by Paul Krueger
“Of course we did,” said Trina.
“No matter what,” Zane said, his gray eyes shining, “you’re one of us.”
“Duh,” said Bucket.
Bailey smiled through watery eyes. “Thanks.”
That seemed as good a time as any to faint.
THE DEVIL’S WATER DICTIONARY.
The White Russian
A libation to induce a certain lightness in the feet
1. Fill an old fashioned glass with ice.
2. Add one and a half ounces of vodka and three-quarters of an ounce of coffee liqueur.
3. Float three-quarters of an ounce of fresh cream on top..
4. Stir slowly until mixed, and serve.
The White Russian’s invention is credited to Vivienne Vandenberg of the Andere Vrouw in Rotterdam in 1938. A longtime skeptic of dairy products in general, Vandenberg initially dismissed as frivolous the effects of what became her most famous creation. However, her partner (in life and love as well as in tending bar), Coby Vandenberg, quickly realized the potential of a cocktail that allowed its drinker to walk on air—the closest any known drink has gotten to full-on flight—and she convinced Vivienne to refine the recipe.
It proved prudent. The Vandenbergs’ innovation greatly improved bartending oversight in Rotterdam, allowing drinkers to more easily descend from the Witte Huis, an eleven-story building that served as a lookout to seek out tremens activity. In the prewar years, Rotterdam boasted one of the lowest tremens-related fatality rates in Europe, although it did suffer a subsequent spike in memory modifications, as bartenders unused to aerial navigation often wandered into plain sight by accident.
CREAM.
Prior to the addition of cream, the combination of vodka and coffee liqueur was served under the name “Black Russian.” Vandenberg’s invention of the White Russian came one afternoon when she was entertaining a visiting delegation of the Belgian Cupbearers Court. One of the delegates, not understanding that the coffee liqueur he was being served contained no actual coffee, stubbornly refused to even taste it until it had been lightened to the degree to which he was accustomed. Etiquette demanded that an official meeting could not begin without all present sharing a drink, immediately bringing the Dutch and Belgians to a standstill. Vandenberg, just as stubborn as her Flemish counterpart, fetched a pitcher of cream from the café next door and proceeded to empty it into the delegate’s glass. The request having been filled in letter, if not in spirit, he had no choice but to drink the result. To this day there is no historical consensus on what surprised him more: the degree to which he enjoyed the flavor or the fact that he had just bumped his head into a rafter.
FIG. 103—A cream pitcher.
CHAPTER TWENTY
Bailey awoke on a sofa and remembered nothing.
Well, not nothing. She remembered taking on Mona and Garrett and fighting what had possibly been a ton of tremens at the top of the Sears Tower. She definitely remembered sort of strangling that last one, right before she almost died and the Alechemists came to her rescue. In fact she remembered a lot more than nothing. The only thing she didn’t remember was how she’d gotten there.
And she didn’t even know where there was.
At first glance, it seemed like a normal enough living room. The floorboards were narrow and laminated, like the ones in bowling alleys. The white walls looked as if they’d built up an inch-thick coat of paint over the years. An old brass radiator stood in the corner. But the floor was covered in woven straw mats enclosed by dark wooden frames. The coffee table was surrounded by cushions that looked as if they were meant to be knelt on. And everywhere she looked, she saw stacks of comics and DVDs.
She picked up the nearest DVD and looked at the cover. A drawing of a frowny young man with physics-defying spiky hair stared back with impossibly big eyes. She couldn’t read the title; it was spelled out in neon green kanji characters. Next she grabbed a comic: big-eyed, small-mouthed girls in sailor outfits, all posed dynamically with various weapons. This title was also in kanji, though at least it had an exclamation point and a large capital X at the end to help her make some sense of it.
Bailey’s heart sank. If she was where she thought she was, she’d much rather have let the tremens kill her.
All the posters on the walls were for anime series. The bookshelves overflowed with manga. A pair of decorative katana hung crossed on the wall, and the lamp on the table next to her was shaped like a leggy cartoon girl with cat ears.
