Spirit and Dust (8 page)

“How should I know what’s intimate or personal to her?” asked Carson.

“Dude, you were her backup date. Obviously you’re close.” I had been actively ignoring the “dead” part of the spectrum, so as not to overshadow the “live” part that I didn’t See very well. Now I refocused and scanned the room intently for some hint of remnant.

“What do girls inherit from their grandmothers?” I asked. “China. Knickknacks … How about jewelry?”

Carson, jolted by the suggestion, turned toward a painting on the wall. As soon as I focused on it, I felt a faint psychic hum. A wall safe, maybe?

We nearly raced each other to it. Sure enough, Carson swung the frame from the wall to reveal a safe with a keypad lock, and the
something
went from nagging to unrelenting.

“It’s been there all along, but I’ve been trying to focus on Alexis.” I felt like an idiot. “We’ve wasted so much time. The jackal might be in there right now!”

Carson shook his head and started keying in a number. “I already looked. There’s nothing in here but jewelry. But maybe there’s something for you to read.…”

He glanced down at me, breaking off when he saw my narrow-eyed stare. So he didn’t know where Alexis kept her intimate stuff, but he knew the combination to her safe? “There’s a master code,” he explained, correctly interpreting my suspicion. “The boss gave it to me this morning so I could search.”

So I was right. The mansion was not the place to keep something hidden from Maguire. Alexis would know that. Carson
would, too. But whose side was he on? He was obviously loyal—maybe
obedient
would be a better word—to the boss. On the other hand, he didn’t seem happy about that. So maybe there was nothing obvious here at all.

I pushed that thought aside as Carson opened the safe door and pulled out a velvet-lined tray full of sparkle. I had never seen so many gemstones up close. The fire inside them was downright hypnotic.

But the stones weren’t what called to me. It was a pile of pearls. Their glow was softer, like warm, pale skin. And more, they seemed to hum, raising gooseflesh on my arms as I dipped my fingers into the tray and pulled them free into a long, perfectly matched strand. The necklace
sang
with impatient intensity.

“It’s about time,” chided a voice, coming from everywhere and nowhere. “I’ve been waiting an age for you to get to me, young lady.”

T
HE SHADE OF
Alexis’s grandmama was head-to-toe haute couture, from pearls to little black dress to classic pumps. Her brown hair was swept up à la Audrey Hepburn, and I was sure she could have breakfasted at Tiffany’s in her day.

She looked down her nose at me and sniffed. “Stop gaping, dear girl, and show some manners. It’s bad enough your generation goes around uncovered half the time.”

I closed my mouth and smoothed the pleats in my skirt before I could stop myself. I’d gone to Catholic school for twelve years. When a woman in black says jump, I don’t wait to ask how high.

The apparition didn’t surprise me, but the strength and
suddenness of it did. I figured I’d have to coax the threads of personality from the necklace into something coherent. But this shade was very sharp, as if fed daily by memory.

Carson had startled when I did, but he seemed to be following my gaze rather than sighting on his own. “Can you see her?” I asked him.

He shook his head and reached out, as if testing the wind. “It’s not as cold as I thought it would be.” The ghost gave his hand a scathing look, and he pulled it back as if she’d stung him. “I take that back. Brrr.”

“Let me do the talking,” I said. “And keep your hands to yourself.” Remnants needed careful handling. They couldn’t always be reasoned with like a whole living person because they didn’t have whole-person logic. Sometimes they were a snapshot of a moment in time. Sometimes they were a hodgepodge of steps in their life’s journey.

Like the woman in front of me. She seemed to be in her late twenties—a lot of shades appeared the way they had at a favorite time of life—but she had all the imperiousness of an elderly society matron.

“What do you mean you were waiting on me?” I asked.

She made an impatient noise. “I heard your voices. I haven’t been able to rest since Alexis was last here. I knew something was wrong, and now the two of you are here, poking around like a pair of common thieves.…”

I hurried to reassure her. “We’re not here to steal anything, Mrs.…”

My leading pause hung empty. She assessed me for a long
moment before finally filling it. “Mrs. James Hardwicke the Third. You may call me Mrs. Hardwicke.”

“Right.” Mrs. Hardwicke was kind of fascinating. She’d obviously had a
very
clear self-image in life, which had carried over into death.

