my joints threatened to pop. But I was helpless to stop the Jackal as he pulled the remnant essence of my aunt into his fist like he was wadding up paper.
Her image shriveled but her scream multiplied. It reverberated in the chamber, shook the walls until they began to transform. The ancient panels of stone on display spread like spilled water, covering the walls until the tomb was no longer curtains and plaster but stone and dirt and stuffy air. The electric light warmed, turned to smoking flame and dancing torchlight.
And the scream still didn’t stop. The air shimmered around the Jackal’s hand, and every cell in my body shuddered in recognition and resonance. Through my link to my aunt, he used me to call the Veil. It didn’t hum. It shrieked as he dragged Ivy’s soul from beyond like a magician pulls a never-ending scarf from his pocket.
Her soul.
“Stop!” I screeched around the cloth gag between my teeth. “I’ll do it! Just stop—”
Stop before there’s nothing left. I sobbed the last, unable to form the words. Tears blinded me, and I blinked them away because I didn’t want to be sightless in front of this monster.
The scream, the Veil, and all trace of my aunt vanished. With a cutting smile of victory, the Jackal opened his fist. He waved, and the gag in my mouth crumbled to foul-tasting dust. Leaning close he hissed in my ear, “Now do you believe I am a god? Submit, or I will destroy every dead witch in your interfering family. I don’t think even you realize how close they are, thinking they can protect you. But they can’t. Not from me.”
He took my broken sob as an answer and stood, swollen with pride and malice. I had underestimated him. And underestimated how much I had angered him by leashing him like a dog.
And he’d treed me like a cat. Now I had to keep my balance in gale-force winds until I figured out a way down.
I got up enough spit to talk and enough backbone to brave this out. “I’ll do it. But keep your paws off my family.” I looked toward the altar, where Alexis and Maguire waited. Carson’s facade had cracked, his face pale and his gaze tortured.
It would have been nice if I’d had more than the SparkNotes version of the Book of the Dead. I could only extrapolate from what Ivy told me and try to make it sound good. The final step, Ivy had said, was to unknot the pharaoh’s ka from his resting place and bind him to a host. There was still a wisp of a thread binding Oosterhouse’s ka to the statue—but that hardly seemed to matter next to the far greater binding I’d worked on him and would now have to undo.
“Choose your host,” I announced to the room, hoping that drama would pass for authority. “To unbind the Jackal, I have to bind him to something else, or he will fade away.”
Carson looked at his father, expecting him to step forward. But Alexis spoke first.
“I volunteer,” she said. Power and dynasty, she’d told me she wanted. What had the book promised her that she thought the Jackal’s power would be hers to exploit?
Her offer shocked Carson, and he stared at her as if another illusion had shattered. But he didn’t have time to re-form the pieces, to realize the full scope of her deception, because Maguire dropped the next bomb.
“I volunteer my son,” he said, one hand on Carson’s shoulder, the other spread in a theatrical gesture of offering. “As a sign of my faith in our accord.”
“What?” shrieked Alexis as every shred of emotion leeched from Carson’s face. “I’ve been loyal to you this whole time!”
“Yes,” said Maguire, in an implacable tone, fully believing her and fully not caring. “And I know you will be loyal to your brother—your knowledge and his innate talents will build our assets beyond what anyone could possibly imagine.”
Dynasty. Maguire wanted it, too.
“What’s going on?” Taylor said around his gag, while Alexis raged with escalating hysteria. The Jackal was enjoying it, drinking in the drama as if he had all night.
“Trouble,” I whispered back. “And worse trouble if I can’t figure out what to do about it. Carson had a plan, but Maguire just cut him off at the knees.”
“Man, can you pick ’em.”
“Shut it, Taylor. You don’t even know.” My eyes were on Carson, who’d gone still with leashed intensity. “If you get loose,” I told