Spirit and Dust - By Rosemary Clement-Moore Page 0,1

of the car.

Agent Taylor and I had been called to a scene this fresh just that past summer, out in the desert, west of Sonora. One kid killed, another missing, the state troopers determined to find any clue, and fast. As soon as I’d gotten my feet on the ground, I’d known the little girl was dead, but it had taken me all afternoon and half of a heatstroke to find her body.

That had been a bad one.

“Hey, Daisy.” Agent Taylor’s voice yanked me out of memory. “What do you hear?”

He wasn’t really asking what the dead were saying. Nothing in his tone—only our code question—gave any hint that he could tell I’d taken a mental step offside. He’d suggested the code when he’d figured out I wouldn’t ask for help in front of other officers—especially Agent Gerard.

What do you hear? Was I that transparent, or was he thinking of the Texas desert, too?

“Nothing but the rain,” I said, the proper response for “Don’t worry, I still have both hands on the wheel.” I mean, what was a little ghost brains on the sidewalk?

Agent Gerard, hands on his hips, showing the butt of his sidearm in his shoulder holster, said, “Can we get this dog and pony show on the road before it ends up on the effing Tweet-book?”

He was right, which annoyed me. I had questions, but the whole reason I was there was to get answers the way only I could.

Ignoring the audience of students and cops, I blew into my icy hands, then crouched to lay my palm on the pavement where Bruiser had fallen. Over time, the imprint of his death would fade, but now it was a clear, sharp buzz of connection that raced up my arm like a hit to the funny bone.

Panic and prayer. Not much. Not long. Just Oh God. A millisecond of petition but no contrition. And then nothing.

“He didn’t see it coming,” I said, the image vivid on my closed eyelids. “I don’t get any kind of anxiety or fear. It seems like he was just minding his own business—whatever that was—when blammo. Out of nowhere.”

What was kind of weird was that for such a clear death imprint, there was barely a trace of Bruiser’s actual spirit, something I would expect only from a much older site.

“Anything else?” asked Chief Logan.

The question confirmed my hunch that there was more going on than just a dead thug on a college campus, but I forced myself to focus and search deeper and wider for any other recent psychic events strong enough to stick.

“No one else was killed. At least, not here.” I stood and shook imaginary cobwebs off my hand. I wished I could shake off my dread as easily, but the threads of suspicion had knit together too tightly. “There’s someone missing, isn’t there? A girl from this dorm?”

“We’ll ask the questions,” snapped Agent Gerard, making Taylor visibly grind his teeth. Before they could argue, Chief Logan overrode them both.

“The victim,” he said, nodding to the sidewalk, “was the driver for a girl named Alexis Maguire. Yes, she is a student here, and yes, she is missing.”

“Okay,” I said, but I was trying to convince myself. It’s okay. She’s not definitely dead. It’s not like the little girl in Texas.

Taylor had taken a small step closer, as if worried I was going to faint, which I was absolutely not going to do. I was Daisy “Talks to the Dead” Goodnight, and freaking out wouldn’t help anyone.

“Okay,” I said again, with more conviction. “Let’s go hablo dead guy.”

2

I’VE BEEN READING spirit remnants since I was a kid. “I see dead people.” The whole shebang.

Because I was raised by a family of witches and psychics, I never thought I was crazy, though I did have some unpleasant moments on school field trips to battlegrounds of the Texas Revolution. I don’t think they’ll ever let me back into the Alamo.

My gift does tend to isolate me from the living. One, I suppose I seem a little weird—I mean, aside from my wardrobe choices. And two … Well, everyone wants to know if there’s something left of us when we die, but most people are a little afraid of the answer.

I’d stepped off the pavement and was following the psychic smears on the grass—the trail of Bruiser’s dragged body. I moved with purpose, Taylor scrambling to catch up, Gerard and Logan trailing behind as we rounded the building to the stretch leading to the small