Moonshine (2010)

by Johnson, Alaya

  “And I’d hate to disappoint you.”

  We had not walked three steps before my stomach let out a painfully audible growl. Now that I thought about it, I hadn’t eaten all day.

  “Sounds like your stomach is auditioning for Wagner.”

  “Just a minor role. You want to wait here while I grab some food inside? I’d invite you in, but Mrs. Brodsky might attack me with a scrub brush.”

  I turned away, but Amir’s voice caught me like a fishing line. “Don’t be silly, Zephyr. I know just the place. If we hurry, we can make it before closing.”

  “You do know I don’t eat wieners and sauerkraut, right?”

  He pressed his lips together, forcefully reining in a smile. “If wieners were caviar, they’d serve it at the Plaza.”

  “And if the Plaza served hot dogs, I still couldn’t afford it.”

  So we walked to Chinatown. It wasn’t very far, but it had been a long day and I looked longingly at the few passing taxis.

  He squeezed my hand, apparently happier than he had been for the last few days. Not that I couldn’t still discern the signs of pain and stress around his eyes and mouth, but he held my hand and hummed under his breath and generally acted like a schoolboy given a surprise half-day due to inclement weather.

  “What’s gotten into you?” I finally demanded, when he stopped in his tracks and lifted me up for a kiss. “Did you find Rinaldo or something?”

  He laughed. He didn’t seem particularly in pain, but his hands were fire-hot even through my coat. “I have a few leads, as Sherlock Holmes might say.” He set me down and stared for a moment. His eyes shone like banked fire through crystal. “This is curious, but I think I’m happy to see you.”

  I had to look away. I couldn’t decipher the expression on his face—it seemed wistful and sad and resigned and giddy all at once, depending on how I squinted in the dark. And though I hated to admit it, his mood frightened me. Something had happened to him over the last few days. His attacks were coming closer and closer together. Rinaldo—whatever the source of their conflict—clearly knew Amir was planning something. No sense in threatening him otherwise. So why, given all the horrible events that had occurred over the past few days, was Amir so unfazed?

  I shook my head and started walking. Amir stood still on the sidewalk for a moment and then jogged to catch up.

  “I can be sad if you like,” he said, still wearing a tentative smile. “Or is it just the thought of you in particular making me happy that makes you look as though you’ve just swallowed coal?”

  I grimaced. “Feed me and I’ll sing you an aria.”

  Lucky for me, the restaurant was just a block farther. He opened a door so nondescript (sandwiched between a tailor and a traditional Chinese herbalist) that I could have walked past it a hundred times without noticing. But as soon as we started up the painfully steep, creaking wooden stairs, the unmistakable smell of delicious food assaulted us. Garlic and duck fat and cloves and ginger and a hundred other scents I couldn’t recognize made me stumble on the top step.

  Amir’s hands held my waist before I could so much as stub my toe. “Just a few more,” he said, laughing. I couldn’t help but smile up at him. My stomach suddenly felt so warm and taffy-stretched I thought it might float away. He opened another door at the top of the steps, and we walked through. The room held three long tables, with four or five Chinese men seated at each while they devoured an astonishing wealth of food with wooden chopsticks. I’d eaten Chinese food from street vendors before, but never in an actual restaurant. A hazard of depending on the charity of others willing to buy you dinner is that you have to eat what they like. An older man wearing an apron came from inside the open kitchen as soon as he saw us and greeted Amir in a string of rapid, incomprehensible Chinese. Amir responded in kind.

  My eyebrows felt like they were about to wander into my hairline by the time we sat down at the table closest to the kitchen. “Basic literacy and elocution,” I muttered. “How many languages do you know, anyway?”

  Amir leaned back in his chair. “About eighty. Kardal speaks over a thousand, counting dialects. But we’re djinn. I can learn any language in a week.”

  “Less obvious than flaming eyeballs, but . . .”

  “Guess that’s why you call us Others.”

  The food arrived ten minutes later: eggplant with hot pepper, garlic, heaps of chives and other greens I didn’t recognize, vegetable dumplings, and two plates of strange springy blocks Amir called “doufu.” It was enough food for at least four people. The waiter dropped a salad bowl full of white rice in front of me, smiled encouragingly, and made noises that I presumed meant something along the lines of “get on with it!”

