Moonshine

by Alaya Johnson

  I knew I looked a mess when I walked into Amir’s place, but there was no help for it. I’d at least wiped what I thought were the last traces of errant tears on my cheeks. Maybe I needed a vacation. A trip to a lovely beach house on the Jersey shore. Mornings spent reading trashy novels on the porch, and evenings dancing at the community hall. And at least twelve hours of sleep a night.

  He was sitting on his couch, chatting and laughing with another woman whose back was turned to me. I’m not a jealous type, really, but I felt sad and confused and a little vindicated in my pessimism about our relationship.

  I almost cleared my throat, then thought better of it. “Should I come back later?” I said, wishing that my voice didn’t sound quite so desperate and scratchy.

  Amir turned toward me, along with his mysterious guest.

  “Zephyr!” my mother exclaimed. “You look terrible!”

  I grimaced and wished my blushes were not quite so florid. “Mama, what are you doing here?”

  “I came to visit Amir,” she said, as though we were back in Yarrow and Amir lived down the street. “To thank him for his lovely present.”

  “Yes, nothing like a deadly weapon as a gesture of friendship.”

  “No need to be sarcastic, Zephyr,” Mama said.

  I sighed and collapsed into the couch opposite them. Amir’s expression was one of patented inscrutability. I could see him take in the new bruises on my neck, the cave dust on Lily’s clothes, my shuddering tension. I felt like a glass about to crack, and he could see every fissure. His hands fluttered, as though they would reach for me, but he instead combed them through his hair.

  “Sweetie, what happened to you?” Mama asked. “How did you get those bruises?”

  I glanced nervously at Amir, who seemed entirely too interested in the answer to this question. I knew he was worried about my association with Nicholas, and he’d think this proved his point.

  “Well, I . . . I fell.”

  Mama raised her eyebrows. “Zephyr.”

  “Someone just . . .” I coughed and then winced. “I mean . . . Nicholas tried to strangle me, that’s all.”

  She threw up her hands. “That’s one of those Turn Boys, isn’t it? The ones your Daddy’s going to kill. Well, good riddance—”

  “You won’t have to deal with him again,” Amir said, neatly cutting off Mama. “I found Rinaldo.”

  We both turned to stare at him. He looked perfectly blasé, as though he’d announced something of no more import than the score of the latest Yankees game. And it was the first thing he had said since I arrived.

  “You . . . you did? How? Was it marked on the maps?”

  He nodded. “Quite obvious once I knew what to look for.”

  I beamed. “That’s great! Oh, that’s wonderful, Amir. Where is he? We’ll have to plan our assault soon. Maybe even let Daddy and Troy in on it. Much as I hate to admit, they know what they’re doing about this sort of thing.”

  Amir frowned. “Zephyr—”

  “Well, Troy is a pain,” I said, laughing nervously. “We don’t have—”

  “You can’t help me.”

  “What?”

  He laced his hands behind his head and shrugged. “You heard me.”

  I found myself standing up, like a medieval knight dealt a blow to his honor. I was furious, and Amir looked so damnably placid. “We’ve been through this,” I bit out.

  “I don’t mean I don’t want you to. I mean you can’t. This was never your problem, Zephyr. I just paid you to help.”

  I could only imagine how I looked: like a child just told her pet dog has died, and never really loved her anyway. Mama looked between me and Amir and stood.

  “I’ll just go check on little Judah,” she said.

  “Judah? What’s he doing here?” I directed it to Mama, but she’d already ducked into the hallway.

  “I thought I’d take him to South Ferry again. See if his memory is better in the daylight.”

  I couldn’t bear to look at him. He knew what he was doing to me—he had to—but he looked so businesslike and coolly attractive that I found myself wondering if I had imagined what had happened between us for the last few days.

  “You just paid me to help?” I whispered furiously. “You expect me to believe this was all some bleeding business transaction? I got this”—I pointed to my throat—“for a business transaction? I know what this means to you, even if you refuse to admit it. And you still need my help.”

