Grave Phantoms (8 page)

Bo holstered his Colt and squatted by Astrid's collapsed body. His shoulder ached where he'd slammed it against the tiled wall, but he ignored its protest and flipped her faceup.

It wasn't like the first time on the yacht when she was unconscious. Her eyelids were fluttering, the whites of her eyes showing. He shouted her name, and ice blue irises rolled back into view and stared up him.

His head dropped in relief.

“Bo,” she said weakly before turning her face to survey her surroundings. “The water is gone? My clothes are dry?”

“Whoa, now. Don't try to sit up.”

“Did you see the water? Did you see . . . the body in the sack?”

“What?” His fingertips skimmed a red spot on her forehead that was already swelling. She flinched and muttered a weak complaint.

“You hit your head,” he told her.

She made a frustrated noise and pushed herself up to sit, despite his protests. “You didn't see it,” she said miserably.

Another vision.

The door to the restroom burst open, and noise from the club blared. One of Gris-Gris's enforcers, Joe, lunged through the doorway. “Bo? What's going on?”

“The man who ran out of here . . .” Bo said. “Someone stop him. He attacked Miss Magnusson.”

Joe didn't question him or ask for more information. He just shouted over the clamor and disappeared into the crowd. Bo knew everyone who worked at Gris-Gris, from the janitors to the house band's drummer, and any one of them would pitch in to help.

“What is happening to me?” Astrid whispered. Long lashes, thick with mascara, blinked up at him, a pleading anxiety behind her eyes.

He couldn't bear it any longer. Screw decorum. He gathered her in his arms and pulled her against his chest. She didn't resist. Slender arms circled his back as she lay her head on his aching shoulder and buried her face in the collar of his jacket.

She felt impossibly good, soft and warm, clinging to him. His heart was an overexcited child that raced madly with the thrill of possession, no matter how fleeting.

He heard the door open. Knew Astrid heard it, too. Yet both of them were hesitant to release each other.

“Bo Yeung,” a commanding feminine voice called out. “I leave Gris-Gris for two hours and come back to pandemonium. Should've known you'd be involved.”

He glanced up to see the owner of the club standing in the doorway, arms crossed over her breasts. Her eyes fell on Astrid and all her irritation turned to worry.

“Lord,” she swore. “What kind of trouble have you been into?”

—

Bo didn't believe the attacker could just disappear into the night after running through a club half filled with people, but he had. According to Astrid, “Max” was the only name he'd given her. It didn't matter. Bo had tracked down
people with less information than that, and for far more trivial reasons. He'd find him. No one hurt Astrid and got away with it.

No one.

Following Velma's efficient strides, Bo ushered Astrid through a door behind the bar and into a short hallway. To their right, the club's bustling kitchen gleamed bright behind a windowed swinging door, but they were headed left. A tall painted bookcase was empty but for a small stack of old menus and a metal dustpan. Bo released a hidden latch on the side and swung the bookcase away from the wall to reveal a doorway and a low-ceilinged room. He turned on the lights. Rows of shelves lined with Magnusson-imported liquor bottles led to an open area with a desk, where the club's bar manager did the accounting.

Bo had spent a lot of time back here over the years, unloading crates and taking orders. He turned the desk chair around and urged Astrid to sit while Velma squinted down at her with a troubled look on her face.

“Wanna tell me what this is all about?” she asked, glancing from Astrid to Bo.

Velma Toussaint was a former dancer in her mid-thirties who moved to San Francisco from Louisiana after inheriting the club from her former—and now deceased—husband. She was elegant and beautiful, with pale nutmeg skin of indeterminable ancestry and shiny brown hair sculpted into a short Eton crop. And she not only single-handedly ran one of the most successful clubs in the city, but was also a
hoodoo
—or a root doctor, as she liked to call herself. Her talent was magical spellwork, mostly herbal in nature. She was well versed in curses, hexes, jinxing, and unjinxing.

In other words, you did
not
want her for an enemy.

Bo leaned against the edge of the desk and let Astrid tell the story about the yacht, only interrupting when she chattered too far off into tangential territory, which Astrid often did, no matter the subject. He secretly enjoyed listening to her talk. She had opinions about everything and
rarely kept them to herself, even when she was wrong, and he liked that. But Velma didn't share his amusement or patience.

