Last Call at the Nightshade Lounge

by Paul Krueger

  But she could hear it.

  And then it came out of the darkness. Whatever was following her wasn’t just another hungover coed in gym shorts. It didn’t even look human: too low to the ground, eyes too yellow. Glowing yellow.

  “Good boy,” Bailey said, keys held high. “Nice b—”

  But it wasn’t a dog. It was something awful that she’d never seen before.

  Before she could scream, something rammed into her, hard and dense, like a cannonball to the ribs. Her head smacked the pavement, her elbow skinned across asphalt. The not-a-dog was heavy on top of her: a horrible, squirming, four-legged thing the size of a German shepherd, with a head like a protruding tumor and limbs covered in naked ropes of salmon-colored muscle.

  Bailey scrambled under it, the world spinning from alcohol and adrenaline. The thing was pawing at her with stubby feet and she couldn’t keep it off, couldn’t wrestle away, couldn’t escape.

  Oh, God, she thought. I’m going to die. Here, on the streets of Ravenswood, less than half a mile from where she’d grown up, less than half a block from where she’d just scrubbed a toilet.

  No, Bailey thought. No. No. The slimy weight on her chest was too heavy for her to draw breath for a scream, and the world was going fuzzy around her. God, no. This was how it ended, not with a bang but with a minimum-wage job and a heap of student debt. Bailey cringed, and with all her dizzied, nauseated might, she mustered up one stupid, single, and probably final thought:

  Fuck. That. Shit.

  And she kicked. Hard.

  It worked. She pushed the thing away with the soles of her sneakers and, before she had time to think, sprang to her feet, closed her eyes, and threw the hardest punch of her life.

  It was ugly and clumsy, and her fist hooked around the thing’s side instead of slamming it head-on. But her knuckles met flesh, and in a spray of black blood, its head caved in like a rotted pumpkin.

  “Shit!” Bailey yelped, and leapt back. The remains of the animal-thing’s body splatted to the concrete. Smoke curled up from the edges of its limbs, as if it were a leaf catching fire, and the night air filled with a thick chemical stench. Bailey coughed, shielding her eyes, and before she even had time to worry about how to scrape the nasty mess off the pavement, the thing’s body collapsed with an abrupt squelch.

  Bailey jumped back from the puddle, out of the street, and glanced around wildly for something else: A pack? A flock? Another pair of yellow eyes? But she saw nothing. Just a quiet street and a fizzing pool of dead-smelling … something.

  She clamped her bloodstained hands over her mouth and smothered a scream. The screwdriver roiled inside her. Her arms and legs shook like it was below freezing, and her heart squeezed painfully with every breath.

  She wasn’t safe. She wasn’t safe, and she was going to be sick.

  Terrified and trembling, Bailey did what she apparently did best: she fled back home.

  THE DEVIL’S WATER DICTIONARY.

  The Screwdriver

  A drink to lend gravitas to the beginner bartender

  1. Fill a highball glass with ice.

  2. Pour glass one-third full of vodka.

  3. Fill remaining two-thirds of glass with orange juice.

  4. Stir once and serve.

  The screwdriver is one of bartending’s most basic and useful cocktails. Though one cannot oversell the importance of a quick mind and a good heart in the life of a bartender, occasions arise when the best tonic is pure brawn. In this department, the screwdriver remains unmatched.

  Bartenders favor this cocktail for myriad reasons. Its ingredients are few, cheap, and easily obtainable in all but the most remote places. It can be mixed quickly, in the event that one has been caught flat-footed while also being conveniently within arm’s reach of a fully stocked bar. And though the abilities granted by the proper preparation of other libations may require years of steady practice to master, drinkers of the screwdriver have found that hitting things very hard in the face until they die is rather straightforward.

  VODKA.

  Unfortunately, records of vodka in the pre-Blackout era are sparse; however, its use is known to date back to at least the 1400s, when its existence was first attested in Polish court documents. Vodka (diminutive of the Russian voda, “water”) was then—anecdotally—the only thing known to convince Slavic men to leave their homes in the dead of winter, let alone to hunt prowling tremens. Traditionally distilled from sugar-rich cereal grains or potatoes, vodka also found a secondary medicinal use as a restorative aqua vitae, its strengthening properties being mistaken for healing ones.

