Spirit and Dust (23 page)

But as far as spirit energy, I didn’t feel a thing. Maybe there was nothing to feel, but more likely I was still zapped. Though I had gotten a very powerful jolt from McSlackerson’s jackal tattoo, so if this was
the
Jackal, I was pretty sure I would know it.

“This isn’t the Black Jackal,” I said.

“That’s what Johnson said, back at the museum.”

“I noticed you used McSlackerson’s real name.” With the password and the mini jackal dead ends for the moment, there was no sense putting off the pants-on-fire discussion. “And while we’re on the subject of real names …”

He went still and then relaxed, as if he’d been bracing for the question and was relieved to have it over with. “Yeah. About that.”

I gently bundled the little statue back up and slipped it into the bag. “You’re going to want me in a good mood for this discussion, Liar Maguire. And I will be in a much better mood in the snack car.”

I
STARED AT
the cardboard-flavored microwave pizza in front of me and added it to the debt of Carson’s offenses.

“It was that or a cold turkey sandwich,” he said, sliding into the booth across from me. “I guessed that you wouldn’t want another of those.”

He guessed right. Insult to injury, there was no Coke. Only Pepsi.

I choked it down like medicine, strictly for the sugar and caffeine, then tried to figure out where to start. The sun had gone down completely and the snack car was brightly lit, superimposing our reflections on the Illinois farmland in the window.

“So Alexis isn’t just
like
a sister to you,” I began. Funny that I’d never considered he could be a cousin or a nephew.

“She’s my half sister,” Carson said a little warily, as if bracing for another freak-out.

The clues had all been there: his status with the staff, how well he knew Alexis … and most of all, now that I thought about it, the strange, bright remnant that seemed to connect father and son in Maguire’s office.

McSlackerson had called him by his last name at the museum. When Carson had objected, I’d just thought he’d been rejecting the association. Which I guess he was, on a deeper, more messed-up level. I might have to give him a pass for now.

“And speaking of lies …” I paused to give Carson the eye, but he didn’t look like he was about to protest his innocence. He just sipped his Pepsi, waiting for me to continue. “When Elbow Patches mentioned Michael Johnson at the Institute library, you said you didn’t know him.”

“No,” Carson said calmly, “I said I didn’t know Alexis was thinking about graduate school.”

I sat back, folding my arms, and prompted him to come clean. “So, speaking of
lies by omission
 … tell me about your history with McSlackerson. And don’t try to tell me you have none.”

The nickname almost made him smile, but he thought better of it. “It’s not that much history. He and Alexis dated a while. I didn’t like him then, but I thought they were done. I thought Alexis dumped him.”

For a long moment there was only the sound of the train on
the tracks while I glared at him, trying to see into his skull. “We really need to discuss your definition of ‘need-to-know basis.’ ”

He met my gaze evenly. “Mrs. Hardwicke told you that Alexis knew one or more of these Brotherhood guys. And the guy at the Institute had just told you that Johnson and Alexis dated. So you knew what I did. We had other things to talk about, like the jackal and Oosterhouse and getting to St. Louis.”

True. I wasn’t sure that excused him, but it was true.

“Okay,” I said. I hadn’t told him I’d emailed Taylor to give him Johnson’s name, so maybe we should just move forward. “Let’s debrief. And we’ll both promise not to skip anything.”

Carson scrubbed his hands over his face. “Daisy, I haven’t slept in almost forty-eight hours and we’ve been through the wringer. The whole museum thing really deserves my best brainpower, and this isn’t it. I’m baffled as to why Johnson and his brothers would stab someone to get an artifact that you say has no power.”

“That’s not what I said. I said it isn’t the Black Jackal.”

“Is that what we’re calling the Oosterhouse Jackal now?” Carson asked. “Don’t you think it’s a little melodramatic?”

“And ‘Brotherhood of the Black Jackal’ isn’t? I didn’t make up these names.” When Aunt Ivy had told me about it, I’d thought the name was a reference to Anubis. And maybe it was, but …

“At the museum,” I said, trying to remember exactly, “Johnson said, ‘This isn’t the Black Jackal,’ and, ‘We’re still assembling the pieces.’ Or something like that.”

“Do you know what he meant?”

