Casa Dracula 3 - The Bride Of Casa Dracula (16 page)

“Is this a fruitcake?” Like any sensible person, I hated fruitcake. “It sounds like fruitcake.”

“You’ll need to make enough for the wedding party.” She reached into her handbag and took out a small binder. “Here are recipes that have been used in the last few generations.”

The notebook held copies of recipes. Some were beautifully written, but others were typed and some were illegible scrawls. One had measurements with descriptions like “half the size of a peahen egg.”

“Which is the best?”

“Choose any one you like. Sam and Winnie had a delicious spice-and-currant cake.”

“I’ll use that recipe, then.”

“A pity that it’s a family secret.” She patted my hand. “Don’t look so sad, pretty, chubby little pickle. Not every girl gets to marry a vampire.”

“Cornelia, if you call me that one more time, I will drown you in a vat of holy water.”

“Meow! Kitten with a whip.”

I’d had enough of this tête-à-tête. “I think I’ll pass on dessert. I’d like to go to the nursery next door.”

“Wise decision. Skip desserts now and Oswald won’t have to suck them out of your hips later.”

“No one is ever going to cut me again, Cornelia.”

“You mean besides Oswald. It is in your vows.”

I tried to hide my surprise as I remembered the monogrammed penknife Oswald had given me. “I meant besides our recreational activities,” I said.

We paid our tab and went to the nursery. The small, narrow building out front had been painted and there were new flower beds around the shrubs. The wonderful fragrances of greenery, compost, and mulch calmed me.

The inside of the shop hadn’t been set up yet. Taped boxes were stacked on the floor by the bookshelves and display racks. I admired the jean-clad, taut rear end of the man bending over the counter by the register. I heard a sigh and saw that Cornelia was also appreciating the view.

“Hello,” I said.

The man stood and turned and I recognized my blue-eyed piratical acquaintance from the botanical garden. He was as lustworthy as I remembered, in a Whitney Farms Organics T-shirt that stretched across his rangy shoulders, his long black hair tied back with a length of green gardener’s twine. “Alfred Joseph!” I said. “What are you doing here?”

“Joseph Alfred,” he corrected. “After you told me about this place, I checked it out and here I am. I needed to invest in something and get out of the City for a while.”

I sensed movement next to me. Cornelia had shifted her slight weight to one leg and was wearing an “I vant to suck your everything” expression. “Cornelia, this is Joseph Alfred. We met in the City.”

Joseph Alfred gave her a huge, unabashedly heterosexual grin. “A pleasure,” he said.

“I’m sure it is,” she murmured low enough to make him come closer.

I made a note to add that one to my catalog of flirting tricks.

“If you can hold on a sec, I’ll show you around,” he said.

“That would be marvelous, Mr. Alfred,” Cornelia said.

“You can call me Joseph, sunshine,” he said.

While Cornelia and I were waiting outside at the entrance to the lot, I said, “Are you suddenly interested in gardening?”

“You have the oddest ideas. He’s got a unique quality, don’t you think?”

“If you mean he’s got a world-class butt, I am in complete concordance.”

I heard someone cough behind me and turned to see Joseph Alfred standing there. I said, “Geez, you can sure sneak up on someone.”

He looked amused. “Let’s start with the deciduous shrubs and make our way around to the annuals.”

Although the nursery wasn’t finished, he’d already set out areas for different plant groups. He’d built a large arbor to cover the shade plants and even cleaned out the old pond for water plants. “I’ll bring in the six-packs of petunias for Joe Average, but I’m going to specialize in rare and unusual fruit trees. I’ll be getting in some improved varieties of heirloom pears that are resistant to fire blight.”

“I’m going to be a regular customer.”

“I’ll give you the professional discount. In fact, if you’ve got any free time, I could use a part-time staffer.”

Cornelia smiled and said, “She doesn’t have any free time. She’s getting ready for her wedding.”

He could have had the decency to look disappointed, but instead he gazed at Cornelia. “I don’t suppose you’d like a gardening job.”

“You understand me so well already,” she said.

He walked us to the drive, but he and Cornelia were so engrossed in each other that I wandered into the nursery again, jotting down descriptions of things I might want to buy later.

When I rejoined them, I saw a small critter scamper into the shrubs. “The animals have already discovered the new habitat,” I said.

