Grave Phantoms (7 page)

Bo held out a chair as he stealthily scanned the dim speakeasy, looking for the telltale flounce of blond hair. Gris-Gris wasn't as busy as it should be this time of night, but there were still enough people to make it difficult to spot someone across the tangle of candlelit tables and dancing bodies.

“You owe me for this, Yeung Bo-Sing,” Sylvia said in Cantonese as she sat down in the chair he offered, using the formal Chinese surname-first pattern to emphasize that she meant business.

Then again, Sylvia Fong always meant business. The twenty-year-old switchboard operator lived with her twin sister in an apartment two floors above the one Bo grew up in—one he still kept but rarely used—just off Grant on the northern edge of Chinatown. She occasionally helped him when he needed to listen in on telephone conversations, and he made sure the building superintendent knew that he couldn't screw her over on rent or bamboozle his way out of repairs.

“You said you weren't busy tonight,” he told her. The
house band was loud, so they had to practically shout at each other to be heard. “Besides, I'm buying you a drink. Your boyfriend surely won't mind two friends catching up.”

“No, he won't.” Her ruler-straight short bob swayed as she slowly shook her head. “But no club in the city would make you pay for drinks, and you wouldn't beg me to race over here with you in this nasty weather if you didn't want something.”

True.

Thanks to the widow Cushing moving the
Plumed Serpent
, Bo had been able to oversee the loading of tonight's runs from Pier 26 instead of staging everything across the Bay. This saved him a couple of extra hours of work, but it was already past ten. He hoped Astrid hadn't already moved on to another speakeasy—or decided against coming here altogether.

“Only one thing would make you look that nervous,” Sylvia said. “
She's
home from college, isn't she?”

Bo sat where he could see the bar and the door. “Who do you mean?”

“Pssh. Don't play dumb. The blond Swiss girl.”

“Swedish.”

Sylvia widened her eyes and pretended to pant, mimicking small dog paws with her hands. “This is you, wagging your tail and begging for her to scratch your ears.”

“A bit lower down than my ears,” he said with a smile.

She laughed. “Lucky her.”

“You're a boon to my ego, Miss Fong.” Bo had known Sylvia several years, and even though things started off lustily between them, it had been quick burning and short. But she was funny and easygoing, and they had not only remained friends but become closer. A rare joy, she was. “Why aren't we together again?”

A stupid question, because they both knew why. She'd been uninterested in being hampered by a serious relationship, and he'd been harboring, well, whatever
this
was for Astrid.

Then, of course, there was the other thing.
That
night. The night he didn't want to think about right now.

But she only said, “Because my mother would just as soon me marry a convicted murderer.”

“Mm. That's something I hear a lot,” he murmured, half serious as he flagged down a waiter and ordered them two drinks: black-label champagne for her, water for him. When the waiter left with their order, Bo mused, “Maybe I should change my line of work. Do something respectable.”

“And give up your fancy new car?” Sylvia said as she took off her gloves and pocketed them.

He smiled. “Good point.”

“What did you name it, by the way?”

“I never could decide,” he lied. He didn't want to give her the wrong idea—or even the right one, which was that he'd decided to christen it “Sylvia” as a quiet act of petty and irrational retaliation after he'd received one of Astrid's college letters that mentioned that damned professor of hers.

“You should give it a nice Chinese name,” Sylvia said. “What about your mother's name?”

“A car is too sexy to be named after a mother.”

She huffed and crossed her legs, adjusting the fall of her dress over one knee. “As if mothers can't be sexy.”

“Not your
own
mother.”

Sylvia squinted over his shoulder. “Don't look now, but I think I've spotted the person holding your doggy leash.”

Bo slowly,
slowly
turned his head in the direction Sylvia was looking, and damned if she wasn't right. In the middle of the dance floor, Astrid twisted her curvy hips in a beaded aqua blue dress. Her mouth was open, laughing, while she stomped it up with one of Gris-Gris's regular patrons, Leroy Garvey.

Jealousy, hot and liquid, shot through Bo's chest.

He forced himself to watch her. Penance for dreaming an impossible dream. A voice inside argued:
You could be the one out there, swinging her over the dance floor.
Dancing with her. Whispering in her ear. Anticipating getting her alone in some dark corner of the club, where people would look the other way.

Could he be satisfied with that? Stolen moments in dark corners, seeing her when he could, between her long trips to Los Angeles and his short trips up the coast to Canada, running booze . . . until she found someone permanent, forcing Bo to step back and accept it? To let her go and watch her spend her life in another man's arms?

