Spirit and Dust

30


THE GOOD NEWS? There was still emergency lighting. It cast the room in a garish red glow, and Smith explained that the security system was on a different power grid. Or something. All I knew was it wasn’t completely dark and the doors were still locked. The psychic defenses were still in place, too.

The bad news was we were cut off, trapped without phone, Internet, or Coca-Cola. Every once in a while we could hear a far-off bang, and Margo would fret over something else being broken. Stranger still, I could feel subtle, earthquakelike shifts in the psychic atmosphere, deep in the infrastructure of the building, as the Jackal tried to get free.

A rumble echoed from below, and Margo groaned in harmony. “Please don’t let it be Sue,” she whispered like a mantra. “Don’t let it be Sue.…”

“She is seriously worried about that dinosaur,” I whispered to Marian.

The librarian glanced at Margo with sympathy. “Sue may be one of the most valuable things in the museum. She’s truly one of a kind.”

“Let’s focus,” said Carson, drawing me back to the current task. I sat in front of the librarian’s laptop, where we’d plugged in the flash drive and were trying every password we could think of. Fortunately the computer had a full charge.

Not only were we trying words in English, but we tried them all in Spanish, French, Italian, Latin, Arabic, and Greek (ancient and modern), thanks to Marian and Soul Patch, whose name was Fred.

“How do you say ‘Black Jackal’ in Egyptian?” I asked, feeling like we were missing something obvious.

Fred considered the translation. “Try ‘Kemet Sab.’ ”

I did. Nothing.

Carson had been standing behind me, leaning over to see the screen. He straightened, rubbing his shoulder. I was sure it was one of many bruises. “This is crazy. For all we know, it could be some random string of numbers or letters. And time is running out.”

Lab Coat started whistling the theme to Jeopardy! Carson shut him up with a knife-edged glare. “That’s not helping.”

“Chill,” I said, trying to hide my own nerves. “I know you’re worried about Alexis. I’m worried about the city of Chicago. These people are worried about getting out of here. We’re all worried.”

He didn’t apologize, but he did compose himself. Not that I’d go so far as to say chill. “Okay. What languages haven’t we tried?”

Fred suggested, “German. A lot of Egyptology papers are written in German.”

So we started trying things in German, except now I had the theme from Jeopardy! stuck in my head. I’d never even asked how Alexis had done on the contest—

My fingers stilled on the keyboard as one half of my brain slapped the other half for being an idiot.

“What’s wrong?” Carson asked.

“Jeopardy!” I said. “Your answers must be given in the form of a question.”

I typed into the password field: What is the Black Jackal?

A new window telescoped open, filling the screen. I crowed in triumph, and Marian and Fred jumped from their seats and crowded in to see.

My bubble of victory popped. “It’s in hieroglyphs.”

Fred turned the laptop to get a better look. “Not hieroglyphs. It’s hieratic. A sort of transitional stage between picture writing and cursive-type writing called demotic. Hieratic was the language of the priests.” He followed the first line of text with his finger. “Ah yes. This is a Book of the Dead.”

“So you can read this?” Carson asked, sounding hopeful.

Fred shook his head as he scrolled down. “I recognize the opening passages. A proper translation of the details and specific semantics would take months. At least.”

A groan rumbled through the room, and it wasn’t from me. Though it could have been. The sound came from far below us, like the protest of a gigantic radiator.

What were the Jackal and his minions doing down there? The more time we spent here, the more time they had to fortify and prepare for whatever they were planning.

While Fred studied the document on-screen, I turned to Carson. His expression was stoic, but I could feel the tension in him. “When you asked Johnson about Alexis,” I asked softly, “what did he say?”

“Nothing.” He scrubbed a hand over his tired face. “But I get the feeling she’s close. I can’t explain how.”

“You don’t have to explain it to me.” I wished I were the type who could take his hand and comfort him, or that he were the type to invite sympathy. But all his walls were up, so I went back to the matter of the book.

