Grave Phantoms (25 page)

Bo smelled the ocean before they pushed him out of the car. They'd blindfolded him, and whoever had brained him with the pistol had knocked him hard enough to make the world go sideways. Blood had begun to crust over his ear, and he winced as they jostled him onto his feet and shoved him forward.

He did his best to fight the throbbing headache that threatened to obliterate rational thought and concentrated on his surroundings. Traffic in the distance, and a lot of it, but the sound was muffled by . . . buildings, perhaps? And boats. He heard rigging and groaning hulls and mooring ropes. They were at a pier, but it wasn't his pier. He could tell by the feel of the boards upon which they were now shuffling. Too much bounce.

“Where's Astrid?” he said, his voice sounding weak and not quite right. His lip was split. It hurt like hell to talk.

The two thugs who were shoving him along, hands gripping his arms, guns pointed into his back, didn't answer. But when he asked again, louder, one of them
punched him on the back of his head, and somewhere under the fresh jolt of pain, he heard Max's coughing.

“You do what I say, you just might get to see her again,” the man said. “Can't promise what condition she'll be in, though.”

“You fucking piece of garbage—”

“Save your breath,” Max said. “I need you cognizant, and if the boys have to hit you again, I'm afraid they may cause permanent damage.”

Cold Pacific air howled in his ear and whipped though his clothes as Bo was hustled up a gangway and shoved onto the deck of a boat. He smelled a particular bright cedar scent and had a good idea they'd boarded the
Plumed Serpent
. While they crossed the deck, he wondered if Mr. Haig at the radio station had anything to do with him and Astrid getting captured, or if someone at the dance hall had recognized them. Maybe Max himself had been upstairs, looking down the peephole, when they'd visited the carousel booth. That thought made him feel a little sick . . . or perhaps that was only his head injury.

“Step up,” one of the thugs told him, but not soon enough.

He stumbled up several stairs, crossed a threshold, and was pushed into a cabin.

His arms were wrenched back painfully. Hands bound with rope. And then he was tied to what felt like a pipe on the wall and left in silence. Bo tried to pull himself loose, blindly feeling out his environment with his knees, feet, elbows, searching for anything. All he found were a couple of walls, a chair bolted to the floor a few feet in front of him, and the boat rocking beneath him. They hadn't left port, and from the layout of the cabin—a small room, up a set of stairs—he was almost certain they'd stuck him in the boat's pilothouse.

He ignored his instinct to call out for Astrid. Never show weakness around people who can hurt you. That's what Winter had taught him. Bo didn't want them torturing Astrid to get a rise out of him. And he couldn't let his brain
think about what they might do—
what they could be doing to her right now!
—or he'd go mad. He felt the raving panic battering his mind already. Sweat bloomed across his back and beaded his forehead. He wouldn't be any good to her if he allowed himself to crack.

She would fight back, he told himself. That wasn't much, but it was something. She was smart and savvy, and she didn't fall apart under pressure. He heard her voice saying
I am a Magnusson
, chin high, foxlike eyes narrowed, and willed her to summon that defiance now.

The only thing that gave him peace was the dark confidence that he would kill every last one of these people the second he got free. Bo was not clean of spirit. He'd taken life before, twice, in self-defense. The most recent one was a bootlegging deal that went sour—the man had pulled a gun on him—but the first time when he was spying for Winter. When he was sixteen. That was a savage killing, and he'd been an animal when he'd done it. No matter that he'd known in his heart that he would've been dead himself if he hadn't, the weight of it had taken months to purge from his head.

Maybe he'd never really gotten over it completely.

But he knew what he was capable of. And he would do it again. To get her back. To protect her. To avenge her. He would do it without hesitation. And focusing on this made the panic manageable.

A door slammed. Bo sat up as two sets of footfalls approached.

“We're going to untie you now,” a British-accented voice said. Mad Hammett. “If you try anything funny, it'll be taken out on the girl. Understand?”

“Where is she?” Bo demanded.

“Close enough that if I press a button, she'll be harmed—and that's all you need to know right now. And in case you haven't noticed, that's a gun on your head.”

Blood rushed to Bo's hands as the rope was cut. He was hauled to his feet and pushed forward before being told to sit. The blindfold was removed. Bo blinked into the light.
He sat in front of the ship's wheel. An L-shaped wooden dash with a radio and navigational instruments curved around to his right, and before him, slanted windows looked out over the yacht's bow.

He tried to gauge where they were docked—somewhere on the northern shore of the city—but it was hard to concentrate when a gun was prodding the back of his head and a man with half a face was coughing up blood at his side.

Max leaned against the ship's wheel. “This is what's going to happen. You will pilot us to this location,” he said, pointing to a map on the dash. A spot in the ocean was circled, and next to it, a pair of coordinates written in dark ink. It took Bo's eyes time to focus, but he shortly comprehended the location. It was north of the city, off the coast. Near the Magnusson's Marin County warehouse and the lighthouse . . .

Where Captain Haig had taken the yacht the night of its disappearance a year ago.

“Why do you need me?” Bo asked. “I thought pirates were sailors. Or has it been so long, you've forgotten your way around a boat?”

Something like surprise flickered over Max's peeling face, but he looked too weary to care. “Start the engine before I change my mind and throw you overboard.”

Bo considered his options. Astrid was on the boat. That was all that mattered right now. She was here, and he would get to her. Somehow. He just needed to get his hands on the gun prodding his skull.

After flipping on the blowers, he managed to start the engine and get his bearings. He also sneaked a look around the pilothouse. It was a cramped space, hardly big enough for all three men to stretch out. Apart from the dash and the wheel, there was a narrow berth to his left and, next to it, the door they'd entered, which led down to the deck. Nothing that could be used as a weapon. He eyed the headset hanging from a hook on the dash. He could radio the Coast Guard.

