Spirit And Dust Part 5

Lauren heaved a sigh. "Magic one-oh-one, Red. This isn't Harry Potter. There are protection charms here and on the dorm room, of course. Tracking charms are a great idea in theory, but huge power drains. Expensive-magically speaking-to maintain when a GPS chip in her phone works just as well. Most of the time," she added, preempting my next question.

That part I got. My cousin Phin loved to give me lectures in Magic 101, and now I wished I'd paid more attention. But I did remember that the major impediment to big, flashy magic was the impractical amount of energy required to make something go against its nature. Magic worked on probabilities and enhanced inclinations. That was why fireb.a.l.l.s and flying carpets were fantasy.

At least, that was what I had thought until now. Maybe it really was just a matter of getting enough power. But power had to come from somewhere.

Dude, magical theory was a mental labyrinth and I didn't have a map. So I focused instead on the current problem.

"You said that Alexis was hidden from your locator spell," I said to Lauren, confirming what she'd said in Maguire's office. "Do you think the spell was blocked somehow?"

She didn't have to think about it. "Less blocked, more like scrambled."

I worked that through. "So someone could be doing it deliberately. Like a radar scrambler."

She pointed at me like a game show host. "Ding! Give the girl a toaster."

"Look, you." She was seriously p.i.s.sing me off. Worse, her bad vibes were majorly interfering with my mojo. That's not just an excuse fake psychics use. "You don't want me to be more useful than this," I told her, "because it would mean someone is dead. Which I can arrange, if you keep mouthing off."

She laughed, then pretended she hadn't meant to. "I'm sorry, kid. You're about as intimidating as a hissing kitten."

"Lauren," said Carson, without moving from his lean against the bookcase, "back off or go away. And you, Suns.h.i.+ne, calm down."

Has anyone in the history of the planet actually calmed down when someone said "calm down"? All it did was turn up the gas under the teakettle of my temper.

"Why doesn't Maguire just pay the stupid ransom?" I demanded. "I mean, what are they asking for? His left kidney?"

Carson debated a moment and glanced at Lauren, who gave him a "your call" sort of shrug. "Because it's not money they want," he finally said. "It's a thing. And he doesn't have it."

"Why doesn't he just go get it?" I asked, slightly more calm, but much more confused. "Or send somebody. He seems pretty good at that." The two of them exchanged another look. "Hey," I said, at the end of my rope with them. "Stop with the secret eyeball communication. I'm standing right here."

Carson sighed and reluctantly confessed, "Because we don't know exactly what it is."

I eyed him suspiciously, but he didn't look like he was joking. "That doesn't make any sense. Are you supposed to just guess?"

He didn't laugh. "What the kidnappers said was, 'Bring us the Oosterhouse Jackal.' But no one here has heard of it."

"Did you Google it?" I asked, because that's what I would do.

Lauren slapped her forehead. "Oh my gosh, Carson! Why didn't we think of that? Google! What a genius idea!"

Carson straightened and jerked a thumb toward the door. "Out, Lauren. Now."

I expected an argument, or some more eye rolling. Instead, she indulged him, calling, "Don't let her beat you up again," before she closed the door behind her.

At least Carson seemed as annoyed by that as I was. So we agreed on something.

The room seemed smaller somehow, once he'd taken charge. He had a trick of fading out when he was with Maguire and Lauren, standing still and contained, as if he were just the muscle, waiting for orders. It would be easy to underestimate him. Maybe that was why he did it.

But now he was all business. "Yes, of course we did an Internet search for the Oosterhouse Jackal. Nothing useful came up, but Maguire has people on it."

I was sure he did. Scary people without the restrictions of, oh, say, jurisprudence or civil liberties. My job was to follow the clues to Alexis. That was what I'd sworn to do.

But something kept nagging at me. I mulled over what it might be as I went back to the curio case, looking at the stuff Alexis had collected, picking up the figurine Lauren had warned me away from. It actually did look old, even felt that way to the touch. But to my other senses it was oddly ... inert. At any rate, it was not cursed from the tomb.

When I turned, Carson was watching me, as if curious when the show would start. "I still don't get it," I said, fidgeting with the carved stone. "Why would the kidnappers ask for something that Maguire doesn't have, or even have access to?"

"Lauren and I have a theory," he said. "We think Alexis knows what it is or where to find it. So maybe the kidnappers a.s.sumed the boss does, too."

"Her dorm room was totally trashed," I said. "It could be they were looking there for this jackal thing. Whatever it is."

He took the stone figurine from my hand and placed it with care back on the shelf. "She wouldn't keep anything valuable in her dorm. It's too unprotected."

