Sweet Poison Wine

by Seanan McGuire

  “Cioppino?” asked Jonathan. Arturo nodded. He smiled. “Ah, excellent. It’s a really quite nice, Fran, and since we’re on the water, it should be quite fresh.”

  “I’ll try anything once,” said Fran, and picked up a roll. Focusing on Arturo again, she asked, “So what’d you do to get yourself so well-liked around here that your friends think it’d be fun to feed you to sea monsters?”

  “Technically, river hags aren’t sea monsters,” began Jonathan. “They’re strictly freshwater, although some species have been known—” He stopped as both Fran and Arturo turned to stare at him. “Ah. This is going to be one of those adventures, isn’t it?”

  “Don’t mind Johnny, he’s like a fortune telling machine on a midway. Stick in a quarter and you get a fun fact about something gruesome.” Fran’s attention returned, laser-like, to Arturo. “I believe you were about to answer my question when we got interrupted by the encyclopedia entry on river hags.”

  “You don’t let up, do you?” asked Arturo.

  “Nope,” said Fran. “I can do this all day.”

  Faced with two well-dressed, heavily-armed out-of-towners, Arturo Gucciard did what any sensible man would have done: he lied. “I honestly have no idea. I was walking along the river, and then wham, they were on me. Next thing I knew, those river-whatzits were pulling me toward the water. If you two hadn’t come along, I woulda been a goner.”

  “So you could say that you owe us your life,” said Jonathan.

  Arturo frowned. “I suppose, if you want to look at it in those terms.”

  “Since that’s the situation, why don’t you do us all a favor, and stop lying to us?” Jonathan’s tone never varied, remaining mild throughout. Belatedly, Arturo realized that perhaps he had chosen the wrong Healy to be concerned about during an interrogation.

  “I don’t know what you’re talking about,” he mumbled.

  “Mmm,” said Jonathan.

  The food arrived then, big steaming bowls of soup accompanied by a platter of tomato slices and mozzarella cheese. Conversation stopped while the pleasant hostess-waitress-cook put down bowls and plates, beaming the whole time. She said something in Italian to Arturo, her tone matching her smile. He responded in kind and she went bustling off again, vanishing into the kitchen.

  “What’d you say?” asked Fran.

  “That you were customers of mine,” said Arturo.

  “Ah.” Jonathan picked up his spoon. “Tell me, do all the bootleggers bring their new clients here, or is it an arrangement that you have with the owner? She seems quite pleasant, although I distinctly heard the Italian word for ‘poison’ at least twice. Thank you for answering in the negative.”

  Arturo paused with his spoon halfway to his mouth. Then, slowly, he put the spoon back down in his bowl. “You speak Italian?”

  “I speak Latin. They have roots enough in common that I can pick up a smattering of words here and there, especially words that might be attached to an attempt upon my life. I’m very fond of my life, you see, especially right now.”

  “We’re on our honeymoon,” said Fran, smiling brilliantly across the table at Arturo.

  “Congratulations,” said Arturo slowly. “I’m sure you’ll be very happy together. What makes you think I’m a bootlegger?”

  “What other activities end with a rival being tied up and thrown to the hags?”

  “Mr. Healy, this is Chicago. I can name about ten other activities off the top of my head.” Arturo grimaced. “But to be fair, most of them paint me in an even worse light than bootlegging. Yeah, I brew a little bathtub gin and run the occasional shipment across the lake. There’s no harm in it, and it serves a genuine need in the community.”

  “True enough, but I’d venture that you’re not the only one trying to serve that ‘genuine need,’ are you?” Arturo didn’t answer. He didn’t need to. Jonathan shook his head. “Mr. Gucciard, we’re trying to help you. We can’t do that if you’re not willing to help, at least a little.”

  “Yeah? If you’re so eager to help, why didn’t you shoot those hags back down at the lakeshore? Make sure they don’t attack anybody else.”

  Fran, who had been busy eating while Jonathan grilled their host, lowered her spoon and stared at Arturo. “Shoot them? For what, the crime of being hungry and tryin’ to eat something that looked and sounded like prey? For shame. I know we only just met, but I’d already started thinking better of you.”