Right on cue, the apartment’s owner, carried on quiet shoeless feet, appeared in the doorway. “Konbanwa, Tokyo Rose,” said Trent, bowing. His dirty blond hair was ponytailed, his neck afflicted with a patchy beard. “Welcome back to the land of the living.” He beamed and flashed her a little peace sign. “I was wondering when you’d come out of it. Thought you’d take up my couch forever. Not that that’d be the worst thing in the world.”
Even if Bailey hadn’t felt like she’d been dragged from one end of Chicago to the other by a semi, Trent still would have been too damn chirpy. No wonder he’s a barista, she thought.
“What am I doing here?” she said. “Where are my friends?” And with annoyed resignation she added: “And I’m Chinese.”
“Your friends went out to kick tremens ass after they left you in my care,” he said. “Whenever someone’s taken a walk on the wild side and had trouble walking away, me and my java-slinging brethren get to play Florence Nightingale.”
He unceremoniously pulled the blanket off her. She recoiled instinctively, then berated herself for upsetting her injured leg. Except she felt no pain. She was still wearing her shredded dress from the night before, but her cuts had healed, too.
“Coffee,” Trent said. “It’ll cure what ails ya. Unless what ails ya is insomnia.”
“Good,” Bailey said, rising. “Then I can—ah!” The moment she tried to stand, the apartment started spinning, as if she were still in the grip of a tremens. She collapsed back onto the couch.
“Easy there, Bailey-chan,” he said. “That tremens took a good drink of you. I spent most of the night just healing the physical damage. I needed you awake before I refueled your animus reserves. Hang on.”
He disappeared into the kitchen. She heard a machine whirr and buzz to life, and the smell of coffee hit the air. He reappeared soon after, carrying a steaming mug. “Drink it slowly,” he said, handing her a cappuccino topped with a perfect tuft of foam. He’d sprinkled powdered cinnamon over top in the shape of a cross, like on the side of a first-aid kit.
Bailey eyed it. “This coffee can heal me?”
“That cappuccino can replenish your stores of innate magic, and then some … if you drink it slowly.”
“What happens if I drink it fast?”
“Then you burn the roof of your mouth, and I’ll have another thing to fix.”
She drank slowly.
Bailey’s dizziness receded as she sipped. Despite its warmth, the drink cooled her insides like a balm. And though she never would’ve admitted it to Trent, it tasted damn good. At last she put the empty cup aside with a contented sigh, stood again, and instantly regretted it, falling back with a yelp.
“Gomenasai,” said Trent, bowing. “Coffee doesn’t work as fast as booze. It’ll take awhile until everything’s completely healed.” He brightened. “But hey, while we wait, I’ll throw on some episodes of Ultimate Frisbee Fighter Gengoro X. I just got it in the original Japanese.”
Too weak to escape, she had to suffer through fifteen minutes of Trent’s running commentary on the first episode before her salvation appeared.
“Now here’s something interesting,” said Trent, who was almost certainly about to tell her nothing of the sort. “In the Filipino dub, Kazemaru was made into a woman and her name was changed to—wait, hang on.” He pulled out his phone. “Hello? Yeah, she’s right here.”
Bailey reached for his phone, but he waved her off.
“I don’t think she’s really ready for … Well, why don�
�t you come up? We’re watching Ultimate Frisbee Fighter …” His voice trailed off. “All right,” he said, the color draining from his face. “I’ll send her down.” He hung up and turned to face Bailey. “Zane and his friends are downstairs waiting for you,” he said. “I’m so sorry to interrupt the episode, but they really insisted that—”
But Bailey was already on her feet.
Fighting residual dizziness, she took her time going down the steps. She’d just survived hell and more. The last thing she needed was to fall and crack her head open. But she felt flutters in her gut the whole way down. On the one hand, she was excited to see Zane. On the other, every single thing had changed overnight. They hadn’t undergone this much interpersonal turmoil in a twelve-hour period since the Fight.