  I stared at Amir. “Is someone joining us?”

  “Eat, Zephyr. You look like you’re about to fade away.”

  I looked back at the food. The aroma was about to make my eyes water. Well, damn, if he wanted to give me this much food, who was I to say no? I lifted the chopsticks and clumsily grabbed a piece of eggplant. It seared the inside of my mouth, made my tongue burn with spice and cleared my nose. I cursed.

  “Too spicy?”

  I ate another piece. “Delicious,” I said.

  Amir only picked at the food, but my appetite sustained me through nearly all of the dishes. The doufu tasted a little strange at first, but by the end of the meal I’d cleared one of the plates. I was so full it hurt to stand. It felt wonderful.

  “Thank you for that,” I said, sincerely, when we went back into the blustery cold outside. He ran his fingers along the back of my neck in silent contentedness. I sighed, not entirely with plea sure. I was full, Amir was beautiful and engaging and happy beside me, Nicholas had finally given me a clue as to where he’d turned Judah . . . and yet I couldn’t shake this uneasy feeling. Why did Amir need Rinaldo? What had happened to make him so nonchalant about his dire circumstances? I thought about Aileen and her strange warning: I know you’ll hurt yourself if you do what he wants. But no, he’d paid me, and I wouldn’t let Aileen’s trauma-induced hysteria make me distrust him for no reason.

  Amir vanished when we reached Water Street, mid-kiss. I could still feel his laughter on my lips, but I was suddenly alone. I shivered and waited for a few minutes until he returned with Judah. But they weren’t alone. I didn’t recognize the third person until I heard his unmistakable bass rumble: Kardal had taken a form that looked almost human, if you didn’t stare for too long. Of course, he looked like a true Arabian, with his smoky skin, jeweled turban and long brocaded tunic. Quite a contrast with Amir’s impeccably modern attire. The two brothers were engaged in a heated argument—apparently having forgotten all about Judah. I walked closer to the child. He looked up at me, but didn’t touch.

  “You’ve always been an irresponsible, callous, selfish ingrate, Amir, but now you’ve gone too far. This is your mess, brother! You can’t expect some innocent human less than a tenth your age to get you out of it!”

  “I don’t expect her to get—”

  “Oh, yes, you do. I know you. You’re using her like you used that one in Osman’s court, and that Bedouin girl and the French maid . . .”

  “They had names, Kardal,” Amir said, with such quiet anger that it shocked me.

  “And I’m sure you don’t remember them! Leave her out of it, Amir. She doesn’t deserve you.”

  Amir was silent for a long moment, opening and flexing his hands. “Are you quite done?” he said finally.

  “She doesn’t deserve you,” Kardal repeated, rather cruelly.

  Amir looked up, as though he would supplicate the heavens. “Of course not. I promise to get her out of my mess. Does that satisfy you?”

  Kardal shook his head, and began to fade. “We all thought Father was crazy, to breathe you into life so late.”

  Amir stared at the spot where his brother had been and put his hands to his temples. Then he turned to me, a pained, rueful smile on his face.

  “Sorry you had to see that,” h
e said.

  “It sounds as though Kardal has given you a bad case of chivalry.”

  “I hope not. I value my skin far too much.” He flashed a conspiratorial smile. “As you well know. Kardal can be so fourteenth century, sometimes. I, on the other hand, am fully on board with feminist ideals. You’ll still help me?”

  “You have to ask?” I said. I looked back down at Judah, who hadn’t moved. The boy looked better, I supposed, though far less childlike than before. Not quite as befuddled and scared, more feral. Amir hadn’t bothered dressing him for the winter chill, I noticed, but at least he didn’t look like he’d stepped straight out of a sultan’s palace. I wasn’t afraid of him, but I suddenly wondered what kind of mother would thank me for returning this child to her.

  “Judah,” I said, bending so I could see him better, “we’re going to walk around. You need to tell me if you recognize anything, okay? If anything seems familiar, you let me know. We’re going to try to find your mother for you.”

