I grabbed the bars of the fence for balance. On Carson’s count, I jumped while he lifted me like I weighed nothing. Somehow I managed not to skewer myself on the pointy top, then got a toe up on the horizontal rail, eased over, and dropped to the other side.
Carson, as far as I could tell, just vaulted across. Maybe he really was a Jedi.
“Which way?” he asked, blowing into his cupped hands.
“Give me a sec.” I flexed my own fingers to get the blood going, and with it, the intangible me. I pushed my psyche out like a sixth-sense radar net and got my bearings.
The graves around us were relatively new. Here and there the soft echoes of souls lingered, damped by the earth. Later, as dust returned to dust, the last remnant traces on this side of the Veil would unravel and vanish.
“Is this weird for you?” asked Carson. “Being in a graveyard?”
It was my turn to raise a brow. “Weird compared with what? Talking to Alexis’s dead grandmother in the backseat of a Ford Taurus?”
He gave me that point. “When you put it that way …”
I tucked my hands into the coat pockets, wrapping my right hand around the mausoleum key. An electric tingle washed over me, carrying subtle information, like flavors I could taste but had no words to describe.
“The remnants here”—I gestured around us—“are all sleeping. Proper burials are like that. Most spirits have someplace better to hang out. What’s left are the memories of loved ones visiting. They blend together, and it’s kind of pretty, actually.”
It was more like an abstract watercolor than a patchwork quilt. But with the key in my hand, I could sense which part of the psychic finger-painting we needed. Like called to like, and key called to lock.
Through the graveyard came the soft sound of metal on metal. I jumped and Carson did, too, but there was no way to tell where the noise had come from.
“You heard that, right?” I whispered, unsure and scared, despite all my big talk about the sleeping dead. In searching the dark, we’d ended up back-to-back, so nothing could sneak up on us through the silver-iced headstones and the black moon shadows beneath.
“Yeah.” His low answer vibrated through my shoulder blades. “But it could be a mile or more away. Sound carries at night.”
“Okay.” I made a tight fist around the key in my pocket. “But let’s hurry anyway.”
He swept out an arm, inviting me to take the lead. “Lay on, Macduff.”
Dude. He’d just quoted Shakespeare and given me the reins of this crazy train. It was a good thing I had more important things to figure out than the mystery of this guy. He was so much more than just the hired muscle.
I led the way through neat rows of modern marble headstones on to where the markers got more worn and more eclectic and uneven. There were a few small crypts, but we were headed to a sandstone building with marble accents and topiary guardians beside the door. A miniature mansion for the dead.
I stopped a few feet away, checking the place out with my other senses. Carson’s vitality made a distracting gravity well in the spiritual landscape. I adjusted for his presence like a pilot adjusts for wind speed. That wasn’t just me being girly. I had to do the same thing with Taylor, but I was used to him. Working with him was like a preset on my psychic radio.
“Hand me the key,” Carson said, before I could get too worried about Taylor and what was happening back at the Maguire mansion. I gave Carson the key as ordered, happy to let him take the lead in the tomb-robbing part. At the door he took a small flashlight from his coat pocket and used it to find the keyhole. Turning the key took some effort, but it finally gave way with a loud clunk of the tumblers.
The door opened smoothly. I held my breath as a swirl of air rushed in, pulling the dead leaves around our feet with it. But nothing deathly wafted out, and I allowed myself a sigh.
“At least it doesn’t look like Dracula is buried here,” Carson said, echoing my relief. I peered over his shoulder as he passed the flashlight beam over the vaults, which were sealed with smooth stone and marked with the names of those resting inside. The chamber smelled of metal polish and cold marble, with a whiff of classic floral perfume that said our Mrs. Hardwicke was around. It was clean, but felt echoing and empty, even to my remnant senses. Everyone there was long gone or sleeping deeply.
I slid around Carson and went in, my footsteps ringing. He followed my movements with the flashlight. The walls weren’t all marble—there was a stained-glass window at one end of the building, and another over the door.
