Bitter Spirits (25 page)

AIDA BARELY SAW WINTER THE REST OF THE WEEK. A FEAT
, really—and an ironic one, at that. She was staying under his roof, sleeping in his bed, and yet she was never alone with him. He was gone when she woke every day. Sometimes he'd eat dinner at home, but by the time she'd rush off to do her show at Gris-Gris, then rush back afterward, he'd already be on his way out again. She waited up for him until the wee hours of the morning, but he never came to bed. On the third night, she found him sleeping in his mother's old bedroom; he claimed he didn't want to wake her when he got home.

Aida spent more time with Astrid, and with Bo. Good grief—even Mrs. Lin spent more time with her when she stopped by to check in and bring almond cookies.

Aida knew Winter was avoiding her. He was mad because she was leaving—maybe mad that he'd said those things to her that night they were together.
Everything I have is yours.
At the time she'd thought he meant it. Now she worried it was merely a lover's oath, said in a moment of passion, forgotten the morning after. And yet the words hounded her thoughts days later. She felt silly for letting them affect her, sillier still for
wanting
to believe them. But she couldn't help but wonder if she'd been able to say something back, would he be avoiding her now? Would she still be going to New Orleans?

She wanted to talk to him, but she didn't know how.

On her next-to-last night in the city, she followed him into the kitchen after dinner, where he was talking to Bo at a large prep table that sat in the center of the room.

Aida felt the temperature change as she stepped across the doorway; the room was humid and warm with earlier dinner preparations. “I am leaving in a day,” she announced to Winter's back. “Are you going to refuse to look at me until I walk out the door?”

His body stilled, but he didn't turn around to face her. The cook did, however—and after shelving the plate she'd been washing on a rack above the sink, she mumbled something in Swedish, then scurried out the door, wiping her hands on her apron.

Bo coughed into his fist before scratching the back of his neck. “I'll . . . just be in my room.” He gave her a sympathetic look as he passed.

The heels of her leather pumps clicked on black-and-white checkerboard tiles as she walked around the table. Steam puffed from a simmering pot on the stove behind her, where bones from their meal were being used to prepare stock for tomorrow.

“If you're angry at me, I wish you'd just come out and say it.”

He still wouldn't look at her. Just gathered the paperwork that was spread out on the table. “I've been busy.”

“Liar.”

His hand flinched. “What do you want me to say, Aida—have a great trip? It's been nice knowing you?”

“It's not easy for me, either. I'm not jumping with excitement to leave. I'm dreading it, if you want to know the truth. I don't want to go.”

Mismatched eyes slanted toward hers. “Then don't.”

“I have to.”

“Why?”

“Because it's my job. I've made a name for myself. Try to understand. I used to beg for work, now clubs are seeking
me
out. I've been given this window of success—if I squander it, I might never have it again.”

“You said yourself that you don't want to do this forever.”

“I don't. But what am I supposed to do? I just lost everything I've saved for the last few years—”

He tossed the paperwork on the table. “Oh, for the love of God, you know I'll replace that. I've probably got it in petty cash in my study.”

“Of course you do,” she said bitterly. “Because it's nothing to you. Do you have any idea how hard I struggled to save that? Years of scrimping, choosing second-best, doing without, only to have all of that brushed aside as your petty cash?”

“So I'm to be penalized because I have money?”

She waved a hand in frustration. “This isn't about money. It's about my independence—my life. Who I am. I won't sacrifice everything I've worked for on a whim.”

“I thought you lived in the moment.”

“I do—but I'm not careless. I plan for my future.”

“Then plan for it here,” he said, planting both palms on the wood as he leaned over the table and spoke intently. “The Bay is where you were born. This is your home.”

“I don't have a home.”

“Then make one.”

“I will. That's what I'm trying to do—I'm trying to save, but it's hard.”

“You know what I think?” he said, biceps straining his suit as he crossed his arms over his chest. “I think this isn't really about money at all.”

“It's about
my
money. My pride.”

“And what if you were to find out that you
do
have money. Yours.”

“I'm not looking for a handout—how many times do I have to say that?”

He started to reply, then thought better of it and shook his head. “It doesn't matter. I don't want you to make a decision to stay because of money. I want you to
want
to stay. I told you how I felt. You obviously don't share those feelings.”

“What do you know of my feelings?”

“I only know what I see when I look in your eyes. What I hear when I listen to the emotion behind your words.” He paused, then spoke in a lower tone. “What I feel when I touch you.”

Her throat tightened. “And what do all those things tell you?” She meant to sound tough, but the words came out reeking of desperation.

“They tell me that no matter what you might feel, you are too stubborn to take a risk when it comes to your heart. Because even though you accuse me of being weighted down by my past, you're the one living in yours.”

“Me?”

“I might be depressed and angry at times, but I didn't stop living after the accident. I picked myself up and kept working. I didn't let my family down. I didn't abandon my clients or my workers or my staff.”

“And that's exactly what I'm trying to do!” she argued.

“Here's the difference: I don't work because it would make my father happy. I work because
I
enjoy it—me—and because people are counting on me.”

Was he insulting her? She wasn't sure. “I enjoy what I do.”

“Do you really? You enjoy hurting yourself? You enjoy giving yourself scars?”

She struggled for a breath. Her voice cracked. “You said you don't mind them.”

