Last Call at the Nightshade Lounge (33 page)

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.”

Bailey didn’t know what to expect—a young professionals’ mixer, a college reunion, maybe even a tasteful bar. She definitely hadn’t expected a black-and-white photo of a graffitied concrete basement, the floor littered with crushed beer cans. She hadn’t expected to see a crowd of sweating young men and women with leather jackets and patched jeans, moshing furiously while three tattooed rockers wailed away on instruments.

And yet there it was.

“Regular Puke,” said her mom, pointing to the band. “They
broke up two weeks later. But your dad and I didn’t.”

She clicked to the next photo, and Bailey’s jaw all but hit the carpet.

Her dad was a tiny nightmare, the cuffs of his loud plaid pants stuffed into combat boots. He wore a black T-shirt with a red anarchist
A
sprayed on it, and his hair detonated from his scalp in spikes that were the burnt orange that Asian hair took on when bleached. Her mom had a short crew cut Vincent would’ve envied, topped with a lopsided black bowler hat, and she wore a spike-studded leather jacket and short ruffled skirt. They held each other so tight that even with the grainy quality of the image Bailey could make out the depressions where her dad’s fingers sank into her mom’s jacket.

They couldn’t have possibly looked more in love.

Her mom paged through some of the other pictures: herself, age twenty-whatever, hiding from the rain under a black umbrella shaped just like her bowler hat; Dad, leaning against a wall and giving the camera the finger as he smoked a cigarette; Mom, hunched over and screaming into a microphone—

“Holy shit,” said Bailey. “
You
were in a
band
?”

“Language, young lady,” her mom said. “And no, my roommate was.” Her smile could’ve run the length of a football field. “I just stopped by for practice once, and they got a picture of me goofing off. No, if you want a shocker …” She clicked to the next picture. A younger version of her reclined on a leather bench as a man etched a stylized rose into her forearm. When Bailey’s eyes flickered to her inkless arm, she said, “I got it removed when you were less than a year old. No way you’d remember it.”

Bailey’s mind sagged from all this new information. “So you and Dad—”

“Were cool a long time ago. Well, your mom’s still pretty great,” Bailey’s dad said, smiling at his wife. “Beetle, when we were growing
up, falling in line was important. And we both came from Chinese families, where that was important no matter what decade you were living in. We both needed out of it. We needed the time to be selfish.”

“We were some of the only Chinese kids in the SF punk scene, if you can believe it,” her mom said. “We were bound to meet eventually.”

They smiled at each other, and for once Bailey wasn’t grossed out.

“The point is,” her mom said, “I remember how long it took for me to realize I’d grown out of my parents, not the other way around. It’s just a normal part of life.”

“But you’re so normal
now
,” Bailey said.

“First comes love, then comes marriage, then comes Bailey in the baby carriage,” her dad recited.

“We shuffled the steps around,” her mom said. “But we did go through those phases, too. And it wouldn’t be fair of us to deny you the chance to explore and try things and make mistakes.”

“Wouldn’t be very punk rock either,” said her dad.

“Anyway, Bailey, we know we raised a smart girl. You’ll find out what you’re supposed to do eventually.” Her mom squeezed her shoulder and eyed her ripped-up dress. “But maybe take it easy on the partying, huh?”

Bailey opened her mouth but was interrupted by an urgent buzzing in the depths of her battered purse. She rummaged through—where the hell was her phone?—and when she finally found it, the screen lit up with a familiar picture.

Zane Whelan calling

Her parents seemed to know enough to give her privacy, and she fumbled to answer it. “Hello?”

“Bailey?” he said. “Where are you? Trent said you left with me, but obviously you didn’t and—”

“I’m here,” Bailey said. “I mean, I’m at my house. My parents’ house.” Whichever it was. Maybe it didn’t matter. “Where are you?”

“On our way to Nero’s,” he said. “Need a ride?”

Before she could answer, a loud squeal of tires and a sonorous car horn melody sounded like …

“Was that ‘O Canada’?” Bailey said incredulously.

She heard someone in the background shout: “Tell her she’s damn right it was.”

“You’re both yelling right in my ear!” someone else yelped. Trina. Bailey laughed.

“Yeah, so …” Zane said. “We’re outside. You’ll, ah, know which car.”