“That’s why Renna was working with him on astral projection?”
“He was having trouble—new for him, I might add—with being fully there, fully present.”
“And yet not.”
“Exactly.”
“This is why I don’t do well with things like scrying. That whole ‘concentrate but let your mind wander’ thing isn’t easy.”
“Tell me about it.”
We crossed Waverly Place, and walked past the Willie “Woo Woo” Wong Playground. A few kids were running about, screaming and playing, while their parents sat on benches, chatting. Unlike many of the city’s other tourist draws, San Francisco’s Chinatown is a vibrant neighborhood full of immigrants and native-born citizens, chock-full of people going about the business of everyday life.
As we turned onto Hang Ah Alley, Patience sniffed the air. “You smell that?”
“I can’t smell much lately, but there used to be a German perfume manufacturer here, a long time ago.”
A young man was leaving Sailor’s apartment building as we approached, and he held the front door open for us. The windowless hallway was dim, lit only by a single bare lightbulb. We climbed the creaky stairs to the second floor. At the landing outside Sailor’s apartment, I set down my backpack and took the wooden box from Patience.
“Something happened here,” said Patience, a frown marring her brow. “Something bad.”
“A fight over a gambling debt that didn’t have a happy ending.” If I could feel the spirit that lingered on this landing, I could only imagine how much Patience was feeling. “Sailor said that’s why the apartment’s so cheap. He says the spirit doesn’t bother him.”
“It feels . . . mournful.”
“I always thought so, too.”
This was surreal. I had spent so much time stressing over Patience, had seen her as so very different from me—and here we were, working together, and basically on the same wavelength.
“What’s that?” Patience asked as I opened the box.
“My Hand of Glory.”
“You do realize what you just said doesn’t actually reveal anything, don’t you? What is a Hand of Glory, or do I even want to know?”
“Probably not. A Hand of Glory is a kind of candleholder that opens locked doors—so far it hasn’t been foiled by a single one—and illuminates dark spaces with a clear bright light, like daylight. It’s made from the mummified left hand of a hanged man, which is kind of gruesome, but if you can ignore that part, it’s awfully convenient.”
“You’re serious?”
“It’s very handy.” I chuckled at my inadvertent pun and held up the Hand of Glory to her. “‘Handy,’ get it?”
“Yeah. Hysterical,” she said, rearing back and pushing my arm away. “Just open the door so we can get out of this apartment building of horrors, will you? Between the mournful spirit breathing down my neck and this gruesome mummified hand, I’m going to have nightmares tonight.”
So much for being on the same wavelength.
I held the Hand in front of the lock, and opened the door.
Patience strode right in, but I lingered in the entrance. Sailor’s apartment always smelled great: notes of citrus and exotic spice, mingled with the faint scent of perfume from the alley. But today I could barely sense it. It made me sad.
Again, I wondered if we were crossing any important lines in invading Sailor’s privacy in this way. True, we were doing it for him . . . but I felt as though I should have asked him before coming in. I had been here before, of course, but not often. We usually met at my place, and almost always stayed the night there instead of here. But Sailor hadn’t given up his apartment, and so far we’d avoided talking about where we would live after getting married. Which was a pretty basic conversation not to have had, now that I thought about it. In fact, it dawned on me that we’d avoided talking about a lot of things. Aidan’s words rang in my ears. What was Sailor’s middle name? What about children?
Time to focus. Inside, the usually neat apartment was a mess. I imagined it had been torn apart by the SFPD’s forensics team, looking for bloody clothing or other clues linking Sailor to Tristan’s murder.
“This is pretty bleak,” Patience said as she wandered around, her fingers trailing over Sailor’s sparse furnishings and piles of books.
“It’s usually neater than this; the cops must have tossed it. But even so, you’re right. Pretty bleak.”
Her eyebrows rose, but she didn’t say anything else.
The living room included a small galley kitchen. Several cabinet doors and drawers stood open, revealing only a single bowl, a plate, and one set of cutlery. There were a drawer full of disposable chopsticks, the kind that came stuffed into bags of takeaway, and a bunch of single-wrapped fortune cookies and soy sauce packets. On the one hand it did seem sad; on the other, if a person lived alone in Chinatown, it would be easy enough to pick up inexpensive, delicious takeout every day of the week.
Off the living room was a small bedroom furnished with only a bed, a nightstand, and a bookshelf, along with a small bathroom. The books had been toppled, the bed linens tossed in a heap on the floor. A metal file box full of papers and an empty leather-bound jewelry case stood open in the corner. That was all there was.
“Nothing out of place?” Patience asked after sticking her head in the bathroom.
“I can’t really tell, since the police have tossed it,” I said. But as I spoke, I noticed a notepad covered with doodles on a small table near the bed. The doodles reminded me of something. . . .
“We have to leave,” Patience said, her tone urgent.
“What is it?”
“Now!” She grabbed my arm and yanked me toward the door.
“What—”
“Move!”
I ran after her out the door. On the landing the spirit was agitated; moving across the small space felt like pushing through freezing-cold water. Patience took a moment, closed her eyes, and let
