by Sarah Zettel
I couldn’t do it. I just couldn’t do it.
I squared my shoulders and marched into the dining room. The remains of the bridesmaids’ arrival party turned to stare at me.
“Look,” I said to them all. “I know it’s been a bad night and the party’s over, but I have a kitchen full of food going to waste in here, and you all must be starving. You might as well eat.”
There’re forms of telepathy that belong strictly to families, and I could feel that particular current flowing through these people. Silently, balance shifted, and decisions were ceded. Mrs. Alden in particular looked for a long time at her balding husband. I noticed how she didn’t speak until he’d nodded.
“Thank you, Chef Caine. I think that would be a good idea.”
“Why don’t you sit down then? I’ll have things out in a second.”
I went back into the kitchen and set to work. A minute later, Trudy Lyons appeared with a tray. Her eyes looked red-rimmed, and the pucker was back around her mouth.
“I got this.” She didn’t look at me as she started loading up plates of salad. It occurred to me abruptly that I hadn’t seen her since she’d walked off with the warrant. And she’d have most certainly known about the timing of this little dinner party.
Now, however, was not the time to probe.
The late, much-scaled-down dinner service went smoothly. I saw nobody but Trudy. The only sounds that came back through that swinging door were the clatter of silverware against dishes and the occasional murmur of subdued conversation. Between getting the abbreviated set of courses ready, and starting cleanup, I had plenty of time to ponder the whole set of questions raised by the evening’s dramatic events. I was also painfully aware there were precious few places I could go for answers right now.
When Trudy came back from serving dessert, I had two plates of steak, potatoes, and salad ready, along with a fresh thermos of coffee.
“Thought you could probably use this.”
“Thanks, Chef Caine…”
“Charlotte. Pepper?” I held out the grinder.
“Great.”
“Coffee?”
“Hell, yeah.”
I filled her cup, made sure the cream pitcher was in easy reach, and settled down to my own dinner. We both ate, one ear on the dining room, alert for any sound of waning conversation.
“So, you worked for the Aldens long?” I asked, pouring another coffee for myself. It was a lame opening, but it was all I had.
Thankfully, Trudy didn’t seem to notice the lameness. “Since before she had the girls.”
“Must be nice to have a steady job.”
Trudy shrugged. “Usually. Although lately…” She set her cup down abruptly and rubbed her reddened eyes. “Charlotte…Damn, I’m going to sound like some kind of bigot or something, but…you know about…” She made the upside-down air quotes with one hand that had come to symbolize fangs in the pop culture. “Is it true they can control people with their gaze?”
This is one of those questions that comes up a lot. That’s no surprise, given the amount of misinformation about the vampire whammy flying around. “Yes, they can, but the whammy really only works for direct commands. It’s somewhere between difficult and impossible for a vampire to cause someone to, say, fall in love, or change their entire personality long term.”
“So, Deanna, you don’t think she’s doing this because that…vampire…is controlling her?”
“Well, I haven’t seen them together a whole lot, but I don’t think so.”
“I suppose that’s a relief.” Trudy pushed the remaining food around on her plate, then picked up her cup, looked at the coffee, and sipped.
“Do you know where they met?”
“Not exactly. Adrienne and Kay-Kay are active on a lot of charity boards and go to a lot of dinners. Deanna goes with them sometimes.” Kay-Kay? I tried to picture the Karina Alden I’d seen in front of Perception as a little girl who could have a nickname like “Kay-Kay,” and failed. “I think she started seeing Gabriel around the circuit, and even at a few private homes.” Which would tally with Anatole’s description of the Renaults as professional party guests.
I found myself wondering where Kay-Kay was right now, how she’d met Oscar, and when they’d started going out. I wondered when and why she’d left the paternal brownstone. The departure had clearly been recent. It also occurred to me that Oscar would have had this dinner on his schedule before he walked out, and he might have shared that schedule with Karina. The question was, was the raid the cover for the theft, or was the theft just a crime of the opportunity provided by the raid? Okay, that was one of the thousand questions.
“What I don’t get is why Gabriel would agree to marry her, or why she’d even want to marry him,” Trudy was saying.
“Vampires need human companionship. It’s not just about the blood.” I could have done without the mental jump cut to Anatole’s green eyes and wicked smile just then. “We give something to them that other nightbloods can’t. Deanna seems nice. Maybe Gabriel wants the company.”
“That should be a relief to hear, but it just seems so…twisted.” She frowned at her empty plate.