“So this Max fellow knew who you were?” Bo said when Astrid finally got around to explaining what had just transpired in the club's restroom. “But why do you think he had anything to do with the people on the yacht? He wasn't one of the survivors, was he?”

“I'm not sure.”

Hard to tell in the rain, with all that blue makeup smeared on their faces. Now Bo wished he'd taken a second look at them at the hospital. “He was probably just a reporter.”

“That's what I thought at first,” she admitted. “But I started feeling funny when his ring hit my wrist.” She quickly rubbed her hand over the spot, as if she could erase it. “The symbol on the ring could have been the symbol on the idol. And, Bo, the inlay was turquoise.”

Shit.

“Just where is this so-called idol?” Velma asked.

Bo retrieved it from his coat pocket and unfolded the handkerchief wrapping. “It doesn't seem to have any sort of charge anymore. I've touched it several times without incident.”

“No magical energy,” Velma confirmed as she peered at it for a moment, and then picked it up. “Heavy,” she noted, weighing it in her hand. “Solid turquoise, you think? If it's old, could be worth a pretty penny.”

“No doubt,” Bo agreed.

“That's it! That's the symbol that was on the ring,” Astrid said, pointing to the gold disk on the idol's belly.

“Are you sure?” he asked.

She stared at the bright blue statue, biting her bottom lip. Doubt crept in. “I think. It was dark in the club, and everything happened so fast in the restroom . . . Do you know what the symbol means, Velma? Is it bad?”

The conjure woman gestured for Astrid to move out of the way so that she could switch on a lamp. The three of them hunched over the desk as Velma examined the gold disk under
the light. “Sorry. This is no symbol I've ever seen,” she finally admitted and turned the idol around to study the back. “What's this?”

“I think that says ‘NANCE,' but it's hard to read,” Bo said. “I wasn't sure if it was some kind of magical word or part of a larger spell. Maybe the other idols Astrid saw in her vision had other words on them, too.”

“I wasn't paying attention,” Astrid confessed.

“Strange,” Velma murmured. “The figure's overall design looks primitive. Ancient. Asian or South American, perhaps. But these are clearly English letters. It seems like a mishmash of styles. I don't know what to make of it.”

Astrid groaned. “So you don't know what kind of magic it would be used for? What about the ritual I described? Have you heard of anything like that?”

Velma absently stroked her collarbone with her thumb. “I can't say that I have, but I don't think you're wrong about the iron boots and the burlap sacks. It sounds like those people were drowned as some kind of sacrificial offering.”

“But why?” Astrid asked.

“That, I don't know. And I don't understand why they'd be missing for a year at sea, either.” Velma put her hand on Astrid's forehead and held it there, as if testing for fever. When she withdrew it, she tilted Astrid's chin up and studied her face. “However, I think I know where the magical charge in that idol went.”

“Where?” Astrid said.

“Inside you. Don't be alarmed, dear, but you have two auras.”

Astrid tucked her chin and peered down at herself. “What the hell does that mean?”

“Everything living gives off an emanation,” Velma explained, putting her hand on Astrid's shoulder to calm her down. “An aura is someone's personal energy. And your aura has always been red, as long as I've known you. Now you've got a second layer . . . almost like it's a shadow. Something that doesn't belong.”

Bo didn't like the sound of that.

Neither did Astrid, apparently. She shook herself like a dog, as if she could rid herself of it. “Am I cursed like Winter?”

“Winter was hexed with magical poison,” Velma said. “You aren't hexed. This sounds accidental to me. And it doesn't look bad or evil. It just looks different, is all.”

“Can you get rid of it?” Bo asked. “One of the unhexing baths you gave Winter?”

The conjurer's brow furrowed. “Like I said, Astrid's not hexed. I can give her some herbs to drink for purification, and I can pray over her. But unless we know what kind of ritual they did on that boat—and, more specifically, what this symbol on the idol means—I can't offer counter magic. And maybe she doesn't need it. Like anything else, magic fades over time. Maybe this will, too. Might be a bigger risk to stick your nose into these people's business. If you stumbled upon whatever it was they were doing, you might want to stumble your way on out of it. Cut your losses. Return the idol to the survivors and wash your hands of it.”

Bo threw a hand up in the air. “And what? Just go about our merry way and hope that Astrid hasn't taken on permanent spiritual damage?”