  “Fran has been receiving a vigorous education in my family’s way of doing things,” Jonathan said. “We’ve discovered that most so-called ‘monsters’ are a necessary part of the natural world—even an essential one, much of the time. Remove them without careful study of what they eat and what they chase away, and you could find yourself with a far worse mess. If they were coming out of the lake and hunting children, that would be one thing, but this is something else entirely.”

  “It’s not their fault they’re hungry,” said Fran, mellowing into a glare.

  Arturo blinked. “So what are you people, some kind of monster missionaries?”

  “Not quite, but we do try to look out for the...let’s say ‘well-being’ of the various monsters trying to get by in this modern world. It can be surprisingly difficult for them, especially with construction coming in and tearing up their habitats. Someone must have seen the river hags when they were disturbed by the work down by the lake, and realized that they would make a perfect means of body disposal. There’d be nothing left to find.”

  “Not seeing why these aren’t things we should shoot,” grumbled Arturo.

  “Because they’re not the ones who put you in that lake,” said Jonathan. He sighed. “Difficult as this may be to grasp, we really are trying to help. The first step is figuring out who would have tied you up and thrown you to the hags. Now that we know that you’re a bootlegger, that gives us something to work with.”

  “No, it doesn’t,” said Arturo. He stood. “I’m happy to buy you lunch for the save, but this is the end of it. I don’t need your help. I can deal with whatever this is on my own. Thank you for what you did before. It was a lifesaver, literally. Now if you’ll excuse me, I’m going to settle the bill and get out of here. I have things to do.”

  “We’re staying in the honeymoon suite at the Carmichael Hotel, should you change your mind,” said Jonathan, looking unflustered.

  “Thank you for lunch,” added Fran.

  Arturo looked at the two of them for a long moment before he shook his head, muttered something in Italian, and turned to walk away.

  “You just going to let him go?” asked Fran softly.

  “He’ll call if he needs help,” said Jonathan, picking up his spoon again. “If he doesn’t, then either he doesn’t need help, or he’s been eaten by river hags. You can’t help a man who doesn’t want you to help him, Fran.”

  “Swell,” sighed Fran.

  “Look at it this way: we got an excellent lunch out of it, and I bet they have tiramisu here.”

  “What’s that?”

  Jonathan smiled. “Something every bride should experience on her honeymoon.”

  They returned to the Carmichael Hotel an hour later, having enjoyed a leisurely lunch—with tiramisu—before mutually deciding that a nap was the next essential order of business. There were no messages waiting for them at the front desk.

  “See?” said Jonathan. “He handled things on his own.”

  “I hope he gives them hags indigestion,” replied Fran.

  When they reached their room, they both found that they suddenly had a second wind, one which mysteriously coincided with the removal of their clothing. It wasn’t until they had exhausted themselves for a second time that they finally curled around each other, yawning and content, and slipped into the arms of sleep.

  The sound of the phone ringing shrilly woke them both at virtually the same time. Fran made a distressed mewling noise, trying to burrow deeper into the pillows, while Jonathan rolled over, fumbling for his glasses on the
table beside the bed. He shoved them onto his face with one hand as he picked up the receiver with the other.

  “This had best be an emergency of earth-shattering proportions, or I will be quite cross,” he said, voice still blurry with sleep.

  “There’s a man in the outside lobby,” said Asta. “He says he’s a friend of yours. Says you told him to come here.”

  “Oh, for Pete’s—is he tall, with dark hair and a beard in need of trimming?” Jonathan sat up, covering most of his face with one hand. Fran rolled over, pulling her head out of the pillows as she eavesdropped shamelessly.

  “That’d be the one. Do you want us to let him in?”

  “For the love of God, no. The only non-humans he’s encountered were river hags, and they were trying to eat him at the time. If he sees the real lobby, he’s likely to suffer a psychotic break of some kind. Tell him that Fran and I will be right down.”

  “You got it, Johnny.” The receiver went dead in his hand.

