Last Call at the Nightshade Lounge

by Paul Krueger

Bailey chuckled and then, out of politeness, turned to the remaining Alechemist. “And what about you, Mona?” she asked, trying to keep her tone as pointedly unpointed as possible.

  Mona stared back through half-lidded eyes. “I want to know how it tastes.”

  And then she calmly turned her attention back to her coffee, as if Bailey’s question had been an interruption instead of part of the conversation.

  Zane flashed Bailey an apologetic look. Sorry, that’s kind of just how she is.

  “Food’s here!” Bucket said, perking up as Diana teetered over with a plate-laden tray.

  “Thank God,” Zane said. “I’m starving.”

  “Starving enough to eat those greasy worms you Americans dare to call bacon,” Bucket said, taking his plate of waffles from Diana. “You know, in the rest of the world, bacon means Canadian bacon. It’s like the metric system of pork products.”

  Diana set down the rest of their food—Zane’s scrambled eggs, Bailey’s pancakes, and Mona’s decidedly non-breakfast bowl of gumbo—but only Zane and Bucket seemed eager to dig in. Even when faced with hot, delicious diner food, Mona was—as in all things apparently—reserved. Even with Zane’s arm around her shoulders. When he looked at her she’d smile, but otherwise he might as well have been cuddling a tree.

  Bailey cut her pancakes into squares. That was no way to act when a guy like Zane Whelan touched you. She could imagine his arm wrapped around her. Its warmth. Its weight, draped across the nape of her neck. The strength hidden in its wiry muscles. The smell infused in every fiber of his sleeve—

  “Whoa, B-Chen,” said Bucket around a hunk of waffle. “You okay? You’ve got this whole Asian glow thing going on.” He gestured to his cheeks.

  “I’m fine,” Bailey said. She sounded more breathless than she’d meant to. “Just my, um, early-onset menopause.”

  It was a dumb and not even logical joke, but the boys laughed. Mona almost smiled. And then she took Zane’s free hand.

  Bailey decided to concentrate entirely on her pancakes. Sweet, reliable pancakes. Pancakes were delicious. Pancakes were dependable. She’d been eating pancakes her entire life and never got tired of them. They’d been there forever, like an old friend. Pancakes understood her.

  Mona threaded her fingers through Zane’s, which made Zane hold her a little closer, which made Mona smile just a little bit more.

  Gosh, but these are good pancakes, Bailey thought, chewing furiously. Because if she didn’t focus all her mental energy on breakfast, there was a chance she’d think the thought she was really thinking. And that thought was

  Ohshitohshitohshit.

  “Oh, shit.”

  Bailey looked up. Zane had his phone out, and Mona and Bucket were staring at him.

  “What?” Bailey said, setting down her fork.

  “SOS,” Zane said. “Vanessa, from the Pig and Castle. She’s sobering up but saw one on West Henderson. That’s—”

  “Three blocks over, three blocks up.” Mona, now disentangled from Zane, whipped out a small silver flask from the pocket of her leather jacket, poured an exact 1.5-ounce shot of whiskey into her coffee cup, and followed with a dose of cream.

  The cup began to glow.

  Mona slung back the coffee, tucked away the flask, and leaped over Zane, bolting out of the booth. Bucket dumped a pile of crumpled bills onto the table. Bailey was still putting on her jacket when Zane hauled her out by the elbow.

  “What—”

  “This is the fun part.” Zane pushed open the door and swept them both into the night. “But we’ve gotta run.”

  So Bailey ran. She pounded after Zane down Belmont, threading through pedestrians and dodging mailboxes and trees, finally jumping off the curb to jaywalk (jayrun?) up Southport.

  “Do you mind,” Bailey yelled ahead to Zane, huffing a little, “explaining … what’s … happening?”

  “I set up a bartenders’ group message that’ll ping anyone who’s nearby, in case someone spots something they can’t handle when they’re out on patrol and—”

  Ahead of them, Bucket had skidded to a stop, causing Zane and Bailey to practically crash into him.

  “Oh,” Bailey said, “shit.”

