Last Call at the Nightshade Lounge (8 page)

Bailey didn’t even bother answering him. “You brought me to get coffee from my stalker?” she whispered furiously to Zane.

“He didn’t stalk you,” Zane said. “He just, uh, followed you everywhere.” He frowned. “Okay, point taken.”

“Loving the Bailey-Zane banter, guys,” said Bucket. “Not that
helpful, though.”

“Trent’s really into anime and manga,” Zane said. “But hey, everyone needs a hobby, right?” He grinned at Bailey, who didn’t return the smile. Instead, she turned to Bucket.

“Sophomore year Trent decided that
I
was the school’s other resident expert in Japanese culture and the only one who, like, understood him. Which—two problems: I’m a born-and-raised American. Also, Chinese.”

“Ah,” Bucket said, wrinkling his pierced nose. “Ew.”

“I’ve never even been to Tokyo,” Bailey muttered. “And roses are the fast food of flowers.” Her dad had taught her that lesson early on, and it had stuck.

Zane laughed. “Well, I’ll keep that in mind next Valentine’s Day.”

“I—” Bailey’s mind skidded briefly off track as Mona’s piercing gaze fell on her. She squirmed under its intensity. “Um, anyway, let’s never speak of it again,” she said.

“I dunno,” Bucket said. “There’s some pretty excellent Canadian Japanese glam rock if you’re into that kind of thing, eh?”

A waitress appeared. “Hi, Zane,” she said before nodding to Bailey. “Who’s the new girl?”

It took Bailey a moment to realize that she, not Mona, was the newcomer. Which—
seriously?
She’d been coming to this diner since she was fourteen years old. Then again, this waitress, with her earnestly lined eyes and her not quite even eyebrows, probably was fourteen. Now there was a grim thought. Bailey sat back, contemplating her mortality.

Zane remained cheerfully oblivious to her existential horror. “The new girl’s an old friend,” he said. “This is Bailey. Bailey, this is Diana. She’s our regular waitress. Yours, too, now.”

Diana peered at Bailey, looking somehow both bored and inquisitive. Bailey, for her part, felt unsure and intrusive, as if she’d
been brought to someone else’s church and didn’t know when to stand, sit, or kneel. The other Alechemists gave their food orders, and it was only after the silence continued that Bailey realized it was her turn.

“Um, pancakes,” she said. “Please.”

“All righty.” Diana clicked her pen. “Coffees are coming right up.”

“Thanks.”

Bailey wasn’t really jonesing for a caffeine fix, but she also didn’t want to be the only person not having any. Diana went on her way, and Bailey leaned in before more chitchat could take over. “So, I take it you two, um, survived tonight.”

“No,” said Mona, deadpan. Zane and Bucket laughed as Bailey flushed.

“They’re both healthy and whole,” said Zane. “And pleased to have you join us.”

Bailey glanced at Mona, who looked not the least bit pleased. Or the least bit anything else, for that matter.

“So we’re giving her the full rundown, eh?” said Bucket with a theatrical crack of his knuckles.

Zane nodded and then reached into his pocket. “First thing’s first: my gift to you, from master to apprentice.” He held a serious face for a moment but then giggled. “Heh. You have to call me master now.”

“No way,” Bailey said. “No gods, no masters.”

Zane frowned. “Isn’t that commie talk? What kind of business school student are you?”

An underemployed one
, Bailey thought. She reached out a hand. “Gimme.”

From his coat pocket Zane pulled a slim black volume and tossed it to Bailey. The silver letters on the spine read:
The Devil’s Water Dictionary
.

Bailey studied it, frowning. “So is this a water dictionary owned by the devil, or …”

“Ha. Funny.” Zane grinned. “Every language has its own nickname for distillates. Aqua vitae. Eau de vie.
Uisce beatha. Yakovita
. Devil’s water is just what we here call it. Old-timey American drinkin’ lingo at its finest.”

“Mmm.” Bailey was only half listening. She’d already opened the book and started flipping its pages.

Zane chuckled. “Yeah, I figured you’d like it. It’s got almost every one of our secrets: our recipes, our history, the occasional scrap of abstract magical theory.”

“Theory?” Bailey repeated.

“Oh, yeah.” Zane’s eyes lit up. “I mean, there’s some pretty basic underlying magical tenets behind your everyday cocktails. But the really exciting stuff is what
isn’t
in there.”

“Like what? Picklebacks and Jägerbombs?”

Mona shot Bailey a look. “Like legends,” she said.

