Spirit And Dust Part 9

That got a half laugh. "Appropriate, the way they drive there." He cut the headlights and the dashboard console went dark, though we were still bathed in the light of the semi behind us. "You might have another quick word with her. We haven't quite lost them yet."

There was an unlit turnoff ahead. It didn't rate being called an exit. We slowed only enough for the truck behind us to ride our b.u.mper, then slipped down the ramp at full speed. The service road plummeted out of sight and into shadow. Carson drove with calm intent, like a runner in the zone, a thrumming tension in his body as he hauled on the wheel and put the car into a skidding turn.

I prepared for death, wondering if then I would be able to talk to the living like I talked to ghosts now. But incredibly, we slid between the columns of the overpa.s.s and came to an abrupt stop before the drop-off into a drainage culvert. The engine subsided to an idle, and the car filled with the sound of our breathing. Overhead, the eighteen-wheelers rumbled like thunder across the vaulted ceiling of our concrete sanctuary.

I fumbled the door open and staggered to the culvert, where the turkey sandwich made a return appearance. I almost never eat meat. I would almost certainly never eat turkey again.

Carson killed the dome light. A moment later he was crouched beside me, making sure I didn't tumble into the ditch while I heaved. Finally I half fell to a seat on the concrete, gasping and mortified. Wordlessly, Carson cracked the seal on a bottle of c.o.ke and offered it to me.

It was something Agent Taylor had done a million times, and my throat clenched over sudden tears. I hoped he was all right. I hoped Alexis was all right. I felt swamped by responsibility, for them, for my family, even for Mrs. Hardwicke. The stress of it welled up until I thought I might puke again.

"This was just supposed to be a routine reading." I let anger force the words past the choking weakness. "Find a body, point the finger, go home to Texas."

"I know," Carson said, his voice deep and rumbly, with something that sounded like real regret. He took off his coat and draped it over my shoulders. "Drink your soda."

I took a swig, swished it around, and let the carbonated burn chase away the taste of deli mustard and fear. That left only anger with no target. "I was not supposed to end up freezing my a.s.s off in a remake of Harry Potter meets The Italian Job by way of Fargo."

"Fargo is in North Dakota."

"I don't need a flipping geography lesson!"

He made a shus.h.i.+ng gesture. In the dark of the underpa.s.s, I couldn't see much of his face, but I suspected he was trying not to laugh. "You watch too many movies."

I restrained myself from dumping my c.o.ke over his head. "Says the guy with getaway driver on his resume. And just what was that with the light show back there? What else are you packing?"

"What else am I packing?" he echoed. "Have we gone back to the forties?"

"I know your buddies at the compound were armed. How do I know what you've got in your pants?" He choked, and so did I, for different reasons. "Pockets!" I corrected, not that it stopped his laughter or my incendiary blush. h.e.l.lo, Dr. Freud, my name is Daisy.

He stood, outlined by the moonlight. Deliberately, he unloaded his trouser pockets-plastic mummy, cell phone, and wallet, handing each to me before turning out his pockets and holding his arms to his sides.

"Want to frisk me?" he said. "I don't mind."

He'd just handed me his phone. Did that make him trusting or complacent? If I managed to not give it back, who could I call? I could at least try to see what the geas would allow. So I got to my feet and slipped my arms into the coat before handing him the wallet and mummy, hoping he wouldn't notice that the phone went into the jacket pocket. "I'll pa.s.s, thanks."

He shrugged and stowed his stuff without looking at it. "Just trying to be fair. I've gotten a few inappropriate handfuls this evening, so I thought I'd offer."

"t.i.t for tat, I think they call that."

That was on purpose, to distract him from the missing phone, but the surprise in his chuff of laughter made me grin. There was an intimacy in laughing with someone, turning the ridiculous exchange into something warmer, something shared. Something closer to flirting.

Sweet Saint Gertrude, what was I doing? I couldn't flirt with him. I didn't even know if Carson was his first or last name. It didn't matter, because he was an employee of a criminal enterprise and I was an FBI consultant and, oh yeah, technically kidnapped and probably in the throes of some kind of Stockholm syndrome.

I cleared my throat and worked to unweave what had become a moment between us. "No big deal. I gave you the benefit of the doubt that any groping was unintentional and expedient."

He caught one edge of the coat I wore-his coat-then the other, and pulled me a step closer, knitting the spell tighter. "I appreciate that. When I grope a girl, I don't want to leave any doubt that it's on purpose."

"That's good," I said, way more breathlessly than I liked. Stupid Stockholm syndrome. "Expedient groping isn't nice for anyone."

His hold on the coat was very light, but I was caught by the sharpening speculation in his gaze. Forget firearms, that was a lethal weapon right there. Especially paired with the devilish curve of his mouth. "Are you ever at a loss for words, Daisy Goodnight?"

"Well," I said, heady with the thought of winning this battle, "I did get a perfect verbal score on the SAT."

"That explains it." He trailed his fingers to my shoulders, then down my arms. His breath was warm on my cheek, stirring my hair as he leaned in. "You are good at verbal scoring."

Oh my G.o.d, was he going to kiss me? That was so inappropriate. I'd have to tell him that afterward.

