Spirit and Dust - By Rosemary Clement-Moore Page 0,105

kidding me.

Bound and gagged like a pig at a luau.

I couldn’t speak. My mouth felt like it had been stuffed with old sweat socks.

Nightmare shadows loomed on the ceiling and walls, cast by deformed heads and cloaked figures. The Brotherhood stood in a semicircle around me, wearing jackal masks and some sort of robes, and it was all too weird and too terrifying at the same time. Their chant had the ring of ritual, and it raised a sort of electricity in the air, a potential of power. As if they could call anything and it would answer.

The semicircle faced an altar, and that raised my hackles, too. Behind it stood Devlin Maguire. To his left, his daughter, Alexis. To his right, his son, Carson, eyes straight ahead. A dynasty in the making.

The big man raised his arms in invocation. The chanting dropped to a hum, and Maguire spoke over it. “The Brotherhood of the Jackal has formed. We call our mentor and master, the Black Jackal, and offer him a body so that he can live again and we can share his glory.”

Oh, you have so got to be kidding me.

34

A BODY?

Ancient Egyptians didn’t go for human sacrifice. But there I was, in the middle of the semicircle of brethren, tied to the statue of the jackal like some kind of offering.

I’d managed to sit up with my back to the pedestal, my arms stretched behind me, wrists bound to something yielding but inescapable on the other side. I gave a few experimental yanks and the something yanked back with a very annoyed grunt.

Oh. That was where Taylor was. I was relieved he wasn’t lion chow but otherwise was not happy to hear from him.

And Carson … Carson still hadn’t looked at me. His jaw was set, his muscles tight. Surely he would find a way to give me some clue as to what he was planning.

Suddenly Ivy was there beside me. I jumped, then pulled at my bonds, and barely remembered not to talk out loud to her.

“I am so very sorry I didn’t stay to watch your back,” she said, guilt flavoring her apology but not prolonging it. “I thought it was important to reconnoiter for you.”

Get out of here! I told her. It’s jackal central! Are you nuts?

“I will. But it’s important I tell you what I know.” She glanced at the Maguire family behind the altar. Everything seemed in stasis, but it was only in comparison with the speed Ivy’s shade was telling me things in psychic time. “The young man won’t look at you because he doesn’t want them to use you against him. He has a plan. It’s a catastrophically stupid plan, but I have no way to stop him.”

How do you know? I asked, still terrified for her. But I had a hunch that made me terrified for all of us.

“I spoke with him.” She absorbed my reaction to that even before I could. “You mean he doesn’t share your ability to speak with the dead?”

No. He has the ability to borrow it, though.

Until now, he’d only done it when we were touching, or close. But he had the Jackal’s mark, and it was a whole new ball game now. My horrible hunch said my talent for speaking with the dead wasn’t all he’d borrowed.

He’s planning to push the Black Jackal back through the Veil.

“He thinks he can, yes.”

That wasn’t all. I knew what Maguire meant about offering the Jackal a body. Not a sacrifice, but a host. If Maguire thought he would remain in control of all that power, he would take it. And I didn’t think Carson cared if sending the Jackal back to the afterlife sent Devlin Maguire, too.

Psychic time or regular time, we were out of both. I could feel the Jackal prowling within the bonds I’d anchored to the foundations of the building. This room was the limit of his tether, but not a stretch.

Go, I told Ivy. If I could force her away, I would. He’s coming.

She went, with a fleeting touch of her spirit to mine, spending no time on words. Then she was gone, really gone, and safe.

I looked at the altar, subjective time back to normal. A pulse beat in Maguire’s neck, above the collar of his shirt. He wore his suit like a vestment. There was something else, a muted psychic hum. I’d felt it once before in his office. However he’d contained the soul of Carson’s mother, he had it here.