Grave Phantoms (Roaring Twenties #3)(21)

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?”