Let Them Eat Stake: A Vampire Chef Novel (17 page)

“Do you want to go home?” Brendan asked, his voice terrifyingly even. “Just say so, and I’ll take you out of here.”

His hands were clenched hard enough to turn the knuckles white. I stood, and I stepped close to him. I took both those strong hands, and I held on. I held his gaze too, and we stood there like that, until he loosened his fists.

“Nobody plays me for an all-day sucker,” I said, enunciating each word clearly. “Nobody uses me or my people for their games. I am going to find out who’s doing this, and I will hand them to O’Grady. Possibly wrapped in puff pastry and slow roasted. Are you with me, Brendan?”

“Always,” he answered.

I kissed him for that. I meant the gesture to be small and
soft, but it did not stay that way. Brendan is a man who enjoys a good kiss. He’s thorough, and he takes his time. When we finally ran out of breath, we still stood there, just holding on to each other. Brendan brushed his mouth along the edge of my ear, and I could feel his warm, sweet breath against my skin. “Charlotte.”

“I can’t,” I told him, as gently as possible. “Not here.” As in not in his aunt’s house while we were in the middle of a whole great, big honkin’ heap of not knowing what was going on. Anywhere else, really, and any other time. The middle of Fifth Avenue during rush hour was not out of the question at this point.

With a sigh, Brendan rested his forehead briefly on my shoulder, but he did let go, and he stepped back.

“Sorry. I shouldn’t have. It’s just…” He cupped my cheek with his hand. “You are so damned gorgeous; you know that?”

I was beyond melting now, beyond the giggles and blushes and the warmth from a spectacular kiss. This was someplace deeper and more important, where I had to be honest, or I risked losing everything.

“I want to be sure,” I said. The fact that I was echoing Anatole made me wince inside. But even that was appropriate. Because more than being in a strange house, more than being in the middle of a green and growing disaster, it was the existence of Anatole that made me hesitate. I wasn’t going to play games with Brendan. I wasn’t going to go back and forth between him and Anatole. I’d watched that kind of scenario play out before, and it wasn’t good for anybody involved. I would make my decision and stick with it.

“Okay.” Brendan shoved his hands in his back pockets. “I’d better get out of here, before I start trying to convince you you’re sure now.” I did not whimper at the thought of how he might go about creating my conviction, and I am proud of that. “But I want to put a warding on this room,” he
went on. A warding is a kind of magical security fence. It keeps out malevolent powers and, provided the warlock building it is strong enough, malevolent people. I had no doubt that Brendan was strong enough to keep out the IRS if he felt the need.

“Are we warding against vampires or against grandfathers?” I asked.

“Yes.” He said it with utter seriousness. Brendan never works magic casually. In fact, the few times I’d seen him actually use his powers, either somebody’d been in immediate danger, or he’d been really cranky about it, or both.

“Is there anything I need to do?” I asked. “Or should I just head downstairs and let you, um, work?”

“Actually, I’ll be able to build it more tightly if you’re here, since you’re ultimately what the ward’s going to protect.”

“So I just sit here?”

“I’m afraid so.” Brendan crouched down beside the black bag he’d carried up with my suitcase, opened the catch, and pulled out a stick of chalk, and a Ziploc bag of what looked like kosher salt. Clearly we were going for the high-tech warlockery here.

“Brendan?” I settled back onto the window seat.

“Hmm?” He started sketching symbols on the floorboards in front of the threshold, and dusting salt on top of them.

“You don’t like magic much.”

“It’s not that I don’t like it; I just think it’s more trouble than it’s worth. Harry Potter and Hogwarts and all that sound great in theory, but when you actually give adolescent kids the power to alter other people’s reality, it gets messy.”

“Did you ever get messy?”

“Yes. More than once.” He sat back on his heels and waited for me to ask more. I didn’t, and he went back to work with the salt and chalk.