  Jonathan sighed, dropping it back into its cradle. “Arturo is here,” he said needlessly, before standing and beginning to collect his clothing from the floor. “Asta has him waiting outside the lobby.”

  “Why’d he go and show up here?” Fran rolled out of the bed, taking the top sheet with her, and started picking up her underthings.

  “If I had to guess, I’d say that he learned something dreadful had happened to one or more friends of his, he became concerned, and that was enough to make him decide that our help was worth accepting.” Jonathan yanked his trousers on. “Bastard.”

  “You wanted him to accept our help back at lunch,” said Fran.

  “That was before he woke me up,” Jonathan rejoined. “I’d throw him to the river hags myself if it wouldn’t upset their diet.”

  Fran smiled languidly at him before picking up her dress and slipping it on over her head. Her hair was still in disarray, making it quite clear that she’d been roused from her bed, although it wasn’t entirely clear what she’d been doing there. “Zip me up and kiss me before we go downstairs to deal with our new toy?”

  “Yes, dear.” Jonathan did as he was told, in the appropriate order, before resting his forehead against Fran’s and saying, “I’m sorry we’ve acquired a complication. I wanted our honeymoon to be perfect.”

  “You’re silly,” said Fran, reaching up to pat his cheek. “This is us. It wouldn’t have been perfect without the monsters.” She stepped away, pausing to grab her coat as she moved toward the door. “In my head, you arranged this just to keep me from being bored.”

  “Of course I did,” said Jonathan, and followed her.

  Every eye was on them as they descended the stairs and moved through the main lobby of the Carmichael Hotel. Fran stepped a bit closer to Jonathan, taking his arm as she murmured, “Doesn’t look like we’re makin’ any friends among the locals.”

  “They think we brought an uninvited human to their doorstep,” Jonathan replied quietly. “It’s no wonder that they’re annoyed. I’d be going for the guns if I were in their position.”

  “Well, isn’t that nice.” Fran clapped a smile on her face, so practiced that only someone who really knew her would have been able to tell that it wasn’t sincere. She kept walking. “Should we pack our bags?”

  “It depends entirely on what happens next,” said Jonathan.

  They stepped out of the lobby and walked down the narrow hall to the second, much smaller lobby that was used to distract and detain human visitors. Asta was there, with a kerchief tied over her serpentine hair and a scowl fixed firmly on her face. Arturo was perching gingerly on one of the decrepit-looking chairs, clearly about as uncomfortable as it was possible for a man who wasn’t actively being tortured to be.

  Judging by the look on Asta’s face, that “not being tortured” problem could be solved for him, and quickly, too, if he insisted on lingering around the Carmichael.

  “Mr. Gucciard, perhaps I am unfamiliar with your big city ways, but in Michigan, when someone says ‘call me,’ they do not in fact mean ‘present yourself at my current place of residence in the middle of the night.’ As you can see,” Jonathan waved his free hand to indicate the lobby, including Asta, “this is not a friendly locale, especially after dark.”

  “You know, I could help you find a much nicer place to stay while you’re in the city,” said Arturo. “As a friend. This place probably has diseases or something.” He paused as a hiss resonated through the lobby. “Did you hear that?”

  “No,” said Jonathan.

  “Hear what?” asked Fran.

  Asta, whose hair was the source of the hissing, put a hand on her kerchief and said frostily, “If that was all you needed, sir, I bid you good night. Mr. and Mrs. Healy, please remember that we do not allow visitors and that curfew is strictly enforced.” She turned and flounced into the hall—although Fran noticed that she was moving a bit faster than was strictly necessary, maybe to prevent her hair from getting free and starting to bite.

  “As I was saying,” said Jonathan, dragging Arturo’s attention back to him. “What seems to be so important that you had to come all the way out here? I thought you wanted nothing to do with us.”

  “That was before I found Big Tommy,” said Arturo. There was a grimness to his voice that hadn’t been there before, not even when he was freshly rescued from the river hags. “Will you come with me? I think you need to see this.”

  Jonathan and Fran exchanged a look before shrugging, almost in unison. “All right,” said Jonathan, turning back to Arturo. “But we’re going to need you to pay for the cab.”

