spirits. “Or a talent?”
He considered his answer. “I think it’s more like a talent for a certain type of spell, if that makes sense. Lauren—who would know—describes it as magic, but I’ve always just done it, like you and your spirits.” He paused. “I haven’t always understood what it was I was doing, though, and it takes understanding to do anything useful.”
I could relate to that, too. Sensing spirit energy was one thing. Actively using that sense had taken time to learn.
“Are you and Lauren the only ones on the Maguire staff who can do magic? Or is it some kind of job requirement?”
Carson shrugged. “Unless someone has some ESP they’re not telling us about, Lauren and I are the only employees with any, uh, special skills.”
“That makes sense.” I was relieved crime magic wasn’t a whole new fad. “I guess if you had a psychic on staff, you wouldn’t need me.”
A thought struck me. Not from the blue, but from inside my head, as if it had been waiting for me to get around to it and run out of patience.
“What?” asked Carson, because I’m so transparent.
“I don’t know.” The thought didn’t come with helpful context. “It is kind of weird that someone like Maguire couldn’t have gotten his hands on a psychic better at finding live people.”
Carson topped off his coffee mug. “It’s not that weird. You were close by, bona fide, and easily controllable.”
“Easily controllable?” I echoed, because I was also easily insulted.
He raised his hands, fending me off. “I’m just thinking like Maguire. You have a large family that you love.”
Well, he had a point, even if I didn’t like it. “That’s probably the first time in my life I’ve been called convenient,” I grumbled.
“I wouldn’t go that far,” said Carson. But he turned more serious as he studied me, as if I’d raised some question for him, too. “How many people can do what you do? Out of curiosity.”
Okay, it’s true I like to imagine myself a badass psychic, and I don’t see the point of false modesty when my skills can help someone. But I don’t let on that I’m a little freaky, even for a freak. I’ve met mediums and people who do psychometry or who read auras—which is sort of like what I do with spirits. But all in one package is unusual. And the Veil …? I’ve learned not to talk about that at all.
“It’s not what I can do,” I finally answered, in an I’m-going-to-be-perfectly-honest-with-you tone that wasn’t perfectly honest. “It’s how well.”
Carson rolled his eyes. Distraction objective achieved. I held out my hand. “Give me the doohickey from the mausoleum. Not even I am good enough to raise the spirit of a plastic mummy. But you never know what may have hitched a ride.”
He took the toy out of his pocket and dropped it into my palm. I hadn’t felt anything from it in the cemetery, and a longer, calmer read confirmed that there were no remnant traces attached. But as I rubbed my thumb over the molded ridges of the bandages, I noticed something else. A crack. The mummy’s head and shoulders were the cap to the USB end of a flash drive.
I may have squealed a little bit when I showed it to Carson. “Look! I told you it was important!”
He took it from me and examined it. “Yeah, but we won’t know how until we get it plugged into a computer.”
“Don’t harsh my vibe, dude.” The geas sang along with my excitement. I was doing what Maguire had tasked me to do: follow the clues to Alexis.
There was some writing on the back of the mummy. I could see why Carson hadn’t been able to read it with the flashlight. A lot of the black ink had rubbed off. I could read half the letters; my memory filled in the rest. “This is from the Oriental Institute of the University of Chicago.”
“Is that important?” he asked.
Yes, said my instincts.
“Maybe,” I said aloud. “It’s another coincidence.” Not that a flash drive shaped like a mummy came from a museum specializing in artifacts from Egypt and points East. But that something related to Alexis was related to me.
The waitress came around to collect our plates and ask if we wanted anything else. After she’d left the check, Carson said simply, “Explain.”
I sat forward, elbows on the table. “Alexis is studying classics, right? Latin, Greek, birth-of-civilization stuff. Egyptology isn’t the same thing, but they’re not worlds apart. Then there’s