While he was trying to decide how much to tell her, his eyes fell on the golden locket around her neck. “What’s inside?” he asked, fingering the engraved floral pattern on the front.

“Just a photograph.” She sounded defensive, which set off warning bells inside his head. He clicked the small mechanism on the side before she could stop him. A tiny oval photograph was set inside. A young man.

“Who is this?”

“No one.” She tried to shut it, but he wouldn’t let her. “Stop. It’s just Sam.”

“One of your lovers?”

“No,” she said. “Sam Palmer. My brother.”

Winter was confused. “You told me you lived with a foster family.”

“I did. The Lanes. Sam and I were rescued from the earthquake together. He was a year older than me.”

He studied the photograph with greater interest. Perhaps there was some resemblance, hard to tell. Then he remembered what she told him when they were walking in Chinatown. Everyone I’ve loved is dead. “You said Sam was a year older than you. Is he . . .”

“Sam and I lived with the Lanes together in Baltimore until he turned eighteen. He joined the army in 1916 after President Wilson called for volunteers.”

“Did he end up in the war?”

“He got assigned to a cantonment in Virginia. He was there for six months, and was due to be deployed overseas when America entered the war. He was shot during a training exercise. Just a fluke accident.” In a blink, her eyes became bleary. “I didn’t take it well. We were inseparable. He was my only real family—you know, flesh and blood.”

“I’m sorry.”

She gave him a tight smile. “The Lanes were killed in a train derailment a month later. I was seventeen. They had some money—not a lot, but they weren’t poor. Only, they never officially adopted us. They thought they had, but Sam and I kept our surname. We called them Aunt and Uncle since we were little. And I think the surname confusion was mishandled in the paperwork. I don’t think they ever knew. Mr. Lane’s brother showed up for the funeral, and within two weeks, he’d fired the staff, sold the house, and dumped me off at an orphanage. This photograph is the only thing I was allowed to take with me. That and the clothes on my back.”

“Christ alive, Aida.”

“Good old Emmett Lane. Lovely man,” she said sourly. “I’d only met him once before. He never gave a damn about his own family, much less Sam and me, so it wasn’t a big surprise in hindsight.” She snapped the locket shut. “Anyway, I lived in the orphanage until I finished school. It wasn’t pleasant. When I turned eighteen, I got out of there as fast as I could and struck out on my own. Sam always told me to be independent, count on myself, no one else. And he never was afraid of my talents—he encouraged them.”

“Could he . . . do what you can do?”

She shook her head. “I started seeing ghosts when we moved to Baltimore. The Lanes just thought I was having nightmares about the earthquake, but Sam believed me. I didn’t know I had channeling skills until he introduced me to another medium before he joined the army. Mrs. Stone. She took me under her wing after I left the orphanage. Gave me a room for a few months, showed me how to make money with my talents. Got me on my feet.”

“And you’ve been on your own for ten years?”

“Never look back, always move forward—that’s what Sam always said. He wouldn’t want me feeling sorry for myself, so I don’t. I just keep getting up every day and moving along.” She smiled again, this time more genuinely.

“Live in the moment,” he said, repeating her sentiment from the night before.

“Exactly. Sam believed in the value of independence, and I honor his memory by appreciating today.”

So confident. But anyone could see the sadness beneath her bravado.

They were alike in a way. Both had lost their parents, and though he’d lost Paulina, Aida had not only lost a second set of parents, but her brother.

And then she was forced to support herself with no family help?

He tried to imagine Astrid in the same predicament and wondered how she’d fare. It made him feel ill to think about her utterly on her own. And even without the bootlegging fortune, even when they were just a fishing family, no man in his household would abandon a female. Not Astrid, not his mother, not Greta . . . not even Paulina. What kind of man does that? Not a real one.

Winter suddenly felt both more pity and respect for Aida.

“There. Now you know the story of my life,” she said.

He pushed her bangs back from her forehead and kissed her there, softly, lingering. When he pulled back, she met his gaze and something passed between them. Something that made his chest tighten. He just wasn’t sure what it was.

She quickly redirected the subject. “So, you were about to tell me what happened last night with the raids.”

