Spirit and Dust (24 page)

“Besides,” I said, flustered and determined to break the tension, “my idealism isn’t
that
secret. I drive a Prius.”

He shuddered. “I can’t believe I let a girl who drives a Prius kiss me.”

Awkward. Pause.

“I just did it to steal your phone.”

“I know.”

Damn. I mean, I knew he knew I had it, but damn. “I’m a lousy pickpocket.”

He laughed, looking sheepish. “Actually, this time I didn’t notice until you went to the restroom.”

Kiss distraction achieved. That was progress, I guess. And nice of him to admit it. That was progress, too, though I wasn’t sure what kind.

“Do we have a plan for Chicago?” I asked, changing the subject. Again.

“Find a place to crash.” He rubbed a hand over his face, wincing when he hit a cut on his cheek. “But now that I don’t have to protect my secret identity, I’ve got an idea.”

“Is it stately Wayne Manor?” I asked. “I always figured you for more of a Batman guy than a Superman one.”

“More like a penthouse,” he said as he gathered the greasy
remains of our microwave pizza. “But there is a butler, and he’s a very good cook.”

“Carson,
darling boy
, come and give your aunt Gwenda a hug.”

He did, and his aunt air-kissed both his cheeks, the sleeves of her hostess gown fluttering but the cocktail in her hand absolutely steady.

I wasn’t sure what to expect when the taxi from Union Station had dropped us off at a skyscraper of condos near Chicago’s Magnificent Mile. The doorman had eyed us askance, since it was after eleven and we were looking rough, to say the least. But Carson had a quick word with him, showed him his ID—maybe even his real one—and after a phone call, the doorman sent us up to the twenty-third floor.

“Isn’t your dad going to know we’re here?” I’d asked in the elevator. He’d told me Maguire owned the penthouse, keeping his sister there and out of his hair. Also, I would bet the feds kept tabs on all Maguire’s properties, even on a day when his son
wasn’t
on the run from the law.

“Maybe,” said Carson. “But by now, if he really wants to know where we are, he does. I’ve been careful but not that careful.” He’d shrugged as the elevator pinged for our floor. “Besides, Gwenda won’t tell him. She’s sort of like Switzerland that way.”

Aunt Gwenda was older than her brother, midsixties or a well-preserved seventy. Maybe she’d had work done, or maybe she had really great bone structure. Her zygomatic arches were sculpted just like Carson’s.

“You look wonderful, Gwenda,” he said. “Are we interrupting a party?”

“This old thing?” She gestured to her hostess ensemble. The butler—yes, a real butler—had shown us to the kitchen, but a murmur of conversation came from deeper in the apartment.

“It’s just a few friends, darling,” she added, with a sip of her cocktail. “You must think this is awful with Alexis missing, but it’s been scheduled forever and Devlin said to behave as normally as possible.”

“I understand,” said Carson, all smoothly sociable, not a bit stony. “Speaking of all that …”

Gwenda held up a hand like he hadn’t already trailed off. “I don’t want to know. And don’t worry, I won’t tell anyone you’re here.
Including
my brother.”

“Thanks.” He flashed her a handsome-devil grin and got an indulgent-aunt smile in return. The guy was scary adaptable. With perfect manners, he stepped back to introduce us. “Aunt Gwenda, this is Daisy. We need a place to stay for the night.”

“You poor darling!” she exclaimed, as though she hadn’t taken my measure as soon as she’d come into the kitchen. “We must get you into a hot bath as soon as possible.”

I put on my company manners, too. I do have them. “That sounds wonderful, Miss Maguire.”

She hooked her free arm through mine. “You must call me Aunt Gwenda. We shall get you all fixed up, my dear. Are you hungry? Will canapés do, or shall Matthew whip up an omelet?”

“Yes, please,” I said, in a daze of yes-yes-please-feed-me.

When I glanced at Carson he was looking very smug. Not that this made us even.

Well, maybe it made up for the pizza.

Matthew was the butler. He was young and handsome and, as promised, a great cook. He fed us while the party wrapped up down the hall, then Carson called first dibs on the shower, which suited me because I called seconds on canapés.