No argument there. But his point did spin up a new idea. "This place," I said, meaning Castle Maguire, "is like a freaking fort. When was Alexis last home? Could she have hidden something here?"

"About a week ago," he answered. "The mansion would be a safe place to keep something secure from outsiders. We thought of that, and Lauren did her divination thing. There's no sign of anything on the property."

"Yeah, but if you don't know exactly what the Jackal is, any kind of locating spell would be only slightly better than guessing." I knew that much, because it was usually the same for psychics.

I'd also caught his qualifier-safe from outsiders. Where would Alexis keep something she didn't want Maguire to know about?

"Is there a picture of Alexis somewhere? Maybe a photo alb.u.m?" I wanted to get a better image of her physically to see if that helped at all.

Carson nodded to a wall that separated the sitting part of the suite from the bedroom part. It held a decorator-perfect arrangement of frames, but when I went closer I saw that the shots were mostly candid: teenage Alexis with gla.s.ses and braces, slightly older Alexis with straight white teeth, arms around her girlfriends, all of them wearing school uniforms a lot like the one I'd worn to Our Lady of Perpetual Sn.o.bbery in San Antonio. There was Alexis in front of the Eiffel Tower and the Louvre, on the ski slopes of the Alps, in front of the British Museum and the Trevi Fountain.

The only picture with her father was also the only formal portrait, one of those where they try to make it look unposed and natural but it just ends up looking like a magazine photo of a happy family. Maybe it was a magazine shoot. In any case, Alexis and her father didn't look miserable, but their body language was almost businesslike.

Contrast that with the one picture of Alexis with Carson. He wore a tux-and wore it really well-and they leaned into each other, grinning cheekily at the photographer. The photo couldn't be very old, but the carefree guy in the photo seemed a lifetime of experience from the young man standing nearby, watching me with folded arms.

I pointed to the picture. "Did someone put a happy spell on your prom tuxedo or what?"

He allowed himself a shadow of that smile. "Alexis's first sorority formal, our freshman year. She went to an all-girls high school and hadn't dated much until then, and she was wary of asking a stranger."

Yeah, I could see where having Devlin Maguire as a dad would impede romance, with the bodyguards and all. So who was Carson to her? He would have been too young to be Maguire's employee then. He still looked too young now.

"How long have you known Alexis?" I asked, moving to the nightstand to poke around. The something was still nagging at me. Something besides curiosity about Carson.

His answer was un.o.bliging. "A while."

"Since you started college?" I asked, undeterred.

"Since before." He obviously knew I was fis.h.i.+ng for information on more than just Alexis, and he gave me a grudging morsel. "Maguire sent me to school."

I paused in my drawer rifling. "Is that why you work for him?"

He smiled slightly, but the humor in it was bitter. I'd hit a nerve. "That would be the simplest answer." It was also clearly the only one I was going to get. "Are you finding anything?" he asked. "Or just pretending to look while you give me the third degree?"

"Trust me," I said, tough, like I was some bada.s.s ghost interrogator. "If I give you the third degree, you'll know it."

I shut the bureau drawer. This room was neat as a pin, cleaned regularly, and totally unhelpful on a psychic level. What I needed was a dead person.

"There aren't any pictures of Alexis's mom," I said, suddenly noticing. "Where is she?"

"Gone," said Carson.

"As in dead?" I asked, maybe a little too hopefully.

The corner of his mouth turned up at my tone. "As in remarried and living in Europe."

"What about a grandparent or an aunt or uncle?" I asked. "Someone she was close to, who might check in on her from the beyond now and then?"

"Her maternal grandmother." He must have followed my line of reasoning, and antic.i.p.ation sparked in his eyes, though he kept it tightly reined in. I suspected Carson kept everything tightly reined in. "Lex-Alexis, I mean-always spoke of her fondly."

"Excellent. Grandmothers are the worst busybodies." I rubbed my hands together, s.h.i.+fting into higher gear. I pretty much never reined anything in. "Does Alexis have something of hers? Anything intimate or personal should do."

"How should I know what's intimate or personal to her?" asked Carson.

"Dude, you were her backup date. Obviously you're close." I had been actively ignoring the "dead" part of the spectrum, so as not to overshadow the "live" part that I didn't See very well. Now I refocused and scanned the room intently for some hint of remnant.

"What do girls inherit from their grandmothers?" I asked. "China. Knickknacks ... How about jewelry?"

Carson, jolted by the suggestion, turned toward a painting on the wall. As soon as I focused on it, I felt a faint psychic hum. A wall safe, maybe?

We nearly raced each other to it. Sure enough, Carson swung the frame from the wall to reveal a safe with a keypad lock, and the something went from nagging to unrelenting.

"It's been there all along, but I've been trying to focus on Alexis." I felt like an idiot. "We've wasted so much time. The jackal might be in there right now!"

