Moonshine

by Jasmine Gower

  The Dell lineage had never practiced methodical magic – they were ritual magicians. What separated magic into types was largely each magic’s mode and source. Methodical magic was all math and algorithms and code phrases powered by the magician’s own internal energies, or at least that’s how Daisy understood it. Ritual magic stored power in the physical world around the magician – in baubles and trinkets that could be easily carried and disguised as ordinary objects – but that power came from… elsewhere. It was not an efficient transfer of energy, and a magician could never survive putting their own power into a trinket. It was a practice that, in some ways, was better left behind.

  But Daisy was not her grandmother, and abandoning magic completely would not undo the twisted horrors of the past. Even knowing what her grandmother had done, Daisy had loved her, and Grandma Sparrow was gone now. Sparrow had fled to Ashland in a time of war, and she was hardly the only one who had to disregard the lives of others in order to survive. Tossing her handiwork now would hardly bring any of those souls back, and as long as Daisy never recreated the process to fashion new trinkets, there was no reason she could see not to make use of the ones that already existed.

  All that left, then, was the matter of whether she would need any of those trinkets that night. She didn’t expect anything to go disastrously wrong while she was out on the town with friends in tow, but she preferred to play it safe.

  She plucked a white headband from the tangled trove. When triggered, it could create a smokescreen, one that was hardly noticeable as anything unnatural outside on hazy days. Perfect for when creeps followed her around on the sidewalks. She slipped the headband on and considered a moment longer, eyeballing a solid bronze bracelet. The headband was a little outdated in its style, but it was white and simple in its make – entirely inoffensive even if it went noticed. The bracelet was bulky and drab and clashed with everything in her closet, and it didn’t even fit right on her narrow wrists. Still, she picked it up and slipped it on. A single questionable accessory was worth the energy-boosting properties locked within the trinket. Just the thing in case she needed help keeping up with her coworkers.

  With that, she rushed to slip on her dancing shoes and grab the keys hanging from a plain nail near the front door. She could hear a few more toots of the horn even out in the hallway as she locked the door and skipped down the stained, carpeted stairs two at a time until she was out of the building.

  By the time she had circled around the apartment complex, Angel and Rudolph had stepped out of the car, with the latter slipping into the backseat. Angel waited by the driver’s side door and waved at Daisy when she approached.

  “Evening, dear. My, terrible weather it’s been lately.” More ash clouds had rolled in just around dusk, but Angel stood before her in a long white dress, cream overcoat, and matching hat, all completely unmarred by soot. Daisy wasn’t given any time to wonder over this before Angel began shooing her toward the passenger seat. “Well, come on. We’re supposed to meet the girls in five minutes, and it’ll take half an hour to get there.”

  “Oh, my,” Daisy said, settling into the clean leather seat and allowing Angel to shut the door behind her before returning to the driver’s side. “Will they be upset?”

  Angel laughed – a warm, bellowing sound. “I don’t doubt they’re just as behind as we are. I’ve never had a single one of those women show up on time for anything. If we leave now, we might just time our arrival perfectly with theirs.” Daisy laughed along as Angel started up the car again and began down the road toward the gentrified northeast district – the very opposite side of town.

  “I do hope you don’t mind a bit of chatter. You’ve been such a lovely employee since you’ve started, but I feel I haven’t had a proper chance to make your acquaintance,” Angel said as she sped through the streets. Daisy herself didn’t know how to drive – she had been too anxious the first time her father tried to teach her, and she had always lived in walking distance from her schools and places of employment, so she had never bothered to try again. “Andre mentioned you graduated from the Catherine Eleanor Ruthell Women’s College. A lovely institute. I have an old beau who’s a professor of physics there. What did you study?”

  Daisy was relieved that Angel didn’t make any remark on the fact that college, theoretically, was supposed to educate students for a life in the workforce beyond the kind of menial labor she was now employed for. She cringed at the idea of being seen as some airheaded girl who got an education just to pass the time, but the academic scene in Ashland was modeled largely after Berngi and Algretau academia, including their backwards ideas about women. Judging from her name and looks, Angel’s family had probably come from Berngi, and although she was a learned woman herself, Daisy worried she would think of her field of study as flippant and useless.