He watched her trade partners. Another handsome man, happy to hold on to her, and he, sitting here moping beneath a cloud of nebulous anger and hurt.

The band finally ended their set. As the crowd on the main floor dispersed, Bo tracked Astrid's sparkling dress to a table across the main aisle, where she sat down with her back to him. Alone. Waiting for her friends, he supposed. Or was she? Was that just a fabricated excuse to shake off any protests that she'd be out alone, acting like a spoiled flapper, drinking and dancing with anyone in sight? What the devil was going on here, anyway?

“Oh my,” Sylvia said, clucking her tongue and shaking her head. “My-oh-my-oh-my.”

Bo's gaze flicked to his companion's face.

She gave him a pitiful smile. “What I wouldn't have given for you to look at me like that.”

He relaxed against his seat and tapped his fingertips against the linen-covered table. Casual, cool. Slow breaths. He didn't dare look in Astrid's direction again. In fact, he banished her from his head completely, proud that he actually could.

“But if I'm being honest,” Sylvia continued, “I do think I prefer you better as friend. You are less intense.”

“You were the one who told me I was coming by too often.”

“I got tired of you looking at the clock and hearing you talk about
her
.” Sylvia lifted her chin in Astrid's direction.

“You didn't want a commitment,” he argued.

She lowered her eyes. “No woman wants to settle for second prize, Yeung Bo-Sing.”

“I'm sorry,” he said softly, and meant it. “I wish things had turned out different between us. We've never talked about it, but that last night, with—”

“I agreed to it. We were drunk.”

“My good sense failed me.”

She shrugged with one shoulder. “Amy was always more adventurous.”

“It changed things between us, and I can't even look at your sister anymore without feeling guilty.”

She dismissed his words with a coy smile. “No need for regret. Amy has long forgotten it.”

It may have been two years ago, but her sister still flirted with him shamelessly and occasionally tried to talk him into coming over when Sylvia wasn't around. Which would be a temptation to even the most pious of priests. But he couldn't. Sylvia would be hurt, for one, and he valued her friendship too much. More than that, just thinking about it made him feel like he was cheating on Astrid . . . a woman he'd never even kissed.

He was pathetic. Truly.

“Besides,” she said. “I've forgotten it already, too.”

“Ugh.” He clutched his chest and grinned. “My male pride.”

Sylvia swatted his hand playfully. “What about my female pride? You drag me out here tonight for what—to make your little biscuit jealous?”

“No.”

Her eyes narrowed with cool incredulity.

“All right, yes.” Was she mad? He felt a little ashamed, and hoped she wasn't mad, considering their history. Sylvia was hard to read. Sometimes he felt she was full of light, uncaring about what anyone thought, and other times, he worried that she cared too much and went to great lengths to hide it.

But she only laughed at him right now, and relief washed through him.

“Fine,” she said. “But you
really
owe me, and I get to name the price.”

They ribbed each other good-naturedly for a while, Sylvia naming off favors that became more and more exorbitant, until she elbowed his arm. “Hold on a minute. Now who is that she's talking to?”

Bo looked. A man sat at Astrid's table. Well dressed, older. No friend of hers that Bo knew—and Bo knew them all. In fact, he'd go so far as to call the mystery man at Astrid's table . . . dangerous looking. An animal toying with its prey.
That's likely your jealous heart talking
, he told himself. But he realized a moment later that his instincts about the man were not based on anything the man himself was doing. Bo was only reading Astrid; she had gone completely rigid in her seat.

Without thinking, Bo pushed away from the table. But before he could stand, Astrid was on her feet and saying something to the man as she dashed away and disappeared behind a column.

“What was that all about?” Sylvia said in a low voice.

Bo wasn't sure, but he didn't like it. And he liked it even less when the mystery man followed Astrid into the shadows.

“Stay here,” Bo instructed Sylvia, and strode off after the man.

The restroom was empty but for a single woman fixing her hair in a mirror. No attendant. Maybe she was on a break. Astrid breezed past the mirrors, headed to the last of three marble-walled toilet stalls, and closed the door with a sigh of relief.

Tonight was not going well. She sat on the edge of the toilet seat and cursed her friends for not showing up and leaving her here to deal with drunken strangers on her own. Cursed herself, too, for telling Jonte she'd find her own ride home. At least she had money for a taxi. If she could just sit it out here long enough for that shady man to leave, she could make a beeline for the lobby and get her coat.

It will be fine
, she told herself as she blew out a long breath. He was just a drunken lout. A nosy reporter trying to get a scoop. So why couldn't she get the image of his garish ring out her head? She was being paranoid, surely, but the ring reminded her of the turquoise idol . . .

