Jenn Bennett - Bitter Spirits

“Holy shit,” Bo murmured, jerking his head away from the potion.

“I won’t lie—it’ll taste terrible,” Velma said to Winter in a calm voice as she sat on the stool. “But it will remove your hex.”

“Want . . . doctor,” he answered between shivers.

“No regular doctor can save you now, you understand?” Velma said firmly, snatching his chin between her fingers and turning his face toward hers. “ I am your doctor—you are my patient. I will heal you. Drink.”

Winter hesitated, his face pinching from the ghastly scent of the tea, teeth clicking together from the cold. “Iffit kills me—”

“Then I’ll get Miss Palmer to bring you back from the beyond to chat as often as you like. Now, open up and drink.”

He obeyed. His face was rigid as she held the cup for him, chanting a prayer. Brown rivulets leaked from the corners of his lips. Aida thought of the crunch from the mortar and pestle and couldn’t bear to watch him drink. She clamped a hand over her mouth.

He gasped in pain—he was trying to keep it down, gagging. Bo turned around, hands on his knees, breathing heavily.

“There you go,” Velma praised.

Winter stilled. His eyes rolled back into his head, but instead of white, they were swarming with black lines, moving and vibrating like a spiderweb being shaken by a fly. He looked possessed. Aida had never witnessed anything like this—and she’d seen a lot of strange things in her line of work.

Bo gaped at Winter with horror-stricken eyes. “He’s not breathing. What have you done, witch?”

“He’s really not breathing,” Aida seconded.

“Wait!” Velma shouted.

They all stood stock-still. Watched. Waited. Winter wasn’t moving, but the water was. It bubbled up, the pink hue turning darker . . . blackening. Something moved within it, shifting and stirring.

Suddenly the surface rose like boiling water inside a pot. It churned and roiled, and up from the depths, tiny black shadows wriggled and danced, thousands and thousands of them.

Everyone jumped back. Disjointed shrieks of terror reverberated through the bathroom.

Winter’s body sagged into the mass of black shadows as if he were melting. His limp arms hung over the sides. Velma called his name, but he was unresponsive.

As his head sank below the surface, the shadows rose until they spilled over the sides of the tub. But when they hit the black-and-white checkerboard of Velma’s floor, they just . . . disappeared. As if the entire gruesome spectacle was a mirage. Might’ve been; magic often was.

Winter remained underwater, unmoving.

Aida’s heart drummed a crazed rhythm. A silent scream welled up inside her.

The foamy bathwater calmed and lightened to pink. Then, like a submarine surfacing, Winter’s head shot out above the water. Eyes wide and clear, he gulped air and began coughing.

“You see?” Velma said triumphantly as Bo and her men rushed to pull him out of the water. “I told you I was a doctor.”

Aida exhaled a long-held breath as the men hauled Winter onto his feet and covered his shaking body in towels. He looked exhausted and defeated, but he could stand. He gave Velma a pitiful, grateful look, as if that was all he could manage.

“My pleasure,” Velma said as she turned to exit the room. “Get him dressed and leave the bathwater alone. I’ll need to throw it away at a crossroads and cleanse this room later.”

Aida stepped in the hallway with Velma and shut the bathroom door with a shaking hand. “Is he really going to be okay?”

Velma nodded. “He’ll feel better after a good rest. Hopefully he won’t be drawing any more ghosts . . . though I can’t do anything about him seeing them if he stumbles on any around the city. His eyes are open now—no fixing that.”

Tough break, but Aida had little sympathy. She’d been able to see ghosts since she was a small child. If she could live with it, surely a big, tough man like him could do the same.

The conjurer stared at the empty cup in her hands. Traces of antidote ringed the bottom. She turned it upside down on the saucer. “Once he’s back to normal, he’ll need to track down the person responsible. Looks to me like he’s got some enemies in your neighborhood.”

A FEW HOURS AFTER LEAVING GRIS-GRIS, WINTER SAT IN Aleather armchair in his study, staring out a long set of windows that overlooked twinkling city lights ending at the bay. A splendid view. One of the best in the city. He never grew tired of it, and right now it was a small comfort he needed in order to ground himself after the evening’s unsettling events.

The hot tea his housekeeper, Greta, had brought up was doing little to take the chill off his bones. He was slowly feeling normal again, but he couldn’t get the taste of Velma’s satanic brew out of his mouth.

Once he got his hands around the party responsible for what happened tonight, he was going to choke the life out of them or break their neck trying. But he had his work cut out to find the culprit: all they had was the chop mark of the sorcerer who’d issued the spell, scribbled among the arcane symbols on the paper left on the table when he was poisoned.

Black Star.

Bo had never heard the name; maybe someone around Chinatown would know it.

In the meantime, Winter wouldn’t be imbibing any more strange drinks. And there was still the matter of the resident ghost inside his study. “Maybe she can get rid of it, too,” Winter said, but he didn’t really have the ghost at the top of his mind. He was thinking of the way the spirit medium had looked at him in Velma’s bathroom. That look was telling. Maybe she didn’t find his scarred face attractive, but she was interested on some sort of base level. No virgin blush on that curious face of hers. No one had looked at him like that in years. Perhaps he’d been hallucinating under the poison’s dank influence.

Leaning against the window frame nearby, Bo stuffed his hands in his pockets and said nothing for several moments. “She’s witty.”

“She’s got a sharp tongue. That’s always trouble.”

“Trouble’s better than demure and boring. And I’ve never seen someone with so many freckles. Kind of exotic, don’t you think? Looks a bit like Louise Brooks.”

“Far better-looking than Brooks.”

“Same big brown eyes,” Bo argued.

“Mmm. Bigger, I think. Should probably ask her to come up here.”

“You mentioned that already. Are you sure you’re all right?”

Winter felt himself becoming irritated. “Considering what I’ve been through tonight, I think I’m feeling pretty damn good. I won’t pretend to understand what happened to me tonight, but somebody’s screwing with me, and I don’t want to see another damn ghost again if I can help it. Miss Palmer is an expert on spiritual matters, and I want her to come out here and get rid of it. What’s wrong with that?”

“Nothing.”

“That’s right, nothing.”

Bo gazed out the window. “She should come out here because she’s an expert.”

“Exactly.”

“And her eyes are bigger than Louise Brooks’s, as well as her breasts.”

Damn that impudent kid and his smart mouth. But he’d made his point, and now Winter was angry at himself for saying too much, maybe a little embarrassed as well. He also didn’t like Bo noticing her. At all.

“Might take some convincing to get her out here,” Bo said. “Maybe you should go call on her . Apologize for flaunting your balls in her face and nearly smashing her to death.”

He hazily remembered her last words to him— I’d rather be horsewhipped —and wondered if she’d already had her fill of him. She’d not only seen him naked; she’d seen him weak and sick and delusional. God only knew what she must think of him. His mood blackened.