Last Call at the Nightshade Lounge (10 page)

“Well, I bet it tastes great,” Zane said. “Just keep practicing and you’ll get the hang of it.” He patted her on the shoulder—a friendly pat, Bailey knew, but one that still sent a flutter to her stomach. “Here, why don’t you have this?”

He slid her creation over to her. Bailey eyed the six-ounce monument to her failure.

“You said no drinking on the job.”

“Yeah, but you’re not on the job for another fifteen minutes,” Zane said, glancing at his pocket watch (
because of course he has a pocket watch
, she thought). “You might as well enjoy that one.”

Bailey looked up from the drink. “But don’t I need to make one that, like, works?”

“Baby steps,” Zane said. He’d started drifting to the back. “I’m gonna do some quick inventory. Just try to breathe, okay? You’re gonna do great.”

He left and Bailey exhaled. Of course. Of course tonight wasn’t going to be that different from all the nights she’d already endured as a barback. Zane was in charge, and Bailey followed orders. What had she expected to change about that?

Instead of letting herself answer the question, Bailey downed her drink.

It might not have been magical, but it didn’t taste half bad: bitter and sweet, with a smack of orange to perk everything up. Good but not perfect, and that’s what this business required. Perfection. Precision. People’s lives were at stake.

Bailey took another sip and scowled. So much for underpromise, overdeliver.

The door swung open and Trina slipped in, wrapped in a pink coat and matching puffy headphones that clashed fantastically with her red hair. She must not have seen Bailey because no sooner had she shut the door than she struck a rock star pose, one arm in the air, and mouthed along to words that only she could hear.

Bailey stood still and sipping and watched until Trina’s eyes flew open.

“Bailey!” She turned almost as red as her hair and tugged her headphones out of her ears. “I—I didn’t see you there. Or, um, hear you. Just jamming to Orange Banana’s early stuff. As one does.” She smiled sheepishly and twiddled her headphone cable.

“Oh,” Bailey said, “of course.”

“Do you know them?” Trina said, pulling off her coat. “They’re Canada’s number one J-Rock glam band. I just loaded up their whole discography into my Divinyl.”

“Neat,” Bailey said quickly. An irritating voice told her she should quiz Trina on her listening habits, how often she used the app, what she thought Divinyl could do for other fans of Canadian Japanese glam rock, but Bailey ignored it. The voice sounded kind of like her mother anyway.

“So, about that cabinet? The other night?” Trina said. “Zane, um, told me I left it unlocked. I’ll be more careful in the future.” Trina’s voice was steady, but her eyes were on the ground.

“You mean the thing that saved my life and bagged me a promotion?” Bailey wasn’t much of a hugger, but this seemed like a good occasion to go for it, and she threw her arms around Trina.

“So you really saw a tremens?” Trina said in a muffled voice.

“Yup.” Bailey let Trina go and stepped back. “Killed it, actually. All thanks to your lackluster cabinet-locking skills. So, yeah, I don’t know how I’ll ever find it in me to forgive you.”

“Not to worry.” Zane emerged from his office, a fresh towel in his hand. “Bailey may not believe in penitence, but I do.” He threw the towel to Trina. “We don’t have a new barback yet, and tonight Bailey’s training. Since it’s a job that requires attention to detail, and you can use a refresher—”

“Fine.” Trina deflated a little. “But I’ll still take first shift patrol?”

“You got it.” Zane beamed. “But first, clean up those counters.”

“Yeah, yeah,” she grumbled, snatching the towel. “I’ll get you for this, Whelan.”

“Less griping, more wiping,” he said, smiling. “I just came up with that one,” he added as she squeezed past him. “You like it?”

Trina disappeared into the dishwashing room with a flash of her middle finger.

“That just leaves us in the trench together,” he said to Bailey.

“Yup,” she said. “Together.”

You don’t have a crush on Zane
, she told herself.
The real Zane wears For Dear Life T-shirts and hasn’t figured out how to shave. You just have crush on, I don’t know, three-piece suits and a stubble-free upper lip. Get over yourself
.

Maybe that was it. All she had to do was get used to the new Zane,
really
used to him, and things would go back to the way they’d been in high school. There was no way she ever would’ve gone out with him back then.

