Spirit and Dust

4


WE EXITED THE dormitory and a camera flash drove a spike into my eye.

My knees buckled as the headache blossomed to full force. Taylor caught me under one arm and Gerard under the other, hustling me through a small crowd of reporters bristling with cameras, microrecorders, and questions.

“Are you the agents in charge?”

“Any leads on who killed Dev Maguire’s henchman?”

“Or the whereabouts of Miss Maguire or her body?”

“Does Mr. Maguire know you’ve hired a psychic to find his daughter?”

Taylor took up the rear guard, offering them nothing but “No comment at this time” while his partner shoved me into the backseat of the black SUV waiting by the curb.

“Effing reporters,” growled Gerard as he slammed my door. He might as well have been slamming it on my head.

“How the hell did they find out about her?” the agent demanded, once he and Taylor had climbed into the front and closed out the reporters.

“Pretty coed goes missing?” said Taylor, buckling his seat belt. “It was going to splash, even without a whale like Maguire involved.”

“No. I mean her.” Gerard stabbed his thumb toward me, sitting innocently in the backseat, trying not to be sick.

“Chill.” Taylor sounded like he’d reached the end of his patience about five snarky comments ago, and I was glad those hadn’t come from me. “It’s not her fault college students like to Tweet. Hell, she’s probably got a fan page on Facebook by now.”

Gerard chilled. He went positively frosty and flexed his hands on the steering wheel like he was picturing them around someone’s neck. “I swear, rookie, if little Miss Ghostbuster blows this investigation for me, I’m going to make sure she—and you—are sidelined until monkeys fly out of my ass.”

Taylor spoke low and grim, reminding me why I wanted to stay on his good side. “You know, Gerard, the Minneapolis field office didn’t ask for us. They asked for Daisy. You wouldn’t even be here if it weren’t for her. Maybe you’d better think about what’s best for the case instead of what’s best for your career.”

Just a guess, but this wasn’t going to make Gerard like me any better. He slammed the SUV into gear and pulled out from in front of the dorm so fast my head bounced on the back of the seat. Fireworks exploded and my stomach flipped over.

I must have made a sound, because Taylor turned to look at me. “Hang tight, Daisy. We’re headed to one of the precincts in Minneapolis. We’ll base out of there, and you can get some rest in the ready room.”

A swig from my latest bottle of Coke helped me sound half normal as I said, “You should take me with you if you’re going to see Maguire.”

“How do you propose we explain you?” sneered Gerard, eyes on the road. He wasn’t even pretending to be nice now that we were in private. “Junior Miss Marple, goth edition?”

That might have been funny if he weren’t such an ass. “He’s going to know about me from the six o’clock news anyway. And crime boss or not, he’s a dad. Parents will try anything to find their kids.”

Taylor and I had searched for enough children to know. It only took one.

With his arm hooked over the seat back, Taylor studied me. From his skeptical frown, I figured I must look as bad as I felt. “No offense, Daisy, but are you going to be good for anything? You look like you’re about to hurl.”

“Do not throw up in this car,” snapped Gerard. “We’ll be responsible for having it cleaned.”

Just when I thought I couldn’t hate him any more than I already did.

• • •

We arrived at a police station in Minneapolis, where we—meaning the agents—were liaising with the local PD and meeting someone from the FBI field office. I was hazy on the details, and Taylor didn’t introduce me to anyone before he strong-armed me into an office, sat me on a sagging sofa, and made sure there was an empty trash can within easy reach. I would have protested, but the fluorescent lights sent signals to the hammers inside my skull. A dark office was only sensible.

“An hour,” I told Taylor as I flopped over on the couch. It smelled like shoe polish, stale coffee, and cop eighteen hours into a twenty-four-hour shift. “That’s all I need. It will take that long, at least, to get the search warrant for Maguire’s house, right?”

“Longer,” he assured me, with a glance at his watch, “since they’ll have to drag a judge away from his dinner.”

