Bitter Spirits
Page 67

“Magnusson,” the man whispered.
They held each other’s gaze as discordant sounds from the temple seeped under the heavy canvas of the tent. “You drank the Gu but are unaffected?” The old man was genuinely surprised.
“Another magic worker removed the curse.”
Shadows clung to bags of loose skin beneath his eyes. “I should’ve never taken that job.”
“You really shouldn’t have.” Winter moved his jacket aside and watched Wu’s gaze settle on the gun strapped next to his ribs.
The old man gave him a dismissive wave. “I lost my wife ten years ago, and with her passing, the will to live, so threatening me is futile. I am looking forward to the afterlife far too much to worry about dying. Save the violence for someone younger who is still under the illusion that there is happiness on this plane.”
If anyone understood apathy born of grief, Winter did. And when he pictured harboring that kind of hopelessness for an entire decade, he almost pitied the old man. But not enough to excuse him. “Your problems are your own. I just want information.”
“All you had to do was ask—I have no loyalties. What would you like to know?”
“Everything.”
Wu leaned back in his seat. “I was hired to do a job, and was told that an anonymous party was interested in ensuring that you do not work anymore. That you have a family history of mental instability—that you had inherited your father’s fragile mind. I was asked to make a potion that would draw ghosts to you and make you crazy.”
He hadn’t inherited his father’s mental illness. The doctors said it could be genetic, but no one else in his family had showed any signs of it. His father had been ill since he was young man—Winter’s mother knew about it when she married him. It just didn’t get out of hand until a few years ago, when the frenzied episodes worsened.
“So you are telling me that someone paid you to mix up a poison that would draw ghosts to me because they believed this would drive me insane,” Winter said. “And when the poison didn’t work, you were hired to conduct additional spells to draw ghosts to me with coins and buttons.”
“I just found out from you that my Gu was unsuccessful. I was hired to make the poison, nothing more. That is my speciality.”
“What about Parducci? You make any poison for him?”
He looked at Bo and began speaking rapid Cantonese.
“He doesn’t know Parducci. Says he was hired by an old Chinese man in May,” Bo interpreted. “He came to his tent, gave no name. Asked for the poison and paid him half up front, half when he came back to pick it up two weeks later.”
“Talk to me, not him,” Winter said to the old man, patience wearing thin.
“He mentioned your name specifically—no one else’s,” he replied in English. “The poison is custom-brewed for one individual. Can’t be used on everyone.”
If that was true, and Wu was a hired gun, then it stood to reason other magic workers were being hired for their specialties. Maybe whatever had been done to Parducci was a different kind of magic.
“In early June the man who hired me collected the Gu I made for you,” Mr. Wu added. “Haven’t seen him since.”
“The man gave no name at all? Surely you must have some idea who he was. What did he look like?”
“Western clothes. Maybe fifty, sixty years old, maybe younger. Average height and weight. Nothing special about him. He had a forgettable face and he never gave a name. Apart from what you already know about the poison, he was insistent that the Gu not kill you directly. Some recipes for Gu are used for other purposes—sometimes to kill. He said I must be absolutely sure it wasn’t deadly. It was only meant to cause a nervous breakdown.”
This just didn’t make sense. It was cowardly. Passive.
“He claimed he was working for someone with a higher cause,” Wu said.
“What kind of cause?” Aida asked, speaking for the first time since they’d arrived.
“One that would liberate Chinatown from the Gwai-lo.”
Aida’s brows knitted. “Who are the Gwai-lo?”
“White men,” Bo said quietly.
Winter shook his head. “Nonsense. I have no business in Chinatown.”
Wu spoke in a hushed voice. “I don’t know for certain, but I think they mean to liberate Chinatown from the entire city. A quiet rebellion, the man told me. Take power not by force, but by controlling the money.”
A quiet rebellion. And one of the easiest ways to control money these days was to control booze. Winter thought of all the booze problems in Chinatown . . . St. Laurent getting nabbed by the Feds in the raid. And now Parducci. Sweat bloomed over Winter’s forehead. “Have you heard of a secret mystical tong?”
The man shook his head.
Winter pressed further. “One that’s headed up by a purported necromancer?”
Wu’s eyes narrowed. Bo rattled off a longer explanation in Cantonese.
“I’ve never heard of such a thing,” Wu said. A lie. Winter had seen something in the old man’s eyes when Bo was talking. “I’m sorry. I’ve already told you more than I should have.” Before Winter could protest, the man was scribbling something on the back of one his fortune cards. He slid it across the table. It read: the Hive.
Winter’s mind was jolted back to something Bo had told him back when all of this started. He’d said that a tong leader who dealt in booze had died locked in a room filled with bees. A chill raced down Winter’s spine. “Where can I find them?”