When she reached the street, Bailey wasn’t greeted by a scarecrow-thin modster in an old suit, or a punk stereotype with a Canadian accent, or a redhead in a puffy coat. Her welcoming committee was a severe-looking black woman with dangling dreadlocks. She stood smoking a cigarette as the cold November wind rippled her long coat.
“Hello, Chen,” said Mona.
Bailey immediately tried to turn and run back inside, but the door had slammed shut. For a wild moment she thought Trent was somehow in league with Mona, but then she realized he must not have known about Mona’s betrayal. He probably thought she was still one of the Alechemists.
Frantically her eyes raked across the building’s list of tenants, looking for Trent’s name. But a hand covered the directory, and suddenly Mona was next to her, filling Bailey’s nostrils with secondhand smoke. “I won’t hurt you,” she said. “I’m here to talk.”
“How can you expect me to trust you?” Bailey said, trying to sound more angry than afraid.
“I don’t,” Mona said dispassionately. “But you know if I wanted to hurt you, you’d be hurt. I wouldn’t have let you see me coming. So walk with me. Please.”
So they walked.
“Do you know why I’m here today, Chen?” said Mona. “Why I sought you out?”
Bailey cast about for a retort that was brave and pithy and just a little angry. “Because you suck.”
Dammit.
“Bartending is like any other discipline,” Mona said. “A distanced perspective is necessary to fully understand every aspect of it. Garrett … Zane … even Vincent: they all were too close. Too stubborn to take a wider view. But not you. You’re good, but you’re still coming into this as an outsider. And you’re wondering why I stood with Garrett. Why I wanted to get you out of there. And you saw what happened to him.”
Something niggled at the back of Bailey’s brain. “Why’d you let us go there in the first place if you just wanted us to get out of the way? For that matter, why’d you let Garrett mix the Long Island at Apex? All those people would’ve been killed if we hadn’t been there.”
“But you were there,” Mona said. “And he wasn’t mixing at Apex.”
“Okay, so technically it was the distillery above Apex,” Bailey said. “Same diff—”
But no, she thought. It wasn’t the same.
“The distillery,” Bailey said. “Garrett’s explosion destroyed all the equipment.”
A shadow of approval flitted across Mona’s face. “The Long Island iced tea is too dangerous for anyone to possess. When you accused Garrett in front of the Court, I realized the threat he posed. I approached him, offering him Zane’s breakthroughs. When Garrett took them and didn’t back away, I knew what I had to do. And I did it.”
A pang of bitterness hit Bailey. “So everything that happened up there … it didn’t matter. I could’ve just stayed home, and everything would’ve played out just like it had.”
Mona shook her head. “You showed me where to look. And you didn’t know what you were walking into when you showed up at Apex. You just showed up anyway, ready to go to bat for a bunch of people who hated you. That’s not nothing, Chen.”
Bailey stayed silent. But now she was confused. Was this a pep talk?
“Garrett got his wish.” Mona went on. “His legacy will serve the Cupbearers’ Court forever … as a warning. They’ll cover it up, of course, and I doubt most bartenders will ever even hear about it. But now they know what will happen if one of them tries to seize ultimate control again.”
“But they aren’t the only ones trying to mix it. I mean, you saw Zane. You were there when he almost did it.”
Mona stared at her calmly.
“What did you do?” Bailey said. “What did you do to stop him?”
Another fleeting smile of approval. “A thumbprint on the inside of the glass,” said Mona. “The residual oils from my fingertips were enough to throw off the balance of the Long Island’s composition and render its magic inert after the initial reaction. Simple and undetectable once the first liquid is poured.”
“So without you, Zane would’ve succeeded? He’d cracked the code?”
“He’s certainly smart enough,” said Mona.
Everything was lining up in Bailey’s brain. “And you’ve been with him for over a year. How many other times has he come close?”
A third approving grin, this one showing the tiniest sliver of teeth.
“What if he’d found a way to succeed anyway?” Bailey pressed on. “What if he found a way to outsmart you?”
The smile faded. “That would’ve been an … interesting day,” she said, her voice distant. “Have you heard of Hortense LaRue?”
