Bitter Spirits (Roaring Twenties #1)(91)

Winter had never felt so impotent and useless. Scared out of his mind. Plagued with what-ifs. What if they were hurting her? Maybe using fire again, or something else just as sick. After all, this was the man who killed one of the biggest tong leaders in Chinatown with bees.

Maybe the worst of his fears was something he hadn’t yet considered. What if he never found out what they were doing to her—what if he never found her? The crushing darkness that had descended on him after the accident threatened to fall again. He pushed it away.

He watched Bo count off several bills to the bakery owner before marching out into the cold early-morning air. “The house?”

Bo buttoned up his coat. “Greta says Jonte’s sitting in the foyer with a shotgun. The men outside haven’t seen anything.”

“Pier?”

“Same there. Called Gris-Gris again—Velma said no one’s seen anything there, either, but she’ll keep the telephone next to her bed, so we can call her on her home line.”

Winter grunted in acknowledgment. He’d already begged Velma to help with magic, but she said there was nothing she could do.

“Talked to Dina down at the station,” Bo said as he tugged his gloves on. “She said she’d call the inspector to meet us at the station, and she’s putting the word out.”

“Fine. It’ll take us twenty minutes to get there.”

Bo put a hand on his arm. “There’s one more thing. Dina said you were already on the inspector’s call list. Apparently they already called the Seymours.”

Winter stilled. “Paulina’s parents . . . why?”

“The good news is I think I know how Yip has been manipulating the ghosts haunting you. Remember I told you the original rumor about the secret tong—that the leader was a necromancer? Dina said there’s been a lot of grave robberies over the last few months.”

“Digging up graves?” Winter mumbled.

“Dina said most of the graves weren’t notable. But early last night one particular grave was reported from Oakland, and I don’t think it’s a coincidence.”

“Oh, Christ.”

“Paulina’s grave was disturbed. Her coffin’s been stolen.”

• • •

The lantern’s fuel had long extinguished, but dusky tendrils of daylight from the port window outlined shapes within the cabin. For hours Aida had been listening to every thump, creak, and groan within the beached ship. She heard, at one point, the distinct sounds of a couple having sex—maybe a few rooms away—and occasionally heard doors opening and shutting, but the door she heard now was louder, and it was accompanied by deep voices: one speaking, one answering.

And both voices coming closer.

Heart thumping, Aida silently hefted the lantern then herself into the top bunk and waited. The voices were speaking Cantonese. They stopped at her door.

As the key rasped in the lock, Aida crouched in the cramped space with the lantern in hand. The door creaked open. She didn’t wait to see who was on the other side.

Using all her strength, she swung the lantern from her perch and smashed it into someone’s face. A man’s voice cried out in pain.

She leapt off the bunk and rushed the doorway, shouldering aside the body that was hunched there. She didn’t have a plan—didn’t have time to make one. All she could hope was that the surprise of the lantern would put them off guard long enough for her to race down the hall.

She shoved at the second man, trying to get past him as light from his lantern scattered dancing shadows across the walls.

He grabbed her arm and spun her around.

Cauliflower-eared man.

The air whooshed out of her lungs when her back hit the wall.

He struggled with something in his pocket.

She pounded his arm with a fist. Kicked him in the shin. He growled and slapped a wet rag against her mouth.

The noxious cloth from the car.

She tried not to breathe, but her aching lungs betrayed her. And as she inhaled the wretched herbal fumes, she heard shouting down the hall—someone had heard them. She also caught sight of a young Chinese girl carrying a tray of food, and standing nearby, the person she’d thunked with the lantern, who was, serendipitously, the man she’d stabbed in the face with incense sticks.

Should’ve aimed for your balls, she thought as darkness took her.

• • •

It was almost two in the afternoon when Winter stepped out of the runabout and onto his pier, having returned from Oakland. Another fruitless exercise. No one had witnessed the robbery of Paulina’s grave; the night watchman had been drugged. He paid a couple of men to watch his parents’ graves, which were untouched—small favors.

Leaving Bo to moor the runabout, he marched up the dock and headed into the bulkhead building that housed his shipping warehouse and offices. Several of his men greeted him. No, they hadn’t heard anything. He nodded and made his way from the reception area, bright and warmed by the midday sun glinting through its Embarcadero-facing window, back to the dark cave of his private office.

He hung his hat on the coatrack and settled behind his father’s big old desk, wanting badly to lay his head down. Lack of sleep was starting to wear on him. He’d send someone out for coffee; he’d rest when he found her.

Even though he’d just been informed no one had called, he was compelled to pick up the telephone and ask the operator for the same numbers he’d been calling every hour all night—home, Velma, Dina at the police station . . . As if all it took was persistence, and one of these times he’d get the news he wanted.