Grave Phantoms

by Jenn Bennett

  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.

  TWENTY-SIX

  Bo smelled the ocean before they pushed him out of the car. They’d blindfolded him, and whoever had brained him with the pistol had knocked him hard enough to make the world go sideways. Blood had begun to crust over his ear, and he winced as they jostled him onto his feet and shoved him forward.

  He did his best to fight the throbbing headache that threatened to obliterate rational thought and concentrated on his surroundings. Traffic in the distance, and a lot of it, but the sound was muffled by . . . buildings, perhaps? And boats. He heard rigging and groaning hulls and mooring ropes. They were at a pier, but it wasn’t his pier. He could tell by the feel of the boards upon which they were now shuffling. Too much bounce.

  “Where’s Astrid?” he said, his voice sounding weak and not quite right. His lip was split. It hurt like hell to talk.

  The two thugs who were shoving him along, hands gripping his arms, guns pointed into his back, didn’t answer. But when he asked again, louder, one of them punched him on the back of his head, and somewhere under the fresh jolt of pain, he heard Max’s coughing.

  “You do what I say, you just might get to see her again,” the man said. “Can’t promise what condition she’ll be in, though.”

  “You fucking piece of garbage—”

  “Save your breath,” Max said. “I need you cognizant, and if the boys have to hit you again, I’m afraid they may cause permanent damage.”

  Cold Pacific air howled in his ear and whipped though his clothes as Bo was hustled up a gangway and shoved onto the deck of a boat. He smelled a particular bright cedar scent and had a good idea they’d boarded the Plumed Serpent. While they crossed the deck, he wondered if Mr. Haig at the radio station had anything to do with him and Astrid getting captured, or if someone at the dance hall had recognized them. Maybe Max himself had been upstairs, looking down the peephole, when they’d visited the carousel booth. That thought made him feel a little sick . . . or perhaps that was only his head injury.

  “Step up,” one of the thugs told him, but not soon enough.

  He stumbled up several stairs, crossed a threshold, and was pushed into a cabin.

  His arms were wrenched back painfully. Hands bound with rope. And then he was tied to what felt like a pipe on the wall and left in silence. Bo tried to pull himself loose, blindly feeling out his environment with his knees, feet, elbows, searching for anything. All he found were a couple of walls, a chair bolted to the floor a few feet in front of him, and the boat rocking beneath him. They hadn’t left port, and from the layout of the cabin—a small room, up a set of stairs—he was almost certain they’d stuck him in the boat’s pilothouse.

  He ignored his instinct to call out for Astrid. Never show weakness around people who can hurt you. That’s what Winter had taught him. Bo didn’t want them torturing Astrid to get a rise out of him. And he couldn’t let his brain think about what they might do—what they could be doing to her right now!—or he’d go mad. He felt the raving panic battering his mind already. Sweat bloomed across his back and beaded his forehead. He wouldn’t be any good to her if he allowed himself to crack.

  She would fight back, he told himself. That wasn’t much, but it was something. She was smart and savvy, and she didn’t fall apart under pressure. He heard her voice saying I am a Magnusson, chin high, foxlike eyes narrowed, and willed her to summon that defiance now.

  The only thing that gave him peace was the dark confidence that he would kill every last one of these people the second he got free. Bo was not clean of spirit. He’d taken life before, twice, in self-defense. The most recent one was a bootlegging deal that went sour—the man had pulled a gun on him—but the first time when he was spying for Winter. When he was sixteen. That was a savage killing, and he’d been an animal when he’d done it. No matter that he’d known in his heart that he would’ve been dead himself if he hadn’t, the weight of it had taken months to purge from his head.

  Maybe he’d never really gotten over it completely.

  But he knew what he was capable of. And he would do it again. To get her back. To protect her. To avenge her. He would do it without hesitation. And focusing on this made the panic manageable.

  A door slammed. Bo sat up as two sets of footfalls approached.

  “We’re going to untie you now,” a British-accented voice said. Mad Hammett. “If you try anything funny, it’ll be taken out on the girl. Understand?”

  “Where is she?” Bo demanded.

  “Close enough that if I press a button, she’ll be harmed—and that’s all you need to know right now. And in case you haven’t noticed, that’s a gun on your head.”

  Blood rushed to Bo’s hands as the rope was cut. He was hauled to his feet and pushed forward before being told to sit. The blindfold was removed. Bo blinked into the light. He sat in front of the ship’s wheel. An L-shaped wooden dash with a radio and navigational instruments curved around to his right, and before him, slanted windows looked out over the yacht’s bow.

