Grave Phantoms (2 page)

DECEMBER 15, 1928

Astrid Magnusson was mad as hell. She furiously wiped the fogged-up window of her brother's Pierce-Arrow limousine with the mink cuff of her coat, but it didn't help. The hilly streets were nothing but darkness punctuated by the occasional streetlight as they drove through more rain than she'd ever seen in her life.

“I can't believe it's been like this all week,” she said to the family driver over the half-raised window divider between the front and back seats. “It never rains like this here. Never.”

“
Ja
,” Jonte replied in Swedish as they turned onto the Embarcadero. “You shouldn't be down here with all this flooding. Winter will be angry.”

Whoop-de-doo. She'd been back in San Francisco since noon and had barely spoken to her oldest brother. Half the city was barricaded, and she knew that's why Winter was down here working at nine in the evening—to help sandbag
the warehouse. She also knew that's why Bo was here; however,
him
she wasn't ready to forgive.

She hadn't seen Bo in almost four months, he'd stopped answering her letters, and now that she was home, he couldn't step away from the warehouse for one hour? Not even a telephone call or a note?

At least the staff had made her a nice dinner to welcome her back, and she'd had a little celebratory champagne. A little too much, possibly, but she didn't
feel
very drunk. Then again, she wasn't very good at drinking. A couple of months back, she'd downed five glasses of bathtub gin and ended up with a sprained ankle after falling off the dormitory balcony. But the post-drinking sickness had been far worse than the sprain, and she swore to all the saints she'd never drink again.

But really, that was a pointless promise to make, considering that Winter was one of the biggest bootleggers in San Francisco.

The limousine slowed in front of a long line of bulkhead buildings that sat along the waterfront. Warm light spilled from windows that flanked an open archway marked
PIER 26
. Magnusson Fish Company's waterfront dock. At least, that's what it was in the daytime; at night, it was a staging warehouse for citywide liquor distribution.

Astrid grabbed her umbrella and began opening the Pierce-Arrow's door before it came to a complete stop. “Don't wait for me,” she told Jonte. “I'll get someone to drive me back home.”

“But—”

“Good night, Jonte,” she said more forcefully and erected the umbrella against the blustery night rain.

Ducking under the building's gated Spanish stucco archway, she splashed through puddles and immediately smelled exhausted engine oil and shipping containers. Familiar and oddly pleasant. Just past a fleet of delivery trucks parked for the night, men stacked sandbags against the warehouse walls, where water ran across the cement
floor. Winter was there, talking to someone as he directed the sandbagging.

But no Bo.

Before Winter could spot her and yell at her for coming out here at night, she folded her umbrella and took a sharp right into the warehouse offices. The reception area was empty, but a light shone from the back office. She marched with purpose, head buzzing with champagne, and stopped in the doorway.

The office was exactly as she remembered. Framed ancient photographs of her family lined the walls, slightly askew and dusty: their first house in the Fillmore District, her brothers as small children, and every boat her father had ever owned—even the last one, right before he died in the accident three years ago. Watching over those photographs was Old Bertha, a stuffed leopard shark that hung from the ceiling.

And hunched below that spotted shark was Bo Yeung, stripped from the waist up and dripping wet with rainwater. A soaked shirt lay on a nearby chair; a dry one was draped across a filing cabinet.

A sense of elation rose over the champagne singing in Astrid's bloodstream. He was here, her childhood friend, the person she trusted more than anyone else in the world, and the only man she'd ever cared for.

Stars
, she'd never been so happy to see his handsome face. She wanted to rush forward and throw her arms around him, like she used to do when they were both too young to recognize things were changing between them . . . when she was just the boss's baby sister, and he was only the hired help.

No longer.

And with that realization, all her hurt feelings rushed back to the surface.

“So you
are
alive,” she said.

At the sound of her voice, he stood and turned to face her, and the sight of his sleek, sculpted chest momentarily took her aback. She'd seen him without a shirt a dozen
times before—working outside in the sun, in the Chinatown boxing club where he sometimes went to blow off steam, or when they'd find each other in the kitchen raiding the icebox at midnight. But as he stood there in front of her now, holding a damp towel as if poised to fight, the elegant sheen of his finely muscled arms seemed almost risqué. Virile. She felt hot all over, just looking at him.

It was unfair, really.

“Astrid,” he finally said in a rough voice. Straight hair, normally neatly combed, fell over one eye like a stroke of black calligraphy ink. He pushed a damp lock of it back and stared at her like she was a mirage—one that he hadn't expected to see.

Too bad. Astrid wasn't going be ignored. She'd worn her best fur and a stunning beaded amaranthine dress that showed off her legs, and she'd practiced exactly what she was going to say to him.

Only, now she'd forgotten most of it.

“You didn't pick me up at the train station,” she said.

“I was working.” He shrugged with one shoulder, as if he couldn't be troubled to lift both of them. “Besides, I'm not the family driver. That's Jonte's job.”

As if that were the point? Truly.

“
And
you didn't come to dinner. Lena made almond cake.”

“Did she? Sorry I missed that,” he said lightly.

“Is that all you missed?”

“Don't tell me she made lemon pie, or I really will be sorry.”

Anger heated her cheeks. “I'll give you something to be sorry about, all right. Be serious for one moment, please. I think you owe me at least that for not bothering to say hello to a girl you haven't seen in months.”

He snapped the edge of the towel toward the ceiling. “Do you not see what's going on out there? We're nearly underwater.”

“But it's my birthday.” Even as the words came out, she knew they sounded petty and childish, and wished she could take them back.

“I know,” he said.