“I don't and you damn well know it. But you told me you use the lancet because it's fast. You wouldn't have to use it if you were spending an hour with one client, calling up one spirit, for the same amount of money you make calling up a dozen in front of an audience.”

“I can't do that until I've saved enough money.”

“How many years will that take? Five? Ten?”

“I d-don't know.”

“But you won't accept a loan? What if it came from an outside source? People get loans from a bank every day. That would hurt your pride so much?”

Good grief, he was exasperating, trying to talk her into a trap. “This isn't about my career,” she complained. “You want me to stay for us.”

“Hell yes, I do! Guilty.”

“But if I stay, then I lose my career momentum. And how long will we last, Winter? Ask yourself that. You've already tried marriage once, and you said yourself it wasn't working, even if the accident never happened. You told me you weren't interested in anything more than a fling because of your marriage.”

“Feelings change.”

“Yes, and quickly. Because we've only known each other a month. And what if your feelings change again in another month? Sam always told me that nothing lasts, and that relationships destroy the individual. And clearly that's what you've experienced yourself with Paulina. Why would it be any different for the two of us?”

“Did you ever stop to think that Saint Sam might not know everything?”

Anger heated her cheeks as she pointed a shaking finger. “Don't you
dare
talk about him.”

“Why not? You brought him up. I'm sure he was a fine fellow, but he's dead, Aida. He's been dead for more than ten years. When are you going to stop living your life to please him?”

“He's none of your damn business!”

“Unfortunately he is my damn business, because he's come between me and the woman I love.”

Love? She didn't mean to gasp—if that's what the noise coming out of her mouth could be called. It was so loud, it sounded as though she were choking. She felt like she was. A brutal weight struck her chest and strangled her heart. She stood in place, unnaturally glued to the tile floor as if under a spell.

“That's what I thought,” Winter said. “No response. I suspect you'd let your martyrlike mission to preserve Sam's idiotic ideas overshadow anything at all you might feel, so God only knows whether you care for me in return.”

I do.
She wanted to say it out loud, but her throat wouldn't work. Her fingers were going numb. She felt . . . she felt as though she were going into shock.

If she could articulate what she felt, she'd have told him she was overwhelmed with feelings for him. But it was something she'd never experienced before, and she was terrified. She'd have told him that she wanted more than anything to stay here and be with him.

But Winter didn't give her time to manage it. “Sam was an eighteen-year-old boy who was trying to rationalize the meaning of life,” he said. “Did you ever stop to think that he may have changed his tune after a few years?”

“I'll never know, because he didn't get a few more years.”

“But you'll spend the rest of yours molding your life around a memory?”

Tears came, fast and strong. She felt like a quaking rabbit cornered by a wolf, unable to think properly. Unable to do anything but position herself to cut and run. “W-why am I the only one forced to take a risk? You want me to stay, but only as your mistress. Did you ever stop to think how I will be perceived if I stay here permanently? Everyone knows you. Everyone will know me, too, and they will talk.”

“Who cares if they do?”

“I do! It will affect me and any kind of business endeavors I'd attempt to make.”

“Bullshit. No one cares about that anymore.”

“Your parents did, or your mother wouldn't have pushed you into a marriage with someone you didn't even like.” She swiped tears from her eyes. “If Sam's memory taints my choices, then your horrible relationship with Paulina taints yours.”

Cold eyes stared at her from across the table. A muscle in his jaw jumped. He took a deep breath and looked at his hands. “Maybe Paulina just opened my eyes to what marriage really is.”

“And pray tell, what exactly did dearest Paulina teach you about marriage?”

“That it's a piece of paper—a legal document that has nothing to do with feelings or trust or affection or friendship. It's a goddamn business transaction, and I will not reduce what's between us to a court filing whose only purpose is to bind people together for the sake of money!”

“And I will not keep repeating what you already know—if you think I want money from you, then you can damn well keep believing that while I'm on the train to New Orleans!”

Rage transformed Winter's face into something demonic, the kitchen's pendant lights casting harsh, craggy shadows down the planes of his face. He slammed his fist on the table, making both it and Aida jump. As his paperwork scattered, some of it fluttering to the floor, he stormed around and stalked her. She backed up, but he kept coming until he was towering over her like a fiend rising from the abyss. Steam from the simmering stockpot whirled around his dark head.

“Go on, then.” His breath was hot on her face, his anger hot as flames licking her skin. “Get out of my house and don't fucking come back. I don't ever want to see your face again.”

His words boiled her heart right inside her chest. And the tears that spilled down her cheeks weren't enough to extinguish the damage he'd done.

“GET OUT!”

She stumbled backward, turned, and without another word, fled the room.

 • • • 

Winter slammed the heel of his palm against the porcelain icebox. Did that really happen? He could hardly believe it. He listened to Bo's voice, hearing snatches of his conversation with Aida outside in the hallway. A minute later, he heard an engine, and assumed Jonte was driving her to Gris-Gris for her last show.

The telephone rang. He let someone else answer. After a few moments, Bo slipped inside the kitchen. Winter prepared himself for the speech, but to Bo's credit, it didn't come.

“I know you might not want to hear this right now, but that was Velma on the line.”

Winter grunted. It was all he could manage.

“She was calling to say that they're reporting on the radio that two unidentified men in Chinatown were burned alive inside a black truck that misfired outside a grocer's shop. Witnesses said a couple of folks tried to help the men when the truck started burning, but the locks were stuck on both doors, and they were afraid it would explode—which it did.”