Free Last Call at the Nightshade Lounge by Paul Krueger Page A

along to assist a table of surly kids who looked like they shopped exclusively in a leather-filled dungeon.
    “We call that time the Blackout,” Zane continued as each of them started performing their various coffee rituals. “Since then we’ve been trying to regain that knowledge.”
    “And we’ve gotten a lot of it back,” Mona said. “A lot.”
    “Yeah,” Zane said. “Physical experimentation and investigations into theoretical magic, new and better ways of distilling. We’regetting there.”
    “But?” Bailey said. She could sense he was building up to something.
    “But,” Zane said with gravitas, “there’s one big missing piece that no one’s been able to crack in more than three hundred years: the secret of the Long Island Iced Tea.”
    Bailey laughed into her coffee. When she put down her mug, the three Alechemists were staring at her.
    “Oh, God,” she said. “You’re serious. Sorry.”
    “Nothing could be more serious.”
    “It hasn’t always gone by that name,” Mona said. “Nor has it always had the same formulation. We didn’t even have cola for most of the nineteenth century, let alone premade sour mix.”
    Zane leaned forward, the familiar spark again in his eyes. “Magical energy is unlocked with alcohol, but too much alcohol will dilute it past the point of usefulness. If properly mixed, a Long Island Iced Tea could defy the most basic law of magic: multiple liquors working in perfect harmony to unlock the drinker’s deepest potential.”
    “Basically, the philosopher’s stone,” Bucket said. “With a lemon twist.”
    “Hang on,” said Bailey. “Deepest potential? Philosopher’s stone? As in—”
    “There are conflicting reports.” Zane interrupted. “Well, not even reports. Legends. But they all say things like increased powers, immortality, forbidden knowledge. And other talents that even the best modern drinks could never unlock.”
    Bailey nodded slowly. “So that’s why you call yourselves the Alechemists,” she said. “You’re trying to re-create the Long Island iced tea.”
    “Zane’s like Nicolas Flamel,” Bucket said, “if Nicolas Flamel dressed like a Beatle, had a girlfriend, and also had a really sexyCanadian sidekick no one ever wrote about. Oh, and, um, a Bailey.”
    “But why?” a Bailey asked.
    Everyone stared at her.
    “Why what?” said Zane.
    “Why this quest for enlightenment?” Bailey said.
    “Are you kidding?” Zane said. “Why not? You’ve seen the good we can do with the little magic tricks we know. Hell, you’re a trainee and you’ve already done some good yourself. Think of what we could do with even more.” He gripped his coffee cup tightly. “If you ask me, the Court’s too content with running things the way they always have been. The world is changing, and the court’s resources and liquor stockpiles can’t last forever. We have to be ready to adapt. To go further.”
    Bailey looked at Bucket, who’d added enough milk to turn his coffee the color of a manila folder. “You think so, too?”
    Bucket shrugged. “I mean, immortality would also be sweet as hell,” he said. “You get to see how everything turns out; you get to do all the things you’d never get around to. Spend a century saving up and then splurge on something incredible.”
    “Like wh—”
    “The entire island of Manhattan,” Bucket interrupted. “Rented out for a day. One goal uptown, one goal downtown, and every professional hockey player in Canada or the States trying to get a single puck to either one. Not,” he added, sipping his coffee-milk, “that I’ve given it much thought.”
    Bailey chuckled and then, out of politeness, turned to the remaining Alechemist. “And what about you, Mona?” she asked, trying to keep her tone as pointedly unpointed as possible.
    Mona stared back through half-lidded eyes. “I want to know how it tastes.”
    And then she calmly turned her attention back to her coffee, as if Bailey’s question had