“A lot of this is hard to wrap your mind around if you’re not used to it.” I tried for gentleness, but I’m not very good at that, so she’d have to settle for blunt sympathy. “I guess working for the Maddoxes, you don’t get many chances to meet the local nightbloods.”
Trudy gave a tight little snort through her narrow nose. “Hardly. And after all we went through…” She stopped herself, made a face, and got to her feet. “They’re slowing down out there. I need to go clear plates.” She picked up her tray.
Damn. Again, I had no choice but the direct approach. “Trudy?”
“Mmm?”
“The other chef? Oscar Simmons? He said he was offered a bribe to disrupt things with the family. Do you think Lloyd might have tried to buy him off?”
Trudy turned away without answering, but as she started toward the door she said, “No way. Not his style. But Adrienne might.”
14
“How’s it going in here?”
When finally Brendan reemerged from the dining room, I was on my own, stacking plates into the commercial-grade dishwasher. Trudy had hung her keys up on the Peg-Board by the coat hooks and gone home a half hour before, with barely a word to me. I was left with nothing to do but clean, and wait.
I shrugged. “How’d it go out there?”
“About the same.” Brendan looked tired. On reflex, I wondered if he’d gotten enough to eat at dinner. Sitting with a group of relatives spoiling for a fight would be enough to sour anybody’s appetite. “Any idea where Gabriel took off to? Deanna came back just long enough to announce she wasn’t coming down anymore tonight and vanished upstairs with Peri and Lois, but we haven’t seen any of them since.”
Reflexively, my gaze swept all the kitchen doors. They’d developed this tendency to open at awkward moments to let in highly awkward people. This time, though, they stayed closed, so I told Brendan about giving Deanna and Gabriel Rafe Wallace’s phone number.
“Thanks,” he said softly. Then he straightened up, visibly trying to shake off what had turned into a very long night. “Aunt Adrienne said you’re staying here for the duration. I’ll show you your room.” Brendan picked up my suitcase from where I’d left it with the coats. He also grabbed an old-fashioned doctor’s bag I’d never seen before.
Well, I thought. That’s iiiiinteresting…My stomach started doing strange fluttery things. Nothing between Brendan and me had yet involved his needing a change of clothes. “I suppose you just happened to ask your aunt which room is mine?”
“Just happened to.” He should have smiled when he said it, one of his long, slow, lazy smiles. But he didn’t. The strange fluttery feelings died an early death.
Brendan led me all the way up the zigzagging back stairs to the fourth floor, right under the roof. Probably this attic space had once been servant’s quar
ters, but somebody had done some remodeling. The scarred door Brendan opened led to a lovely, airy bedroom with a sharply sloped ceiling. White pillows and handmade quilts covered a brass bed. The dresser and nightstand were bird’s eye maple. A chair with embroidered cushions stood in front of a pint-sized fireplace with a landscape painting hanging over its plaster mantel. The shades of blue and cream swirling in the Persian rug on the floor matched the colors in the curtains and the cushions on the window seat.
“Whoa,” I breathed.
“Aunt Adrienne wanted to make sure you’d be comfortable.” Brendan just about filled the tiny room as he squeezed past to lay my suitcase on the bed.
“I may never go home.” I had to lean down to push the window curtains back, but when I did, I found I also had a spectacular view of Manhattan lit up across the river.
A distinct warmth moved up close behind me. A moment later, I had the familiar weight of Brendan’s hands on my shoulders. “Charlotte, this really isn’t how I wanted you to meet my family.”
“There probably weren’t any good ways to introduce me to your grandfather. At least it’s out of the way now.” I turned. Brendan was very close, not that there was any other way for him to be in this room. The ceiling was so low, he had to slouch. He looked bashful and boyish doing it. Another time I would have noted how unbelievably cute it looked, but right then I was too worried about how worried he looked.
“Brendan? I’m going to ask this once. What the hell’s happened?”
“Something got stolen.”
That much I’d heard. “What was it?”
“You must have seen it on the mantel in the living room—that little silver gun.”
“Crap.” I thought about all those antiques neatly lined up in that black and white living room. When I’d walked in that first day, I’d wondered if they could be magic. Now I wondered if one could be this thing Brendan had talked about, the Arall.
“And, of course,” muttered Brendan, “we can’t find two of the nightbloods who were here, so…”
So of course everybody was all set to assume they stole it. The problem was, it was a reasonable assumption. “I don’t suppose anybody’s going to do something smart like call the cops?”
