Moonshine

by Alaya Johnson

  Amir shook his head. “And then he’ll kill you outright, or bleed you to death because he can’t turn you. This is a bad idea.”

  I groaned. “And you have a better one? Spare me the chivalry, Amir, I’ve been getting it from everyone today. I need the money, you need the help. Let’s leave it at that. Unless you think my gender obviates my right to risk my safety.”

  Amir stared at me for several long, uncomfortable seconds. Then he broke into a sudden grin. “Obviates my right to risk my safety.” His mimicry was a little uncanny, right down to the hint of Montana drawl that always infects my speech when I’m angry. “Zephyr, habibti, I’m fully behind your right to risk your safety. It would just make me happier if you didn’t end up on a slab in the basement of the Tombs.”

  Impulsively, I put my hand on his elbow. “I’m in no hurry to get there, either. I’ll be careful.”

  Amir leaned forward until our noses touched and my eyes crossed. I could hardly breathe. But then he backed away with a sigh.

  “I went through a lot of trouble to get that vase,” he said wistfully.

  My stomach twisted. “Yes, well . . . sorry about that.” I looked up at his bemused expression and relaxed. “How did you get it, anyway? Rob an auction at Christie’s?”

  He snorted. “Just a well-timed temple fire. They guarded the antiques like dragons at that place, and refused to sell it to me.”

  “You set fire to a temple so you could get a vase? Was anyone killed ? ”

  He looked caught out, like he’d expected me to chuckle over his youthful hijinks. “I . . . I mean, I doubt it. I pretended to be a demon and made a lot of noise.”

  “Pretended.”

  He ran his hand through his hair. “Right. Ming vases are a tool of the ruling class to suppress the proletariat. Apologies.”

  I rolled my eyes. “You are almost insufferable, Amir.”

  “Almost? ”

  I could forgive a great deal coupled with that smile. He cupped the back of my head in his hand, saying something low under his breath in that language of his I didn’t understand. I loved the sound of it, though—liquid, like a stream, but peppered with rocks. I couldn’t trust a voice like that. Too beautiful, and too unknowable. Other. I started to shiver again.

  “I have to get home,” I whispered. “Mrs. Brodsky will lock me out again.”

  His lips brushed mine, gentle as the silk of his shirt. “Would that be so bad? You could stay here.”

  Yes. No. Yes. “I . . .”

  I squeezed my eyes shut, grabbed a fistful of his unruly black hair, and attacked. My tongue slid across his, rough and sweet, and traced the contours of his perfect teeth. He nibbled my lip while his skin blossomed like a hot house against mine. Yes. Yes. Yes. No.

  “I have to get back,” I said, backing away so quickly I nearly fell off the couch.

  Amir rubbed his mouth ruefully. “I clearly have to work on technique.” He stood up. “Get your things. I’ll take you there. No way you’ll get back in time, otherwise. If you’re going to die, at least make it respectable, like at the hands of murderous vampire thugs. Freezing to death would be beneath your dignity.”

  I opened the door to the boarding house in a daze, my nostrils still filled with his crackling scent, my body still radiating his warmth. I leaned against the hallway wall for a minute, elation warring with bone-jarring exhaustion. I needed to sleep. I wanted to sleep with Amir. I was well and truly screwed.

  The hall was dark, but drafty, as though someone had left the front door open for a long time. To my surprise, a low light was still on in the kitchen, and I heard the scuffling of someone inside.

  “Katya?” I whispered. “You shouldn’t have waited up—”

  I stopped abruptly on the threshold. The person sitting on a stool by the stove wasn’t Katya, but Mrs. Brodsky. The resident dragon looked even worse than I felt—her eyes were the kind of bloodshot red-gray that I usually noted only in the single mothers I visited for the Citizen’s Council. She was smoking a clumsily hand-rolled cigarette, and blowing in jittery puffs toward the drafty window.

  “What do you do all night, Miss Zephyr? What could be so important, anyway?”

  Given the disaster with Amir this afternoon, the remark felt like vinegar on a fresh wound. I shrugged my shoulders. “Good night, Mrs. Brodsky.”

  “Zephyr, wait.”

