Moonshine

by Jasmine Gower

  “I thought that was what the handgun was for.”

  “That’s for defense.” Frisk rolled her eyes. She was being a good sport, all things considered.

  “I’d rather get blood on one of Vicks’ old shirts than this little number.”

  Daisy was about to joke, “We all have to make sacrifices,” until she remembered that Frisk wouldn’t have been dragged into this mess at all if Daisy hadn’t allowed Andre to bully her into revealing the secret of ritual magic and the trinkets. What she said instead was, “I’m sorry.”

  Frisk’s eyes flickered toward her, opened wide but with pupils narrowed from the effect of mana. Aside from that, she displayed no other manic symptoms. “What? Why?”

  “These hunters are hounding us – not just me, but also Cyan and our entire company – all because of my magic.”

  Frisk snorted, the kind of unladylike sound that gave people like Franklin Blaine an ulcer. “Dell, you think this is all ’bout you? Hun, we’re a gang. An organized criminal family. You think we don’t get into this kinda shit from time to time?”

  That only made the guilt dig deeper into her, realizing that she still didn’t know all that much about her new criminal family. “How long have you been working for the Stripes, anyway?”

  “Six years. Vicks and I been on the blue stuff for eight, and we lost so many jobs and so much money that we were on the verge of starving in the streets when Swarz found us. We saw his fancy coat and hat and tried panhandling him as he walked by the alley we holed up in. He could probably tell that we were on mana, and he decided to hire us for a quick job. I know it was just ’cause he pitied us and knew he could control us with promises of mana, but Vicks and I kinda owe him our lives for it. We ran one delivery for him, somehow impressed him, and he talked to Grey for us after that. He hooked us up with solid jobs.”

  “Did he?” It always seemed to Daisy like Andre could barely tolerate the Pasternack twins, especially from how Frisk and Vicks talked about their relationship with him. And he was responsible for them being in the company at all?

  “I know he’s a hard-ass, and he ain’t no friend to me – way too boring – but he’s not a bad sort, you know?” Frisk’s fingers drummed against the steering wheel as the car began to slow. They were almost to the right neighborhood, where they would park the car a few blocks away from their destination. “I know I’ve said it before, but he really likes you. He’s not the affectionate type, but he does. He doesn’t talk shit behind your back or nothing.” When Daisy gave her a startled stare, Frisk was quick to add, “Oh, he talks shit to people’s faces, too, so I guess you would already know if he hated you.”

  “He doesn’t respect me.” Daisy didn’t really mean to say it, but she was exhausted and relieved enough to see Frisk back to herself that it got her defenses down.

  Frisk pulled up along a curb and parked. “If he didn't respect you, he wouldn’t be doing all this. You think if me or Vicks got into this kind of mess that he’d be staying up late and getting in hot water with the Big Boss to save our asses?”

  Frisk unbuckled and stepped out of the car before Daisy could respond, and when Daisy scurried out after her, Frisk was already sauntering in the direction of the Gin Fountain. “Hot water? Is he in trouble with Grey?”

  “Uh, yeah. I don’t know all the details, but Angel told me he took responsibility for your faerie friend. I guess the Big Boss was pretty mad about that business.” Frisk gave Daisy a wolfish grin as she caught up. Frisk was considerably more athletic in high heels than Daisy. “I think it’s all really my fault, though. If I hadn’t knocked off your charm playing cards, none of this might ever have gotten started!” She sounded almost proud of herself.

  Her words, though, did remind Daisy that they were out in the open and “on stage” for their scheme. She paused and glanced in the direction they had come. In the shadows beyond the streetlights, she couldn’t see much except for a few parked cars and one large dumpster rolled up to the side of a building. Wei and her minions could have been lurking there and, against all natural instinct, Daisy hoped that they were. All that really mattered at the moment was that she made a show of looking around for them, assuming someone was, in fact, watching them.

  “So, what are we looking for?” Frisk asked, also falling into their act. They both spoke a little too loudly, in hopes that someone might overhear.

