Let Them Eat Stake: A Vampire Chef Novel

by Sarah Zettel

  But then, so could Anatole. And I knew that, and I still didn’t tell him to stop coming around to see me and walk me places and smile his smile full of promises at me.

  At three thirty in the dark of a spring morning, I cleaned the kitchen, packed up the food I’d made, wrote the contents of the fridge and the bread box on the chalkboard glued to the stainless steel fridge, and climbed the stairs to my bedroom, trying very hard not to think anymore.

  21

  “You look tired,” said Brendan when we’d finished a brief but pleasant greeting kiss. “Want a drink?”

  “Yes. A lot.”

  I’d spent most of the day at Nightlife, helping Reese, Zoe, Marie, and Mel coordinate staff and deliveries. It was Monday, so the restaurant was closed. This gave us a chance to work on logistics and to use the kitchen to test and refine our Big Day recipes. Then Reese and I hightailed it back to Brooklyn for the bridesmaids’ tea. Now, those same bridesmaids, and the bride, were off at whatever bachelorette shenanigans they had planned. I could have hidden under that little brass bed upstairs. I could have gone home to Queens for fresh clothes and television. I didn’t. I called Brendan. I was, as he observed with his trained security consultant eyes, tired—deeply, heavily tired. But I was also scared, angry, and confused. To top it all off, people were lying to me, which is not something I take to well even when nobody’s dead. I wanted to be with Brendan. I desperately needed to tell somebody exactly how messed up things were, and he was the only one I could trust with the whole story.

  Besides, this was his family. He needed to know what was going on, whether they wanted him to or not.

  I followed Brendan into his living room. The first time I stepped into this gorgeous SoHo loft, the place was pristine. It featured white walls, comfortably full bookcases, blond wood floors, and the kind of clean white leather furniture that only a person without kids or pets can own. The place had looked staged for sale.

  Since his paranormal security firm got the city contract, however, that had changed. Maps, blueprints, and reports had taken over Brendan’s home. Papers buried the dining room table, created foot-high stacks on the spare chairs, and completely engulfed the coffee table. Schematics big enough to cover one of Nightlife’s four top tables were taped to the walls above Brendan’s desk, which looked like nothing more than a uniform layer of paper on four legs.

  I peered at the new representations of city landmarks that had gone up since I’d last been there. “Homeland Security’s going to come knocking on your door if they find out about this.”

  “Them? I’ve got them on speed dial.” Brendan knows my drink preferences and had taken to stocking single malts. He poured me a healthy measure of amber liquid and handed it over as I took a seat at the far end of his butter soft leather sofa. It was the one part of the room not drowning in paper. I suspected that was because he’d taken to sleeping on it.

  “Thank you.” I sipped the fine scotch and let the heat of the alcohol and Brendan’s presence uncurl in my veins.

  Brendan touched my arm as he sat down at the other end of the sofa.

  “It’s been a day,” I admitted. “More like a day and a half.”

  “I’m not surprised. Did you find anything in Oscar’s office?”

  “Oscar tore some pages out of his most recent notebook and shredded them.” I fished out the crumpled piece of list and handed it over. “That’s what’s left, as near as I can tell.”

  Time and being carried around in my pocket had not done good things for my pathetic little scrap of a clue. Brendan gave me a meaningful look. I blushed. He went over to his paper-bound desk and switched on the lamp. He bent down under it and held the scrap up about an inch from his nose.

  “What’s this first one? ‘Acon’…‘aconti’?”

  “I was hoping you could tell me. Whatever it’s written in, I can’t read it. The second line looks like ‘CH’ something, but I don’t think he finished it.”

  Brendan was quiet for a long moment, turning the paper this way and that, searching for some angle that would make Oscar’s scrawl legible. “Shit,” he breathed.

  “What?”

  “This last line. It’s Old Welsh.”

  “You read Old Welsh?” I held up my hand before he could give me that special look. “Of course you do. What’s it say?”