  “Yes?

  “Aileen . . . is she quite well? She stayed in her room all day, she won’t answer when I call. Is it a boy? I know what you modern girls do with boys these days, it would make a sailor blush.”

  I grimaced. If only. “She just . . . had a rough night. She’ll be fine.”

  Mrs. Brodsky glared at me. “I know you, Miss Zephyr. I know the sorts of things you get into. You should not drag poor Aileen into your mischief. Your vampires and demons and fairie godmothers.”

  I valiantly suppressed the urge to roll my eyes and said, as pleasantly as possible, “I will attempt to be an influence to the good. Is that all?”

  “You are forgetting something?”

  She gave me a hard look, but I was too tired to attempt to decipher her preferred language of nonverbal shame and intimidation.

  She shook her head. “It is past midnight. Sunday, Zephyr.”

  Ah, of course. I gave her a tight-lipped smile and fished Amir’s wad of cash from my pocket. I counted out twenty-five dollars in slightly damp bills and tossed them on the stovetop.

  “For the next two months. Good night, Mrs. Brodsky.”

  The lamp that usually rested at the top of the stairs had vanished. It was probably Lizzy, our across-the-hall neighbor, who was terrified of rats and refused to travel even three feet in the dark. She tended to hoard the communal lamp in the winter, when the rodents liked to huddle indoors.

  “Do you think she’s afraid of turning into a were-rat?” I asked Aileen once. Aileen had just stared at me.

  “There’s such a thing as a were-rat?” she said.

  “Oh, don’t worry,” I’d said blithely. “They’re not common.”

  Of course, now, creeping down the hall in my damp, Amir-scented clothing, I suddenly found myself jumping at every creak and shuffle in the dark. I almost drew my knife, but the thought of a former demon hunter trying to stake a cockroach was just a little too embarrassing. I eased alongside our door and then relaxed. See, nothing there.

  My hand was on the doorknob when something shrieked and clawed me across my forearm. I whirled, back against the wall and silver blade in my hand nearly as fast. The thing—just a blue-black blur against a light wood floor—launched itself at my head. I dropped the knife and caught the creature as it sailed past. Before it could struggle much—I’d pegged this as a revenant something and knew its strength would surprise me—I grabbed the back of its tiny head and twisted until I heard a familiar crunch. No Other can survive a severed spinal cord. It’s the cleanest kill you can make, but also the most difficult.

  I was panting with exertion, but otherwise felt bizarrely calm. My hands didn’t even shake as I held the furry creature up to the dim light filtering in through the window. Not a rat, but a small cat. From its unkempt fur and scarred tail, I guessed it must have been a stray. Someone had branded the marks of a revenant on its back, and the wounds were raw enough to be recent.

  And meant for me. A piece of paper had been tied around its neck with a bit of red ribbon. When had this been left here? This revenant might be small, but revenant crabs have been known to kill people who weren’t prepared. What if Aileen had needed to use the bathroom? For the first time since the attack, I started to feel scared. I’d never forgive myself if something happened to her because of my own mess (and neither would Mrs. Brodsky). But who would do this? I put down the dead cat and read the note.

  A PRESENT FOR TUTORING MY BOYS.

  Dear God. Rinaldo. He knew something. I forced myself to breathe past the sudden constriction in my chest. Calm, Zephyr. He couldn’t have learned everything. But how much?
Could he have guessed my connection to Amir? Or was there some other reason he didn’t want me around Nicholas? I stuffed the note hastily into my pocket and sheathed my knife. What ever its import, I had to get rid of the revenant. I climbed the ladder to the roof, and tossed the cat into the alley. The rats would take far better care of it than I could. My arm was throbbing by the time I came back inside, so I washed the scratches—not very deep, thankfully—in the sink before finally entering our room.

  The lamp was out, but Aileen sat up as soon as I opened the door. “Is it safe to go out?” she asked. Her eyes were very wide and her face was ghostly pale. Had she heard my fight outside? But how would she have known what it was?

  “Yes,” I said.

  Aileen nodded. She released the sheets and lowered herself with painful care onto her bed. “Good.” She looked over at me. “Are you okay?”

