is not a word I would apply to Dr. Oosterhouse.” She frowned. “He didn’t voice theories of which he was uncertain. They say—said—the professor tried to re-form this cult among the students. A sort of secret society.”
My heart went graveyard cold. Like a brotherhood?
“Yes! That’s what it was called. The Brotherhood of the Black …” She paused with a little quake of realization, and I knew what she was going to say.
Jackal, I whispered.
Suddenly I was squinting in the glare of a flashlight. “Are you okay, young lady?” asked the security guard behind it.
Ivy’s shade paced to my right, talking angrily to herself. “Why didn’t I remember that as soon as you said the Oosterhouse Jackal? What a ninny I am!”
“It’s fine,” I said—aloud. “You’re just a shade.”
My great-great-aunt drew herself to her full height. “I am Professor Ivy Goodnight. I am not just anything.”
The guard moved the light out of my eyes, and I could see him looking at me like I was the ninny. “Did you hit your head when you fell?”
“No, no,” I assured him. “I’m fine.”
I wasn’t fine. I was trying not to follow Ivy with my eyes and trying not to freak out at the possibility that my brotherhood—the window-smashing, magic-throwing brotherhood from the cemetery—was related to Ivy’s Brotherhood of the Black Jackal.
I hadn’t realized I’d been thinking so loud until Aunt Ivy’s shade flitted to my side, her face tight with worry. “The one thing I do know for certain is that the Brotherhood was real. This Oosterhouse Jackal could well be the thing that the professor believed would stop Germany’s march across Europe.”
Her urgency made my head spin, and it was starting to chill the air. The guard was watching me—no, he was saying something, and I hadn’t answered, and now he was reaching for his radio to call an ambulance and I couldn’t let that happen.
“Sorry,” I told him, and got to my feet on my own power. “I have a phobia about the dark, you see. That’s why I ran and tripped.” I didn’t have to fake a shiver; Ivy’s words had iced my veins.
The lights came back on suddenly, and I gave the skeptical guard an exaggerated reaction. “Oh thank God! I’ll be all right now.”
He reached for my arm. “Let’s just get you out to the lobby and make sure.”
If he took me away from the pharaoh, he took me away from Ivy. I panicked, and Ivy did, too.
“Listen to me,” she said. Words and images and emotions came like falling stars from her mind to mine. Sand and heat, dust and danger. Cold metal tanks and hot furnace fires. “If this jackal is Oosterhouse’s weapon, and the Brotherhood holds the secret, you cannot let them reach it. You cannot let anyone reach it. You have to get to it first, Daisy.”
“Okay,” I said as the guard led me away. I trailed my hand on the statue as long as possible, and Ivy kept pace with me. “Okay,” I said again, because there were enough nonmagical face-melting weapons in the world. And once more, because I couldn’t think of any single person who should have that much power. “Okay.”
That was two triple vows. Rescue the girl, save the world. Lucky thing I’m a Goodnight.
“You are a Goodnight,” said Ivy, quickly, because we were losing touch. “Remember you’re never alone.”
I thought about the five hundred sixty-seven emails in my web mail in-box by now. I was never alone in spirit, but I felt so far away in actuality. How could any of my family help me here?
The guard held my arm like fragile china, walking me out. My eyes finally focused on the physical world, and I saw Carson running toward us. His footfalls hurt my head.
“Are you okay?” He took my shoulders and bent to look into my eyes. He was absolutely not putting on a show. I must look like crap. “What happened?”
“It was dark.” I said, bolstering my white lie to the guard. “And I have a migraine coming on.” That excused a lot of things, including a hasty exit. It also was true. I felt it rumbling toward me like a mudslide down a mountain.
Carson took charge, thanking the guard, sliding his arm around me, ushering me out the door. We were outside in record time.
He pushed something into my hand. “Sunglasses. Put them on.”
“Thanks,” I said, fumbling them into place. Even the overcast sky beat on my eyeballs.
The tide of students hurrying to class flowed