Instead he just whispered, "But not much good at picking pockets." He stepped back, holding the cell phone up between us. "Nice try, though."

a.s.s.

"Come on," he said. While I sputtered and fumed, he changed gears as if this was all in a day's work. "It's two exits back to civilization."

He started down the dark service road, abandoning the Taurus. "Are we just going to leave the car?" I asked. Who just leaves a whole car?

"It's too easy to identify," he said, clearly expecting me to follow him. "b.u.t.ton up so you don't freeze to death."

"What about you?" I fell into step beside him. "Aren't you cold?" He wore only a pair of dress pants and the same blue b.u.t.ton-down s.h.i.+rt I'd soaked when I coshed him over the head with the flower vase about a decade ago.

"I have the n.o.bility of my intentions to keep me warm." He also had his hands in his pockets and his eyes on the distant lights of one of the last outposts of sub-suburban Minnesota.

"How about a plan?" I asked. "Do you have one of those?"

"Yes." He counted off on his fingers. "One, don't get killed. Two, don't get shanghaied by the same people who grabbed Alexis."

"Yeah. Them." The fraternity of the invisible baseball bat. "We should have demanded they show us Alexis, to make sure she's okay."

"That would have been counter to item two," said Carson. "Maguire will deal with proof of ... of that."

He was going to say proof of life. Evidence that Alexis was still alive. Obviously he watched movies, too.

"I'm worried about Mrs. Hardwicke," I said, which was not as random as it seemed. My subconscious was still gnawing on the smashed rear window and the timing of the shade vanis.h.i.+ng.

Carson glanced at me. "Lex's grandmother? Why?"

"There was something weird about the way she disappeared. Remnants can fade over time, or move on or dissipate. They don't ever just ... poof."

That got me a longer study before he suggested, "Maybe she bailed? Or something happened when you dropped the necklace?"

"Possibly," I conceded. "Except ... kidding aside, I'm pretty good at this. And I'm sure of what I felt. I just don't know what it means."

He thought that over while we walked on in silence. Or maybe he was thinking something entirely different. But he was unmistakably contemplative, and I gave myself props for reading that much.

Our goal seemed to be a brightly lit truck stop. I was thinking wishfully about greasy doughnuts and bad coffee when Carson asked, in a tone I couldn't read at all, "Why do you call them remnants and not ghosts?"

I chewed over how to explain. Psychics and mediums had certain common terminology, but all the ones I knew-in my family and those I'd met working with law enforcement-had their own methods of visualization. It wasn't exactly an objective experience.

"What most people call ghosts," I said, "aren't like you see in movies, a whole person and personality. Most of them are just impressions or traces. Like a snapshot of a particular moment, or a looped recording of an event. Sometimes it's nothing but an emotional resonance, like when you get a sad or creepy feeling somewhere."

"But you talked to Mrs. Hardwicke like a real person," he said, and I could sense that he wasn't just making casual conversation, and this wasn't just about Alexis's grandmother. "You wouldn't be worried about her if she was just some kind of ... psychic looped video."

"This is the bit that's hard to explain." We were almost to the truck stop, and I wanted to get this out while darkness softened cynicism and lowered barriers. "A remnant is just a piece-but it's a piece of a soul. And a soul can't be sliced and diced, so the whole is present in the part."

He stopped, looking bewildered, and his gaze dropped to Saint Gertrude's medal around my neck. "Is this a Catholic thing?"

"No." This was a thing I'd sensed in my gut long before I donned my first plaid skirt and oxford s.h.i.+rt. It annoyed me when people slapped a label on something that literally transcended time and s.p.a.ce.

"Think of it like DNA. If I cut myself and leave a blood trail, my whole DNA is in each drop, even though it's only one part of me."

"So where's the rest of the soul?" he asked. "Heaven, h.e.l.l ... somewhere in between?"

I get this question a lot, from the desperate, the fearful, the grieving.... I usually get a handle on the reasons people ask. I didn't have a handle on Carson. I didn't think my grasp was long enough to reach that deep.

"I don't know," I said, which is not something I admit very often. "I do know that most remnants, unless they have a reason to stay, are happy to go."

That wasn't entirely true. I thought about the ghost that had started my day-my yesterday, really. But something in the intensity of Carson's question made it impossible to tell him how complicated it could be.

"What do you mean, a reason to stay?"

I shrugged and started walking again. "Bits of spirit cling to things like fingerprints sometimes. But if we're talking a cognitive-type shade-well, there's unfinished business or some traumatic event. Some remnants get stuck in a rut and don't know the rest of them has moved on. And sometimes someone leaves a piece of themselves behind voluntarily. My uncle Burt, for instance. He's not leaving my aunt Hyacinth until she kicks off and can come with him."

"Very sweet," said Carson, trying for cynicism and not quite making it.

"Lots of ghosts like to pop in now and then to check in on their loved ones, or hang out in their favorite-"

"Haunts?"

I rolled my eyes and gave him that one.

His mood lightened to its usual ... whatever it was. I'd been wrong to call it stoicism. That implied a lack of emotion, whereas Carson's demeanor allowed humor and irritation and a few other things that had distracted me when I should have stayed on task. But I was on to him now.