  Amir raised his eyebrows, but remained seated. “Has anyone told you you’re remarkably needy for someone who spends their days giving to others?” I opened my mouth. He waved his hand. “And don’t flatter yourself, dear. I’m a djinn. You’re just a human. My business with Rinaldo is my own, and much better accomplished without you getting in the way.”

  I would not cry. I would not. But I couldn’t seem to stand and hold them back at the same time. I bit my tongue until I tasted blood and sat on the edge of his couch.

  “I’m afraid I misunderstood,” I said, wishing I could keep my voice as cold as his.

  “Zephyr, I . . .” Something seemed to have cracked his façade. I could see traces of the confusion and worry and tenderness I’d hoped were still there.

  “This didn’t mean anything to you?” I whispered.

  He leaned forward, so his scent tickled my nose. Comforting, like a hearth fire when you come in from the cold. “I can’t answer that. I’ve behaved . . .” He shook his head. “Wait a week, Zeph. If you can, ask me then.”

  His eyes were determined and sad, without a hint of seduction. And so I leaned forward to kiss him.

  “Amir uncle, Winnie says you want to take me on a trip.”

  We moved slowly apart, like the heat I felt from him had turned to sticky taffy. I sighed. But he was already smiling and walking toward Judah.

  “Yes, she’s right,” Amir said, letting the boy hold his hand.

  If you can, ask me then.

  I started to shiver.

  I didn’t have to, but insisted on coming along with the three of them. Mama thought of it like a tour of the city, and since she seemed to like both Amir and Judah, I couldn’t really begrudge her enthusiasm. “He looks so much like Harry at that age,” she’d said wistfully as we climbed into the cab. I wondered how much Amir had told her about Judah, but sitting in the back of a carriage with the two of them didn’t seem like the ideal time to ask. We insisted the driver pull back the cover, so we could view the city in all its frigid, smelly glory. I had to make do with my worn tweed winter coat, but Mama wore a fox fur stole with a matching muff and hat that wouldn’t have looked out of place in a boutique window on Madison Avenue.

  “Daddy must be doing well,” I said as we headed down Broadway.

  She noticed the direction of my gaze and beamed. “Just a little something he got me for our anniversary, sweetie. Lovely, isn’t it?”

  I scowled. “Sure. Nothing like the satisfaction of knowing that at least a dozen animals sacrificed their lives for your greater comfort.”

  “Zephyr!”

  “I think it’s lovely, Mrs. Hollis.” Amir glared at me. I ignored him.

  “Zephyr is very sad,” Judah said. We’d bundled him up carefully—as such a young vampire, he didn’t have to worry much about the sun, but it was better to be safe.

  “You know,” I said under my breath, “I think I liked you better when you didn’t speak.”

  Judah looked up at Mama, his eyes wide and heartbreakingly confused. “I’m sorry,” he said. “Should I stop talking, Winnie?”

  “Of course not, honey,” Mama said. “You can say anything you like to me.” She drew him conspicuously into the voluminous folds of her coat. “Apologize, Zephyr.”

  “I’m very sorry, Judah,” I said wearily. “I’m a miserable excuse for a human being.”

  Amir gave me a sharp glance. Of course we were sitting next to each other, which was bad for my emotional stability, but gave me an excuse not to meet his
gaze. “I think Zephyr is hungry, isn’t she, Judah?”

  Judah looked between Amir and me, and I wanted to squirm beneath that calm, illusion-stripping penetration. “Yes. She is also hungry, Amir uncle.”

  He smiled a little at that, and told the driver to stop the carriage. He left for a minute, and returned with a box full of hot dogs, loaded with relish and mustard.

  “Of course,” I said. He handed me a pretzel and roasted nuts. I was hungry, but found myself distracted by Amir’s meticulous appreciation of his frankfurter. He’d actually closed his eyes, emitting involuntary vocal exclamations more appropriate to certain other activities.

  “Do you know what hot dogs are made of?” I said, because my current mood longed for sour company.

  He licked the last of the mustard off his fingers and grinned at me.

