Last Call at the Nightshade Lounge (14 page)

“You’ve got forty seconds to make me a perfect negroni, or you’re giving me fifty push-ups.”

Bailey had taken many courses and studied under many instructors, but she’d never had a rougher classroom than Long & Strong. The place was a rainbow-spangled rat hole, but it did a brisk business, and on top of the grind of mixing-drinks-making-change-running-tabs, the mixology challenges that Vincent threw down were grueling for her and a delight for him. But not nearly as much of a delight as the perfect negroni she set down in front of him with three seconds to spare.

Vincent had yanked her down to his office for a midshift pop quiz. Now he picked up the crimson-glowing cocktail and breathed in its vapors.

“Think I can smell the magic on this one,” he said. “You know what a negroni does?”

“ ‘A cocktail to fortify the flesh,’ ” she recited. Gin was the transformative liquor, and the negroni made the drinker’s skin unbreakable.

“Good memory, kiddo, though it wouldn’t kill you to put things in your own words once in a while,” he said. “So we’re gonna have ourselves a wager.” He took a decent gulp. “You want to get out on patrol, right? Have yourself a smoke break?”

The thought of finally testing out her new knowledge was
almost irresistible. Every night there’d been a never-ending press of men demanding drinks that Bailey barely knew how to make: shooters, twisters, Jack and Cokes—or Jack and
Diet
Coke, and God help you if you forgot—with no magical value but plenty of popularity. It was a good thing the staff pooled tips; her inexperienced service left plenty to be desired, and it wasn’t like she could fall back on flirting to score a few extra singles. She practically limped to the end of her shifts, and not once had she gotten anywhere near patrol duty.

“Yes,” she said, trying but failing to hide the eagerness in her voice.

“Then here are the terms,” Vincent said, and he gulped a bit more of the negroni. “By the time I finish this, I should have unbreakable skin. If I do, you hit the streets tonight.”

“Unsupervised?”

He chuckled. “You’re not in business school anymore. Quit acting like greed’s a virtue. No, you’ll shadow young Bucket.” He drank again, closing his eyes to relish the flavors. “If I’ve got unbreakable skin, that is.”

“And if you don’t …” Bailey tried not to groan. “How many push-ups?” Physical exertion was Vincent’s favorite punitive measure (“a bartender’s gotta be in shape, kiddo”), and though she was still a far cry from strong, under his tutelage she could drop and give him thirty without stopping.

“Not push-ups. You’ll have to do something a whole lot worse.” Vincent polished off the drink, placed the empty glass on the desk, and calmly laid his hand next to it.

“Which is … what?”

“Take an old man to the hospital.”

And then with blink-and-you’ll-miss-it speed, Vincent slammed a paring knife into his outstretched palm.

Bailey yelped.

But the blade bent, and in what seemed like slow motion shattered, spraying metal across the room. The force had indented Vincent’s skin, but the knife point hadn’t made a mark.

And he was
howling
with laughter.

“
Are you crazy?
” Bailey sputtered.

That only made him laugh harder. He had to squeeze out words between gasps.

“Wish I could … see your face … 
love
doing that …”

“Vincent, that wasn’t funny!” Bailey said, still rattled. When she saw the knife shards strewn across the desk, and his intact hand next to them, she couldn’t help but grin. She’d done it. “It wasn’t
that
funny,” she added.

“You’re on deck, kiddo,” Vincent said. “Soon as Bucket’s back and he’s had another drink, you’re hitting the streets.”

For the next twenty minutes Bailey was antsy. She wished the customers could’ve honored the occasion by taking it easy on her, but obviously she couldn’t tell them why she was smiling so wide; and even if she had, they wouldn’t have cared. Experience on both sides of the counter taught her that you don’t go to a bar to hear about what a great day the bartender is having.

When the time came, Vincent lumbered out of his office with Poppy plodding along in front of him. “You two are up,” he said. “I’ll take over here. Supplies are laid out downstairs. And kiddo,” he added, pointing to Bailey, “don’t forget your keys. That one keeps losing his, and I’m not buying another goddamn set.”

Bailey eyed all the beer taps, liquor bottles, glasses, and garnishes, not to mention the customers clamoring for them in varying combinations. She’d never seen Vincent tend bar, and she couldn’t imagine how he did it with only a dog to back him up.

