Bitter Spirits

TWENTY-THREE

WINTER CLAIMED HE WAS TOO BUSY TO SEE HER THE FOLLOWING day, chasing down this Hive tong, and talking to the last remaining bootlegger in the Big Three. Even so, she suspected part of the reason for his busy schedule had to do with punishing her for the news about New Orleans. Maybe some time apart would help him come to his senses, so she didn’t protest. Just went to work the next night, a little sad, a little anxious, and took the midnight streetcar home to an empty apartment.

After getting ready for bed, she opened her locket and thought of her brother. Before he’d left for training camp, Sam told her about something he’d once read: that people could fall in love with anyone, given the right circumstances. This meant that there was no such thing as soul mates or a One True Love for anyone, he said. Love was something people used to prop themselves up. It created dependency and distracted from learning and personal growth. It also inevitably led to loss. Therefore, one’s goal in life should be to remain single, he theorized; avoid love, avoid a lifetime of pain and suffering. The world was falling apart anyway—why would anyone want to get married and, heaven forbid, bring another child into such a mess?

For once in her adult life, Aida heard Sam’s words in her head and had doubt. This upset her on a couple of levels. It upended her world to even consider for a moment Sam might’ve been wrong. And yet, at the same time, it felt as though she was defacing his memory, wronging him from the beyond. Not for the first time, she wished she could discuss it with him. Ironic that she was a medium but couldn’t channel him. Couldn’t even find another medium to help her, because she had nothing of his to use for memento mori; the photograph she owned wasn’t in his possession long enough to act as a magnet. He would probably say this proved something about the absurdity of life.

Setting the locket on her nightstand, she slipped beneath the bedcovers and tried to block out Sam’s words. It took a long while to fall asleep, and when she did, she dreamed of Winter standing outside the incense-filled temple from the day before. Then the scene changed, and she was watching his hand slipping away from hers as she reached out the window of a departing train. When he was just a speck on the receding landscape, she sat down in an empty train car and unwrapped candy with a beehive printed on the wrapper. It tasted of honey, only far too sweet and bitter. She tried to spit it out when she saw a shadow moving across the window. Just as she turned to study it, the train burst into flames.

Even inside her sleeping mind, she distantly recognized the recurring dream. It was like an old enemy that she’d held at an arm’s length for so long, they were almost friends by default. The earthquake. The Great Fire. Holding on to Sam while the city burned to smoldering ash. Her parents out of reach.

She tried to wake herself up, but the dream was so vivid.

So real.

She came awake with a start to find that it was real! She was not dreaming.

Yellow and orange flames leapt from her apartment door, quickly spreading across the floor and over the inner wall. Aida lurched from her bed and spied movement outside her window.

Someone was racing down the fire escape.

Billows of black smoke rose from the flames. She coughed and stumbled. Her vision wavered. She tried to walk, but her knees buckled.

What was wrong with her?

“Help!” she shouted, again and again.

It was her absolute worst nightmare. The fire was consuming the small apartment. Already, the door to her bathroom was blocked by flames. The only way out was the window.

Dizzy and confused, she glanced around and despaired. She was going to lose everything.

This couldn’t be happening.

She crawled to the open closet and pulled herself up by the door handle. Her handbag was here on the back of the door, thank God, along with the the fox coat. Tearing it from its hanger, she coughed against her forearm and waved away smoke, desperately looking for Ju’s dress, but it was impossible. She couldn’t see her bed anymore, the smoke was so thick.

She shoved her arms into the coat’s sleeves and sloppily ducked onto the fire escape. The iron creaked and groaned as she zigzagged down the steps, back and forth, one story at a time, until she reached the bottom, one story above the sidewalk.

She pushed a bare heel against the drop-down ladder. It was rusted. Not budging.

A blaring bell nearly startled her off the fire escape. Someone had pulled the alarm. The girls on her floor would hear it. Mr. and Mrs. Lin—dear God! The whole building might be lost if the fire department didn’t get here quickly.

She kicked at the ladder again, surveying the streets for people. It had been after midnight when she’d fallen asleep, and she had no idea what time it was now. Two A.M.? Three? Not late enough for the milkman.

In the distance, a group of late-night revelers sauntered down Grant. She screamed for them at the top of her lungs. Had they heard her? It was too dark to tell. Yellow light pooled at the bases of the dragon lampposts dotting the sidewalk. The lights swayed as a wave of dizziness rolled over her.

“Hey!”

The people had seen her—they were rushing up the incline. More onlookers emerged from the apartment building next door. She called out to them, trying to get someone to knock on Golden Lotus’s door to wake up the Lins. The other girls living in the apartments were in danger; just because she’d gotten out didn’t mean they’d be so lucky.

The stairs creaked. She glanced up and saw flames pouring from her window. Then the iron railing made a horrible sound. Rusted bolts ripped away from the brick building.

The world fell away beneath her feet.

She blindly gripped the railing as the bottom flight of the metal stairs collapsed and crashed to the sidewalk with an explosive Boom! that rattled her bones.

Flung from the fire escape, she sailed sideways. Her back smashed against the building, knocking the wind from her lungs. Pain ripped through her body. Her vision went blinding white for several moments, then slowly pulsed back to reality.

Not dead.

A rusted iron dragon skeleton groaned in front of her as a cloud of dust swirled from its fallen carcass.

She inspected herself. The pain receded, which was odd. She should be really hurting, but all she felt was numb, physically and emotionally. Her tongue darted out and swept the side of her mouth, tasting blood and sweetness and that awful honeyed bitterness from her dream.

Strange hands lifted Aida to her feet, then steadied her wobbling. Her foot was bleeding.

Cantonese and English erupted around her as a crowd gathered. She assured people that she was okay, which might not have been entirely true. She was so dreadfully sleepy and dizzy. It was all she could do to stand without aid.

“Miss Palmer, Miss Palmer!”

Aida turned to see Mrs. Lin’s tiny figure racing toward her in a housecoat and slippers, her tightly wound hair now tumbling loose to her waist.

“Are you badly hurt?”

“I’m fine.” Aida’s handbag still dangled around her wrist. A small miracle.

“What happened?”

“Someone came up the fire escape and set fire to my room.”

“Oh, no, no, no—this is terrible.”

“I broke the fire escape on the way down. I’m sorry for that and the fire.”

Mrs. Lin shook her head dismissively. “All the girls are out. We have insurance. I’m the one who should be apologizing to you—I should have done something about the fire escape.”

“You couldn’t have known.”

“Oh, but I did,” she said, distressed. “My mother warned me to repair the fire escape last time you channeled her for me. I should’ve listened.”

Wailing sirens announced two fire trucks. Everyone craned their necks to watch the men setting up wooden ladders to reach what was left of the fire escape so they could drag a hose up to the window. Across the street, Aida leaned against a brick wall, half dazed, watching the fog-capped neighborhood fill with cars and gawkers.

Police arrived. Mrs. Lin dragged an officer to Aida, who took down her story with the nub of a worn pencil: no, she didn’t see a face, nor did she know how the fire was started or why. Someone else chimed in, saying he’d spied two men jumping from the fire escape into the bed of a truck that idled at the curb, but it took off before he could make out the model.

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.”