  “I’m immune to your lectures, Zephyr Hollis. You’ll have to harangue your fellows at the suffragette meeting.”

  Mama laughed. “Yes, honey, don’t be such a wet blanket.”

  Slang? What was next, a feathered turban? I closed my eyes and settled into the corner of the carriage. In my current foul mood, I was clearly not fit for company. Amir and Mama and Judah chatted while I relaxed. I felt curiously warm, given the weather. Amir seemed to have discreetly increased his heat production for my benefit. As Judah talked, I realized how much he’d improved since I first found him. It seemed clear that the turning had damaged him, but in a different way than it had Nicholas. Judah didn’t seem particularly violent. His memory had been wiped almost clean, aside from that one episode we’d witnessed. And beneath his uncanny stillness, he was so disturbingly observant. I’m snapping at everyone like a box turtle and he tells Amir that I’m sad?

  “I hope we’re doing to right thing. Giving him back to his parents,” I said, quietly enough so that only Amir could hear me. I didn’t open my eyes, but felt his heat shift and settle upon me like a blanket.

  “I don’t think we have another choice,” he said, just as softly. “But you’re right. This isn’t the same little boy they lost.”

  We drove past what seemed to be every single ware house and residential building south of Fulton, paying particular attention to the ones closest to Whitehall Street, but Judah stared at each one with precisely the same placid nonrecognition. The sun was sinking, and we fetched up, finally, at Battery Park to witness the weak winter sun descending over the water. We all stepped out of the carriage while Amir paid the driver. I shuddered to think how much our hours of traipsing through the city must have cost, but I was beginning to suspect that Amir literally conjured his money out of thin air. Judah stopped on the threshold of the park and looked around.

  “I know this place,” he told me.

  “Do you?” I said. “Did your papa take you here?”

  “I told you, my papa is gone. I remember I like it because I can see the sun.”

  “Why don’t you go with Amir and see if you remember anything more,” Mama said, when Amir caught up with us. Judah happily took his hand and they walked off along the barren gravel paths.

  “I do like him, Zephyr,” Mama said, when we were alone. I realized too late why she’d encouraged Amir to go with Judah. “He’s kind, and that’s important. Lord knows I’d feel better if he were a human, but . . . well, I think your father will turn around. Don’t worry.” She patted my hand and I smiled weakly. If only Daddy’s bad opinion was the worst of my problems.

  “I’m glad, Mama,” I managed.

  “But you know I don’t approve of this modern ‘dating’ business. If you love a man, he should marry you. You need some stability, Zephyr. Living the way you do is fine when you’re young, but . . .”

  “I’m twenty-four! Hardly Methuselah. And have you ever heard of a human marrying a djinn?”

  She sighed. “Oh, Zephyr. That’s what I worry about. You’re obviously very fond of him . . .”

  I could not believe I was having this conversation. Marriage? Stability? For all I knew, Amir just thought of me as an amusing diversion before he could go back to Shadukiam and his endless privileges of wealth and power. Thankfully, Judah came bounding back up the garden path, providing a blessed distraction.

  “Winnie and Zephyr,” he said, addressing each of us in turn like a king acknowledging his courtiers, “Amir uncle has become very sick.”

  I felt as though a horse had kicked me in the stomach. I stared at Judah, momentarily incapable of a response.

  “Take us, dear.” That was Mama. I was apparently useless for everything except tagging along behind. Another one of Amir’s attacks? But he had looked so well, earlier. I remembered his bizarrely childish joy while eating his hot dog. Usually the attacks had warning signs.

  He had collapsed by the water. I smelled the sweet, charred scent of burning grass before I noticed the slowly smoldering embers beneath his prone body. His eyes were closed and his face slack. If this was an attack, it was of an order of magnitude worse than the others. Had he been hiding it from me all these hours?

  I dropped to my knees, but knew enough not to touch him. “Amir,” I said, attempting to sound calm, and failing. “Can you hear me?”

  But he didn’t move at all. How did djinn’s die? Did they burn themselves up, like a phoenix? Did they fade into smoke? Did they pop like vampires? And could I do anything to stop it from happening?