  I turned so my torso hid my scratched arm. “I’m fine. It was just a stray cat.”

  “Oh, was that it?” She sounded mildly surprised. “I just saw it was some kind of Other. Small, but dangerous. I thought it might be one of Lizzy’s were-rats.”

  I pulled my nightgown over my head. “You saw it?”

  “Oh no, not that kind of seeing. The other kind. My grandmother’s kind.”

  I suddenly realized that Aileen was wearing the exact same clothes she had this morning. Her hair was matted as though she hadn’t combed it all day. She looked terrible.

  “Aileen, what’s going on?”

  “I saw you with Amir again. He’s strange, Zephyr. You should be careful. I can’t see it clearly, but I know you’ll hurt yourself if you do what he wants.”

  Oh, no. Aileen sounded just like an old Irish soothsayer, but this time I knew she wasn’t joking. I took the lamp from beside her bed and lit it hastily. In its glow she looked even more haggard than before.

  “You think that you have the Sight?”

  She buried her face in her pillow. “It’s been hitting me all day. Every time I try to get up another one comes. Your parents came and I suddenly knew exactly where you were.”

  “Yeah, about that . . .”

  Her smile was thin, but genuine. “Sorry. I realized later you probably wouldn’t appreciate a parental visit.”

  “You could say so.”

  “Lord Jesus, I’m so tired I want to pass out. I think I might die.”

  This had been some goddamn day. How to phrase this as delicately as possible? “Do you think you might just be . . . upset?”

  She narrowed her eyes, but I could tell she was interested. “About the other night, you mean.”

  “My first time on a vampire hit . . . well, it gets to you, right? It’s not pretty. I could barely eat for a week. Have you eaten today?”

  She shook her head.

  “Maybe you should eat, and try to sleep and ignore the . . . visions, if you get them again. Maybe you did get the Sight this late, but it’s pretty rare, right? Chances are you’re just scared.”

  Aileen stuck out her jaw. “But how do you explain how I knew where you were?”

  “You already know that Amir and I . . . well, we’re working together, at least, so it wasn’t that hard a guess.”

  “What about the were-rat?”

  “Well, it wasn’t a were-rat. It was a stray cat, and you probably heard it scratching the door.”

  “Bloody hell.” Aileen put her hand on her forehead and sat up in bed. “Oh, bloody hell. If I am ever so fucking stupid again, I give you permission to bean me. Just keep going until I start making sense again. I’m going to get some food.”

  I smiled. “Wait, I have something that should make you feel better.” I went to my trunk, where I’d stashed my finery from the night before and took out the two tiny objects secreted at the bottom.

  “I think these are rightfully yours,” I said, handing her two diamond cuff links.

  She stared at them for a blank moment. Her hand shook when she remembered. “Are these . . . ?”

  “He couldn’t use them anymore.”

  She wiped her eyes hastily. “Go to sleep, Zeph. You look like hell.”

  I yawned. “Love you, too.”

  CHAPTER FIVE

  My dreams were filled with fire, pillars of flame so great I could only admire them as a wonder of nature. Ash drifted onto my hair and streaked my cheeks. Sparks burned my skin, but the conflagration was oddly familiar and comforting. In the distance I could hear wailing sirens, but I knew firefighters could do nothing but wait this blaze out. Lucky that no other houses were nearby. The ware house was a lonely monolith on this street. And didn’t that, too, look familiar?

  “Is she quite alight?”

  It was a firefighter, but I’d never seen a female in the uniform before, and her girth strained against her suspenders.

  “Is Amir okay? Have you seen him?”

  “Amir,” said the firefighter. “Isn’t that a Mohammedan name?”

  “Oh,” said Aileen—who had appeared in the street beside me, clad in just her nightgown, “he’s her boyfriend. A bit of a swell, actually. You should see his kitchen.”

  Aileen kicked me in the shins and I opened my eyes. Iris—dressed in a blue cardigan and tweed skirt, not oversized firefighter suspenders—was sitting on Aileen’s bed. Aileen yanked me upright by my elbow and plopped down beside me.

  “What time is it?” My voice was a hoarse croak. I felt like I could sleep for at least another day.