“Is it Lex’s grandmother?” Carson asked me. “What is she saying?”

The matron shot him a look. “If you’re going to grope a lady, young man, you might at least address her directly.”

We’d wasted so much time already, I shouldn’t have wasted more being amused by that. “She says you should apologize for groping her.”

To my surprise, Carson blushed. “I beg your pardon, ma’am. It was inadvertent.”

“Humph,” she said, giving him a quick inspection. He was a bit rumpled from our tussle, and he had the barest hint of God-knows-what-o’clock shadow along his jaw. His short brown hair stood up all over, and his trousers had no hint of a crease.

“When Alexis was last here,” I pressed Mrs. Hardwicke, “what made you worry about her?”

“Her demeanor, of course. She was very anxious. A grandmother can tell these things.”

“Anything else?” I asked. Had Alexis known someone was after her, or this jackal thing? “Did she do something unusual? Leave anything behind?”

“Nothing but the key,” said Mrs. Hardwicke, as if this should be obvious.

“The key?” I echoed, half for Carson’s benefit.

“What key?” he asked, still holding the tray of jewelry like a plate of canapés.

Alexis’s grandmother sighed. “The key she put into the safe, of course. That was the last time I saw her.”

I elbowed Carson aside and peered into the eye-level safe. There were two shelves. The jewelry had come from the lower one, and the upper one was empty.

“There’s nothing,” said Carson. “I looked.” He set down the tray and peered over my shoulder. In another situation, his breath on my ear would have been very distracting.

“You’re blocking the light,” I said, though really I just needed him to step away so I could concentrate. There
was
something. My psyche caught the whiff of dirt and ash and the hollow sound of metal and stone. I needed both hands, so I looped the strand of pearls around my neck. Then I reached into the safe, feeling along the shelves and sides.

I tapped on the back and it rang hollow. With a press of my fingers, a panel slid away, and a cold piece of metal fell into my hand. The psychic vibration ran up my arm like a live current and knocked me backward into Carson, who caught me around the waist as the object fell to the carpet with a heavy
thunk
.

“Honestly,” said Mrs. Hardwicke, tutting in disapproval, “the way you girls throw yourselves into a man’s arms these days. No finesse.”

With a little groan, I struggled to get my feet under me. “Next time I’ll try for a dignified swoon.”

“What was that?” Carson asked, steadying me until I stopped wobbling.

I gestured to the floor. There lay an old-fashioned key, about five inches long including the sturdy filigree on the end. “Alexis hid that. It must be important.”

“No, I mean that jolt you got,” he said, still hovering. “Are you okay?”

“Fine.” Waving off his concern, I crouched to retrieve the key but first had to work up the nerve to touch it again.

“Let me,” said Carson, grabbing it before I could. He held it up to catch the lamplight on its dull bronze surface. “I’m guessing this has got some ghostly kick to it?”

Mrs. Hardwicke’s shade peered over our shoulders, a very human move. “Well, it should,” she said. “It’s the key to a mausoleum.”

I turned to her in surprise. “How do you know?”

She sniffed, and went to her “foolish mortals” tone. “Because it’s the key to
my
mausoleum, of course.”

Long-standing remnants could be awfully pragmatic about their state of being. It made a nice but startling change from the recently dead wig-out by Bruiser’s shade.

“What now?” Carson asked, sounding frustrated with the one-sided conversation.

I blinked him into focus and he raised his brows to reiterate his impatience. Ingrate.

“You are very pushy.” I stalled, because knowledge was gold and I was still processing this nugget. “
Agent Taylor
never rushes me while I work.”

He gave a satisfying twitch of annoyance, then held up the key between us. “What. Is. This?”

Alexis had hidden the key from everyone—including Maguire. That was important. So whatever the key opened—the mausoleum—had to be important, too.

“What sort of girl-detective game are you playing, young lady?” demanded Mrs. Hardwicke as the silence lengthened. Her aura was keen and protective. “I’ve seen
this
young man”—she nodded at Carson—“with Alexis. But who are
you
?”

Behind Carson was the picture from the sorority dance, and I saw that Alexis was wearing the pearls. That explained how Mrs. Hardwicke had seen him—she seemed to be tied to the jewelry. Otherwise she would have called to me as soon as I entered the room.