  I remembered Amir’s strange instructions the night before. Had he known that something like this would happen to him? “We need to find a street conjurer,” I told Mama. “Someone who can summon the djinn Kardal, his brother. The summoning won’t work, but Kardal will know we need help.”

  Mama nodded. “You wait here with Judah.”

  But Judah was suddenly standing before her, blocking her way. Vampire speed.

  “I can call Kardal uncle,” he said quietly. “He taught me how.”

  Judah raised his arms and his eyes began to glow as though he were Swaying someone. “I summon the djinn Kardal to my circle,” he said, his child voice eerie with intensity and authority. He lowered his arms and then sat down to wait. “He will be here soon,” Judah said, as though to reassure us.

  I looked away from that disturbing image and back to Amir. I wanted to touch him, but even the twelve inches that separated us felt uncomfortably hot.

  Kardal appeared a moment later, a barely differentiated cloud of belching black smoke that enveloped Amir.

  “This will be rough,” he said, in that gravelly voice that had scared me so much the first time I heard it. And he was right—with so many people in tow, the crossing to his palace was disorienting enough to make me stumble to my knees and gag in the thorny brambles of his rosebushes.

  Kardal had taken Mama, Judah and I to one of his courtyard gardens, but he and Amir had vanished. I started to call out to them, but held myself back. You can’t help. Isn’t that what Amir had told me? Too many awful things in this world were indifferent to my help. And no matter how much the sight of Amir collapsed and insensible in the park scared me, I could do nothing about it. I could only wait, and hope that Kardal had gotten to him in time.

  I sat in the fragrant mulch and buried my head between my knees. I’m not sure when my uncontrollable shivering gave way to sobs, but Judah sat beside me and laid his head on my thighs in silent comfort. Mama and I sat back-to-back and she ran her cool, lavender-scented fingers through my tangled curls.

  “Have you thought of putting olive oil in your hair, sweetie? I hear it works wonders.”

  I had to smile. Trust Mama to focus on the essentials. “Better than egg whites,” I said, sniffling.

  “Egg whites? Lordy.”

  I don’t know how long the three of us waited there, in that gentle silence. A fountain delicately gurgled and splashed in the distance. Fat beetles buzzed around the roses and gaudily colored flowers. My tears wet the earth beneath me, but the lazy warmth of Shadukiam’s sun seemed to mute the sound of my sobs. I was profoundly aware of how inappropriate my presence in thi
s garden was. I belonged on dirty New York streets, struggling with my bicycle and hiking up ten flights of creaky tenement steps. And Amir belonged here.

  “He’ll be okay,” Mama said. “You’ll see.” I rarely cried like this. I could tell she didn’t know what to make of it. Neither did I, for that matter.

  “I . . . hurt all over, and Kardal is a pillar of smoke, and Nicholas has the worst daddy in the world, he didn’t deserve what happened to him, though how can I think that, when he’s hurt so many other people? But here I am killing suckers again and Amir is three hundred years old, three hundred, Mama, and he can have all the houris and hot dogs that he wants and I don’t understand anything, anything, anything because he just won’t tell me and so I have to watch as this thing eats him alive and nothing I do can help!”

  Mama hugged me tightly. And for all that I’m an inch taller, I felt like a little girl again, protected in that embrace. “It’ll be all right,” she said, her voice rough. “It’ll be all right.”

  And both she and I knew she couldn’t promise that—no one could—but the words felt like a balm between us.

  I had recovered myself enough to duck my head in the fountain before Kardal came back. He was less bilious than when he rescued Amir, but even the most casual observer couldn’t mistake him for human.

  “Is he okay?” I asked, before he could say anything.

  Kardal’s smoky head seemed to duck in a nod. “For now. Zephyr, I need to speak with you.”

  I looked back at Mama and Judah. “Alone?”

  Again, that vague shift of displaced air. “This is Amir’s tale, but I think you have a right to hear it. My brother is in no position to hide it from you any longer.”