got the next clue to the Jackal. Let’s not waste this lucky break.”

“Okay,” I said, but didn’t move. I was watching the new car that had arrived. A black one. Government plates.

It was definitely the feds, no mistaking the black sedan or the standard-issue square-jawed Johnny G-man who drove it. But what were the chances that the back door would open and Agent Taylor would climb out?

The way my day had been going? Pretty damned good.