Jenn Bennett - Bitter Spirits

Early morning wind rustled her hair and sent shivers through her, even inside the fox coat. Nothing made sense. Why would someone set fire to her apartment? Thinking about it hurt her head. She started to close her eyes, just for a moment, when she heard her name again.

“Aida!”

Strong hands gripped her shoulders. Shook her. She opened her eyes to Bo.

Why was he here? How did she get on the sidewalk? She must’ve slipped down the wall.

“Are you okay?” he asked. “Do you need me to take you to the hospital?”

She repeated what she’d told Mrs. Lin and the police officer, but the words weren’t coming out right. Light from a dragon lamppost cast triangles across Bo’s face, highlighting his sharply chiseled cheekbones. His normally perfectly combed-back hair fell into his eyes, reminding her of Winter in bed after sex. “You’re very handsome, Bo,” she heard herself saying.

“What’s wrong with you? Your face is flushed.” He leaned in close. Was he going to kiss her? No, that was all wrong. She tried to back away, but he held her firm. Sniffing, not kissing. That still didn’t make sense. He opened up the front of her jacket and looked at her nightgown. She tucked in her chin and did the same. A reddish brown stain coated the front of her gown.

“Where did that come from?” she said. “Is that the sweet taste in my mouth? I woke up tasting honey. Bitter honey. And brandy. I think I might be drunk, but I don’t remember drinking.”

He said something in Cantonese.

“What?”

“Laudanum,” Bo translated. “Opium.”

Her eyes widened. “N-o-o.”

“Someone didn’t want you leaving that room.”

“That’s . . . wait—why are you here?”

“I keep an apartment a block away. Can you walk? Let me take you there. You’re freezing to death out here.”

“Mrs. Lin—”

“She’s the one who told me what happened and pointed you out. Let me tell her where we’re going. Come.”

Bo’s place was in a tiny apartment building squeezed between a furniture maker and a tea shop. He didn’t lead them through the front, however. Instead, he hustled her down a side street, through a door that led into the furniture maker’s storage room, and finally into the apartment’s empty lobby. Very sneaky, that Bo. The stairwell was musty, but his room on the second floor was clean and sparse: only a small unmade bed, a tiny table with two chairs, and a love seat, on which she collapsed.

“I don’t stay here often,” he said, before making a hushed phone call. When he was done, he left the room for a few minutes and came back with a mug of something warm. “Drink. All at once.”

Her throat was dry. She took a gulp from the mug and made a face. Warm salt water.

“All of it. Hurry.”

She drank half, then felt her stomach constrict violently. He placed a ceramic bowl in front of her face, and she promptly began vomiting. When she was done, he gave her a wet towel to wipe her face and a drink of cool water to rinse her mouth out.

If she was weary before, she was doubly so now. He left the room again, taking away the bowl and the salt water, then returned empty-handed.

“You can see Golden Lotus from your window,” she noted as she watched the firemen in a sleepy haze. The fire was extinguished. She wondered what was left of her room.

“I eat there sometimes. The Lins are good people.”

That surprised her, but she was too drugged to make sense of it at that moment. “Best landlords I’ve ever had. I can’t believe this happened.”

“I should’ve been watching. Winter’s going to be furious.”

She looked up at him, puzzled. “He has you watching me?”

“Sometimes. Just to make sure you get home okay from Gris-Gris. It’s dangerous being out so late.”

“I’ve managed just fine the past few years, and I’ll manage when I’m in New Orleans.”

He sat down next to her on the love seat. “You’re breaking his heart, you know.”

“Who?”

His dark eyes narrowed in irritation as he cast an incredulous look her way. “He’ll never admit it, and when you leave, he’ll go back to being mad at the world. So I don’t like you very much right now.”

Aida was mildly embarrassed that he was speaking to her about this. “Well, that’s too bad, because I like you. Thank you for helping me. I’ll just need to find a cheap hotel somewhere close by.” She thought of her financial situation and reconsidered. “If you’d let me sleep here on the couch, I’ll be out of your hair by morning.”

He didn’t answer.

She was having a hard time keeping her eyes open. “I lost everything I own. My clothes. My savings . . . I can’t believe it’s gone. Every penny I scraped together for the last three years. All I have is a few dollars in my handbag.” Tears slid down her cheeks, but that seemed strange, because she wasn’t crying. “Every time I try to plan for the future, the world conspires against me and rips it away.” She tried to gesture, but it took too much effort to raise her arm. “Look at me. I don’t even have shoes. I’m right back where I was when I was a child.”

