Spirit And Dust Part 31

She might not have a ghost, but she sure had a psyche. And she was p.i.s.sed at the mess the Jackal had made of her museum.

Looming protectively over me, she gave another piercing roar at the Jackal's monster. My ears rang as Sue leapt over the railing and advanced on the nightmare, shaking the building's foundations as if she were muscle and bone instead of magic and memory.

The beast gave a feline roar in return and pounced, trailing shreds of spirit. Sue batted it away from me with a whack of her tail, sending it streaming across the hall like a comet.

The crash woke the unconscious brethren, and the dinosaur shade stomped toward them, sending them scrambling like c.o.c.kroaches caught out by the light. Her tail whipped dangerously close to Taylor, who hadn't moved.

At the end of the great hall, the Jackal gathered his spirits and his strength and re-formed his Frankenstein nightmare. The T. rex headed for a preemptive strike on the monster, but the Jackal, with a push I could feel across the room, sent his creature in a blur past her, not toward me, but toward Taylor, who still hadn't moved.

Sue made an astonishingly tight turn and ran after the beast, flattening out in the straightaway. I ran for Taylor, too, skidding to a halt beside him and flinging up all the psychic shield I had. It wouldn't be enough, but it would be a try.

The beast was almost on us when Sue struck, her ma.s.sive jaws grabbing the back of the nightmare's neck with a crunch that made my psychic teeth hurt. She shook the construct like a dog shakes a rat, and it flew apart into the remnant wisps that had made it.

What was left of them.

The Jackal stalked toward me. I stood up and squared my shoulders. From far away he looked like Carson, but the closer he came, the more I saw the stranger. "We aren't done," he said, when he was very close indeed.

But we were. A gunshot rang through the hall.

I didn't know how it happened or how I even saw it. Maybe it happened in psychic time, neuron fast. But for an instant of an instant, Carson was Carson again. In the next he slammed into me, knocking me to the floor. And in the next he staggered and pressed a hand to his chest. I felt the pain as if it were my own when I saw the blood bubbling up from under his fingers.

I didn't think about the Jackal. I didn't think about the gunshot. I thought only about Carson and jumped to my feet, flinging myself to help him.

Another shot cracked and a bullet thunked into the taxidermic elephant near my head. Sue lowered her head and roared, and I spun like an idiot and just stood there as Alexis took aim at my heart.

A trio of gunshots. One. Two. Three. A quick, professional grouping, and then a thud. I was on the floor again, but only because the T. rex's tail had knocked me down. When I got the nerve to look, I saw Alexis on the ground, sprawled motionless. And behind me was Taylor, propped up on one hand with his backup revolver in the other.

Sue's image was fading, as if forcing me to duck had been the last of her-of the remnants'-strength. As for Alexis, Taylor rolled to his feet and hurried over to her, kicking away the weapon, then checking for ... just checking.

I turned toward Carson and got another shock. He was still on his feet. Grabbing the hem of his shirt, he pulled it off and threw it aside. The wound frothed with blood, but as I watched, out came the bullet, spit by his body like a watermelon seed.

Carson was gone again, and the Jackal looked at me with his unnatural blue eyes and foreign smile. "Lucky for your friend that you did not pull me loose when you had the chance."

His shadow on the floor began to lengthen and broaden. I was seeing double: Carson with my eyes and the Jackal in full pharaoh regalia with my Sight.

The Jackal was healing his body-Carson's body-and strengthening himself, but how? I was tapped out. Where was his new power coming from?

A shade appeared beside me in a puff of frigid air and urgent warning. "Call the Veil for the girl," she said, in a voice I knew only from my lullabies.

"Mom?"

"Call it," she said. "Before there's nothing left of her."

The girl. There was only one here besides me. My gaze flew to Taylor, still kneeling beside Alexis. He caught my eye and shook his head.

Why hadn't the Veil appeared? Where was her soul?

I heard it then, a tiny keen that faded as the Jackal's shadow grew more ma.s.sive.

"You mustn't call it," said a gruff voice on my other side. Aunt Diantha, who knew more about shades and remnants than anyone else, even before she was one.

"But Alexis-" I couldn't let her soul be consumed, no matter what she'd done.

"That abomination," said Aunt Diantha, meaning the Jackal, "is keeping the Veil from opening with his hold on the girl. But you must not call it. That's what he wants you to do, so he can use the young man's power to steal yours."

I had to open the Veil without calling it. Like I hadn't had enough puzzles today.

"Daisy," said my mom, "do something! The sound ..."

I remembered Ivy's scream, and I didn't know how the Jackal was keeping Alexis's own from me, but Mom could hear it and it had brought her shade to tears.

The Veil ... I only called, I didn't control. It opened when it was needed.

With a bolt of inspiration and trepidation, I reached into my pocket and took out the vial that held the spirit of Carson's mom. I was taking a huge risk-losing an innocent soul to the Jackal in an attempt to save a blackened one. And one just slightly gray one, if you counted Carson's.

