Jenn Bennett - Bitter Spirits

Doctor Yip finally answered her, speaking for the first time since she’d gotten inside the car. “We are going somewhere Mr. Magnusson will never find you. You might call it my little nest.” He smiled.

“You are the Beekeeper?”

“Some call me that.”

“That afternoon we came to your shop—”

“Oh yes. That was quite a surprise. For a moment, I thought you’d uncovered my identity. Very surreal to see Mr. Magnusson standing in front of me. Providence, as you say here in the States, was smiling down on me that day.”

“These two were working for you?”

“Not when they came into my shop that afternoon.” The herbalist crossed his legs, pushing himself closer as he settled an arm on the back of the seat like they were old friends. “But Ju-Ray Wong is a weak boss who is uninterested in expanding his territory. After he banished the boys from his tong, I convinced him to work for me.”

“Because you are going to take over Chinatown by controlling the liquor supply?”

“I was chosen by celestial deities to lead a quiet rebellion. My shen spirits brought me across the ocean from Hong Kong to save my people from the Gwai-lo. The Chinese have been treated like slaves in this country, captured like pigs, forced to build your railroads. After the Great Fire, the city tried to move Chinatown and seize our land, and when we resisted, you kept us in cages on Angel Island, separating our families for years.”

“I didn’t. And you were in Hong Kong.”

“But my brother was not. He was detained on Angel Island for almost a decade before he died. He was jailed for no crime, but they treated him like a criminal.”

Aida certainly could empathize with grief for a lost sibling, but she didn’t lash out and kill people for revenge when Sam died.

Yip rocked his foot. “I am here now, ready to avenge my brother’s life and lead my people to reclaim what is theirs. But I will do it my way, by my own creed. My mission is a peaceful one, because the shen spirits have given me a prophecy: I will help my people gain control of the city without spilling one single drop of blood.”

It took several moments for this to sink in. Winter’s hauntings, the “voice of God” telling the bootlegger to turn himself in, the tipoff for the raid, all the unrest in Chinatown . . . her fire. And the way Yip had gotten upset when these two thugs had broken into his shop—he’d shouted at them not to spill blood, claiming his shop was holy.

“I’m a peaceful man, a healer—not a killer,” the herbalist said. “I have no blood debt on my hands. I am clean.”

“Just because you didn’t pull the trigger doesn’t mean you’re not guilty.”

He gave her a patient smile. “Death is part of war, Miss Palmer. That is hard to hear when you are on the losing side.”

“And on whose side are the tong leaders in Chinatown? Haven’t you halted their business?”

He rocked one bee slipper near her shins. “They were given a chance to be on the winning side, but they all chose money over honor. And regarding guilt, every soldier knows that there are both good and bad ways to kill. I am taking the higher path by avoiding death if possible. And if death is necessary, I arrange for the killing to be done by the victim’s own hands.”

“Like the fortune-teller?”

“Suicide was the only honorable option. Mr. Wu violated an oath of silence and betrayed his own people to the enemy.”

“And what about me, huh? That fire nearly killed me. How is that not on your hands?”

He sighed. “The fire was to scare you away from Mr. Magnusson. I only found out about the laudanum after the fact. They took it upon themselves to stray outside the guidelines of my orders and took things too far. Ah, look—we are almost home.”

The car slowed as they headed past a sign for Hunter’s Point, then another for a dry dock, where several massive ships sat inside channels, moored on land by networks of planks and stilts. “What is this?”

“Where unseaworthy ships are repaired. The rusting hulk in front of us is the ship that brought me over from Hong Kong. Unfortunately for the Royal TransPacific Steamship Company, the Jade Princess would not be able to make the return trip to China, because a strange and terrible fever struck her crew several days before entering port, and during that time her boiler went defective. The repair expenses were too high for the owners to manage, and permit problems seemed to plague them. Luckily I was there to pay the dry-docking costs, so she was signed over to me.”

In the moonlight reflecting from the dark bay water in the distance, the beached passenger ship looked like a great derelict beast. Faint lights flickered inside a couple of the port windows; someone was inside.