“What are we looking for?” Carson asked.
A good question. “Something that doesn’t belong here, I guess.”
The beam swept over the marked crypts. Big family. Old mausoleum. Lots of crypts. Carson voiced what I was thinking. “Where do we start? I’m not breaking into a grave unless absolutely necessary. I didn’t bring a sledgehammer.”
“Give me a minute.” Alexis’s grandmother was just a faint glow in the shadows of the chamber, but the misty aura took on her familiar shape as I gave her my attention.
“Do you know when Alexis was last here?” I asked her. Was it too much to hope that Alexis had been wearing Mrs. Hardwicke’s pearls when there? If she’d been there. I was beginning to doubt the genius of this plan.
Disappointment laced her tone. “The last time I was here with Alexis, I was alive and she was just a child. In my day, people visited their dearly departed. I brought flowers for Mr. Hardwicke twice a month.”
She nodded at a marble-sealed crypt, about head high. The marker read JAMES HARDWICKE III. BELOVED HUSBAND AND FATHER. There was a brass sconce next to it—I thought it was some sort of lamp. There were more, spaced evenly between the vaults. Then I realized they were empty vases for flowers.
Mrs. Hardwicke sniffed her disapproval. “I think it’s clear that no one has been here in quite some time.”
I pressed her for useful information. “Did Alexis say anything when she hid the key in the safe? Did you sense her thoughts, like if she might have hidden something here?”
“No.” Her image turned watery, weakening. “I want to help Alexis, but this is more difficult than I thought.”
I realized I was the only thing keeping her coherent and aware. When I relaxed my psychic hold, she dissolved into a sigh of fog, but I could still feel her hanging about in a formless sort of way.
“What did she say?” asked Carson, sounding edgy, or maybe just uneasy. I mean, standing in the dark among the dead might get to some people.
“She doesn’t know when Alexis was last here,” I said. “Which only means that Alexis wasn’t wearing the necklace when she visited. We’re back to square one.”
“What about …?” He gestured with the flashlight toward the vaults that held the remains of Alexis’s maternal ancestors.
I took a deep breath just contemplating the heavy lifting it would take to get anything coherent from the scraps of memory that lingered there. Could I do it without getting my hands on at least one set of physical remains?
“There’s not much here to work with,” I told him. “Before I try to pull off a miracle, let’s look for signs of any disturbance, like if she hid something. You check the physical, I’ll cover the psychic.”
“Got it.” Carson began a systematic study of the marble-fronted crypts, running his hands and the flashlight over the seals and the ledges in front. That left me in the semidarkness, but I didn’t need light to read the spirits in the place and know they were undisturbed and unhelpful.
I ended up standing where Mrs. Hardwicke had disappeared. In front of me were two side-by-side crypts. Mr. Hardwicke III was in one. The other engraving said ALEXANDRA HATTERSLEY HARDWICKE, BELOVED WIFE AND MOTHER.
This was nuts. How could a girl like Alexis hide anything in one of the vaults? Even if it was unoccupied and unsealed, opening it would be a task for a heavy-lifting crew.
Then why come here? I put myself in her shoes, like I did with the remnants too old and ta
ttered to read properly. She must have felt this was a secure place. She came here with her grandmother—maybe there were happy associations. They brought flowers.…
Bingo! The answer was staring me in the face. Or rather, I was staring right at it—the empty brass vase right above eye level, between Mr. and Mrs. James Hardwicke III.
“Carson, come here!” The vase would definitely hide something small dropped inside. I could reach the lip but not down into it. “Give me another boost, will you?”
He saw what I was up to and handed me the flashlight, then offered his linked hands as he had outside the cemetery wall. I stepped into them, grabbing his shoulder for balance.
He had nice, solid shoulders, and he took my weight without a quiver. I was only up long enough to get my hand in the vase and grab the object inside. I gave a soft whoop of triumph and Carson let me back down, then moved closer to see as I aimed the flashlight onto the treasure in my palm.
