Grave Phantoms (24 page)

He dropped to his knees, cock glistening as it bobbed in front of him. Then he wrapped his hands around the underside of her thighs and scooted her closer. “Open for me,” he said. Beneath the nest of blond curls, he could see the flesh of her sex, plump and slick, unfurling like the petals of an exotic orchid. He trailed kisses on the insides of her thighs, one on each side, back and forth, until he got to the tender crease where her leg met her torso and licked there.

“Have you missed me?” he said, looking up at her.

“Every minute,” she whispered.

“I missed you, too. Let me show you how much.” He breathed in her scent, inhaling deeply, and swept his flattened tongue against her hooded clitoris. He went slow at first, but her clean, salty taste and soft moans made him harder. He licked and suckled. Kissed and kneaded. Flicked and rubbed. And as her stomach tightened, he dropped a hand to his cock and gave himself a few strokes, just to pacify it.

But when he felt her feet digging into his shoulders and her hips began pushing upward—and when her soft moans increased in volume—he settled his forearm over her stomach to give her something to buck against. “No . . . screaming,” he instructed her between licks, and then paused. “Or I'll stop right now.”

She roughly pushed his head back into position, and he laughed a little and took up a steady rhythm as she fisted the edge of the window seat cushion in both hands. It gave him joy to watch her as he worked: eyes squeezed shut,
open mouth, contorted face, a deep flush of red spreading over her upper chest and neck as she strained. And when she switched her straining grip from the seat cushion to his bracing arm, he watched her face turn to the side as a silent scream floated from her open mouth.

“Good girl,” he said when the tremors slowed and her legs tried to close around his head. He gave her one last lick, a lingering kiss, and then released her.

He wanted to feel her skin. As her breath steadied, his palms drifted over the smooth silk of her stockings, up her calves and thighs. He continued exploring, molding her curving hips and the flat expanse of her stomach. He skimmed over the tips of her breasts and savored the way his touch made her jump. The way, when he caressed her breasts, she came back to life. The way her legs parted once more, inviting him closer. And it was then that he realized, with no small amount of excitement, that the window seat was the perfect height. He could take her like this, kneeling between her thighs, framed by the lights of the city winking over a dark sea of rooftops.

“Are you ready for me, now,
huli jing
?” he whispered as her damp curls tickled the head of his cock.

“Yes,” she whispered back. “I want you.”

He didn't bother to take off his pants—they didn't have the luxury of time—so he only pushed them down below his knees so he could find better leverage on the woven silk rug that covered the floor.

“You know,” he said, momentarily sucking her nipple into his mouth because he couldn't resist, “I think I've heard if two people come together beneath mistletoe, you'll both have good luck for ten years.”

She choked out a laugh, and then her eyes became serious and glossy. “Have I told you how much I love you?”

“No,” he admitted, pushing back a wave of emotion so strong, it made goose bumps spread over his arms. “But tell me afterward if you haven't changed your mind.”

He drove himself into her as far as he could, allowed a
moment for the overwhelming pleasure of it to pass (hot, wet, tight, mine-mine-mine), and then gripped her hips and picked up speed.

If the newness of her body was a pleasure during their night at the lighthouse, then the familiarity of it was its own grand reward now. He knew how to angle himself to hit the spot inside her that she liked, right at twelve o'clock. He knew how hard to push her, and when it was too rough. He knew if he kissed her now, with the taste of her sex still on his lips, the taboo of it would excite her and she'd squeeze around him a little tighter.

But most of all, he knew when that pleasurable squeezing started and stopped, started and stopped, started and
didn't
stop, that she was racing toward climax.

He raced for it with her.

They dug their nails into each other. He felt the silken soles of her feet leave the ledge of his buttocks to scrabble for foothold on the edge of the window seat. Heard the rhythmic squeak of wood keep time with his quickening thrusts and the lush sound of their flesh smacking together, the finest symphony ever composed. And when she opened her mouth against his neck to stifle her scream, the gathering warmth in his balls shot forward and he came—quietly, muscles quaking, heart stopping, soul bursting apart into a million points of light.

When he pulled out, still hard, he was so spent, he wobbled on his knees. “Come here,” he murmured, summoning the strength to hoist her onto his hips while he repositioned them. He sat on the window seat with her across his legs, and wrapped her in his arms.

“Look at that,” he said, gazing through the window. The rooftops of Pacific Heights rolled down the hill toward the Golden Gate. “If you look close enough, I'll bet you can see the lighthouse past the hills.”

“No, you can't,” she said with a husky laugh and pressed her hand against the windowpane. “But it's beautiful, isn't it? And it's ours.”

Their city. For it seemed at that moment to have been painted across the landscape just for the two of them.

He sighed, wholly content. Another minute, perhaps, and they'd have to leave. If they stayed gone too long, someone would notice. He thought of Aida's words in his ear:
Thanks for keeping my secret. Road goes both ways.
If she knew, how long would it be before she confessed her suspicions to Winter?

“Bo?” Astrid asked. “What happened to the young scholar and the fox spirit?”

He rested his chin on top of her head, stroked over her bare shoulder, and then gently grazed his nails down her arm, memorizing her anew.

Impossibly soft.

Scent of roses.

Voice that made his heart warm.

