Last Call at the Nightshade Lounge (15 page)

“Should we …” Her voice trailed off.

“Don’t worry about the sign. We should go.” Bucket glanced up at the apartment windows, some of which were glowing with sleepy yellow light. “You were pretty noisy—awesome but noisy—and I bet someone’s about to call the Royal Chicago Mounted Police.”

“Right.” Bailey couldn’t help feeling a little let down: all that hard work, and the only one who’d ever know was Bucket. She gave her handiwork a final glance before Bucket pulled her away.

“I knew you were gonna be okay,” he told her as they hurried off. “But you took that thing down like a goddamn pro.”

“Yeah. Thanks. Needed the therapy.” Despite the pounding in her head and the pulse of adrenaline in her veins, she managed a smile. “Just wish I could … share it or something, you know?”

“No, I get it. But that’s why you have us, your fellow bartenders,” he said, leading her back to Roscoe. “We’re always around if you need to vent or brag or—”

Just as they rounded the corner, Bailey ran right into Zane Whelan.

He wore a brown striped suit and sneakers, his tie loosely done. Mona was with him. She yelped and jumped back.

“Shit,” Bailey said. “Sorry. I thought you—”

Zane raised a hand. “No tremens here. Just your friendly neighborhood Alechemists.”

Bailey swallowed. “Right. What’re you guys, uh, doing here?”
She realized too late that the question probably sounded rude.

“Bucket told us what was happening tonight,” Mona said, her arms folded across her chest.

“Yeah,” said Zane. “We didn’t want to miss your
bar
mitzvah.” He glanced around for approval but no one laughed. “Oh, come on,” he grumbled. “That was hilarious.”

“I thought it was very funny,” said Mona in a tone utterly bereft of amusement.

Bailey wasn’t so easily distracted. “Aren’t you on duty tonight?”

Zane straightened his tie. “I basically run the Nightshade now. I decide when I’m on duty. And if Garrett’s got a problem with that, he can come back and mind the place for himself.” Before Bailey could ask where the attitude was coming from, Zane shook it off. He was positively giddy in the way that only demonic carnage seemed to make him. “Enough about that, though. Using a sign as a battle-ax? Awesome.”

Mona shot Bailey an odd look.

“Resourcefulness, Bailey.” Zane tapped the side of his nose. “That’s how you last in this business.”

“Not dying also helps,” Mona said.

Bucket and Zane laughed, but Bailey did not. Something about Mona’s eyes told her it hadn’t been a joke.

Zane’s excitement subsided, and he reached into his coat pocket. “Hey, guess what? I got you—well, I found something, and I—I thought of you.” He shoved a slim plastic something into Bailey’s hands.

“A CD?” It took Bailey a second to recognize what it was. The cover depicted four brooding men in black: long and lopsided haircuts, makeup tears running down their cheeks, a stylized logo that read “4DL” superimposed beneath them.

“For Dear Life?” Bailey cracked a grin. “Zane, I think we’ve both way outgrown—”

“Look inside.”

She flipped open the case and her eyes widened.

“Holy shit.” The familiar face of the disc winked up at her, but it featured something her old copy had not: four signatures in black marker. “How did you—”

“They came through town while you were out,” Zane said, as if her four years in Philly had been a long trip to the store for milk. “I got backstage passes. I, uh, brought Mona.”

Mona nodded. “It was loud.”

“Anyway, that’s yours, and don’t try to give it back to me.” Zane lowered his voice. “It’s a gift.”

As it happened, Bailey had been about to protest. This was too much. She and Zane had listened to a lot of music in high school, but For Dear Life’s discography was the true sound track to their teenage years. And even though most music fans their age had moved on from “no one understands me” angst punk to experimental acoustical lo-fi indie whatever, Bailey still carried her torch; 4DL’s single “Dark November” was in regular rotation on her playlists. In fact, she’d acquired an unfortunate reputation in college as “that girl who always puts on ‘Plastic Eyes’ at parties.” Apparently Zane felt the same way. About the band, anyway.

“It’s not, you know, all filtered up or whatever,” Zane said. “But—”

“Thanks,” Bailey said. “Thank you, Zane.”

Zane grinned. “That’s only part one. Part two will have to wait till tomorrow. It’s a surprise.”

“Oh. Um …” Not really sure what to make of that comment, Bailey instinctively reached for her purse to stow the album. But her purse wasn’t dangling from her shoulder; she’d left it at the bar, where she and Bucket were technically still on duty. “Actually, we should probably get going.”

“No problem,” said Zane. “Mona and I will walk back with you
guys. We’ll drink up until closing, and then we can hit Nero’s and celebrate properly.” He nudged Mona. “What do you think, baby?”

Baby
. The word thudded off Mona like a bird off a window. Bailey resisted the urge to make a face.

Mona just turned to him, almost smiled, and said, “I can’t think of a socially acceptable way to disagree.”

On the way back, Bucket regaled them with a dramatic retelling of Bailey’s fight, one in which he played all the characters himself and changed the story’s emphasis as he saw fit.

