Spirit and Dust (21 page)

“He’s lying,” said Cleopatra, in a darker tone, the girlish veneer slipping away to show the formidable young woman she’d been. She turned her gaze toward me, and I understood how she’d swayed such powerful men, reclaimed and ruled the kingdom of Egypt. “Be careful, priestess. I think he cares for you, but he may care for something else more.”

The way she said that made me wonder how much she recalled of her own life. Despite the time pressure, I had to ask, “Do you remember them? Caesar and Antony?”

“No. They came later.” I understood what she meant—any memories of those men belonged to some other remnant. Still, there was a heaviness to her sigh. “But men are the same always. Do not doubt they love, and do not doubt their love won’t matter.”

There was a bang from the front of the museum, the crash of one of the doors slamming open, and the sound of running footsteps. The open chambers of the museum carried the warning clearly. Carson put the phone in his pocket and grabbed the thief’s bag. “We have to go. Now.”

McSlackerson, maybe warned by the same noises, flexed his bound fingers. He must have been faking unconsciousness for who knows how long. But he was tied up, and there wasn’t a reason for my heart to pound against my ribs.

No reason except the daughter of Isis.

“Cleo—” I warned.

Too late. The thief’s fingers closed on an intangible fold of her linen shift. Cleopatra gave a start of surprise, then shock, then fear. And then she vanished.

I watched Cleopatra disappear, grabbed at her with my psyche and felt the worst sort of nothing—the freaky Novocaine numbness where your brain knows something awful just happened and your senses try to deny there’s a hole where your wisdom tooth used to be.

The last pharaoh of Egypt. It didn’t matter that I knew it wasn’t all of her, or that there were who knew how many other
remnant versions all over the world. This one—this unique moment in this amazing woman’s life—had just been used up like a Kleenex for this guard-stabbing, priceless-artifact-stealing, mafia-princess-kidnapping asshole to spit out his gum.

McSlackerson snapped the belt around his wrists and it crumbled to ash, the metal buckle tinkling to the floor. He looked from me, staring at him in shock and outrage, to Carson, holding the bag—literally—to the door, where police would be pouring through any second. Then he jumped to his feet and ran like the jackal he was.

Fury burned off the numbness. I started after him, but Carson grabbed me. “Leave him. Let’s go.”

He yanked me with him through a different doorway, to a dead end full of modern art. “Brilliant!” I said, strangling my voice down to a whisper. “We’re trapped.”

A whisper wasn’t good enough. Carson clapped a hand over my mouth and pushed me against the wall next to the connecting archway, flattening us there, out of sight.

“Calm down.” He breathed the words into my ear, hardly stirring any air, probably because there wasn’t any air between us—pressed together from chest to hip, our legs tangled up, his cheek against mine, his lips against my hair. Pressed any tighter and we would melt into the plaster.

Even though I knew it was simple expediency—maybe
because
it was expedient and efficient and all the things Carson was when something needed doing—my heart fluttered at the feel of his arms around me and his body against mine and his broad shoulders between me and the whole world.

The police charged into the next room, yelling things like “Clear!” and “He’s not here!”

“Think invisible thoughts,” Carson whispered, and I gave an infinitesimal nod. Which was all I could do, because he hadn’t taken his fingers from over my mouth. Maybe he didn’t trust me not to give us away.

Rubber soles squeaked in the doorway. If I could have drawn a breath, I would have held it.

Then someone said, “This is a dead end. He didn’t go this way.”

“He’s going for the back exit,” said another officer, and the footsteps retreated.

Carson waited a long moment before moving, and then only to put his hand on the wall beside my head. His breath—when he finally let himself breathe—skimmed my neck and raised gooseflesh. Even without magic, without my extra senses, there was an electric zing everywhere we touched. Which was just about everywhere.

“What about the security cameras?” I whispered.

“I shorted them out when I grabbed the wire to zap our friend back there.”

“Oh.” I shivered, for reasons I couldn’t quite untangle.

Be careful, priestess
. Cleopatra’s observation became a warning.
Power is attractive
.

