opened my eyes a crack to see if he got the message, hoping the ability he’d borrowed from me would last. His gaze flicked to mine, and I knew we were going for it.
Now. The Veil shimmered into being, not smoothly, but there. I snapped my last knot, then formed the threads of the bindings into an arrow and sent it with all my heart, all my strength toward the portal to eternity.
The Jackal roared, and his image stretched and distorted, pulled toward the Veil but caught—snagged on the black jackal statue that had lain with his bones. I’d forgotten the only tie I hadn’t made myself.
I cut it with a thought, but the damage was done, inertia destroyed. The Jackal took control of his own path hitting Carson and knocking him to his knees.
Carson grabbed his shoulder with a cry, shuddering as if he’d been hit by a real arrow, muscles heaving as he breathed through some pain or stress and finally quieted.
“Carson?” I asked, when he still didn’t move.
“Yeah,” he said tightly. “I’m here.”
“And the Jackal?” I whispered, almost afraid to know.
He tugged his shirt over his head. On the back of his shoulder, above his shoulder blade, was the jackal tattoo. Unlike Johnson’s simple outline and Alexis’s girly scrollwork, this ink had character, with a sense of movement and a hint of a wolfish, trickster grin.
More than a hint. In the torchlight, the eyes gleamed with victory.
Carson finally answered, “He’s in here, too.”
35
“NO, no, NO!”
Alexis grabbed up the hammer and brought it down toward the glowing glass vial on the altar. Before it could land, Carson had snatched up the tiny jar, holding it safe in his hand.
“Stop being a brat.”
Who was talking? The Jackal or Carson? It sounded like Carson, except for the cavalier way he dismissed the half sister he’d broken all kinds of laws to save.
“A brat?” Alexis echoed, but she sounded back in control of herself. “I gave this to you. I did all the groundwork. I formed the Brotherhood and you left it. You don’t deserve the Jackal.”
“But I’ve got it,” he said calmly. Turning to the slack-jawed brethren—they’d ditched their masks ages ago—he said to the ones holding Taylor and me, “Let them go. Now.”
Whether compelled or just confused, they did. Taylor ran to Maguire, who still hadn’t moved, and checked him for serious injuries. I followed, mostly to put distance between me and the henchmen. “He’ll be okay until we get an ambulance,” Taylor said. “We’d better not move him until the armed response team gets here.”
Alexis finally did something clever, seizing the closing window of opportunity to regain the Brotherhood. She swooped over and caught Johnson by the front edge of his robe. “You don’t want to wait here for the SWAT team to come in, do you?”
“Of course not,” he said, looking down at her with poorly disguised adoration.
“That’s what Carson would make you do,” she said, sweeping them all up in a wave of charisma a lot like her father’s. “All of you who don’t want to go to jail, come with me.”
No one wanted to go to jail, apparently. I didn’t know how to stop them, and Carson seemed to be fighting his own battle.
“Here,” he said, holding the vial out to me. I put out my hand, skin already shivering at the proximity of the imprisoned soul, and Carson dropped the tiny glass into my palm. He was leaning heavily on the altar. “Take care of that for me.”
Taylor had stood, and he looked from me, to Carson, to the glow in my hand. “What is it?” he breathed, almost reverent. Maybe a soul was profound enough for even a nonpsychic to feel.
“A soul in a bottle,” I said.
He was silent a moment. “You’re right. This is World Series weird.”
Carson laughed, but it was a shaky sound. “Get Daisy out of here before all hell breaks loose, okay?”
“Okay,” said Taylor, like they’d formed their own brotherhood. A brotherhood of jackasses.
“Are we really discussing this again?” I demanded. “Here is exactly where I need to be when hell breaks loose.”
“No,” said Carson, his tone inarguable, all the shakiness gone. “You need to get out. Now.”
Taylor grabbed my hand and breathed a warning. “Daisy …”
The fear in his voice stilled my attempts to shake him off, and I followed his gaze. What he could see from his angle, but I couldn’t, not until he pulled me closer to him, was the tattoo on Carson’s back.
The jackal silhouette