Bucket, on the other hand, didn’t seem even slightly fazed. “Come on, B-Chen—”

“Call me that again and die.”

“—Bailey. Let’s go be good guys.”

As they clanked down the stairs, Bailey glanced back at the open trapdoor. “Will he be all right up there by himself?”

“Vincent?” Bucket said. “Yeah, don’t let the blind thing fool you. He’s like some kind of Zen master, except with booze. Just worry about you. You know what you’re doing?” They stepped into the office, and he shut the door behind them.

“I—I think so.” She’d been confident, even eager, right up until he’d asked her that question. Now she felt her poise evaporating. She stared down at the small forest of bottles and wondered which one she could trust to save her life in the face of skinless death.

Bucket stepped up next to her and patted her shoulder reassuringly. “I know you’re scared,” he said. “But you can’t let fear freeze you up. People need us, whether they know it or not, so you’ve—”

With quick, decisive motions, Bailey started yanking out bottles of rye, bitters, and water, and then a short thick-bottomed glass to put everything in. She turned to Bucket. “Where do you keep the sugar?”

The two of them stepped out a few minutes later. It’d been raining all day, and though the skies were dry, the rainfall had smothered whatever heat the summer had left behind. Bailey shivered, wishing she had more than a hoodie and an old fashioned to keep her warm. Looking not even slightly bothered by the chill, Bucket bobbed along next to her. He’d drunk a mai tai that he’d practically built inside its glass.

“So what does a mai tai do?” she asked to fill the silence. From skimming the
The Devil’s Water Dictionary
, she knew that rum drinks produced elemental effects, but she couldn’t remember the specifics for mai tais.

He grinned. “Let’s hope I won’t have to show off. But if I do, well, you’re in for fireworks.”

“So it’s fire?”

“I didn’t say that.”

“But it’s fire.”

“I didn’t say that.”

“You didn’t need to. It’s fire.”

He sighed. “You done?”

She nodded. But to herself, she repeated:
fire
.

Boystown was unusually tame. They headed south on Halsted, past locked-up leather shops and about a billion frozen-yogurt places and a dog boutique called I Ruff My Pup. The occasional stragglers weaved around the corners and ducked past them, giggling. No one was running in terror or screaming for help. Bailey stifled a yawn. A drink’s effects lasted about as long as it took the drinker’s system to metabolize it, which gave her roughly an hour to work. Slightly less; pushing it too close and she ran the risk of losing power midfight. Theoretically it’d be good to have a quiet night, but Bailey just wanted to get her encounter over with.

“Hey,” Bucket said, interrupting her thoughts, “I gotta ask you something. It’s kind of been on my mind since you started working here.”

“Um, shoot,” Bailey said, wondering what he wanted to ask. Bucket had been Zane’s friend first—if Bucket was even Bailey’s friend at all. He’d been unfailingly polite and cheerful since they’d become coworkers, but maybe that was just Canadian niceness. How did adults figure this stuff out?

“Ladies’ night,” he said seriously. “Vincent should totally do one, eh? Probably counts as discrimination if he doesn’t, right?”

Bailey laughed so hard she snorted. “I’m sorry, what?”

“Yeah, dude,” Bucket said. “Think about it. You get more tips, and I get to show these American girls my rugged Canadian charm.”

They’d hung a right past the Chicago Diner onto Roscoe, and Bailey shook her head while following Bucket’s lead onto a single-block street lined with apartment buildings.

“Sorry again, but I’m so not following,” she said. “We work at a gay bar.”

“Yeah. The mesh tank tops tipped me off.”

“But you want to pick up girls?”

Bucket laughed. “Duh. Why wouldn’t I?… Wait, you think I’m gay?”

“Um, yes,” Bailey said. “You’re a man who works in a gay bar, so yes, I thought that was a reasonable assumption.”

It was Bucket’s turn to look confused. “So Zane didn’t tell you? Or Vincent?” When Bailey shook her head, he sighed. “Right, okay, let’s set it straight. Follow me on this one because it could get complicated: I’m transgender. Oh, and there’s a tremens behind us.”

“What—seriously?” Bailey wheeled around, but the street was deserted. Relatively well lit, even. Bucket kept walking.