  Henderson was a small side street—residential and relatively quiet. Or it would have been usually. Mona was crouched on top of a parked SUV, one hand pressed to her temple and the other pointing to where a fat, glistening bulk of muscles was convulsing in the middle of the road. It was the first tremens Bailey had seen since her night of screwdriver bravery, and it was even more horrifying flailing—like a tumor with legs and teeth. Up on the car Mona twitched her fingers, and the tremens squeaked in pain.

  “Irish coffee,” Zane said in awe. “She’s making it hallucinate.”

  “Nice,” Bucket said, and he elbowed Bailey. “Study up, eh?”

  Bailey automatically pulled the book from her jacket pocket but then stopped. Neither Zane nor Bucket was doing anything—they were just watching as Mona made the demon thrash and wail.

  “Should I go get … backup or … something?” Bailey said hesitantly. “How’s she going to kill it with just”—she glanced at a page in The Devil’s Water Dictionary—“illusions?”

  But before Zane could answer, Mona had closed her hand into a fist and stood up. With one swift movement she ripped a windshield wiper from the car, raised it high, and jumped into the air. When she landed, she sank the wiper into the tremens.

  “Like that,” Bucket said, “I guess.”

  The twitching tremens burst, and its black blood sprayed onto Mona. She straightened, flung her hair out of her eyes, and wiped her face with her arm as casually as if she’d simply broken a sweat.

  Bucket threw up his arms and let out a whoop. “Yeah! That’s the spirit!” He grinned. “Hey, get it? Like spirits?”

  He nudged Bailey, who felt like she was going to puke. The first time she’d seen a tremens, she’d been so shocked that she hadn’t let the gruesomeness of killing it sink in. She’d been too pumped with the adrenaline rush of not dying to appreciate how gory it was. But this was literally bloody awful.

  “Holy shit,” Zane said. “Baby, that was—” He hovered reassuringly around Mona, but she didn’t look at all like she needed comforting. In fact she looked right at Bailey.

  “Bartending,” she said. The calm in her voice, while she stood there flecked with blood, made Bailey’s skin crawl. She handed the gory windshield wiper to Bailey, who took it without thinking. “It was bartending.”

  “She knows,” Zane said. “She’s ready. Aren’t you, Bailey?”

  Bailey gripped the wiper, the coating of warm tremens blood oozing between her fingers, and stared at her three fellow bartenders. “I’m ready.”

  Somehow Bailey managed to keep down her midnight breakfast until she got to Ravenswood.

  THE DEVIL’S WATER DICTIONARY.

  The Irish Coffee

  An elixir to induce illusions

  1. Pour three ounces of fresh hot coffee into a glass mug.

  2. Add one teaspoon of brown sugar and one and a half ounces of Irish whiskey. Stir gently.

  3. Float one ounce of fresh cream on top of the drink. Serve without stirring or mixing.

  The emergence of a codified Irish coffee dates to the winter of 1940, when severe snowstorms grounded a commercial flight in County Limerick, Ireland. The local bartender, Padraic Kelly, had been attempting to perfect a coffee-based cocktail, but the recent bad weather that week had left him short on supplies and customers alike. When he found his bar unexpectedly full, he saw a golden opportunity to earn back his losses and engineer an alchemical breakthrough at the same time.

  Using the cold weather to his advantage, Kelly was able to sell his entire stock of whiskey and coffee to the stranded passengers. Each customer was served a slightly different ratio, allowing Kelly to observe a wide spectrum of results. He soon realized one of his customers had been imbued with the ability to manifest illusions in the minds of the other p
atrons. Though he later cited his knowledgeable eye for the supernatural, his barback claimed he’d been tipped off by the fact that after a certain point, all his customers had failed to notice they were sipping from now-empty glasses.

  COFFEE.

  FIG. 23—Coffea arabica.

  The discovery of coffee’s restorative properties predates that of alcohol, although it is impossible to pin down an exact date; some legendary sources credit the Oromo people, whereas others (such as the Abd-al-Kadir manuscript) attribute the beverage’s invention to the enterprising Sheikh Omar, who boiled the beans in a last-ditch attempt to survive in the desert. Regardless of origin, the drink’s healing abilities have made its practitioners—the baristi—natural allies of the bartending community. But where they manipulate coffee in its raw form to repair the fibers of the body, the introduction of alcoholic components helps it instead augment the body or, in the case of whiskey, the mind. For best results, a pure arabica bean blend is recommended; robusta beans, though hardier and richer in antioxidants, are handicapped by their high pyrazine content, which produces a bitter taste and an aggressive diuretic effect unsuitable for magical potables.