“Don't get snitty with me, Bo Yeung,” Velma warned.

“You're telling me there's a group of people in town practicing some sort of big, dark ritual and despite all the mediums, clairvoyants, and oddball spiritual healers you book at this club, no one's heard a thing about it?”

She settled a hand on her hip. “I'll see if any of my contacts around town have heard rumors about these idols. But you play with fire, you're liable to get burned. Don't say I didn't warn you.”

Bo snorted. “If I listened to all your warnings, I'd never leave the damn house.”

“Ungrateful miscreant.”

“Mean old witch.”

“Old?” Velma huffed.

He squinted at her. “Not too old to appreciate an extra case of ten-year-old single-malt Scotch, on the house?”

Velma smiled slowly. “
That's
more like it.”

“Now, about those herbs you mentioned . . .” Astrid said.

Velma smoothed a hand over Astrid's back. “Come on upstairs and I'll mix you something up.”

Snappy footfalls made them all swing around. Stopping near a shelf of liquor was Sylvia, escorted by the club's master of ceremonies, Hezekiah.

“There you are, Ah-Sing,” she said sweetly, using a familiar form of Bo's given name—an intimacy that wouldn't be lost on Astrid. “I was beginning to think you had abandoned me in the middle of our date. Aren't you going to introduce me?”

Bo squeezed his eyes shut for a moment. Long enough for his “date” to take matters into her own hands.

“I'm Sylvia Fong,” she said brightly.

Bo winced.

Blond eyebrows shot up sharply. “Sylvia?” Astrid said in disbelief.
“Sylvia?”

The already-stifling air in the small room seemed to congeal like gelatin and wobble with tension. Well, he'd wanted to make Astrid jealous, hadn't he?

Wish granted.

Astrid was the very picture of restraint and good manners. She'd ignored the beautiful Miss Fong while Velma mixed up a batch of herbs. She'd smiled pleasantly while Bo helped both women into their coats and led them outside Gris-Gris just before midnight. He informed Astrid that he'd not driven “Sylvia” (the Buick) tonight but had instead ironically brought Sylvia (the Glamorous Woman) here by taxi—which meant now they'd all three be sharing a cab home, what marvelous fun! Astrid had refrained from demanding which of the two women would be dropped off first. Because
that
would sound jealous and petty, and Astrid was neither.

She merely wanted to club him to death with her umbrella.

Bo sat in front with the taxi driver, leaving her to cozy up to Miss Fong in the back. He rattled off an address that sounded an awful lot like his Chinatown apartment building. Was he taking Sylvia there with him? Surely not. And if so, he would die where he stood when Astrid got her hands on him. But she didn't say this, of course. She
only sat stiffly, pretending to stare out the window through the rain.

“I like your shoes,” she told Sylvia in a calm voice after they'd ridden in silence for a time.

Sylvia turned one shapely ankle and peered down at her pump. “Thank you,” she said politely, and then, “Your gown is beautiful.”

“Thank you. I think I lost a few beads on the dance floor,” Astrid responded lightly, toying with the fringe of her beaded hem.

They continued this too-polite small talk on a too-long ride, which was, in reality, only eight blocks. The conversation went like this: How long have you known Bo? Oh, you live in the same building, do you? Switchboard operator, eh? No, I'm not really sure what field I want to study at college. Yes, Los Angeles is certainly sunny this time of year.

And so forth.

Once they got to Chinatown, Bo escorted Sylvia beneath their shared apartment building's entrance, speaking to her briefly while Astrid waited in the idling taxi. Astrid was in turns relieved (Bo was coming back to Pacific Heights, not staying here) and filled with hurt (he was hugging Sylvia good-bye?), but she waited silently. Remained silent, in fact, when Bo got back in the front seat of the taxi.

Remained silent the rest of the way home.

Bo paid the driver. They entered the Queen Anne together. It was quiet inside, mostly dark. He locked the door behind them as she removed her coat and hat.

“Twice a day?” he asked in a low voice—his first words to her since the club.

She glanced down at the brown paper bag that Velma had given her. So
that's
what he wanted to talk about? All right.

“Twice a day,” she repeated.

He began shrugging out of his coat. She didn't wait for him, just went straight to the kitchen and flipped on two
pendant lights, which hung over a long butcher-block prep table sitting in the middle of the room. She set down Velma's bag of herbs.

