Spirit and Dust

22


I CLUNG TO Carson’s waist as we zipped out of Forest Park, quickly getting the hang of shifting my weight with his. Mostly he did all the work and I just held on as he doubled back twice to make sure we didn’t have a tail before heading against rush-hour traffic toward downtown.

“Are you crazy?” I shouted, hoping some of the question would make it to his ear before being whisked away by the wind that was turning my hair into a banner behind us. “Every cop in town will be looking for a guy and a redhead on a motorcycle.”

“Trust me.” He made two more turns and then pulled into a parking garage near a retail mecca in an old train station, stopping at the gate and hitting the button for a ticket like we were out for a day of shopping. There were plenty of empty spots, but we wound all the way to the top before he pulled into one and cut the engine.

I was off the bike before the engine died. “Trust you? Who should I trust? Maguire? That’s your last name?”

He didn’t go so far as to wince, but there was definitely a flinch behind his cool control. “I can explain.”

“Yeah? You don’t think that would have been better at the beginning of our association?”

“Possibly. But this isn’t the best time for a freak-out.”

“Really? Because twenty-four hours ago, I was a law-abiding kick-ass psychic, the go-to girl when the freaking FBI needed someone to interrogate the dead. And now I’m on the run, complicit in grand theft auto, and grand theft motorcycle, and art theft, and riding a motorcycle without a helmet. I’ve been kidnapped, almost twice, and nearly smothered by the ghost of the most famous volcanic eruption in history. When would be the best time to freak out?”

Carson watched me all the way through, without expression. “Are you done?”

“Not quite.”

I reached out, grabbed the edge of his jacket, yanked him close, and kissed him.

It was an impulsive decision. But not the obvious kind. At least, not when I’d decided it. All I wanted was to seize one small moment of control. For the gazelle to get the better of the lion.

He froze when I planted my lips on his, except I’d knocked him literally off balance, and the natural reaction was to grab on to the nearest thing, which was me. And then he realized what he was grabbing and let go like I was hot—and not the good kind.

For an age we stood there like that, me holding him by the collar of his jacket and kissing him for all I was worth, him standing there, hands up like I was frisking him, with no idea what to do about it.

It. Was. Awesome.

Because all the time he didn’t know what to do with his hands, he knew exactly what to do with his lips. In fact, Carson Maguire—oh my God, Maguire—was twice as good at being kissed as other guys were at kissing.

The balance shifted, and he stopped resisting. I was able to slide my arms around him, skimming my hands over his back, which got an approving sound, to his waist, which got a small, warning growl, to the pocket of his jeans, which got no sound at all because he was too busy taking over the kiss, and it was all I could do to remember to grab the cell phone from his pocket.

Just as his arms started to close around me, I collected my brain from the puddle of mush it had become and stepped back. Carson nearly fell on his face, which would have been much more satisfying if I weren’t swaying on knees as weak as my resistance.

“Okay,” I said, pretending my voice wasn’t breathless. “Now I’m done.”

He just looked at me, and I couldn’t tell if I’d just rocked his world or pissed him off. Maybe a little of both.

Whichever it was, he had to clear his throat before he could speak. “Good. Now that you’ve got that off your chest.” He jerked his head toward the stairwell. “Let’s go see what time the train leaves for Chicago.”

“Why Chicago?” I asked, like that was the most important question of the moment.

“Because Michael Johnson had a return ticket there in his wallet. And if he was bringing this artifact back to Chicago, then that’s what we’re going to do.”

He’d already turned for the stairs before I connected the fact that McSlackerson was Johnson with my feeling that Carson had some personal beef with the guy. Which meant that my partner in crime was a lying liar at least twice over.

Carson Maguire had some explaining to do.


The train station was just a block away, and we reached the ticket window right before it closed. Carson paid for two business-class seats with cash and nudged me to show my fake ID, which worked just fine, though I didn’t think I looked like an Adelaide Schmidt.

The railway attendant pulled up the steps after us, and we found seats as the train chugged into motion. I dropped into the seat next to Carson and tried not to moan. Now that we’d stopped running, I had time to actually hurt.

As the train rolled past the Gateway Arch, the setting sun painted the landmark a vibrant orange, a picture-postcard vision in the middle of a craptastic day. “So how did you manage this?” I asked.

“The sunset? I’m good, but I’m not that good.”