When Aunt Gwenda swept back into the kitchen, she laid a pile of silky fabric on one barstool, then took the other beside me. “I brought you something to sleep in, darling. I can have those clothes washed for you, or we can just toss them out and start over. I’m sure I have something you can borrow.”

“Oh, I couldn’t possibly—”

“Of course you could.” She patted my hand. “I wish you weren’t here on
business
, so we could talk about you. Carson has never brought a girl anywhere near the family before.”

Matthew the butler and I exchanged glances as he refilled my orange juice. “No offense, Miss Maguire, but I can sort of see why.
You
seem very nice, but …”

“But my brother is a dreadful man.” She gave a what-are-you-going-to-do shrug. “At least I have a lovely home and a delightful niece and nephew.”

I was not going to get an opportunity better than this. “Did you know Carson’s mother?”

“Sadly, no. I understand she was a very talented artist. But I didn’t even know I
had
a nephew until he came to live with Devlin.”

“What about Alexis?” I asked. “Where is her mother?”

“She moved away ages ago. Remarried now. To some foreign count, can you believe it?”

That was one of the more believable things I’d heard in the past two days. “What’s Alexis like?” I asked. Carson spoke fondly of her, but I still had little read on her personality.

“Very smart.
Book
smart, just brilliant. She doesn’t get that from our side of the family.” Gwenda poured some orange juice into the remains of what I assumed was her vodka. “But she’s clever, too, like a Maguire. Well, she’d have to be. Devlin is a manipulative bastard, and she had to learn to get around that, learn to work his system so she could have some independence and happiness.”

I couldn’t find fault with that. No wonder Carson was so cautious with his truths, and he’d only been in that environment since he was sixteen. What would he be like if he’d been raised as Maguire’s only son? Probably less conflicted, and not in a good way.

Gwenda patted my hand once more. “You toddle off and have your bath, or a nice hot shower. Second door on the right, down that hall.”

I thanked the butler again for the midnight snack, then took the bundle of pj’s Aunt Gwenda pushed at me and followed her directions. It was weird not feeling a shred of spirit energy anywhere. Full-on apparitions like Cleopatra or Mrs. Hardwicke were rare, but snatches of color, voices, or emotion were the background music of my life. It was sort of lonely without them.

Down the hall, I opened the second door on the right and found my temporary bedroom. I also found Carson coming into the same room through a different door, wrapped in a towel and nothing else.

I
T WAS A
big towel, but there was a lot of Carson.

I mean, he was really tall. And
really
well built. No wonder he’d been able to toss me over the cemetery fence, then vault it like a bump in the road.

I stood there with my mouth hanging open and, I don’t know, some sound coming out, because he made a shushing motion with the hand not holding the towel and then hurried to pull me into the room and close the door.

“Aunt Gwenda has made an assumption,” he said. “And I sort of let it stand because it’s simpler this way. I swear this was not my idea.”

He was very apologetic and earnest. In fact, he seemed rather panicked that I was going to get the wrong impression. From him wearing a towel. And nothing else. Because no one would get the wrong impression from that.

“Let me put on some clothes,” he said, when I continued to say nothing.

I decided to study the decor while he grabbed a stack of something from a chair and returned to the adjoining bathroom. That was when I noticed there was only one bed. It was a big bed, but there were two of us.

He came back quickly, wearing a pair of sleep pants and a long-sleeved T-shirt. “Look, I can grab the comforter and a couple of pillows and sleep on the floor. It’s not a big deal.”

“That’s stupid.” My brain had finally started working again. “I saw your bruises.” Boy, had I. “You don’t need to sleep on the floor. We’ll put a pillow wall down the middle or something.”

“Are you sure?”

I clutched my bundle of pj’s to my chest and walked past him to the bathroom. “Carson, after the day we’ve had, if you can do anything other than sleep, you’re not just a magician, you really are Superman.”

The shower had five types of massages, and I tried them all. And not just because I was delaying going out there and facing Carson. I was
thinking
.

There were still holes in some of my theories, simply because I didn’t have the pieces to fit. But nothing was totally unraveling.
If Alexis and Johnson were close, it made sense that they would have shared information about Oosterhouse and his secret society. Maybe they split when she realized how the magic drew its power, or how far the Brotherhood was willing to go to get the Jackal. But they still needed her knowledge, or Maguire’s resources, or whatever was on the flash drive, so they took her.

