Spirit and Dust - By Rosemary Clement-Moore Page 0,115

her head and roared, and I spun like an idiot and just stood there as Alexis took aim at my heart.

A trio of gunshots. One. Two. Three. A quick, professional grouping, and then a thud. I was on the floor again, but only because the T. rex’s tail had knocked me down. When I got the nerve to look, I saw Alexis on the ground, sprawled motionless. And behind me was Taylor, propped up on one hand with his backup revolver in the other.

Sue’s image was fading, as if forcing me to duck had been the last of her—of the remnants’—strength. As for Alexis, Taylor rolled to his feet and hurried over to her, kicking away the weapon, then checking for … just checking.

I turned toward Carson and got another shock. He was still on his feet. Grabbing the hem of his shirt, he pulled it off and threw it aside. The wound frothed with blood, but as I watched, out came the bullet, spit by his body like a watermelon seed.

Carson was gone again, and the Jackal looked at me with his unnatural blue eyes and foreign smile. “Lucky for your friend that you did not pull me loose when you had the chance.”

His shadow on the floor began to lengthen and broaden. I was seeing double: Carson with my eyes and the Jackal in full pharaoh regalia with my Sight.

The Jackal was healing his body—Carson’s body—and strengthening himself, but how? I was tapped out. Where was his new power coming from?

A shade appeared beside me in a puff of frigid air and urgent warning. “Call the Veil for the girl,” she said, in a voice I knew only from my lullabies.

“Mom?”

“Call it,” she said. “Before there’s nothing left of her.”

The girl. There was only one here besides me. My gaze flew to Taylor, still kneeling beside Alexis. He caught my eye and shook his head.

Why hadn’t the Veil appeared? Where was her soul?

I heard it then, a tiny keen that faded as the Jackal’s shadow grew more massive.

“You mustn’t call it,” said a gruff voice on my other side. Aunt Diantha, who knew more about shades and remnants than anyone else, even before she was one.

“But Alexis—” I couldn’t let her soul be consumed, no matter what she’d done.

“That abomination,” said Aunt Diantha, meaning the Jackal, “is keeping the Veil from opening with his hold on the girl. But you must not call it. That’s what he wants you to do, so he can use the young man’s power to steal yours.”

I had to open the Veil without calling it. Like I hadn’t had enough puzzles today.

“Daisy,” said my mom, “do something! The sound …”

I remembered Ivy’s scream, and I didn’t know how the Jackal was keeping Alexis’s own from me, but Mom could hear it and it had brought her shade to tears.

The Veil … I only called, I didn’t control. It opened when it was needed.

With a bolt of inspiration and trepidation, I reached into my pocket and took out the vial that held the spirit of Carson’s mom. I was taking a huge risk—losing an innocent soul to the Jackal in an attempt to save a blackened one. And one just slightly gray one, if you counted Carson’s.

Everything relied on my timing and my own sagging strength. I dropped the glass to the floor and crushed it with my heel.

Helena! Her name burst into my mind as her spirit burst from the prison, bright and blinding.

The Veil appeared with a waiting swiftness. It rang with a pure, true note in the middle of the discord. To me and the spirits—my spirits—it sang a welcome.

To the Jackal, it was a warning. He whirled to face me, and the curtain that shimmered open between us. He lost his grip on Alexis, and her racked soul stretched and twisted on its way through the portal, her tortured screams cut off as the surface tension between worlds rippled in her wake.

“You can’t,” said the Jackal, anticipating my plan. “Not without sending your young man through, too. We are bound.”

“Help him,” said the shade—no, the soul—that had taken Mom’s place beside me. Helena pled, “How can I help you help my son?”

“Just hold tight,” I murmured, and shored up my resolve—or at least my bravado. To the Jackal I called, “I unbound you before. I can do it again.”

I hoped.

“But without my magic,” crooned the Jackal, “he’ll die from his bullet wound.” He held up bloody fingers and tsked. “I