“I’m sorry.”

She shrugged. “What can I do but start again in New Orleans? I’m not happy about leaving, in case you think I am.”

“Then don’t.”

“I have to earn a living.”

“Get a job running a switchboard. A secretary, maybe.”

“I have no experience. Can’t even type. And could you do a job like that after working for Winter? After the freedom he gives you?”

He stared at her for a moment before shaking his head.

When Bo left the room for a third time, she lost track of time and fell asleep. The next thing she knew, she was being jostled down a flight of stairs, carried in someone’s steely arms, crammed against a warm, hard chest.

“Mind your feet.” The familiar cadence rumbled through her shoulder.

“Winter?”

“I’ve got you.”

Her voice was weak and far away. “Guess what? I’ve been drugged.”

“And injured. We’ll get your foot patched up when we get back to the house, okay?”

“I rescued the coat.”

“I see that.”

“I just don’t understand why this happened.”

“Someone wanted you dead, and they went to great lengths to ensure that they didn’t kill you directly. And I’ll wager it’s no coincidence this happened after our visit to the temple. We were seen together.”

“Do you think it’s that tong Mr. Wu told us about? The Hive?” she asked, closing her eyes. His arms were strong and safe, and she was so . . . very . . . drowsy.

He dropped a kiss on the crown of her head, then his deep voice whispered near her face. “Whoever it was, they won’t be alive when I get my hands on them, I promise you that.”

THE LAUDANUM BECKONED HER TO SLEEP AGAIN, AND SHE GAVE in, waking up briefly during the car ride, the side of her head sweating against Winter’s shoulder as he held her in his lap.

When she woke again, it was inside the Magnusson elevator, and she was being carried again. “A girl could get used to this,” she said, her voice rough, “but I need to find a cheap hotel. And I might need to borrow a couple of dollars.”

“You’re not going anywhere,” Winter replied. “If I have to lock you up in the turret attic, I will. Consider yourself my prisoner.”

She was too weak to argue. “Do prisoners get baths? Because I can’t stand the stink of smoke all over me. It’s burning my eyes.”

“Yes, prisoners get baths.”

“Will you bathe me?”

A throat cleared. Aida tilted her head to see cold-as-ice Greta operating the elevator in a housecoat, a scarf tied around her head. Wonderful. God only knew what she thought of all this.

The elevator groaned to a stop.

“Thank you, Greta. I’ll ring if I need you,” Winter said. “Get some sleep.”

Aida smelled orange oil. Wood paneled walls blurred by. Then she found herself being carried into a sumptuous, warm bedroom with rosewood flooring, window seats, and a lavish Nile green rug. “Where is this?”

“My room.”

“O-oh, it’s even nicer than the Fairmont. We should’ve been coming here.”

He set her on the biggest bed she’d ever seen, covers pulled back, sheets wrinkled. A dragonfly-patterned Tiffany lamp cast muted light from a bedside table. He struggled to get her out of her coat. “We’ll have this sent to the cleaners. Get the smoke out.”

“I need to find out if anything survived the fire,” she said.

“Don’t worry about that now,” Winter said. He knelt down and inspected her foot. “A little swollen. Could be sprained. Can you move it?”

She could. It was tight, but any pain she felt was far, far away in the distance.

A new voice startled her. “You want me to call a doctor?” It was Bo. He set some first aid supplies on a mahogany chest of drawers with modern, sleek lines. Her handbag hung from one of the drawer pulls.

Winter shook his head. “He’d just elevate it and give her more drugs, which she doesn’t need. We’ll call someone in the morning. Go ahead and alert the warehouses about the fire, in case someone tries that trick again.”

“Already called Frank. And there’s something you should know.”

Winter sighed heavily. “What is it?”

“The fortune-teller from the temple. Same time Aida’s apartment was being set on fire, Mr. Wu jumped from his apartment window and killed himself.”

The news sobered Aida for a moment. “Oh no.”

“Christ,” Winter said.

“Charlie was on shift watching him. Said he saw the man racing into his apartment like he was trying to outrun something. Charlie checked the stairwell, windows—nothing was there. Then he heard screams outside, and that’s when he went out and saw him on the sidewalk. Neighbors had already found him. Stuck around until the police came, just in case someone else showed up. Never saw anything else.”