Last Call at the Nightshade Lounge (32 page)

She couldn’t get out of its way—her ankle was too weak—but she realized that she could move it out of hers. Training her focus, she gave the tremens a telekinetic shove in the flank, then V-stepped aside like a matador. The tremens whooshed past and slammed against the wall. It shuddered and bucked, its visible muscles working to dislodge the obstacle in its throat.

Bailey pushed the concrete back down. It was sick and brutal; she’d never killed a tremens so slowly. Behind her, Zane was up on his feet, but when he jumped forward, Bailey stuck out a hand to stop him.

“No,” she said. She could feel the tremens’s throat muscles relaxing and giving way, its thrashing growing more feeble, and it oozed to the floor as whatever vital force animated it slowly drained away.

“Bailey—”

“It’s fine,” she said. “It’s dying.”

Something rammed against her knees, and Bailey buckled to the floor.

“Bailey!”

She felt a tug around her ankles, dragging her forward across the slick marble. Her vision was speckled—she’d clocked her head—and her hair was a wet curtain on her face.

A trail of red followed her.

Whatever was tugging stopped, and Bailey felt a rush of gratitude. Fireworks exploded in front of her eyes, and with the pain of her ankle, the throbbing of her skull, and the exhaustion of staving off the apocalypse, she just wanted to sleep. She was spent. Above her, the tremens heaved and inhaled, its disgusting lips convulsing around the concrete, and Bailey shuddered as the deep, gnawing ache bloomed inside her. A choking tremens wasn’t a harmless one; it didn’t need to breathe. And she’d driven the creature into such a frenzy that it wasn’t merely drinking her life essence away; it was trying to shotgun it like beer from a punctured can.

Dimly, Bailey knew she should fight back. But she’d already saved Chicago. She’d saved Bucket. And Trina. She’d saved Zane. She’d finally actually done something that mattered. So if this was the way it was going to end—

“No!”

With a bone-rattling slam, the tremens shot backward and into the wall. Zane had struck it, and he bounded over Bailey and toward the wall to land another blow. From over Bailey’s head, someone lashed out with a thin whip of water that snapped against tremens flesh—Trina with her mojito. Bucket ducked and rolled to their side, a torrent of fire erupting from his outstretched hands.

Scorched, bruised, and broken, the tremens exploded.

Bailey gasped like she’d just emerged from the bottom of a deep pool. The night air was cold and harsh in her lungs, but she was still alive. She sat up wincing and blinked.

“You guys saved me,” she said dumbly.

“Of course we did,” said Trina.

“No matter what,” Zane said, his gray eyes shining, “you’re one of us.”

“Duh,” said Bucket.

Bailey smiled through watery eyes. “Thanks.”

That seemed as good a time as any to faint.

THE DEVIL’S WATER DICTIONARY.
The White Russian

A libation to induce a certain lightness in the feet

1
. Fill an old fashioned glass with ice
.

2
. Add one and a half ounces of vodka and three-quarters of an ounce of coffee liqueur
.

3
. Float three-quarters of an ounce of fresh cream on top.
.

4
. Stir slowly until mixed, and serve
.

T
he White Russian’s invention is credited to Vivienne Vandenberg of the Andere Vrouw in Rotterdam in 1938. A longtime skeptic of dairy products in general, Vandenberg initially dismissed as frivolous the effects of what became her most famous creation. However, her partner (in life and love as well as in tending bar), Coby Vandenberg, quickly realized the potential of a cocktail that allowed its drinker to walk on air—the closest any known drink has gotten to full-on flight—and she convinced Vivienne to refine the recipe.

It proved prudent. The Vandenbergs’ innovation greatly improved bartending oversight in Rotterdam, allowing drinkers to more easily descend from the Witte Huis, an eleven-story building that served as a lookout to seek out tremens activity. In the prewar years, Rotterdam boasted one of the lowest tremens-related fatality rates in Europe, although it did suffer a subsequent spike in memory modifications, as bartenders unused to aerial navigation often wandered into plain sight by accident.

C
REAM
.

Prior to the addition of cream, the combination of vodka and coffee liqueur was served under the name “Black Russian.” Vandenberg’s invention of the White Russian came one afternoon when she was entertaining a visiting delegation of the Belgian Cupbearers Court. One of the delegates, not understanding that the coffee liqueur he was being served contained no actual coffee, stubbornly refused to even taste it until it had been lightened to the degree to which he was accustomed. Etiquette demanded that an official meeting could not begin without all present sharing a drink, immediately bringing the Dutch and Belgians to a standstill. Vandenberg, just as stubborn as her Flemish counterpart, fetched a pitcher of cream from the café next door and proceeded to empty it into the delegate’s glass. The request having been filled in letter, if not in spirit, he had no choice but to drink the result. To this day there is no historical consensus on what surprised him more: the degree to which he enjoyed the flavor or the fact that he had just bumped his head into a rafter.

F
IG
. 103
—A cream pitcher
.

Bailey awoke on a sofa and remembered nothing.

