Before leaving, Bo Li took out the three letters and placed yet another explanatory letter on top—so that, when Erik returned to the room, he would see it at once.
Having done this, she donned a black cloak—beneath it not a gown, but a shirt and trousers suited for escape. Her shoes too were not silken slippers, but sneakers taken from her travel pack.
Before departing, she once more checked the chambers of her revolver—extracting each bullet, then pushing them back in, repeatedly cocking the hammer to ensure there would be no jamming. Then she tucked the gun into the holster at her waist, put on a wide-brimmed lady’s hat, and stepped out.
Boyd was already waiting at the hotel entrance. Seeing her, he immediately lavished praise upon her beauty.
“Please, get in, Miss Claremont,” he said gently. “The medium is already waiting for you in the villa. She has long wished to hear your story.”
Just before boarding the carriage, Bo Li turned her head back one last time.
Erik still had not appeared.
Even that sensation of being watched was gone.
Why?
Or… had he fallen into danger? Had Tricky captured him?
It was unlikely.
If Erik had already been captured by Tricky, then she would have lost all value of being treated courteously.
At present, the only reason Boyd greeted her with a smile was because he was uncertain whether Erik might still be standing behind her.
“What are you looking at?” Boyd asked.
Bo Li replied coldly, “Didn’t you say you smelled the aura of a ghost on me? If I see something, can’t you see it as well?”
Boyd felt somewhat embarrassed, but quickly tried to make excuses for himself:
“Of course I cannot truly see ghosts. What I meant was that you are safe at my side. Ghosts fear mediums. With so many mediums surrounding you, at least today, they will not come to trouble you.”
Bo Li suddenly said, “But if the ghost I see—is alive?”
She lifted her gaze, looking straight at Boyd. “At that moment, how would you respond?”
Boyd was not a man who readily displayed his emotions. Skilled in the art of performance, adept at swindling and deceiving, he could manipulate every muscle of his face to produce whatever expression he wished.
Yet the instant he heard Bo Li’s words, the smile on his face froze. Cold sweat began to drip down his back, bead by bead.
He would never forget the day his finger had been severed.
At that time, he had been watching a play when a rope suddenly dropped from above, tightening around his neck and dragging him violently into the darkness—
Then, a hand clamped down over his mouth and nose. The hand was enormous, covered by a coarse leather glove, nearly suffocating him on the spot.
What made Boyd’s hair stand on end was that the other man’s gaze lingered upon his throat, as though deliberating where best to strike.
Behind a white mask, the man’s eyes were indifferent and hollow, as though Boyd were no human being at all, but merely livestock awaiting slaughter.
At that moment, Boyd felt cold pierce up from his tailbone. His heart pounded wildly at his throat. His whole body was drenched in sweat.
He was going to die.
He was going to be killed by this man.
Yet, for some reason, the other did not kill him. Instead, seizing him by the hair, he hauled him up and smashed his head with force against the wall—
Then, with calm precision, cut off his finger.
It was as though the man had done such things countless times before, calculating everything so that Boyd would not faint from dizziness, nor scream in pain.
In fact, after the man left, Boyd no longer even had the strength to cry out for help. He could only lie on the floor of the box, listening to his own rasping breath, staring at his severed finger amidst a haze of vertigo, waiting for the usher to enter and discover his wretched state.
Tricky had said he was fortunate, that he had escaped alive from the hands of a madman.
But Boyd harbored a sinister foreboding—he was certain that Erik had spared him back then only to torment him more thoroughly in the future.
If not for Tricky’s repeated persuasion, assuring him again and again of how much money Bo Li possessed, how beautiful she was—that once they succeeded, he would not only gain a great fortune, but also vent all the humiliation and pain of his severed finger upon Bo Li—he would never have dared to approach her again.
But as the saying goes, money makes even the devils turn the mill.
If blame were to be laid, it was because Bo Li had taken money that did not belong to her.
Only after a long while did Boyd manage to press down his fear, and in a low voice he said:
“I do not understand what you mean, miss.”
Bo Li discovered that Boyd seemed to be deeply afraid of Erik.
She had not even mentioned Erik’s name—merely described one of his features—and Boyd’s whole body stiffened in terror, cold sweat breaking out across his forehead.
If matters truly came to the point where she had to fire a gun, perhaps she could rely on uttering Erik’s name to make Boyd lose focus, then press the barrel to his back.
Bo Li was always this way: the more tense the atmosphere, the calmer she became.
The carriage drove toward the garden villas, the wealthy district of New Orleans. White villas stood hidden among greenery, policemen were stationed everywhere, and unlike the bustle near the hotel, here there was only quiet.
Her first impression of the place was silence.