The thought of dinner made me glad for the trash can. “I’m sorry,” I moaned, my cheek sticking to the pleather sofa.

“Why?” Taylor crouched to eye level, which would have helped if I could see straight. Just then he had four dark-blue eyes and two square jaws. Not quite as handsome as the usual number. The expression on his face made up for it. “The fact that you can’t locate Alexis is a good thing, right?”

“Yeah,” I said. It meant she was alive. “But all that stuff about the black dog. And Bruiser. It was so weird. And worse, it was useless.” I closed my eyes because they were starting to sting and I didn’t want to cry in front of him. “I wish my head would stop hurting so I could think.”

After a quiet moment, Taylor picked up my legs, which were hanging off the couch, and put them properly up beside the rest of me. Then he covered me with a scratchy blanket that smelled like gunpowder. His hand clasped my shoulder before slipping away. “Get some rest, kiddo. There’s nothing to do right now anyway.”

Ugh. Kiddo. That was nearly as nauseating as the migraine and the sofa smell.


Someone shook me awake about five seconds later. It was a young woman with short blond hair and too much makeup for a uniformed cop. But then, I couldn’t quite focus on her face, so maybe I was wrong.

She shoved a bottle of Coke under my nose. “Here. He said you’d need this.”

I took it automatically and sat up to crack the seal on the plastic cap. “Agent Taylor sent you?” The soda was cold, and so was the air when my blanket slid off.

“Yeah,” she said. “I’m assigned to take you to a hotel to get some sleep.”

I choked midswallow and wiped at my chin. “That is not the plan. The plan is I sleep here until the warrants come through.”

“What good are you when you can’t even drink properly, kid?” She stood, then hooked a hand under my arm and pulled me to my feet. “Come on. The motel is close and a lot more comfortable than this. I’ll come get you when those warrants are done.”

I wanted to be stubborn and tough things out. I also knew I’d recover faster in comfort and proper darkness. So I knocked back another slug of soda and followed the uniformed woman out of the office and down a hall. Either we were traveling very fast or my brain was moving very slowly, because it seemed like we were far away from the noise of the squad room by the time I wondered if I should text Taylor and remind him to take me with him to call on Maguire.

“What are you looking for?” asked the uniform, when she saw me digging in my backpack.

Earphones, lab notebook, e-reader, but no sweater. I had to start packing better. “My phone.” I couldn’t seem to put my fingers on that, either. And it wasn’t a big bag.

“I’m sure it’s in there somewhere,” she said as we neared a bar-locked door at the end of the hall.

I didn’t like that answer. I didn’t like that she wore so much makeup. I mean, I can rock the black eyeliner, too. But I wasn’t wearing the badge of the Minnesota PD.

“So, what do you hear?” I asked, in a conversational tone. If Taylor really had sent her, she’d give me the no-worries response.

“That they’re hoping to have those warrants in a few hours.” The officer didn’t miss a beat as she straight-armed the door and held it open to the frigid night. “Now come on. I’m letting all the cold air in.”

This? Was not good.

She saw in my face the instant I decided I wasn’t going anywhere. And holy cats, that chick moved fast. In a flash she snagged my arm, yanking me off-balance so I stumbled out into the cold.

The icy air sliced through the fog in my head, but too late. The door slammed and latched closed, and I was standing on a sidewalk, not in a squad car bay, and in front of me was not a black-and-white cruiser but a big black sedan.

This was also not good.

The young man who leaned on the fender straightened when he saw us. He looked about eight feet tall, and as he stepped forward he practically vibrated with purpose, all of it narrowed in on me.

I did the only thing possible: I ignored the red haze of the migraine and ran.

Tall Guy grabbed me by the shoulders, but I realized it wasn’t to catch me because I was running, but to catch me because I was falling. The haze was taking over, blossoming in crimson over my vision, closing in black from the edges until the last thing, the very last thing I saw was a pair of hazel-green eyes, swimming with ghosts.