Moonshine: A Novel

by Alaya Johnson

  Troy apparently decided this was too much. "Now, now, Zephyr, this is your father--"

  "--pigheaded," I continued, even more loudly, "bigoted, small-minded little man I've ever known. It is none of your damn business why I do what I do, but I'll have you know it has piss-all to do with destroying the country!"

  "Well, you're giving a damn good impression of it, sweetie," said Daddy, with such mildness that I wanted to stomp my foot like a little girl.

  "There are ways to help people that don't involve rolling in with your own little private army and blowing your problem to ribbons. Ever heard of diplomacy, Daddy? But maybe not--you did vote for Wilson, after all."

  "So you think that Wilson should have tutored the Germans? That would've helped! Shown them the error of their ways, would it?" He turned to the others. "My little girl sure has some strange notions."

  "I am not," I said, emphasizing the negative with a pounded fist on the weapons table, "your little girl. And I'm not tutoring Nicholas to show him the error of his ways. I'm tutoring him to help someone. But what would you know about that? You boys strap on your weapons and call yourselves Defenders, but who are you really defending? Your pocketbooks, maybe. And your shrivelingly small self-conceptions."

  "Little girl," said Daddy, quite deliberately, "you read too damn many books. What ever this job of yours is, it's not worth it."

  I took a deep breath and closed my eyes against his smug expression. "Daddy, Troy," I said, when I had calmed myself, "I can only tell you that this is important to me. If you could just--"

  "Great bleeding Jesus, Zephyr, can't you see we got better things to do than play around with you? Now, your mother told you she'd let you know when we go out. That's got to be enough."

  Mama caught up with me while I waited for the elevator. I smelled her before I felt the gentle tug on my sleeve. Pressed lavender, the same homemade perfume she'd worn all my life. I smiled despite myself as I turned around.

  "Dear," she said, "your father didn't mean all that. He's been under a lot of stress lately. And seeing you with that genie . . ." Something in my expression made her hurry on. "You know how he always gets before a hit."

  "But, Mama, this time the one he's hitting is Amir. I might be his little girl, but he couldn't care less about that."

  At least Mama looked upset. She took my hand and squeezed it. "Maybe you're getting a little too involved, dear. Amir seemed very concerned about you. He seemed to think you were getting in over your head. Are you, Zephyr?"

  It took me a long moment to pro cess what she was saying. "Amir . . . you've seen Amir? Did you go back to his apartment?"

  She laughed. "No, no, he came to see your father this morning, but John was out so I spoke to him. He has lovely manners. And he obviously cares about you, dear. He gave this to me."

  She held out a scabbarded short-sword that took me a moment to recognize: the foreign-blessed blade that Troy had sold to Amir at discount.

  "I could tell it was unusual. Amir said I should keep it. As a gesture of his good faith, he said."

  Well, that sounded like Amir. Give my mother a blade blessed in the tradition most likely to kill him. "That was nice of him," I managed.

  "I don't want anything bad to happen to him, either, Zephyr. I promise, as soon as I know when your daddy's moving out, I'll tell you. I think you still have a few days." Her mouth twisted a little. "I don't think Troy's mysterious client has paid his last installment."

  I had to laugh. "Well, that would hold things up, now, wouldn't it?" The elevator arrived and I signaled for the operator to hold the doors. "Thanks, Mama," I said, kissing her cheek. "I guess I'll keep trying."

  I needed to ditch the subtle approach with Nicholas and the Turn Boys. I didn't have time to waste trying to prize clues out with memory games. I was jittery with nerves by the time I sat down in the dimly lit back room. Nicholas looked better than he had yesterday, but I wondered if it was because he'd indulged in less Faust the night before, or just more fresh blood this morning. His cheeks were as rosy as the Nutcracker's.

  A general lack of good ideas coupled with panic made me an utterly useless spy for the first half of our lesson. On the other hand, I was a tolerably good tutor, and Nicholas applied himself. We went through the rest of the alphabet almost painlessly, and he wrote his letters backward only about a quarter of the time. I took a primer from my bag that I had borrowed from Chrystie Elementary and helped him struggle through his first words, then his first sentence.

