Moonshine

by Alaya Johnson

  “I’m busy, Charlie,” I said. “I agreed to tutor Nicholas, not be his servant.”

  Charlie frowned. He looked genuinely worried for me, and so boyishly cute I tried not to wonder if the flush along his fingertips and ears had been legally gained. “I think you gotta come. Nick’s in one of his moods. Didn’t even drink Faust last night, and it’s like he’s going nuts.” He froze and looked up at me. “Don’t tell him I said that. Hates it when we use that word.”

  I could imagine. “Of course not, Charlie,” I said. “Can he wait a few minutes?”

  “Oh, sure,” he said, relieved. “Just don’t come down to the Rum. It’s a mess, you know. The Faust dried up around midnight ’cause the new shipment we was supposed to get never showed. Word is the Boss is pissed to hell ’cause this nigger or whoever he’s buying from just vanished, and the German guy ain’t takin’ his tele grams.” He snapped his fingers. “Town’s gone as dry as a desert. Just between you and me, it’s not so bad. Faust . . . never thought I’d say it, but you can have too much of a good thing. Still, I got a name to make for myself, Zephyr. Nick was pissed when I lost that booze to the Westies, but I’m going to do one better. I’m going to find Dore’s killer. The Boss has put a bounty on the head of whoever popped him.”

  I kept my face carefully neutral, attempting to digest this torrent of information that had improbably fallen out of Charlie’s lips. Perhaps I’d been pumping the wrong Turn Boy all this time. A bounty on the head of Dore’s killer, the “nigger” supplier suddenly cutting off all business (I’d have to tell Lily), and something I’d forgotten: the escalating rivalry between Rinaldo’s gang and the Westies.

  “Nicholas can’t get too mad,” I said, carefully. “The Westies have stolen a few shipments in the last few weeks, haven’t they?”

  Charlie frowned and shook his head. “I don’t think so. If they’d done it more’n once, I think Nick might have declared war! Nick doesn’t like poaching.”

  “But . . . I’d heard it was one of Rinaldo’s runners, not Nick’s,” I said. This was strange.

  He shrugged. “Hey, maybe. We don’t got much contact with the Boss. Specially not now that Dore’s been popped. I didn’t hear nothing about it, though.”

  I didn’t think it would be safe for Giuseppe if I pressed further, so I shrugged and put the tax papers into a more or less orderly pile.

  “I’m ready then. Where does Nicholas expect me to tutor him, if not the Rum?” And despite my curiosity at this new turn of events, I wished I’d explored that back room more when I had the chance.

  “Broad Street station,” he said.

  “But it’s still under construction.”

  “That’s all right. Nick’s got a place. He’ll see you when you go, but . . .” He scuffled his feet in the marble again and looked up at me. “Mind if I take you there, Zephyr?”

  I stared at Charlie, my mouth open. “How old are you, Charlie?”

  “Got turned last year, up in Boston.” And he couldn’t have been a day older than fifteen when he turned. Sixteen. Well, goodness me, the boy had a crush. I smiled and let him take my arm.

  Nick’s “place” was little more than a large man-made cave filled with piles of rocks and discarded construction equipment from the work site. He led me into it from the main entrance while the workers conspicuously ignored us. He’d brought a few gas lamps to light the room, but otherwise it was entirely devoid of signs of habitation. I wondered why he’d chosen to take me here. Maybe it reminded him of the strange, dark place with water rushing past and roaring boat horns and some sort of flat? But why would he want to remember the site of his horrific turning? I could tell immediately that Charlie had been right about Nicholas’s “mood.” The head Turn Boy was pale, like he’d forgotten to feed, or deliberately denied himself. He’d managed to lead me here without speaking at all, limiting himself to grunts and gestures. I’d worry for my safety, if not for the fact that he seemed so internally focused, as though he only noticed me as a physical object in the room. Admittedly, I wasn’t an expert on mob hits, but this didn’t seem like the proper attitude for a murder, even from someone as strange and depraved as Nicholas.

  “Charlie told me it was urgent,” I said, finally, when he’d been pacing the length of the cave silently for a full minute. My voice echoed like a disobliging guest.

  “Charlie’s a pest,” he said. He kept pacing.

