The Devil's Sweet Salvation
Gin and vermouth went into the mixing glass. To live up to Lady Shinano's expectations, the ice went in with them—and so did the words themselves.
"Don't stir it. Shake."
I caught up the shaker and drove it hard.
Clack. Clack. Clack!
Ice struck liquor, and the bright sound spread through the haven. Frost had bloomed white across the shaker's surface, glittering under the backlight. I laid a strainer over the rim and poured, and the clear liquid slipped, calm and steady, into the inverted triangle of the crystal glass.
Up to here, it was by the book.
But before I set the olive on its pick, I decided to allow myself one irregularity. From the back of the refrigerator I drew a small glass jar. Inside was a cactus fruit flushed with red—Cactus, the very word she carried as a name. I set it on the pick, side by side with the olive.
"Your martini, Lady Shinano."
I eased the glass quietly across the counter.
"I was generous with the olive. And tonight, as a special touch... I left a little gift beside it."
Lady Shinano gazed down at the cold inverted triangle that had glided to a stop before her. An olive lay drowned in the clear, trembling liquid, and beside it, sunk in the same stillness, a cactus fruit glowed red. Keen interest gathered in those exacting green eyes.
"Hoh..."
Her cat ears rose, unhurried.
"A variation that borrows this kitty's name. Quite the bold attempt, meow."
She pinched the rim between slender fingers, brought the glass to her lips, and let a slow mouthful slip in.
In that instant her tail shuddered as if a current had jumped through it. A moment later it caught a pleased rhythm and began to sway, supple, through the empty air. The gin's sharp perfume, the cactus fruit's faint sweetness, and a chill brought to perfection by the shake—when the three folded together and became one in her mouth, Lady Shinano's expression changed.
"......Haah."
The fingertips setting the glass down trembled, just slightly.
"It passes, meow."
It was the same verdict she had delivered over the espresso con panna that afternoon, but the depth in her voice was nothing alike.
"The cold. The bite. And this sweetness—lawless, and yet luxurious."
Fatigue wiped clean from her face, she licked a bead of liquor from the corner of her mouth with the tip of her tongue.
"Perfect, meow."
I wiped the shaker and smiled without a sound. The cactus fruit had been half a joke and half a bit of sense, but a reaction like that made me glad I had put it in.
There was, however, a creature sprawled at the very next seat who could not endure this peaceful, grown-up quiet.
"U-um... excuse meee..."
A thoroughly wilted voice. For all the splendor of the shrine-maiden robes she had put on, Katsune was already at her limit. Her snow-white sleeves lay strengthless across the table, and the fingers visible between them scratched at the wood—scritch, scritch. She looked up at me with eyes brimming.
"Could you maybe stop looking after only Senior Shinano, and save the magical girl over here who's actually dying...? Something sweet... and strong... the kind that blows everything in your head clean off the moment you drink it, just one glass, okay...? Please...?"
She whined with the momentum of someone about to crack her forehead on the table. The magical girl who struck proud poses before a crowd was no longer up there. All that remained was a worn-out little lamb, starving for alcohol, firing off a look that begged to be saved.
Lady Shinano tilted her martini and cut me a sidelong glance. Those green eyes said it plainly. Handle it yourself, meow.
"Sweet... strong... something to make her forget all of it."
I held Katsune's gaze and repeated it, slow.
"All right."
The cocktail meant for her rose in my mind.
First I took a vicious rum from the display. The strength printed on the label glinted under the lights with a quiet menace, but if she wanted sweet and strong, this was the foundation I owed her. I poured the rum, then let the cranberry juice run in slowly, and across the clear spirit a blood-red spread as if it were seeping. Last came the peach liqueur. The instant I tipped the bottle, a sweet fragrance lifted over the counter.
Sweet in the moment of drinking—and once swallowed, the rum's strength came around and struck the back of the head. A dangerous arrangement.
Its name was Faust.
A cocktail named for the man who sold his soul to the devil. For a magical girl whose soul had already been picked clean by her shikigami and by the world at large, I could not imagine a name that suited her better.
I loaded the shaker, filled it with ice, and began to shake—a little more gently than when I had made Lady Shinano's martini. Shake too hard and the ice shears away until the flavor thins. A strong drink has to arrive still strong, or it fails to earn its price. I set the strainer over the glass and poured. Through the clear ice, a blood-red liquid swayed in a slow roll and settled into the glass.
I lifted the finished cocktail into the light. Backlit, that blood-red glowed faint through the crystal: a beautiful color, and a dangerous one. It seemed, somehow, to resemble Katsune herself.
The glass left my hand, slid in a smooth glide across the bar, and came to rest just under Katsune's nose.
Blood-red, wavering between panes of clear ice. The moment that fatal figure met her eyes, the head she had planted on the table snapped up. Ruby irises caught the blood-red liquid in the glass.