  He tried to gauge where they were docked—somewhere on the northern shore of the city—but it was hard to concentrate when a gun was prodding the back of his head and a man with half a face was coughing up blood at his side.

  Max leaned against the ship’s wheel. “This is what’s going to happen. You will pilot us to this location,” he said, pointing to a map on the dash. A spot in the ocean was circled, and next to it, a pair of coordinates written in dark ink. It took Bo’s eyes time to focus, but he shortly comprehended the location. It was north of the city, off the coast. Near the Magnusson’s Marin County warehouse and the lighthouse . . .

  Where Captain Haig had taken the yacht the night of its disappearance a year ago.

  “Why do you need me?” Bo asked. “I thought pirates were sailors. Or has it been so long, you’ve forgotten your way around a boat?”

  Something like surprise flickered over Max’s peeling face, but he looked too weary to care. “Start the engine before I change my mind and throw you overboard.”

  Bo considered his options. Astrid was on the boat. That was all that mattered right now. She was here, and he would get to her. Somehow. He just needed to get his hands on the gun prodding his skull.

  After flipping on the blowers, he managed to start the engine and get his bearings. He also sneaked a look around the pilothouse. It was a cramped space, hardly big enough for all three men to stretch out. Apart from the dash and the wheel, there was a narrow berth to his left and, next to it, the door they’d entered, which led down to the deck. Nothing that could be used as a weapon. He eyed the headset hanging from a hook on the dash. He could radio the Coast Guard.

  “Cord’s cut,” Max said, nodding to the dangling wire that wasn’t connected to the transmitter. “So don’t get any Mayday ideas. Just get us moving. The lines have been cast.”

  “I want to see Astrid.”

  Max tapped the map. “You pilot us here, I just might let you do that.”

  Bo checked the gauges, turned on the fog lights, and pulled past a line of buoys, away from the dock. The yacht was big and moved like a slow beast as it cut through the Bay. It would take a half hour or more to get to where they were going. And once they got there, then what?

  “How old are you?” Bo asked.

  Max coughed into his hand. “I was born in 1491 in Cornwall,” he said, his accent changing—sounding awfully close to Mad Hammett’s. “I see that doesn’t shock you. I’m not sure how you found out about us, but it doesn’t really matter. Once I get my vigor back, you and Goldilocks will no longer be my problem.”

  “How are you going to get it back?” Bo asked.

  “The Sibyl will pull it out of her.”

  “Sibyl?”

  “Our priestess.”

  “Mrs. Cushing,” Bo said.

  Max didn’t confirm or deny it. He just peered out acros
s the water, where the fog lights shone over the surface as they headed away from the northern coast of the city. Bo could navigate this route in his sleep. His eyes flicked around the pilothouse, still looking for something—anything—to use to his advantage, and settled on the radio headset and its dangling cord.

  He continued talking to Max, less out of curiosity, and more to keep the man’s attention occupied. “If your turquoise idol is Aztec,” Bo mused, thinking back to the Wicked Wenches’ story, “and you were a Cornish pirate, then I’m guessing you were under the French pirate’s command—Jean Fleury?”

  “Very good,” Max said, sounding genuinely impressed. “Attacking those galleons changed my life. I could’ve died that day. Instead, I had the fortune to raid the hold where they were keeping the Sibyl. Freeing her turned Max Nance’s destiny around.”

  “How did you end up here in San Francisco?”

  Max shrugged. “We settled in France until the Revolution. Things became too dangerous. Fleury was nearly killed by a mob.”

  “The closest you all ever came to dying, wasn’t it, Grandfer?” Mad Hammett spoke up for the first time, his voice floating over Bo’s head.

  Grandfer? “Are you related?” Bo asked, not seeing the resemblance.

  Max’s gaze connected with Bo’s. A wariness behind his eyes softened to apathy. “You won’t be around to tell anyone,” he said, more to the view outside the Bay than to Bo. “And who would believe you anyway? No, this is the closest we all came to dying. Because if I go, we all go. Stand or fall together. So thanks to you and your girl snooping around in matters that didn’t concern you, we’re all here tonight.”

  “If you touch her—” Bo started.

  The muzzle of the gun dug into his scalp.

  “I just want my vigor back,” Max said. “And if you want to speak with her again, you’ll keep us on course and do it with your mouth shut. Because—”