“Of course I was.” She took another step into the room, and as she did, she seemed to leave her skin behind. The illusion burst gently, like a dandelion puff in the wind. All that remained was the real girl, one I’d only seen in photographs.
Alexis Maguire.
“He’s my dear old dad, after all.”
33
“WHAT’S GOING ON?” asked Taylor, obviously unsure if he should keep his gun aimed at her or not. “That looks like Alexis Maguire.”
“I think it is.” After all the shocks of the night, I felt numb, hollowed out, and spent. Maybe that was why the pieces fit together so easily. The dandelion-puff bits of illusion hung in the air, smelling of lakeside mud and blood spatter. “Did you kill your bodyguard for the power to make that disguise?”
She shrugged. “It had to be good enough to fool Carson. He can be reluctant about the messy stuff. And I figured you’d get along better if you sensed his sincere worry about me.”
I allowed myself to feel a moment of relief that Carson didn’t know everything, that he’d been played, too. “Was there ever a real Lauren?” I asked.
“Of course,” said Alexis, with a chilling lack of concern. “But she had to go, too. She was a little too insightful.”
Taylor put it together more quickly than I’d have thought. But then, I’d warned him it was world-class weird. “So … you faked your own kidnapping?”
“Obviously.” She caught the confusion that flashed over my face. “Questions, Miss Goodnight? I’ll let you ask a few.”
I voiced the one foremost in my mind. “How did someone as smart as you end up taking orders from someone like Michael Johnson? He’s the leader of the Brotherhood, right?”
Annoyance twisted her features. “I let him think he was. But once we’d identified all the pieces of Oosterhouse, I had my own plan. I knew that moron Johnson would make an unholy mess of things, which he has.” The cool slipped back into place. “Still, it’s not unsalvageable. And he has his uses. A priestess needs acolytes.”
Taylor spared me the barest glance, keeping an eagle eye on Alexis. “What’s she talking about?”
I fumbled for a quick explanation, but Alexis spoke first. “I’m sorry, Agent Taylor. There’s really not time to bring you up to speed. Why don’t you take a little nap?”
She merely nodded and Taylor collapsed, and my heart with him. I was just barely fast enough to keep his head from hitting the floor. His gun fell out of reach with a clatter.
“He’ll be all right,” Alexis assured me as I felt for his breath and pulse. “He’s a strong one. And cute. No wonder Carson sounded so jealous.”
I ignored her jabs and lowered Taylor gently, then stood, taking back the height advantage. It was the only one I had. While I was at it, I felt around for Aunt Ivy and got only the faintest resonance. I pushed back fear for her with hope that she had sense to retreat.
“How much does Carson know?” I asked. “Not, I assume, that you’re a cast-iron bitch and murderer.”
“I think he’s figured it out by this point. He was pretty shaken when he came downstairs and saw through my illusion, though he tried to hide it.” Alexis had sauntered sideways while she spoke. I didn’t realize where she was headed until she picked up Taylor’s pistol. “Carson said you would be gone by now, not to bother to come look for you. I think he underestimated your superhero complex.”
“People do tend to underestimate me.”
“Not me,” said Alexis, handling the gun as easily as a fashion accessory. “I’ve been on the lookout for someone like you ever since I found Oosterhouse’s Book of the Dead. You were just what I needed. The problem was how to convince Carson to go along with kidnapping you. He’d left the Brotherhood already. Ethics, he said. In his position, can you believe it? That boy is seriously messed up.”
That was a mistake I made, Carson had said, when I’d discovered the Jackal’s mark. I’m not like them, he’d told me on the train. I still believed that. I had to, or I’d have to start doubting everything I knew.
“Where is he now?” I asked.
“Downstairs, waiting on Dad. With all those conflicted principles, I wasn’t expecting him to come onboard with me so easily. But his finding out that Dad played him—and worse, forced him to put you in danger—has got him rethinking alliances, which is convenient for me.”
No wonder I had so much trouble putting the jigsaw puzzle together. This picture had more double crosses than string art.
“So your father,” I prompted, since she seemed to enjoy my questions, “he was the mastermind behind this whole thing?”