“I’m here to help Alexis,” I told Mrs. Hardwicke. That was the rock-bottom truth. There was no debate about whose side I was on. Maguire had bound me, but Alexis was my priority.

Where did Carson fit into that? He was still waiting for me to answer him about the key. Where was
his
loyalty?

Before I could answer him, something caught his attention. If a guy could prick up his ears like a dog, Carson would have alerted like a Doberman pinscher.

With startling speed, he palmed the key and shoved the tray of jewelry into my hands. “Stow that and close the safe,” he ordered in a murmur, then stepped around me, heading across the suite just as the door flew open.

“The cavalry is here.” Lauren’s voice carried around the bookcase that hid me, and the safe, from view. “Time for Elvis to leave the building.”

I C
OULDN
’
T EXPLAIN
why I jumped to do what Carson said, except that I trusted Lauren less than I trusted him. Blocked from her view, I whisked the velvet-lined tray into the safe. I started to put the pearls back as well, but Mrs. Hardwicke’s voice stopped me.

“Take me with you.”

What?
I asked her silently, my hand poised at the back of my neck.
Why?

“I know what you are,” she said, in a weird mix of plea and direct order. “You must help Alexis. I can help you do that.”

From the other side of the suite I heard Carson say to Lauren, “It took them longer than I thought to get a warrant.”

He meant the FBI, and a lightning strike of hope lit my heart. Agent Taylor—the cavalry—was on his way.

I closed the safe and swung the painting to cover it, my brain running double time. If Lauren’s spell was working, Taylor still thought I was asleep on that smelly couch in the office. I needed to give him some kind of heads-up. Not for myself, but for my family. If anything happened to me, he would have to protect them from Maguire.

Could I leave him a clue and get my message across? Taylor hadn’t ever shown any sign of ESP, but he had instincts that were almost as good. While I had the chance, I unlooped the pearls from around my neck and unfastened the chain I was wearing in the same movement. The pearls I slipped into my skirt pocket, feeling Grandmama Hardwicke fade to a bare psychic stirring. My own necklace and pendant I hid in my hand, just as Lauren called to me.

“Stop stalling, Red,” she snapped. “If you haven’t found anything by now, you’re not going to.”

I dropped the necklace—Saint Gertrude’s medal gleaming up at me—beside the bureau and hoped the detectives were thorough in their search. Then I hurried toward the door before Lauren or Carson came looking for me.

“Where are we going?” I asked warily. Maguire needed to stash me while the FBI was there, and I did not put it past him to have a dungeon.

“Out,” said Carson, giving me a nudge.

I followed Lauren into the hall. Carson lagged behind, and I hoped he still had the mausoleum key. Surely he would know it was important even if I hadn’t yet told him why.

“You two are going to check Alexis’s dorm room again,” Lauren told me. “Just don’t get caught. You can’t find Alexis if you’re in federal custody.”

“Thank you, Captain Obvious,” said Carson, sliding out of the bedroom and closing the door firmly. Lauren gave him a talk-to-the-hand wave and disappeared to tend to her own duties, which worried me for Taylor’s sake. She’d better not put another spell on him.

Carson, meanwhile, took my arm and hustled me toward a back staircase, which led down to an enormous kitchen. Bertram was waiting with two coats and a set of keys. “It’s got a full tank,” said the butler, “and a six-pack of soda in the back, as you requested.”

“Thanks, Bertram.” Carson pocketed the car keys and slipped into one of the coats. He grabbed the second one, and when I didn’t move fast enough, wrapped it around me and shoved me toward the back door.

We froze at a sound from the front of the house—one of the goons answering the door, then the familiar murmur of Agent Taylor’s voice and the harder crack of Gerard’s demand.

I drew a breath to yell to him. Drew it, held it, my tongue making the
T
in
Taylor
. Then the geas jerked on my leash with boot-to-the-chest force. My shout came out as nothing but air and a grunting wheeze.

Black fireworks splashed over my vision as I tried to make my diaphragm work, to pull breath back into my lungs. I grabbed at a wall to keep from falling over, but it turned out to be Carson. “Daisy?” he asked, sounding genuinely alarmed.

This
was why Maguire had bound me to a task I would have done freely. I couldn’t call out to the agents because they would stop me from looking for Alexis. If Taylor didn’t ship me back to Texas for my safety, Gerard would arrest me for interfering with a federal investigation.