by Paul Krueger
“But?” said Mona.
“I told him—” A sick feeling rose in the back of Bailey’s throat as she remembered what came next. “I told him the bar was trashy. I told him I was going away and there wasn’t any point. Basically I told him he wasn’t good enough for me. And until a month and a half ago that was the last time I talked to my best friend.”
For a long moment Mona merely stood there, leaning against the wall and smoking her cigarette.
“I’m a totally different person now,” Bailey said hastily. “I realize how stupid and elitist and mean that was, and I know I didn’t have any fucking clue what I was talking about. If I could take it all back, I would. I totally would. And I’d kick my own ass, too, just to make the lesson stick.”
“And you didn’t—” Mona stopped short. “That’s all he told you about the bar? That he was working to save money? Nothing else?”
“I … yeah.”
Mona stomped out her cigarette. “I like you, Chen. And I like the truth. So I’m giving you a gift in kind.”
“You—what?” Bailey clamped her mouth shut and shook her head. “I mean, um, I like you, too?” It was kind of true, in the sense that she was too creeped out and/or terrified of Mona to dream of saying otherwise. “What are you going to give me?”
“The truth,” Mona said simply. “The truth is that you were right to stay away from the Whelan bars. Don’t go back. Not even if—”
Someone screamed.
Mona instantly headed back into the alley. Bailey whipped around and followed her. They saw the waitress standing frozen, holding a bag of garbage, cornered between the wall and the Dumpster by something squat and fleshy and evil.
“Tremens,” Mona said.
“What?” Bailey gaped. Impossible. It was still daytime and the sunlight stretched up to the bar’s back door, shining on the creature’s ugly exposed muscle skin.
Mona leapt forward and kicked the tremens in its side.
“Angie, get inside!” she yelled. “Chen! Get in there and mix me something.”
The waitress screamed again, dropped the garbage, and bolted for the door.
“But this can’t—” Bailey started to say. Again Mona kicked it, but the thing made an ugly snarling sound and latched on to her boot. She shook it off, hard enough to slam it against the Dumpster.
“Now! Anything! Please!”
It was the please that did it. Mona could kick ass—probably could bruise up that tremens pretty well—but if she was going to kill it, she needed magic. And Bailey could help her.
Inside, Bailey pushed through the crowd, ignoring the heys and what the hells, just shoving blindly until she got to the bar. Angie was hovering at the end, looking terrified, and Bailey took the opportunity to wedge her way behind to the bottles and glasses.
“It’s for Mona,” she said shortly, and started pulling together the first recipe that came to mind: Vodka. Orange juice. Ice. The one thing she knew she could make without even trying. As soon as the glasses started to glow, Bailey downed her screwdriver in a single gulp, then jerked open the lift-up bar and booked it for the back entrance. When she flung open the door, she didn’t see Mona.
“Mona!”
She was flat on the ground, pinned by two tentacles, her face twisted in pain as a sickening mouth opened above her. Bailey reacted before she realized what she was doing.
“Get off her!”
With her superpowered arm, she pitched the second screwdriver as hard as she could at the tremens’s head. The glass glanced off its stubby face and smashed on the asphalt in a shower of citrus and ice—not enough to kill it but enough to distract it.
“Do it!” Mona yelled, pushing it off. “Now!”
“Do what?”
“Something!” Mona had wrestled the tremens onto the shards and was grinding it down as hard as she could. “Just do it now!”
“Okay! Um, okay!”
Panic clutched Bailey’s chest—whatdoIdowhatdoIdo—and then she got an idea.
“Move!”
A two-foot running start was all she needed. Bailey booked it for the middle of the alley, superstrong legs propelling her with impossible force, just as Mona released the tremens from her half nelson. As soon as she did, Bailey jumped.
With a vicious crunch, Bailey landed on the beast, heels first. Her shoes—her sensible, expensive, no-nonsense business-lady shoes—gouged it right between the eyes. Liquid gushed.