She grinned, her straight white teeth gleaming in the dim light. “That’s what he thinks. That’s the trick with managing Dad—nothing magical about it. You just have to make him think something is his idea. Carson, too, in the opposite way. I knew putting you on the run together would bring out all his protective instincts.” She paused for thought. “I did seriously underestimate his hate for Dad. It’s kind of oedipal, don’t you think?”
“Except for the part where his dad ordered his mom killed. That isn’t how the play goes.”
“Whatever.” She sighed heavily. “If I’d known, I would have just asked him to help me. Subterfuge is a lot of work.”
It sounded like she had a plan for Maguire—and maybe Carson, too. He must be playing along with her, but if he had a plan beyond that, I was pretty sure it didn’t account for the fact that his half sister was a sociopath.
“But what do you get out of it?” I asked. Taylor had once told me that sometimes the best interrogation technique was to shut up and let the suspect spill his guts. It was like a compulsion, whether they felt guilty or proud of what they’d done.
Alexis? Did not feel guilty.
“Power. And dynasty, of course.” She checked her phone, a very businesslike gesture. “I need Carson’s help, which means I still have a use for you. He almost wrecked it, giving you the chance to escape. But here you are.” She flashed another grin. “I love it when a plan comes together.”
I had a bolt of inspiration. Not the good, get-out-of-this-jam-with-everyone-you-care-about-alive kind. But the bad, this-shit-is-so-much-deeper-than-I-thought kind. I should have kept my mouth shut, but I had to know if I was right.
“Did you make Maguire think it was his idea to kill Carson’s mother?”
Her smile vanished, and something deadly sparked in her eyes. “Can you blame me? I had to discover by accident I had a brother. And when I found out he had the same weird talents I did? Of course I wanted him in the house. I’d always wanted a sibling, and Dad always wanted a son. Everyone wins.”
“Except Carson’s mom.”
Alexis gave an Oh well shrug. “It’s time to go downstairs. Dad found a way in, and everything is set. But since I just got Carson onboard and you’re a bit of a wild card, I think you should take a little nap, too.”
“Wait!” I said …
Just before everything went dark. Again.
I woke to the flickering of torchlight on hieroglyphs and the rhythmic chanting of men’s voices. My arms ached, and when I tried to move, I found I was sitting on the floor, my wrists tied behind me and around the base of the statue of Anubis, in the reconstructed tomb in the bottom of the museum, where this had all started that afternoon.
You have got to be kidding me.
Bound and gagged like a pig at a luau.
I couldn’t speak. My mouth felt like it had been stuffed with old sweat socks.
Nightmare shadows loomed on the ceiling and walls, cast by deformed heads and cloaked figures. The Brotherhood stood in a semicircle around me, wearing jackal masks and some sort of robes, and it was all too weird and too terrifying at the same time. Their chant had the ring of ritual, and it raised a sort of electricity in the air, a potential of power. As if they could call anything and it would answer.
The semicircle faced an altar, and that raised my hackles, too. Behind it stood Devlin Maguire. To his left, his daughter, Alexis. To h
is right, his son, Carson, eyes straight ahead. A dynasty in the making.
The big man raised his arms in invocation. The chanting dropped to a hum, and Maguire spoke over it. “The Brotherhood of the Jackal has formed. We call our mentor and master, the Black Jackal, and offer him a body so that he can live again and we can share his glory.”
Oh, you have so got to be kidding me.
34
A BODY?
Ancient Egyptians didn’t go for human sacrifice. But there I was, in the middle of the semicircle of brethren, tied to the statue of the jackal like some kind of offering.
I’d managed to sit up with my back to the pedestal, my arms stretched behind me, wrists bound to something yielding but inescapable on the other side. I gave a few experimental yanks and the something yanked back with a very annoyed grunt.
Oh. That was where Taylor was. I was relieved he wasn’t lion chow but otherwise was not happy to hear from him.
And Carson … Carson still hadn’t looked at me. His jaw was set, his muscles tight. Surely he would find a way to give me some clue as to what he was planning.