  “A nickel charm. Just a round coin with a hole punched in it.” Daisy wasn’t wearing her charm bracelet or any of its remaining components. Instead, she was equipped with her bronze levitation pendant, the onyx fire ring, and her smokescreen headband. The pendant was a bit obvious – it clashed horribly with her dress – but she hoped that these mage-hunters wouldn’t be able to spot the other ones for what they were. Her trinkets had limited use as weapons, and she would need the advantage of surprise as much as she could get it.

  Frisk had a pistol tucked into a holster hidden on her left thigh under the dress. The gown was just sheer enough that one could spot the dark outline of it, but it was barely noticeable in the city nightscape, especially on an evening so overtaken with swirling ash clouds blotting out the lights of buildings even just two blocks away.

  “Right, right. Let’s hope someone didn't grab it first.”

  “They would mistake it for trash, I’m sure,” Daisy said as they resumed their walk, trying to appear natural. It was hard, especially knowing what Rudolph and Regina had been up to for their part of the plan.

  Earlier that afternoon, Rudolph had gone to the Market Deli and lingered there for nearly an hour, making a show of being a fussy and unsatisfied customer to draw attention to himself. After ordering and sending back three perfectly decent salads, he loudly declared that the Market Deli would never again see his patronage before storming off. Several blocks away, after having enough time to “cool down,” he encountered Regina at her predetermined point, a believable distance from the scene where she had been captured. There, they made casual conversation about their coworkers, including references to the incident at the Gin Fountain and Daisy Dell and her grandmother’s curious Old Ways, before amicably departing to return to their own business.

  If anyone had been watching the Market Deli, they might have followed Rudolph after noticing his great tantrum, and from there they would have certainly overheard him and Regina laying clues that led directly to the Gin Fountain.

  They had no way to verify if they had been – or were currently being – followed. They had been too obvious as it was, and could not risk being more blatant in trying to lure Wei to that location. Daisy hoped the trap that they had set was subtle enough to keep from scaring the woman and her goons off. Even more than that, she hoped they had guessed right in assuming that Wei had the neighborhood around their office under surveillance.

  She and Frisk continued to the Gin Fountain, the front door of which was boarded off. “We just gotta slip in, find the bauble, and be on our way?” Frisk asked, examining the boards. Of course, the others should have been positioned inside, so the boards would be pried loose already, but Daisy used her pendent to nudge the nails until Frisk was able to jerk the lumber off piece by piece with ease.

  “If we can find it, yes.” Frisk rolled her eyes as she started removing boards. It felt beyond foolish to have a pretend conversation about a lost item that was, in all actuality, tucked safely in the warded box in Daisy’s apartment, especially when they weren’t yet sure that anyone followed them at all.

  With the boards set aside, Frisk pushed the door open and gestured Daisy through. “Let’s get.” Daisy took one more half-pretend glance around to scout the area. She saw nothing but shifting clouds of ash in the night, and she stepped inside.

  Ming squatted in an alley down the street from the Gin Fountain, Jase right behind her. She had already sent Kelsie off to alert her other hired muscle that skulked a couple neighborhoods away.

  Two of her scouts had reported finding the blond man and Regina Sadowski that afternoon,
having followed the man after an outburst at the Market Deli, and that they had spoken of the Gin Fountain and plans with a “Daisy” to go out dancing that night. Ming had already tried digging up information on the Daisy Dell that Regina had mentioned in her interrogation, but all she could find were records of her graduation from the Catherine Eleanor Ruthell Women’s College. Her scouts’ report that Regina had mentioned Daisy again did her little good, and it all kept coming back to the Gin Fountain, which raised some flags given that the establishment was closed after the riot she and Jase had accidentally started. Ming had set up in the neighborhood – between the Gin Fountain and Walter’s, just in case – even as her gut told her it might be better to back off.

  She still didn’t know how bowler-hat man and that… thing he summoned fit into all of this. More weird magic she should have asked Johnston about, she supposed. Maybe she should have been going after him this whole time, instead. At this point, she was half ready to abandon her current hunt and deliver Johnston any random corpse and just tell him it was a magician – but he had the right connections and would be able to dig up the truth about that. By the time a car rolled into the empty neighborhood, it was too late for Ming to back out, anyway. Daisy Dell and the woman that Jase had shot stepped out and began making their way on foot toward the Gin Fountain.