  “Modern Ashland history.”

  “History? Splendid. I’ve always loved to read about history. Sadly, I devoted my college education toward a path that would lead to easier job security.” She shrugged, hardly seeming sad at all, though her interest in Daisy’s education sounded sincere.

  “You went to college, as well? What did you study?”

  “Chemistry.”

  Rudolph leaned forward from where he hunkered in the backseat. “That must be why your chemistry with everyone is so phenomenal, dear.”

  Angel made a show of rolling her eyes even as a thin smile crossed her face. “He makes that joke every time I mention it. Thinks he’s so damn funny.” Rudolph only smirked at her chiding and leaned back again.

  They talked more as they neared their destination, discussing families and hobbies and favorite foods without getting too personal or detailed on any one topic. It was a pleasant chat, comfortably superficial, and Daisy got to watch the towering buildings speed by, their bright lights blurring from the movement of the car and the volcanic dust drifting in the night air. They soon arrived in a glitzy neighborhood surprisingly close to Vicks’ area. She hated all these club and restaurant owners for chasing out the poor to take up cheap neighborhoods, she hated the city that it only bothered with upkeep of these neighborhoods once the rich rolled in, and she hated herself for playing along as a patron. Glamour and money were lovely, but the alluring sheen of it all smudged when she thought about what others had to lose for it.

  Daisy wasn’t the rich, though, and she had her own needs, and so long as she could justify the partying aspect of her persona and increasing social networks with coworkers as a “need,” she was able to choke down the guilt and disgust.

  Angel parked her car in a well-lit lot, and the three of them made their way to a dance hall two blocks over. As the ashfall continued, Angel’s pristine outfit remained untouched, even while grey flecks clung to Daisy and Rudolph. It would be easy enough to brush the ash off without too much smudging, but Daisy did wonder how the older woman managed to keep her clothes so clean. It must have been the type of fabric, Daisy ultimately decided. Daisy herself could have used a spell to accomplish a similar effect, but she had left her repellant ring at home, and it would have been too obvious. Outing herself as a magician – as a ritual magician, no less – was not how she wanted to make her first impression with her coworkers.

  “I do hope they’re here,” Angel said, strolling into an old (well, as old as building got in Soot City) two-storied brick structure crammed between two slightly taller buildings, decorated with white plaster molding around the windows and doors. Dull chatter and the soft melody of a piano and trumpet singing to each other drifted out from the white front doors. It was calm and elegant while also appearing rundown and pedestrian. Daisy and Rudolph followed her in, and while Rudolph went immediately to the front cashier to pay for their cover charges, Angel paused on the club’s plush red and gold carpet, swiveling her head as she examined the round tables set up around the edge of the dance floor and stage. Her eyes landed on one occupied by four young women as trim and sporty as Daisy, all with bare arms and tall heels.

&
nbsp; “Ah, that’d be them.” Angel hooked her arm into Daisy’s and headed toward the table without waiting for Rudolph to catch up. “Evening, dears.”

  The four women, who had been laughing raucously over some joke one of them had told, stopped abruptly and stared at them. Daisy could tell they were unlike Angel and her beau, as the group gave the larger woman a collective sharp look when they approached. They were glares that were both admiring but also wary and exasperated – these were menial labor working women, like Daisy, mistrustful of Angel even as they considered her a friend and colleague. Some things did not transcend social class.

  “New meat, Angel?” one with a jawline bob cut and a glittering red sequined dress asked. The angles of her white face were severe, and that combined with her dark eyes glancing Daisy up and down gave her the impression of an alley cat or a sadistic school teacher.

  “Ladies, this is Daisy Dell, Andre’s new typist.”

  The woman sitting – very closely – to the left of the first stiffened her back. “Oh-ho! Replaced already? I’ve hardly been in the ’house for a month.”

  “Andre always needs someone to type for him, Lia. You know that.”