When the symbols and the seasoning were the way he wanted, Brendan stood up and pulled a box of matches out of his pocket. He’d explained to me once that magic workers tended to be sympathetic to a particular element; earth, air, fire or water. The Maddoxes were mostly attuned to fire, although every so often one of them came closer to water or air.

Brendan struck the match and turned the flame inward toward his palm, like Europeans do with lit cigarettes. He began to whisper, soft and fast, and, I was fairly sure, not in English. He walked from corner to corner across the room, his hands cupped close enough around that flame that my palms began to heat up in sympathy. The flame didn’t flicker. The smell of sulfur and smoke wafted around him, too strong to be coming from one tiny match. My skin prickled and I smelled something new; something warm, familiar, and strong, like the sidewalk smell after a warm rain. There was a taste too; cinnamon and ginger, and a little bit of chili. Who knew magic came in flavors?

Brendan came to a halt in the threshold. He raised the flame high overhead and ran it down both walls and across the floor to trace the shape of the door. Then he stepped into the hall. The match winked out, taking scents and flavors with it.

I blinked, startled. “Is that it?”

Brendan held up his hand, palm toward me, as if running it over an invisible wall. “That’s it. You can come out if you want.”

I did, coming to stand beside him in the hallway. I didn’t know what to say, so I went with the obvious. “Thanks.”

“You’re welcome.” We stood there for another awkward minute, each trying to signal to the other the conflicting desire for another kiss and the knowledge that it was not a good idea right now, considering the circumstances.

“Talk to you tomorrow?” I asked.

“Talk to you tomorrow,” he agreed.

Then we had to stand there another minute, acknowledging that the message had been received, and then for a final minute after that, because from the get-go neither one of us had ever known how to say good-bye in the middle of this kind of silence.

Finally, he started down the stairs, and I went back into my comfortable little room, changed into my favorite oversized pajamas, got into bed, and waited for the memory of Brendan’s kiss to fade away enough for me to roll over and get some sleep.

I waited a very long time.

It was barely ten in the morning when I made my way down the back stairs, tying my bandanna around my head and wondering how long it would be before my hair got long enough to braid again. Despite the events of the previous evening, or maybe because of them, I’d slept pretty well. Now the scent of fresh-brewed coffee drew me like a mirage in the desert. I shouldered my way into the kitchen in time to see Reese standing by the fridge, clutching Hank, my line cook, by both shoulders.

“You’re sure?” Reese’s face lit up with a huge grin. “We really got i—”

But Reese spotted me and snapped back to attention as if he were still in the army.

“Morning, Reese. Hank.” I did my best casual glide into the suddenly very quiet room. “What’d we get?”

“Bacon quiche!” squeaked Hank, shoving golden brown and delicious egg pie across the counter toward me. “We made two! But they only ate one! Not as many people to breakfast!”

“Those bridesmaids are all watching their weight,” added Reese, who was suddenly very involved in pouring a
cup of coffee. “Here you go, Chef. Just the way you like it.” He pushed the mug to sit beside the quiche.

That I was able to leave both wonderfully fragrant breakfast items on the counter and ignore my frantic stomach for a full twenty seconds was a tribute to the level of self-control necessary to the professional chef. Or perhaps it was a tribute to the level of suspicion being around one too damned many mysteries can raise. “What’s going on, guys?” I asked.

“Nothing!” Hank’s throat was so tight, it was bugging his eyes out. “Gotta get back, you know? I’m helping Marie with the bread. Think maybe, like, switch over to pastry. ‘Bye!” And he was gone out the side door.

I turned to Reese. “What’s going on, Reese?”

“Nothing, Chef.”

I won’t say the penny dropped then, but it definitely rattled. “Does this have
anything
to do with a food truck?”

“No. Why? Did you change your mind about a truck for Nightlife?”

“No! We are not getting a truck!”

“’Cause I’m just saying, if we had a truck…”

“You’re getting a truck?” Trudy pushed her way through the door from the back stairs, carrying a bucket full of spray bottles and rags. “Those new foodie trucks are just so cool.”

