Spirit and Dust - By Rosemary Clement-Moore Page 0,61
if you hurry.”
With her urging me on, I did hurry, into the main hall where I tried to get my bearings. I couldn’t believe no one was investigating why the police hadn’t arrived downstairs, or wondering about the almighty racket.
“This way!” said the Egyptian girl. “Through the hall of the bearded old white men.”
That narrowed it down to just about all of Western Civilization. I had to cross the big, open space to get there, but a bang and clatter from the front doors sent me diving for cover behind a nude statue with a conveniently large … pedestal. A squad of EMTs ran by, their bright yellow stretcher garish in the monochrome decorum of marble and bronze.
It gave me a chance to catch my breath. This ache was different than the usual rebound migraine. I felt stripped and raw, and drained like an old car battery. My thighs shook like I’d run a marathon.
Worse, I couldn’t seem to bring my second Sight into focus. In the pale light of the hall, Cleo looked translucent, like a hologram. The vibrancy that had earlier colored the museum, the pieces of their souls that the artists put into their work, none of it sang to my extra senses.
Was this what normal felt like?
“Something is wrong,” I said, trying, and failing, to keep a lid on rising panic. “I can barely See you. And I can’t feel any echoes or remnants.”
She gave me a pitying look. “Do you think power is inexhaustible? You are a very formidable priestess, but you are not a goddess.”
I got a grip on my panic and sorted through events. Carson had turned my psychic defenses into a shield against the magical attack—and as crazy as my life was by normal people’s standards, that was even crazier. The whole thing must have lasted just seconds, but I was totally spent.
Why was McSlackerson still on his feet?
Other pieces started to come together, too: Mrs. Hardwicke’s weird and sudden disappearance. The muting of every trace of death echo in the Pompeii exhibit. A translation of the Book of the Dead that spoke of—or instructed how to use—the power of the afterlife. My subconscious had figured it out already, because I’d warned Cleo away from my abductor. Somehow this Brotherhood was using remnants to do real magic. Big magic.
The idea violated my entire purpose in life and in other people’s deaths. But I couldn’t do anything about it with my current problem.
“Why can I still See you?” I asked the Egyptian girl.
She shrugged. “Your senses are dulled, not gone. And I will that you should See me.”
Some remnants can and do appear to the average Joe, but the clarity of our current interaction was impressive for someone who looked like an Egyptian teen princess. “You can do that?”
“I am the daughter of Isis.” Another shrug. “I can do whatever I wish.”
She had the supremely casual tone of the truly arrogant, and I had a bad feeling I sounded like that sometimes. Maybe a lot of the time.
But not just then. Despair took my heart in its fist. “What if it doesn’t come back?” I didn’t know how to be normal. My Sight … it wasn’t just what I did, it was what I was.
“This I do not know,” said Cleo, impatiently. “But what I do know is that when you fell, your magician looked like someone had put a sword through his heart, and you’ve been so long feeling sorry for yourself that he probably thinks you are dead and is killing the knave now in vengeance and you are missing it!”
She was right. Bloodthirsty, but right. I was feeling sorry for myself, and I had important things to do, like stop Carson from doing something rash.
Not that he ever seemed to be without a plan, even when taken by surprise. Especially when taken by surprise. I really hoped he had a plan for stopping the attempted murderer from getting away, and for us not getting caught by the cops ourselves.
I used the statue’s pedestal to haul myself up. Cleo had popped up across the hall and was gesturing for me to hurry, which I did. The wing with the old masters had bigger rooms and higher ceilings, almost like ballrooms. In the first gallery hung life-sized portraits. A huge Gainsborough and two sober Dutch masters gazed in painted disapproval as I ran past.
My steps slowed as I neared the door to the next gallery, partly because I wasn’t sure what waited