“Need help?” his low voice said over her shoulder. She hadn't even heard him following.

“Think I can manage to boil water on my own.”

She strode across the black-and-white checkered floor and looked at the pale green enameled oven. Where was the kettle? Didn't people normally leave those out? She heard a shifting noise and saw it sliding in her direction across a small counter, prodded by Bo's hand.

“Thank you,” she said, not looking at his face, and added water to the kettle. Now. The stove. She'd seen this done a hundred times. How hard could it be? The matches were in a ceramic box on the counter. She lit one and stared at the range's cast-iron coiled burner. Right. This didn't look like the stove Lena had taught her to how to light. The pilot light should be . . .

Bo leaned near and blew out the match. “Move.”

“I can—”

He turned the handle and a coil magically glowed orange. “The old range needed to be replaced, and Winter insisted the new one be electric,” he said, putting the kettle atop a burner. “Lena hates it, for the record. The teacups are in the butler's pantry with the rest of the china.”

“I know that,” she said, trying to sound insulted and not embarrassed. But when she stood in the wide hallway between the kitchen and dining room, staring too long at the drawers and cabinets that lined the walls, Bo's silhouette blocked the light from the kitchen.

“Middle cabinet.”

Right. She turned around and opened it. Bowls. Gravy boat . . .

Warmth covered her back. Bo reached over her shoulder to a higher shelf. “Here,” he said. One word, spoken low and deep, just above her ear, and for a moment she forgot all about being angry with him.

His bright scent surrounded her. His suit jacket brushed
the back of her gown, and beneath it a thousand chills rippled over her skin. She was taken aback by the force of it and nearly leaned . . .

If she would just—

If he would only—

The sound of china clinking against the marble counter pulled her back from the deep. He'd set the cup down and was now reaching for a saucer. She spun in place to face him.

He flinched and pulled back an inch or two. Far enough to put some space between them. His arm hovered in the air and then fell by his side as he stared down at her.

“Why were you at Gris-Gris tonight?” she asked in a low voice.

“I was having a drink with a friend.”

“Sylvia Fong is too beautiful to be a friend.”

“And Leroy Garvey is too debonair to be a dance partner. Where were all these chums of yours that you were supposed to be meeting?”

“Were you spying on me? You were! This is Luke all over again—”

“Luke,” he said, spitting it out like it was rotten meat. “Tell me the truth, Astrid. What happened in that hotel? Did he touch you?”

Her mouth fell open. A trembling rage ran up her arms, and before she could stop herself, she swung her hand and slapped him, straight across the cheek.

He reeled backward. The dramatic planes of his handsome face made severe angles. Oh, he was
shocked
.

So was she. Her hand stung. She regretted it immediately and felt like crying. God! Not now.
You will not cry, Astrid Cristiana Magnusson.
You will. Not. Cry.

“I am
not
your little sister,” she said through gritted teeth. “Not your
mui-mui
. And if you'd realized that a few months ago—”

She stopped, unsure of what she'd been ready to say. That what? It could have been Bo instead of Luke in that hotel room?

“A few months ago?” Bo said, his words heated with
rising anger. “Astrid, I realized that
years
ago. I realized it before you did. And don't tell me I couldn't possibly know your mind, because I remember the exact day and time and place. I remember how the redwoods smelled, and how the setting sun turned your hair to platinum, and how you looked at me.”

He bent his head low, leaning until the tip of his nose was a hairsbreadth from hers, and said quietly, “
I remember all of it.
”

They'd never spoken of it, but she knew the day he meant. Unshed tears prickled the backs of her eyelids. But she did not cry. Did not move. She just dove into the dark pools of his intense eyes and remembered along with him.

She'd been sixteen, he eighteen. She'd harbored something like a crush on Bo long before that afternoon—something that made her giddy at times, but it was sweeter and lighter, tempered with innocence and bound up loosely with the ties of their enduring friendship. But after that day, no longer.

It was the one-year anniversary of her parents' deaths. She went to visit their graves and hadn't expected it to affect her quite as much as it did. Bo had patiently talked her through tears, and to cheer her up, he offered to take her out with him on one of the rumrunners late that afternoon. He was doing some spying on a man who operated a large whiskey still near the Magnussons' Marin County docks, across the Bay from the city. A stretch of coastal redwood forests sat between their property and the still, and Winter had been worried one of his truck drivers was sharing client lists with the still owner.