“Maybe. Well, no, but a little.” Boy, did we have a lot to catch up on. Pointing to his pizza, I said, “You eat. I’ll talk.”

I told him everything that happened after I woke up over the shoulder of Johnson’s comrade: the kidnap attempt, my drained psychic battery, the fact that I’d spoken with the real Cleopatra, and the way Johnson had used her remnant force to escape his bonds. I also explained that I thought he had stabbed the guard to somehow use his—I guessed
psychic energy
was the only term for it—to keep the alarm from going off.

“That’s why I’m so worried for Alexis,” I said. My pizza had gone cold as I’d been talking. For the first time in my life I didn’t feel like eating. “And that’s why these Brotherhood guys have to be stopped. They’re willing to kill someone, but worse, they’re willing to steal their … the essential spirit of them. These are remnants of people’s
souls
.”

Carson had listened calmly as I caught him up, but he’d pushed aside his food. By the time I’d finished, his folded hands rested on the table, knuckles white.

“I’m not like them,” he said tightly. “I wouldn’t use up … I didn’t know.…” He broke off, to stare out the window, his jaw muscle working as he struggled with his thoughts and some emotion I didn’t understand.

Finally he turned back and met my gaze. “Daisy, I’m so sorry for hurting you back there.”

I was stunned. It was the most genuine apology he’d given me, for something I would never hold against him. “Carson—I’m fine. I think my mojo will come back, but even if it doesn’t—” My voice broke, and he flinched. Not much, but visibly. I pulled
on my brave-girl armor for both our sakes. “Even if it doesn’t, I’m still here. You did it to save both of us, not just yourself. You’re nothing like the Brotherhood.”

He let my assurance stand for a few seconds, maybe letting it sink in. When he did speak, it was like we were going to pretend that moment of weakness hadn’t happened. “I don’t think they were trying to kill us. I think they were trying to do exactly what happened—drain you to exhaustion and distract me while they made off with you and the artifact.”

“How would they know you could make with the deflector shield?” I asked. “
You
didn’t know until you felt—whatever it was that happened when Pompeii hit me on the first time through. Did you?”

He got a little bit of a dodgy look, like he was about to tell me something else he’d been holding back. “Not on that scale. I did something like it at the cemetery. Remember, I told you to think invisible thoughts? But that was just …” He waved a hand.

“Jedi mind tricks,” I finished. I thought about what Johnson had said about collecting the pieces needed for the fiendish plan. “You did have a theory that a psychic who could talk to the dead was one of the resources the Brotherhood couldn’t get on their own. Why they need the Maguire organization.”

“Yeah, I did suggest that.” He didn’t look happy about being right. “But why?”

“Maybe to read this.” I put my hand on McSlackerson’s messenger bag on the seat beside me. Did I feel a tingle of spirit from the artifact inside, or was that wishful thinking? “Maybe this holds a remnant with a clue to the Black Jackal.”

“Which still leaves the question … What
is
the Black Jackal?”

I explained what I had put together, leaving out the part about Phin’s help. “I think Oosterhouse discovered how to draw on remnants and shades for magic and somehow left that information for his disciples. The Brotherhood has been doing it all along, just on a relatively small scale. But the Oosterhouse Jackal, or Black Jackal, will let them use that spirit power more efficiently.”

“Like a transistor that amplifies an electronic signal,” said Carson, following the thread.

He was as bad as Phin. “It’s a thingy. It makes it work. I don’t need to know how.” I drummed my fingers on the table. Magical theory really was not my thing, but I didn’t want to risk calling my cousins again and drawing them further into the situation. “I would like to know how they do magic now, without the Jackal. It’s not something everyone can do.”

Carson leaned back in his seat. “Secret societies have secret rituals. Initiations.”

“Symbols!” I pointed to my arm. “Johnson had a tattoo of a jackal. And when I touched it, I got a powerful jolt of remnant energy. Maybe the tattoo links the members of the Brotherhood somehow.”

“Everyone has tattoos these days,” said Carson, and pointed to a family sitting across the aisle from us, enjoying their snack and their train ride. The mom’s pants leg had ridden up to show a butterfly inked on her ankle. “Even nice, normal Midwesterners. Even me.”