"Salvation... yeah. What I need right this second is salvationnn..."
The sacred young lady, dressed so neatly in snow-white shrine-maiden robes, seized the glass in both trembling hands like a castaway who had found an oasis in the desert. There was not a millimeter of hesitation.
Glug.
Glug, glug.
"Wait—! That thing is packed with rum, it's seriously strong...!"
There wasn't even a gap in which to stop her.
"Kk— haaaaaah...!"
Tears spun up and gathered in Katsune's ruby eyes. The sweetness of peach would have gone down her throat soft and easy, and the rum chasing after it would have climbed her esophagus as heat. The back she had been holding so straight began to melt, limp as a squid, and those glamorous shoulders—beloved by tens of thousands of fans—flopped once more across the bar.
"Haaaah... so sweeet... so strooong..."
From between flushed lips, empty nonsense began to leak in a steady stream.
"Ah, Mister Devil... I'll just hand my soul over cheap, so please, please take it... and in exchange, cover tomorrow morning's schedule too, and the money to buy that raccoon brat some chicken tenders...?"
A magical girl in white shrine-maiden robes, sprawled on a bar and trying to cut a deal with the devil. Had this gone out on a broadcast, her fans' illusions would have come crashing down—but here, there was no need for that worry.
This was the Witches' Gathering. No cameras, no fans. Just a bar in the mountains.
Lady Shinano sipped her martini and looked down at the scene. A faint wash of backlight drifted across those green eyes, and a small smile rested at her mouth. She had put away a quantity that would have dropped an ordinary person long ago. A magical girl's sturdy constitution really did seem to operate on another level entirely. She had slammed the alcohol down that recklessly and still hadn't passed out cold; she was simply holding on, gone slack, atop the table.
Past the point of disbelief, I set down the towel I had been wiping the bar with and spoke.
"However strong magical girls may be... if you one-shot something that's fifty percent alcohol..."
I looked down at Katsune, mumbling on the tabletop.
"Even so, I guess being a magical girl means you don't just black out."
At words that were half honest admiration and half worry, our feline senior—who had been elegantly sipping her ice-cold Cactus Martini beside me—finally opened her mouth.
"Blacking out and forgetting would be the greater mercy, meow."
Lady Shinano's green eyes made a leisurely pass over the pitiful junior magical girl. She looked for all the world like a cat come up from hell to savor someone else's misfortune.
"Give it about an hour, and a magical girl's strengthened metabolism will burn the liquor clean off, meow."
She went on, slowly tipping the martini glass.
"And then every scrap of nonsense she was spouting until a moment ago will be left behind as a perfectly vivid dark history, meow."
At that, the sprawled Katsune flared and jerked her head up.
"Nnngh... whaddaya even sayin'... it's not a dark history! I'm being totally serious right nowww...!"
She mumbled it with a tangled tongue, cheek rubbing the table. But a person who until a moment ago had been whining please take my soul, Mister Devil could claim seriousness all she liked. The persuasive power was hovering near zero.
"I think the service had better end here..."
I set the shaker in the sink, started washing the glasses, and began to close out.
That was when it happened.
The sound of a door opening drifted into the café. Wondering if it might be another guest, I looked at the figure standing in the doorway—and the towel in my hand went still without my meaning it to.
She was small. A full head shorter than Lady Shinano, by the look of her. What was draped over that frame, though, was something that could never belong to the mood of this mountain café: the habit of a nun, the sort one sees in a cathedral. Blonde hair shone softly under the interior lights, and the golden eyes beneath it held a severity that had nothing in common with that young, cute build.
Anyone could tell at a glance that she was a magical girl. Only she seemed an entirely different kind from the Katsune who had come in earlier.
"Welcome to the Witches' Gathering..."
Habit is a frightening thing. The corny line Lady Shinano had ordered me to use moved my mouth ahead of my head, and out it slipped.
"The Witches' Gathering, you say."
The voice that left the girl's lips was as young as her stature, but the speech itself stood solemn and upright as a cathedral hymn. Golden eyes began to take stock, in order: Katsune in her shrine-maiden robes, sprawled across the table; cat-eared Lady Shinano, sipping a martini; and me, standing behind the counter.
Her small lips went on, each syllable set neatly in place.
"I have heard that this place is a refuge for magical girls, granted by leave of the Association President. Even so, I would ask that you refrain from so impious a greeting, even should it be spoken in jest."
She gathered her hands neatly and inclined her head, light and precise.
"I am Clara, a servant of the Lord."
The café went still. Even Katsune's slurred mumbling at the bar had stopped. From the speakers, a song from ten years ago still wandered out at its ease, but the gulf in temperature between that unhurried music and the girl before me was immense.
Quietly, inside the counter, I took down a fresh glass and thought.
What on earth am I supposed to serve a nun like this?