Spirit and Dust - By Rosemary Clement-Moore Page 0,59

bad you don’t work a little faster.”

The sneer just made everything that much worse, picturing this guy grabbing Alexis, stabbing the guard, all with that superior smile on his face. Throw in my fury at myself that we hadn’t gotten here first and a whole lot of pissed-off in general, and it was a good thing that Carson stood a protective step in front of me.

“Look, asshole,” I said, trying and failing to get around the arm Carson put up to stop me. “Tell us where Alexis is. You have the Jackal. You don’t need her.”

McSlackerson blinked, as if the suggestion surprised him, and then he laughed. “This isn’t the Black Jackal. I’m just here collecting the pieces we need to get it. And that’s all I’m going to tell you of my fiendish plan, Supergirl. I’ve been monologuing long enough.”

Right on cue, two of St. Louis’s finest burst into the room behind the thief, weapons drawn, shouting, “Freeze!”

I’d never stared down a real gun barrel before. This day was just full of new and unpleasant experiences.

Carson relaxed his shoulders, the way he did when he was anxious or pissed and was pushing it back where it wouldn’t interfere. He looked perfectly cool as he held his empty—and very bloody—hands out to his sides. I copied him, right down to the blood, which couldn’t possibly make us look harmless.

“Turn around slowly,” one of the cops barked at McSlackerson. “Hands where we can see them.”

The thief smiled—an I-love-it-when-a-plan-comes-together smile—and raised his arms to his sides. As he turned, his hand crossed the plane of one of the exhibits, and he flexed his fingers over a plaster cast of a volcano victim, like he was testing the temperature. I did that move so often, my fingers twitched like I was the one feeling for spirit traces.

That was what he was doing. I had no time to think why before the world—both my worlds—went sideways.

Since we’d come in, I’d been braced against the echoes of thousands of hot, smothering deaths. I was not prepared for the groaning shift of the psychic air pressure, like a volcanic cone crumbling in on itself. I staggered, as if I’d been leaning against a wall that suddenly just … vanished.

Which was impossible, because two millennia of psychic energy didn’t just go away.

Carson tensed, too, and I knew something bad was going to happen. When it did, that seemed impossible, too. The thief pushed his empty hand toward the cops. A wall of acrid wind blasted them into the next room. Over the roar in my ears I heard the crash of bodies and a second later, the crack and thunder of toppling stone. They’d hit the statues, any one of which was heavy enough to crush a man’s skull.

I moved instinctively to help—somehow, anyhow—but Carson caught me around the waist, pulling me tight against him as McSlackerson swung around, his smile cracking the layer of ash on his face. Between his hands he gathered the ghost of a pyroclastic cloud, and all six of my senses said it was totally possible we were going to die.

Carson wrapped himself around me, my back against his chest, and yelled in my ear, “Make like the Millennium Falcon, Sunshine, and do not drop those deflector shields!”

At the first blast of heat, I pushed all I had left into my force field. What McSlackerson threw at us wasn’t psychic but physical—intangible energy turned into magical heat and wind. My defenses should have been useless. But I felt the moment when Carson mirrored what the other guy had done, transforming my psychic defenses into something invisible but solid.

Everywhere we touched was an electric zing, an icy burn that pulled a helpless gasp from my throat. The grit-laced gale scoured the floor around our untouched island. It ripped tiles from the mosaic and fired them like bullets into the plasterboard walls of the exhibit. Pillars toppled and paperboard markers scorched around the edges.

This was not the best time to discover the limits of my resources. Deep inside, I shuddered like a sputtering engine, and the muscles of my legs trembled as I braced with Carson against the wind that pounded our shield. He felt it, too, and took more of my weight, but he couldn’t hold us both up and he couldn’t hold the defenses at all if I didn’t give him something to work with.

I thought the ash cloud was darkening around us, but I realized it was my vision. Sparkles came