Taylor, “make a run for it.”
He laughed—actually laughed. “Do you know me at all?”
Okay. So none of us were runners.
I was watching Carson for signs he was about to act. I was watching the Jackal for the same thing. I should have been watching Alexis.
I should have remembered that she must wear the Jackal’s mark, too.
Suddenly the air crackled with remnant energy, and Maguire was airborne. With a gesture, Alexis had slammed him into the stone wall, loosing a shower of pebbles and dust. Maguire’s oak-tree body dropped to the floor with a bone-shattering crack and didn’t move.
Neither did anyone else. We watched in shock as Alexis picked her way over the rubble she’d released and bent over her father, reaching into his jacket. When she stood, she held a small glass vial. In it I could sense the muted blaze of a woman’s soul.
The Jackal began to laugh. Around us the brethren shuffled in confusion, not sure whom to back in this mutiny.
Alexis ignored them all. With chilling efficiency she grabbed one of the museum’s mummification tools, then placed the fragile vial onto the altar and raised the ancient hammer over it.
“Yield to me, Carson,” she said. “Or I let the Jackal have your mom.”
“No, Alexis.” His fury finally boiled to the surface, though he reined it in with clenched fists. “Let her go, and then I’ll yield.”
I tore my gaze away and looked at the Jackal, who watched the drama hungrily. If Alexis freed the soul, he would take it anyway.
“Stop it, both of you!” I shouted. In my family, you learn early how to deal with extreme sibling rivalry. “No one gets anything until I unbind the Jackal. So shut up and let me loose.”
“Untie her,” Alexis ordered the brethren. “But keep a tight hold on her buddy.”
The minions weren’t so confused they didn’t follow orders. They wrenched the ropes off Taylor’s and my wrists and hauled us both to our feet.
“Now,” said Alexis, with the hammer still poised over the vial. “Release the Jackal from his bonds and complete the ritual.”
I rubbed my wrists, shaking the blood back into my hands, and looked from her to Carson. Finally—finally—he met my eye. He gave an infinitesimal glance at Alexis, then the slightest hint of an It will be all right nod.
How, by Saint Peter’s giant gold key, was this going to be all right?
“Enough stalling,” said the Jackal, reclaiming the room. Didn’t Alexis see that he’d allowed her to have her tantrum? His image glowed with power. How did she expect to control that if they were bound?
“Do your magic, witch,” the Jackal said to me, and I didn’t correct him. “Play your role and you will all live to serve me.”
The limb I was on was shaking, and I dug in with my claws.
“Okay,” I said. “Let’s do this thing. Show me your tattoo.”
“Why?” demanded Alexis.
To get her to set the hammer down, away from Carson’s mother, of course. But aloud I said, “For a point of focus, in a place you’re already bound once to the Jackal. I don’t want to get this wrong.”
She exhaled in irritation but pushed up her sleeve, revealing a delicate scroll of black ink on her forearm, just below her elbow. “Don’t screw this up,” Alexis warned. “Or both your boyfriends will wish they’d never been born.”
Maybe I could still make this work. I couldn’t send the Jackal through the Veil until I’d unknit him from the building. But if my timing was very, very good …
“Stop stalling,” said the Jackal. Then to the Brotherhood he said, “Give her some encouragement.”
The sound Taylor made as a brethren’s fist hit his kidney was all the encouragement I needed. With the Jackal to my right and the ancient altar and the Maguires to my left, I closed my eyes, braced my feet, and let the psychic hum of the building creep through its stones and into my body.
The song was so out of tune that it hurt my heart. The once–perfectly balanced orchestra of shades and remnants, of psychic echoes and resident ghosts, had skewed to a jangling garageband cacophony.
The Jackal’s stolen magic had tainted it, and his struggles to pull free had made it worse, snarling the threads that held him. I picked through the tangle, loosing the ties one by one, and tried not to listen to the warnings of the building’s shades.
With one knot left, I instructed them, Tell Carson to open the Veil on my signal; then I