  IRISH WHISKEY.

  Thrice distilled, unlike its twice-distilled Scottish counterpart, Irish whiskey is comparatively sweeter and smoother, and it lacks the peaty, smoky flavors in scotch that can destabilize the caffeine compounds. Whiskey (from uisce beatha, “water of life”) was first attested in the 1400s in the monasteries of Ireland, where one scribe called it “drinkable evidence of a loving and beatific God.”

  CHAPTER FIVE

  “So,” Zane said, “ground rules.”

  “Now there’s a name for a coffee shop,” said Bailey.

  He grinned appreciatively, and Bailey willed herself with all her might not to blush. Which was worse: having a crush on Zane, the best friend she’d already rejected once, or having a crush on Zane, the best friend who was now in love with someone else?

  “Very funny,” Zane said. “I like a little sassy insubordination in my employees.”

  Nope. Worst was definitely having a crush on Zane, her boss.

  “Anyway, rule number one: no moonlighting. While you’re an apprentice, this is your one source of income. No second jobs, not even if it’s just helping out your dad in the shop for an afternoon.”

  “Okay, sure.” That much she was actually thankful for. She loved her dad, and as a kid she’d loved wandering through the fragrant candy-colored clouds of begonias and alstroemeria. But as soon as she’d reached the age where it was okay for him to put a spray bottle in her hand and set her to work, the fun had evaporated faster than spritzes of plant food. “This is a serious job, and you want my head a hundred percent in the game.”

  “That’s right,” he said. “No distractions.”

  Bailey nodded and tried her best not to be distracted, but the way Zane stayed close, even from across the counter, made it difficult.

  They were in the Nightshade Lounge an hour before opening. Bailey stood behind the bar, poised for action, while Zane sat on a stool, leaning hard on his elbows. She couldn’t see, but she knew him well enough to guess that his knees were bouncing anxiously. Zane never had been much for sitting still.

  “Next rule,” he said. “While you’re an apprentice, no magic outside work, and no using it for nonwork purposes. It’s the same reason you don’t swipe a pair of scissors from an office gig, except it’s magic instead of scissors and a bar instead of an office, so in hindsight maybe that wasn’t the best comparison.”

  “Got it. Use my powers only for work-approved good. Anything else?”

  He tapped a long finger on his chin. It was a good look for him. “All right,” he said. “If I know you, you’ve already started on your homework.”

  She rankled at being thought of as predictable. “Not necessarily …”

  “So if you were to show me your copy of the Devil’s Water Dictionary, it wouldn’t be covered in neon Post-its cross-referencing everything?”

  In fact her copy at home was fringed in enough adhesive flags to turn it into an attractive, if offbeat, Christmas wreath.

  “I don’t have to answer that.”

  Zane chuckled and then rapped his knuckles twice on the counter. “Well, barkeep, let’s say I want a drink with rye, bitters, sugar, and water. I want an—”

  “Old fashioned,” she said. This she could do. Whether the subject was the Battle of Hastings or the makeup of a magic-inducing cocktail, Bailey had always understood pop quizzes. Read, memorize, regurgitate. Though not literally, in the case of the cocktails. She cast a still-wary glance at the bathroom door.

  “Over ice, in an old fashioned glass,” she said, finishing the recipe.

  “Served with?” Zane raised an eyebrow, almost like he was teasing her, and Bailey briefly forgot what they were talking about.

  “Um,” she said, “a smile?”

  Zane shook his head and mimed a spiral with his finger. Oh, right. The garnish.

  “An orange twist,” Bailey said, “and nothing else.”

  “Damn right, nothing else,” he said. “So why don’t you make me one?”

  She turned to the bottles behind her and, ignoring her shaking hands, pulled the appropriate ones, taking the time to check the labels before plunking them on the counter. Glass in place, she built the drink layer by layer—the sugar, the water, the bitters, the Court-issued whiskey—then gave it a stir with a long silver bar spoon and dropped in one of the oversize ice cubes meant specifically for drinks like this. Finally, she shaved a perfect spiral off an orange peel, rubbed it along the rim, and slipped it into the drink.