“Okay,” he said, as if shoring up his strength. He’d used as much magic as I had psychic energy
and
been in a fistfight. Still, his arms were steady as he pushed off the wall just enough to look
down at me. If I hadn’t been propped up, the anguished relief in his eyes, from that intimate an angle, would have leveled me.

“When you passed out,” he murmured, searching my face, “I thought I’d hurt you.”

I couldn’t bring myself to tell him that he had. I wasn’t sure I could voice it at all and keep going. I felt stretched to a fragile filament. Admitting weakness might break me.

So I didn’t. “It takes more than some guy channeling a volcano to keep me down.”

His rueful laugh stirred my hair. “I know that’s right.”

He knew so much about me, and I knew so little about him. Who was he thinking of when he asked me about remnants and ghosts? Why did he pick his truths so carefully? Could I trust him a little, or not at all?

Carson stepped back, letting his hands fall to my shoulders and giving me an encouraging squeeze. “Ready for more running?”

“God, no.” But I got my legs under me anyway. Whether the cops managed to catch McSlackerson or not, we had to get out of there before they came back to secure the scene. “You owe me a helluva lot more than a milk shake and french fries.”

By some undeserved miracle, we were able to slink unseen through a fire door where the alarm was already shorted out. I figured we had just minutes, maybe less, to get out before officers were stationed at all the exits; it was dumb luck—and the
distraction of chasing McSlackerson—that they weren’t guarded already.

We slid out the side of the building, then slipped around to the front, to get lost in the crowd that had gathered there. Four police cars blocked the drive in front of the museum, and uniformed officers stood sentry on the stairs. An ambulance waited, too, its doors ominously open, like a pharaoh’s empty tomb.

“Why is it taking so long to bring out the guard?” I fretted.

“They probably want to make sure his vital signs are steady,” said Carson. Maybe he was as certain as he sounded, or maybe he sensed how thin I was stretched and was trying to hold me together with hope. My ESP was blown like a fuse, Cleopatra had been erased, and the perpetrator had gotten away. But if the guard died, if we hadn’t been able to save him, then what was any of this for? I might as well go home and sell magic tea and candles like the rest of the Goodnight clan.

“Come on.” He touched my arm, trying to draw my attention away from the ambulance. “We’re out. We’ve got the next clue to the Jackal. Let’s not waste this lucky break.”

“Okay,” I said, but didn’t move. I was watching the new car that had arrived. A black one. Government plates.

It was definitely the feds, no mistaking the black sedan or the standard-issue square-jawed Johnny G-man who drove it. But what were the chances that the back door would open and Agent Taylor would climb out?

The way my day had been going? Pretty damned good.

I
RECOGNIZED
A
GENT
Taylor’s profile with less than a glance. The way he moved, how he held his shoulders. It jabbed like an adrenaline needle into my heart, but with the reverse effect. I couldn’t move.

Binding promise or not, I’d had zero temptation to give myself up to St. Louis’s finest. But this was
my
Agent Taylor. He would believe me.
Trust me
, I’d said in my email.

The email I’d sent told him to track down Michael Johnson. And now Taylor was in St. Louis, where McSlackerson had just stabbed a guy and one of his Brotherhood had tried to abduct me
through Ancient Greece. Did that mean one of them was Johnson?

The other car door opened, and Agent Gerard climbed out. Nuts. Agent Gerard would
not
trust me. If anyone could possibly want to lock me up more than he did, I didn’t know about it.

Beside me, Carson cursed, and I knew he’d recognized them. “Come on,” he growled. This time it was an unmistakable order.

I hesitated too long. Maybe Taylor caught a glimpse of the setting sun on my red hair. Maybe he felt me staring at him. Maybe my psychicness had rubbed off on him. But he paused on the steps to the museum and turned back to scan the crowd.

Then he saw me and blinked, poleaxed by surprise. He must have said something because Gerard turned, too. What
he
said was easily readable on his lips, and
he
didn’t blink, just charged like a bull down the museum steps.

Even if Carson hadn’t grabbed my wrist and urged me into a run, the sight of Gerard barreling toward us would have spurred me on.

