A Taste of the Nightlife (26 page)

“But . . . but . . .”

“Think, Charlotte. We are helpless during the day when you own the world. You can stay up late into the night, but we cannot remain conscious after sunrise. You can form a gang, a mob, an army. We can congregate in a large group, but for more than a few of us to cooperate for a long time is nearly impossible. And despite our boasts that we are the very pinnacle of the food chain, daybloods are exceedingly dangerous prey. In a group, appropriately armed, there is nothing more deadly than your kind.”

“Why don’t you stay away from us, then? Do like the separatists say and scatter into the countryside.”

“That is the other thing we don’t talk about. We don’t just want your blood, we want your presence. We crave it.”

“You love us and are doomed to destroy us?” I meant it as a joke, but considering everything that had happened lately, it maybe fell a little flat.

“You have been watching too many bad movies.” Anatole’s flicker of a smile came as a relief.

“So, how old is Ilona?”

“She was turned about forty years ago.”

“Kids these days.”

Anatole stopped in his tracks and turned toward me. The light caught in his golden hair but left his eyes sunken in shadow and turned his skin uniformly white. He was not human. He was Other and the fear that had come over me the night before when it was Chet I walked home with struggled to make its prime-time comeback.

“With the young Maddoxes running about the city with their stakes, I am less than amused about that at the moment.”

“Sorry.”

Anatole nodded his acceptance of my apology and we walked on. Cars rolled past. Lights flicked on and off in the windows over our heads. The city was going about its business and expecting nothing more than for us to go about ours.

I probably could have let things lie, but I didn’t. “Something’s going on with the Maddoxes.” There’s no way Margot Maddox offered me a million dollars because it might stop a blood-runningscam that her cousin might be helping out with. “It’s not just Brendan trying to keep his relatives under wraps.”

“Something else to inquire into.”

“I hope he’s okay,” I whispered. I should have found time to think about him today. I should have checked in.

“Have faith, Charlotte. I have a feeling your Brendan has been looking out for his family for a long time.”

It was a measure of how far out of it I was that I didn’t say anything about the “your Brendan” remark. Anatole noticed it too, and got a very strange look on his face before he turned toward the eastern horizon.

“It is almost sunrise. I will find you a taxi.”

God, is it that late?
I glanced at my watch. Yeah, it was. “Thanks. I’ll let you.”

“Ah!” Anatole laid his hand over his heart. “The lady accepts my gifts. My heart may dare to hope. . . .”

“Don’t get carried away.”

This time the smile was real, and it held. “It is not to be helped. Russian, remember?”

He stalked over to the corner and stood, staring down the street like he was willing it to produce a taxi. I let him be. I was not ready to handle what looked like a touch of jealousy from Anatole Sevarin. Not that it was warranted. Between the debacle at the theater and the fact that he hadn’t called me any more than I had called him, it was pretty clear Brendan didn’t want anything more to do with me.

He hadn’t called me, had he? I pulled out my phone and found I’d accidentally switched it off at some point. At least, it probably was an accident, or maybe reflex. Unless it was more of that fine-dice denial I’d been working on all day.

I pressed the POWER key and checked my messages. There were three new ones, none of them from Brendan. I stomped on my disappointment. Two were voice messages from Elaine West, and the other was a text from Chet. It had been sent back at 7:18. I immediately thumbed that one. A single line appeared on the screen.

Where the hell is he?!

I swallowed around my heart, which seemed to have filled the back of my throat, and hit Chet’s number. It rang, and rang, and I got voice mail. I hung up and hit REDIAL.

The fourth ring cut off in the middle. “Chet, you asshole, what are you doing?”

It took me a minute to recognize the outraged voice. “Doug?”

“Charlotte?” I could picture Chet’s roommate wrinkling his Neanderthal-grade forehead.

“What’re you answering this phone for? Where’s Chet?”

“Fuck if I know. I was out last night and I got back in from work and half his stuff is cleared out and his phone and keys are on the table.”

