Chapter 24

Fine. She wouldn’t look.
Bo Li thought, *Your mask will be torn off by the heroine eventually anyway.*
Only after the portrait had burned to ash did Eric allow Bo Li to open her eyes.
She glanced at Boyd’s corpse and felt a headache coming on.
Even though both Tricky and Boyd had deserved it—one made his living murdering freaks, the other cheated people out of money and sex—the police didn’t know that.
Would Eric be arrested?
Would those fleeing “mediums” go to the police?
How was she supposed to get him off?
Just then, footsteps sounded outside the drawing room.
Bo Li jolted, thinking the police had arrived. She was already spinning an innocent story in her head when Mrs. Merlin walked in.
Mrs. Merlin carried a lamp, her face expressionless. She looked at Boyd’s body, then at Tricky’s head hanging from the chandelier, and said flatly, “They’re finally dead.”
She turned to Bo Li and Eric. “You don’t need to wait. The police won’t come. Tricky was in the freak trade. He’d already paid off the police—no matter what happens here, they won’t interfere.”
“…Why are you so calm about this?”
“Because neither of them was any good,” Mrs. Merlin said coldly. “They tricked the mistress into lending them the house, then used it for rape and murder. I told the mistress many times that Boyd was no good, but she refused to believe that spiritualism was a fraud.”
“Why?” Bo Li asked.
“Because the mistress has seen a real ghost,” Mrs. Merlin replied.
Bo Li frowned slightly. “A real ghost?”
But no matter how she tried to pry, Mrs. Merlin wouldn’t say more.
Eric hadn’t spoken the entire time. When Mrs. Merlin asked them to leave, he simply picked up Tricky’s head in one hand and grabbed Boyd by the collar with the other, ready to walk out like that.
Bo Li could barely stand to look. She was about to tell him to put them down when he said calmly, “They’re wanted. There’s a reward.”
Bo Li: “...”
She couldn’t believe a horror-film protagonist was lecturing her on the law.
“A reward?”
Before Eric could answer, Mrs. Merlin cut in impatiently. “Haven’t you been to the post office or train station? Wanted posters everywhere. Dead or alive, fifty dollars each. I was going to keep the bodies and collect the money myself, but since you want them, take them. Now leave. I need to start mopping.”
Bo Li quickly put it together.
So Tricky hadn’t wanted Eric to turn him into a specimen or make him part of the “oddities exhibition.” He’d wanted Eric to protect him.
In America at this time, the westward expansion wasn’t quite over. Police forces were thin. Anyone could be a bounty hunter.
Tricky must have run into a few pursuers and panicked. Even bribing New Orleans police wasn’t enough. So he’d set his sights on Eric.
Instead of getting Eric’s protection, he’d ended up dead by the Punjab lasso.
Before leaving, Bo Li asked Mrs. Merlin, “You said Tricky was in the freak trade. Do you know where he kept them?”
Mrs. Merlin gave a cold laugh. “What, you want to make specimens too?”
“No,” Bo Li said patiently. “I want to hire them. Give them real work.”
“Real work?” Mrs. Merlin said. “How real? Stand onstage like monkeys while people throw money, or send them to hospitals for examinations?”
Bo Li needed her help. She kept her temper and answered gently, steadily. “You misunderstand. The work I mean is for them to be real actors—using stories, performance, and personality to move the audience, to earn applause and attention. Not just their unusual appearance.”
“Why should I believe you?” Mrs. Merlin said.
Bo Li glanced at Eric without seeming to, then lowered her lashes and said softly, “I’m not trying to win your trust. I made a promise to someone…to show him that people’s pity is just another kind of privilege. Using that privilege, freaks can become the finest stage performers.”
As she finished, Eric’s gaze dropped onto her.
Bo Li didn’t know if her acting was too obvious. Lately, whenever he looked at her, his eyes were ice-cold—like sharp blades, as if he meant to cut her open and judge what was inside.
His personality was getting stranger and stranger.
Before, when she said nice things about him, it raised his favorability.
Now when she said nice things, he seemed to react badly.
Unexpectedly, her words didn’t win Eric over—but they did soften Mrs. Merlin’s expression.
She looked Bo Li up and down several times. “You look like a street girl, but you talk like a well-bred young lady.”
Bo Li: “…I’m not a street girl.”
As she said it, she wondered: what about her looked like a street girl?
But in Mrs. Merlin’s eyes, she wore a wide-brimmed hat, a shirt and trousers, her face clean and pretty, her eyes so bright—even with a severed head and a corpse in front of her, that light never dimmed.
Only street girls, con artists, unbound women had that kind of fire.