  Post-Blackout, vodka found its way to American shores in the saddlebags of the Polish cavalier Casimir Pulaski, who encouraged its bibulation amongst the cavalrymen he trained to fight in the American Revolution. Though he expressly forbade its use in open battle, his horsemen would frequently be dispatched with rations of vodka to patrol the fringes of his encampments and root out lurking tremens.

  ORANGE JUICE.

  The logistical difficulty of producing mass quantities of orange juice sidelined its use for many years as a bartending curiosity and little else. It wasn’t until the mid-twentieth century and the advent of widespread refrigerated trucking systems that bartenders were able to incorporate it regularly into their repertoires. For best results, fresh-squeezed juice is recommended; if none is available, canned orange juice, with its higher vitamin C content, is preferable to standard grocery bottles or cartons. It is unknown who created this particular combination, but the name “screwdriver” was coined by Frederick Leeds, a Florida bartender who claimed that he used the drink to help him remove from his boat hitch a screw that had rusted into place.

  CHAPTER TWO

  Bailey woke to the sound of snapping jaws, causing her to yelp and nearly fall out of bed. No—breathe—she was alone. Gingerly she pushed herself to a sitting position and brought a careful hand to her chest. Her heart was beating like a jackhammer, and the scrapes on her elbow still stung. But she was definitely alone, and alive.

  She blinked until her surroundings came into focus. Her childhood bedroom was an untouched shrine to her teenage self. Normally she resented waking up to posters of heartthrobs whose careers had long since lost their pulse or to her stack of For Dear Life CDs. Today she couldn’t have been gladder to see them. They were things that made sense. They were normal.

  But somewhere under her bed, she remembered, were her blood-clotted clothes. And forty feet down the hall from them were her parents, expecting their normal daughter to rise and shine.

  With a deep breath, she swung out of bed. She’d replaced her work outfit with the first things she could grab when her limbs had stopped shaking: a baggy T-shirt she’d stolen from her ex (and ex-TA) Dan and the ugliest flannel pajama pants she owned. She slipped her feet into owl-headed slippers and then padded out into the world.

  Everything in the hallway was normal: family portraits on the walls and the familiar scents of lemon cleaner, jasmine rice, and fresh flowers from her dad’s shop.

  Maybe everything was normal. Maybe she had imagined it.

  “Please tell me there’s breakf—” Bailey said as she emerged into the kitchen, but then she stopped in horror.

  The room was a tableau of tasks interrupted: Water running over the dishes in the sink, the crossword abandoned on the table. And her parents. Who had just broken apart from what appeared to be a very passionate make-out session.

  “Gross!” Bailey yelped. “God, my eyes! Gross!”

  “Beetle,” her dad said, unhanding his wife. He was a squat man—not fat, but just a bit round, like he’d stayed svelte just long enough to get married and then let himself go in spectacular fashion. Or at least so Bailey assumed; the earliest pictures she’d managed to unearth of her parents were from her second birthday party. Now her dad was leaning back against the kitchen counter, failing to look at all casual.

  Bailey squeezed her eyes shut and for just a moment forgot about the nightmares o
f the last few hours. “Ohmygod,” she said. “Is this what you two do in the kitchen when I’m sleeping?”

  “I’m sorry your father and I love each other,” her mom said, squeezing her husband tighter. She was skinny, with long straight hair, and, despite her husband’s significantly greater mass, she appeared to have been attempting to envelop him.

  “Yeah,” said her dad, beaming. “Maybe if we hated each other, we could’ve given you the neglectful childhood you always wanted.” He kissed his wife on the cheek.

  “Not our Bailey,” her mom said with a smile before her expression hardened a shade. “Did you talk to Jess about the job? When’s your interview?”

  “Wow,” Bailey said. “Did you maybe want to let me have coffee first?”

  “I’m only asking,” her mother said. “And it’s a pretty simple question.”

  Bailey dumped coffee into a WORLD’S SEXIEST FLORIST mug.