My brain, which was already imploding from adrenaline and lack of sleep, froze solid. I could make no sense of this. None whatsoever.

“I gotta go, Doug,” I whispered.

“I wouldn’t care. You know, whatever, but rent’s due.”

“Yeah.” I hung up and stood there, a statue on Lenox Avenue. A yellow cab pulled up, waiting, and I still didn’t move.

“Charlotte?” Anatole was beside me as though he had materialized there. “What is it?”

“Chet.” I was still staring at the phone. “He’s gone. That was his roommate, Doug. He said Chet’s cleared out his stuff and gone.”

Anatole took me by both shoulders. “Charlotte, listen to me. I am almost out of time. Who is Chet’s sire? If he thought he was in real trouble, that’s where he’d go.”

“We don’t know where she is.” The lie I had spoken for five years came easily to me, even with Anatole’s eyes looking straight into mine. “She vanished.”

“That is not possible,” he said sternly. “A sire does not abandon the ones they deliberately turn. There is a connection, a need.”

Memory dragged me under. The dark alley, hungry, eager eyes, the tightly folded wad of bills in my hands.

Just a few minutes . . .

Anatole made a strangled noise deep in his throat. “I do not have time to understand this now. Go to O’Grady. Immediately. You must tell him what has happened.”

“But—”

“Charlotte!” He shook me, and I felt how much he was keeping a rein on his strength. “This is not a game! Promise me you will call O’Grady!”

“Why do you care?” Tears trickled down my face. When had they started?

“Does it matter?”

“Yes!”

“Preserve me from daybloods. Charlotte, I do not want to see you arrested and thrown in jail because your brother is too stupid to exist! Now will you promise to call O’Grady?”

I nodded and Anatole straightened up and let me go. “Thank you. Now, get in the cab and go home.”

I hesitated. “Will you be okay?”

“If I am not delayed by more foolishness, yes.”

I climbed into the cab, awkward and one-handed because I couldn’t manage to put my phone down. The door closed behind me, and when I looked back, Anatole was already gone.

“Where we goin’?” asked the cabbie.

“Fourth and Bleecker,” I said.

I’m sorry, Anatole.

20

I had to lean hard on the buzzer for a full minute before Doug let me in.

I never liked Doug. When not actually out on the street he tended to dress in torn T-shirts and crumpled boxer shorts. He never learned the art of the clean shave, and he had a forehead that proclaimed direct descent from the Clan of the Cave Bear. Chet said my real problem was that the one time I’d offered to make him dinner, Doug had dumped catsup all over my steak au poivre
.
But Chet also said Doug paid his rent on time, he didn’t mind sharing an apartment with a vampire, and whatever he was into, it never came home except in the form of the occasional hookup.

“So where is he?” Doug shuffled into the kitchen, pulled a can of Mountain Dew out of the fridge, popped the top and chugged half. I watched, unable even to muster a queasy feeling.

“I don’t know.” Chet’s cell lay on te table, along with his apartment key, just like Doug had said. There was also a stack of junk mail, old copies of advertising flyers and a few issues of
Circulation
. I sorted through it all, vaguely hoping to find a note, or a business card, anything that might tell me where my brother had gone.

“Well, if you don’t know, who does?”

“I don’t know.” There was no note. I pocketed his cell phone and keys and turned to the living room. The laptop where Chet kept Nightlife’s books was gone. The books that Chet admitted he was cooking, just not in the usual way. He said. Except I couldn’t exactly trust what Chet said right now.

He’s not dead,
I told myself as I moved away from the empty makeshift desk.
If someone had killed him and wanted to make it look like he took off, they wouldn’t have taken the computer and left the cell.

Unless they didn’t care what it looked like. Unless all they really wanted was to know what he’d been doing with the money. From where I stood, it looked like he was working with Shelby and Taylor Watts as well as Marcus the Mystery Nebbish. Maybe he was putting money into the Nightlife accounts not to help the restaurant but to hide it from his partners. Maybe they found out about it. Or maybe he just got mixed up with someone who was out for undead blood, like the Maddoxes. Maybe Margot Maddox got tired of waiting for me to accept her payoff and had decided to take a more direct route to stop the reopening, right through Chet.