  “I drove,” said Arturo. Exchanging another look, Jonathan and Fran nodded and followed him out of the lobby, into the Chicago sunset.

  Arturo drove like a bootlegger: slowly, carefully, and obeying all traffic laws. The only way he would find himself being stopped by an officer of the law would be to receive a commendation, and possibly a medal. He refused to talk while he was driving, preferring to focus on the roads. Jonathan kept himself busy by making notes in a small blank book that he had produced from his pocket; Fran took the time to arrange her knives in a more comfortable configuration. That actually earned her a few wide-eyed glances in the rearview mirror, as Arturo was distracted by the sight of her hand disappearing down the front of her dress.

  “Mr. Gucciard, are you married?” asked Jonathan, not looking up from his notation.

  “Haven’t found the right girl,” Arturo said.

  “Ah. Well, you see, I have, and I assure you, marriage is a very pleasurable state. Especially when one has married a woman who carries quite so many knives.”

  “A girl can never have too many hats or too many knives,” said Fran.

  “Got it,” said Arturo, and kept his eyes off Fran’s reflection for the remainder of the drive.

  They paralleled the lake for a while before turning off into a shady-looking stretch of dockside. They were close enough to the construction that the water was dark with silt, although the construction site itself couldn’t be seen. Arturo pulled up in front of a large, unlit warehouse. “Come on,” he said.

  “Are you taking us out here to kill us by any chance?” asked Jonathan, getting out of the car. “I ask purely out of curiosity, mind you, and not because I’ll attempt to stop you from trying. It would be entertaining to watch, if nothing else.”

  “You like to talk, don’t you?” Arturo shook his head. “No, I’m not going to kill you. I want to show you something, so you can tell me how concerned I need to be.”

  “That’s always an encouraging thing to hear,” said Jonathan.

  Arturo started walking. Fran followed him, waving for Jonathan to follow. He shook his head and trotted after her. At least if they were walking into danger, they were doing it together, and that made it an appropriate—if unusual—honeymoon activity.

  The sun had continued to slip downward in the sky as they drove, and now it was almost completely beneath the horizon, leaving the shadows and the early
night to claim the city. A few of the warehouses had floodlights on their eaves, but most of them weren’t turned on, and more than a few appeared to be broken. Jonathan eyed them, shaking his head.

  “This is an invitation to hungry lake monsters,” he muttered.

  “What was that?” asked Arturo.

  “Nothing,” Jonathan replied, and walked a little faster. If anything emerged from the waters of Lake Michigan, he was grabbing Fran and running for the safety of the car. Arturo could take care of himself.

  “All right,” said Arturo. They had reached the edge of the dock. Without pausing, Arturo stepped into the open mouth of a nearby shipping tunnel, disappearing into the darkness.

  “We’re following a man we just met, who’s admitted to illegal activity, into a tunnel, under cover of darkness,” commented Jonathan.

  Fran blinked at him. “Well, yeah. What’s your point?”

  “No point. I just wanted someone to have actually said it.” Jonathan walked to the edge of the tunnel and stepped in after Arturo.

  “Silly boys,” said Fran, and followed.

  If it had been dark on the dock, it was pitch black in the tunnel. “All here?” asked Arturo.

  “Yes,” said Jonathan.

  “Uh-huh,” said Fran.

  “I heard a gun cock and a knife being drawn just there,” said Arturo. Sudden light blazed through the darkness as he clicked on the flashlight in his hand and aimed it at their faces. “You weren’t planning to kill me and leave my body down here as a warning to others, were you?”

  “We were preparing to defend ourselves from a virtual stranger, if such was necessary.” Jonathan raised the hand not holding the gun to shield his eyes. “Please, could you direct that at the ground and tell us what we’re doing here?”

  “We came when you called,” said Fran, in a chiding tone.

  Arturo lowered the flashlight, looking faintly ashamed. “Sorry, ma’am,” he said. “Follow me.” With no more fanfare than that, he began walking along the tunnel toward the water.