Speakeasy Dead: a P.G. Wodehouse-Inspired Romantic Zombie Comedy (Hellfire Universe Historicals) by Vicky Loebel

electrified. She claims the emanations curdle the gin.
    The door slid shut, muffling the music upstairs. Something rustled at the back of the lab.
    Priscilla pulled an apron over her dress. “Come help me, child.”
    I followed obediently from still to still, taking temperatures, adjusting clamps. Every few seconds, the sound of clinking bottles or scraping boxes carried faintly from the direction of the coal room. Fortunately, two decades of alchemy explosions have all but ruined my half-sister’s hearing.
    “I’ve been meaning to speak to you, Clara.” She turned a dial and vented steam out of a narrow pipe. “About this new hotel.”
    “The Hollywood Grand? It’s pretty swell, isn’t it? But once I’m done rebuilding our bar….” It would be fabulous: chrome curves, black and white tile, glass counters atop a slash of neon light. The Grand might be a golden French symphony of smoke and glass. But we’d be slim and lean and modern. We’d be jazz . “I just know we’ll get customers.”
    “That’s not the issue. Hold this.” She lit a table lamp, opened a highboy cabinet and passed me a stack of tins, each labeled, I knew, with something completely different from what it actually contained.
    I carried the tins to the big worktable in the center of the room.
    Wood creaked loudly somewhere nearby.
    “Do you realize,” Priscilla asked, “the Hollywood Grand is doing business with gangsters?” She dumped ingredients into a large mortar and began crushing.
    I breathed in juniper and anise. “Yes, ma’am. I figured that out.”
    “Real gangsters. Chicago gangsters, not local bootleggers.”
    I considered telling her about Stoneface and promptly quashed the idea. The safest policy where my half-sisters are concerned has always been volunteer nothing .
    Bottles rattled. Whispering voices rose and fell. Voices? Who was Ruth talking to? I spun one of the tins nervously between my hands.
    Priscilla added more herbs to her mixture. “I fear the Treasury Department may send agents to Falstaff.”
    “So what?” I shrugged. “Everyone knows Prohies are goons.”
    “And that those agents,” Priscilla said, pounding her pestle, “will not attempt to close the Hollywood Grand. It has too much political interest, too many wealthy investors.”
    The whispers were getting louder. I plinked my tins into a noisy stack.
    “Prohibition agents will be looking for smaller, more vulnerable targets to put out of business. Targets like us.”
    “Let them,” I scoffed. We were a coven, after all. “Who cares?”
    “Our sister, Eleanor, will care.”
    My stack tumbled. “Eleanor!” Tins rolled and dropped onto the floor.
    The thing to know about my eldest half-sister, Eleanor, the really big thing, is she’s a warlock. I mean, I’m a warlock. I’ve summoned a demon. But Eleanor’s more like the Princess of Hell.
    If my career as bar manager dragged Eleanor into a fight with the Feds, the first sound would be a loud squeal of pain from the Federal government. The second would be the gentle murmur of my name….
    “That’s bad.” I chased the tins. “Really bad!”
    Priscilla sighed. “We cannot let that happen, Clara.”
    “No, ma’am.” My heart deflated. “I don’t suppose we can.” All my plans, all my grand schemes were going flatter than a bald tire in a nail factory.
    Without the bar to manage, I had nothing. No college, no travel, no film career. All those ideas had already received a firm and final no from Eleanor. A girl’s options tend to be somewhat limited when she’s fourth in line to be the next Princess of Hell. That’s why Priscilla, the third in line, had built herself a tomb of test tubes and copper coils.
    “I guess,” I said sadly, “I guess I’d better close the bar.”
    “Don’t be melodramatic,” Priscilla scolded.
    I kicked the worktable, scuffing my Mary Janes.
    “I know how much this opportunity means to you.” Priscilla tipped her mixture into a tin and wrote