Last Call at the Nightshade Lounge Page 4

  Zane chuckled. “Okay. You know how when you’ve had just enough to drink, you feel like you can do pretty much anything?”

  You mean, like the time I tried to steal a concrete birdbath from my English professor’s front yard? Bailey thought. Or the time I walked home in a snowstorm wearing only that very much too short minidress with the orange sequins? Or the time I hit on my decidedly gay lab partner in front of his boyfriend?

  But all she said was: “Yeah.”

  “Well, what if I were to tell you that was literally true?” He plinked crushed ice into the shaker.

  Slowly Bailey connected the dots.

  “You’re telling me I turned into Bailey the—the whatever slayer last night because I had a drink?”

  “Not just any drink,” Zane said, opening a bottle of something that smelled like Christmas. Gin. “What you had was a screwdriver: chilled orange juice and vodka.” He poured a shot of the gin, then carefully eyed the height of his hand before dumping it onto the ice. “But using just the right vodka”—he poured only half a shot of the other bottle; it had a scent Bailey didn’t recognize—“and served in just the right proportions, in just the right glass … well, drink that, and you can kick a tank across a lake.”

  “You can’t be serious.”

  “Well, maybe not the lake, what with its being Great and all.”

  “You know what I mean.”

  “Sure,” he said. “And yeah, you get to be pretty damn strong.”

  “Zane,” Bailey said slowly, “you’re joking. How stupid do you think I am?”

  “Not very.” Zane stirred the mixture with the vigor of a human blender. “Not at all, actually. You’re not scrambling to justify the crazy shit that happened to you last night. We both know you’re smarter than that. You’re here because you’re looking for answers. Because you want to learn, to figure it out. And I want to help you. But like I told you earlier”—he clapped a strainer on the shaker and tipped its contents into the glass—“this is something better shown than told.”

  The liquid was clear enough that Bailey could see Zane through it without distortions, as if it were somehow even clearer than the glass that held it.

  “Final touch.” Zane popped open the jar of olives, plucked one out, and let it roll to the bottom of the drink. As it did, something changed. The way light hit the cocktail, sitting there on the counter, made it look like a small, clear lantern.

  Zane held it up like it was Excalibur.

  “This,” he said, “is a perfect martini.”

  Bailey eyed the liquid. “So you’re gonna drink it, then Hulk out in your apartment?”

  He chuckled. “Does this look like a screwdriver to you? No. Different cocktails produce different effects.”

  Bailey leaned forward on the stool, curiosity tingling the back of her neck. “So … what does a martini do?”

  “You’ll see,” Zane said. “Or, really, I guess you won’t.” He took a sip of the drink and then pulled a face. “Oh, right, this thing’s almost pure gin. Gross.”

  “Should’ve thought that through before you—”

  Bailey stopped. Zane was gone.

  She jumped off the stool. He hadn’t ducked under the bar or hidden behind the couch. The spot where he’d been standing a moment ago was empty. She whipped her head around and then circled the whole living room, but all she could see was Zane’s fancy couch and Zane’s semi-shabby carpet and Zane’s coffee table with Zane’s coasters. But no Zane.

  She called his name.

  Silence.

  “This isn’t funny,” Bailey said. “Where’d you go? Zane,” she called again. It wasn’t a question this time, but the answer was still silence.

  Feeling a tinge of panic, Bailey took a breath. Reality isn’t playing by the rules anymore, she reminded herself. Or else you’ve sunk into an elaborate fugue state. Either way, anything is possible. Stepping across to the kitchen, she slowly crossed possibilities off her mental checklist: smoke and mirrors, a trapdoor, even something as mundane as him hiding behind the couch (she checked again, for good measure).

  The kitchen was empty. So were the bathroom and Zane’s bedroom, which, she couldn’t help noticing, was still a mess and smelled like him. Back in the living room, Bailey pulled an olive out of the jar and rolled it in her palm like a dull green eyeball.

  “Zane,” she called one last time as she headed toward the couch, “come on.”

  Nothing. Of course. Bailey tossed the olive, caught it, and then hurled it at the space behind the bar.

  “Ow!”