Ju’s former employees hauled her out of the car and shoved her toward a locked wooden fence that guarded entry to the dry dock. A foghorn wailed in the distance.

“We are quite invisible out here,” Doctor Yip said as he unlocked the gate, the planks of which were covered in Chinese characters and strange symbols. “You and I have similar talents, Miss Palmer. Rather infuriating for me, as you ruined my hard work. But now that I have you contained, my efforts with Mr. Magnusson will be more successful. And I have something very special in store for him. Would you like to see what a necromancer can do?”

WINTER STOOD IN THE MIDDLE OF DOCTOR YIP’S SHOP, GLASS crunching below his shoes from where he’d busted the door open. His stomach was knotted, his chest tight with a dull, pulsing terror.

The shop was deserted.

Not a damn piece of paper with another address or phone number. No paperwork whatsoever: the desk in the back office was completely empty. The shop itself looked as it did when Aida and he first came—minus the broken door.

And the row of glass jars behind the counter, which Winter had smashed with the register.

He now stared at the dark spot on the counter where the register had been. A twenty-dollar bill sat there, both sides painted with red symbols.

“See if Bo’s done checking the alley, would you?” Winter said to Jonte. The driver stepped outside the shop and came back with his assistant, who’d met them there with a crew of men after Winter had called him from Gris-Gris.

“You know what any of this Chinese means?” Winter asked.

Bo strode to the counter and laid his gun down to examine it. “Black magic.”

“I know that much.” He couldn’t help but wonder if this was the same bill he’d given Yip that afternoon. How many twenties would an herbalist get? Not many.

Then again, Yip was no herbalist.

Winter flipped open a matchbook, struck a match, and lit the bill on fire.

The rest of his men met them out front after canvassing the neighbors, which included an opium den, a locked warehouse, and one small well of apartments. No one knew where the herbalist lived. One lady said a black car dropped him off and picked him up every day.

He forced himself to stay calm. He would not think of the fire in her apartment, or how she’d been drugged. He would not think of what atrocities a kidnapped woman could be forced to suffer in the hands of a man who was trying to liberate Chinatown.

He only thought of what he’d do to that man when he got his hands on him.

Focusing on that, he had Jonte drive back home to keep an eye on Astrid while Bo drove him to Golden Lotus with his crew of men following. But after waking the Lins at an ungodly hour and scaring them half to death, all he discovered was that Mrs. Lin had never asked the herbalist where he lived.

“Is Miss Palmer in trouble?” she asked, gripping her robe closed as she stood in the apartment stairwell next to the restaurant, Mr. Lin standing over her shoulder.

“I think Yip is the one who had the fire set in her room and now he’s taken her.”

“Oh no. This is my fault,” she said in a pained voice. “He seemed like such a nice man, but I should have never sent her to see him.”

“Don’t blame yourself. He’s after me, not her.”

His fault, but he would fix it. He would not lose her. Not if he had to destroy half the city finding her.

He could spare a man to watch Golden Lotus, make sure they wouldn’t be left vulnerable. Mrs. Lin said she’d start calling her friends and find out if anyone knew anything about Doctor Yip. Doubtful, but Winter wasn’t going to discount anything at this point.

He asked the Lins to call his house and leave a message for him there if they heard anything, then walked out into the chilly night air with Bo to rejoin the rest of his men.

“We should go to Ju,” Bo said. “If the men who attacked you at Yip’s shop were patrolling Ju’s territory, then their replacements might be working the same area. They might’ve seen something.”

“If so, that’s great, but I’m not going to sit around waiting for information while Yip does God only knows what to Aida. We’ll drive to Ju’s, but he’s not going to be happy, because I’m going to ask him to call all the tong leaders together for a meeting. If they want to take back control of their booze, they’re going to have to help me find Aida.” He stopped in front of the car. “Doctor Yip seems to want a war. He’s got one.”

Aida entered the ship on a wide gangplank. The deck was unassuming and quiet, the picture of disuse. The inside was another story. The first-class entrance, a large two-story open room with a staircase, was filled with wooden crates of alcohol—row after row of teetering stacks, some stamped with recognizable brands, others simply marked GIN. Half of them were painted with Chinese characters.