This was one of those times when some Harry Potter–esque magic would be helpful, if I could just wave a wand and say some faux Latin and the words would realign themselves on the page. But I doubted even mad scientist Phin could pull that out of her bag of tricks.

A lightning bolt of an idea goosed me out of my slump, so abruptly that I startled a shriek out of Margo. No, not Phin. That was the wrong Goodnight to ask.

Turning to Marian, I said, “I need a book.”

“Well, I am a librarian.” She pointed to her glasses and bun.

Casting back through the week that I’d lived in the past twenty-four hours, I recalled the title I wanted. “Female Pioneers in Archaeology. Or something like it. I need pictures of women archaeologists of the nineteen thirties.”

“Ancient Egypt is nine-three-two,” she said, giving the reference number. “I can’t be more specific because the catalog is all on our mainframe, and that’s down with the power.”

See? Sometimes you needed drawers full of manila cards.


Marian found a flashlight in her desk, and Carson insisted on going back into the stacks with me. As if I had the least interest in going there by myself. In the reading room with the others, there was an illusion of security. The looming shelves of books were dark and cold, and the emergency lights didn’t reach into the corners. I stuck so close to Carson that I could feel his body heat.

“You really think you can call up your aunt Ivy from a picture in a book?” he asked. I hadn’t told him what I’d planned, but I didn’t suppose it had been hard for him to guess.

“I’m going to try.” For a moment there was just the sound of our steps on the tile floor. With the others around, we hadn’t had time to debrief or compare notes. “How did you manage to raise the shades of those Neanderthal warriors?”

“Desperation.” He shone the flashlight at the end of each row of shelves, looking for the 900s.

“I suppose the fact that the Brotherhood was here and waiting for us supports your theory that they knew all along where the Jackal was. Or rather, the artifacts they needed to raise him.”

“And now we know why they needed you,” Carson said, with no hint of I told you so.

“To open the Veil.” A knot of emotions twisted in my chest, all having to do with how stupid I’d been. “I can’t believe Oosterhouse played me that way.”

“I did say I didn’t trust him.”

There it was. The I told you so. I stopped in the aisle, in spite of the dark. “But remnants cannot lie! They can’t.”

Carson stopped, too, and though I couldn’t see him well, I thought he softened a bit. “Well, he didn’t lie, did he? You opened the door to the afterlife, and he sure as hell showed us the Jackal.”

I clenched my fists in front of me, like Oosterhouse was standing there. “I’d like to wring his ghostly neck. He had a lot of nerve abusing my secret idealism that way.” A thought occurred to me. “Do you think he heard the whole conversation on the train, and only pretended he’d been awakened just before morning?”

“You’re the spirit expert.” He studied me for a long moment. “When the Jackal pointed out how much good you could do if you joined them, were you tempted at all?”

“I’m already doing good.” I believed that with conviction. At least, on the whole, even if I had screwed the pooch by opening the Veil for Oosterhouse. “And what he actually said was ‘remake the world.’ Not even I am arrogant enough to think I have any business doing that.”

“But we have the book,” said Carson. “And it must be important or they wouldn’t still want it. It has to be the key to their power.” He caught my hand, and I felt a tingle, like when our abilities meshed. “If we could use the secrets in the book, think of how much more good you could do. You wouldn’t just solve murders after the fact. You could stop them from happening. Keep more people from being hurt or killed.”

Back in his aunt’s kitchen, we’d talked about finding the Jackal and using it—if it had turned out to be a powerful artifact and not a megalomaniac überghost—to rescue Alexis. But Carson seemed to be talking about something different.

“This power uses up spirits, Carson. There’s nothing good about that.”

“Until we translate the book, we won’t know if it has to. Your affinity for spirit energy and my ability to channel power into magic might get around that.”

