glared at her. She was glad to step away from the table and away from Esther’s assessing stare. Mox slipped behind the bar, and Sloane leaned against it from the other side, making a show of squinting at the bottles lined up behind him.
She raised an eyebrow when Mox grabbed a sheet of paper and dragged it over. On it were written the ingredients for the genie martini.
“Bad memory,” he said. “Forgot how to work the olive.”
“That sounds like a euphemism,” she said.
He laughed and grabbed the jar of olives. Sloane watched with interest as he scooped one out with a spoon and put it in the bottom of the shaker. He covered it with his siphon hand, and she heard his low hum, much deeper than she was expecting. A wet bounce came from the shaker, and it shivered, with just his siphon hand keeping it still. He hummed again, this time higher, and when he pulled his fingers away from the shaker top, just a little, the olive was glowing blue. It bounced up, almost escaping, so he covered the top again.
“I bet a lot of things get smashed when you guys figure out new recipes,” she said. “Do you serve anything that doesn’t bounce, float, or continuously burn?”
“I could make you an OF OF—old-fashioned old-fashioned,” Mox said.
“Sounds good,” she said.
“Still no siphon for you?” he said, nodding at her bare hands. He scooped some ice into the shaker, careful to cover it until the last second so the ice could pin the olive to the bottom. He poured some gin and vermouth on top of it, at which point the olive had wriggled free of its icy prison. He covered the top and let the olive do the shaking.
“For all you know, I could have one on my right breast right now,” she said. “How do you get that thing to settle down enough for someone to drink it?”
“If you were rich enough and powerful to have a chest siphon, you would be cutting holes in your clothing to show it off,” he said with a laugh. “And it’s a dwindler, this working. All it needs is time.”
She tried not to give him a blank look, but she wasn’t entirely sure she managed it. “Maybe I’m not showy about my siphons,” she said.
“It’s not a character assessment, it’s a survival instinct,” he said. “We display our best assets to attract mates or to warn off predators. Like the peacock. Are you claiming to be better than millions of years of evolution?”
“I’m the pinnacle,” Sloane said, solemn. “Congratulations on meeting me.”
“I feel so honored.” He picked up a strainer and poured the drink into a martini glass, then added the olive. It danced at the bottom of the glass, no longer threatening to become a dangerous projectile.
“My siphon’s still getting repaired,” she said. “It’s only been a day.”
“Which would drive most people insane,” he said. He tossed the ice and rinsed out the shaker, then started on the old-fashioned old-fashioned with a muddler and a sugar cube in a fresh tumbler.
“I think it’s nice not to rely on magic for everything,” she said.
“You’re in the wrong place, then,” he said. “Might want to go to a haven city instead.”
Sloane didn’t know what that meant. “You ever been to one?”
“I was born in one. Arlington, Texas,” he said.
“No accent, though?” she said.
“I had some trouble with magic pretty early in life,” he said. “Moved here as a child to learn how not to destroy things with it.”
He paused with the tumbler in one hand and the jigger of whiskey in the other, his dark eyes fixed on her. She felt like he was waiting for something, and the longer she went without giving it to him, the more of a misstep she was making. But she was missing all the vocabulary for this place—the unspoken words for what a haven city was and what it meant that he had destroyed things with magic as a child and even what it suggested, that she could go a day without a siphon. “Did your parents stay here?” she said, knowing it was the wrong thing to ask but not coming up with anything else.
“Nancy and Phil, live in a magic hub? Perish the thought!” He spooned a cherry into the tumbler on top of the whiskey, ice, and sugar. “No, they never came to begin with.”
“Ah.” She searched, desperately, for a new subject. “Well, I’m from the middle of nowhere. High-school