Colton took a fourth unlabeled bottle down from the shelf, this one filled with a golden liquid. "You’re right," he said, "I’ve never had that particular request before. But before you break your arm patting yourself on the back I should point out that pretty much all of my orders are unique."
He was standing behind the bar, wearing a pristine white apron over his tailored suit. There was nobody else in the bar, just Colton and Isaac, though the distant sounds of a busy night club came from three stories above. Colton’s bar was always empty other than whichever client he had decided to allow inside, despite having seating for at least a hundred.
"So the question, as always, is how do I mix this drink?" He stared intently into one of the other bottles he had gotten down, a thing of thick green glass that - to Isaac at least - appeared to be empty. Isaac knew the question had been rhetorical but it he answered anyway out of nervousness.
"Well - heh - hopefully no tongue of bat or anything, right?"
Colton smiled, and slowly looked up. "No. No bat for you, friend. Don’t get me wrong, I’ll have to put some... obscure... ingredients in there. It’s magic you want, after all. But no wool of bat, no eye of newt, nothing like that. I think, in your case... a martini."
Isaac felt his muscles relax. A martini. That sounded familiar, safe. "Sure, sure. Thanks mister Colton. Good old gin and vermouth, and a little of your... your thing."
"Maybe," Colton said, putting one of the bottles back on the shelf and taking three more down. "I have some very special gin that will be perfect for this, and a few types of vermouth that might tie in with the right binding ingredients. But I have other options too, the martini has some variants that are still close enough to earn the name."
"Does that matter?" Isaac asked as he squinted at the thousands of bottles still on the shelves.
"Oh, certainly. The name is all part of it, magic works partly on its own merits but partly on how the local culture demands. Thus, in times where magic is largely considered fiction it can actually be better to disguise the crafting of potions as something people do believe in - mixing drinks. But then the drinks themselves must follow, and so we care very much about the connotations. Martinis are sophisticated, a bit celebratory. As with any alcohol you can drink them when you’re depressed but that’s not really what they’re associated with."
Celebratory. Isaac rolled the word around in his head, and couldn’t make it apply. "I don’t know that celebratory is the thing, really. Not to question your work, mister Colton, it’s just that I worry you’ve misunderstood."
Colton smiled. "Not at all, but as I was saying there are variants. A martini is our base, we’ll be close enough to the martini to get some of the good connotations we need but with a slightly different twist. Pardon the pun. Yes. Add some vodka, swap the olive out for a twist of lemon peel... yes, this will do." Colton yet again re-arranged the bottles, replacing some and pulling one more down. He pulled a lemon out from under the bar and cut it in half, revealing black pulp under the yellow rind. Isaac stared at it, watching the juice run down onto the bar and change from pitch black to bright red as it spread out in a puddle. "That’s a lemon?" he asked, but Colton just carved a thin slice off and set it aside.
He began to measure out the alcohol, some of it seeming to pour in slow motion. "There’s still the question of the glass. Martinis are traditionally served in a modified cocktail glass, but this type should be in a champagne coupe." Rather than ice, Coulton dropped some clear crystals into the container. They didn’t look cold, but almost instantly condensation appeared on the glass. "Of course what I really am using this for is the name, because the other connotations are more related to... subterfuge, gambling, womanizing. All related to your predicament, I suppose, but the name is the thing. Vesper. Roman version of Hesperus, also known as the evening star. Hesperus and Phosphorus are two sides of the same coin, brothers but also the same person - Phosphorus being the morning star. Sound familiar, Isaac?"
Isaac shook his head and Colton began to stir, a faint light flickering in the drink as the crystals clinked. "It’s where the name Lucifer comes from, Isaac. Lucifer is the morning star, the light bringer. The devil. And what would be the other version of Lucifer, his metaphorical brother? The left hand of God, the angel before the fall. And then of course in the plural we have Vespers, which I’m sure you know is a type of Catholic mass." Colton set the stirring rod aside, the twisted length of metal steaming as if hot even though the mixing glass looked ice cold. "And that circles around to my choice of glass. As I said a moment ago, a champagne coupe is traditional but that’s a sort of goblet and I have a custom-made goblet that’s close enough and is... extremely appropriate."
Colton placed a goblet on the table, made of stained glass, and poured the drink through a strainer into it. He set the strainer aside, crystals now clouded, and placed the twist of lemon into the drink. The liquid was glowing, casting bright shapes of color onto the bar. Colton turned the glass idly, admiring it, and Isaac found himself trying to make the shapes in the stained glass form something. Shouldn’t it form a picture? But the pieces were too large, some tiny fragment of an image too big to see. Isaac reached out and lifted the glass in his hand.
"Who am I," he asked, "to argue with God? If the almighty wills that I be damned, then... and I did it. I betrayed her, and I let her die. I’m bound for perdition, and no fucking martini can change that."
Colton nodded. "Maybe. It’s a tall order. But this Vesper doesn’t overturn the will of God, Isaac. It’s... a reminder. An acknowledgement of sin, a reminder of a past glory, and a request for dignity and future hope. Make a toast, Isaac."
He lifted the stained glass goblet to his lips, felt the liquid starlight flow into him and bridge a divide he didn’t know was there. And Isaac laughed.
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