“Like alchemy,” said Bucket.

“Like your wildest dreams,” Zane said, with a glint in his eye.

Bailey stared at the little book in her hands.

“So, yeah, that’s yours,” Zane said. “It’s your sword, your shield, and your standard-issue frag grenade. A thousand books can tell you how to mix a drink, but only one will teach you how to do it right. This baby’s got the entire history of bartending infused within every page.”

She flipped the pages and then slipped the book into her purse. She could read it later. Besides, if the telltale gleam in Zane’s eye was any indication, he was about to launch into his version of the entire history of bartending-kind.

“Humans have sensed the connection between alcohol and magic for a long, long time,” Zane began. “Dionysic wines that granted women superstrength. Ayurvedic arishtas that cured you
with fermented herbs. Sake offered to the Shinto gods for ritual purification.”

“Those dogs with the barrels around their necks,” Bucket added helpfully.

“Right,” Zane said. “But mere fermentation could get us only so far. Once Taddeo Alderotti perfected fractional distillation in the thirteenth century—”

Bucket yawned and flapped his hand in a
blah-blah-blah
motion.

Zane coughed. “Anyway, used to be that whatever you wanted, your friendly neighborhood barman—”

“Or barwoman”—Mona interrupted—“though
they
were usually called witches.”

“—could whip you up a drink for it.” Zane went on. “And I don’t mean party tricks, like we do every night. I’m talking etheric travel, incorruptible flesh, alchemy. Ancient bartenders knew how to mix humble liquors and liqueurs to create a solution for every problem that life could throw at you.”

Bailey sensed a “but” lurking on the outskirts of the story.

“But,” Zane said, “sometime in the eighteenth century, something happened. Overnight all that knowledge just vanished. None of the old texts survived intact, and from what we’ve been able to piece together, bartenders started dying by the score.”

He paused as Diana appeared with a tray of steaming Americanos.

“Food’ll be up in a second,” she said. Then she glided along to assist a table of surly kids who looked like they shopped exclusively in a leather-filled dungeon.

“We call that time the Blackout,” Zane continued as each of them started performing their various coffee rituals. “Since then we’ve been trying to regain that knowledge.”

“And we’ve gotten a lot of it back,” Mona said. “A lot.”

“Yeah,” Zane said. “Physical experimentation and investigations into theoretical magic, new and better ways of distilling. We’re
getting there.”

“But?” Bailey said. She could sense he was building up to something.

“But,” Zane said with gravitas, “there’s one big missing piece that no one’s been able to crack in more than three hundred years: the secret of the Long Island Iced Tea.”

Bailey laughed into her coffee. When she put down her mug, the three Alechemists were staring at her.

“Oh, God,” she said. “You’re serious. Sorry.”

“Nothing could be more serious.”

“It hasn’t always gone by that name,” Mona said. “Nor has it always had the same formulation. We didn’t even have cola for most of the nineteenth century, let alone premade sour mix.”

Zane leaned forward, the familiar spark again in his eyes. “Magical energy is unlocked with alcohol, but too much alcohol will dilute it past the point of usefulness. If properly mixed, a Long Island Iced Tea could defy the most basic law of magic: multiple liquors working in perfect harmony to unlock the drinker’s deepest potential.”

“Basically, the philosopher’s stone,” Bucket said. “With a lemon twist.”

“Hang on,” said Bailey. “Deepest potential? Philosopher’s stone? As in—”

“There are conflicting reports.” Zane interrupted. “Well, not even reports. Legends. But they all say things like increased powers, immortality, forbidden knowledge. And other talents that even the best modern drinks could never unlock.”

Bailey nodded slowly. “So that’s why you call yourselves the Alechemists,” she said. “You’re trying to re-create the Long Island iced tea.”

“Zane’s like Nicolas Flamel,” Bucket said, “if Nicolas Flamel dressed like a Beatle, had a girlfriend, and also had a really sexy
Canadian sidekick no one ever wrote about. Oh, and, um, a Bailey.”

“But why?” a Bailey asked.

Everyone stared at her.

“Why what?” said Zane.

“Why this quest for enlightenment?” Bailey said.

“Are you kidding?” Zane said. “Why not? You’ve seen the good we can do with the little magic tricks we know. Hell, you’re a trainee and you’ve already done some good yourself. Think of what we could do with even more.” He gripped his coffee cup tightly. “If you ask me, the Court’s too content with running things the way they always have been. The world is changing, and the court’s resources and liquor stockpiles can’t last forever. We have to be ready to adapt. To go further.”

