Spirit and Dust - By Rosemary Clement-Moore Page 0,14
you in to find Alexis before anything bad happens to her.”
My elation drained away. “Except what I do is kind of specialized. I can’t get any kind of read on the living.”
“Can’t?” asked Maguire, then after a beat, “Or won’t?”
He was studying me as if I was a peculiar specimen. Which, granted, I am. But there was something weighted about his gaze and the significant pause between words.
“Can’t,” I stated firmly. The truth was close enough that I felt no guilt leaving exceptions off my résumé. I can read a man’s dying thoughts from the change that was in his pocket when the bus hit him. But trying to read the impressions of the living is like trying to answer a cell-phone call in an elevator at the bottom of the Grand Canyon.
What I was really leaving out, though, was how much the dead told me about the living. Like how the radioactive concentration of remnant energy in this room should make a normal person twitchy over time, yet there was Maguire, calm as could be. The man had iron will and Teflon nerves, and I was so screwed if he didn’t believe that my abilities were of no use to him.
“Miss Goodnight—may I call you Daisy?” He took my agreement as a given, speaking with a we’re-all-friends-here candor that let me know exactly how much we were not friends. “I’m giving you the opportunity to be completely honest with me. If I find out you haven’t, I’m not going to be happy.”
“Look,” I said, brazening this out. “It’s not a straightforward thing. We’re talking about the inexplicable forces of the universe here. Not the rules for Donkey Kong or something.”
Carson coughed like he was covering up a laugh. Maguire glanced at him, more calculating than curious, and the younger man sobered up quickly.
Maguire turned back to me, shifting topics suddenly. “Are you hungry? I can have sandwiches brought in.”
I wanted to say no, because I didn’t think I could swallow past the lump in my throat. But my stomach didn’t know how screwed we were and gave a loud growl. “I’ll take that as a yes,” he said, and pulled out his BlackBerry to fire off a text.
“Mr. Maguire,” I began as he sent in his Quiznos order or whatever. “I’m willing to see if I can sense traces of someone—alive or dead—on Alexis’s belongings. But I can’t promise anything.”
“Oh, I think you will.” He looked up from the BlackBerry with a basalt stare—cold, black, and smooth. “It’s just a matter of finding the right motivation.”
The knot of fear in my chest, the one I was trying to pretend wasn’t there, looped even tighter. I glanced at Carson, who had promised things would be all right. His gaze was on the floor, and a muscle in his jaw flexed rhythmically but unhelpfully. If he was trying to send me a message, I was out of luck, because I’d never learned Morse Code for Assholes.
The door opened and I flinched. So much for my cool bravado.
I recognized the woman who entered, even though she’d changed from the police uniform into a leather jacket and Union Jack T-shirt. Her platinum hair was cut short and spiky and her makeup was all black eyeliner. She looked like a punk-rock pixie.
“This is Lauren,” said Maguire as the blonde took her place beside him. “It was her suggestion we bring you in, when her attempts to locate Alexis by magic met a dead end.”
I blinked, because it sounded like he just said he had a witch on the payroll, which was unexpected, even to me. But that did explain how this Lauren person could have walked into the police station and out again with me in tow. I wouldn’t have felt an illusion- or misdirection-type spell because that’s not my thing.
Oh man. Like getting kidnapped and strong-armed by a normal crime organization wasn’t bad enough? I was in so far over my head I couldn’t even see daylight.
I’m a psychic. Sensing remnants and spirit traces is more about who I am than something I do. But magic? All I knew about magic came from watching the witches in my family, and I wasn’t sure how that compared. Goodnight spells were very low-key, nothing flashy, except when my cousin Phin was involved.
I bet that Maguire wanted a lot of flash from his witch. And from her complacent smile, I imagined he got it.
Carson, when I glanced at him, didn’t seem fazed by talk of magic.