  Brilliant. I run away from my paid job and now Nicholas won’t even talk to me. “Hey,” I said, just to get his attention. “I heard your Negro supplier cut off your line to Faust.”

  As I hoped, he looked at me. “You have your ears in strange places, Charity. But I can tell you that thief ain’t quite a nigger. The Boss wouldn’t stand for it.”

  And is “the Boss” a skinwalker, in addition to a bigot, I wanted to ask? Nicholas had led me to believe that his father had turned Nicholas himself, but wasn’t it possible that Rinaldo had enlisted someone else to do the job? Dore, perhaps? Which would explain Nicholas’s obvious antipathy to his father’s late second-in-command. On the other hand, maybe Amir had a particularly good reason for thinking that Rinaldo was a vampire. I needed to talk to him.

  Thankfully, Nicholas stopped his pacing and pulled some sort of letter from his pocket.

  “Want you to read this,” he muttered, handing it to me. The creases were worn and the edges frayed from worrying hands. And yet the paper felt curiously dry for something so well-handled. Vampires, after all, didn’t sweat. Carefully, I unfolded the papers and looked. One closely typewritten page with a law firm letterhead—clearly some kind of legal document.

  “What is—”

  “Just read it from the top!” he shouted. The words echoed for several seconds after he fell silent. I shrugged and began.

  “Hereby begins the Last Will and Testament of RINALDO SANGUINETTI of the area known as Little Italy in Manhattan, well-known businessman. I revoke all wills and testamentary writings by me at any time heretofore made and declare this to be my Last Will and Testament. I appoint my business partner Dore, no surname, Executor of this will. I give and bequeath control of my business holdings and interests to the aforesaid Dore, to maintain and expand our areas of operation at his full discretion, until such time that Giudo, my son, reaches his majority at eighteen years. I hereby consign Giudo into the care of his mother, Katerina, until this time. He is to receive an allowance of two thousand dollars per annum toward his rearing and education. Katerina is to receive one thousand dollars per annum, until her death, provided she refrains from carnal contact with other men and remains faithful to my memory.

  “Pending Dore’s approval of the following as regards specific, unforeseen circumstances, I hereby divide management of my business holdings as follows—”

  Nicholas jumped to his feet and smashed his hand against the cave wall. Stone shattered and fell in a puff of dust. He’d cut his hand, but the ragged edges of skin didn’t bleed at all.

  “I knew it!” he yelled.

  I held myself very still and made sure my face betrayed no emotion. Nicholas was unstable in the best of circumstances, but now I was afraid that he was angry enough to hurt me without even realizing it.

  “Giudo!” he said, his voice tangled with an unvoiced sob. “Giudo. Does it mention me, Zephyr? You can read it to yourself, right? Does it mention me?”

  I was aware of a tight pain in my chest, the source of which I could hardly credit. Could Nicholas’s father care for him so little? Nicholas was a monster—I couldn’t forget that, or I’d never be able to live with what Daddy and Troy were about to do to him—but beneath it he was still a thirteen-year-old boy, locked in a dark room while vampire poison ravaged his brain. I looked away from his needy, open face and back at the letter. For several paragraphs Rinaldo detailed which streets and contacts would go to various members of his gang. Finally, I saw Nicholas’s name mentioned at the bottom of the page.

  “To my son Nicholas,” I read, “I bequeath m
y musical collection, comprising of recordings, playback devices and instruments. Nicholas may also, should he so choose, retain control of his division of my business, though I encourage him to pursue his talents elsewhere.”

  I kept my eyes on my lap. “That’s it,” I said. “The rest is just legal jargon. Nicholas . . . how did you get this?”

  He walked so close to me that I could see the scuffed leather of his expensive boy’s shoes, but I couldn’t look up. “Lawyer came and found me after Dore got popped. Said Papa had to change the will, so I Swayed him and took it. Wanted to see how much the bastardo really loves me, after all. I’m going,” he said, plucking the paper from my stiff fingers. “Go back to your charity, Zephyr Hollis.”

  I sat in the empty cave for at least a minute after he left. Was Daddy really going to kill him? This boy whose father could only bother to leave him a few sheets of music in his will? I stood up, and then froze at the abrupt, sudden sound of an aborted scream deep in the tunnels. A rat?

  “Bastardo! Putanna!”