“I don't know,” he said. “I'm afraid I just don't know.”

The week between Christmas and New Year's Day was, bar none, the happiest in Astrid's life. Firstly, it didn't rain a single day; the historic storm was finally, truly over. Secondly, they didn't catch even a glimpse of Max and his knife, nor did Astrid experience any disturbing visions—though a visit to Velma told her that the tea she'd prescribed wasn't helping; the unwanted shadow on Astrid's aura was still very present. But despite this disappointing news and the fact that Bo and Astrid's impending date at the carousel of Babel's Tower was quickly approaching, they were able to put it out of their minds.

Easy to do when you're basking in bliss. Because Bo made time every day to steal away and visit her at the top of the turret. And one morning he even sneaked her into a taxi and took her to his apartment in Chinatown, where they spent two glorious hours wearing out the springs of his single bed before walking a block to eat dim sum at Golden Lotus.

“I remember you,” the restaurant owner, Mrs. Lin, had
said with a kind smile after she'd kissed both of Bo's cheeks and seated them at a table with a view of Grant Avenue's bustling sidewalk. “You are Mr. Magnusson's sister. You and another young girl came to visit Aida when she boarded with me upstairs.”

“Benita,” Astrid said, remembering fondly and wishing her old friend was here to share her secret about Bo. She'd almost written her about it, but changed her mind; it felt too intimate a thing to share in a letter. “She was my seamstress. We'd brought Aida a new coat that afternoon. That was right before the fire in her room.”

Mrs. Lin's face darkened for a moment, but she quickly shook it away. “Mr. Magnusson paid for the repairs and now everyone wants to rent that room because it has the shiny, new private bathroom. I charge big dollars for it. What do they call that? Silver lining,” she said with a grin.

The old restaurant owner had then proceeded to command every dim sum cart to make a beeline to their table with hot food straight from the kitchen, and Bo fed her steamed pork dumplings from the tips of his chopsticks until she nearly burst—from both the abundance of food and the sheer happiness at being able to sit beside him at a public table while he laced his fingers through hers.

Astrid carefully preserved all of these moments in her mind and tried to be grateful for today, and today only. But the morning of New Year's Eve, she found herself unable to stop the future from leaking into her thoughts. And after some deliberation and self-honesty, she finally made a plan for what she was going to do about school. What she was going to do with herself.

What she wanted.

It was a risky plan—
not a scheme
, she told herself indignantly—and one that required a little more faith in herself than she was absolutely sure she had, but there it was. Her plan for the future.

She decided she would tell Bo after the clock struck midnight. A new year, a new plan, a new, more serious
Astrid. No matter what happened, she would be able to say that she tried, and that was a small boon to her heart.Evening fell, and though Bo and Winter had worked until dawn the previous night, delivering the last of their liquor runs to all the hotels and clubs around town hosting big New Year's parties, they were both taking the night off. Winter planned, he told Astrid, to be asleep with his wife and baby when the city was counting down the new year. And Bo, of course, planned to get into Heaven with Astrid.

Deciding against parking his newly repaired Buick in a sketchy part of town, Bo paid a taxicab to drive them to Babel's Tower dance hall a few minutes before nine. The surrounding neighborhoods were lively with revelers, but Terrific Street was dark and gloomy. A few drunken people shambled down the sidewalks. Music blared from a dance hall down the block. But the area in front of Babel's Tower seemed . . . subdued.

“The streetlights are out,” Bo said as he gripped her hand a little tighter.

“What?”

“Four of them, look. And they're all right here.”

He was right, but Astrid wasn't sure why he was so bothered about it. This wasn't the best part of town. She doubted the dance halls had a civic group fighting to keep the potholes fixed and was far more concerned that the club didn't look half as busy as it had the first night they'd been there. Maybe everyone was already inside.

Bo shook his head. “I don't have a good feeling about this. Maybe we should ask the taxi driver to wait while—hey!” He slammed a hand on the cab's flank as it peeled away from the curb and left them stranded. Bo said something sharp in Cantonese and looked up and down the street for another cab. It was hard to spot much of anything with the streetlights out.

A stumbling man stinking of gin approached Astrid, muttering something under his breath. Bo put a steely hand on her shoulder and pulled her away, yelling at the bum to
leave them alone. “Let's just get inside,” Bo said as the man shuffled away and crossed the street. “We can use their telephone and call another cab. We're giving up on this. I'll find another way—”

“How?” Astrid said. “We're already here and you're armed. We didn't go to all this trouble tracking this down just to abandon it. And you heard Velma. That shadow is still on my aura. Whatever that idol did to me, I want it fixed.”

Bo exhaled heavily. “All right, but if things look suspect upstairs, we're leaving. And if Max is here—”

“I know.” Bo had drilled her on this already several times. “I stay behind you and remain aware of my surroundings. I am a Magnusson, and no one messes with me and gets away with it.”

He smiled at that. “You are a Magnusson, and you are mine. Don't forget it.”

Not a chance. He pulled her closer, and they hurried to the club's front door, where the same doorman from the first night allowed them entrance. But once they were inside, Astrid understood Bo's reservations. No band played. Most of the tables were empty, and as they crunched over peanut shells, the dozen or so men that were scattered through the bar area all seemed to look up at them with hostile faces.

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.