Grim Shadows (Roaring Twenties) Read Online Free PDF Page B

straight off the ground and hugging her back with the same enthusiasm. “All right, all right,” he said, setting her back down. “Release me, she-demon.”
    She grinned up at him, running her gloved hand over his whiskers. “You look like a vagrant,
älskade broder
.”
    “I feel like one. And look at you! You’ve grown since the summer. Are you still just seventeen?”
    “Last time I checked.”
    “You’re wearing rouge now?”
    “Maybe I am.”
    “Mamma and Pappa would roll over in their graves if they knew.”
    “I’m not a child, Lowe.”
    He laughed. “I didn’t say it was unbecoming.”
    Her nose scrunched up as she smiled. He slung an arm around her shoulder and kissed her cheek as another familiar face came into view.
    “Bo Yeung,” he said, unhinging himself from Astrid to shake hands. The Chinese boy wasn’t really a boy anymore—he was twenty-one, all lean muscle and handsome grace. Once an orphaned pickpocket, Bo had been the trusted assistant of Lowe’s brother, Winter, for several years. When Bo wasn’t helping Winter with the bootlegging, he did some driving for the family and played bodyguard to Astrid. A well-paid one, at that: he wore a plaid newsboy cap and matching dark green suit that looked as if it cost more than Lowe’s entire steamer trunk of desert-friendly wear.
    “She’s right,” Bo said, giving his hand a hearty shake. “You do look rough.”
    “I’ve been through hell the last few weeks. I can’t tell you how good it is to see friendly faces.”
    “I’d say the house has been quiet without you, but that’s a lie.” Bo had lived at the Magnusson house in the servant’s hall since their parents died in a car accident more than two years ago. Part of the family, really. But the way Bo was standing over Astrid—almost
too
protectively—and the way she was swaying nearer to Bo—almost
too
close—made Lowe think something had changed between them while he’d been in Egypt.
    Interesting. Lowe loved a good scandal.
    Astrid made a distressed noise. “What happened?”
    “Oh, this? Didn’t I write you about it?” he asked as she lifted his left hand. “I lost it in a game of Five-Finger Fillet.”
    “What?” Astrid and Bo said together before Astrid continued, “—in the world is that?”
    “Knife game,” Lowe said, holding out his hand, palm down. “You put your hand on the table, fingers spread, and take the tip of your knife and stab between your fingers . . .
tap, tap tap!
”
    “You are a liar!” Astrid squealed, horrified, but laughing. “Is it really gone? Is it a trick?”
    “Wouldn’t you like to know?” He wiggled his remaining four fingers before lunging at her side to tickle her until she squealed some more, begging him to stop. “All right,” he said. “Enough of that. Are the two of you my entire greeting party? Where’s my big brother and this fictional wife of his?”
    A cheerful voice floated over his shoulder. “Fictional? I thought you were the one with a thousand stories up your sleeve.”
    He turned to find a small, heavily freckled woman in a red silk dress with an oriental collar. She flashed him a pretty smile and crossed her arms under a great pair of breasts.
    “You must be the spirit medium.”
    “I’m also your brother’s fictional wife.”
    “Hello, Aida.” He started to shake her hand, then leaned in and hugged her. “For the love of God, you’re family now.” He held her at arm’s length to look at her. “Are you really having Winter’s child?”
    “The doctor says I am.”
    He hugged her again as she laughed. “God help you if it’s a boy.”
    “Christ alive, don’t squeeze her to death,” a deep, melodic voice said at his side. His older brother, Winter Magnusson, the mighty bootlegger. At twenty-nine, Winter was Lowe’s senior by four years and twice as burly. Lowe accepted his embrace, clapping him on the shoulder.
    “You look like death warmed over,” Winter said. “Don’t they have a