After Dark by James Leck, Yasemine Uçar, Marie Bartholomew, Danielle Mulhall Page A

consistently overlooked for my golden-boy older brother, but what really cooked my craw was when they started cutting into my nap time, or my floating-in-the-pool time, or my lying-in-the-hammock-doing-nothing time to pick my brain about what Johnny was “really like” or ask if he’d been talking about them around the dinner table. I was hoping it didn’t come to that with Elizabeth Opal.
    She drove away, and I continued my walk along Church Street. I wandered past a few more stores and then spotted a knee-high chalkboard, propped up against a wall at the mouth of a narrow alley that ran between Brooks Books and R. Sterling’s Fine Jewelry. Scrawled across the board in yellow letters were the words Voodoo Juice Bar . Under them, a yellow arrow pointed into the alley. I figured an establishment that was located in an alley was the perfect place for a fine young man like myself to escape family bonding time, so I headed down to check it out.
    There were a few other arrows, drawn on the walls and along the ground, that pointed the way past the back of Brooks Books, around a corner and into another alley. That’s where I found a green wooden door held open with a brick. There was no sign above the door, but there was an arrow on the ground, pointing inside. So, I followed it in.
    The walls in the Voodoo Juice Bar were deep purple, and the only light in the place was coming from a bare lightbulb hanging from the middle of the ceiling. There were three tables, surrounded by folding lawn chairs, and a ragged-looking couch pushed into the back corner. The bar was on the other side of the room, and there were shelves stacked behind it, packed with jars, boxes, shakers, vials and beakers. One of the larger jars had five or six tarantulas inside, floating around in a clear, thick-looking liquid. Above the shelves was a blackboard with about fifty different drinks scrawled across it in yellow chalk. The drinks had names like Pinpricks, Zombaid, Undead-Colada, The Vortex and my personal favorite, The Re-Animator. I was still scanning the list when a man’s head poked through a set of red beads hanging from the doorframe of a back room. He had white hair that puffed off his head like a fluffy cloud and was wearing black-tinted goggles over his eyes.
    â€œWhat are you here for?” he blurted.
    â€œUh … a drink, I think?”
    â€œWhat? Why are you here? What’s your name?”
    â€œHis name is Charlie,” a voice said from behind me.
    I turned and saw Miles Van Helsing standing in the doorway. He looked like he was wearing the same black clothes as the night before, only now he had on a black baseball cap.
    â€œHe’s okay, Dr. Vortex,” Miles added, coming toward me.
    â€œI’m not sure you’re qualified to make that kind of judgment call, Miles,” I said.
    â€œTrust me, Doctor,” Miles said, pulling a twenty out of his pocket and laying it down on the bar, “he’s clean.”
    â€œWhat’ll you have?” Vortex asked, stepping out from behind the red beads. He was lean and tall, and wore a pair of big black rubber gloves and a white lab coat.
    â€œWe’ll take two Re-Animators,” Miles answered.
    â€œThat doesn’t have any spiders in it, does it?” I asked.
    â€œJust the fangs,” Vortex said, staring at me from behind those black goggles.
    My eyebrows shot up.
    â€œHe’s joking, Charlie,” Miles said, slapping me on the back. “Let’s have a seat.”
    â€œGood, because spider venom this early in the morning gives me a headache.”
    Vortex pulled the goggles down and smiled. His eyes were a brilliant blue. “Me, too,” he said and started grabbing jars off the shelf behind him.
    â€œDr. Vortex is a genius,” Miles said, leading me to one of the tables in the back. I sat down in a lawn chair across from him. “He’s a scientist, a brilliant inventor, and he makes the