Something Strange and Deadly (Something Strange and Deadly #1)(51)

I gulped. The Spirit-Hunters needed dy***ite? Why? I had to admit I’d be wary to hand over explosives to just anyone. Except the Spirit-Hunters weren’t just anyone.

Jie shifted her head side to side, and her neck popped loudly. “We can’t fight the entire cemetery, you know.”

“I know,” Joseph answered. “But if the city will not let us have dy***ite, then there is nothing we can do.”

She spoke her next words casually. “We can take it, Joseph. We just break into the factory and take what we need. It’d be fair enough to—”

“No,” Joseph and Daniel snapped in unison.

Daniel dropped his hands from the window and inched around to face Jie. “No stealing. Especially not that.”

I spoke up, my voice breaking. “I-I know what the Dead want.”

Three heads spun toward me.

“It’s one of the grimoires—Le Dragon Noir—and it’s on display here. I saw it listed in the Exhibition catalogue.”

Joseph sagged onto a stool. He rubbed his head and then he slung out another stool. “Sit. Tell me everything from the beginning. This... this is startling.”

So I did as he asked. I began with Elijah’s most recent letter and ended with the New York listings in the Exhibition catalogue.

Joseph stared at me, his whole body stiff and his lips pressed thin. “Le Dragon Noir,” he murmured. “This is very bad.” He jumped up, massaging his forehead.

“What is it?” Jie asked.

“I asked the Exhibition board about this title.” Joseph dropped his hands, and his eyes shone with anger and fear—something I’d never seen in him. He spoke faster, his voice rising. “When we first arrived here, I’d mentioned this title and many others. I thought perhaps the museums would display their valuable pieces. The board insisted there was nothing. Promised me. They must not realize what they have—not understand what someone with the proper training could do with a handful of these pages.”

He hung his head and stared at the floor. His hands trembled as he clenched and unfolded his fingers. When his head lifted, he met three sets of wide eyes. “The Black Dragon has spells that are especially seductive to a dark magician—to a necromancer. It teaches how to bring a soul from the dead to animate a body. It is like... well, imagine if the spirit, the one your mother let in, were able to take over a human form. Or if every corpse in the cemetery were given a new soul.”

I shuddered. “So the spirit must want the grimoire too. That’s why it was at the library.”

“Wi. That must be so—which is an even greater cause for concern.”

I tipped my head to Daniel. “And now you need dy***ite. Why?”

“It’s an invention.” He reached under the worktable and slung out a metal canister the width and length of my forearm. It was fixed at an angle to a flattened piece of tin, giving it the look of a toy cannon. A copper wire coiled around the canister and glowed bright red in the morning light.

“It’s a special explosive.” Daniel held up a metal rod the size of my fist and dropped it in the tube. It clunked at the end. “When this magnet shoots through this cylinder, it creates a pulse of electromagnetic energy. A big wave.” He spread his arms wide. “I call it a pulse bomb.”

Joseph cleared his throat. “It would affect the Dead as I do, Miss Fitt. The explosion of electromagnetic energy would destroy spiritual energy. It would stop many corpses at once”

Daniel grunted and set the device on the table. “The problem is, the magnet has to be propelled somehow—like a bullet.”

“Or a cannonball?” I asked.

“Yep. But the magnet has to go almighty fast to make the electromagnetic pulse, and it won’t move without an explosion—a big explosion.”

“Dynamite,” I murmured.

“Yeah.” He pushed the miniature cannon toward me, and I ran a gloved finger down the copper wire. Clacking jaws and rabid hunger filled my mind. If there were more of those corpses or, heaven forbid, an entire cemetery of them, then no one in Philadelphia stood a chance.

“And this is our only hope?” I held up the canister. “An invention that can’t be finished?”

“It can be finished,” Jie said. She marched between Joseph and me. “We’re wasting time talking about it. If you won’t break into the factory, then I’ll do it myself.

“When the Dead come, we won’t be able to stop them. They will cover this city, and the Hungry will kill and kill and kill. That’s much worse than jail time, yeah? I thought it was our job to stop the Dead. Isn’t that what makes us the Spirit-Hunters?”

Joseph closed his eyes. “Jie, I do not think you see—”

“No, you don’t think! You’re not thinking at all, yeah? You just found out the Exhibition board has lied to you and put a grimoire on display. They don’t care about protecting the people here, but that is what we care about, Joseph. That’s our job. What matters more? Stealing something we deserve anyway or letting the entire city be slaughtered by the Dead?”

Joseph’s brow wrinkled. He stared at the floor, and his gaze turned hazy.

“I think Jie’s right,” I said. “You don’t owe the city’s officials anything—not after they’ve treated you so rotten.” I waved my hand around me. “This tiny lab, their unwillingness to help because of some election, and now this problem with your invention. I don’t understand why they even hired you to begin with.”