  Ming didn’t even turn to look when she heard gravel kicked across the pavement from somewhere behind her, accompanied by a light panting. “I got ahold of Bruno. The others will be here, soon.”

  “How many? When?” She didn’t tear her eyes away from Daisy and her friend. Kelsie crept closer to peer around the corner of the building before answering.

  “Eight, and they’ll be bringing arms. Half an hour, at most. I told him to meet us on the corner of Hazel and Winter.”

  “You and Jase meet them and bring them back here. I will keep watch.” The gravel crunched as Kelsie turned and went back down the alley. Ming heard a half-uttered grunt from Jase, but he never said anything before following the other woman. Ming remained crouched as she was. She had pulled a lot of strings to get support in this hunt, would owe a fair sum to Bruno’s crew and all those scouts, and she had lost enough resources wasting time with the bowler-hat man and his faerie. Her money from Johnston was nearly dried up. She’d be deep in the red if she didn’t bag the martyr for whom Johnston was so hungry.

  Ming intended to see the ritual mage’s corpse that night.

  Smoke-laced dust drifted in the front hall as Daisy and Frisk disturbed the peace. The Gin Fountain had been closed since the riot, and Daisy could now see that its staff had left it largely untouched in that time, too. In the dim shadows of the lifeless club, Daisy could see chairs overturned and tables smashed, but beyond that, the far walls of the dance hall were lost in black void.

  “Well, it will take nothing short of forever to find it in this,” Frisk grumbled. Her complaining sounded sincere enough that Daisy almost asked what she was hoping to find, not realizing for a moment that it was part of their act.

  “I can get the lights.” Daisy remembered from their first visit that the Gin Fountain had some old-fashioned lighting for aesthetic effect. There had been oil lamps on the walls and a few candles set out on tables, so she wandered over to the nearest upright table and used the power of her onyx ring to summon a small wisp of fire and light the wick. A small, orange glow spread from that little table in the center of the hall, casting dramatic shadows across the stage backed by a heavy curtain, the scuffed bar, and the grandiose geometric embossments on the walls, pillars, and molding of the architecture. She used that scarce light to hunt down a few more candles and light them, until it was bright enough to see the rubble and debris scattering the floor.

  Daisy turned around, remembering a night of music and laughter in this grand, desolate room, now weighed down under a heavy cloak of darkness and dust and hollow silence. “Did they just abandon this place after the riot?”

  Frisk shrugged, making a token effort at pretending to dig around in a pile of splintered chair remains for the supposedly lost nickel charm. “Maybe. If the cops came sniffing ’round here, they’d be outta here in no time.” She glanced over toward the bar. Daisy followed her gaze, just then noticing that there had been no faint, blue glow of thaumaturcite cutting through the dark when they entered. Even the few liquor bottles that remained on the shelves were mostly empty, not worth saving. “All the mana’s gone. They probably figured it was safer to cut their losses and lay low for a while.”

  “Gracious…” As if it wasn’t bad enough knowing that Frisk had been shot over Daisy’s lost bird charm.

  She was about to kneel in the debris and join Frisk in the phony hunt for her other charm, but Frisk stood straight and stepped up to her, taking her by the arm and pitching her voice to a sandpaper whisper. “Listen – you ever been in a toss-up before?”

  “Been in a what?” The firm press of Frisk’s bony fingertips into her arm was startling and verging on painful, but she didn’t try to pull away.

  “Fisticuffs, or a shoot-’em-up – a brawl. Not counting when we were here last, of course. One where you fight back.”

  In the dim light of the cavernous dance hall, there was almost no reflection off Frisk’s eyes as they focused with fierce precision on Daisy. “Uh, well, one time in college I got into a hair-pulling match with another girl at a bar. I shoved her into a wall and she landed weird, breaking a nail. She went home crying.”