  Bailey jerked back with a squeak. Instead of bouncing off the back wall, the olive thunked off something in the air.

  “You’ve got a killer arm,” said a voice. Zane’s voice.

  “You—you’re invisible?” Bailey said, reclaiming her seat.

  “You noticed.” Though she couldn’t see him, she knew he was grinning. “Or didn’t notice, as the case may be.”

  She shook her head. “Nope. I don’t believe it. Being drunk does not give you superpowers.”

  “Bailey,” Zane said, “you can see for yourself.”

  And with that, he faded back into sight.

  “Jesus!” Bailey almost fell off the stool.

  “Got me good,” Zane said, polishing olive juice off his glasses. “Which I guess I deserved.”

  Bailey gaped.

  “So … wait, hang on. This is insane. You mean anyone can just up and make a martini like that?” she said. “Some idiot might just trip over the right combination one day and end up invisible? That’s crazy dangerous.”

  “Not without the right stuff,” Zane said, patting the bottle of gin. For the first time Bailey noticed the label, a pair of interlocking Cs that formed the rough shape of a goblet. Beneath was a motto in ornate text: “Bibo ergo sum.”

  “I picked the martini because it’s a good way to show you this is the real deal without risking my deposit.” He went on. “But there’s a lot you can do, depending on the liquor. A tequila slammer lets you make these awesome force fields. Drink a White Russian, and you can walk on air. And if you’ve ever wanted to know what it’s like to breathe underwater, I make a sick Tom Collins.”

  Bailey’s mind was in overdrive. “So you’re saying someone can just get hammered and turn into a one-girl army?”

  “No amount of cosmos will make me a one-girl anything,” Zane said. “And no, actually. So there’s this energy inside you, right?”

  Bailey wrinkled her nose. “Sounds New Agey.”

  “Nah,” he said. “I mean, we’re alive, right? And that’s pretty incredible. There’s this little bit of magic, and everybody has it. But for magic to do something, it needs a focus and a territory. For us, the focus is a drink. The territory’s you. The alcohol frees up that spark, and the other ingredients shape how you can use it. Make sense?”

  Bailey nodded slowly.

  “Okay. So imbibe too much alcohol, and you’ll lose your hold on that spark, just like any other reflex. You might end up having a pretty good night, but it won’t be a magical one. Not literally anyway.” Zane shrugged. “But yeah, that’s pretty much it. Magic.”

  “Magic,” she repeated.

  “Magic.” He wiggled his fingers.

  Bailey stared. “You’re telling me the secret to magic, something humankind’s obsessed over since, I don’t know, forever, is … booze?”

  Zane grinned. “Booze is universal, it brings people together, and a lot of times it results in the creation of more people. What could be more magical than something that does all that?”

  Bailey had to admit he had a point. Also, he’d just reappeared before her eyes.

  “Okay. Okay, fine,” she said. “So you guys drink magic cocktails at work. And then what? You go out and play superhero on your smoke breaks since none of you smoke?”

  “We’re not playing anything.” Zane’s grin faded. “Do you know why bars exist?”

  “To fulfill a need created by the demands
of a willing market?”

  His smile returned a little. “Okay, smartest barback. And what’s that need?”

  Bailey could think of a lot of obvious answers—the need to celebrate, the need to savor fancy cocktails, the need to obliterate reality—but she suspected none of those was what Zane was looking for. She shrugged.

  “Human beings are animals,” Zane said. “That means we get all the perks: moving around, eating, doing more than just sitting wherever our roots are, or bumping along as single cells. But that also means we have to deal with the baggage. And a big piece of baggage, one that people don’t think about too often anymore, is predators.”

  Bailey blinked. “That thing was trying to eat me?”

  “Not eat,” he said. “It was trying to drink you. That same magic spark I was talking about—your animus? That’s their nectar. And pound for pound, you can’t find a better source than Homo sapiens. Especially a Homo sapiens who’s had a few,” he added, miming drinking from a glass.

  “Okay.” Bailey’s slow understanding of this new reality didn’t make it any easier to swallow. “So you’re saying that bars were invented to herd us all together?”