  “That’s been out for a while,” her dad said helpfully. “Hope you don’t mind room temperature.”

  The only way the stone-cold coffee could have been room temperature was if the room in question had been a meat locker, but Bailey chugged it like it was a healing elixir.

  “What’s wrong, Bailey?” Her mom, an accountant, had an irritatingly sharp eye for detail. Bailey turned and struggled to remember what a normal facial expression looked like.

  “Nothing,” she croaked, clearing her throat. “Um, nothing. Just … hungry?”

  Her mom looked unconvinced. Her dad looked at the fridge.

  “Plenty of leftovers in there, Beetle,” he said. “Help yourself.”

  “Did you even call Jess yesterday?”

  “Mom.” Bailey pulled a container of lasagna out of the fridge, even though her stomach felt like a concrete brick.

  Her dad grinned. “Our girl just probably had a rough night.”

  You have no idea, Bailey thought. “No, no,” she said, aiming for chipper but missing. “Just a late one. You know how bars get at closing time.” They didn’t, of course. Hell, after last night, even Bailey barely understood what happened after hours. Her parents exchanged a look as she forced a smile. “I’m fine, you guys. You don’t need to interrogate me.”

  “We know, Beetle,” her dad said.

  “It’s not an interrogation,” said her mom. “We just want to make sure you’re happy and not”—she paused before deciding on the proper word—“settling.”

  “I’m not,” Bailey said, surprised by her own certainty. “Bartending’s just … a job.”

  “That’s right,” her mom said. “A job, not a career. You didn’t go to business school just to sling drinks and up the death toll of Chicago’s brain-cell community.” She cracked a smile and Bailey’s dad chuckled, but Bailey gritted her teeth.

  “I know, Mom,” she said. “And I’m working on it.”

  “So you did talk to Jess.”

  “Yes,” Bailey said, a bit too slowly. “But I’m, ah, waiting for her to call me back.”

  It wasn’t technically a lie.

  “Well, don’t wait too long,” her mother said with a crisp nod. “That position sounds like a dream job for you.”

  “A dream job with dental benefits,” her dad added.

  “She’ll call me when she calls me.” Bailey slammed the microwave door with more force than necessary. “I’ve kinda got a lot on my mind right now, okay?”

  To Bailey’s immense relief, the doorbell rang in the front hall. “I’ll get it,” said her dad. “Dearest Laura?”

  “Yes, dearest Sandy?”

  “You’re still on top of me.”

  “Oh. So I am.”

  While her parents disentangled themselves and her dad lumbered out, Bailey stared intently at the lasagna revolving in the microwave and tried to get a grip. She was exhausted, and she was supposed to go in for a shift.

  No. Ugh, no. She gave her pounding head a little shake. She’d definitely call in sick, and maybe for the next shift, too. Call Jess back, she decided. Figure out if she, Bailey, was crazy or just … crazy. And then find a way to let Zane know that maybe working a night job wasn’t the best thing right now. That what she really needed was to take a step back and get some—

  “Well, good morning, Zane!” her dad practically sang from the front hall.

  —distance.

  “Hi, Mr. Chen,” Zane said. “Can Bailey come out to play?”

  “Yes.” Bailey jogged down the hallway and pushed her dad out of the way. With a rattle, the front door slammed behind her, leaving her alone with Zane on the porch. She started in on her half-formed lie. “So, Zane, I think I’m sick and—”

  “Sick?” Zane said. “Or you’re recovering from an attack last night?”

  “—shouldn’t be working if I’m coming down with—” Bailey froze. “What?”

  Zane, who had traded last night’s gray suit for a black one, looked over Bailey’s mismatched PJ situation like he was trying to figure out the best joke to make.

  “What did you say?” Bailey said again, her voice quavering.

  He jerked his head toward the street. “Walk with me?”

  “How about you come inside and tell me?”

  Zane craned his neck past her, toward the inside of the house, and lowered his voice. “This isn’t anything your folks need to hear.”