  Frisk’s brow dropped to a flat line over her eyes. “Fucking hell, Dell. I mean a real fight. You ever hear the crunch of someone else’s bones under your boots or the swing of a crowbar?” Daisy shook her head. She understood the risk she and the rest of the Stripes were undertaking, but it chilled her that Frisk was so flippant with the more violent aspects of their line of work.

  It wasn’t like Daisy was surprised by any of this, either. Moonshining and bootlegging weren’t exactly low-risk business ventures. But that knowledge did nothing to tamper her jitters.

  She shook off Frisk’s grip. “I’m part of this organization, too, Frisk. If it comes to a fight, then I’ll fight.”

  “Not trying to be condescending. It’s just more important that you not get killed than that you be a killer. Otherwise, all this was for nothing.” She had a point there, and just as Daisy was about to let the topic drop and get to rooting around for an imaginary lost item, Frisk patted her on the arm in the same place where her fingers had just gripped. “I know you can handle yourself. And knowing when to quit is part of that. You got the rest of us at your back. Which reminds me…”

  She glanced toward the door. There was no indication of Wei trailing them yet, but it was possible that she or someone working with her was listening from outside, and Frisk and Daisy’s whispered conversation had gone on for long enough. Anyone eavesdropping would start to get suspicious at this point, but Frisk continued.

  “Watch out for Angel. She’s a sweet lady until she feels threatened, and then she becomes like a devil from the magma. Like, me and Vicks, we get pretty rough-and-tough in a scrape, but Angel is a sick, sadistic fucker when she wants to be. Might see her pulling some stuff, and I’m telling you now, do not get in the way of that.”

  Daisy recalled Angel’s ambiguous comments about questioning one of Wei’s former lackeys. She had already known that Angel could do – and had done – bad, bad things, and in the same way, she had always known that her trinkets were powered by the lost lives of humans dead by Cyan’s hands. Something about Frisk’s firm gaze nailed the point home, and Daisy’s lungs felt as though they rattled in her chest.

  Everything Daisy had – her magic, her job, the protection of these people she was beginning to see as friends – came at the risk of other people’s lives. But without all that was gained by those unwilling sacrifices, what would she have? An arbitrary degree from a mediocre school, a couple of surviving relatives who couldn’t afford to take care of her anymore, a life of wistfully gazing at magazine covers
and never becoming a rival to the beautiful and determined Modern Girls posing there? What the hell did any of that matter, anyway? What good was being modern beyond conforming to beauty standards and possessing a modicum of financial independence? Were those meager gains worth asking Frisk and Angel and all the rest to put their necks on the line?

  But everyone did what they had to in order to get an upper-hand in life. Her current alternative to modest finances was no finances at all, and she had knowingly tangled herself in this line of work when Andre came forward to her about the truth of the Stripes. Daisy wasn’t proud of some of her choices, but a girl had to eat. No point in feeling down about it.

  Frisk was making things a little too real at the moment, though.

  “Right, I got it. Let’s just… We need to find that charm and get out of here.” She said that last part loud enough to be heard across the room. Frisk got the clue and, without another word on anyone’s ruthlessness, returned to shifting through the debris with her foot.

  After Daisy crouched and rooted around for several minutes through broken shards of furniture and items abandoned by club patrons, she caught a movement at the edge of her vision, somewhere above. She looked up to the several half-circle balconies peering down at the dance floor. She caught a flicker of movement again between the railing on one, and she sucked in a breath and jumped to her feet.

  Frisk spun at the abrupt motion. “What is it?”

  “Up–!” She pointed, but snapped her mouth closed when she got a better look. Through the shadows, she caught a glint off of two small, glass ovals, and when she squinted, she could make out Vinnie’s blocky features behind the spectacles. He crouched in the balcony with a weapon – maybe Vicks’ rifle again – cradled in his arms. Of course, she had known that the other Stripes were supposed to already be positioned around the club, but she had nearly forgotten in the midst of their fake search.

  She lowered her hand, pretending to swat away a gnat. “Oh, never mind. It was just a bug, I think.” Frisk had already glanced where Daisy had pointed, but she turned away from Vinnie without any acknowledgement before returning to her task. Daisy was finding that the other woman was much smoother at improvising than she.