“A beauty, yes?” Bo said. “She’s brand-new. Custom-built.” He held open the back door for her while she slid inside. The interior was a dream: polished wood steering wheel, chrome reading lights, crystal pulls on the window shades. It was all Aida could do not to whistle in appreciation as she settled into the leather backseat, propping her heels on the footrest below.

A long window, rolled down halfway, served as a privacy divider between the front and the back. A small handheld motor phone made it possible to talk with the driver. Bo saw her eyeing it as he started the car. “You want the divider all the way up?”

“So that I can talk to myself back here?”

He grinned in response and pulled out into traffic.

Aida stared out the window through lengthening raindrops. Stores selling silk slippers and Oriental rugs blurred as they headed west. A few more blocks and she’d be headed into parts of the city where she’d never been.

Her hands didn’t know where to settle. She raised her voice to be heard over the rumbling engine. “How long have you worked for Mr. Magnusson?”

“Seven years, thereabouts. He hired me when he started helping his father with the family business—after he left Berkeley.”

Berkeley educated? Surprising. “How old were you when you started working for him?”

“Fourteen.”

Good grief. He was running around doing illegal things when he was still a child? She supposed she shouldn’t feel too sorry for him. He was obviously doing well now, and she certainly knew what it was like to be hungry for money.

“At first he just called on me now and then to run errands for him,” Bo explained. “Then I started working for him every day after school. After the accident—”

“The one that caused his eye injury? What happened, exactly?”

“You don’t know?”

“He didn’t say.”

“I’m surprised you haven’t heard talk around the club.”

“I’m all ears now.”

“He’ll have to be the one to tell the story, and I wouldn’t recommend asking until he’s warmed up to you. Touchy subject. Anyway, as I was saying, after the accident, he took over his father’s business full-time, and when he moved back into the family house, I came with him. I’ve got a room there.”

So Winter’s father was the original bootlegger, which meant he must’ve died in the accident, Aida reasoned. How terrible. She wondered if the mother was still alive, but it unearthed memories of her own parents that she didn’t care to think about, so she shifted the conversation back to Bo. “What exactly do you do for him, if you don’t mind me asking?”

“This and that. Communicating instructions, scouting, relaying information . . . driving spirit mediums around.” Brown eyes met hers in the rearview mirror, sparkling with humor. “And I guess you can add ‘personal valet’ to that list after that night at Velma’s.”

She laughed to cover up the unwanted picture of Naked Man floating inside her head. “I imagined the life of a bootlegger being a series of gunfights in dark alleys.”

“There’s a little of that. Winter’s definitely more comfortable with guns than ghosts, but you shouldn’t be afraid to call on him. He’s had additional security at the house since the supernatural business started up, and no one working for him has ever been killed . . . at least, not on purpose.”

She almost choked. “That’s, uh, helpful to know.”

He steered the car down a side street. “Honestly, I’m surprised you agreed to come today, after everything at Velma’s.”

“Guess I’m a glutton for punishment.”

“He might seem irritable at times, but he’s been through a lot, so I guess you could say he’s a little mad at the world. You just have to grow a thick skin around him when he’s in one of his moods. He’s not a bad person, despite what you might think.”

“I didn’t think he was. Maybe a little demanding.”

Bo grinned at her in the mirror. “You fight your way up to a certain level of success after being nothing but an immigrant fisherman’s son, you’d be demanding, too. Can’t command respect unless you act like you deserve it.”

In their line of business, she didn’t doubt it.

Houses began to increase in both size and grandeur as Bo turned onto a street with a steep incline. The Pierce-Arrow’s engine protested as it turned faster to make the climb past an eclectic mix of grand homes. “Where are we?” she asked.

“Pacific Heights. Never stepped foot here until I started working for Winter. It’s swanky—where all the Nob Hill millionaires built after the quake and the Great Fire. Everyone here pays for that.” He pointed toward a spectacular view of the bay and the rocky cliffs beyond, now shrouded in quiet rain and light fog. All the homes sat shoulder-to-shoulder, cramped on horizontal streets that lined the hill in tiers like movie theater seats, where everyone gets a good view of the screen.

Bo slowed the car as they passed through an intersection. Aida read the street sign here: BROADWAY. Her nerves twanged as she looked at a beautiful beast of a home on the corner. Bo parked the car at the curb.

“Welcome to the Magnusson house,” he announced.

FIVE

AIDA STEPPED OUT OF THE PIERCE-ARROW IN FRONT OF A GRAY green Queen Anne mansion. Four stories high, it was twice as big as the neighboring houses and looked like something out of a fantasy tale, with steeply gabled roofs, fish-scale shingles, bay windows, and a round, turreted tower. Like the other homes in this area, it had no yard to speak of—only a short iron fence and a shallow border of grass separating its massive girth from the public street. And like virtually everything else in this city, it was built on a steep slant with half the bottom floor disappearing into the hill.

“Goodness, it’s grand,” she murmured to herself, craning her neck to take it all in. She spotted two men stationed at either fence corner—security, she supposed. “He lives in this big house all by himself?”

“His younger sister, too. The help. His brother, when he comes home on holidays.”

Ah, no mother, then. Maybe she died in the accident, too. No wonder he didn’t like talking about it.