Suddenly Ivy was there beside me. I jumped, then pulled at my bonds, and barely remembered not to talk out loud to her.
“I am so very sorry I didn’t stay to watch your back,” she said, guilt flavoring her apology but not prolonging it. “I thought it was important to reconnoiter for you.”
Get out of here! I told her. It’s jackal central! Are you nuts?
“I will. But it’s important I tell you what I know.” She glanced at the Maguire family behind the altar. Everything seemed in stasis, but it was only in comparison with the speed Ivy’s shade was telling me things in psychic time. “The young man won’t look at you because he doesn’t want them to use you against him. He has a plan. It’s a catastrophically stupid plan, but I have no way to stop him.”
How do you know? I asked, still terrified for her. But I had a hunch that made me terrified for all of us.
“I spoke with him.” She absorbed my reaction to that even before I could. “You mean he doesn’t share your ability to speak with the dead?”
No. He has the ability to borrow it, though.
Until now, he’d only done it when we were touching, or close. But he had the Jackal’s mark, and it was a whole new ball game now. My horrible hunch said my talent for speaking with the dead wasn’t all he’d borrowed.
He’s planning to push the Black Jackal back through the Veil.
“He thinks he can, yes.”
That wasn’t all. I knew what Maguire meant about offering the Jackal a body. Not a sacrifice, but a host. If Maguire thought he would remain in control of all that power, he would take it. And I didn’t think Carson cared if sending the Jackal back to the afterlife sent Devlin Maguire, too.
Psychic time or regular time, we were out of both. I could feel the Jackal prowling within the bonds I’d anchored to the foundations of the building. This room was the limit of his tether, but not a stretch.
Go, I told Ivy. If I could force her away, I would. He’s coming.
She went, with a fleeting touch of her spirit to mine, spending no time on words. Then she was gone, really gone, and safe.
I looked at the altar, subjective time back to normal. A pulse beat in Maguire’s neck, above the collar of his shirt. He wore his suit like a vestment. There was something else, a muted psychic hum. I’d felt it once before in his office. However he’d contained the soul of Carson’s mother, he had it here. Here, where he was about to raise a soul-eating monster.
What an arrogant ass.
I didn’t think Carson could sense it. I’d had seventeen and three-quarters years to learn how to use my gifts. What made him think he could master them instantly?
Simple. He was the son of an arrogant ass.
The air stirred with a shimmer, the Black Jackal appeared inside the semicircle of his brethren. He wore the guise of the jackal-headed god, but I could See through the illusion to the shade of Oosterhouse. Handsome, young, fit … and bare-chested, like a Yul Brynner Rameses.
He put his hands on his hips and studied the surroundings with a sneer. The tomb had seemed very real when I’d awakened to chanting, but behind the genuine artifacts were black exhibit walls, and the torches were merely flashlights and electric lanterns. It was all just set dressing next to the self-proclaimed demigod.
Maguire spoke from the altar like it was a boardroom table. “Welcome, my lord. As you see, we are ready to proceed with the ritual.”
The Jackal encompassed Maguire in his disapproval. “You managed to secure the book?”
“I never lost the book,” said Maguire, cool and in charge. “I always knew where it was.” He placed one paternal hand on Carson’s shoulder, the other on Alexis’s. “My son had it, and my daughter translated it, and together they brought you Miss Goodnight.”
At last Carson’s guarded gaze flicked toward me, as if to see if I believed that he’d been working with Alexis. I trusted he hadn’t, but I was still pissed about everything he had done, including delivering the Jackal exactly what he wanted. Not me, but the power to open the Veil.
The Jackal finally gave me his attention, and the air crackled between us with opposing psychic forces. He strode to where I was bound and stood over me, his shadowed eyes glinting. It hurt to look at him, as if the twisted magic that made him burned the answering magic in my soul.
His gaze roved over me in a vile way. “You’ve brought her,” he said, “but you haven’t broken her. How will you convince her to play her role?”
Maguire’s voice was a smooth, ringing promise. “If she does not unbind you, Agent Taylor will die in disgrace as part of the plot to kidnap my daughter.”