Absolute stillness.
The flowers were silent, the leaves were silent, even the fountains seemed motionless, the silence verging on unnatural.
Whether standing, sitting, or conversing in low tones, the people all seemed unnaturally subdued—as though they were living beneath water, in darkness, voiceless, with only hidden currents stirring.
Suddenly Bo Li’s back chilled, her whole body turned cold.
She inexplicably gave rise to a feeling—
Even if she were to shout and struggle here, it would be as though submerged beneath a tide of darkness, with no one able to hear her.
Boyd had been watching her expression closely. Seeing the faint fear on her face, he immediately clasped her hand, speaking softly: “Don’t be afraid. I will protect you.”
Bo Li’s eyes fixed upon his hand—his right hand, missing an index finger.
Suddenly she recalled: that day, the reason she had not sensed the presence of a third person’s breathing in the theater box, seemed to be because Boyd… had touched her neck.
At the time, she thought Erik had departed.
Yet who knew—he had been following her all along, even into the theater box.
And now?
Was he still watching her?
Watching as Boyd held her hand, as their faces drew near, their breaths mingling?
For one must know—this was not a four-wheeled carriage, but a light two-wheeled one, with no enclosure, only a double leather seat.
If Erik were still following, he could see her every movement clearly.
Perhaps the reason he had severed Boyd’s finger was because Boyd was a handsome fraud;
Or perhaps, in his eyes, she was his prey, and he would not permit such a lowly swindler to defile her.
Whatever the reason, he would never stand by and watch Boyd grow intimate with her.
To prevent cold sweat from seeping into her palms and loosening her grip upon the gun, Bo Li wore short gloves, deliberately choosing an openwork lace design to increase friction against her skin.
She fixed her gaze on Boyd, tilting her head slightly: “You seem never to have offered me a hand-kiss.”
Boyd was taken aback. “I thought—”
“What did you think? That because I wear my hair short and trousers, I have no need of a hand-kiss, is that it?”
“Of course not…” Boyd was merely a little bewildered. Just a moment ago, she had treated him with icy disdain, her words edged with barbs, and now she wished him to perform a hand-kiss.
It was far from normal.
And yet, it seemed normal enough.
He was so young, so handsome, no different from the gentlemen strolling the gardens—her being drawn to him was perfectly natural.
After all, beside her, there were only two men to choose from.
One was him.
The other was Erik.
In order to drive a wedge between her and Erik, these past days Tricky had even hired an artist to sketch Erik’s appearance—though it was said to be only seventy to eighty percent accurate.
Even so, after seeing it, Boyd had nightmares for an entire night.
That was no human visage.
How could anyone’s face be such that one half was stern and flawless, without a single blemish, while the other half resembled… a ghastly skull?
To call it a skull was already too generous.
At the first glance, Boyd even thought that the eyeball of Erik’s left face was about to fall out—skulls have no eyelids, only an excessively protruding brow ridge, deep hollow sockets like caves, with an eyeball set within as if about to drop at any moment.
A little closer, and one might even see sticky, writhing threads of blood trailing behind the eye.
And that was only seventy to eighty percent likeness.
Who knew how terrifying the man himself truly looked?
No wonder Tricky had said: “But once you see the other half of his face, I fear you will not think so any longer.”
Bo Li must simply have thought it through on the way here, wishing to show him goodwill, and thus requested a hand-kiss.
Indeed, she was at least a rather pretty young woman—why should she not choose him, rather than a skull-faced horror?
With this thought, Boyd took Bo Li’s hand and bowed, pressing a kiss upon the back of her hand.
His kiss carried a turbid heat, searing itself onto the lace of her openwork glove.
Bo Li could not help but feel a surge of intense repulsion.
What was strange was this: Erik had, more than once, bent close before her, his rough breath sounding above her head—she had even lain beside him, with the heat of his body continuously radiating against her—and yet never once had she felt such revulsion as she did now.
It was too strange.
Stranger still was—why had she thought of Erik at the very instant Boyd’s lips touched her hand?
The next moment, a needle-prick sensation abruptly shot across her back.
It was an indescribable sense of danger.
Her scalp tingled instantly, gooseflesh rising across her skin.
Erik truly was watching her.
His gaze was icy, heavy, like a block of ice streaked with clinging water, sliding slowly across the back of her hand.
Bo Li’s hand instantly felt as though it had been plunged into icy water, stiffening with cold.
Yet she did not pull it back. Instead, she allowed Boyd to go on holding it, leaving herself exposed to Erik’s scrutiny.
The colder his gaze grew, the heavier it pressed, seeping into her like ice-water, cutting into her like the edge of a blade.
The stranger it felt… the safer she was.