Young ladies—like her mistress—had their light worn down, swallowed, turned into stagnant water.
Mrs. Merlin said flatly, “Your words sound good. But I still don’t believe you. Go.”
Bo Li didn't push.
She felt Mrs. Merlin's attitude had softened. If she came back in a couple of days to "loosen the soil," she might be able to get the location of the freaks.
Besides that, Bo Li also wanted to know what kind of ghost the villa's mistress had seen.
But that seemed to be a taboo for Mrs. Merlin. She'd have to ask later.
As they were about to leave the villa, Bo Li looked back at the portrait of the mistress—Mrs. Healy.
Was it her imagination?
The portrait had a strange, off feeling—as if something that shouldn't be there had appeared in the painting.
She was about to look closer when Mrs. Merlin came out and stared at her expressionlessly.
Bo Li didn't want to offend her. She gave an awkward curtsy and turned to leave.
Eric walked behind her, carrying a head and a body as if it were nothing.
The scene was too bizarre.
Bo Li didn't dare look back.
Outside the villa, Eric tossed Tricky and Boyd into the carriage—Tricky's own luxurious coach—with a single hand, his expression blank.
Bo Li had wanted that carriage, but after seeing that, she decided she didn't want it anymore.
When he was done, he climbed into the driver's seat and took the reins.
Afraid he'd leave without her, Bo Li scrambled up after him.
The next moment, he pulled off his black gloves, tossed them aside, and held out a hand to her.
Maybe he didn't even realize it—but this was the first time he'd ever reached out to her with a bare hand.
The thought startled Bo Li.
No one would call a hand "bare." She must have been affected by how secretive he was about his body.
But once the thought appeared, she couldn't push it away.
Even in the deep night, his fingers looked beautiful—long and clearly defined, like some kind of pale, translucent jade, fine blue veins slightly raised.
Beautiful to that degree felt almost forbidden—something you shouldn't look at.
Her gaze lingered too long, sweeping back and forth—from knuckles to veins to wrist bones, then up to the thin, tight muscle of his forearm.
He seemed to have had enough. "Get up here," he said coldly.
Only then did Bo Li snap out of it. She took his hand and climbed up.
They rode in silence.
From the carriage, the smell of blood drifted constantly toward the driver's seat.
Bo Li felt like she'd had a nosebleed all night—everything smelled like blood.
The streets at dawn were all fog, the air cold and damp, filled with the sound of wheels rolling through mud, the ground crisscrossed with messy ruts from the day before.
There were more homeless people than she'd imagined. Even in the dead of night, the streets weren't empty. Many people were chatting, staring blankly, or sleeping on the sidewalks.
Some were already up, spitting and washing. A woman came out with a chamber pot and dumped it right in the street.
Bo Li suddenly felt intensely alone.
She'd been alone in foreign countries before, but this was different.
She felt as if her soul had been locked away—so even after being tricked once, when Mrs. Merlin mentioned a "ghost," she still wanted to investigate.
Suddenly, the carriage took a sharp turn.
Eric's driving was usually steady, but this time he nearly threw her off.
Bo Li suspected he'd forgotten someone was sitting beside him.
To prevent another drift, she pushed all her homesickness aside and wrapped both arms around his, afraid she'd fall and break her neck.
Ten minutes later, the carriage stopped in front of the police station.
When Eric walked in with the wanted posters for Tricky and Boyd, the sheriff thought he was being robbed—only bandits wore masks in public.
Bo Li hurried forward to explain. Only then did the sheriff lower his gun, half-convinced.
"So these two con men are calling themselves Tricky and Boyd now… You can never be too careful!"
The sheriff blew his nose into a handkerchief, acting as if he'd had no idea the two had been causing trouble in the city. If Mrs. Merlin hadn't mentioned that Tricky had paid off the police, Bo Li might have been fooled.
"These two have changed names who knows how many times, swindling and harming people everywhere—leave them here. This is your reward."
Bo Li picked it up and counted. "Why only fifty dollars? Isn't it fifty each—a hundred for both?"
"Look," the sheriff said, waving a hand and leaning back in his chair, feet on the desk. "You two don't look like professional bounty hunters. I'm not investigating you for murder, and I'm giving you fifty dollars. That's more than fair."
Bo Li's thoughts raced. She pulled off her wide-brimmed hat, revealing short hair, planted one foot on a nearby chair, and spat on the floor like a bandit.
"Why do you think this is my first time as a bounty hunter? Let me tell you something—before Tricky and Boyd died, they said some interesting things… But we're not the nosy type. Just give us the other fifty dollars, and we'll keep our mouths shut. Won't say a word to anyone."