“Are you okay?” Bailey took a squelching step out of what used to be the tremens and what used to be her shoes.
“I’m fine.” Panting, Mona pushed herself up. “I don’t get hurt. But you …” She stared. “Not bad for a tite pichouette.”
“A what?” It sounded French.
Mona shook her head. “You need to get out of here, Chen.”
“Get out?” Bailey stared back at the puddle hissing around her ruined high heels. “But that was a tremens. In the daylight. The waitress saw it. This is serious. We have to tell Za—”
“You’re not telling Zane,” said Mona, “or Vincent. You’ll go home and leave the rest to me.”
“No way.”
“I’m no fool, Chen,” said Mona. “I know why you’re here. Those people you were with—they were all wearing T-shirts with the same logo. That company that does the applicatives for your music phones.”
“Well—” Bailey frowned. “Yeah.”
“So tell anyone about what happened in this alley, and I’ll ensure that the Court knows why you were here to witness it.”
Bailey balked. “I just saved your life, you ungrateful—”
“Chen.” Unmoved, Mona stared her down. “I know you don’t care for me. But you have to trust me.”
And with that she opened the door, zipped past Bailey, and disappeared into the crowd.
Mint leaves, sugar, lime juice. Concentrating on details always helped.
Bang.
The door to Long & Strong flew open and Bailey jumped, but it was just Bucket returning from patrol, red cheeked from the night air but seemingly unharmed. She had spent her preshift Saturday drinking coffee and staying as alert as possible; now that she was up next for patrol, she was making herself a mojito—her ex-coworker Trina’s favorite, which would give her the power to manipulate ambient water to her will—and her hands were shaking. From caffeine or from fear, she couldn’t quite tell.
“Phew.” Bucket staggered to the bar and mimed wiping sweat from his brow.
Bailey rolled her eyes, acting more relaxed than she felt. “You’re fine.”
Bucket perked up instantly. “Damn right I am. I found three tremens and made them into dead- … mens?” He grimaced. “Oof. Even Zane would not have gone for that one.”
Bailey smirked. “You underestimate him.”
“Probably. You ready for your turn?”
“Almost.” Bailey dropped a mint sprig into the white mixture, but it wasn’t glowing. “Dammit,” she said under her breath.
“Everything okay?”
Bailey looked up. “Why? What happened?”
“Well, you put salt in your mojito, for one.”
“Shit.” Bailey dumped out the liquid and started over.
“Hey, it’s okay. Happens to everyone. Also, like, crazy shit’s been going on lately.” Bucket grabbed a fresh lime, split it with a knife, and without even being asked, squeezed out a fresh measure of juice.
“Thanks,” Bailey said. This time her mojito glowed.
Bucket shrugged. “Just looking out for a friend.”
Friend. Bucket was maybe the first friend she’d made since returning to Chicago. “Actually,” she said, “Bucket? I need to tell you something.”
“Sure.” Bucket scooped a loose strand into his mohawk, but it refused to stay put. “What’s up?”
Bailey fiddled with a paper coaster. She’d been true to her word and hadn’t breathed a word to Zane, but Bucket was different. Bucket was, after all, her friend.
“I saw
one in the daytime,” she blurted out.
His eyes widened. “What? Where? How?”
“With my eyes,” Bailey said. “In the Loop the other day. I killed it but—”
“Yeah.” His complexion turned arctic pale.
“You … believe me?”
“Uh, duh,” Bucket said. “I mean, one, you were onto the delirium before anyone else even noticed, eh? And B, you’ve always got my back, so I trust you.” He grinned weakly and Bailey felt better, demonic upsurge notwithstanding.
“Do you think it’s got something to do with Halloween?” he added.
“I was thinking that, yeah,” she said, poking her cocktail with a straw. “But that’s still not for a week. It comes but once a year, right?”
“Right. Well. I guess we’ve just gotta keep doing the job, eh?” Bucket tried and failed again to smooth his hair to its full height. “You ready to take over? I’m gonna go make myself pretty before I start tending.”