And that made her
livid
.

“A simple ‘Happy birthday' would be the polite thing to say. But I'm not sure why I expected you to even remember, because you haven't answered any of my letters.” He hadn't even bothered to write and tell her the disappointing news that her friend and seamstress, Benita—who lived downstairs in the Magnusson house—had left for Charleston two weeks ago to tend to a sick relative. “I suppose you just forgot to write me back?”

Bo grunted and avoided her eyes.

“Don't tell me you were busy working, because I know damn well it hasn't been raining all that time.”

“No, it hasn't.” He turned away from her, toweling off his hair.

“Then what? Out of sight, out of mind—is that it? Am I that forgettable?”

“Damn, but I wish you were.”

“What's that supposed to mean? God, Bo. Is it because you're not being paid to wheel me around town anymore, huh? Is that it? You get promoted and now I'm just a job responsibility you can shuck?”

He tossed her a sharp glance over his shoulder. “Stop being ridiculous.”

“
You're
ridiculous.”

“You came down here in the middle of the night to tell me that?” He tossed the towel aside and pulled on a dry undershirt.

“What if I did? At least I remembered where to find you after four months, which is more than I can say for your crummy sense of direction.”

Swearing under his breath, he snatched up a clean shirt and glanced up at her as he shrugged into it. His fingers paused on the buttons. “Have you been drinking?”

“Drinking?” Astrid repeated, as if it were the most ludicrous thing she'd ever heard.

“You keep squinting at me with one eye shut.” He marched toward her. Before she could get away, his fingers
gripped her shoulders. She dropped her umbrella and leaned back, trying to avoid him, but his neck craned to follow her movement. His attractive face was inches from hers, all sharp cheekbones and sharper jaw.

He sniffed. Clever, all-seeing eyes narrowed as he tracked her sin with the precision of a bloodhound. “Champagne.”

“Only a little,” she argued, breathing in the mingled scents of the dusty warehouse and rainwater, and beneath those, the brighter fragrance of
Bo
.

All her anger disappeared for a moment because—damn it all!—she'd missed him so much. She didn't care if his position in the Magnusson household meant they shouldn't be together, or that societal rules regarding their cultural differences meant they
couldn't
be together. If she had to make a vow never to leave him again, she would. And unlike the no-drinking promise, she'd be able to keep this one, because if going away to college had taught her anything, it was that Bo was what she wanted.

Only Bo.

She softened in his grip and dazedly blinked up at him with a small, hiccupped laugh.

“Ossified,” he proclaimed. For a moment, the slyest of smiles curled the corners of his mouth. She loved that smile. He was the shiniest, most vibrant person she'd ever known, and she wanted to soak him up like warm sunlight.

His gaze fell to her hand, which had drifted to her neck like a shield, as if it could somehow prevent her runaway feelings from escaping. “I thought you said you broke that wristwatch,” he said in a lower voice.

“I did. But my arm feels bare without it.”

For a moment, she thought he might reach for her hand. But he merely released her, stepping away to button his shirt. “You shouldn't be drinking.”

“So what if I've had a coupe or two of champagne? A girl's entitled to that much, freshly back from college and on her birthday,” she said, following him around the desk. Never mind that she'd had five glasses, possibly six. She
could still walk straight. Mostly. “Besides, I'm an adult now, if you haven't noticed.”

“College magically transformed you, huh? To think I've been doing it wrong all these years, what with this pesky hard work and responsibility.”

“You're a jackass.”

“So I've been told. By you, several times, if I remember correctly.” He tucked in his shirt and donned a leather shoulder holster and gun, a sobering reminder of this warehouse's purpose and Bo's role in it.

“Why are you avoiding me?” she persisted. “Why did you stop answering my letters?”

“I'm sorry—were you waiting on me to answer?” He combed his damp hair back with his fingers, cool as you please, but his words were delivered with tiny barbs. “It sounded like you had your hands full, what with that harem of college boys salivating beneath your skirt.”

Her cheeks heated. “I never said that!” Not that crassly, anyway. Sure, the boys at college were a lot more open and forward, which was probably due to the fact that, unlike her suitors in high school, they didn't know she had two older brothers who would pummel anyone who so much as winked at her.

“Not to mention that you seemed pretty busy gazing at stars with what's-his-name,” Bo said, snapping his fingers. “Professor Hotel Room.”

Astrid was too tipsy to convincingly feign shock over his implication. Yes, she'd told him about Luke and the hotel. But she certainly hadn't said what they'd done there. It was none of Bo's business. Besides, she hadn't spoken to Luke since that night. She merely stopped showing up for class, and he never bothered to track her down.

So much for her sensitive professor.

But it didn't matter. She was a grown woman. So what if she'd made a few mistakes her first semester at college? Well, a lot of mistakes, actually. Luke may have been the worst of those, a lapse in good judgment, but there was
nothing she could do about that now. Life went on. And everything else was perfectly fixable as long as Winter didn't find out. Now, as for Bo . . .

Hold on just one second. Her drunken brain oh-so-slowly began piecing Bo's words and tone together. Was he jealous? Her heart skipped a beat.

“Listen,“ she said as he slipped into his suit jacket, but the rest of her words were lost under a horrific wrenching noise that was so long and loud, it rattled all the family photographs on the back wall for several seconds. Beyond that wall was the northern pier.

They both glanced at each other. Bo drew his gun, and without another word, they raced through the offices and into the warehouse. The workers had abandoned their sandbagging and were running through an open cargo door onto the docks. Cold rain and a howling gale cut through Astrid's clothes as she jogged behind them into briny night air.