Well, not
nothing
. She remembered taking on Mona and Garrett and fighting what had possibly been a ton of tremens at the top of the Sears Tower. She definitely remembered sort of strangling that last one, right before she almost died and the Alechemists came to her rescue. In fact she remembered a lot more than nothing. The only thing she didn’t remember was how she’d gotten there.

And she didn’t even know where
there
was.

At first glance, it seemed like a normal enough living room. The floorboards were narrow and laminated, like the ones in bowling alleys. The white walls looked as if they’d built up an inch-thick coat of paint over the years. An old brass radiator stood in the corner. But the floor was covered in woven straw mats enclosed by dark wooden frames. The coffee table was surrounded by cushions that looked as if they were meant to be knelt on. And everywhere she looked, she saw stacks of comics and DVDs.

She picked up the nearest DVD and looked at the cover. A drawing of a frowny young man with physics-defying spiky hair stared back with impossibly big eyes. She couldn’t read the title; it was spelled out in neon green kanji characters. Next she grabbed a comic: big-eyed, small-mouthed girls in sailor outfits, all posed dynamically with various weapons. This title was also in kanji, though at least it had an exclamation point and a large capital
X
at the end
to help her make some sense of it.

Bailey’s heart sank. If she was where she thought she was, she’d much rather have let the tremens kill her.

All the posters on the walls were for anime series. The bookshelves overflowed with manga. A pair of decorative katana hung crossed on the wall, and the lamp on the table next to her was shaped like a leggy cartoon girl with cat ears.

Right on cue, the apartment’s owner, carried on quiet shoeless feet, appeared in the doorway. “
Konbanwa
, Tokyo Rose,” said Trent, bowing. His dirty blond hair was ponytailed, his neck afflicted with a patchy beard. “Welcome back to the land of the living.” He beamed and flashed her a little peace sign. “I was wondering when you’d come out of it. Thought you’d take up my couch forever. Not that that’d be the worst thing in the world.”

Even if Bailey hadn’t felt like she’d been dragged from one end of Chicago to the other by a semi, Trent still would have been too damn chirpy.
No wonder he’s a barista
, she thought.

“What am I doing here?” she said. “Where are my friends?” And with annoyed resignation she added: “And I’m Chinese.”

“Your friends went out to kick tremens ass after they left you in my care,” he said. “Whenever someone’s taken a walk on the wild side and had trouble walking away, me and my java-slinging brethren get to play Florence Nightingale.”

He unceremoniously pulled the blanket off her. She recoiled instinctively, then berated herself for upsetting her injured leg. Except she felt no pain. She was still wearing her shredded dress from the night before, but her cuts had healed, too.

“Coffee,” Trent said. “It’ll cure what ails ya. Unless what ails ya is insomnia.”

“Good,” Bailey said, rising. “Then I can—ah!” The moment she tried to stand, the apartment started spinning, as if she were still in the grip of a tremens. She collapsed back onto the couch.

“Easy there, Bailey-chan,” he said. “That tremens took a good drink of you. I spent most of the night just healing the physical damage. I needed you awake before I refueled your animus reserves. Hang on.”

He disappeared into the kitchen. She heard a machine whirr and buzz to life, and the smell of coffee hit the air. He reappeared soon after, carrying a steaming mug. “Drink it slowly,” he said, handing her a cappuccino topped with a perfect tuft of foam. He’d sprinkled powdered cinnamon over top in the shape of a cross, like on the side of a first-aid kit.

Bailey eyed it. “This coffee can heal me?”

“That cappuccino can replenish your stores of innate magic, and then some … if you drink it slowly.”

“What happens if I drink it fast?”

“Then you burn the roof of your mouth, and I’ll have another thing to fix.”

She drank slowly.

Bailey’s dizziness receded as she sipped. Despite its warmth, the drink cooled her insides like a balm. And though she never would’ve admitted it to Trent, it tasted damn good. At last she put the empty cup aside with a contented sigh, stood again, and instantly regretted it, falling back with a yelp.

“
Gomenasai
,” said Trent, bowing. “Coffee doesn’t work as fast as booze. It’ll take awhile until everything’s completely healed.” He brightened. “But hey, while we wait, I’ll throw on some episodes of
Ultimate Frisbee Fighter Gengoro X
. I just got it in the original Japanese.”

Too weak to escape, she had to suffer through fifteen minutes of Trent’s running commentary on the first episode before her salvation appeared.

“Now here’s something interesting,” said Trent, who was almost certainly about to tell her nothing of the sort. “In the Filipino dub,
Kazemaru was made into a woman and her name was changed to—wait, hang on.” He pulled out his phone. “Hello? Yeah, she’s right here.”

Bailey reached for his phone, but he waved her off.

“I don’t think she’s really ready for … Well, why don’t you come up? We’re watching
Ultimate Frisbee Fighter
 …” His voice trailed off. “All right,” he said, the color draining from his face. “I’ll send her down.” He hung up and turned to face Bailey. “Zane and his friends are downstairs waiting for you,” he said. “I’m so sorry to interrupt the episode, but they really insisted that—”