  "Blessed are the . . . pure at . . . heart," he said triumphantly, after a battle of perhaps five minutes. But the smile fell from his face like an ill-handled souffle when the meaning caught up with his reading. "That's a dumb sentence," he said. "Who needs the Bible, anyway, Charity? What good's it gonna do me?" I couldn't help feeling sorry for him. Turning so young had obviously damaged his mind, and I had a feeling that Rinaldo had left even more wreckage there before that.

  Nicholas had started rocking gently back and forth. His gaze was fixed at some point past my shoulder.

  "Too dark in here," he muttered. "A flat. The trains all got a flat."

  "Where are you?" I whispered.

  But he blinked and then stared at me, as though startled to find me so close. "What, you wanna kiss me, Charity?"

  The contrast between his childish voice and leering eyes made me rock back in my chair. Nicholas probably would have continued in that vein, but at that exact moment Charlie poked his head into the room. He was so pale that in the dim light his head seemed to float disembodied. His hands shook a little, like an old man's.

  "Nick," Charlie said, his voice rasping. "Kathryn's here. Won't leave unless she talks to you."

  Nicholas frowned. "I'm fucking busy, Charlie. Tell her to blow off."

  Kathryn had apparently heard this response, because her voice now pierced our inner sanctum. "You come out here now, you scum, you dirty ungrateful piece of slime!" Her voice--high-pitched, but melodious--broke. I could hear her sobs. "Come here!" she cried again.

  Nicholas strode through the door and closed it firmly shut behind him. I was at the doorknob a second later. I turned it carefully, hoping to peek through the crack to the scene in the bar, but instead I had a view of Charlie's corduroy pants. I could just barely make out a swath of feminine blue fabric if I peered between his legs. Fashionably cut, I surmised, from the simple fact that the hem appeared to be more than five inches from the floor. Kathryn, whoever she was, whispered furiously to Nicholas, but emotion made few of her words audible.

  ". . . you must tell me . . ." I heard.

  I strained to hear more clearly, but the conversation remained largely unintelligble. After a moment I stepped away from the door. So much for discovering his secrets that way.

  I paused. Maybe he stored important Turn Boys paraphernalia in this room, in addition to broken instruments. I scrambled off the floor and scanned the walls.

  I could still hear the stream of disjointed whispers as I located a set of wooden boxes shoved underneath the broken player piano. I pulled one out and lifted the top. Dust scattered and I held the edge of my green jacket over my nose to stop the sneeze. Lily was going to kill me. I quickly thumbed through the haphazard stacks of papers inside.

  Music. Modern jazz, strangely enough, given that Nicholas seemed to have his grounding in a classical repertoire. Maybe these belonged to someone else? Joplin, Gershwin, Goodman, Armstrong . . . well, I'd like to visit what ever gin joint would play all this, but it didn't tell me anything at all about Rinaldo. I replaced the top and pulled out the second box.

  "Get out of here!" Nicholas was yelling. "You're just a whore. Get out, you puttana."

  Kathryn let out a wail that made me shudder. My God, what had happened to her? Why was Nicholas being so cruel? Could it be a lovers' quarrel? "Please, please," she begged, her voice so abject that I had to tune it out. I didn't have much time left, and couldn't afford to pay attention to the scene inside.

  This second bo
x held even stranger papers. Old maps of Manhattan, some dating back to the 1890s, with certain streets and buildings marked with indecipherable symbols. As I flipped through I started to notice a pattern: the areas with the most markings seemed to represent an area of Rinaldo's current activity. I even saw one mark that represented the Beast's Rum. These must be some of Rinaldo's old plans for his crime operations. Maybe even schedules and drop-off points and smuggling routes. Maybe, if I was lucky, a secret palace fit for a vampire.

  A door slammed. Kathryn must have left.

  "Bruno!" Nicholas called, his voice closer, "fetch me a pint. Rinaldo has some taste in women, eh?"

  Rinaldo's taste! Fuck. He was about to come back. What to do? Frantically, I grabbed a handful of the pages--enough to glean some clues, but not so much that he would be able to notice with a casual glance--and raced back to the table. I'd just shoved them in my bag and seated myself when Nicholas burst into the room. He was furious, I could tell. But the anger had an edge to it. I knew better than to ask. So, Rinaldo had a mistress. That was something. And if she had anything to do with the horror that Rinaldo had perpetrated on Nicholas when he was thirteen, I could understand his hostility.