Except it wasn’t back then. It was now, a bizarro world where Zane had a job and a decent wardrobe and a girlfriend and a doozy of a passion project, and Bailey had nothing to her name but a diploma and a collection of ex-boyfriends’ T-shirts. He was a grown-up, and Bailey was just a teenager who’d gotten old.

“Hey.” Zane sidled up next to her, and Bailey jumped. “Penny for your thoughts?” He held up a coin from the cash register.

“That’s a quarter.”

“So keep the change.”

She took the quarter and put it back in the drawer. “My thought is that it’s almost opening time,” she said, “and I want to get working.”

“Ah, subservience. Another prized quality in my staff.” The light glinted off his glasses. “Let’s do this.”

On the basis of the high-octane chaos that had accompanied her brief tenure as a barback, Bailey expected her first night as a bartender to put her through the wringer. But the customers stayed orderly, and the drinks stayed simple: scotch neat, draft beer, vodka soda. After spending the past day speed-reading through her shiny new copy of
The Devil’s Water Dictionary
, Bailey felt a little let down. She wanted to make martinis, not change for a twenty. Even Trina, reporting back from patrol, said it had been quiet out there.

“Didn’t see a single one,” she said. “Which is too bad, because
I was jonesing to rock my mojito powers.”

Trina glanced around and then waved her hand over an ice cube, which melted to a little puddle. She snapped her fingers, and the puddle instantly froze. She pointed at it, and it instantly re-formed into a perfect cube.

“Wow,” Bailey said.

“It’s nothing,” Trina said, but Bailey could tell she was pleased. “Just the thing I’m awesome at.”

The evening slowed down so much that Bailey had to check her phone to make sure time wasn’t going backward. But no, it was eleven thirty. Trina was carting in a case of clean glasses from the dishwasher, Zane was handing out credit cards and receipts to their respective owners, and Bailey was bored.

But then
, she thought,
better bored than dead. Underpromise, overdeliv
—

“Bailey.” Zane clapped her on the shoulder. “Why don’t you man the counter solo for a bit?” he said. “Er, woman it. Whatever. I can’t get the card machine to take debit, and I’m gonna call the bank. Also, it’s changed the display to Spanish for some reason and—”

“Wait. Solo?” she said. “Um, I’m not sure I’m ready—”

“Not ready to do what?” he said. “Babysit Sleepy Ernie over there?”

At a far table a half-conscious man raised his hand in a wave before it flopped down to his side.

“You’ve got this,” he said. “You made it through big, scary college. You can handle an hour or two behind the bar. Trust me, it’ll be fun.” He coughed. “Also, you kind of have to, um, obey my every command and stuff.”

“You just couldn’t wait to pull that one, could you?” She tried to glare at him but ended up smiling.

“I deserve a cookie for holding out this long,” he said, heading
for the office. “Try not to die, okay?”

Bailey listened to his creaky footsteps receding on the old wooden floor. Safe was better than dead, she reminded herself. And if Zane wasn’t nearby, she could practice.

In her twenty-two years Bailey had enjoyed a lion’s share of beginner’s luck. Made valedictorian in high school, got in early decision to her top-choice college, even won a raffle for a week’s worth of free pizza in her first week on campus. She didn’t get second chances because she didn’t need second chances. Practice was for people who weren’t good enough to stick the landing the first time. But here she was, stymied. Old fashioned number one had been a failure. A dud. Useless. It was going to take at least a second try. Which was fine. Where old fashioned number one had failed, old fashioned number two would be a glowing concoction that she could proudly point to and say—

“Goddammit.” She’d dropped in the orange twist just like the recipe said, but once again she’d made a drink that was pretty, not glowy. She sipped deeply, just to be sure (one never could tell with the lighting in this place). It tasted just as good as the first one, but the flavor wasn’t the point. As she’d learned from her speed cramming, each of the five vital liquors had different effects, and whiskey’s domain was the mind. But her mind didn’t suddenly achieve higher consciousness or flood with new intelligence and power. She didn’t even feel the warmth that the screwdriver had produced. This was just booze and ice in a glass.