Bailey said “sure,” but he wouldn’t leave until she tagged him in, like they were wrestlers. When she finally slapped him five, he struck a dynamic pose, then practically skipped toward the bathroom.
She’d almost got the mojito to her lips when Vincent appeared at her side. “He made you do the wrestler thing, huh, kiddo?” he said.
Bailey put down her drink. “Yeah.”
“And you saw a tremens pre-twilight.”
She froze, remembering Mona’s warning. Ah, a little voice in her head said. But you didn’t tell him. He told you.
“I—yeah,” she said. “I know I sound crazy but—”
Vincent interrupted with a wave of the hand. “You know what you sound like, kiddo?”
“What?”
“Someone who asks the right questions.” Despite his blindness, Vincent had no problem navigating the back of the bar to fill the meager stream of orders. Granted, it was a slow night, but Bailey had seen sighted bartenders unable to keep up with demand. Hell, not too long ago she’d been one of them. “Been rolling it over in my head a bit. All this shit with the delirium. Got a theory, if you’ll let me bend your ear.”
“Should we wait for Bucket to come back?” she said.
Vincent shook his head. “Bucket’s a good worker, but he’s too tight with the Whelans for my liking.”
Bailey nodded, then blushed as she realized her mistake. But Vincent was already smirking.
“You tried to nod, huh? And now you’re blushing?”
“Okay, how could you know I’m blushing?”
“I didn’t,” said Vincent, “but that mental picture was funnier. So here’s what I’m thinking. The way I figure, you gotta go at this scientifically. If the control is the way things have always been, then that means the variables are the tremens, the environment, and us. The tremens have remained constant, and so have we, at least as far as I can tell. That means the one variable in this experiment is the environment.”
She cocked her head. On the floor, Poppy did the same thing.
“What, you’re surprised I know the scientific method?” Vincent slid a freshly poured beer down the counter to a regular. “Just ’cause I’m a blind donkey working a bar doesn’t mean I don’t remember high school science, kiddo.” He nodded down to his dog. “And thanks for the vote of confidence there, Poppy. Really feeling the love.”
In response, Poppy stood on her hind legs, leaned against him, and energetically licked his hand.
Bailey weighed his words. “So what do you think caused the change, boss?”
“Told you I wasn’t sure.”
“Then hypothesize.”
“You won’t think it’s some crackpot theory?”
She put a firm hand on his shoulder. “I would never.”
“Okay.” Vincent rubbed his jaw. “Those suckers want arcane energy, and they can’t mix drinks with those stumpy legs of theirs, which makes sauced-up human souls—or animus, whatever you want to call ’em—the best source. But what if we weren’t the best anymore?”
A patron flashed a hand from the end of the bar and Vincent grunted in response, scooping ice into a shaker.
“There’s something I didn’t tell you the other night. You know why I got blind?”
“Yes,” she said without thinking. She regretted being so quick to answer, but he didn’t seem fazed. “Home-distilled gin. It’s more powerful but less stable than—”
“Not how,” Vincent said. “Why. Why I was distilling in the first place.”
The answer slid into Bailey’s mind, and it was so overwhelming and obvious that she barely dared say it louder than a whisper.
“Speak up, kiddo,” he said. “Unless I’m going deaf now, too.”
She cleared her throat. “The Long Island iced tea.”
“Bingo.” He rattled the cocktail shaker a few times. “I never got close enough to making the full thing, to be sure. But I got close enough to know that shit is powerful. And if I hadn’t been too young and too dumb to fuck it up …” He poured the drink and slid the glass down the bar. “Let’s just say that if you’re old and too smart for your own good, and you’ve got the family name to keep this town under your thumb …” He shrugged his huge shoulders.
She stared. Zane wasn’t old and he wasn’t that smart. And he definitely didn’t have infinite resources; otherwise he wouldn’t have flipped out after using up Hortense LaRue’s rum.