What if he wasn't a reporter after all?

A faucet squeaked off. Heels clicked across the floor,
and for a moment the noise of the club filled the tiled restroom. Then the door blocked it out again.

Astrid let out a long breath and heard something else inside the restroom . . . Light footfalls. Not the click of women's shoes. Surely Max wouldn't come in here? Whoever it was, they approached the stalls and stopped. Blood swished in Astrid's temples as she silently waited for the sound of a stall door opening.

It never came. Only a brief shuffling.

Someone was checking beneath the stall door.

A moment later, hinges squealed. The door banged . . . and then the person stepped to the middle stall.

Oh-God, oh-God, oh-God.
Astrid lifted her legs and held them up in the air as the same noises repeated only a few feet away, shuffling, hinges squealing, door banging. Why didn't they put locks on these doors? Why—

The person stopped in front of her stall.

Feet shuffled. A shadow fell across the floor beneath the door. Astrid's heart drummed against her rib cage. The hinges began rotating.

She didn't think. Her legs shot forward and she pressed the soles of her T-bar shoes flat against the stall door, pushing it closed with a bang.

Outside the door, a murmur of surprise echoed off the marble. Masculine.

Holy living God, it
was
Max!

Without warning, the door exploded inward. Astrid yelped as her legs folded back like an accordion, and she slid sideways on the toilet seat. She braced her hands on the stall walls and stared up at the dark figure of Max.

“Found you,” he said with a dangerous smile.

Survival instincts kicked in. A dozen scenarios raced through her mind at once. The simplest hung on a chain around her wrist: a silver mesh handbag. It was heavier than she preferred, but she'd worn it tonight because it matched the band on the wristwatch Bo had given her. A small bit of fortune. She tightened the chain, and when
Max reached inside the stall to pull her out, she swung the handbag and struck him in the face.

He cried out and stumbled backward a step, more surprised than hurt. One hand caught the casing around the stall while the other touched his cheek briefly and dabbed blood.

“Little bitch,” he muttered through gritted teeth.

Inside her head, she heard Bo's voice instructing her how to protect herself if she were ever in a situation like this.
Kick a man straight in the balls
, he'd said. A childish thing to do, she'd thought at the time, but she didn't much care at the moment. She started to raise a leg and do just that. But Max suddenly stilled.

“You're going to want to move away from her, slowly, before I blow a hole in your spine,” a familiar voice said behind Max.

Max grunted and raised both his hands as he stepped out of the stall. Bo stood behind him in a long navy coat. The muzzle of Bo's gun was pressed into the man's back.

Relief washed through Astrid's limbs.

“Now, then,” Bo said, patting Max's suit jacket with one hand to search for weapons. “You want to tell me just who the hell you are and why you were stupid enough to touch her?”

Max's elbow swung backward and struck Bo in the jaw. Hard.

Bo let out muffled grunt of pain as he stumbled backward. His shoulder cracked against the restroom wall.

Shouting savagely, Astrid jumped out of the stall and tried to whop Max with her handbag. This time he wasn't surprised. His arm shot up and he swatted it as if it were a fly. His signet ring caught her on her wristbone—
the ring is inlaid with turquoise
, her mind realized as pain shot up her arm.

Pain, and something more . . .

Time seemed to slow. In the space of a few rapid heartbeats, Astrid watched Bo shake his head like a wet dog and quickly retrain his gun on Max.

Just not quickly enough.

Max raced through the restroom and was already pushing open the door into the club. Chaos erupted as he plowed through the bar area. Bo growled and took off after him, only to come to a skidding stop when Astrid cried out in horror.

Like an electric bee sting, a strange series of aftershocks radiated from the spot Max's ring had clipped her on the wrist. The shocks buzzed and hummed until they wracked her entire body. The stark-bright light of bathroom dimmed. And all around her, dark water poured from the cracks of the tiled walls.

Dark, odious water.

It flowed down the mirrors. Flooded the sinks and overflowed, cascading black waterfalls onto the floor until it began filling the restroom, rising and rising, covering her feet and climbing her legs. It was briny seawater, reeking of salt and rotting fish, and it quickly rose over her knees.

She tried to wade through the icy water, tried to get to Bo. He looked so confused. Why was he just standing there, staring at her like she'd lost her mind?

Then she realized that she might actually
have
lost it. Out of the floodwater, a dark shape bobbed to the surface.

It was the size and shape of a human body, and it was encased in a burlap sack.

Astrid swayed and fell into blackness.