  “Exactly.” Zane’s eyes glinted with approval. “Pack them all in where it’s easy for a qualified bartender to keep an eye on them and defend them if need be. And what better place to defend them—”

  “—than somewhere with all the necessary supplies.” She finished his thought. It was utterly ridiculous, yet the pieces fit, like she was playing Scrabble and learning that her opponent’s twelve-letter play made entirely of Xs and Js was a real word. “Why magic, though? Why not use guns or something?”

  “Guns are great for killing stuff that follows the laws of biology. Do skinless demons that nosh on your life force sound like something you can classify with binomial nomenclature?”

  “Right,” Bailey said. “So all those ‘smoke breaks’ …”

  “We’re lifeguards,” he said, “if lifeguards killed demons. Or shepherds, except the sheep are people and the wolves are night-dwelling hellbeasts. Or—”

  “I get it.”

  “Right. Right.” He was bouncing again. The somberness had faded and his usual Zane energy was coming back. “Well, now you know the truth. I’m sorry I kept it from you.”

  Bailey shook her head. “It’s fine. I’m not mad. Really,” she added in reply to his skeptical glance. “I appreciate you telling me the truth.”

  “You’re welcome.” His glasses had squirmed down his nose, and he hastily jammed them back into place, making Bailey smile. It was an awkward motion, the kind she would’ve expected from the old Zane, not the new one. She was about to change the subject, but she saw he wasn’t smiling with her.

  “What’s wrong?”

  He pursed his lips. “It’s just … you’re a civilian who had an encounter, and you weren’t immediately triaged by a bartender. When that happens, there are rules to follow.”

  “Triaged?” She didn’t like the sound of that. “Rules?”

  “I have to bring you before the Cupbearers Court. You—”

  “Whoa,” she said, putting up her hands. “I don’t want to go to court. I’ve never even gotten a parking ticket.”

  “It’s not that kind of court, Bailey,” he said. “If I don’t, I could be disbarred for not following procedure.”

  “Procedure,” she repeated.

  “Yeah,” he said. “You know my uncle Garrett? He’s not just the owner of the Nightshade. He’s a Tribune in our bartender government. I can’t just—” He chewed his lip. “I wasn’t even supposed to tell you all that,” he said softly. “But I couldn’t lie to my friend.”

  Bailey’s stomach twisted queasily, but she threw Zane a smile that was more confident than she felt. “Sure,” she said. “Whatever you say.” She eyed her pajamas. “But please tell me I can change first.”

  THE DEVIL’S WATER DICTIONARY.

  The Martini

  A libation to lend the drinker a glasslike disposition

  1. Fill a shaker with ice.

  2. Pour in two ounces of gin and one-half ounce of dry vermouth and stir vigorously.

  3. Strain mixture into a chilled cocktail glass.

  4. Garnish with a single green olive and serve.

  The martini’s utility for fieldwork is not readily apparent. Bartenders’ role as the world’s sword and shield is decidedly at odds with a potion that makes its drinker difficult to find.

  However, to assess it as such is to sell short the martini’s potential. Because tremens rely entirely on sight, a bartender thusly equipped is a most dangerous foe.

  GIN.

  While America largely spent the Great Hangover acquainting itself with the power of whiskey, across the Atlantic, gin (from the French genièvre, “juniper”) became the chief spirit of England’s fascination. Quality varied historically; much gin was privately produced in residential homes, often flavored with turpentine and other additives unsuitable for spellcraft. During Prohibition, cheap bootlegger products occasionally contaminated sanctioned bartending stockpiles. For this reason, gin-based cocktails have lost some popularity in favor of the more direct power offered by drinks made of vodka, whiskey, or rum.

  The botanical nature of gin, flavored with juniper berries and originally used as herbal medicine, renders it both versatile and dangerous. Nonetheless, gin has its supporters. The American bartender Philip Barnes was a particularly tireless advocate of its use; most famously at the fifth National Symposium of Cupbearers Courts in 1913, he was reported to have used a gin-based drink to stretch his arm so that he could flick his rival, Amos C. Stubbs of Skokie, Illinois, on the nose.