“Cord's cut,” Max said, nodding to the dangling wire
that wasn't connected to the transmitter. “So don't get any Mayday ideas. Just get us moving. The lines have been cast.”

“I want to see Astrid.”

Max tapped the map. “You pilot us here, I just might let you do that.”

Bo checked the gauges, turned on the fog lights, and pulled past a line of buoys, away from the dock. The yacht was big and moved like a slow beast as it cut through the Bay. It would take a half hour or more to get to where they were going. And once they got there, then what?

“How old are you?” Bo asked.

Max coughed into his hand. “I was born in 1491 in Cornwall,” he said, his accent changing—sounding awfully close to Mad Hammett's. “I see that doesn't shock you. I'm not sure how you found out about us, but it doesn't really matter. Once I get my vigor back, you and Goldilocks will no longer be my problem.”

“How are you going to get it back?” Bo asked.

“The Sibyl will pull it out of her.”

“Sibyl?”

“Our priestess.”

“Mrs. Cushing,” Bo said.

Max didn't confirm or deny it. He just peered out across the water, where the fog lights shone over the surface as they headed away from the northern coast of the city. Bo could navigate this route in his sleep. His eyes flicked around the pilothouse, still looking for something—anything—to use to his advantage, and settled on the radio headset and its dangling cord.

He continued talking to Max, less out of curiosity, and more to keep the man's attention occupied. “If your turquoise idol is Aztec,” Bo mused, thinking back to the Wicked Wenches' story, “and you were a Cornish pirate, then I'm guessing you were under the French pirate's command—Jean Fleury?”

“Very good,” Max said, sounding genuinely impressed. “Attacking those galleons changed my life. I could've died that day. Instead, I had the fortune to raid the hold where
they were keeping the Sibyl. Freeing her turned Max Nance's destiny around.”

“How did you end up here in San Francisco?”

Max shrugged. “We settled in France until the Revolution. Things became too dangerous. Fleury was nearly killed by a mob.”

“The closest you all ever came to dying, wasn't it, Grandfer?” Mad Hammett spoke up for the first time, his voice floating over Bo's head.

Grandfer? “Are you related?” Bo asked, not seeing the resemblance.

Max's gaze connected with Bo's. A wariness behind his eyes softened to apathy. “You won't be around to tell anyone,” he said, more to the view outside the Bay than to Bo. “And who would believe you anyway? No, this is the closest we all came to dying. Because if I go, we all go. Stand or fall together. So thanks to you and your girl snooping around in matters that didn't concern you, we're all here tonight.”

“If you touch her—” Bo started.

The muzzle of the gun dug into his scalp.

“I just want my vigor back,” Max said. “And if you want to speak with her again, you'll keep us on course and do it with your mouth shut. Because—”

A muffled scream sounded from somewhere on the deck below.
Astrid!
Bo's pulse doubled. He pushed out of the chair without thinking, only to be pistol-whipped on the back of his head. Lights blurred in his vision as pain lanceted through his skull. He fell against the dash and was hauled back into the seat.

“Try it again, and I'll pilot the yacht myself,” Hammett warned.

“Please do,” Bo said, touching the back of his head and wincing. The pain was almost unbearable. But further shouting from below sharpened his will.

Max cursed under his breath and flicked an uneasy glance out the windows. “Make sure he keeps his hands on the wheel and drops anchor at the coordinates,” he told Hammett. “I'm going to check on them. If I'm not back
when we get to our destination, bring him down. Shoot him in the leg if he doesn't obey,” he added with a wry smile as he exited the pilothouse.

Bo felt the gun pull away from his head. Hammett took up Max's place near the map while keeping the weapon pointed at Bo, and smiled at him beneath his heavy mustache. “You heard the man. Stay on course.”

He'd heard, but didn't much care. All he was thinking about right now was that Hammett was holding Bo's own gun against him. This made him furious. It also made him wonder where Hammett's two flintlock-wielding thugs were. Down in the main cabin? Or had they left them behind on shore? How many guns were on board?

“You don't look young like the others,” Bo said, mentally measuring the distance between them. “So I assume you aren't one of them. Been working with them for long?”

“What's that? Oh sure. Twenty-one years now. Nance came to Cornwall and tracked me down. Eight generations back, he had a son before he went on the voyage and met the Sibyl.” Hammett smiled to himself. “Imagine finding out your ancestor is still alive. I didn't believe him at first, but he showed me the family tree.”

“I suppose the fact that he didn't age was convincing,” Bo said.

“Not at first. The time difference to travel between the planes takes a year, you know.” Travel between planes? He supposed the man was referring to the yearlong stretch of time during which the yacht had disappeared. “And when they come back in their new bodies, they're confused. So the first time he switched bodies, I didn't believe it was really him. Of course, that body had been female. You try looking into a strange woman's eyes and believing the man you spoke to a year ago is beneath the skin.”

Bo stared at Max while the engine hummed. “They . . . switch bodies.”

“Every decade. Well, all but the Sibyl, of course.”

Astrid's vision. She'd said the priestess in red was old. Mrs. Cushing was young. Was she the only one who was
actually extending her life? The rest of them were . . . what? Hopping from body to body? That would mean . . .

Not a sacrificial ritual, but an exchange.

The people in the burlap sacks weren't being killed. They were the Pieces of Eight members. He thought of what Little Mike had told him outside Mrs. Cushing's house—about Kit Manson, the heroin addict. The Pieces of Eight club had offered him wealth beyond his wildest dreams. Had they told him the catch?