It was a plastic mummy, about three inches long, wrapped in white bandages, ready for the sarcophagus. Or maybe to come awake and start shuffling after Boris Karloff, I don’t know.
“That’s definitely not a jackal,” I said, not sure what to think. I was flummoxed.
Carson took it from my hand. “Doesn’t look like it’s been here that long. Maybe some visiting kid left his toy?”
“A kid couldn’t have put it in that vase, it’s too high.”
“Is that writing on it?” He twisted the plastic figure in the beam of the flashlight. “I think it’s an o and an i.”
Puzzle pieces were lining up in my head. Alexis, studying the classical worlds, like ancient Rome and Greece, from which it was just a short mental hop across the Mediterranean Sea to Egypt.
Ancient Egypt, with its mummies and tombs and elaborate burial rituals and pantheon of animal-headed deities.
“Carson”—I grabbed his arm in excitement—“it’s got to be a clue. Do you know who the ancient Egyptian god of mummification was? Anubis. The jackal-headed god.”
I saw him connecting the dots, too. “So you’re thinking this is related to the Oosterhouse Jackal?”
“If Alexis left this here,” I said, “it’s too much of a coincidence—”
That was as far as I got before Mrs. Hardwicke appeared so suddenly and so brightly that I shrieked and dropped the flashlight. Carson caught it before it hit the ground.
“Someone is coming,” said the shade, her form shivering with urgency and emotion. “And I’ve seen one of them before, with Alexis.”
“One of them?” I asked, and Carson looked at me sharply. I kept my gaze on Mrs. Hardwicke. “How many are there?”
“Three,” she warned. “And they know you’re here.”
11
“THEY MUST HAVE followed us,” Carson said when I told him we were about to have visitors. “Let’s go.” He shoved the plastic mummy into his pocket and doused the light, leaving us in the gravestone-cold darkness of the mausoleum.
I didn’t immediately fall into step. “Just close the door and lock it,” I hissed. “We have the only key.”
“Are you sure about that?” He grabbed my hand. “Besides, I’m not a lock-myself-in-a-room-with-one-exit kind of guy.”
He had a point, so I went with him.
The doorway was full of moonlight. Carson stopped at the edge, pressing against the wall, and I did the same. “How far away are they?” he asked.
Mrs. Hardwicke’s shade had drifted with us. “Just down the hill,” she answered, and I relayed that in a whisper.
“Stay low and keep to the shadows,” he murmured, and slipped outside. I followed, grabbing the heavy door on my way and closing it carefully, silently, behind us.
Not quite silently enough.
“Did you hear something?” asked a voice from just down the hill. Way closer than I expected.
“Let’s pick up the pace,” said his companion, and the crunch of shoes on frozen grass sped up.
Carson shoved me out of sight behind an aboveground crypt. I hit the dirt with a grunt, then gave another one as he landed on top of me.
“This is getting to be a bad habit,” I wheezed.
“You’re not much of an escape artist,” he whispered, his breath tickling the back of my neck. “Now shut up.”
The ground was really cold and hard and Carson was hot and heavy, which might be nice in some circumstances, but not just then. I moved so that whatever was digging into my hip dug into a less sensitive place. I thought it was the flashlight, but I wasn’t quite sure. It only just then occurred to me to wonder if Carson was armed.
“Hold still and think camouflage,” he whispered as the footsteps came closer. I could feel them through the ground. We were hidden from the guys’ approach, but one glance to the side and they’d see us.
Mrs. Hardwicke appeared, but all I could see was a pair of gorgeous suede pumps a few inches from my nose. “This is really quite disgraceful, young lady.”
I ignored that, less worried about propriety and more concerned with dying stacked like a deck of playing cards. Do you recognize these guys? I asked her silently. Do you know their names?
“Not their names,” she said. “They’re in some sort of brotherhood.”
Brotherhood? Like … monks?
“More like a fraternal order.” It was strange to hear the granite confidence of Mrs. Hardwicke’s tone crumble with worry. “I don’t like them. They made Alexis nervous.” Then she said, “Here they come.”