  "Come on," he snapped, as though I was the one who had delayed the lesson. "I'm gonna learn this. He'll see."

  He kept me there past dusk, and called it off only when I began to yawn in exhaustion. I didn't know what had happened to drive him like this. And given my other glimpses into Nicholas's tortured soul, I wasn't sure I wanted to.

  Monday was my busiest teaching night. I had three in a row, including Modern Etiquette, my least favorite and most popular. If I didn't want to faint while demonstrating how to sip tea and write condolence letters, I needed food. There was a cheap coffee shop on Baxter I thought I could manage. My cab money from Lily was long gone, but Amir's payment could certainly cover some of that deliciously reviving Italian sludge and a pastry.

  There were fewer people on the street than normal, and they all walked as though they could hardly bear to put one foot in front of the other. We were in the epicenter of the Faust epidemic, and after three days it seemed the fear had morphed into despair. A sharp wind blew a spray of icy snow from the awning of a bakery into my face. I winced and stumbled forward. I was still blinking the snow from my eyes when something pushed me hard from behind up against the bakery's display window. I grunted in pain as every bruise from this morning flared to aching life.

  "What the hell?" I said, too tired and disoriented to even think of getting my knife. Glancing behind me, I saw a tall figure, made anonymous by a long coat and deep hood. He laughed and pushed me again. His breath stank of blood and a gentle hint of rot and tar. A vampire, then. Was that smell Faust, or just the result of a particularly unsavory feeding? I didn't much like either possibility.

  "Please let me by," I said, biting off my words deliberately. To let him know he didn't scare me.

  His laugh was high-pitched. "Rinaldo knows you, puttana," he said, his voice muffled and curiously gruff. "You the mouse, he the cat."

  He leaned forward and laid his head on the back of my neck. Despite myself, I shivered. It was too late to bend down for my knife. Maybe I'd have to start putting slits in my skirts for easier access. Lord, but I hoped it didn't come to that. Nearby, a can rattled, as though kicked down the street. My strange assailant suddenly backed away and then ran with that unnatural speed of which only a sober vampire is capable.

  I took a deep breath and looked up. I wasn't alone. A lone figure leaned against the brown bricks of the building opposite me, hands deep in his pockets. His eyes seemed to burn mine, and I had no doubt who had kicked the can that startled my mysterious assailant.

  How much had he seen? I walked toward him, now far more disconcerted than I had been when the vampire first attacked.

  "Are you okay?" we asked at the same time. He smiled slightly and offered me his arm. I took it, grateful for the warmth.

  "So you were wrong, Zephyr," Amir said, after a moment.

  This statement could have applied to many of my decisions in the last few days. "How, exactly?" I said.

  "Rinaldo knows what you're doing. Or didn't you hear that fellow back there?"

  I sighed. What marvelous luck.

  All the tables in the cafe were taken except for a small one right by the kitchens. After we sat down, I ordered some much-needed coffee and then went back and forth with the waitress until she finally grasped that I honestly desired a sandwich consisting entirely of tomatoes and cheese.

  Amir seemed amused. "That must get frustrating," he said. "Why do you persist, anyway? Surely a little slice of prosciutto never hurt anyone."

  I shrugged. "I've visited a few slaughter houses. And Mama would sometimes make me or Harry kill the chickens for supper. I just . . . lost my taste for it."

  "You're really not worried?"

  "About prosciutto?"

  "Rinaldo."

  I shrugged. Amir looked like he wanted to shake me, but settled for banging his hands on the table. "How did that vampire find you? What else could Rinaldo know?"

  And wasn't that a good question? "But . . . but it really doesn't seem like Nicholas suspects a thing. I don't think he knows I'm spying on him."

  "Maybe he's a good actor."

  I shook my head. "But it doesn't make any sense. Why pretend around me, and then send all these threatening messages? If he wants to string me along, he should make me feel safe, not terrified."