  An Italian rat. He’d told me he was leaving.

  Or maybe he was going to see his father.

  Overcome with this new idea, I grabbed the lamp he had left for me and turned it down until it was barely a flicker in the darkness. I crept to the opening of the cave and looked up and down the tunnel. Nicholas, being a vampire, wouldn’t need a light to see, but the noises seemed to be coming from the left-hand side. I crept forward, hiding the dim lamp beneath my coat. From about fifteen feet away, I could make out his pale shape as a slow-moving hump in the dark. He was definitely heading deeper into the tunnels. I’d had no idea New Yorkers had honeycombed the city to this extent with our demands for transportation. And what a waste to abandon them like this. He made several unhesitating turns at forks in the tunnel: left, right, right. I repeated the sequence under my breath so I could find my way out again. I had no particular desire to starve to death a few yards beneath the city. Nicholas turned right again, abruptly. I waited behind, breathing shallowly for several long seconds, before rounding the corner. This way, the faint light from my lamp wouldn’t alert him to my presence.

  He wasn’t there. I ran forward—had he made another turn? But I didn’t hear any noise down either of the two branches up ahead. Even at vampire speed, he shouldn’t have been able to vanish so completely. I cursed, very quietly, and dared to turn the light up a little. Empty. I turned in a slow circle. Totally alone.

  A sharp, small scuffle behind me. I didn’t even have time to shriek before Nicholas knocked me to the wall. My breath expelled in a dramatic whoosh and I struggled, red-faced, to suck air into my lungs. Nicholas’s hands were barely large enough to wrap around my throat, but given his strength, it was more than enough. I choked and wondered if now would be a good time to get that knife from beneath my skirt. Nicholas twisted his face into an utterly inhuman snarl. His eyes pulsed with light, but too erratically to Sway me even if I hadn’t been immune.

  “What are you, who are you working for?”

  His mouth was a mere inch from my own. I struggled to breathe. “I’m not . . . you know who I am. I just work . . . for you.” Please believe me, please believe me.

  But his hand now threatened to crush my windpipe. I grew lightheaded. “You were following me. Why, Charity? And you better tell me the truth, ’cause help is pretty far away.”

  I closed my eyes. “Can’t . . . breathe,” I croaked. One agonizing second, and he abruptly relaxed his grip. I dropped to my knees, gulping air past my burning throat. “Okay,” I said. And damn me if this didn’t work, because Nicholas was precisely right: we were too far away from help if I’d misjudged him. I looked up into his eyes, which had returned to relative quiescence. Oh, I knew he was insane. But I had to bet my life on his rationality.

  “I want to find Rinaldo. I want to kill him, and you’re the only person who knows where he is.”

  He jerked, as though I’d hit him. But his expression remained strangely inscrutable. He stared at the wall above me. His lips moved, but no sound came from them. I wondered if my revelation, of all things, had finally pushed him over the edge, but eventually he seemed to arrive at a decision. All the coiled, tense violence of the last several minutes left him. I relaxed.

  “I can’t help you,” he said. His voice was very quiet. “I owe Papa that much. I won’t stop you, though. If you think you can do it. But I don’t think you can. I think you’ll probably die.” He cocked his head at me and giggled. “You know that makes me sad? I don’t want Charity Do-good to die.”

  I coughed, and it turned, inexplicably, to a laugh. “That makes two of us.”

  Nicholas led me from the tunnels and made sure I was firmly above-ground before vanishing. I couldn’t have followed him even if I was stupid enough to try again. I caught myself shivering in latent shock, but it was more convenient to blame it on the cold. I didn’t have time to fall apart over every little threat. My throat was just a little bruised, after all—another to add to my collection. I needed to see Amir and tell him about the party last night and Rinaldo’s will, but since I was so close to the subway station I thought I’d check in on our malodorous informant first. Perhaps he had news of Judah’s mother. I retrieved my bicycle from a lamppost across the street from the construction site and made my labored way down to Whitehall Street. I’d decided to take it this morning since I had given all of my remaining cab fare to Giuseppe and my bruises seemed to ache marginally less. By the time I made it to Whitehall Street, I’d given up the effort to maneuver the traffic on my bicycle. If the ground weren’t so icy, or if I weren’t so sore, it might have even been fun, but at the moment I could only think longingly of my bed. Or perhaps something less lumpy. Like Amir’s. And warmer, like . . .