Bo led her down a narrow sidewalk in front of the house, up a short flight of steps to a covered portico that harbored a wide green door. As he reached for the handle, the door swung inward to a tall, pale, silver-haired woman. She wore an apron tied around her middle and a look of aloofness that was only slightly warmed by the pink of her cheeks. She studied Aida critically from head to foot for a moment too long while Bo removed his cap.

“Greta, this is Miss Aida Palmer.”

The woman gave her a funny smile that Aida couldn’t make heads or tails of. “Miss Palmer,” she said in a birdlike voice with a heavy Scandinavian lilt. “Mr. Magnusson is waiting for you in his study. Come. I will take you.”

Aida stepped into a spacious entry, bigger than her entire apartment, with a high ceiling that opened up to the second floor and dark wood floors below her feet. A labyrinth of rooms sprouted in every direction.

“I’ll be eating lunch down here in the kitchen,” Bo said. “When you’re ready to go, Winter will call me and I’ll drive you back home. I’ve got business in Chinatown later.”

She thanked him before he headed down a hallway and disappeared.

Aida followed Greta’s impressively fast strides through the entry. At first she thought they were headed up the massive staircase, but Greta veered to the side and stopped in front of a black elevator, a small rectangular contraption that looked like an Art Nouveau metal birdcage, with scrolling whiplash curves.

“I’ve never seen an elevator inside a private home,” Aida remarked upon entering.

Greta shut the scissor gate, then the cage door, and operated a lever. “The Magnussons are fond of wasting monies.”

Well. Aida didn’t know what to say to that. The rickety elevator groaned and whined as it made a shaky ascent to a highly polished dark hallway on the fourth floor.

Greta led her to a set of carved doors, guarded by a man sitting in a chair, playing solitaire on a folding wooden tray table; he doffed his cap when they passed by. A wide room lay beyond, filled with standing bookshelves, a large desk, and a billiards table. Several windows on the far wall offered an expansive view of the city and the foggy bay.

A cozy sitting area surrounded an oversized fireplace. The fire was lit, and sitting on a brown leather couch reading the San Francisco Chronicle was Winter Magnusson.

Surely he heard the elevator or their steps echoing down the hallway, but he remained engrossed in his reading, legs crossed, lounging in his shirtsleeves. His suit jacket lay folded on the back of the couch.

“Winter.” Greta’s singsong accent made his name sound more like “Veen-ter.”

He glanced up from the paper and looked straight at Aida. His eyes narrowed slowly, like someone playing blackjack who’d just been dealt a ten and an ace.

And Aida felt like she’d just lost all her chips along with the shirt off her back.

“You came,” he said in his low cello-note voice.

“I hope you won’t find a way to make me regret that.”

He looked amused but didn’t smile. “I’ll try to keep my clothes on this time.”

If he was trying to embarrass her in front of his housekeeper, he’d have to try harder. “I’m only here because you’re paying me an exorbitant fee for a house call.”

“Worth every cent.” He folded up his newspaper. “Hungry?”

“Not sure,” she replied honestly. She had been, but now her brain was sending some confused signal to her body, preparing her to either become sick or run for her life. Why was her heart beating so fast? She could feel her blood pulsing at her temples.

“Greta, leave us. I’ll call when we’re ready for a tray,” Winter said, prompting the housekeeper to exit the room as he tossed the folded newspaper aside and stood.

Aida suddenly remembered just how big he was, and took him in from head to foot as he approached: crisp white linen shirt, black necktie with horizontal bands of silver, pin-striped gray vest anchored by the gold chain of his pocket watch, black wing tips. His flat-front charcoal trousers were so accurately tailored, they hugged the muscle of his thighs in an almost obscene manner. She liked this.

“You’re looking . . .” Enormous. Handsome. Intimidating. “Recovered,” she said.

“I’m feeling a hell of a lot better. Are you planning on dashing right back out? Or did you not trust Greta with your coat?”

“She didn’t offer to take it.”

“Since she’s failed at her duties, allow me.” He said this as if it were some great chore and made an impatient gesture for her to comply, but she caught a curious gaze flicking toward her under the false front of seemingly bored, hooded eyes.

She set down her handbag on a small table by the door and unbuttoned her coat. As she was shrugging it off her shoulders, Mr. Magnusson stepped closer. Several things cluttered her mind at once: That he smelled of laundry starch. That the gold bar connecting his collar points beneath the striped knot of his necktie was engraved with tiny nautical compasses. And that she was almost positive he was looking down her dress.

That realization did something strange to her stomach. She knew she wasn’t unattractive—at least, she didn’t think so. Not anymore. When she was a child, she was teased about her heavily freckled skin. Even now, most men only looked at her with mild interest before setting their sights on other women with flawless complexions. But every once in a while she ran across a man who actually liked freckles.

Maybe Winter was one of them.

Did he see her as a sideshow curiosity, or something more? Perhaps he was merely a man, and breasts were breasts were breasts. She held up her coat between them. “How’s the view from up there?”

“Not as clear as your view of me the other night.”

“To be fair, I don’t believe that could’ve been any clearer.”

He plucked the coat from her fingers. “You sure didn’t act like you minded.”

“I didn’t.” She meant that to be a question, but it came out wrong. Winter seemed as surprised by it as she was, but he didn’t comment. Surely he was aware how nicely his body was put together; he probably heard it all the time. He hung up her coat, then, without touching, extended his hand behind her back, urging her to accompany him farther into the study.