Oh . . . that again. He’d only known Aida for a couple of weeks, and already he’d violated all sorts of rules with her—his father was probably rolling over in his grave. But when she looked up at him with those big brown eyes, all he could hear was her angry accusation during their fight on the ride back from Ju’s: I told you things about me.

And now she’d told him even more.

His father had been right, no doubt. It was a sensible warning. But Winter was tired of being sensible. He’d tell her everything, give her the combination to his basement vault and all his bank account numbers if she’d meet him in this hotel room every day. As long as she’d look up at him like this, trustful and expectant, genuinely curious about his work—not plugging her ears and pretending he was somebody other than he really was, like Paulina had.

“You haven’t seen the headlines?” he asked.

“You might recall waking me up,” she said, lifting the sheet to cover her breast. “I came straight here, because I apparently have no self-control around you.”

His heart leapfrogged joyfully. He dropped a kiss on her nose and sat up to fetch the newspaper from the cart. “There were five raids at five hotels last night,” he said, pointing out the Chronicle’s headline. “All of them were executed within minutes of one another. The Feds were tipped off that this man would be personally delivering a big shipment to one of the hotels.”

Aida skimmed the article, reading aloud under her breath. Her fingernail traced the caption below the old man’s photo. “Adrian St. Laurent. He looks like a nice old grandfather.”

Winter snorted. “I’ve known him for years. His operation is smaller than mine, though he used to be part of the Big Three in the Bay Area—and before you ask, yes, I’m one of them.”

“Oh, I seriously doubt any of them are as big as you,” she teased, circling a finger around his thumb as she continued to read the article.

“Keep talking like that and I’m going to be forced to call up the desk and beg them for a bellboy to go out to the druggist for another tin.”

“And I won’t be able to walk out of here. Tell me more about the bust.”

He slipped an arm beneath her head and settled his leg across hers. “St. Laurent does a lot of cheap deals, but he also has half the hotel business in the city. Had, rather. The Feds’ tip was on the nose. They found him in the Whitcomb, eating dinner in the kitchen while his crew unloaded a quarter million in rum for a big fund-raiser party. Had enough evidence to haul him in. Just like that, he’s gone.”

Winter was shocked when he got wind of the bust last night. If he had any lingering worries about St. Laurent being responsible for his hauntings, those doubts were now gone.

“But why did the Feds show up at the Palace if they’re your client?”

Winter folded the newspaper and tossed it on the floor. “They weren’t three years ago. Used to be St. Laurent’s, but he made a deal with my father when he thought the Feds were after him back then.”

“So last night the Feds thought the Palace was one of his.”

“Yep.”

“They weren’t after you.”

“Nope.” He ran his fingers over the curve of her shoulder. Her skin was so soft, he almost worried his calloused fingers would scrape it, but he couldn’t stop himself from tracing random lines of freckles that led to the ridge of her clavicle.

“Do you think that this has any connection with what’s going on with you?”

“Raids happen all the time, and there’s no indication of anything supernatural going on with this one. But there are two things that worry me. On that first night when I was poisoned, St. Laurent told me something was changing in Chinatown. The tongs who control the booze there are getting pushed out of business.”

“And the second thing?”

“Rumor is that the Feds were tipped off by someone in Chinatown.”

“O-oh.”

“Odd that there’s unrest in Chinatown’s booze distribution, and someone’s attacking me from Chinatown, and now St. Laurent gets hauled away on a tip from Chinatown.”

“More than odd.” She stared out the balcony doors. “I was thinking about the ghost last night, and those dragon buttons. You think it’s a coincidence that they were sewed on, and you know someone in Chinatown with a sewing factory . . .”

“Ju? No. Couldn’t be him. That truly has to be coincidence.”

“Are you sure? What if Sook-Yin is upset that you haven’t been seeing her? What if Ju takes your rejection of her as a rejection of him? And at that lunch, he did make a point about how successful you’ve become—warned you people would be jealous of that success.”

As much as he hated to admit it, things had been more relaxed between him and Ju back when he was still visiting Sook-Yin. “I don’t know. Ju isn’t a big tong leader, but he’s not stupid, either. Besides, if he wanted me dead, he’s had plenty of opportunities to kill me. Why all the hocus-pocus with the magical poison and the hauntings? Doesn’t add up.”