  The peel hit the liquid with a tiny plink. Bailey caught her breath and eyed it like the fuse on a bomb, waiting for it to make the drink light up and.…

  Nothing.

  “Dammit.” Bailey flicked the glass but it was no good. Bum fuse. The cocktail had been perfectly measured, mixed in the right order, poured into the right glass, and chilled with the right amount of ice. What she created should’ve been a glassful of magic potion instead of a mere drink.

  “Well, I bet it tastes great,” Zane said. “Just keep practicing and you’ll get the hang of it.” He patted her on the shoulder—a friendly pat, Bailey knew, but one that still sent a flutter to her stomach. “Here, why don’t you have this?”

  He slid her creation over to her. Bailey eyed the six-ounce monument to her failure.

  “You said no drinking on the job.”

  “Yeah, but you’re not on the job for another fifteen minutes,” Zane said, glancing at his pocket watch (because of course he has a pocket watch, she thought). “You might as well enjoy that one.”

  Bailey looked up from the drink. “But don’t I need to make one that, like, works?”

  “Baby steps,” Zane said. He’d started drifting to the back. “I’m gonna do some quick inventory. Just try to breathe, okay? You’re gonna do great.”

  He left and Bailey exhaled. Of course. Of course tonight wasn’t going to be that different from all the nights she’d already endured as a barback. Zane was in charge, and Bailey followed orders. What had she expected to change about that?

  Instead of letting herself answer the question, Bailey downed her drink.

  It might not have been magical, but it didn’t taste half bad: bitter and sweet, with a smack of orange to perk everything up. Good but not perfect, and that’s what this business required. Perfection. Precision. People’s lives were at stake.

  Bailey took another sip and scowled. So much for underpromise, overdeliver.

  The door swung open and Trina slipped in, wrapped in a pink coat and matching puffy headphones that clashed fantastically with her red hair. She must not have seen Bailey because no sooner had she shut the door than she struck a rock star pose, one arm in the air, and mouthed along to words that only she could hear.

  Bailey stood still and sipping and watched until Trina’s eyes flew open.

  “Bailey!” She
turned almost as red as her hair and tugged her headphones out of her ears. “I—I didn’t see you there. Or, um, hear you. Just jamming to Orange Banana’s early stuff. As one does.” She smiled sheepishly and twiddled her headphone cable.

  “Oh,” Bailey said, “of course.”

  “Do you know them?” Trina said, pulling off her coat. “They’re Canada’s number one J-Rock glam band. I just loaded up their whole discography into my Divinyl.”

  “Neat,” Bailey said quickly. An irritating voice told her she should quiz Trina on her listening habits, how often she used the app, what she thought Divinyl could do for other fans of Canadian Japanese glam rock, but Bailey ignored it. The voice sounded kind of like her mother anyway.

  “So, about that cabinet? The other night?” Trina said. “Zane, um, told me I left it unlocked. I’ll be more careful in the future.” Trina’s voice was steady, but her eyes were on the ground.

  “You mean the thing that saved my life and bagged me a promotion?” Bailey wasn’t much of a hugger, but this seemed like a good occasion to go for it, and she threw her arms around Trina.

  “So you really saw a tremens?” Trina said in a muffled voice.

  “Yup.” Bailey let Trina go and stepped back. “Killed it, actually. All thanks to your lackluster cabinet-locking skills. So, yeah, I don’t know how I’ll ever find it in me to forgive you.”

  “Not to worry.” Zane emerged from his office, a fresh towel in his hand. “Bailey may not believe in penitence, but I do.” He threw the towel to Trina. “We don’t have a new barback yet, and tonight Bailey’s training. Since it’s a job that requires attention to detail, and you can use a refresher—”

  “Fine.” Trina deflated a little. “But I’ll still take first shift patrol?”

  “You got it.” Zane beamed. “But first, clean up those counters.”

  “Yeah, yeah,” she grumbled, snatching the towel. “I’ll get you for this, Whelan.”

  “Less griping, more wiping,” he said, smiling. “I just came up with that one,” he added as she squeezed past him. “You like it?”