Spirit and Dust - By Rosemary Clement-Moore Page 0,87

falling and the sound of Carson pulling in air like he’d just swum up from the depths of the ocean. The brethren stood slack-jawed, staring at the jackal-headed apparition that loomed larger than life at the head of the preparation chamber.

Then Johnson dropped to one knee. The rest did the same, bowing before the figure of the canine-headed man who used to be Professor Oosterhouse.

This? Was not an improvement in our situation.

“Thank you, my brothers, for remaining true. Your loyalty will be rewarded.” The voice that rolled from the Jackal was the professor’s, but shaded with darkness and the resonance of eternity. “What I have, I share with you, and together we will start a new dynasty that will endure age upon endless age.”

“Thank you, my lord,” said Johnson, lifting his head. The other guys took their cue from him. Their shock had faded to wary awe, and what looked like anticipation and greed.

Carson hauled himself to his feet, staring at the Jackal in disbelief, then turning to me over the heads of the kneeling minions. “Daisy, what did you do?”

“Nothing!” I managed a horrified protest. Except I’d obviously done something.

“You opened the door to the afterlife and freed me,” said the towering figure. “I died a man, with a weak body and powerful knowledge. And I have come back a god.”

Wow. Forget the sacrilege. That was some supreme arrogance right there.

Was there really a jackal-headed god standing before us? That was what it looked like to my eyes. But to my Sight, it was Oosterhouse. Not the gray-bearded professor who had talked me into opening the Veil for him, but a younger man. Tanned, blond, and fit—he was bare-chested, wearing the draped linen skirt and heavy gold ornamental accessories of an ancient Egyptian priest or royal.

He pulsed with vitality, and I realized I wasn’t looking at a remnant of Carl Oosterhouse. He was too substantial, too present. I was looking at the real thing. His spirit. His soul come back from beyond.

That wasn’t supposed to happen.

But it had. This was real, and this was really bad.

Johnson rose to his feet and gestured to the others to get up as well. “What should we do with these two?” he asked, meaning Carson and me.

The Jackal Oosterhouse turned to me. “Will you join us, Daisy Goodnight? Think what wonders you could do with your power and ours. I’ve heard you speaking with young Maguire, and I know you have great ambition for remaking the world.”

But I didn’t. The world wasn’t perfect, but remaking it to my own design wasn’t the answer. I wanted to fight the problems, not be the problem.

“Bugger off, Professor,” I said. His try at temptation had pissed me off, because he’d been playing me all along. And there’s nothing this idealist hates more than abuse of her good nature. “If you were a god, you could have opened the door yourself.”

He rippled with fury; as solid as he looked, he still had no body. Over the roar of adrenaline in my ears, I heard people coming to investigate the crash. Oosterhouse did, too, and the wave of anger passed, becoming a gloating smile, which was much worse.

“You need proof, my girl?” he said. “I will give it to you, as thanks for your role in reuniting my spirit.”

He drew himself up, breathing in the dust of antiquity that swirled out of the broken cases. His figure swelled, his barrel chest expanding. I felt a pull across my psyche, all over, like silk dragged over my skin, and I realized he was drinking in not air but the remnant spirits of twenty-three human souls.

The dust circled him like a vortex, and he gulped it all down, growing larger, brighter. Then he breathed it out again, an impossibly long exhale, blowing life into the desiccated corpses around the room.

They stirred like sticks in a thunderstorm, rattling and trembling, then rising from their sterile museum tombs.

With jerking motions they came, fragile wrappings ripping, trailing like scarves. They peeled off their cocoons of rotting linen and they climbed out of their cases and they pushed open their sarcophagi. The Brotherhood minions scrambled, wide-eyed, out of the way of the animate dead as they shambled out of the chamber to the halls beyond. Children, guards, patrons—their terrified screams rang through the exhibit.

Three of the undead grabbed Carson. They were indomitable—held together not by brittle tendons or dried muscles but by magic. They bloodied his nose and twisted his limbs, and then I