Spirit and Dust

32


“DAISY GOODNIGHT, YOU are under arrest for the obstruction of a federal investigation, evading custody, conspiring to commit motor vehicle theft …”

There might have been more, but Agent Gerard’s voice merged with the buzzing whine in my head. The armed response team had arrived. I was stretched out on the couch in Marian’s office, and Gerard looked like the devil himself in the red emergency lights.

“You can’t arrest her while she’s semiconscious,” said Agent Taylor. I hadn’t awakened at the armed forces busting through the door, but at Taylor’s hand on my shoulder. I’d nearly cried at the sight of his familiar, loyal face.

I nearly cried for a lot of reasons. The headache beating at the inside of my skull was the least of them.

I was angry and hurt and mad at myself for being hurt, but most of all, eating up all those emotions like a lion in the pit of my stomach, was worry for Carson. Almost as much worry as there was fury.

How far back had he betrayed me? If he’d been in on the Brotherhood’s plan, he was an impossibly good actor. And there was no faking the animosity between him and Johnson. But all the same, he’d been keeping secrets from the start.

Don’t you ever want to take that guy and boot him into an early hell?

Carson wasn’t after power. He was after vengeance.

“We need to go, sir,” said one of the guys in black fatigues. Taylor and Gerard had them on, too.

“Just give me a sec,” I said, sitting up slowly. More slowly, maybe, than necessary. I needed time to think.

Taylor crouched beside me, watching me like I was going to break. Behind him I could see my museum comrades closing ranks on Gerard.

“You can’t arrest her,” said Lab Coat. “She saved us from those mummies. And a big-ass lion.”

“Sir,” said Captain Fatigues, intervening between the nerd and the agent, “you’ve been exposed to a hallucinogenic substance, and we need to get all of you out of here and to medical attention.”

Gerard had already turned back to me. “Where is your buddy, Peanut? Reenacting Die Hard downstairs?”

I tried to glare up at him, but it hurt my head. “Don’t. Even. Start.”

“Sir,” said Taylor, standing to face the senior agent, “may I remind you that Miss Goodnight has been a hostage for forty-eight hours. And that we found her unconscious in a building under siege by terrorists”—Gerard gave a snort, and Taylor ignored him—“so we might cut her some slack.”

Gerard looked apoplectic, and I really didn’t want to be arrested, or to get Taylor in trouble. So I played my ace. “Be nice to me, Special Agent Gerard,” I said. “I can get you probable cause on Devlin Maguire.”

Captain Fatigues stood in the door. “We really can’t waste any more time, sir.”

Gerard gave me a long glare, as if he resented me for giving him what he wanted. Finally he stalked off to join the others in the reading room. Taylor took my hand and pulled me to my feet. I overbalanced and caught myself on his chest. It wasn’t on purpose, but it was convenient.

“I can’t leave,” I whispered.

“Daisy,” he said, steadying me by the shoulders, “you have to. Once you’re all safe, the armed response team is going to go in after the hostiles downstairs.”

“They can’t.” I stepped back out of his hold. “Forget that Carson and Alexis are down there somewhere. So is a monster—a madman who can do things you can’t even imagine.”

“That’s why the professionals are going to handle it.” He was using his calm-the-overwrought-witness voice and I didn’t like it. “They’ll do everything they can to keep the civilians safe. We’re not letting Maguire into the building to negotiate, and I’m not letting you—”

“Maguire!” I wrestled my voice down, because I did sound overwrought and I didn’t like that, either. “He can’t come in here!”

“That’s what I just said.”

“He’s been involved since the beginning! He knew about the Black Jackal, and he must have known about the Brotherhood.…”

“You mean the kidnappers?” asked Taylor, looking at me like I’d really gone off the rails. “You’re not seriously suggesting he kidnapped his own daughter, are you?”

“Maybe.” It did sound crazy, but it had gotten Carson and me on the hunt for the remnants of Oosterhouse. More than that, it had gotten me here, to open the Veil for the Black Jackal.

“But why?”

“Power. I don’t know—I haven’t got that all worked out yet. Something about the symbiotic relationship …”

Now I was just babbling thoughts as they came to me, thinking out loud. Captain Fatigues appeared again in the doorway, like a dad calling curfew. “Agent Taylor,” he said, in a don’t-screw-with-me tone, “everyone else is gone. You’re the last out.”

Taylor took my arm to steer me toward the exit, but he didn’t rush me. As soon as Fatigues’s back was turned, I whispered, “I swear I’m not going bughouse. Bullets won’t do any good here. In fact, dead people will make this about a million times worse. This is World Series weird, Jack. You have to trust me.”

We had a bargain that I couldn’t call him Jack until I was eighteen. This situation called for jumping the gun.

And it worked. He stopped in the doorway and faced me, grave and conflicted. “Daisy, if you don’t toe the line, I’m not sure I can keep Gerard from arresting you.”

“Jack.” I used it again. “If I don’t stop this guy, Chicago will be a ghost town. Literally.”

He studied me closely, his face hard angles in the red emergency lights. “You’re serious.”

“I never joke about ghosts running rampant through the streets. Ghosts of mobsters, ghosts of the great fire, ghosts of Mrs. O’Leary’s freaking cow. The sleeping dead pulled from their graves and every shred of their spirit erased from existence. All to fuel magic. Big, real, take-over-the-world magic.”

Another too-long inventory of my face. If we weren’t such good friends, if the world weren’t in such trouble, I might blush.

“And this isn’t just about one guy in trouble?” he asked, stabbing me in the heart.

“No! What am I?” Outraged. That was what I was. “I’m not some lovelorn twit. It’s about saving the city and every remnant soul in it from a megalomaniac with delusions of godhood.”

And also a guy too stubborn to admit he needed saving.

“I didn’t mean lovelorn,” said Taylor, proving he did know me after all. “I know that you would risk anything for just one soul in danger. But for a whole city, I’ll go with you.”

I threw my arms around him in a relieved and rule-breaking but completely justified bear hug. After a second, his arms wrapped around me so tightly my bruises squealed. Or maybe I’d made that sound, because he eased off, but didn’t let go. “You need to stop scaring the crap out of me, Jailbait.”

Yeah, I probably needed to stop hugging him, especially if he was going to call me that. But the uncomplicated security felt so good that I let myself indulge a moment longer. It was a good thing no one else was there, or my badass image would be wrecked forever.

Wait. Why were we alone?

I straightened so fast that I almost knocked Taylor in the jaw. “Where’s Captain Fatigues?”

He didn’t ask who I meant. In a practiced motion he pushed me behind him with one hand, and pulled his firearm with the other. “Stay back.”

Like hell I would. I knew how many man-eaters there were out there. And that was just the lions.

The reading room was all red and black shadows, as macabre as a horror movie set. It took me a moment to realize the puddle of darkness beside the first table was a sprawled body. Ignoring Taylor’s warning, I hurried toward it and found Captain Fatigues down but not dead. He was deeply unconscious, maybe even whammied.

“Don’t shoot!”

The words came from the inky rectangle of the open hall door. A female voice. A petite figure stepped into the room, spiky platinum hair dyed crimson by the light.

Taylor kept his weapon trained on the punk-rock witch, even after he recognized her. “You were at Maguire’s house.”

“Of course I was.” She took another step into the room, and as she did, she seemed to leave her skin behind. The illusion burst gently, like a dandelion puff in the wind. All that remained was the real girl, one I’d only seen in photographs.

Alexis Maguire.

“He’s my dear old dad, after all.”