  I shook my head firmly and jogged down the stairs into the station. The platform itself wasn’t nearly as crowded as the streets above: the rush of morning traffic had ended hours ago. So I was surprised to find that the indigent seemed to have vanished. His state of advanced inebriation had led me to believe that he probably spent much of his time down here. I walked over to his corner, and saw that he had left behind a worn burlap blanket that smelled even worse than I remembered and a frayed sack filled with half-eaten candy and two bottles of soda pop. Perhaps he relied on the smell to keep thieves away, but why would someone with so little leave what he had behind? Had something happened to him?

  I walked to the station master’s booth. The man seated inside was portly and florid—a reassuring sight after so many days surrounded by dangerous, rail-thin and ghost-pale vampires flushed in all the wrong places. He was reading a copy of the Daily News with a front-page story about the sudden dry-run of Faust, and speculation that Jimmy Walker’s secret narcotics agents had routed out the source. I snorted, which alerted the stationmaster to my presence. He peered at me through the grille.

  “Can I help you, miss?” he said.

  “Do you know what happened to that indigent who used to sit over there?” I pointed. “I had hoped to bring him some food and fortifying reading from our local charity group.”

  He squinted, then released his pince-nez and looked again. “Oh, you’re that girl, ain’t you? The one who beat up that pack of suckers yesterday! I wouldn’t’ve believed it, if I hadn’t seen the picture. My ma says a girl has no business getting mixed up with those types, but I don’t mind telling you I think it’s the berries.”

  I scowled. “I bet your ma doesn’t approve of slang, either.”

  “ ’Fraid not, miss. So you want old Rick? He’s no sucker, if that’s what you mean.”

  “No, no, I’m just here on an errand of charity.” Did he imagine I spent my days tossing errant vampires over my shoulder like sacks of flour?

  He nodded, his eyebrows drawn together. “Well, I can’t really help you there. Nice of you to do a charitable mission for his type, but a pig came ’round here six this morning and took him off. Didn’t even give him time to get his stuff, as you can see. Seemed l
ike Rick got himself mixed up in some nasty business the last couple’a weeks. I wouldn’t be surprised if he didn’t come back.”

  Arrested? I recalled the yellowing tracks of hypodermic needles in his arm. Much as I hated it, spirits were illegal, and addicts like him were the easiest target of corrupt narcotics agents. The Daily News thought Jimmy Walker had the slightest interest in stemming the flow of Faust into the city? While he’s at swanky parties on the Upper East Side, carousing with a glass of illegally imported champagne in one hand and a showgirl on the other? But this wasn’t good news for Judah.

  “Have you ever seen a woman in the station with a young boy? In her thirties, brown hair? The boy has freckles. Not poor, but maybe not obviously wealthy.”

  As soon as I gave this description, I realized how hopeless it was. As expected, the station manager frowned and shook his head. “A lot of people go through the station, miss. Unless they live down here and smell as bad as old Rick, I don’t really notice ’em. Sorry.”

  I thanked him and walked back up the stairs. A blast of frigid air blew in from the river and my throat spluttered like a clogged exhaust pipe. I coughed, violently, and leaned against the wrought-iron fence of the tiny park for support. A few people looked up at me in momentary concern, but no one stopped. The wind subsided and I managed to breathe again, but I stayed where I was, shivering. I didn’t know how much longer I could stand this, truly I didn’t. The threats, the fights, the bruises, the relentless recognition, the gnawing worry about Amir’s safety. And perhaps the only bright spot was the strange, delicate, tentative attraction Amir and I seemed to have for each other. But I didn’t trust or understand him enough to know how much it meant to him or how it could resolve.

  “At the risk of pointing out the obvious, Zephyr,” I muttered, “he’s a djinn. A three-hundred-year-old djinn whose idea of a social movement is crop rotation.” And even after we found Rinaldo and hopefully stopped what ever it was that caused Amir’s attacks, what then? He’d be my boyfriend? Take me on dates around town? I had to laugh, which my throat regretted. Why did that make me so sad? We ain’t the same kind, as Daddy would say. I’d yell at him and insist it didn’t matter. But did it?