Everything relied on my timing and my own sagging strength. I dropped the gla.s.s to the floor and crushed it with my heel.

Helena! Her name burst into my mind as her spirit burst from the prison, bright and blinding.

The Veil appeared with a waiting swiftness. It rang with a pure, true note in the middle of the discord. To me and the spirits-my spirits-it sang a welcome.

To the Jackal, it was a warning. He whirled to face me, and the curtain that shimmered open between us. He lost his grip on Alexis, and her racked soul stretched and twisted on its way through the portal, her tortured screams cut off as the surface tension between worlds rippled in her wake.

"You can't," said the Jackal, antic.i.p.ating my plan. "Not without sending your young man through, too. We are bound."

"Help him," said the shade-no, the soul-that had taken Mom's place beside me. Helena pled, "How can I help you help my son?"

"Just hold tight," I murmured, and sh.o.r.ed up my resolve-or at least my bravado. To the Jackal I called, "I unbound you before. I can do it again."

I hoped.

"But without my magic," crooned the Jackal, "he'll die from his bullet wound." He held up b.l.o.o.d.y fingers and tsked. "I think it may have gotten his lung."

This was a chance I had to take. I would gladly risk my life or my soul in place of any of these people. But I couldn't. I had to do what I did best-talk big, and pray I didn't screw this up.

"Enough chitchat," I said. "Let's dance."

I let my psyche slip away from my physical form, a shade of my own self. Unconfined by distance, I grabbed at the jackal mark on Carson's back, the spot where the two were knit together. The threads had tightened, and somehow I had to unst.i.tch them without unraveling the half that I cared about.

The more the Jackal struggled, the more blood ran down Carson's chest. The Veil hummed and shimmered with infinite patience as I picked at the tight snarls of the binding, but the longer it took, the paler and weaker the living body became, so weak I worried Carson's soul would make the trip, too.

I needed to rip the Jackal off like a Band-Aid and get him through the Veil. My psyche was strong, but I needed force and inertia. I needed the weight of a soul.

Carson's mom was no more than a translucent vision, and no less than everything that made her human. "You wanted to help? It's risky."

"He's my son. This is no risk." Then she laughed. It was a beautiful sound, of someone used to laughing. "It beats the purgatory of Devlin Maguire's office for eternity."

I smiled in spite of myself and held out the threads of the Jackal's binding to her. She took them, smiled back-a devilish smile-and ran for the Veil, painting the air with light as she leapt through.

The Jackal gave an angry shout as he was yanked toward the curtain of eternity, scrabbling to hold on to this world with psychic tooth and claw. At the tipping point, he began sliding toward the Veil without my help. But he was taking Carson's spirit, unconscious and unable to fight, with him.

"If I go," sounded the Jackal over an intangible roar of wind, "he goes, too."

"You don't get to say who stays and who goes, you son of a b.i.t.c.h."

Neither did I, but I knew how to fight for a spirit. As the last thread of binding pulled loose, I grabbed Carson, body and soul, and anch.o.r.ed us in the here and now. But he was so heavy, and all of eternity yawned before me.

The open Veil offered tantalizing glimpses outside the walls of time and s.p.a.ce. It awed but didn't frighten me. Maybe it should have. I was so small and eternity pulled at the fragile bond of my body. I was an atom and a star, an infinitesimal speck of ident.i.ty suspended before the gravity well of fathomless eons of souls.

Daisy ... A woman's lullaby voice from beyond, chiding me gently. The job is done. Let the Veil close.

"Daisy!" A guy's voice. A young man. Naming me and calling me back. "You did it. It's over ... and we need your help with your relatives."

I sat up, unable to remember lying down. But I had, in a position that strongly indicated that Taylor had caught me when I collapsed and held me safely until I came to.

The shade of the T. rex was gone, and when I looked at the skeleton, the only hint of her adventures was a fading green glow in the sockets of her skull. The color was all Goodnight, but the wink-there was no mistaking it for anything else-I was sure that belonged to Sue.

"What relatives?" I asked, seeing no other remnants. I would be sad that Mom hadn't said goodbye, except we didn't need to.

Then I heard them, the unmistakable rallying shouts of Goodnights on the march, coming from outside and demanding to be let in. The museum doors stood open and the hall was flooded with cops, armed response officers, museum officials, and paramedics- Carson. They surrounded him. I'd been holding on to him-no, that was just with my psyche. Now all I could see were his shoes. I started to get up, but Taylor's hand on my shoulder kept me where I was. "He's fine," Taylor a.s.sured me. "The fuss is because they can't figure out why he's fine."

"Oh." I took a moment to look around. What a mess, with mummy dust and toppled totem poles and the museum store looking like it had had a retail explosion. "Did you See anything?" I asked Taylor, meaning the big battle.

"Besides the big dinosaur rampage? Not really. The temperature dropped about fifty degrees and you said 'Basingstoke' and collapsed." He pointed at his eyes. "Serious REM going on, though."

