Bitter Spirits (2 page)

WINTER MAGNUSSON WASN'T SUPERSTITIOUS. IF ANYONE
would've asked if he believed in ghosts a week ago, he might've laughed. He wasn't laughing now. And after a lousy week marred by one bizarre event after another, he frankly wasn't sure what he believed anymore.

First, a crazy old woman had accosted him on the street and shouted some hocus-pocus curse at him. After that, a specter began appearing in his study every afternoon—something no one in his household could see but him. Then, during a business meeting tonight at a bar in Chinatown, someone spiked his drink with a foul-tasting green concoction. And before he could spit it out, a prostitute with a gaping hole in her head walked right through a wall from the brothel next door.

Like the specter in his study, no one but Winter saw the dead prostitute, but she'd damn sure followed him from Chinatown to North Beach. All she did was stare at him, but until the spirit medium walked in the room, he'd been questioning his sanity.

Now he was too unsettled to question much of anything.

After the medium's breath returned to normal, the first thing Winter noticed about her was her breasts, which were respectable. Much like looking into the sun during an eclipse, staring at her breasts would only lead to harm, so he quickly shifted his gaze upward. Slender fingers combed through blunt caramel brown bangs covering her forehead. Straight as a ruler, her sleek hair was styled into a short French bob that fell to her chin in the front and tapered to the nape of her neck. When she introduced herself and extended her hand to shake, it drew his attention to her skin, which was pale as milk and densely covered in bronze freckles. Not the kind you'd see smattered on the sun-kissed face of a child.

Freckles
everywhere
.

They began in a sliver of pale forehead above arched brows, gathered tightly across her nose and cheeks, lightened around her neck, then disappeared into the dipping neckline of her dress.

Winter's gaze raked over her breasts again—still respectable—down her dress to the jagged handkerchief hem below her knees. He followed the path of the spotted skin around her calves, half hidden by pale stockings, to the T-bar heels on her feet. Freckles on her
legs
—how about that? For some reason, he found this wildly exciting. Increasingly lurid thoughts ballooned inside his head after he wondered
exactly
what percentage of her skin was speckled. Did freckles cover her arms? The curving creases where her backside ended and her legs began? Her nipples?

He pushed away the enticing reverie, shook her hand, and successfully remembered his own name. “Winter Magnusson.”

Her enormous brown eyes were ringed in kohl like some exotic Nile princess. A strange heat washed over him as their gazes connected.

“Good grief, you're a big one, aren't you?”

He stilled, rooted to the floor, unable to think of a response to that.

If he was big—and at four inches over six feet, he definitely was—then Miss Palmer was
very
small. Average height for a woman, legs on the long side, but there was something petite and slender about her frame. Graceful. She was also unusually pretty—far more attractive than the sketch of her on the poster outside Gris-Gris's entrance.

“I suppose everyone jumps when you snap your fingers.” The way she said this, in a calm manner, almost smiling, made him think it wasn't a criticism as much as an honest assessment. Maybe even a compliment.

“They jump when I snap my fingers because without me, they have no income.”

“
Aha!
I knew I'd heard your name around here. You're Velma's bootlegger.”

She had such a disarming, casual way about her. Very straightforward, which was off-putting and exciting at the same time. Women didn't speak to him this way—hell, most
men
didn't speak to him this way.

“Not Velma's alone,” he said. “And on the record, I'm in the fish business.”

And he was: fish during the day, liquor at night. Both were considered some of the best in the city. Quality is an unusual thing to specialize in when your enterprise is illegal, but that was his niche. Winter's father owned boats before Volstead and fished up and down the coast, from San Francisco to Vancouver. His old routes and the contacts he'd collected made it easy to set up bootlegging from Canada. And like his father, Winter sold no bathtub gin—nothing cut, nothing fake—which allowed him to cater to the best restaurants, clubs, and hotels.

It also earned him the status of being one of the Big Three bootleggers in San Francisco.

Aida nodded as if it were of no consequence, then said, “They're different colors.”

“What's that?”

“Your eyes.”

Strangers never had the nerve to comment on his maimed eye or the hooked scar that extended from brow to cheekbone. Either they'd already heard the story behind it, or they were too intimidated to inquire. He wasn't used to explaining, and even considered ignoring the medium's questioning tone altogether, but her curious face swayed him.

Or maybe it was the freckled ankles . . . and what he'd like to do with those ankles, which started with licking and ended with them propped on his shoulders.

He cleared his throat. “One pupil is permanently dilated.”

“Oh?” She stepped closer and craned her neck to inspect his eyes. The sweet scent of violet wafted from her hair, disorienting him far more than the foul drink and the damned ghost already had. “I see,” she murmured. “They're both blue. The big pupil makes the left eye look darker. Is that genetic?”

“An injury,” he said. “I was in an auto accident a couple of years ago.”

God, how he detested the disfigurement. Every time he looked in the mirror, there they were, wounded eye and scar, reminding him of the one night he wanted more than anything to forget: when his family was brutally snatched away from him, crushed by the oncoming streetcar. Dumb luck that he survived, but some days he truly believed his continued existence was really a curse in disguise.

The medium made no comment about the scar; though, to her credit, she didn't appear to be revolted or frightened by its presence, nor did she politely pretend it wasn't there. “Can you see out of the wounded eye, or does the dilation affect your vision?”

He smelled violets again. Christ alive. She was intoxicating, standing so close. A pleasurable heat gathered in his groin. Any more pleasurable and he'd be forced to hide a rampant erection. He pulled his coat closed, just in case.

“My vision is perfect,” he answered gruffly. “Right now, for instance, I see a tiny freckled woman in front of me, asking a lot of questions.”