Astrid was usually kept in the dark about matters like these. When her parents were still alive, the word “bootlegging” was never spoken in the house. After they passed, Winter told Astrid enough to keep her safe, and Bo told her a little more—enough to pique her curiosity. But that afternoon was the first time Bo actually let her
see
things.

It was a spur-of-the-moment, grand adventure. She dressed in pants and sensible shoes, and they went hiking
through the majestic old redwoods together, inhaling the clean perfume of the forest. It was a warm, sunny day, and they found a place on a hill to watch the man and his whiskey still. They ate cheese sandwiches and drank Coca-Cola. They sat together, leg against leg, and told stories. About her family. About his. The sun sank into the Pacific behind them, and sometime before dusk, she looked up at Bo's handsome face and something peculiar happened inside her chest.

It was as though, until that moment, her heart had been settled all wrong inside her ribs. And then everything shifted around—organs and muscles and bones and sinews, they all conspired together to make room.

And she hadn't been the same since.

“It doesn't matter,” she said angrily, shaking away the old memory. “I'm independent now. I have college and Los Angeles, whether I like it or not.”

“You could've gone to school here.”

She shook her head. “I needed to know I could do it on my own, without you and Winter and everyone else watching over me and treating me like a china doll. If Mamma were alive, she'd tell me to be my own woman. ‘Be bold,' she always told me.”

“You're the most daring woman I know,” Bo said.

“How come I don't feel that way?” Her voice cracked, and she swallowed hard to get the rest of the words out. “I messed up everything at school, Bo. Everything! You don't even know the half of it. And I . . . God! I was supposed to get over you. All my friends said I'd find someone new—that college would change my feelings.”

After a long pause, he asked, “Did it?”

She didn't respond. Couldn't. The answer stuck in her throat.

“I told myself we'd grow apart, too,” Bo said softly. “I wanted to believe we could. Because I can't keep hoping and wanting. It is killing me, Astrid. I've been a goddamn wreck since you've left, and now that you're back . . .”

They stood in the transitional space of the pantry, so
close. The dark dining room to one side, the bright kitchen on the other. And them in the middle, in the gray area between. Not dark nor light, not friends nor lovers, this
betweenness
wasn't stable. Crossroads never were. The two of them must choose to go forward or remain as they'd always been. And Astrid was all at once filled with a soaring hope, and yet utterly, numbingly terrified.

“I don't know what to do,” she whispered, gripping the marble counter behind her as her fingers trembled. “What do we do?”

His whispered answer came seconds later along with the gentle swipe of his thumb across her cheek, where a stubborn tear was falling. “Let's—”

A clang made her jump. Bo pulled away. They both peered into the glaring light of the kitchen, where Greta stood in her nightdress, silver hair falling down her back. She was moving the noisy teakettle off the burner.

Astrid had never even heard it whistling.

—

Bo reluctantly left Astrid and Greta alone in the kitchen. Now that the house's resident nosey parker was up and about, he'd get no chance to finish his conversation with Astrid. And maybe that was just as well, because he'd almost gone too far. Been too greedy. Too weak. His pulse pounded like he'd been running up Lombard Street with a sack of bricks, and his head was spinning with possibilities. He prowled through the dark house with her words repeating in an endless loop.

What do we do?

He didn't know. At least, not what they should do. He certainly knew what he
wanted
to do, and that was what had crouched on his tongue, ready to springboard, when Greta had interrupted.

But was it the right thing? Or did he even care what was right anymore?

He just wasn't sure.

One thing he
did
know was that Astrid wasn't safe, and
that was something he could fix. Would fix. He jogged downstairs, but instead of turning right to head to his room, he took a left and stole into the community room. A black candlestick telephone stood on a table in the corner. He picked up the earpiece and waited for the operator to answer. Asked her to connect him to the Saint Francis admitting desk and prayed that a particular admissions-desk nurse he'd talked to the night of Astrid's hospital trip was working the same late shift. He knew her outside of work, vaguely. They'd crossed paths in a small speakeasy near the hospital once before. Her boyfriend was a second cousin of Hezekiah from Gris-Gris; sometimes he thought half the people in this town were related.