Grave Phantoms (Roaring Twenties #3)(76)

Astrid told herself she was only imagining this, and when everyone’s eyes fell back to their drinks, she breathed an inward sigh of relief. Any number of reasons why it wasn’t busy tonight. The establishments in this area got regularly raided by both the cops and the Prohis, and New Year’s Eve was prime time for a raid; maybe most of their regulars stayed away because of this. Or perhaps Hell wasn’t busy on nights when Heaven was active upstairs.

“No bouncers,” Bo mumbled as they headed to the inner door that had previously been guarded by two beefy men. “No one selling tickets.”

“Maybe they stepped away.” Music sifted through the walls, so clearly the back dance hall was open for business. Astrid glanced around, looking for the bouncer while Bo tried the door handle. Unlocked. She saw him reach inside his suit jacket for a moment and felt sure he was opening his holster for easy access to his gun, and that made her nervous.

“Stay behind me,” Bo said as he pushed the door with one hand. Mid-tempo jazz, tinny over the speaker, flooded the open doorway. They entered the back dance hall, following a short, dim corridor for several steps until it opened up into the main floor. Everything was as it was the first night: seats, dance floor, roped-off carousel with its bright carnival lights and nude angels.

Only, there were no people.

The music played over the phonograph to an empty hall. Deserted. The hair on Astrid’s arms rose. Bo grabbed Astrid’s elbow. “Something’s not right. We’re leaving. Now.”

They swung around to find the two missing bouncers and gilded flintlock pistols pointed at them. Max stood in the center of the gunmen, a smile spreading over his face.

If Max had looked sick before, he looked positively wretched now. His eyes were jaundiced, the circles under his eyes were nearly black, and one side of his face was peeling and covered in ugly sores.

“Happy New Year,” he said in a garbled, raspy voice. He coughed once and pointed a finger at Bo. “Nuh-uh-uh, my friend. Show me your hands, or they’ll blast two holes in your chest and have their way with your woman while you bleed out on the floor.”

Bo took his hand out of his jacket and mumbled, “Get behind me.”

Astrid did exactly that.

“Do you have the missing doubloon from my idol?” Max asked Bo, hacking up another cough.

“Maybe,” Bo said. “Are you willing to tell me what the symbol means?”

“I’ll do more than that, friend. We’ll be hosting a little demonstration for you. See, you both have something that belongs to me. You, the doubloon, and her, my missing vigor.”

Vigor? The shadow on my aura. Astrid ran a hand over her arm, trying in vain to clean it away. “I don’t want your damn vigor, you dirty pig. Get it off of me and you can have your stinking gold doubloon back.”

Max coughed again, this time into a dirty handkerchief that was splattered with dried blood. “If it were that easy, I would have taken it back when the bastard here shot me, wouldn’t I?”

He hobbled a step, and now Astrid could see that he was still having trouble with his leg. She hoped the bullet festered.

“My doubloon,” Max demanded, waving forward one of the men, who stuck the pistol against Bo’s head. Bo hesitated for a moment and started to reach inside his jacket, but one of Max’s goons stopped him and began searching for the gold himself.

Astrid’s heart raced. Two guns, but one of the men was busy patting Bo down. Could she do something to give Bo time enough to get to his own gun before they took it away? Her mind flipped through possibilities—anything at all. A distraction. A scream. A kick in the balls. But before she could decide, a chill slid down her neck.

Someone was behind her.

She spun around to find Mad Hammett smiling darkly beneath his heavy mustache. He was holding something over her head. As her eyes rotated upward, his hands came down like the blade of a guillotine, fast and unavoidable, sheathing her body. Dark. Rough cloth. Loose weave. Strong, earthy scent . . .

Visions of the sacrificial victims in burlap sacks floated inside her head as she screamed and flailed. Arms like steel bands wrapped around hers. She kicked. Struggled. Heard chaotic shouts around her right before an explosion went off, so loud it made her ears ring. The scent of gunpowder drifted through the rough cloth that smothered her.

“ASTRID!”

She tried to answer, tried to shout back, but a pain shot through her legs—so sudden and forceful, her knees buckled.

And then everything turned upside down.

TWENTY-SIX

Bo smelled the ocean before they pushed him out of the car. They’d blindfolded him, and whoever had brained him with the pistol had knocked him hard enough to make the world go sideways. Blood had begun to crust over his ear, and he winced as they jostled him onto his feet and shoved him forward.

He did his best to fight the throbbing headache that threatened to obliterate rational thought and concentrated on his surroundings. Traffic in the distance, and a lot of it, but the sound was muffled by . . . buildings, perhaps? And boats. He heard rigging and groaning hulls and mooring ropes. They were at a pier, but it wasn’t his pier. He could tell by the feel of the boards upon which they were now shuffling. Too much bounce.

“Where’s Astrid?” he said, his voice sounding weak and not quite right. His lip was split. It hurt like hell to talk.

The two thugs who were shoving him along, hands gripping his arms, guns pointed into his back, didn’t answer. But when he asked again, louder, one of them punched him on the back of his head, and somewhere under the fresh jolt of pain, he heard Max’s coughing.