  DRY VERMOUTH.

  A fortified wine that, like the gin paired with it, has gained little traction for fieldwork. Its origins can be traced to ancient China, where healers added herbs to wine to make it medicinal.

  The innovation of mixing vermouth with gin is credited to the nineteenth-century bartender Bertram Fish, whose bar was left stocked with only those two ingredients and a jar of olives (see below) as an April Fool’s prank played by his brothers. Fish spent the next month invisible, successfully convincing both his brothers that their houses were being haunted by a ghost with a curious affinity for their wives’ undergarments.

  OLIVE.

  Once famously criticized by the French bartending legend Hortense LaRue for “tasting like rotten seawater,” the humble olive has nonetheless distinguished itself as the proper garnish for a martini. The light brine flavor of this pickled fruit counteracts the floral perfume of liquors. LaRue spent many years attempting to find a replacement garnish. Her failure was said to be her greatest regret.

  CHAPTER THREE

  The Nightshade Lounge, as might be expected, looked different during the day. For one thing, it was way too bright. The lights that were on during evening shift made the furniture look dark brown; the sun made them gleam almost purple and showed exactly how chipped and scarred everything was. The walls looked farther away from one another and the ceiling seemed higher. Seeing it like this—clean, empty, smelling more like Pine-Sol than bargoer sweat—Bailey felt a pang of preemptive nostalgia. She was fond of the Nightshade. It really wasn’t that bad a place to work.

  Then she caught sight of the closed bathroom door. Okay, mostly not a bad place.

  Three bartenders stood behind the counter. They weren’t wearing black robes, but they looked like judges anyway. A large burgundy flag hung behind them, with the cup-shaped logo of the interlocked Cs stitched in glinting gold thread. On the right was a wiry black woman whose bald scalp gleamed. On the left was a lumpy man whose shape and coloring reminded Bailey of a pile of mashed potatoes. Standing between them was Zane’s uncle and the lounge’s owner, Garrett Whelan.

  Garrett was even smaller than Bailey, and Bailey was pretty small. (Her college friends called her a midget; she preferred waifish, or, when she’d had a few beers and was trying to chat up some beef-brained econ major, fun-
sized.) The way she remembered Garrett, his energy was as outsize as his body was petite. He didn’t walk so much as bounce, moving with the noodle-limbed energy of a depression-era cartoon. His slicked-back hair was gray, but only just; in another year or two, it’d be full-on white. His mustache was a shade darker and curled up at the corners like a hairy smile. Growing up, Bailey had seen Garrett forever parked behind the Nightshade’s counter—because when Zane was your best friend, playdates involved reading comics by a jukebox while slurping down free Shirley Temples—but now he mostly left the bar to Zane.

  Bailey wasn’t sure whether the circumstances called for her to be overtly cheerful or just coolly friendly, but she hazarded a wave either way. Garrett gave her a generous nod.

  “Miss Chen. A pleasure, as always.”

  Bailey smiled. Garrett wasn’t her uncle, but he’d always been generous with the soda gun. Plus he had let her take a job at the Nightshade with no questions asked. (Well, besides “When can you start?”)

  “Haven’t seen you around here much these days!” she said.

  “Idle hands, Ms. Chen.” Garrett clucked his tongue and shook his head. “There’s little for me to do around here with young Zane at the helm. I’m occupied with establishing enterprises elsewhere.”

  “Enterprises,” Bailey repeated. “Like a new bar?”

  “Garrett, if you don’t mind.” The bald woman interrupted, her voice clear, high, and ever so slightly annoyed. “Let’s begin.”

  Garrett took a shot glass that bore the same double-C symbol and banged it on the counter like a gavel. “I call to order this convention of the Chicago chapter of the Cupbearers Court,” he said to his audience of four. “Bibo ergo sum.”

  “Bibo ergo sum,” everyone except Bailey replied.

  “The members of the Tribunal will identify themselves for the record,” Garrett continued.

  “Standing for the South Side, Ida Jane Worth,” said the woman.

  “Standing for the West Side, Oleg Petrovich Kozlovsky,” said the lumpy man with a clipped accent.