Joseph frowned. “I’m going to get some cats to keep vermin under control.”

“Good luck,” I said. “Our barn cats can barely keep up with all the field mice.”

He walked us to the car and opened the driver’s side door for Cornelia. “See you at seven, angel.”

“Adieu, Joseph,” she said.

When we were on our way back to the ranch, I said, “Did you make a date with him?”

“He made a date with me.”

“I didn’t think he was your type.” I was hoping she wouldn’t do something so terrible to him that I wouldn’t be able to go back to the nursery.

“Gorgeous has always been my type, darling.”

the villainy of a fruitcake

W hen we got back home, Cornelia made appointments at the spa in town and dashed back out again. I spent the afternoon on my fauxoir, creating a fascinating meeting between Don Pedro and a wise witch woman in an Amazonian tribe. I put her in a parrot feather headdress, which added a nice visual, and she revealed her wisdom by repeating people’s words, causing them to reflect on what they had said, the way psychiatrists do.

When I finished the scene, I looked at the fruitcake recipes. Oswald’s grandmother had taught me a little about judging recipes, and my inexpert assessment was that these were stinkers. I called Edna and was happy when she answered her cell phone.

“Edna, how are you?”

“Good afternoon, Young Lady. What have you done now?”

“I deeply resent your implication that I only call you when I’m in trouble.”

“Hmph.”

“Where has Thomas taken you?”

Edna told me that while Thomas was shooting scenes in Montreal, she was visiting museums and enjoying all the amenities of their luxury hotel.

“Thank you for the highly edited, G-rated version of your stay with your sexy and addled young paramour,” I said. “You’ll never guess who has darkened our doorway. Cornelia Ducharme.” I gave her a brief rundown of recent activities. “Now I have to make some horrible fruitcake. All the recipes look vile. Some call for suet. Isn’t that something lardy that you put in bird feeders? Where is your recipe?”

“I don’t recall,” she said.

“But you keep all your recipes.”

“I keep all the ones that work, Young Lady,” she said rather quietly. “My cake was not a harbinger of a happy marriage.”

Edna seldom spoke of her marriage. “How thoughtless of me to ask, Edna. I’ll make do with one of these,” I said. “You know, it’s so quiet here without you that I find myself enjoying Cornelia’s company. But it’s like being friends with a rattler.”

“Cornelia isn’t terrible, Milagro. She developed a shell after her parents died, and Ian has always indulged her.”

“He suggested she take this job, which is funny considering that he never seems to work.”

“It is not becoming for a young lady to gossip.”

“Please tell that to the other family members, who all seem to know everything about me.”

“They are not young ladies and cannot be held to the same standards that you so woefully fail to meet.”

“I miss you. When are you coming back?”

“In another week or so, I think. Thomas wants to talk to you.”

I regressed momentarily and became excited that a Hollywood actor wanted to talk to me.

He came on the line and said, “Milagro?”

“Hi, Thomas. I hope you’re treating Edna well.”

“I treat her like the goddess she is. I need you to go to her cottage, get my black suit, and have it dry cleaned and sent to me.”

“You’re kidding, right?”

“That’s the kind of attitude that makes Edna appreciate efficient room service. Overnight it.”

Edna got back on the line and said cheerfully, “We’re going out now, but I’m sure you’ll do something distinctive with the cake.”

“You’re saying distinctive, but you mean inedible.”

She chuckled. “I’ll see you soon, Young Lady. Don’t forget to send Thomas’s suit.”

I went to the Love Shack and found three different black suits in the closet. I took all of them to the dry cleaners in town and paid extra to have them delivered express to Thomas. When I returned home, I put together a tray of cheeses with crackers for cocktails.

Oswald and Cornelia came home within minutes of each other.

“Would love to chat, but I must get dressed,” Cornelia said. Her glossy ebony bob was perfectly sleek, and she had a new shade of crimson polish on her nails.

Oswald and I sat out on the terrace and I told him about meeting Joseph Alfred at the nursery and his date with Cornelia. “I learned about the fruitcake wedding cake today. Vampire fruitcake wedding cake, it’s one of those things you don’t imagine.”

“Nobody really likes it,” he said. “The one at Sam and Winnie’s wedding was tasty, though.”