"Great. Phin will want to hook me up to brain electrodes next time."

Jeez, I hoped there wasn't a next time.

Taylor ducked his head to catch my gaze, studying my face and heaven only knew what was written there. "Are you okay?" he asked gently, and he wasn't talking about three days' worth of psychic backlash headache that I could feel looming like a pain tsunami.

Blushing made me feel disloyal to Carson. Which was stupid, because wanting to go over to Carson made me feel disloyal to Taylor, who had never lied to me, even by omission ... and who had killed his first person today.

For me.

"Are you okay?" I asked.

"I'm fine," he said.

I allowed myself a smile. "You keep saying that word. I don't think it means what you think it means."

He couldn't-quite-let himself laugh. Instead, he looked over my shoulder. "You'd better slide in there and say what you've got to say while you've got the chance."

That sounded very dire, but I realized he didn't necessarily mean life or death. Police swarmed the place, and I saw Gerard waiting like a middle-aged vulture, and any minute now my family was going to storm the barricade and drag me home to Texas tied to their broomsticks.

Taylor got to his feet and gave me a hand up. I was shakier than I liked to admit, and he squeezed my hand before letting go and flashing his badge so the crowd around Carson would let me through.

He looked awful. The blood loss had made his old bruises appear even more livid, and his new ones were watercolor blotches over just about every inch of him. And that was only the inches that were showing.

When he saw me, he winced. And I hadn't even said anything yet.

"So ...," I started. What do you say to a guy who unwittingly uses you to get a magical artifact ahead of a secret organization that he lies about not knowing, and maybe breaks a little bit of your heart, even though you've only known each other a couple of really intense days, right before he jumps in front of a bullet for you.

I mean, what do you say?

You say nothing. Because just then, Agent Gerard arrived, and wouldn't be put off. "Christopher Carson Maguire, you are under arrest-"

"Christopher Carson?" I interrupted. "Your name is Kit Carson?"

"You," said Gerard, aiming his laser stare at me. "I'll get to you in a minute, Peanut."

"No you won't," Carson said, in his most steely voice ever. "She didn't do anything. And if you want all the information I have on Maguire Enterprises, all their holdings and financial dealings, you'd better remember that."

Maybe "I'm not a nice guy" really was the biggest lie he ever told me.

38.

THE JUDGE'S GAVEL fell, and Carson was off the hook for everything but the motorcycle theft, since two FBI agents had actually seen him do it. Some of that might have been luck, or extenuating circ.u.mstance, or even a lot of payoffs-like two car owners and some museum boards-or the fact that when it came right down to it, no one could really explain what happened at the Field Museum that day.

And of course, Carson had all the dirt on his father's criminal activities. Not just a whale, but a whale of a whale with a really big headline takedown. The making of a DA's career. I wasn't in on the details, but I bet they were happy to work with Carson and his high-priced lawyer.

At the verdict, the courtroom erupted in camera flashes and reporters calling out questions. From a few rows back, I watched Carson stand and shake his lawyer's hand. He was looking a lot better than the last time I'd seen him. Which, really, was not a stretch. It had been two months, and I'd only seen his picture on news websites until I returned to Chicago with Agent Taylor to testify at the hearing.

My cousin Amy, who'd come from Texas for moral support, asked, "Ready to get out of here? Or do you want to say hi?"

"He knows I'm here. Trust me. If he wants to talk to me, he'll find me."

She gazed at me for a long moment, ignoring all the people trying to get past us in the busy courtroom gallery. "You know, guys are weird. Sometimes, when they think they've offended you-because they have-they don't know how to come talk to you, because they think you don't want them to, and they've been raised to respect when a girl doesn't want them around."

I took that advice for what it was worth. "Sorry, Amaryllis. You're not exactly the expert on smooth-sailing romance."

She frowned in equal parts annoyance and embarra.s.sment. "Well. Things sometimes work out for the best in spite of our best efforts to screw them up."

The crowd was getting to be too much for me. Because you know who has a lot of ghost baggage hanging around them? People who spend time in courthouses. "Let's get out of here."

We grabbed our things and headed out to the hall. Winter involves a lot more stuff in Chicago than it does in Texas. Coats, hats, scarves, gloves. I don't even own half that gear.

A couple of reporters waved recorders at me, asking questions, but I'd gotten good at ignoring them, and Amy had always been good at spin-doctoring the weird parts of Goodnight life without actually lying. She'd helped both Taylor and me prepare our testimony, because we didn't want to lie and we couldn't tell the weird parts. Not even the Goodnight charm could handle faux demiG.o.ds, real mummies, and spirit dinosaurs.

Agent Taylor was down the hall, talking to the judge, who'd ditched his robe for shirtsleeves in the overheated courthouse. He waved me over, and I approached warily, worried we'd been caught out in the spin-doctoring, but it seemed His Honor was just being nice.