Spirit and Dust - By Rosemary Clement-Moore Page 0,86

I recognized two of them, even without the jackal tattoos on their arms.

“Hey, Maguire,” said McSlackerson. “Thanks for bringing that flash drive along. I’ll just take it off your hands.”

“Hey, Johnson,” said Carson. “Not arrested yet, huh?”

I ignored the banter, busy trying to figure out what I was Seeing. Cupped in Johnson’s fingers was a basketball-sized incandescent glow of raw power. With dawning horror, I realized why there was nothing but a trace of the drowned sailors on the statue. Johnson held them all. He had stolen the fire of dozens of deaths—dozens of remnant souls—and he held them between his palms like a balled-up snarl of yarn.

“Carson—” I warned, too late to do him any good.

Johnson pulled free a strand from the tangle and snapped it like a whip. Power made a wave of the air and washed over Carson before he could dodge. His next breath was nothing but a drowning gurgle. He struggled against it, doubled over, and heaved up a spew of dark water that stank of brine and diesel fuel.

“Stop it!” I called up my defenses and lunged toward Carson, trying to get close enough that he could use my shields to push the magic away, out of his lungs. But two of the brethren snatched me by the arms, pulling us apart.

“Give me the flash drive,” said Johnson, letting Carson grab half a breath before throwing another thread of drowned spirit at him. Carson dropped to all fours, sputtering salt water from his mouth and nose. But he managed to lift one hand—and one finger—to McSlackerson.

“Carson, you idiot!” I cried, wondering why no guards were coming, wondering why some sort of alarm wasn’t going off. “Give it to him!”

The file was encrypted. That would give us time to think of something, some world-saving plan. But we couldn’t do anything if he was dead.

On his hands and knees, Carson wheezed and spewed. “Alexis first. Where is she?”

Johnson unraveled another thread and spun a darker threat. “You’re not in a position to bargain, Maguire. There are a lot of cute little kids in the museum today. They’re all eating lunch right now, just on the other side of that wall. Maybe we should see how far this magic will reach.”

The next shred of spirit left Carson heaving helplessly on the ground. I wrestled against the guys who held me until I thought my shoulders would pop out of joint.

Oosterhouse whirled to me, so quick, so intense that his form blurred. “Hurry, my girl, and we can save him. If you open the Veil, I can help you.”

I didn’t question how he could do what he said. I couldn’t afford to doubt him and be wrong. With herculean effort I pushed back my panic and my tears and found the song inside me that called the curtain between us and eternity. I let my whole soul ring with it.

The Veil was sluggish to answer, and I pushed it, poured my desperation into the ethereal serenade until slowly the air began to shimmer behind the shade of Oosterhouse.

“You must cut my ka free from the statue,” he said, shouting over the bell-tower racket of my psychic call.

He’d used the word before, and I knew what he meant. I pictured my shadow self unknotting the threads of his silent, weak remnant in the heart of the statue. As they loosed, they blew toward the Veil but met Oosterhouse standing between. There was only one phantom strand remaining tied to the statue as they tangled around his grandfatherly form, sinking in, reuniting.…

Reclaiming.

The Veil changed, brightened along the edges with warm yellow light. In the next moment it opened, like a daylit doorway to a tomb. A figure stood silhouetted by the blinding glow, the same shape depicted on the walls around us.

It towered over Oosterhouse’s shade. The two figures superimposed and merged as the glare became blinding. The guys holding me let go, and I shielded my eyes as every display case in the room shattered.

Glass rained down and the awful brilliance became red-tinged darkness and ringing silence. When I could see again, the Veil had disappeared, and so had the fusty-looking professor with his neat white beard and khaki kangaroo pockets.

In his place was a jackal-headed god.

“This is the thing you seek,” he said, in a voice that flooded the room like the Nile. “I am the Black Jackal, and now is the end of all things.”

28

WHAT. THE. HELL.

No one moved. There was only the plink of glass shards