Taylor tensed at the threat, pulling at the ropes that bound us. More than that, I could sense the horror the threat gave him—not the death, but the dishonor. Though I was guessing he didn’t much want to die, either.
I managed to twist one hand until I could link a few fingers with Taylor’s as Maguire continued. “However, if she complies with the ritual, her friend will merely be killed in the line of duty.”
Wow. He wasn’t even pretending he wasn’t going to kill us. Taylor’s fingers squeezed mine, but I didn’t find that reassuring. My choice was doom him to disgrace or doom him and every other soul in this world to oblivion.
Maguire stood, shoulders back, supremely confident. He saw himself as the pharaoh here, and Oosterhouse as his pawn. Beside him, Alexis glowed with the same conviction of control, and in his own way, underneath his mask of compliance, Carson seemed steady in the idea that he could turn the tables.
They were all cataclysmically wrong.
“I like the way you think, Maguire,” said the Jackal, indulging him. “The problem is your sense of scale. I know a man like you understands the importance of, what do they call it now? Shock and awe.”
As quick as a thought, he plunged a spectral hand into my chest. Icy cold punched through my ribs, burning, cracking, seizing my heart. He twisted, tearing a scream from my vitals. It was the worst pain I’d ever felt in my life, but worse still was the moment when he grabbed the threads that connected Ivy to me and used them to pull her shade from thin air.
“Hello, Professor Goodnight,” he said. She dangled from his grip on her throat, her hands grabbing at his thick, tanned forearm.
“Oosterhouse.” Aunt Ivy managed to wheeze with contempt, as if they were academic rivals and not one spirit choking the afterlife out of another. “I should have known. No one who likes to hear himself talk as much as you do has altruism at heart.”
“I’m so glad this turned out to be you,” he snarled. “Women—and Goodnights—need to know their place.”
He tightened his fist, and Ivy screamed. I did, too, straining at my bonds until my joints threatened to pop. But I was helpless to stop the Jackal as he pulled the remnant essence of my aunt into his fist like he was wadding up paper.
Her image shriveled but her scream
multiplied. It reverberated in the chamber, shook the walls until they began to transform. The ancient panels of stone on display spread like spilled water, covering the walls until the tomb was no longer curtains and plaster but stone and dirt and stuffy air. The electric light warmed, turned to smoking flame and dancing torchlight.
And the scream still didn’t stop. The air shimmered around the Jackal’s hand, and every cell in my body shuddered in recognition and resonance. Through my link to my aunt, he used me to call the Veil. It didn’t hum. It shrieked as he dragged Ivy’s soul from beyond like a magician pulls a never-ending scarf from his pocket.
Her soul.
“Stop!” I screeched around the cloth gag between my teeth. “I’ll do it! Just stop—”
Stop before there’s nothing left. I sobbed the last, unable to form the words. Tears blinded me, and I blinked them away because I didn’t want to be sightless in front of this monster.
The scream, the Veil, and all trace of my aunt vanished. With a cutting smile of victory, the Jackal opened his fist. He waved, and the gag in my mouth crumbled to foul-tasting dust. Leaning close he hissed in my ear, “Now do you believe I am a god? Submit, or I will destroy every dead witch in your interfering family. I don’t think even you realize how close they are, thinking they can protect you. But they can’t. Not from me.”
He took my broken sob as an answer and stood, swollen with pride and malice. I had underestimated him. And underestimated how much I had angered him by leashing him like a dog.
And he’d treed me like a cat. Now I had to keep my balance in gale-force winds until I figured out a way down.
I got up enough spit to talk and enough backbone to brave this out. “I’ll do it. But keep your paws off my family.” I looked toward the altar, where Alexis and Maguire waited. Carson’s facade had cracked, his face pale and his gaze tortured.
It would have been nice if I’d had more than the SparkNotes version of the Book of the Dead. I could only extrapolate from what Ivy told me and try to make it sound good. The final step, Ivy had said, was to unknot the pharaoh’s ka from his resting place and bind him to a host. There was still a wisp of a thread binding Oosterhouse’s ka to the statue—but that hardly seemed to matter next to the far greater binding I’d worked on him and would now have to undo.