  Lia – Amelia, Daisy assumed, whom she recalled Mr Swarz mentioning on occasion as his previous typist – smirked and leaned on the shoulder of the woman sitting beside her, regardless of either of their bony skeletal shoulders. “He doesn’t miss me at all, does he?”

  The woman she leaned into laughed, while a third woman stared off into space, appearing completely detached from the entire conversation. The fourth woman, strikingly familiar to Daisy, only grinned along. “Nah, Lia, you’re too fun for a crotchety snake like that,” the first woman said. She scooted away from Amelia and stood, offering a hand to Daisy. “Frisk Pasternack. I work in the, uh–” Daisy had taken her hand, but Frisk pulled away and turned to Angel. “You got a second?” The two stepped aside, putting their heads together to whisper in hushed tones. Daisy glanced at Amelia and the third woman while this went on, but they only examined her with silent, curious stares. Daisy looked again to the familiar girl, and she wondered if it wasn’t because she looked so similar to Frisk with her sharp facial features. A moment longer of looking, and she realized the true reason behind her déjà vu.

  “Vicks?”

  Vicks’ wolfish grin widened, and Daisy remembered the complaints she had from Mr Sparrick and Miss Cadwell while she had been covering Vicks’ errands. Mr Sparrick had noted that Daisy wasn’t the usual delivery boy, whereas Miss Cadwell had said something about a delivery girl. She hadn’t noticed the discrepancy at the time.

  She tried to politely hide her surprise, averting her eyes from the narrow-cut black dress or the bobbed wig Vicks was wearing. “Fancy seeing you here. One last shebang before you get back to work tomorrow?”

  Vicks snickered. “You seem a bit shocked, Daze.”

  “I just… took you for more of a suit and tie sort of man, is all.”

  “Well, sure, when I am a man. I’m not now.” Daisy took Vicks at her word and resolved herself not to bother her with any more questions or observations on the matter.

  When Frisk and Angel pulled apart and rejoined them, the former returned her attention to Daisy. “Sorry ’bout that. Anyway, I work in the warehouse, ’long with Amelia, Regina, and some of the boys. And my twin, here, Vicks. You met Vinnie and Jonas yet?”

  “I haven’t had the pleasure yet, no.” Rudolph rejoined them at that point, asking Daisy and Angel if they wanted drinks from the bar. He ignored the warehouse girls, who each already had at least one glass in front of them. While Daisy and Angel settled at the table to wait for his return, the band on stage started up a light, hopping beat, and Amelia bounced in her chair.

  “Babe,” she said, whacking Frisk on the arm. “Come on, let’s dance.”

  Frisk waved her off, leaning forward with elbows on the table. “Later. I wanna get to know our new girl better, first.” Amelia’s bouncing halted as she pouted and shot a glowering stare toward Daisy. It wasn’t any of Daisy’s business, but the brief glare made her gut turn a bit cooler. Amelia then turned to the woman sitting on the other side of Frisk.

  “How ’bout it, Regina?” Regina’s eyes were still a bit glassy and unfocused, but she nodded to Amelia’s request without looking directly at the woman and stood. While they went together to the dance floor, Vicks scooted her chair closer to her sister’s, and the Pasternack twins watched Daisy with intent and wild stares.

  “So, how’d you get pulled on as Andre’s right-hand?” Frisk asked.

  Angel cleared her throat, but Daisy could barely hear it over the blaring of horns and the twanging thrum of the piano. “I saw the job posting in a newspaper.” Daisy shrugged, unsure of how exciting Frisk expected her answer to be. “It seemed decent enough work.”

  Vicks threw back her head and laughed while Frisk grabbed a glass of scotch in front of her, muttering with a chuckle, “Decent,” before taking a long sip. Angel cleared her throat again, and when Frisk waved her hand dismissively at the other woman, Daisy realized that Angel wasn’t suffering the beginnings of a mild cold.

  Frisk leaned forward again, so far this time that her bony ribs pressed against the edge of the table. “And is, uh, our line of work very interesting to you?”