"Carson," I said as we reached the edge of the neon island around the truck stop. He turned, wary at my preparatory tone. I pushed my wind-tangled hair behind my ears and squinted up at him. "Have you lost someone close to you?"

"Why do you ask?" His cheeks were bright red with cold. "Do I have someone checking up on me?"

I shook my head gently. I admit I can be abrasive with the living. But I know how to be kind with the grieving. And bone-deep instinct told me that Carson, despite the careful casualness of his tone, had lost someone important to him. "I don't sense anyone around you. But I can look more closely if you want."

There was a nanosecond when he thought about it. And then we'd moved on. "Don't bother." He hooked a hand under my arm and hurried us into the outpost of transportation and commerce. "Come on. I'm freezing and you're starving. I've been listening to your stomach growl for the past ten minutes."

Nice. I'd been expounding on the metaphysical mysteries of the universe and that was all he noticed?

Except I wasn't fooled. His demeanor was only a part of the whole. The Carson he let people see was just a remnant, with his soul hidden in an unknown beyond.

13.

AT THE TRUCK stop, three twenty-dollar bills convinced the driver of an eighteen-wheeler to give us a lift to the next town on his route. The guy looked us over-Carson in his b.u.t.ton-down and muddy trousers, two a.m. shadow on his jaw and a cut on his cheek, me swimming in his coat, my striped socks up over my knees, my Converse sneakers covered in skulls. We looked one shotgun away from a Kentucky wedding, but the trucker pocketed the money and didn't ask any questions.

I had plenty of questions-like where were we headed and why had Carson turned off his phone instead of calling for a getaway car that didn't smell like chewing tobacco and cardboard-pine-tree air freshener. I a.s.sumed it was part of the plan where we didn't get killed or shanghaied, except that I'd always been told that was exactly what to expect if you were foolish enough to get in a car with a stranger.

But true to his word, at the outskirts of the next town, the trucker dropped us in an acre of parking lot that conveniently connected a Denny's, a La Quinta Inn, and a twenty-four-hour Walmart. For those times when you're roaming the tundra and have a three a.m. need for a new set of snow tires.

"Come on," said Carson as the semi pulled away. The fog of his breath gave him an unearned halo under the streetlamps. He left it behind as he grabbed my hand and hustled for the restaurant and out of the cold.

I was rounding third on a Grand Slam breakfast and sliding home into the second helping of pancakes I'd requested instead of bacon. Carson eyed the rapidly disappearing stack with what I decided to interpret as awestruck wonder.

"You're obviously feeling better."

"My amazing powers require a lot of sustenance," I said between bites. "I figure I'd better top off the tank for whatever comes next. Which, by the way, we should probably discuss. You can start with why you turned off your phone instead of calling for a pickup, or getaway car, or agent extraction, or whatever term you people prefer."

" 'You people'?"

"Don't make me say 'mobsters' in the middle of a Denny's."

He glanced around the restaurant, which was virtually empty. The waitress had left a carafe of coffee when she'd dropped off our order, and we hadn't seen her since. "No one's listening."

"Good." I shoveled another bite of pancakes into my mouth. "Because I want to talk about magic."

"And I want you to tell me everything Alexis's grandmother said about the guys who showed up at the cemetery."

"There's not much." I stacked my plates and pushed them to the side. "She recognized at least one of them as someone Alexis knew. Maybe they met at a sorority party, which would explain why Alexis had on the pearls. Mrs. Hardwicke said the boys were in some kind of fraternity."

"Fraternity," echoed Carson, his tone hard to read. I was going with disbelief.

"She actually said 'brotherhood,' which sounds more ominous. I mean, if I was going to form a kidnapping and magic club, I'd go with that over 'frat house.' "

"Are you taking this seriously?" he asked, and I didn't have any trouble with that tone. I answered it as it deserved.

"Uh, yeah. Dude put an invisible fastball through the back window of a Ford Taurus. Also, Mrs. Hardwicke said she didn't like them. They made her nervous. I guess for a reason. Kidnapping Maguire's daughter? I mean, just writing the ransom note would take a pair of t.i.tanium cojones."

It had been hard to really get a look at the three guys in the cemetery, what with the dark and the running for our lives and stuff. But my fleeting impression had been that they were young and would pa.s.s for college pranksters if not for a tangible air of menace.

"I joke because they scare me," I said soberly. "I think they did something to Mrs. Hardwicke's shade. And the remnants of Bruiser-I mean Walters-were ... they weren't right. I thought maybe it was the bullet to the brain that scrambled his head, but now I'm not sure."

Carson took that in, expression neutral. "What else would it be?"

"I don't know yet. I'm still figuring it out."

He turned to look out the window. I watched his profile, not expecting to read much, and not disappointed. But my mind kept turning the puzzle pieces, and suddenly some of them clicked. Carson's smile in the photograph with Alexis, the fact he called her Lex and seemed comfortable in her room and around her stuff.

I'd wondered about it before, but now it mattered. It didn't make finding her any more important than a moment ago. It just made it more ... just more.