“What do you think?”
I’d already said what I thought. But I had other thoughts. In fact, I had a whole lot of thoughts. “You call them.”
Brendan shook his head. “I can’t.”
“Brendan!”
“I know! I know, and believe me I don’t like it either. If it were anything but the Arall, I’d have Linus O’Grady down here right now.”
“So, that gun was the Arall?” Who kept the family secrets on the mantelpiece? The most feared vampire hunters this side of the Atlantic, that’s who. Why? Who knew? I sure didn’t know, and clearly the man in front of me didn’t know, because he was slumping his shoulders even more now.
“You are not going to believe this,” said Brendan.
“Try me.”
“I don’t know if the gun is the Arall or not. I’ve never seen the Arall.”
“How can you have never seen it?”
“It’s a secret, Charlotte, and like the name says, it’s a last resort. I know it exists, but that’s it.”
“So, this stolen pistol—it could be the Arall, or the Jimmy Hoffa murder weapon, or anything.”
“Right. But Grandfather and Aunt Adrienne don’t want a fuss made about it going missing.”
“Really? How’s that working out for you guys?” I regretted the words as soon as I’d said them. “I’m sorry, Brendan. I shouldn’t have…It’s just turning into one of those nights.”
“Tell me about it, and you’re not wrong.” He lifted his head as far as he could without bashing into the ceiling. “I never should have let you get into this.”
“I’m a grown chef, Brendan. I knew I was jumping into a mess, and I could have said no.” I smiled, but Brendan was very clearly not going to play along with my attempt to lighten the mood. My stomach bunched itself up and tried to hide somewhere in back of my spine. “Brendan, what’s really going on here?”
“I don’t know.” He threw out his hands. One slammed against the wall, and he winced. “But I’ll tell you what. I’d give a lot to find out what ICE is doing raiding for vampires after dark.”
“What?”
Brendan looked at me as if I’d just achieved a supernatural level of density. It was not a look he’d repeat often, if we both knew what was good for him. “Come on, Charlotte. Who chases down vampires when they’re awake? You wait until daylight when they’re out cold, and then you go get them.”
I opened my mouth. I closed it. I slowly but silently enumerated all the kinds of idiot I was. You saw it all the time in the movies and on TV. Cops, or FBI agents, or other Good Guys burst in on the vampire hideout, stakes in hand, and a fight ensued with lots of blood and flying dust. But, of course, that wasn’t what really happened. Despite evidence to the contrary, cops and government agents aren’t stupid. If they know where the vampires are, all they have to do is wait for sunrise.
“Those badges were real,” I said weakly. “The warrant looked it too.” At least Trudy thought so, and she seemed to know what she was talking about.
“It was real. I checked.” Of course he had. It was the kind of thing a professional security expert would do. “And I made a call to a friend of mine at Immigration. He said those two agents are on the books, and on shift. But this ‘raid’ was staged.”
“So somebody could get his hands on that gun in the confusion?”
“Sure looks that way.” Brendan made a fist, pressed the side against the sloping ceiling, and leaned in. It was the slow-motion version of punching the wall.
“Is this about the wedding?” I asked. “I mean, they’ll have to postpone the event, right? Maybe that was the point.”
“It could be,” said Brendan slowly. “But this just doesn’t feel like my family with a mad on.”
“Why not?”
“Too clumsy. If anybody in our clan was going to put together something this big, you wouldn’t be able to see the seams. And when we go in after the vampires, they do not get away.” He said that the same way he’d say the sun would rise in the morning.
“Could it have been a warning shot of some kind? Somebody trying to scare somebody?”
“I think it must have been. But who?” Brendan started pacing, without seeing a thing in front of him, including me. “Who? Who? Who?”
“Do you think it has something to do with this particular set of vampires?”
“Or a particular Maddox.” He stopped in front of the mantel and glowered at the innocent landscape as if it were withholding evidence. “There are other clans who know about the Arall’s existence and are really worried about this wedding. One of those ICE agents might have been a warlock, and maybe he took the gun to keep it away from the Renaults. Could this get any more complicated?”
“Um…yes.” I told him about how I’d met up with Linus O’Grady outside Perception and what had happened afterward. Then I told him about how Jacques had introduced himself in the alleyway.
They invented the word “thunderous” to describe the expression that settled over Brendan right then. Jacques was very lucky he wasn’t anywhere in the house. If he was smart, he was nowhere in New York State.
“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.