“Can I see his bedroom?”

Doug waved me past with the Mountain Dew can. I nodded my thanks and walked into Chet’s room.

It was not entirely a sty. The bed was unmade, but the sheets were clean. The hamper was full, but nothing overflowed onto the industrial beige carpet. One of the two dressers had its drawers pulled out. I recognized a couple of Chet’s sweaters and his BYT ME BEATMAN T-shirt.

He’s not dead.
My hand wrapped tight around his cell phone.
He’s running. He thought somebody might be able to trace him on the cell, so he left it. He didn’t think about how much information it’s got in it. Or maybe he did. Maybe he wants me to be able to figure it out. Maybe he’s counting on me being able to help him.

Maybe this is about you finding out I don’t need you. . . .
I tried not to hear his voice echoing in my head, and failed.

“Anything?” Doug yawned like he was calling down moose from Vermont.

“Not really.” At least I didn’t think so. I poked through the drawers. It looked like stuff was missing, but that was all I could tell. Some empty hangers dangled in the closet, but the dark blazers and white button-down shirts that he wore when he was running the front of the house at Nightlife were all still there.

“Thanks, Doug.” I pushed quickly past him.

“Yeah, well. Listen, Charlotte . . .” I stopped in the middle of the living room and squeezed the cell phone hard.

“Chet’s a good guy,” Doug said. “I hope he’s okay.”

“Me too.” I couldn’t get the words out in more than a whisper. “I’ll take care of the rent, okay?”

“Don’t worry about it,” he said. “We’ve got a week.”

“Thanks.” I squeezed the phone again. “I’ll let you know what’s going on once I know.”

“Cool.”

I walked out thinking I owed Doug another shot at dinner. I’d even spring for the catsup.

Chet’s block of Bleecker, though, was mostly a night street. First thing in the morning, it was just me, the autumn leaves and some restless fast-food wrappers on the sidewalk. The pigeons hadn’t come off the ledges yet, and the cars lumbered down the street like they hadn’t had enough caffeine. Another couple blocks, and I was into the student area surrounding Washington Square. Hip young things strolled past, hanging on to their backpacks and texting the entire world. I glimpsed the name on a diner as I threaded my way between them, and a memory jogged loose.

Friends wherever you go.

I scurried across the street and through the door of a long, low dining room done up in rattan and glass. Big windows let in the sun and an espresso machine the size of a VW bus waited up front for carry-out customers. The pass-through to the kitchen was large enough that I could see the head line cook, and when she turned around to slide a steaming omelet onto a pristine white plate, she could see me.

“Charlotte!”

“How’s it going, Nicki?”

The hostess in obligatory black jeans and T-shirt smiled and let me by. Nicola Papandreos and I clasped hands through the pass. We had worked the line together at Caliente. It was my first serious restaurant job in New York and Nicki’d helped me navigate that particular minefield. But I had my executive and owner ambitions, and she said she just wanted to cook, so we went separate our ways.

“It’s good.” Nicki reached for a squeeze bottle and laced hot sauce across the omelet. “Better than it’s been for you.” She had no idea, but I managed to keep my answer down to an eye roll. “Word’s out that they’re letting you open again, though?”

“Fingers crossed.” A server shouldered past, gave us both dirty looks and pulled three loaded plates off the pass. “Listen, Nick, I’m dying here. Can you . . . ?”

“Sit.” She pointed me toward a table by the window. “Breakfast’s on its way. Coffee?”

“You’re a goddess.”

I slid into a table by the window where I could see the front door, the kitchen door and who was going past outside. I also took a moment to hate the fact that I was thinking like this. A server brought me coffee and I downed a big slug too fast, letting the burn clear my mind.