with enthusiasm. “But you’d have to deal with the transduction inefficiencies in the energy conversion ratio from the noncorporeal to the physical mass differential.”
Or something like that. I was ninety percent sure she was just pulling those words out of a hat. “In English, please?”
She translated carelessly. “You wouldn’t get much bang for your buck. It takes way too much energy to do the simplest spells.”
“What would you need to make that kind of arrangement practical?”
“Hmm. Some kind of potentiating transducer, maybe. Or find an unlimited power source.” She laughed at this second suggestion. When I didn’t, she explained, “That’s funny because there is no such thing.”
Nerd humor. “I get it,” I said.
“We live in a finite universe, even if it is so large that it seems—”
“I get it, Phin.” I was sure this was what the Brotherhood was doing, and they already seemed pretty good at it. One had used up a very strong remnant just to blow out the Taurus window, and McSlackerson had spent all of young Cleopatra to dissolve the belt tying him up. That was too inefficient to stop an army.
But it gave me an idea what the Jackal might be. “What if there were some sort of object that could either amplify energy or make it work more economically or something …?”
“That would do it. But there is no such thing,” said Phin. “It would be like … like the philosopher’s stone. Legendary and utterly improbable.”
“But worth killing for if it did exist?”
“Oh yes,” she said, with maybe just a little bit of greed. “Absolutely worth killing over.”
There was a scuffle for the phone and my cousin Amy came on the line. “Daisy! What does Phin mean ‘worth killing over’? Where are you? Are you okay? What’s going on?”
“Would you believe I don’t know the answer to any of those questions?”
“You? Yes.” Amy was not a go-with-the-flow type. “What can we do?”
Come here and help me. Risk life and psyche and indentured servitude to a magical crime boss. I wanted to keep them safe from Maguire and the Brotherhood, but I knew they would risk everything for one girl’s life, if I just asked them to.
But all I said was, “Keep the aunts from worrying.” I caught a glimpse of myself in the mirror and realized that would be a trick, if they could see me. Dark circles under my eyes, my freckles standing out against my pallor …
Lips like they’d been kissing someone’s socks off. I was worried for me.
“Gotta go.” I hung up before I could give in to the strange temptation to unburden my worries on my cousins. They thought I was either (a) annoying or (b) indomitable. Mostly (a). I wouldn’t want to burst their bubbles in a moment of weakness.
I dialed the next number while I was still feeling strong. Agent Taylor answered on the second ring.
“Taylor,” he answered, sounding wary, since I was calling his direct line.
“I have an anonymous tip,” I said, knowing he’d recognize my voice.
There was a nanosecond sigh of relief, and I heard footsteps like he was in the museum. “Go ahead, caller. Any information you have would be welcome.”
“There’s a stolen motorcycle on the top level of the garage by the Union Square shopping center.” I dropped the pretense, at least on my end. “And a Corvette in the parking lot near the art museum. Sorry about that.”
“Got it.”
“I’m calling from the phone of the guy who stabbed the guard in the museum. Is that how you ended up in St. Louis? You trailed Michael Johnson?”
“Yes. I got your other tip.” There was the sound of a door closing, then he dropped the pretense on his end, too. “Daisy, are you—”
I cut him off, focused tightly so I wouldn’t sway from my course. “Is the guard going to live?”
“Yes. He’s critical but stable.”
I let out a breath I didn’t know I’d been holding. “And the officers who got hit in the Roman statuary?”
“They’re fine, but scheduled for psych evaluations.”
Of course they were. Pyroclastic blasts didn’t just come out of thin air in Sane Person Land. “There was another guy,” I said, “in the room with all the Grecian urns.”
“We didn’t find anyone there. Just a broken pot that the management was pretty upset about.”
I leaned against the door as the train swayed on the tracks. So, no one captured at all. No one to interrogate about Alexis’s whereabouts. It was all up to me and Carson, then.
“Can you get away?” Taylor asked. “If