“That’s like asking if I’ve heard of George Washington,” Bailey said. “I read the Dictionary backwards and forwards.”
“Then you know her last deed in the Court’s history was the apprehension of Tom Collins,” Mona said. “After that she dropped off the earth. Except some say she didn’t. Some say she was the first person after the Blackout to re-create the Long Island iced tea. And that after she did, she realized no one should ever make the same mistake.”
“Some say?” Bailey echoed. “Do you have any proof?”
“No,” said Mona. “But you know why.” And the moment she said so, Bailey did.
“She wouldn’t have wanted proof,” Bailey said. “The best way to keep a secret is to make sure no one knows you’re keeping one. But then, how would you know it?”
Mona took the last drag of her cigarette.
Bailey suddenly remembered their strange chat in the alley.
Those things will kill you.
And Mona had shaken her head. No, they won’t.
Realization dawned in Bailey’s brain. Her spine tingled. “Mona,” she said carefully, “when Hortense LaRue made that Long Island iced tea, did she drink it?”
“I couldn’t say,” Mona said. “But if she did, she probably regretted it.” She dropped her cigarette and ground it under her toe.
“Why are you telling me all this?” Bailey said. Instinct told her she should be afraid, but for some reason she wasn’t. If anything, she was too calm.
Mona looked down at her. “Because I like you, Ch—Bailey.” Her voice softened. “Because even if you don’t trust me, I trust you. And because I don’t believe we’re done with each other. I want to be your friend, Bailey. I very much do. But I also want you to appreciate what it means to have me as an enemy.”
Bailey shivered.
“That’s all,” Mona said, as if it they were wrapping up a business agenda. Bailey looked up and realized with a start that they were standing at the corner of her block. Her parents’ block.
“This is where I leave you.” Mona held out a hand for Bailey to shake. “But not for good.”
Bailey had no idea what the hell to say. All she did was shake Mona’s hand like they were actual grown-ups, nod, and start down the path to her house. She didn’t look back, but it didn’t matter; she already knew that if she did, Mona would be gone.
“Bailey!”
Bailey froze. She’d been planning to lie, to rehearse how best to explain her prolonged absence to her parents. But now there they were, bursting through
the door wearing bathrobes and very concerned expressions.
“Um,” Bailey said as her dad crushed her to his flannel-covered chest. “Hi.”
“We were so worried, Beetle,” he said. “When you didn’t call—”
“Where have you been, young lady?”
Her mom never called her young lady unless Bailey was in deep, deep shit. As her dad disentangled himself and marched inside to the couch, Bailey racked her brain for an explanation. Halloween shenanigans provided a convenient cover, but they couldn’t excuse everything. And she imagined downtown had probably been chaos last night. It was a miracle the city wasn’t on some kind of high terrorism alert after what had gone down in the Sears Tower.
“Well,” Bailey said, “here’s the thing.” She desperately began concocting a G-rated version of the night’s events that still technically counted as the truth. “I guess you’ve noticed I’ve started staying out later and later. Hanging out with a new group of friends. Um, drinking a lot.” She took a deep breath. “And I know that on the face of it that seems really irresponsible, but the thing is that for the first time in my life I feel like I’m doing something important, and I want you guys to know that you can trust me …”
She fully expected to have been cut off by now. But her parents weren’t yelling. In fact they were kind of smiling at each other.
“Beetle.” Her dad set his ACCOUNTANTS DO IT WITH BALANCE mug on the coffee table. “Of course we trust you. We understand.”
That was the last thing she expected to hear. “You do?”
Her parents exchanged a look. “Didn’t you ever wonder why there are no pictures of your father and me from before we got married?” her mom said.
Bailey had to admit the thought had never crossed her mind. She shook her head. “You were both in San Francisco,” she said. “You met at a concert. Hit it off. Got married. Then I happened.”
Her mom shook her head. “Not quite.” She nodded at the computer in the corner, where Bailey’s dad had called up a photo. “This was where I met your father.”