“So then Bailey is all ‘Monster, you interrupted a super interesting chat I was having with my good buddy Bucket about gender and personal identity, so I’m gonna fuck you up,’ ” he said, pitching up his voice into a passable imitation of her own. “And I’m standing there like, ‘Oh, shit, this tremens won’t even know what hit it.’ You know”—he added in an aside—“because telekinesis is invisible and tremens are dumb.”

Bailey laughed. “Skip to the good part,” she said. Her walk had a bit of a strut, and why not? After tonight she’d earned it.

“Which good part?” said Bucket.

“Oh, you know,” she said, pretending to modestly examine her fingernails, “the part where a tremens thinks it can just show up out of nowhere—”

“Tremens!” Bucket yelled.

“Exactly,” Bailey said.

“No, I’m serious!” Bucket’s eyes were wide, his voice hoarse. “Tremens!”

He pointed up at a busted-out streetlight just as the demon launched itself toward them.

“Shit!” Bailey jumped back, witless and terrified and completely forgetting she was supposed to run
toward
these things now. “Zane! Mona—”

But like her, they had both jumped out of the way. Bucket, on
the other hand, jumped forward. He spread his hands and blasted twin columns of pale blue flame, as if his arms were jet engines. The sudden heat ignited the air with a small
snap
, then a giant
crack!
, and finally a brilliant explosion that sent the tremens flying, its hide scorched.

“Holy shit!”
Bucket said, sliding into a wide defensive stance. His hands were wreathed in tongues of fire, which had cooled from blue to orange. “Did you guys see that?”

“Hard not to,” Mona said drily.

“Yeah,” Bailey said. She wanted to smirk about how she’d guessed right about Bucket’s fiery fists, but she was too rattled to say anything but “Fire.”

“We’re not armed,” Zane said. “You guys have to handle this one.”

The streetlight sputtered back to life, bathing them all in an orangish glow. The hairs on the back of Bailey’s neck pricked again as she heard skittering behind her. She turned and felt the last of her cockiness drain away.

“Not one,” she said, her voice soft with fear.

A second tremens lurked on the edge of the illuminated circle, its steps tracing an elliptical path around them. Down the sidewalk the first tremens had risen, and the pair of beasts moved in concert at opposite edges of the light. One was what she’d come to think of as the basic tremens: almost wolf shaped except that it rippled and oozed like a jellyfish. The other was completely different: a writhing ball of tentacles that scuttled sideways like a crab. Out of the blackness between its tendrils, angry yellow eyes glared thirstily at its prey.

Zane’s mouth flapped before any noise came out. “Two tremens at once,” he said. “That’s not possible.”

“Or convenient,” Mona said.

Bailey tried to take refuge in logic. “Let’s worry about the probability later and kill them now,” she said. “Bucket, you take that
one. This one here’s mine. Each of us can go one-on—”

Suddenly from down Roscoe Street a third tremens stalked into sight. From behind a mailbox emerged a fourth. Then a fifth from underneath a car. And a sixth. And a seventh. Bailey and Bucket were pacing in a circle to keep Zane and Mona behind them, and Bailey had lost track of how many there were.

As one, the demons bared their teeth and then surged in to feed.

THE DEVIL’S WATER DICTIONARY.
The Mai Tai

An infusion of infernal nature

1
. In an ice-filled shaker, mix one and a half ounces of white rum, half an ounce of curaçao, a teaspoon of orgeat syrup, and a teaspoon of lime juice
.

2
. Shake vigorously until well mixed
.

3
. Strain into an iced highball glass
.

4
. Float half an ounce of dark rum on top of the drink. The result should be multilayered and multicolored
.

5
. Garnish with a wedge of pineapple, and serve
.

L
ike many other rum drinks, the mai tai (in Tahitian
maita’i
, “good”) is one whose usage has grown with the increasing availability of fresh ingredients. Once a colorful curiosity available only in certain areas of the world, it has since risen in stature to become perhaps the most popular rum cocktail used in the field.

Three reasons account for this popularity, all of which are rooted in the drink’s side effects. First, its pyrokinetic qualities afford the user greater levels of visibility at night, when the lion’s share of patrolling takes place. Second, the power lends bartenders a key combat advantage, as tremens possess the same primal fear of fire as do their mundane animal counterparts.

The final reason for the mai tai’s prevalence was eloquently summed up at the 1970 National Symposium of the Cupbearers Court by the Chicago bartender Robert Whelan: “Fire is cool.”

D
ARK
R
UM
.

Unlike its white counterpart, dark rum is aged in charred oak barrels. In addition to the difference in color, rum processed in this fashion imparts a stronger flavor and is more conducive to being consumed neat. In fact, dark rum actively resists being mixed with other ingredients, an expression of the spirit’s elemental nature. The mai tai illustrates this same principle because when it is properly made, the dark rum is meant to float on top of the other ingredients rather than mingle with them.

O
RGEAT
S
YRUP
.

After the two rums, orgeat is the most essential ingredient in the mai tai. While serviceable substitutes exist for curaçao, garnish, and fresh lime juice (see
GIMLET
), not even the weakest pyromancy has been achieved via a mai tai not made with orgeat syrup. The substance, an emulsion of rose water, sugar, and almond oil, is not particularly fiery in nature or manufacture, but as leading mixology experts are universally quick to point out, the same is true of everything else in the mai tai, save perhaps the glass it’s served in.