“Yeah,” I said slowly. His reasoning was more tempting than anything the Black Jackal had put before me, but that didn’t make it right. “I could also sprout wings and fly. But I’m not holding my breath.”

“Even with what happened to your parents?” he demanded. “What if you could stop that happening to someone else? What if you could take that guy who killed them and boot him into an early hell?”

“What if?” I echoed. I wanted to be shocked or offended by the idea, except that I didn’t have room to throw stones in my glass house. “You think I haven’t worked out exactly how I could shove Mom and Dad’s murderer through the Veil? But that’s not my job.”

“Right. St. Gertrude. I forgot.” He turned away, taking the flashlight and turning to search for the female archaeologist book. “But I’m just the son of a crime lord.”

The gravel in his voice knocked the wind out of me. How could I not have heard it before? That when he said “your parents” he really meant “my mother”? I was an idiot.

“Carson …”

“Forget it.” He ran the flashlight beam over the spines, reading titles. “Let’s just find your aunt.”

Deal with ghosts long enough and you know when to push the stubborn ones. “Do you know who murdered your mother?”

“Of course I do,” he said, like we were talking about who fumbled the ball in last night’s baseball game. “Devlin Maguire ordered her killed so he could raise his son in his own image. Especially since the kid had some pretty useful talents. And just to make sure the kid follows orders, he finds a witch to put his mother’s soul in a jar that he can keep in his desk.”

Horror washed cold over me. A helpless, trapped soul was more wretched than I could imagine. But it was the flat ribbon of Carson’s voice, the grief and anger ironed out of it by time and helplessness, that cinched the strings of my heart so tight it was hard to breathe. “Why didn’t you tell me?”

His gaze swept over my face, his own expression closed, all business. “Because you would look at me like that. Like one of your lost souls. I’m not. I don’t need your pity.”

“No.” Except yes, more than ever. “But you do need my help.”

“Yeah.” He dropped a book into my hands; I only caught it by instinct. “I need you to translate that computer file so we can use it to rescue Alexis and vanquish this son of a bitch.”

I clutched the book to my chest. “You’re choosing now to push me away? We need to stay a team, Carson.”

He folded his arms and gave me nothing. “We are. We’re a great team, Daisy. I would never have gotten this far without you.”

“Trapped in a library by man-eating lions and a self-appointed demigod in the basement?”

He laughed, then tried to pretend he hadn’t. “Well, maybe not.”

“So … all the rest of … everything?” I hated myself for blushing, for not being able to say kissing out loud. “That was just to win me over?”

His shrug might have been convincing two days ago. “I told you at the beginning. I am not a nice guy.”

“Keep telling yourself that,” I said, already mad and boiling up to furious. How dare he let me glimpse into his soul and then slam the door. “Because I told you at the beginning, I think you lie to yourself more than anyone.”

“That’s what criminals do.”

“Do you think I would be working with you if I thought that was all you were?”

“Yes. Because you’re sworn to find Alexis, and you’re determined to stop the Brotherhood and the Black Jackal.”

“I would have figured out some other way.”

“Right. With your darling Agent Taylor.”

“Exactly.” It was a jab at him, and I knew it. There was no comparison between the two—talk about apples and oranges—but Carson seemed sensitive on the subject, so I used it, because I could be a jackass, too.

If he flinched he didn’t show it. He just put a finger on the book I held clutched to my heart. “Translate the computer file, Sunshine. And when this is over, you can go back to solving mysteries with your rookie G-man and putting ghosts to rest with your wacky family and forget all about me.”

I hadn’t gotten as far as thinking about when this was over. But at least he was confident we would succeed. A lot more confident than I was, about that or anything else. Especially that bit about forgetting him.

But what I said aloud was “Fine.”

And he said, “Fine.”

“I’ll go get started,” I warned, giving him the chance to call me back and fix this, to make me stay so he could explain why he was working so hard to be a jackass.

He did none of those things. He just said, “So go.”

So I did.