Bailey looked at Bucket, who’d added enough milk to turn his coffee the color of a manila folder. “You think so, too?”

Bucket shrugged. “I mean, immortality would also be sweet as hell,” he said. “You get to see how everything turns out; you get to do all the things you’d never get around to. Spend a century saving up and then splurge on something incredible.”

“Like wh—”

“The entire island of Manhattan,” Bucket interrupted. “Rented out for a day. One goal uptown, one goal downtown, and every professional hockey player in Canada or the States trying to get a single puck to either one. Not,” he added, sipping his coffee-milk, “that I’ve given it much thought.”

Bailey chuckled and then, out of politeness, turned to the remaining Alechemist. “And what about you, Mona?” she asked, trying to keep her tone as pointedly unpointed as possible.

Mona stared back through half-lidded eyes. “I want to know how it tastes.”

And then she calmly turned her attention back to her coffee, as if Bailey’s question had been an interruption instead of part of the
conversation.

Zane flashed Bailey an apologetic look.
Sorry, that’s kind of just how she is
.

“Food’s here!” Bucket said, perking up as Diana teetered over with a plate-laden tray.

“Thank God,” Zane said. “I’m starving.”

“Starving enough to eat those greasy worms you Americans dare to call bacon,” Bucket said, taking his plate of waffles from Diana. “You know, in the rest of the world, bacon means
Canadian
bacon. It’s like the metric system of pork products.”

Diana set down the rest of their food—Zane’s scrambled eggs, Bailey’s pancakes, and Mona’s decidedly non-breakfast bowl of gumbo—but only Zane and Bucket seemed eager to dig in. Even when faced with hot, delicious diner food, Mona was—as in all things apparently—reserved. Even with Zane’s arm around her shoulders. When he looked at her she’d smile, but otherwise he might as well have been cuddling a tree.

Bailey cut her pancakes into squares. That was no way to act when a guy like Zane Whelan touched you. She could imagine his arm wrapped around her. Its warmth. Its weight, draped across the nape of her neck. The strength hidden in its wiry muscles. The smell infused in every fiber of his sleeve—

“Whoa, B-Chen,” said Bucket around a hunk of waffle. “You okay? You’ve got this whole Asian glow thing going on.” He gestured to his cheeks.

“I’m fine,” Bailey said. She sounded more breathless than she’d meant to. “Just my, um, early-onset menopause.”

It was a dumb and not even logical joke, but the boys laughed. Mona almost smiled. And then she took Zane’s free hand.

Bailey decided to concentrate entirely on her pancakes. Sweet, reliable pancakes. Pancakes were delicious. Pancakes were dependable. She’d been eating pancakes her entire life and never got tired
of them. They’d been there forever, like an old friend. Pancakes understood her.

Mona threaded her fingers through Zane’s, which made Zane hold her a little closer, which made Mona smile just a little bit more.

Gosh, but these are good pancakes
, Bailey thought, chewing furiously. Because if she didn’t focus all her mental energy on breakfast, there was a chance she’d think the thought she was really thinking. And that thought was

Ohshitohshitohshit
.

“Oh, shit.”

Bailey looked up. Zane had his phone out, and Mona and Bucket were staring at him.

“What?” Bailey said, setting down her fork.

“SOS,” Zane said. “Vanessa, from the Pig and Castle. She’s sobering up but saw one on West Henderson. That’s—”

“Three blocks over, three blocks up.” Mona, now disentangled from Zane, whipped out a small silver flask from the pocket of her leather jacket, poured an exact 1.5-ounce shot of whiskey into her coffee cup, and followed with a dose of cream.

The cup began to glow.

Mona slung back the coffee, tucked away the flask, and leaped over Zane, bolting out of the booth. Bucket dumped a pile of crumpled bills onto the table. Bailey was still putting on her jacket when Zane hauled her out by the elbow.

“What—”

“This is the fun part.” Zane pushed open the door and swept them both into the night. “But we’ve gotta run.”

So Bailey ran. She pounded after Zane down Belmont, threading through pedestrians and dodging mailboxes and trees, finally jumping off the curb to jaywalk (jayrun?) up Southport.

“Do you mind,” Bailey yelled ahead to Zane, huffing a little, “explaining … what’s … happening?”

“I set up a bartenders’ group message that’ll ping anyone who’s nearby, in case someone spots something they can’t handle when they’re out on patrol and—”