  Daisy tried not to frown. What did Frisk expect her to say? Even Mr Swarz hadn’t bothered with the usual question of “Why are you interested in this job?” at her interview, knowing full well that there were only so many things about document management that a person could find appealing. “Well, work is work,” she answered, her voice wavering slightly. She feared she wasn’t making much of a first impression, and the Pasternacks with their hyena-like stares were starting to make her jumpy. What kind of Modern Girl allowed herself to appear bland and skittish?

  A pulse of relief flooded through her chest when Rudolph sauntered back, awkwardly balancing three flutes of white wine between his two hands. Just as he set them down before Angel and Daisy, the older woman stood and tapped Daisy on the shoulder. “I love this song. Care for a dance?”

  Daisy hesitated. The song had already been going for half a minute, and Angel’s enthusiasm felt forced. The wolfish smiles had faded from the Pasternack twins, and now they only watched Daisy with blank expressions. Still, she would be happy to have a moment to collect herself away from them. Maybe she could appear more sure of herself doing something that didn’t involve running her mouth.

  “Of course.”

  She stood as well, allowing Angel to take her arm and hurry her over to the dance floor. Rudolph watched them scurry off without him with his mouth just slightly agape before calling out, “All right. I’ll just be right here. Enjoy yourselves!”

  Daisy began to relax more with the firm feeling of polished wood under her shoes. Angel guided her to near where Amelia and Regina danced together, kicking up their heels and flinging their bony arms wildly to the rhythm of the trumpet flares. Angel was a gorgeous woman, and Daisy admired her for every bit of that womanhood, but she wasn’t a fit for the Modern Girl image like the dancing girls in skinny dresses. She was too old, fat, and wealthy for that. Daisy wasn’t sure that the magazines had a pithy phrase for women like her – she wasn’t sure she wanted them to. Regardless, she expected that Angel wasn’t going to be doing any dance that involved kicking up her heels.

  Whatever spell of frantic alarm had taken hold of Angel at the table disappeared on the dance floor, and she smiled her warm, rosy-cheeked smile. “How about something a little calmer to start with?” she asked, nodding toward Amelia and Regina. “Warm up with a waltz? I’ll lead.” Daisy agreed and stepped up to place one hand in Angel’s and the other upon her shoulder. When the older woman’s hand went to her hip, she drew Daisy closer than expected, and with Angel’s ample bust, it left no room between them. Heat flushed through Daisy as Angel’s breasts pressed against her own, and she counted herself lucky that she didn’t have the same pale pink skin of her dance p
artner to betray her flustering. Angel was merciful enough to keep the dance itself tame, spinning about in a quick-footed modification of a classic waltz. Confident in each step, Angel was a sturdy leader, and Daisy found herself genuinely enjoying the way they glided about across the wood, guided by the drummer’s beat.

  Once Daisy began to grow dizzy and thirsty, Angel stopped them to return to the table. Rather than hold Daisy by the arm, Angel kept a hand on her hip with her arm hooked behind Daisy’s waist. “I do hope Frisk and Vicks weren’t bothering you too much. They can certainly be… aggressive.”

  Daisy barely heard her, distracted by the heat of the arm wrapped around her waist. “Oh, it’s no bother.” When they reached the table again – Vicks now gone to dance with some other patron of the hall and Amelia and Regina returned to gossip with Frisk – Daisy tried her best to slip out of Angel’s embrace without being too obviously bashful. She hurried to plop herself in her chair and reach to take a drink from her glass. However, she had misremembered where she sat – Amelia had shifted to where Vicks had earlier sat, and Daisy had mistakenly taken Amelia’s previous seat – and she didn’t examine the glass before raising it to her lips and swallowing.

  It was not wine.

  She slammed the glass down, nearly choking on raspberry vodka as it raced down her throat and up her nose in a fiery blur. While Frisk cackled at the sight, Amelia scowled. “Hey, that’s mine!” Daisy blinked furiously, trying to regain her composure as she pushed the glass across the table toward Amelia. Rudolph reached over to give her an assuring but awkward pat on the back. She didn’t bother trying to locate her own glass and just slumped quietly where she sat. Perhaps she was better off living her nightlife solo.