“Oswald, is there anything else you want to tell me about a bride’s duties?”

He stared out at the fields. Ernie, accompanied by the dogs, was gathering up the horses for the evening. “There’s the cake and the tunics. That’s it, I think.”

“Really? What about the bride’s oath to allow her husband to take her blood?”

I was watching his face. The indirect, soft golden light made his gray eyes so clear and his pale coloring so lovely.

“It’s in the vows, but I don’t want you to do anything you don’t want to do.”

“But it’s what you want, isn’t it?”

“I’m a vampire.” It was the first time he’d ever said it to me. “I’m a vampire and I’d like to make love to you the way we used to. And if you want to take my blood, too, I’d really like that. I thought you enjoyed the tastes you had.”

“I did, Oz, I had that craving…” I liked to think I was sexually liberated, and I’d had his blood before, once accidentally when I was infected and the second time when I craved it during a state of delirium. “After Cornelia goes, we can try. We’ll take it slowly, light some candles and get out the massage oils.”

“Milagro, there’s no way I can do that without having sex.”

I leaned into him. I kissed his smooth neck and rubbed my breasts against him. “So, let’s have sex.”

“We made a promise.”

“A promise to the damn Council. The longer we keep it, the less sense it makes to me. We have no guarantee they won’t come up with some other reason to exclude me.”

“We’ll try doing it this way, and if it doesn’t work…”

“What then?”

“I don’t know. Most of my life, I had nothing to do with them. Then I met you…” He smiled and reached out for my hand. “They blame me for bringing you into our lives, but how could I resist you?”

I squeezed his hand. “I am pretty irresistible. I don’t know how that escaped Nixon’s notice.”

We sat and watched the sun setting, and soon Cornelia came back downstairs, dressed in a skintight black cocktail dress and sky-high heels. Sapphires glittered on her ears and on a necklace that dropped into her plunging neckline.

“You look stunning, Corny,” Oswald said. “Enjoy yourself.”

“Don’t wait up.”

Oswald and I had a quiet meal of leftovers. Afterward, he went to the barn to talk to Ernie about ranch business, and I went for a run. I did two circuits of the fields, and then I visited Daisy’s grave. I talked to her while I waited to see if Pal would show up. “I miss you, Daisy, but I’m not so sad anymore. I think of all the fun we had together. I’m not replacing you with Pal. No one could replace you, but he’s a nice dog. You’d like him.”

I woke up when I heard Cornelia return at around 2 a.m. At least someone got lucky tonight.

Sometime later, I heard howling. I looked out the window and spotted the pale yellow moon behind the trees. Our dogs and the neighbors’ dogs heard the howls and set up a ruckus. The animals were livelier than usual tonight. I saw the outlines of small creatures moving in the grasses, and a striped cat leaped off a fence post and toward the barn.

The cool breeze came in through the window and I wished that I, too, were a wild creature in the night.

Oswald left early, telling me not to hold dinner for him.

“Will your schedule let up soon?” I asked.

“Not unless I get a partner.”

He’d mentioned it before, but there was always the complication that an outside doctor might figure out Oswald’s condition. “It would be great if someone else could handle some of the responsibilities.”

Cornelia was sleeping in, so I looked through the recipes again and selected the one that seemed least awful. Most of the ingredients were relatively common: currants, dates, dried plums, nuts, poppy seeds, pine nuts, and honey. The cake was flavored with cardamom, nutmeg, and other spices, and preserved with the horrible, potent booze that the vamps used in ceremonies. The recipes called it “green wine” but I thought of it as green death.

Dried pomegranate seeds were included in every version of the cake recipe. I brushed aside the coincidence of my discussion with Ian about Persephone and pomegranates. The vampires’ genetic line had started with merchants on the Silk Road, and they had carried pomegranates with them, so it was reasonable that their descendants would use the fruit in traditional recipes.

I looked up the history of pomegranates in one of my gardening books. The shining clear crimson seeds symbolized fertility and had often been used in marriage ceremonies. Vampires needed all the help with fertility that they could get, and they loved the gorgeous red juice.

The local market wouldn’t have half the things I needed, and neither did the high-end market near Oswald’s offices. Several phone calls later, I found an Indian grocery in the City that sold dried pomegranate seeds and all the spices I needed.