  Judah seemed to consider my words for an overlong moment and then nodded. “My mother is very beautiful. She loves me. I remember that.”

  “And your papa?”

  “My papa’s gone,” he said, very sure.

  God, his voice was so high and innocent. But the notes beneath it were too seductive, pure vampire. If he lived a long time, I suspected that his would be a voice capable of controlling me. But for now, I was safe enough. He didn’t know what he was capable of.

  It didn’t take us long to circle the neighborhood around Water Street and reach Battery Park, with its clear nighttime view of the South Ferry docks. But Judah responded to the place with the polite interest of a tourist. We were careful to walk near any landmarks he might recognize, but he just shook his head when we asked him if he remembered anything. We’d covered most of the park—and I was wondering if I’d ever feel my fingertips again—when a trash barge pulled into view from the East River. Judah stared at it, mesmerized, as the barge turned to go up the Hudson. Suddenly, it let out a deep bellow, utterly uncanny in the January stillness. I could see how a child might be frightened of that. And, indeed, Judah had turned away from the shoreline and regarded Amir with an expression of incipient panic.

  “Do you recognize that?” Amir asked, and I glared at him. He couldn’t even attempt to comfort the boy?

  “It’s very loud,” Judah said, softly. “It’s like a roar.”

  I would have comforted him myself then, only I was recalling the strange thing Nicholas had said this afternoon. Something about his papa putting him in a cage with a roaring beast. But it now occurred to me that the deep horn blast of a trash barge could sound very much like an animal with the right acoustics.

  I ran until I reached the edge of the docks and looked down. Sure enough, storm drains here emptied into the water. Could this be Nicholas’s cage?

  “Amir,” I said, when he and Judah came up behind me, “can you go down there and check for anything suspicious?”

  “Those are storm drains,” he said, as though I’d asked him to take a quick trip to the moon.

  “Those storm drains might be where Rinaldo turned Nicholas.”

  “I think you might have taken the term ‘lair’ a little too literally, habibti. He’s a vampire, not a mole rat.”

  “I didn’t say he lived down there. But you must admit sewers would be a safe place to hide your mad child sucker.”

  I realized after I said this that Judah was still listening to our exchange. Amir glanced at him. “I’ll take you back soon, I promise,” he said, with a surprising touch of tenderness.

  This shock only increased when Amir flashed me an indulgent smile and turned into a cloud of vapor. I shrieked. Judah grabbed my hand. The cloud that had been Amir hovered for a moment and then flowed over the side. A moment later, I heard something solid echoing off the concrete.

  I cupped my hands over my mouth. “Are you . . . ah . . .”

  “Dirty? Climbing through sewage? Wasting my time?”

  “Corporeal?”

  I trembled a little at his echoing laugh. “How charming. The vampire suffragette, overcome by a bit of smoke. There’s nothing down here, you know. Unless you are interested in rat carcasses. Which I am decidedly not.”

  “Does it lead anywhere?”

  “Not unless you can turn to smoke. There used to be a tunnel, but it looks like someone smashed it in. Please tell me—ah.” He paused for a moment. “Well, look at that.”

  “What? What happened?”

  “I’ve found something.”

  I managed to keep a semblance of calm when the smoke flew back up to the surface and reassembled into a fully clothed Amir. A fully clothed, dirty Amir. He held a wet and brown rag distastefully between two fingers.

  “You brought the sewer sludge with you?”

  “Oh, how quickly she turns critical. That isn’t as easy as it looks, my dear.”

  “That trick could have saved you some trouble with that vampire I popped.”

  “That trick is one I find almost impossible in extremity. Unfortunately for my pride.”

  This made me smile, for some reason, and we looked at each other for a moment that might have turned to something else entirely if not for Judah standing quietly by.

  “What is that thing, anyway?”

  “You don’t recognize it? Imagine it with a less liberal coating of muck.”

  I took a step closer and then gasped. He held a knitted blue mitten—the match for the one Judah had been wearing when I discovered him.

  “They turned him here,” I said. “In the storm drain.”

  Amir tucked the mitten gently in his pocket. “Looks like it.”

  A night guard approached us and so we hurried back onto the streets. “You two should go back,” I said. “We can’t do anything more to night.”