I was truly beginning to hate all these doors. “We are not getting a truck.”

“You should.” Trudy pulled up a stool to the counter. “I had these Belgian waffles from this one truck the other day. Oh my God, I coulda just died and gone to heaven right there. Dibs on the coffee.” She picked up my mug and downed a large gulp. I did not snatch it out of her hands. I want points for that, too.

“See, that’s what I keep saying.” Reese emphasized his approval by passing Trudy a slice of quiche—the one he’d originally cut for me. Not that it made any difference to me,
of course. “People love a meal off a truck. And they’ll line up around the block, if you just Tweet your location, and FlashNews is setting up a special food truck station for all the blogs.”

I faced Reese, informing him with my eyes that we would most definitely be continuing this conversation later. “Has Mrs. Alden been asking for me?”

Trudy glanced toward the dining room door and shook her head. “No. She’s been on the phone most of the morning.”

“About the theft?” If she was going to take my coffee, she could darn well give me some information in return.

“Theft?” Reese paused in cutting off another slice of quiche. “They got robbed? Jesus, you’d think a place like this would be wired up its…butt.”

“It is,” said Trudy. “Whoever did this used the ICE raid for distraction.”

Grim reality surged through me as the caffeine took hold. “So, you may as well know, the wedding is probably at least postponed,” I told Reese. “It might be totally off. We’re just waiting on the word from the clients.”

Reese swore. He then sliced the rest of the way through the quiche and set the new portion on a waiting plate. “Chef, nobody said anything about it at breakfast.”

“You’re kidding?” I looked to Trudy for confirmation, and she nodded.

“All the girls were just going on about fittings and dye jobs and mani-pedis and what sounds like it’s gonna be the Mother of All Bachelorette Parties.” Reese muttered something under his breath that sounded a whole lot like “crazy effin’ rich people.”

“But that’s imp—” Footsteps cut me off.

“Oops.” Trudy swallowed her last bite of quiche. “Here it comes.”

Mrs. Alden walked in from the dining room, and her gaze swept across us. As quick perusals went, this one was
precise and comprehensive, noting how we were arranged and who had been talking with whom—including Trudy. Make that especially Trudy.

“Ms. Lyons, I thought you were going to take care of the guest rooms.” Mrs. Alden’s words carried a keenly honed edge.

Slowly, making sure her employer saw each movement, Trudy got to her feet. “I said I’d get
that
done after the foyer, Mrs. Alden.” The women faced each other. No, they squared off. Except for their age, these two were direct opposites. Work had pushed Trudy’s willowy body into a permanent slump, despite her legs being still long and straight. The veins and knuckles stood out on her rough hands. She wore no makeup on her puckered face, and she had allowed her braided hair to turn iron gray. Elegant Adrienne stood in front of her in a pink and apricot twinset, probably ready for church. Her hair was dyed perfectly black, her face as smooth as the spa and Bloomingdale’s cosmetics counter could make it, her hands impeccably cared for. But between these two brewed the intimate, brutal anger that can build only between very old friends, or very close family.

Mrs. Alden broke first. She turned to me, and I got to watch her pull that anger back. “Chef Caine, may I have a word?”

“Of course.” I didn’t bother with my notebook. I didn’t care what Reese thought he’d heard. There was no way this wedding was going to happen any time soon. As I followed my soon-to-be-former client through the dining room and up the main stairs to the living room, I looked through my mental ledger to that place where I’d penciled in the two hundred K, and fondly kissed it good-bye.

“Now.” Mrs. Alden took her seat in the chair by the fireplace and gestured toward the sofa. I sat. “I don’t suppose you heard that, among all the other disturbances last night, this house was robbed.” She looked at me very steadily as
she spoke, letting me know she was giving me a chance to preserve appearances. I decided to take it.

“I’m very sorry to hear that,” I answered politely. “I imagine this changes things.”