  Amir leaned back in his chair, thoughtful. The waitress delivered my sandwich with a contemptuous toss and my coffee with a little more reverence.

  "You said Nicholas hates Rinaldo, right? Well, maybe Rinaldo knows something he's not saying. He's threatening you to stay away, but Nicholas is still in the dark."

  I took a sip of the coffee, winced, and spooned three heaps of sugar inside. "Well, if the Turn Boys don't know, then I shouldn't worry."

  "Unless Rinaldo decides to tell them," Amir said, with infuriating practicality, "or he tires of your interminably hard head and takes care of you himself."

  I sighed. "Maybe this whole argument is moot. Look what I found today."

  I reached into my bag, pulled out the stack of yellowing papers and pushed them across the table. "Go ahead," I said. "Look through them."

  He was silent for a while, but I could tell that he was encouraged just by the way his foot began to tap against the table. "They're old, but . . ."

  "He must have marked those when he started expanding the business. Which was around the time he became a vampire, according to Lily. Around the time he disappeared."

  Amir looked up at me and grinned. "And maybe these will mark a mysterious location? Very clever." Suddenly, his face fell. "But what if they notice it's missing?"

  "Not a chance. I found them buried in a dusty box under a player piano."

  "Can I take them?" he asked. "Maybe you won't have to bother with the Turn Boys again, after all."

  "Of course." I took a bite of my sandwich. "You might want to look for markings near the subway line. Maybe even Battery Park. Nicholas had some kind of spell--like Judah. He said something about a train having a flat."

  " A flat? But train wheels don't have tires."

  "Oh." I looked at him, nonplussed. "Well, I don't know what he meant then. I'm afraid to ask too many questions. Maybe he meant a car?"

  "Maybe." He looked at the papers, but abstractly, as though he wasn't really considering them, and then back up at me. "That outfit . . . it looks nice on you," he said. "In between defeating a vampire pack barehanded and causing scenes with the mayor, I wouldn't have thought you'd have time to dash into Saks."

  I blushed. "So you heard about that?"

  His smile was surprisingly gentle. "Dear, who hasn't?" He reached across the table, traced my jawline with a warm finger and followed the curve of my neck. He hit a bruise, hidden by the edge of my wide jacket collar, and I winced. Did his eyes always glow like that? Just an edge of somet
hing warm beneath the caramel brown, a hint of the embers I knew lurked there.

  "Zephyr," he breathed, "I'm so sorry. I've been so thoughtless . . ."

  I was gripped with an inexplicable panic, a conviction that I did not want his apology, despite the fact that I had no idea what on earth he was apologizing for. "It's actually on loan from Lily," I babbled. "I ran out of clothes. Rough week. She thinks of herself as Pygmalion to my Galatea. I suppose there are worse things than being the pet project of a socialite. Better than Professor Higgins, anyway--"

  "Zephyr."

  I closed my mouth.

  "This ends now. Rinaldo, Faust, all of it. I can still count on your help with Judah?" I nodded, mechanically. "Good. Then I have some errands I need to run." He stood and tossed a crumpled wad of bills onto the table. "I have to go," he said, his face such a mask of determination I hardly recognized him. He put his hand on my shoulder, the same one that had crashed onto the cobblestones this morning. It hurt, but I barely registered the pain. "If you need help, if you can't find me . . . cast a summoning spell and call Kardal."

  I was shivering. "Amir, I can't even warm a cup of coffee. A summoning spell? Wouldn't that bind him to me?"

  He flashed a tight, ironic smile. "Get a corner-charmer to do it for you, then. And don't worry about Kardal. A subway rat would have as much chance of binding him. It's just the easiest way for him to notice you need help."

  What was going on? I stood up, the better to implore him, but to my surprise he lifted my hat and kissed me. The kiss itself was more than a little inappropriate, but he took his time about it, parting my lips and touching my tongue as though he could eat me from the inside. I pulled myself closer to him, until each button from his vest imprinted itself on my chest. As though from far away, someone hooted. Amir abruptly disengaged. I gripped the back of my chair to keep from falling.

  "Be safe, Zephyr," he said, his voice rough.

  And then he was gone. The conventional way, though the door. The blast of cold air awakened me to the throbbing of my bruises.