  Bailey frowned. The silence of the last four years notwithstanding, Zane had been close enough to Bailey’s parents to practically be family. The same had been true of Bailey to Zane—well, to his uncle Garrett, anyway, who was basically Zane’s father. Secrets weren’t really a thing they did.

  Unless …

  She looked Zane in the eyes, the one part of him that seemed unchanged since first grade. Behind his glasses, they were that same cool gray, always on the verge of sparking with excitement about something. Like right now.

  “My place,” Zane said. “Come on. I think I’ve got a box of doughnuts or something.”

  Bailey considered.

  “Fine.” She opened the door a crack. “I’m going out! Be back, uh, soon!”

  They headed down Sunnyside toward Welles Park, where together they had spent a lot of time climbing around the playground or running through the fields, pretending to be dinosaurs or cowboys or robots, depending on what movie had just come out. But they weren’t kids anymore, and Bailey didn’t feel like playing. Suddenly every rustling leaf was the two-second warning of another skinless hellbeast, about to drag her to the ground and devour her from the inside out.

  “You all right?” Zane asked. “You look scared.”

  “Fine,” Bailey said, a little too quickly. “Fine.”

  “You’re safe during the day. Tremens don’t like the light—burns those weird muscles of theirs. And there’s fewer drunk people for them to feed off of.”

  “Tremens?” said Bailey with the nonchalance she imagined cool people used to greet everything, even descriptions of skinless not-a-dog demon things.

  “The thing you saw—killed, rather.” He nodded. “I caught the end of it. You did well.”

  Bailey’s fake coolness evaporated. “You what?” She stopped abruptly, and Zane overshot her by two steps. Her voice was shaking. “You saw me there and you didn’t help?”

  Zane put up his hands. “I showed up just in time to see you punch it. And I didn’t approach you afterward because you had superstrength and none of the training to use it. You would’ve been a danger to anyone near you. Even me.”

  “Superstrength,” she said. “I have superstrength.”

  “Had,” he corrected. “But if you want to take a moment to try flexing your guns, be my guest.”

  Bailey didn’t have time for this. Zane was being too cryptic. “Well, did you catch the other one or—”

  “There was no other one. Tremens hunt solo. They’re too greedy to share. And too stupid to work together. Come on.”

  Zane led her out of the park and up to Wilson, then hung a left until they reached the blocky sand-color
ed apartment building where Zane lived—just Zane, alone, like an actual adult. The place was classic Chicago style: three floors, high ceilings, and sunrooms that stuck out toward the sidewalk and made Bailey twitchy with envy. In her price range, natural light was as easy to come by as reliable hot water.

  “Zane,” she said, because he was humming to himself as he rummaged for his keys, “you promised you’d explain. Stop fucking around.”

  “I’m not—” He stopped humming and sighed. “Look, this whole thing is best shown, not told. You trust me, right?”

  Once upon a time Bailey would’ve trusted Zane to do anything, whether it was keeping quiet when she’d gotten that C+ or keeping his back turned while she changed out of her bathing suit. But that was before he tried to tell her that skinless demons stalked the streets of Chicago. Nothing, in other words, was what it seemed.

  Unfortunately she didn’t really have a choice.

  “Right,” she said, and she followed him up the stairs.

  Zane’s apartment was a far cry from the jungle of books and papers that had been his childhood bedroom. His records, once scattered across his floor like bizarro vinyl tiling, were now neatly color-coded on a wall shelf. His furniture was furniture: not the secondhand puke-stained IKEA crap that had filled Bailey’s rathole of a college apartment, but a plump red couch and real armchairs with throw pillows covering the worn spots. His windows even had curtains, for God’s sake. This was somewhere a grown-up lived.

  Along one of the brick walls, Zane had built himself a makeshift bar from plywood paneling. He’d left it unpainted, all the screws still visible, but the raw look somehow only added to its charm. Bailey settled herself on a battered stool that looked as if it, like Zane’s suits, had been picked up in a thrift shop. Zane sidled behind the counter and in short order produced two green bottles, a jar of olives, and a martini glass. Then he grabbed a gleaming cocktail shaker and walked over to the fridge.

  “Isn’t it a little early for a cocktail?” she said.