Bitter Spirits (Roaring Twenties #1)(73)

Winter sighed heavily. “What is it?”

“The fortune-teller from the temple. Same time Aida’s apartment was being set on fire, Mr. Wu jumped from his apartment window and killed himself.”

The news sobered Aida for a moment. “Oh no.”

“Christ,” Winter said.

“Charlie was on shift watching him. Said he saw the man racing into his apartment like he was trying to outrun something. Charlie checked the stairwell, windows—nothing was there. Then he heard screams outside, and that’s when he went out and saw him on the sidewalk. Neighbors had already found him. Stuck around until the police came, just in case someone else showed up. Never saw anything else.”

“Ghosts,” Winter mumbled. “Or some other kind of black magic.”

“That’s what I’m thinking,” Bo said. “Charlie sounded unnerved. He also mentioned that he heard Wu repeating something when he was running into his apartment—‘beekeeper.’”

Winter’s jaw shifted to one side. “The Hive.”

“Maybe that’s what the leader calls himself?”

“Maybe.”

“Regardless, it rules Wu out for the fire,” Bo said. “Not that I really suspected him.”

“Poor bastard.”

A wave of sadness washed over Aida. She had rather liked the depressed old fortune-teller, even if he had poisoned Winter. Maybe he’d found his dead wife beyond the veil. She hoped so.

Winter talked with Bo in soft murmurs outside his room for several moments before he dismissed him and shut the door, turning his attention back to her. “Still with me?”

She nodded. He stripped off her laudanum-stained nightgown and left her naked on the bed, while he stepped into the adjoining room and started running a bath.

Several framed photographs crowded the back of his bedside table. The most prominent was a family photo in front of a fishing pier: a couple who could only be his parents, Astrid as a younger girl, a blond man about Bo’s age—his brother, the archaeologist—and Winter, looking several years younger, smiling, squinting into the sun with no scar.

Happier times.

Behind that photograph was a smaller one, a posed portrait of a strikingly beautiful blond woman, her long hair pinned up, porcelain skin, and a stoic look on her face.

Winter strolled back into the bedroom, barefoot and shirt stripped off, wearing nothing but pants and suspenders over a sleeveless white undershirt. The unyielding breadth of his mighty bare shoulders and well-muscled boxer’s arms made her heart skip a beat.

“Who is this?” Aida asked, reaching for the silver-framed blonde.

“No one.”

Hmph. It had to be Paulina. A dull feeling of jealousy taunted Aida from a distance. “Why would you have a photograph of no one next to your bed?”

“Why would you care? You’re leaving in a week.” He took the photograph from her hand and put it back on the table, then reached to lift her off the bed.

“I can walk,” she said irritably, pushing his hands away. As she struggled to her feet, she flipped the photograph facedown when his back was turned.

His bathroom was spacious with gleaming white tile and polished wood cabinets. A beveled glass window was cranked open to the opposite view seen from his study: instead of the Bay, it was the south side of Pacific Heights rising up steep hills, its prestigious homes wearing a crown of fog beneath the night sky.

An enormous, grand slipper claw-foot tub sat to her left. Winter twisted the silver handles to shut off steaming water. Before she could protest, he lifted her off the floor and set her down into the hot water. It stung her ankle for a moment, but the rest of her felt so good, it didn’t matter.

“Too warm?”

Her muscles turned to mush as her shoulders slid down the high-backed tub. “Perfect. You could fit a car inside here.” Or a giant-sized bootlegger. The heated water sent ripples of pleasure through her limbs.

He folded his big body up to perch on a wooden stool next to her. “Put that foot up here,” he said, patting the side of the tub.

She propped her leg where he instructed and sank farther into the water. A firm hand held her leg while he soaped up her foot, carefully cleaning her cuts with a soft washrag, sloughing all the grime away.

“Winter?”

“Yes.”

“I have three dollars to my name. All my savings was in my room. I have no clothes. No cosmetics, no jewelry—”

“I will replace everything. You wouldn’t have lost it if you weren’t affiliated with me.”

“You don’t know that.”

“You normally have people trying to kill you?” he asked.

“Well, no.”

“And I do. This is the same passive bullshit that’s being used on me with the hauntings. My fault, therefore my responsibility. End of story.”

“I don’t want charity. I’ll repay you once I’ve earned the money back. Velma still owes me one more payday, and the salary I’ll earn in New Orleans—”

He slapped the washcloth onto the floor. His face was taut with outrage. “You’re still thinking about New Orleans? You almost died tonight. Do you know how terrified I was? How close you were to being burned alive? I could’ve received a call from Mrs. Lin instead of Bo, telling me to come arrange a casket for your charred body.”