But maybe Zane wasn’t the only Whelan with his eyes on the prize.
“Garrett,” Bailey said. “Garrett’s trying to make a Long Island iced tea.”
“Yeah, His Royal Tininess Garrett.” His expression turned ugly. “Guess when you’re staring death in the face, you start to lose your grip on your principles a bit. Good thing I can’t stare, huh, kiddo?” He chuckled.
Her mind was two steps ahead. “And you think the tremens are attracted to the energy in a Long Island iced tea.”
“It ain’t no mojito, that’s for sure,” Vincent said, nodding at the glowing drink in Bailey’s hand.
“How did you—”
Vincent tapped the side of his nose. “What, you think I just guess what’s in all these bottles?”
“So you think the closer he gets, the more tremens appear.” Bailey frowned. “But Garrett can’t be distilling it himself. Where would he even find the space? Or the money?”
“I think a lot of things, kiddo,” Vincent said. “But I know that whoever gets their hands on that power will also be the only one able to stop a full-blown delirium.”
She shivered.
“All right,” he said. “That’s enough conspiracy theories for now. Drink your mojito before it gets warm, and go kick some eldritch ass.”
Bailey did as she was told.
THE DEVIL’S WATER DICTIONARY.
The Mojito
A concoction to assert dominance over elements aquatic
1. Drop six mint leaves, a lump of sugar, and the juice of one lime into a Collins glass.
2. Muddle until the leaves are bruised and the sugar has dissolved.
3. Add two ounces of white rum and a splash of soda water.
4. Fill the glass with ice, garnish with a mint sprig and a slice of lime, and serve.
The mojito is the signature drink of Cuba. The island’s extensive coastline and large aquatic beast population give local bartenders little reason to serve anything else in the field. The preparation of a mojito is time-consuming endeavor, and its drinker requires a large source of water nearby in order to take full advantage of the aquatic affinity it grants. However, the mojito’s advantages outweigh its faults: not only does it allow the drinker to control all forms of water, including ice and steam, but the mint leaves also leave a pleasant smell on one’s breath.
WHITE RUM.
Fitting for its Caribbean roots, white rum is aged in steel drums. The metal barrels have an anomalous effect on their contents; though the process diminishes the rum’s inherent power, it creates a product much more suitable for mixology (as opposed to d
ark rum, which must be coaxed into playing well with others).
The exact magical properties of steel barrels have remained a mystery since antiquity, though some bartenders have attempted research into the matter. Ángel Noriega, a bartender from Santiago de Cuba, once went so far as to have himself sealed into a barrel of white rum with an oxygen tank in the hope of observing the process. When his barrel was unsealed at the 1920 summit of the Organisation Européenne des Échansons et Sommeliers in Belgrade, the shock of finding his rum-bloated corpse was overshadowed only by the immediate appearance of a mad, gin-drunk count from Italy.
COLLINS GLASS.
Taller and thinner than the highball glass, the Collins is named after the Tom Collins, a gin-based cocktail it was first used to serve. Its eponymous inventor was a Manhattan bartender who began selling Court secrets to New York high society. In 1874, Court representatives were dispatched to apprehend him, but Collins seeded a hoax among the Manhattan public, in which people would ask friends if they’d seen Tom Collins. They would then insist that a man by that name was defaming their character just around the corner, hoping to provoke their friends into foolish action. Eventually Collins was cornered in Boston by Hortense LaRue, and the memories of him and his customers were modified by the Court. But by then the term Collins glass had gained too much traction, leaving it and its namesake the sole tribute to one of the Court’s earliest traitors.
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
Bailey knew she had to level with Zane. But after she’d slept off the exhaustion of liquor and demon slaying and conversations with Mona, Bucket, and Vincent, she woke up not at the crack of noon, full of purpose and vigor, but at some actual morning hour to the sight of her mom perched on her bed like a cat eager to be fed.
Bailey jerked upright. “What’d I do?” she said, her voice thick with sleep.