I’d meant the timing with the train, but he was facing away from me and I was worried I’d give myself away by thinking about the stolen phone in my back pocket, so I didn’t say so. The sunset washed Carson in warmth, too. He’d have a Technicolor bruise on his cheek tomorrow. As he flexed the fingers of his right hand, I could see the knuckles were swelling. I was still mad enough to hope he ached in at least half as many places as I did.

The conductor came by and checked our tickets and our IDs. I watched her carefully to see if she gave us any particular attention, but she merely handed back our stubs and told us the snack car was open.

“I have to powder my nose,” I said when she’d moved on. Carson gestured for me to go, then leaned back and closed his eyes. He looked tired and vulnerable and I almost felt guilty for kissing him for the phone. Almost. I’d put off calling him a liar. But I hadn’t forgotten.

The restroom at the end of the train car was slightly bigger than an airplane lavatory, but not by much. I closed the door and latched it, pulled out McSlackerson’s phone—the one I had liberated from Carson’s pocket under amorous pretenses—and dialed a number from memory, not sure if I’d get an answer or not.

My cousin Phin picked up on the second ring and started talking without so much as a hello. “You would think a psychic would see trouble coming and know how to avoid it,” she said.

This was comforting, in its own infuriating way. If Phin didn’t rib me, I would know I was doomed. “Hey, Igor. I have zero time for pleasantries. I need to know if it would be possible to work magic with trace psychic energy. Like from spirits or remnants.”

“Oh, totally.” She jumped on the idea with enthusiasm. “But you’d have to deal with the transduction inefficiencies in the energy conversion ratio from the noncorporeal to the physical mass differential.”

Or something like that. I was ninety percent sure she was just pulling those words out of a hat. “In English, please?”

She translated carelessly. “You wouldn’t get much bang for your buck. It takes way too much energy to do the simplest spells.”

“What would you need to make that kind of arrangement practical?”

“Hmm. Some kind of potentiating transducer, maybe. Or find an unlimited power source.” She laughed at this second suggestion. When I didn’t, she explained, “That’s funny because there is no such thing.”

Nerd humor. “I get it,” I said.

“We live in a finite universe, even if it is so large that it seems—”

“I get it, Phin.” I was sure this was what the Brotherhood was doing, and they already seemed pretty good at it. One had used up a very strong remnant just to blow out the Taurus window, and McSlackerson had spent all of young Cleopatra to dissolve the belt tying him up. That was too inefficient to stop an army.

But it gave me an idea what the Jackal might be. “What if there were some sort of object that could either amplify energy or make it work more economically or something …?”

“That would do it. But there is no such thing,” said Phin. “It would be like … like the philosopher’s stone. Legendary and utterly improbable.”

“But worth killing for if it did exist?”

“Oh yes,” she said, with maybe just a little bit of greed. “Absolutely worth killing over.”

There was a scuffle for the phone and my cousin Amy came on the line. “Daisy! What does Phin mean ‘worth killing over’? Where are you? Are you okay? What’s going on?”

“Would you believe I don’t know the answer to any of those questions?”

“You? Yes.” Amy was not a go-with-the-flow type. “What can we do?”

Come here and help me. Risk life and psyche and indentured servitude to a magical crime boss. I wanted to keep them safe from Maguire and the Brotherhood, but I knew they would risk everything for one girl’s life, if I just asked them to.

But all I said was, “Keep the aunts from worrying.” I caught a glimpse of myself in the mirror and realized that would be a trick, if they could see me. Dark circles under my eyes, my freckles standing out against my pallor …

Lips like they’d been kissing someone’s socks off. I was worried for me.

“Gotta go.” I hung up before I could give in to the strange temptation to unburden my worries on my cousins. They thought I was either (a) annoying or (b) indomitable. Mostly (a). I wouldn’t want to burst their bubbles in a moment of weakness.

I dialed the next number while I was still feeling strong. Agent Taylor answered on the second ring.

“Taylor,” he answered, sounding wary, since I was calling his direct line.

“I have an anonymous tip,” I said, knowing he’d recognize my voice.

There was a nanosecond sigh of relief, and I heard footsteps like he was in the museum. “Go ahead, caller. Any information you have would be welcome.”

“There’s a stolen motorcycle on the top level of the garage by the Union Square shopping center.” I dropped the pretense, at least on my end. “And a Corvette in the parking lot near the art museum. Sorry about that.”

“Got it.”

“I’m calling from the phone of the guy who stabbed the guard in the museum. Is that how you ended up in St. Louis? You trailed Michael Johnson?”