The crowd slowed the two agents down. I heard them shouting for people to get out of the way, and I was tempted to look back but didn’t dare with Carson pulling me along. We plunged down the steep slope of the lawn, and I could barely keep my feet under me.

“Daisy Temperance Goodnight! Hold it right there!”

Crap! The full-name whammy. Oldest magic in the book. I’d
taught
Taylor that trick, the asshole.

I obeyed, only for a fraction of a second before willpower
kicked in. On the flat land it wouldn’t have made a difference. On the grassy hill, though, I tripped over my feet and went down.

My fall jerked Carson to a stop, but he didn’t let go of my wrist.
That
was going to bruise. He wrapped an arm around my waist and hauled me to my feet. It wasn’t a long delay, but enough for Taylor to gain ground. Gerard lagged behind, probably because he was fifteen years older or maybe because he was on the phone calling for backup.

Carson dragged me after him until my legs started cooperating again. We made it through the gap in a row of hedges that walled off a sculpture garden, and I hoped he knew where we were going, because I had no idea.

“Maguire!”

The name startled me, and so did the fact that Carson glanced up at it. I whirled and found Taylor, slowing his steps at a safe distance, his gun drawn but pointed down at his side.

His gun drawn
.

“Seriously?” I said, outraged. “You need your firearm for this?”

He looked not at me, but at Carson, who hadn’t moved. “Step away from Daisy, Maguire. We can sort this out, but only if you let her go.”

That was the second time Taylor had used that name. And inside, McSlackerson had called Carson by it, too, but I’d thought he was just being snide.
Maguire?

“I’m sorry, Agent Taylor,” Carson said, still holding me beside him. “If I don’t get out of here with this girl, another one is going to die.”

“We can find Alexis.” Taylor spoke in an authoritative, hostage-negotiating tone. “This is what we do.”

“No offense,” said Carson, with a hint of cool irony that showed none of the tension I could feel in the arm wrapped around my waist. “But this is way beyond the FBI. That’s why I need to borrow your girl Daisy.”

“Hang on,” I said. Carson gave me a “not now” squeeze, but this was important, and not just because I didn’t want him to get shot. “I’m my own girl.”

Taylor’s gaze flicked to me, to Carson, and back again. He was smart, and intuitive, and he
knew
me. He must realize what “beyond the FBI” meant—beyond
normal
. I could see him working it out, but I could also hear Agent Gerard almost on us.

Taylor heard him, too, and came to a decision. “What do you hear, Daisy?”

I let out my held breath and gave him the
I’m okay
response. “Nothing but the rain, Taylor.”
Trust me
.

His eyes narrowed on Carson, who gazed steadily back, some kind of testosterone telepathic exchange going on. Taylor confirmed when he warned, “If anything happens to her—”

That was as far as he got before Gerard charged through the gap in the shrubs. Taylor whirled, expecting an attack, and Carson dropped his arm from my waist and grabbed my hand. “Let’s go.”

I didn’t hesitate, but I did look back, long enough to see Gerard point his weapon at us and shout something that I couldn’t hear over the roar in my ears. I made out “stop” and “arrest,”
and I smelled the burning of bridges. Taylor knocked his partner’s arm away, yelling, “Are you crazy? You could hit Daisy!”

I was pretty sure Gerard wouldn’t mind.

I kept running, convincing myself that the ache in my chest was exhaustion and not my heart breaking because I was leaving behind everything that had been so important to me twenty-four hours ago.

We reached the parking lot with no more sign of close pursuit. Carson ran for a motorcycle that someone had parked illegally near a fire hydrant. He touched something—the battery, maybe?—with one hand and the ignition with the other and the engine roared to life.

He swung his leg over and ordered, “Get on.”

I wanted to make him work for it—with an explanation or a plea or even, you know, a
request
. I was tired of being ordered, hauled, squeezed, and run over.

“Get on the bike, Daisy.” His gaze caught and held mine, his fatigue and desperation binding me closer than any spell or bond. “I can’t do this without you.”

I got on the bike, like I’d known I would. A girl’s life and the power to throw volcanoes at people were more important than a “please” or a promise to answer all my questions. But so, I had to admit, was “I can’t do this without you.”

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.