Jenn Bennett - Bitter Spirits

Ghosts don’t talk.

“Is she your dance partner?” Aida said.

The man jerked around. My. He was enormous—several inches over six feet and with shoulders broad enough to topple small buildings as he passed. Brown hair, so dark it was almost black, was brilliantined back with a perfect part. Expensive clothes. A long, serious face, one side of which bore a large, curving scar. He blinked at Aida for a moment, gaze zipping up and down the length of her in hurried assessment, then spoke in low voice. “You can see her?”

“Oh yes.” The ghost turned to focus on the man, giving Aida a new, gorier view of the side of her head. “Ah, there’s the death wound. Did you kill her?”

“What? No, of course not. Are you the spirit medium?”

“My name’s on the sign outside.”

“Velma said you can make her . . . go away.”

“Ah.” Aida was barely able to concentrate on what the man was saying. His words were wrapped inside a deep, grand voice—the voice of a stage actor, dramatic and big and velvety.It was a voice that could probably talk you into doing anything. A siren’s call, rich as the low notes of a perfectly tuned cello.

And maybe there really was some magic in it, because all she could think about, as he stood there in his fine gray suit with his fancy silk necktie and a long black jacket that probably cost more than her entire wardrobe, was pressing her face into his crisply pressed shirt.

What a perverse thought. And one that was making her neck warm.

“Can you?”

“Pardon?”

“Get rid of her. She followed me across town.” He swept a hand through the woman’s body. “She’s not corporeal.”

“They usually aren’t.” The ghost had followed him? Highly unusual. And yet, the giant man acted as if the ghost was merely a nuisance. Most men didn’t have the good sense to be afraid when they should.

“Your breath is . . .” he started.

Yes, she knew: shocking to witness up close rather than from the safe distance of the audience when she was performing onstage. “Do you know what an aura is?”

“No clue.”

“It’s an emanation around humans—an effusion of energy. Everyone has one. Mine turns cold when a spirit or ghost is nearby. When my warm breath crosses my aura, it becomes visible—same as going outside on a cold day.”

“That’s fascinating, but can you get rid of her first and talk later?”

“No need to get snippy.”

He looked at her like she was a blasphemer who’d just disrupted church service, fire and brimstone blazing behind his eyes. “Please,” he said in a tone that was anything but polite.

Aida stared at him for a long moment, a petty but sweet revenge. Then she inhaled and shook out her hands . . . closed her eyes, pretending to concentrate. Let him think she was doing him some big favor. Well, she was , frankly. If he searched the entire city, he’d be lucky to find another person with the gift to do what she did. But it wasn’t difficult. The only effort it required was the same concentration it took to solve a quick math problem and the touch of her hand.

Pushing them over the veil was simple; calling them back took considerably more effort.

After she’d tortured the man enough, she reached out for the Chinese woman, feeling the marked change in temperature inside the phantom’s body. Aida concentrated and willed her to leave. Static crackled around her fingertips. When the chill left the air, Aida knew the ghost was gone.

She considered pretending to faint, but that seemed excessive. She did, however, let her shoulders sag dramatically, as if it would take her days to recover. A little labored breathing was icing on the cake.

“Your breath is gone.”

She cracked open one eye to find the giant’s vest in front of her. When she straightened to full height, she saw more vest, miles of it, before her gaze settled on the knot of his necktie. It was a little annoying to be forced to tilt her face up to view his. But up close, she spotted an anomaly she hadn’t noticed from a distance: something different about the eye with the scar. Best to find out who the hell this man was before she asked him about it.

“Aida Palmer,” she said, extending a hand.

He stared down at it for a moment, gaze shifting up her arm and over her face, as if he were trying to decide whether he’d catch the plague if they touched. Then his big, gloved hand swallowed hers, warm and firm. Through the fine black leather, she felt a pleasant tingle prickle her skin—an unexpected sensation far more foreign than any ghostly static.

WINTER MAGNUSSON WASN’T SUPERSTITIOUS. IF ANYONEwould’ve asked if he believed in ghosts a week ago, he might’ve laughed. He wasn’t laughing now. And after a lousy week marred by one bizarre event after another, he frankly wasn’t sure what he believed anymore.

First, a crazy old woman had accosted him on the street and shouted some hocus-pocus curse at him. After that, a specter began appearing in his study every afternoon—something no one in his household could see but him. Then, during a business meeting tonight at a bar in Chinatown, someone spiked his drink with a foul-tasting green concoction. And before he could spit it out, a prostitute with a gaping hole in her head walked right through a wall from the brothel next door.

Like the specter in his study, no one but Winter saw the dead prostitute, but she’d damn sure followed him from Chinatown to North Beach. All she did was stare at him, but until the spirit medium walked in the room, he’d been questioning his sanity.

Now he was too unsettled to question much of anything.

After the medium’s breath returned to normal, the first thing Winter noticed about her was her breasts, which were respectable. Much like looking into the sun during an eclipse, staring at her breasts would only lead to harm, so he quickly shifted his gaze upward. Slender fingers combed through blunt caramel brown bangs covering her forehead. Straight as a ruler, her sleek hair was styled into a short French bob that fell to her chin in the front and tapered to the nape of her neck. When she introduced herself and extended her hand to shake, it drew his attention to her skin, which was pale as milk and densely covered in bronze freckles. Not the kind you’d see smattered on the sun-kissed face of a child.

Freckles everywhere .

They began in a sliver of pale forehead above arched brows, gathered tightly across her nose and cheeks, lightened around her neck, then disappeared into the dipping neckline of her dress.

Winter’s gaze raked over her breasts again—still respectable—down her dress to the jagged handkerchief hem below her knees. He followed the path of the spotted skin around her calves, half hidden by pale stockings, to the T-bar heels on her feet. Freckles on her legs —how about that? For some reason, he found this wildly exciting. Increasingly lurid thoughts ballooned inside his head after he wondered exactly what percentage of her skin was speckled. Did freckles cover her arms? The curving creases where her backside ended and her legs began? Her nipples?

He pushed away the enticing reverie, shook her hand, and successfully remembered his own name. “Winter Magnusson.”

Her enormous brown eyes were ringed in kohl like some exotic Nile princess. A strange heat washed over him as their gazes connected.

“Good grief, you’re a big one, aren’t you?”

He stilled, rooted to the floor, unable to think of a response to that.

If he was big—and at four inches over six feet, he definitely was—then Miss Palmer was very small. Average height for a woman, legs on the long side, but there was something petite and slender about her frame. Graceful. She was also unusually pretty—far more attractive than the sketch of her on the poster outside Gris-Gris’s entrance.