My tension must have warned Carson, because he tightened his arm around me. My heart gave a girly sort of flutter at the protective gesture before I was distracted by the sensation of something settling lightly over us, a net of static that played across my nerves like the electric tingle of a ghostly remnant.
“There’s no sign of anyone,” said one of the guys. He sounded youngish—not high school young, but not hardened, either. Maybe twenties? “You really think she told them where to find it?”
“She” must be Alexis, and “them” must be her father, maybe Carson. Now if the guy would just say what “it” was, then lying on the freezing ground would be totally worth the frostbite. But his pal was all business. “Shut up. Team Maguire must be around somewhere.”
Carson tensed, and I heard the first guy say, “Stop looking around like that. You’re giving me the creeps.”
How were they not seeing us? From the sound of their voices, they were right alongside our hiding place.
“You’ll have worse than the creeps if they’ve been here and gone. We need all the pieces, or nothing will be any good. Not the Jackal, not the girl … She’ll be useless.”
“Shhh,” said his buddy, on the steps to the mausoleum. “The door’s unlocked.”
I heard it swing open, and their footfalls going inside. But in my head was the menace of that simple statement: She’ll be useless. Expendable.
Carson exhaled as if he’d been holding his breath the whole time. The odd tingling feeling evaporated and the toes of Mrs. Hardwicke’s shoes wavered in front of me.
“Goodness,” she said, sounding shaken. “I thought for sure you would be caught.”
Had Carson done another Jedi mind trick? Sleight of hand, he’d called it when we were leaving the mansion.
He didn’t give me time to ask. “Let’s go,” he whispered, rolling to his feet and pulling me with him. Part of me said, Yes, let’s run, and another part said, No, wait! There was something I was forgetting. Only two guys had passed us. I hadn’t told Carson there were three.
The third guy came into sight just as we jumped up from behind the crypt. The moon was like a spotlight, and there was nothing to do but freeze.
The guy was young, like the others had sounded. He wore a knit cap with a University of Minnesota logo, and brotherhood or not, he did look like a fraternity guy. He also looked as shocked to see us leap out of the shadows as we were to be seen.
The other two came out of the mausoleum behind us. “They’re not here,” t
he burly guy in the lead started, then broke off when I swung around, putting my back to Carson’s.
Carson squeezed my hand then let go. “Cover your eyes,” he said.
“What? Why—?”
An instant later I heard the flashlight smash to the ground. I clapped my hand over my eyes and squeezed them shut as light flared, reddening the edges of my fingers.
Then there was darkness, and a lot of cursing and yelling. When I dropped my hand, I saw the guy in the hat blinking blindly in the moonlight.
“Get them!” he shouted, but all Thugs One and Two could do was snatch at the spots filling their ruined night vision.
“Run!” said Carson, like I wasn’t already moving.
I took off through the headstones, saving my questions for later. That flare had been way more than a flashlight beam. Just then I was grateful for the head start and the advantage of being able to see by moonlight.
Carson followed on my heels as I weaved through the rows of stone markers. I remembered the way back to the car, and I could navigate the watercolor psychic landscape without relying on the path.
Thugs One and Two and the Cat in the Hat had gotten themselves together, and I heard them galumphing after us. We reached the fence and I started over it with zero finesse, jumping to catch the top rail. And then I just hung there like I was trying to do a chin-up in the worst gym class ever.
Carson put a hand on my butt and shoved. Honestly, I’d seen more action since meeting him than I had in all of high school. I got my leg up and leveraged the rest of me to the top, just as the three hooligans came sliding down the icy grass of the graveyard hill.
Carson scrambled over and dropped to the other side. I tried to do the same, but the collar of my coat caught on one of the spikes. I tumbled from my perch and braced to hit the frozen ground from a nine-foot drop but instead jerked to a stop, half choked by the coat and hung out like a rag doll on a clothesline.
“Ditch the coat!” Carson said, his eyes on the hoodlums closing fast. I unzipped and wriggled out of the parka, then stumbled and hit the ground.