Carson shook his head and started keying in a number. "I already looked. There's nothing in here but jewelry. But maybe there's something for you to read...."

He glanced down at me, breaking off when he saw my narrow-eyed stare. So he didn't know where Alexis kept her intimate stuff, but he knew the combination to her safe? "There's a master code," he explained, correctly interpreting my suspicion. "The boss gave it to me this morning so I could search."

So I was right. The mansion was not the place to keep something hidden from Maguire. Alexis would know that. Carson would, too. But whose side was he on? He was obviously loyal-maybe obedient would be a better word-to the boss. On the other hand, he didn't seem happy about that. So maybe there was nothing obvious here at all.

I pushed that thought aside as Carson opened the safe door and pulled out a velvet-lined tray full of sparkle. I had never seen so many gemstones up close. The fire inside them was downright hypnotic.

But the stones weren't what called to me. It was a pile of pearls. Their glow was softer, like warm, pale skin. And more, they seemed to hum, raising gooseflesh on my arms as I dipped my fingers into the tray and pulled them free into a long, perfectly matched strand. The necklace sang with impatient intensity.

"It's about time," chided a voice, coming from everywhere and nowhere. "I've been waiting an age for you to get to me, young lady."

8.

THE SHADE OF Alexis's grandmama was head-to-toe haute couture, from pearls to little black dress to cla.s.sic pumps. Her brown hair was swept up a la Audrey Hepburn, and I was sure she could have breakfasted at Tiffany's in her day.

She looked down her nose at me and sniffed. "Stop gaping, dear girl, and show some manners. It's bad enough your generation goes around uncovered half the time."

I closed my mouth and smoothed the pleats in my skirt before I could stop myself. I'd gone to Catholic school for twelve years. When a woman in black says jump, I don't wait to ask how high.

The apparition didn't surprise me, but the strength and suddenness of it did. I figured I'd have to coax the threads of personality from the necklace into something coherent. But this shade was very sharp, as if fed daily by memory.

Carson had startled when I did, but he seemed to be following my gaze rather than sighting on his own. "Can you see her?" I asked him.

He shook his head and reached out, as if testing the wind. "It's not as cold as I thought it would be." The ghost gave his hand a scathing look, and he pulled it back as if she'd stung him. "I take that back. Brrr."

"Let me do the talking," I said. "And keep your hands to yourself." Remnants needed careful handling. They couldn't always be reasoned with like a whole living person because they didn't have whole-person logic. Sometimes they were a snapshot of a moment in time. Sometimes they were a hodgepodge of steps in their life's journey.

Like the woman in front of me. She seemed to be in her late twenties-a lot of shades appeared the way they had at a favorite time of life-but she had all the imperiousness of an elderly society matron.

"What do you mean you were waiting on me?" I asked.

She made an impatient noise. "I heard your voices. I haven't been able to rest since Alexis was last here. I knew something was wrong, and now the two of you are here, poking around like a pair of common thieves...."

I hurried to rea.s.sure her. "We're not here to steal anything, Mrs...."

My leading pause hung empty. She a.s.sessed me for a long moment before finally filling it. "Mrs. James Hardwicke the Third. You may call me Mrs. Hardwicke."

"Right." Mrs. Hardwicke was kind of fascinating. She'd obviously had a very clear self-image in life, which had carried over into death.

"Is it Lex's grandmother?" Carson asked me. "What is she saying?"

The matron shot him a look. "If you're going to grope a lady, young man, you might at least address her directly."

We'd wasted so much time already, I shouldn't have wasted more being amused by that. "She says you should apologize for groping her."

To my surprise, Carson blushed. "I beg your pardon, ma'am. It was inadvertent."

"Humph," she said, giving him a quick inspection. He was a bit rumpled from our tussle, and he had the barest hint of G.o.d-knows-what-o'clock shadow along his jaw. His short brown hair stood up all over, and his trousers had no hint of a crease.

"When Alexis was last here," I pressed Mrs. Hardwicke, "what made you worry about her?"

"Her demeanor, of course. She was very anxious. A grandmother can tell these things."

"Anything else?" I asked. Had Alexis known someone was after her, or this jackal thing? "Did she do something unusual? Leave anything behind?"

"Nothing but the key," said Mrs. Hardwicke, as if this should be obvious.

"The key?" I echoed, half for Carson's benefit.

"What key?" he asked, still holding the tray of jewelry like a plate of canapes.

Alexis's grandmother sighed. "The key she put into the safe, of course. That was the last time I saw her."

I elbowed Carson aside and peered into the eye-level safe. There were two shelves. The jewelry had come from the lower one, and the upper one was empty.