If
the Brotherhood took her. I’d argued all along that they must have, but there was something weird about the way Johnson had reacted when I demanded he let her go. He’d seemed surprised. Was it simply because I’d thought the small jackal figurine he’d stolen was
the
Jackal?

Too many missing pieces. The password to the flash drive, the information on it, the reason the Brotherhood wanted the artifact from the St. Louis museum …

I admitted that I was going to run out of hot water before I ran out of questions. I also admitted I was stalling, and forced myself out of the shower.

Putting on the loaner pajamas, I brushed my teeth with the guest amenities, then checked my reflection in the steamy mirror. The pj’s were green silk that brought out the color of my eyes and the purple of my bruises. Fortunately, most of those were covered.

No more stalling. So the silk was clingy when I moved and it was kind of obvious I wasn’t wearing a bra. I was just going to walk out and get under the covers like it was no big deal.

I walked out to the sound of snoring. Carson sprawled facedown on half of the bed.

The middle half.

Ass.

“Move. Over.” I pushed him until he rolled to one side, then I started putting pillows down the middle of the bed. Before I got to the one at the top, I stopped and looked at him.

I was not the type to get soft, squishy feelings for a boy. I liked guys who made my heart race, not ones who made it melt. But Carson asleep and ragged and vulnerable? He did both.

Odds were, not many people got to see this. Why did he walk such a tightrope, hating Maguire, but working for him, playing his game. Adapting.
Here
was a guy who was clever.

Clever and powerful. Cleopatra had the right of it. Dangerous and irresistible.

“Carson,” I whispered. He made a sleepy, not-really-awake sound. Perfect. I didn’t have any scruples about questioning his subconscious. “Carson, what hold does Maguire have over you? Why do you stay with him?”

He gave a drowsy hum and muttered something. I leaned closer to hear and he whispered, “Nice try, Sunshine.”

I hit him with the pillow, but not very hard. “Ass.”

Cracking open an eyelid, he looked at me, then the pillow, then me again. “If you’re going to put that brick in the wall, you’d better do it. I can see down your top.”

I whacked him again, plenty hard, then thumped the pillow into place, completing the feather fortress. When I collapsed on the bed, I couldn’t see him at all.

Carson rolled over and turned off the bedside lamp. I stared at the dark ceiling, exhausted, but my mind was racing too fast
for sleep to catch up, still trying to find the pieces to fill all the holes.

The Oosterhouse Jackal, the Black Jackal … 
Were
they the same thing? If not, then what
was
the Black Jackal?

Twice through the Veil I had seen something, a lean, hound-like shadow. Was this the power of suggestion, or something real? And if so, what? And what did it want? The threshold to eternity—whatever lay beyond this world—was a one-way deal.

At least, I thought so.

On the other side of the pillow wall, Carson stirred, like he was restless, too. I had one more thing on my mind, and it wasn’t any kind of transcendental question.

“Hey,” I whispered, in case he was sleeping.

“What now?”

“Back in the garage, when I stole the cell phone … Why did you wait so long to kiss me back?”

“Because I have this weird policy against kissing girls under a magical compulsion to obey my father.” There was a loaded pause and then, “After we find Alexis, it will be a different story. Just so you know.”

Great. Now my heart was racing as fast as my brain. What would he say if I told him that I hadn’t felt coerced much at all since we hit the road?

I wasn’t going to find out what he’d say to that, because the next thing I heard from his side of the wall were his snores.

•   •   •

I finally slept, dreamless as the dead. But when the washed-out light of dawn edged the curtains in the unfamiliar room, I heard a voice calling me, so faint that I wasn’t sure I wasn’t still asleep.

“Wake, Daughter of the Jackal. You’ve slept too long.”

Awake or dreaming, I opened my eyes to find a spirit beside the bed.

For a second, my sleep-fogged brain Saw a canine-headed figure, but it faded, leaving a gray-haired man dressed in sweat-stained khaki, looking down at me with a benevolent smile.

“At last! Wake up, young lady. I’ve been waiting for you for a very long time.”

W
AKING UP WITH
a dead guy standing over me was a helluva way to discover that my systems were back online.