She dumped out the drink, rinsed the glass, and set it down on the bar. “Third time’s the charm,” she muttered as she started to drizzle water over a sugar cube to dissolve it. Once again she went through each step precisely as written in
The Devil’s Water Dictionary
. And once again she found herself with a very pretty glass of whiskey, citrus, and frozen water. It tasted nice, and she couldn’t think of a more devastating compliment for her work.
Nice
was just another
way of saying
useless
.

Number four was normal. So was number five. Six looked for a moment as if she’d finally cracked the spell, but then she realized the glowing effect was just light glinting off a piece of ice that had chipped when she dropped it in the glass.

What did you think, Bailey?
she mused.
That you’d nail mixing old fashioneds, then stir up the perfect Long Island iced tea while Zane was taking out the trash?

She glanced at the clock while taking her now customary sip of number six. It was well past midnight. The bar closed at two, but chances were likely they might cut out early, depending on whether they could get Sleepy Ernie out the door in a timely fashion. She’d be able to put her disastrous attempts at magic behind her for the night, get some rest, and start all over again in the morning.

Yeah
, Bailey admitted.
And then Zane and I would make out or something
.

The neon
CHICAGO CUBS
sign buzzed at her from across the room, illuminating one letter at a time.
C-H-I-C-A-G-O. C-H-I-C-A-G-O
. As she cleaned her glass yet again, her brain, slightly tickled by whiskey, had an amusing, irrelevant thought:
Chicago has seven letters in it. And I’ve just made six old fashioneds
.

Bailey
, another part of her brain thought,
those two facts have no correl
—

Shut up, self
.

Before she’d been precise, but now she was slapping the drink together like an essay an hour before it was due. By the time the ice splashed into the whiskey, she wasn’t even thinking about getting the recipe right anymore. She was just looking forward to drinking. She was screwing up, but as long as Zane couldn’t see those screw-ups, they were less real.

She took the final ingredient—the orange peel, cut as jagged as a cartoon lightning bolt—and nestled it between the ice cube
and the glass. The peel pushed the cube, which struck the glass with a soft
clink
.

And just like that, the old fashioned glowed a soft red-brown.

Her jaw dropped. “You’ve gotta be shitting me.”

But no, this one appeared to be on the level,
appeared
being the key word, because Bailey was suddenly having trouble finding her footing. Of the six failed experiments, five had been sampled within the past hour, and even if she’d spaced them out with some water (which she had intended to do but then forgot), the fact was she was a tiny Asian girl with a minimal amount of body fat. Her resistance to alcohol was about as effective as cardboard armor.

Well, she reasoned, she wasn’t drunk. Hell, she wasn’t even tipsy. She was just feeling a little more loosely wound than usual. Zane had said that too much alcohol in the system would dampen magical effects, but she was already metabolizing the old drinks. She’d drink this one now, then surprise him with her sudden aptitude.
I can’t believe it
, he would say, after a sip.
You’re amazing
. Then he’d push the glass out of the way, whip off his glasses, and sweep her up against the bar—

“Bailey?”

The door shut with a
click
as Zane headed into the bar.

“Eep,” Bailey said. “I mean, um, yes. Present. How was the bank?”

“
No bueno
,” Zane said. “I’ll try calling in the morning. Hey, what’s that?”

She’d tried to scoot the evidence of her unsanctioned cocktail experimentation behind the forest of beer taps, but apparently he’d already noticed.

“Oh, you finally cracked it?” Zane rushed to her side and stooped to inspect the drink. When he saw the glow in full effect, he nodded slowly in approval. “
Niiiiice
.”

He picked up the glass, held it to the light, and took a big gulp,
complete with a little
ahhh
at the end. As Bailey looked on in quiet despair, he took another sip, then another, and then beamed at her. “Tastes great.” He raised the glass in a toast. And then he let go of the glass and dropped his hand.

Bailey lunged for it, but the drink didn’t drop. The glass was suspended midair, without even a wobble.

“Whoa.” Bailey’s despair turned to wonder. “What?”

“Come on, Bailey, you studied. You know what.”

She closed her eyes and thought of the old fashioned’s
Dictionary
entry. “ ‘A potable to lend physicality to the will of the mind,’ ” she whispered.

“It’s kind of a long way to say telekinesis,” Zane said. “But then again, telekinesis is kind of a long way to say telekinesis.”

She suddenly remembered they weren’t alone. “Wait. There are witnesses—”