  Amir agreed with me, but Judah was moving ahead of us, toward Whitehall Street. He turned the corner and stopped in the middle of the deserted road. He was staring at the wrought-iron electric lamps that flanked the Whitehall subway station.

  “Yes,” he said in a quiet, steady voice, “I know those.”

  Subway lights? Amir and I looked at each other. “Do . . . do you think you lived nearby?” I asked.

  “I don’t know,” he said. It occurred to me that his voice was strangely cultivated, like that of a well-educated child. But what well-educated child would ride the subway enough to recognize its lights in the absence of any other memories? We walked closer to the entrance. On one side there was a small municipal garden. The flower beds and bushes were bare of anything but frozen snow, but something made me pause and walk closer to them. I wasn’t much of a botanist, but even I could recognize the thorny, tangled brambles of a rosebush. And I could imagine how, in the height of their spring bloom, the scent would be redolent enough to stay in the memory of even an amnesiac vampire.

  “Zephyr?”

  I turned to Amir. “These are rosebushes. We must be near Judah’s mother.”

  The feeling of success was a better bracer than a strong cup of coffee. I hopped and dashed down the steep steps to the subway station. The teller’s booth was closed at this time of night, but the station wasn’t quite empty: a poor indigent had made himself comfortable at the foot of the staircase. He had the distinctive smell of a man forced to wear the same winter clothes for months on end without recourse to a bath, with an undertone of something sharp and rotten. I thought I’d grown accustomed to strong smells from my time in the soup kitchen, but this went a step beyond even that. I thought he was sleeping, but he opened his eyes as soon as we approached.

  I fumbled in my pockets for some coins, but Amir rolled his eyes and put a hand on my shoulder. “Do you recognize this boy?” he asked. The indigent apparently recognized a danger when he saw one, because he attempted to sit up. He seemed drunk, actually, which was strange because alcohol was the one smell that didn’t waft to my nose. As soon as he saw Judah, he crossed himself and pressed his back
into the wall behind him.

  “Christ almighty, what’d you do to him? My blood’s no good, I swear, I’ve spoiled it.”

  Amir raised his eyebrows. “Spoiled it? What, you forgot to put it in the ice box?”

  “Alcohol, ashamed to say, sir. Distilled brandy, straight to the vein. Get the shots from one of Rinaldo’s fellas.”

  He helpfully rolled up his odiferous sleeve in order to give us a better view of the yellowing injection sites all along the major vein in his arm. I held my breath and struggled not to gag. I’d seen a lot in my time in this city, but there were always further depths. This man probably wouldn’t survive the winter.

  “Okay, we understand,” I said, voice nasal from breathing through my mouth. “But you recognize this boy?”

  “Boy?” His laugh caught in his throat and turned into a sickly hack. “If that’s a boy, you’re Jimmy Walker. Someone’s gone and turned him.”

  “But who was he before? Did you know his mother?”

  His eyes softened a little. “Oh, of course. Lovely lady. Haven’t seen her but once this past week. Eyes red like she’d been crying. Gave me two dollars for no reason at all. Shame this had to happen to her boy.”

  Amir and I looked at each other with guarded excitement.

  “Do you know her name?” he asked. “Can you tell us what she looked like?”

  The indigent narrowed his watery eyes. “Why? So you can give her that . . . thing? You should stake him and leave her in peace. Beautiful woman.”

  Brilliant. I’d really had enough of this. I fished two silver dollars from my pocket and dangled them in front of his nose. “This is yours if you help us. Clear enough?”

  He looked between me and Amir. “You know, it just wouldn’t be right . . .”

  Amir, with delightful casualness, allowed a delicate stream of sulfur smoke to flow from his ears. The indigent’s eyes widened.

  “Now,” said Amir, “why don’t you tell us what you know.”

  “Never heard her name, I swear. Just saw her and the boy. They’d ride some mornings. She always looked a little posh for the subway, but you know what they say about traffic in the city nowadays.” He laughed nervously, and wiped beads of greasy sweat from his forehead. “Brown hair. Long and proper, you know. Thirty, maybe thirty-five. Light brown eyes.”