“Yes. I got your other tip.” There was the sound of a door closing, then he dropped the pretense on his end, too. “Daisy, are you—”

I cut him off, focused tightly so I wouldn’t sway from my course. “Is the guard going to live?”

“Yes. He’s critical but stable.”

I let out a breath I didn’t know I’d been holding. “And the officers who got hit in the Roman statuary?”

“They’re fine, but scheduled for psych evaluations.”

Of course they were. Pyroclastic blasts didn’t just come out of thin air in Sane Person Land. “There was another guy,” I said, “in the room with all the Grecian urns.”

“We didn’t find anyone there. Just a broken pot that the management was pretty upset about.”

I leaned against the door as the train swayed on the tracks. So, no one captured at all. No one to interrogate about Alexis’s whereabouts. It was all up to me and Carson, then.

“Can you get away?” Taylor asked. “If you come in on your own, I’ll help you, you know that, right?”

He didn’t mean with the investigation. He meant with the criminal charges. But I chose to misunderstand him. “Agent Taylor, if you tried to help me with this one, they’d schedule you for a psych eval.”

He paused to process what I was saying. “That weird, huh?”

“That weird. Tell Agent Gerard I’m turning off this phone, so don’t bother to trace it. Also, don’t call my aunts. They’re freaked out enough as it is.”

“Anything else?” There was a hint of humor there, in spite of everything.

“Yeah,” I said, holding on to the hope of holding on to his good opinion. “Trust me.”

Then I hung up and turned off the phone before heading back to my seat, body aching, brain full, and heart torn.


When I returned, Carson had the netbook open on the seat-back table and the flash drive from the mausoleum plugged in. He didn’t glance at me as I sat beside him, or even pretend to believe I’d been powdering my nose that whole time. “Did you turn off the phone when you were done so they can’t track the GPS?”

Jeez, how did people in real relationships cheat on their boyfriends? I couldn’t even manage it with Carson and Taylor, and neither of them even came close to that description.

Pocket-picking lip-locks excluded.

“I’m not an idiot,” I said.

“I don’t think you’re an idiot,” Carson said. “I think you’re a nice girl who hasn’t ever had to think about the FBI tracing her calls.”

“I’m not a nice girl.” Not in the way he meant, which sounded too much like naive. “Any luck unlocking the flash drive?” I asked. Not that I was changing the subject or anything.

The password field dominated the screen. Carson typed, the field said Denied. “I’ve tried all her usual passwords, her favorite bands, pets, colors, birth dates, mother’s maiden name.…”

He must have been trying things the whole time I was gone. Maybe he was more nervous about my talking to Taylor than he let on.

“Did you try Oosterhouse’s name?” I asked, and from his look, he’d thought of that. “Black jackal? The Black Jackal?”

He did try that last suggestion but was denied again.

“What about Latin or Greek?” I suggested. “She knows both, right?”

“Yeah,” he said. “But I don’t.” He sat back, narrowing his eyes at the screen as if trying to stare it into submission. “It’s a good idea, though.”

Nice try flattering me. “Have you looked at the jackal from the museum yet?”

“I was waiting for you.” He reached under the seat and pulled out McSlackerson’s messenger bag, putting it safely between us. “You’re the one who can tell if it has any psychic kick to it or if it’s some kind of red herring.”

I took out a bundle about the size of a cantaloupe, but oval. The high seat backs and the rail noise gave some privacy as I unwrapped the cloth, leaving it protectively around the fragile figurine. It definitely looked like the illustration in Oosterhouse’s excavation report. The jackal-headed man was tiny, only a hand-span tall. One ear was slightly chipped, but it looked like an old injury. The gold leaf from the wide collar looked good, as did the painted skirt and tiny jewels.

But as far as spirit energy, I didn’t feel a thing. Maybe there was nothing to feel, but more likely I was still zapped. Though I had gotten a very powerful jolt from McSlackerson’s jackal tattoo, so if this was the Jackal, I was pretty sure I would know it.

“This isn’t the Black Jackal,” I said.

“That’s what Johnson said, back at the museum.”

“I noticed you used McSlackerson’s real name.” With the password and the mini jackal dead ends for the moment, there was no sense putting off the pants-on-fire discussion. “And while we’re on the subject of real names …”

He went still and then relaxed, as if he’d been bracing for the question and was relieved to have it over with. “Yeah. About that.”

I gently bundled the little statue back up and slipped it into the bag. “You’re going to want me in a good mood for this discussion, Liar Maguire. And I will be in a much better mood in the snack car.”