“Really?” Curse my vivid imagination. “Where?”

He sipped his soda. “That’s not important.” But he looked pleased that I was curious.

That flustered me. Because I
was
curious, and we had known each other all of twenty-four hours, and twenty-three and one half of them had been spent on the run.

“Okay, then,” I said. “If you won’t tell me that, tell me about your mother.”

He reacted with a very careful nonreaction. Most people would be at least a little surprised by the non sequitur. “How Freudian of you, Miss Goodnight.”

“Well, I know about your father.” I left an accusing beat. “
Now
I do.”

He sighed like I had guilted him into talking, which was fine, since that had been my intention. “My mother was an artist who had an affair with Devlin Maguire just long enough to find out he was married and to get pregnant with me. Not in that order. She raised me on her own until she was killed during a home invasion when I was sixteen, and Maguire adopted me so I’d have his name. I’m his only son.”

The way he stripped all emotion off those facts somehow made them more appalling. “Maguire simply showed up, all ‘Luke, I am your father,’ and adopted you? Just like that? The family court judge didn’t give you a choice?”

“Maguire speaks softly and carries a big wallet.” Carson shrugged. “My mother had never accepted any child support from him, but apparently he could prove he’d tried or something. Anyway, except for the name change, I didn’t mind. Mom never said a bad word about my father—she never said anything at all,
really. And then he shows up, filthy rich, larger than life, and paying for college, promising me a job in the family business. And there were the cars … They’re not all Ford Tauruses.”

I studied him over the rim of my Pepsi can, not believing for an instant it was that simple. “So it’s all about the money and the cars? That’s why you’re sticking around?”

“Of course.” He kept a straight face except for one raised eyebrow. “What would Freud say about that?”

“I don’t know,” I said. “But I’m sure it would have something to do with tailpipes.”

He choked on his soda and grabbed for his napkin as Pepsi came out his nose.

Score.

He mopped at the drink, but he was a lost cause, really. Before we got to the train station, he’d turned his shirt inside out to hide the bloodstains. (I’d ditched my top layer and borrowed his jacket and hoped my jeans just looked tie-dyed.) There were dark circles under his eyes and an unshaven shadow on his jaw, in addition to all the cuts and bruises.

Why was there no remnant of his mother nearby to fuss over him, especially while he was wounded? That was exactly when mothers like to check in on their kids. I remembered him asking me, on the dark road the night before, about remnants, if I saw anything around him. Had he known somehow that she wasn’t around?

I wanted to reach across the table, to take his hand and lace our fingers together the way our lives seemed to have become laced. I didn’t, but I gave in to the impulse to share something else that linked us.

“My parents were killed, too. By Dad’s business partner. Nothing like your dad’s business. Computer parts. But it was over greed and a bigger market share. Would you believe he cut the lines to the brakes on their car? One steep Hill Country embankment and—” I made a fatal arc with my hand. Very dramatic.

My emotions weren’t in the words. They colored outside the lines of the story, and he watched me as I told it, reading my feelings like I read spirits.

“How do you grow up with that,” he asked, “and not be all …”

I raised a brow, mirroring one of his favorite expressions. “Jaded and bitter?”

He acknowledged my point with a tip of his head, then turned the mirror back on me. “You pretend to be jaded. But you have this glow of … 
decency
about you—”

“Now you’re just being insulting.”

“—and a belief in the basic decency of others. How do you keep that, seeing what you see?”

“My aunts, of course. It’s their fault. I wanted to start an indie girl band, but I couldn’t get up the proper angst.” I sighed hugely. “Now you know my secret shame.”

He just gave me a
look
. “I’ve pretty much known you were an idealist from the beginning, Sunshine.”

Well, that explained the nickname, I guess.

Across the aisle, the kids were experimenting with the ripples the motion of the train made in their cups of soda. I watched them for a moment, then said, “I don’t think it’s idealism to believe the universe is a decent place, or that people are more good
than bad. It doesn’t make me
unaware
of the bad in the world, just more determined to add to the good.”

I glanced back to find him watching me with an enigmatic expression. I’d gotten better at catching the glints of truth beneath his surface calm, but this time I couldn’t make out his feelings. Amusement, warmth, regret. Those were enough to make me blush.