Spirit and Dust by Rosemary Clement-Moore Read Free Book Online Page B

to meet his gaze. “Repeat after me, Daisy Goodnight,” he said, letting me glimpse beneath his veneer of civility. “Because the lives of the people you love best are at stake.”
    My eyes stung, but crying would help no one, so I shoved the tears down, hard. Carson’s fingers tightened on my shoulders, and he was tense with some inner struggle of his own.
    “Now,” said Maguire, “I, Daisy Goodnight, will follow the trail of Alexis Meredith Maguire and find her without delay.”
    “I promise,” I said, feeling the geas start to take hold. The vow had to be spoken only once, then agreed to. “I promise. I promise.”
    With the third oath, the slipknot of the spell drew tight. It was a yoke on my psyche and a hot pavement under my feet, and it would press at me until I did what I had sworn.
    The thing that happened next, I couldn’t explain. A buzzing, like the hum of feedback from a loudspeaker, filled my skull, pushing out everything else. It crackled like static and lit my nerves—and then Lauren slipped the cord from our hands and the psychic sound vanished, leaving only clear, crisp fury.
    “If you touch
any
of my family …” I spat the words at Maguire, still clasping his hand, and I was just
full
of intent. “If you even go near them, I swear I will find a way to curse you all the way to the Veil and push you through. I promise this. I pro—”
    Carson clapped a hand over my mouth before I could complete the vow.
Now
I struggled, and he wrapped an arm around my waist, pulling me up against him with my elbows tucked against me and my legs unable to do anything but flail uselessly.
    Maguire waved the three of us toward the door. “Get on with it. Tell me when you know something.”
    “Yes, sir,” said Carson, then grunted as my foot found his shin. He adjusted his grip, tucked me under his arm, and marched to the office door.

7
    “A SSHOLE ,” I GROWLED as soon as we were out of the office. Lauren trailed after us, making choked sounds that I realized were laughter.
    “I told you not to antagonize him,” said Carson, setting me onto my feet and slamming the door behind us.
    “I wasn’t talking about
him
,” I snapped, and made sure my clothes were covering all the parts of me they were supposed to. My emotions needed some sorting, too. As much as I hated being manhandled, Carson had kept me from doing something really stupid.
    Maguire scared the crap out of me. When I blinked, I couldSee the glow of his remnant debt stamped on the dark of my eyelids. A man with a conscience would buckle under that weight. Maguire had none, and that gave a concrete reality to his threats.
    So what did I do? Threaten him back. It was insanely stupid, but it was the only defense I had left.
    Laughter made me jump. The guard from the door and the two gorillas who’d escorted Carson and me were clustered around a smartphone, paying no attention to us at all.
    “Play it again!” said the guard, and the goon with the phone tapped the screen. “Look at her go! Like a red-haired gazelle, that one.” I couldn’t see the video, but I could guess they were watching the farce of my escape attempt. Their cackles when I hit Carson and the groans of sympathy when I kneed him were a giveaway.
    “Something funny, Murphy?” asked Carson. A rhetorical question, because
clearly
, it was hilarious.
    The goon squad sobered, but Murphy, the guard from the door, didn’t bother to hide his grin, even when he said, “No, sir.” Then he gestured to a cloth-covered tray on a console table tucked against the wall. “Bertram brought this up for your guest.”
    Lauren went over and lifted the napkin to reveal a toasted sandwich, an avalanche of potato chips, and a pickle spear. “Do gazelles eat turkey sandwiches?”
    Not voluntarily, but I was running on four Cokes and a long-gone snack pack of pretzels from the plane. I snatched up the sandwich before she had a chance to do anything witchy to it.
“You,”
I said with as much