She laughed, and the sound did something funny to Winter's chest. Maybe he was getting ill. Having a heart attack at the age of thirty. He hoped to hell not. He'd rather be burned alive than tolerate another wretched doctor's so-called assistance. Between the parade of psychiatrists who treated his father's illness before the accident and the overpriced surgeons who sewed up his own eye after it, he'd seen enough doctors to last a lifetime, no matter how short.

When the medium finally turned away, he let out a long breath and watched the spellbinding sway of her ass with great interest as she strolled toward Velma's desk to set down her handbag and the cloche she'd been gripping in her hand. The view only got better when she shucked off her coat: freckles covered every inch of her slender arms.

He might pass out from excitement. His legs were definitely feeling unsteady. Wobbly, even. He felt high as a kite. Feverish. But when the room started to spin, he had the sinking feeling Miss Palmer's freckles weren't the cause.

 • • • 

After Aida set her things down, the bootlegger silently stared at her for several beats, an unnerving intimidation that chilled the sweat prickling the back of her neck. And because she was clearly depraved, a thrill shot through her.

God above, he was well built. Like an enormous bull. Just how tall was he, exactly? Her gaze stuttered over the solid bulk of his upper arms, which stretched the wool of his expensive coat, then ran down the rather distracting length of his meaty legs.

This was a body built for conquering. For smiting enemies. Ransacking villages.

Ravaging innocent women.

Maybe even some not-so-innocent women.

He wasn't pretty or conventionally good-looking. More savagely handsome, she decided. Rough-hewn and dark and intense. A barbarian stuffed inside a rich man's suit. Not her usual taste in men, but for some reason, she found his big body rousing.

“So tell me,” Aida said, attempting to get her mind refocused on the reason she was called here. “How long was that ghost following you, Mr. Magnusson?” His name sounded Scandinavian. He looked it. Something about the combination of those ridiculously high, flat cheekbones and the long face . . . his reserved, intense nature. No accent, so she assumed he wasn't fresh off the boat.

“A couple of hours.”

“Any idea why?”

He made an affirmative noise. His mouth didn't seem to know how to smile—it just stretched into a taut line as he stared at her with those strange, otherworldly eyes. Eyes that fluttered shut momentarily. When they reopened, he looked dazed.

“Are you all right?” she asked.

“I . . .”

He never finished. One second he appeared cognizant; the next, he was swaying on his feet. Before she had time to react, he was leaning toward her like a felled giant sequoia. Instinct opened her arms—as if she could catch someone his size. But she did . . . rather, he crashed into her, a dead weight that overtook hers.

“H-help!” she cried out as his big body took hers down in a series of awkward, slow motions that had her bending backward, dropping to one knee—“Oh, God . . . dammit, Mr. Magnusson . . .”—then finally crumbling beneath him.

Her mind made great, panicked leaps between the mundane—
He smells pleasantly of soap and witch hazel
—and the practical:
How could another human being weigh so much? Is he filled with rocks?

A thunder of footfalls shook the floorboards, and before she could fully wonder if it was possible to experience death by crushing, the impossibly titanic weight of Giant was lifted from her. Sweet relief! While two club workers lifted Mr. Magnusson, Aida's boss helped her to her feet.

“You hurt?” Velma Toussaint's briar rose dress had a softly sweeping neck that revealed sharp collarbones and pale nutmeg skin of indeterminable ancestry. Her shiny brown hair was sculpted into a short Eton crop, with slicked-back finger waves molded close to the head.

“Fine . . . fine,” Aida replied between breaths.

Velma was a former dancer in her mid-thirties who moved to San Francisco from Louisiana a few years back and began running the club after her wayward cheat of a husband—the original owner of Gris-Gris—died of an aneurism. Rumor had it that his untimely death came after Velma used a pair of scissors to cut his photo in half during some midnight ritual. Aida didn't know if this was true, but if it
was
, no doubt the man deserved what he got.

“The poison's settling in,” Velma said.

“You poisoned him?”

Velma made an impatient face. “He
came here
poisoned. Hexed. Someone sneaked poison in his drink and left a written spell on the table. Appears to be some sort of Chinese magic that acts like a supernatural magnet. Draws ghosts.”

“Like the one that was in here.”

“So you got rid of it? Thank you,” Velma said. “I've got a friend in Louisiana who might know an antidote. Called the operator to set up a long-distance call a quarter hour ago. Should be coming through the line any minute now, but he's getting worse.”

Everyone gathered around the downed bootlegger. With disheveled hair falling across his forehead, Mr. Magnusson lay on the floor with his eyes shut, groaning. Looking down at him, Aida thought he really did look like a giant, and that she wouldn't be surprised to see an army of tiny men scurry over him to tie him down with ropes.

Hurried footfalls drew Aida's attention to the doorway as a slender Chinese boy burst into the room. Dressed in a well-tailored cedar green suit and a newsboy cap, he couldn't have been a day over twenty, twenty-one. His face was pleasant, his body sinewy and strung tighter than a guitar, bouncing with energy.

“Aida, meet Bo Yeung,” Velma said. “Bo, this is Miss Palmer.”

Bo turned a friendly face her way and touched the brim of his cap in greeting, then tilted his head as if he'd just worked out a crossword puzzle answer. “Oh, the spirit medium,” he said, looking her up and down with a quirky smile. “I'm Mr. Magnusson's assistant.”

“A pleasure.”

“Bo,” Winter mumbled from the floor, attempting to prop himself up on one elbow and failing. “Did you get a chance to have the symbols on the paper deciphered?”