“Yeah, I’ve known since I was a kid,” he said cheerfully. “There were some rough times, but I started transitioning a few years back and I’ve never been happier—”

“No, about the tremens,” Bailey said, trying to catch a reflection in one of the parked cars’ back windshields. “But congratulations on your transition,” she added hastily. She could hear something skittering over dead leaves in the alleyway behind them. “Um, not to be rude, but why aren’t you more worried?”

“Well, the statistics in the trans community are sobering, but I’ve had really supportive friends—”

“Still talking about the tremens,” she hissed. “Why the hell are you so calm?”

He beamed. “Because you’re going to save me.”

“Save you?”

He nodded solemnly. “Vincent told me it was an important step in your personal journey as a bartender to feel responsibility for another life, and the safeguarding thereof.” After a moment, he added: “Duh.”

“Shit.” Of course. She was an idiot to have expected a straightforward lesson from Vincent. “But you have to help me.”

“No, I don’t,” said Bucket. “I’m just a wee powerless civilian.”

Bailey thrust out a hand and sensed a kind of telekinetic phantom hand mirroring her own. Her brain pressed on Bucket’s torso, sending him staggering back a few steps, to a safe spot behind an SUV flagrantly disobeying a prominent
NO PARKING
sign. Her skin prickled and she turned to face whatever was shivering behind the alleyway trash can.

The trash can trembled.

Holy shit. Holyshitholyshit
.

“Hey!”

Bailey had mentally grabbed Bucket by his shirt collar and flung him farther away. The tremens, small and stocky and six legged, scuttled out and immediately lashed one of its thick, muscly limbs at her. Panicked, she backhanded the air, her old fashioned-induced telekinesis swatting the tendril like a tennis ball.

Okay. Think. Trip it?
Doing so would tip it right onto Bucket, who had left the SUV’s safe zone and was leaning against a metal fence with irritating calmness.

“You got this, Bailey!”

Focus
, she thought. Zane had telekinetically thrown around a heavy manhole cover like a Frisbee. So maybe she could—

The tremens scuttled away from the trash can. She had to get it away from Bucket. Imitating what Zane had done, she pointed her finger like a gun, willing her mind to attack as she “fired.”

Kick. Hard
.

Sure enough, the tremens rippled as an unseen force hammered it; it fell forward, front tendrils flailing.

Bailey sprang back, yanking herself ten feet down the sidewalk. She had just long enough to look in awe at her impossibly long jump before the tremens shook off the impact and wobbled upright.

“Eye on the puck, Bailey!”

Bucket’s voice snapped her back into the moment. They were in the middle of an ordinary street. No manhole cover close by. No convenient piece of debris. Nothing sharp or heavy or on fire enough to kill the damn thing.

But its attention was wavering. She could feel it, and mentally she tugged hard at its limbs, once, twice, three times, feeling her brain recoil each time.

Okay, you ugly demon beast. Follow the leader
.

She turned and started running, focusing her psychic energy on the space between her shoulder blades, willing her legs ever faster with the superfocus of her brain waves. But the tremens could leap, and in a heartbeat it was beside her.

Now
.

Bailey stopped pushing herself and yanked her body laterally off the street. The tremens lashed out to seize her, but its tendril only managed to graze her forearm. She had banked hard enough to slam into a brick facade, but the brief tentacle contact sent a chill racing to her skull.

No
. She wrested back control of her head space. She couldn’t waver. Not when she was so close. Feeling the mental fatigue, she shoved the tremens toward the
NO PARKING
sign, the force of the collision bending the aluminum pole like a flower stem.

Perfect
. She had only one chance. Swinging her arm through the air, she forced the broken section of the post to yank itself from beneath the tremens. The sign dangled downward like the blade of a guillotine.

Her brain burning, Bailey slammed the post onto the neck of the tremens. The impact jarred her as the beast’s neck gave way beneath the sign’s thin edge. She expected a loud squeal, but nope: just the clang of the broken signpost and faint patter as the black matter that had once been a demon sprinkled onto the sidewalk.

Bucket, eyes wide and hands clapping slowly, appeared at her shoulder. He seemed genuinely awed.

“Holy shit, Bailey,” he said. And then, after another moment of staring at the stinking, sputtering puddle: “Seriously.
Holy shit
.”

Bailey looked at the sign. It was beyond repair, covered in whatever substance dead tremens turned into—dark and sticky as oil, with that same unnatural sheen.