  “Eight,” Aileen said, yawning. “Which apparently makes us slugabeds.”

  I closed my eyes and put my head on Aileen’s shoulder. “Wake me up in five hours.”

  “Oh, come on, girls, at your age I’d have already taken a turn around the yard and read the morning paper.”

  “Was this before or after you made the orphans corner-tuck their sheets?” Aileen asked.

  I giggled.

  “No need to be smart,” Iris said, but I could tell she was holding back a smile. “Well, I would leave you to your youthful slumbers, but something has come up. You’ve heard those sirens for the last two hours? There’s some kind of new vampire drug on the streets. Hundreds of vampires nearly burned to death this morning when they were caught out in the sunlight.”

  “Burned to death?” I said slowly. “But that doesn’t make sense. There aren’t a hundred vampires old enough to burn to death in the whole city. New Orleans, maybe.”

  Iris nodded so vigorously that the bed shivered. “Yes, that’s precisely the thing. This drug doesn’t just make them blood-mad, it makes even the youngest vampires burn like they just turned six hundred.”

  I suddenly remembered the ambulance Aileen and I had seen just two days ago; I’d wondered why the gurney was draped in a sun-resistant shroud. Had that vampire burned by accident because of Faust? Horrified, I imagined the carnage that must have greeted the dawn this morning.

  Well, that was one way to wake up. Did I smell charred, exsanguinated vampire flesh coming through our drafty window?

  “And it makes them blood-mad, too? Like when they Awaken?”

  Iris shook her head. “It’s not as bad as that, thank the Lord for small blessings. But I’ve heard of at least six bites being treated at St. Vincent’s. I don’t know how many others can’t afford a doctor.”

  “But . . . I’ve seen this drug. They call it Faust. It’s a pig’s blood clone mixed with some kind of intoxicant. Why would they get blood-mad from drinking blood?”

  Even Iris didn’t have an answer for that. We sat in silence for a moment.

  “Well,” Aileen said suddenly, “it’s like one of those new grapefruit diets, isn’t it?”

  “Torture?”

  “Unnatural. See, they’re glutting themselves on all this stuff that tastes like blood, but doesn’t actually, well, nourish them the way real blood does. It’s a clone of pigs’ blood, right, which isn’t nearly as good as human anyway. So they drink and they drink, but they still need more. So it’s like when you eat nothing but grapefruits and cra
ckers for three days and just give up and spend all your money on macaroni and cheese at Horn and Hardart.”

  I stared at Aileen incredulously. “So you’re saying Faust makes vampires want to gorge at the Automat?”

  “If it had human blood.”

  “Details, details.”

  Iris looked between the two of us and shook her head. “Why it causes blood-madness concerns me much less than it being out on the street at all. Would you believe that when I went to complain to the precinct captain this morning, he told me that this new drug was perfectly legal? I believe that our fine mayor might have fast-tracked this dangerous substance through the city council without any debate! Six people in the hospital in danger of turning, at least two dozen burned vampires languishing in the basement of the Tombs—”

  “Not to mention the poppers,” said Aileen. She seemed giddy with a weird, manic energy. But she’d gotten just as little sleep as I had.

  Iris winced. “Of course. Full exsanguination is always a chore. Well, I came to you because I’ve called in some favors and the Temperance Union has agreed to an emergency meeting to night to discuss this new situation. I wanted to make sure I could count on you to be there to testify.”

  This is why she found me at eight in the morning? Only Iris. “Of course,” I said. “But, Iris . . . the vampires have already had a taste. It might be too late to stop it.”

  Iris shrugged and gave a lopsided smile. “Well, we wouldn’t be proper activists without lost causes, now, would we?” She stood up and grabbed her ivory-tipped umbrella. “I’m off to rally the rest of the troops. We’re meeting in the basement of Second Avenue Presbyterian at seven.”

  After she had swept out of the room, Aileen and I looked at each other in mock horror.

  “Take a good look at your future, Zeph.”

  “Iris is just a little . . . forceful,” I said, yawning.

  “She’s a strident Victorian busybody, that’s what.”

  “Anyway, we’re just trying to help people. This Faust stuff is dangerous.”