  “I’m not sure. The guy had truly terrible handwriting. It’s a smeared scrap, and he was copying something he probably couldn’t read. But see,” he said, turning the paper so I could in fact see. “It’s got the double f’s and the double l’s and y’s in the middle of the words. That’s almost exclusive to Welsh.” He squinted at it again. “Can I keep this?”

  I waved the scotch glass at him. “Go ahead. I’m not getting anywhere with it.”

  “How was Karina when you saw her?”

  “She is not okay. She’d been crying and was about to start again. She was drifting too, as if she had too much churning around inside and she was trying to keep it all under wraps.” This would make a lot of sense if she’d killed her ex-boyfriend, or if she knew who did.

  “We don’t know for sure it was murder,” Brendan reminded me. “Let alone that it was a Maddox.”

  “No,” I looked down into my scotch. “Except.”

  “Should I be sitting down for this?” inquired Brendan lightly.

  “Yes.”

  Brendan’s attempt at a smile faded, and he sank into his desk chair. Slowly, in simple words neither one of us would have to struggle to understand, I told him about my conversation with O’Grady, and the holes in the garden, and how he’d been harboring suspicions about Aunt Adrienne Alden for a quarter century.

  When I’d finished, Brendan bowed his head and scrubbed at his scalp with both hands, hard. “I hate this,” he muttered. “I hate this feeling of trying to choose which family member I’d rather have be a murderer.”

  There were no words anywhere in the language that could cover that, so I just took his hand. Brendan squeezed my fingers, hard. But I have strong hands, and I just let him hold on to me for a change.

  “I’m sorry,” I told him.

  “Me too.” Brendan’s knuckles had gone white. He didn’t let go, and I didn’t ask him to.

  “Did…Did O’Grady say anything else about the death of that NYU student?” he asked after a while.

  I shook my head. “Maybe Oscar was trying blackmail? He was sleeping with Karina. She may have packed up on her family, but I’d bet money she knew exactly what each one of them was doing.” I remembered how she lied to me about how close in touch with her father she still was. “Maybe she knew about her mother’s history with O’Grady.”

  “Or maybe somebody in the house was worried about what Oscar might tell Karina. He was an haute noir chef, wasn’t he?” I nodded. “So he would have had connections around the nightblood community. Maybe he knew something about the Renaults, and they didn’t want him spreading it around.”

  I hadn’t thought about that. I was so used to seeing Oscar as a blowhard, I hadn’t even stopped to think he might actually be a real threat on any front. “It’s possible, except Oscar died during daylight hours.”

  “Poison doesn’t have to be immediate.”

  Now there was a nasty idea. I could think of several ways poison could be a ticking time bomb, and I wasn’t even trying hard. “There’s another possibility,” I said slowly.

  “What?”

  “That this doesn’t have anything to do with the wedding. Karina’s working the luxury market in a down economy. Among all the other things he was, Oscar was a tight-fisted bastard. Maybe he got her to develop a perfume for him, and then stole the recipe and broke up with her, with the intent to give the formula to somebody who would make it for cheap.” New York was second only to Beijing for being able to counterfeit designer anything-you-could-ask-for. There was no reason perfume should be tougher to fake than, say, handbags. “That’d explain the list. It’s a perfume formula.”

  Brendan pi
cked up the crumpled scrap again. “Maybe, maybe,” he muttered. “If he got it off Karina, it’d explain the Welsh. A lot of us use it as kind of a code for personal messages, since next to nobody outside the family reads it. But would that be enough to kill somebody over?”

  “It’d mean the loss of some major dollars,” I said. “If Karina’s business had been taking a hit, it could mean the difference between life and death for her company.”

  Brendan nodded. “I could find out some of the financial information, but there’s a risk Karina’d get word I was looking into her business.”

  I looked at the dregs of my scotch. “I have an idea,” I told him slowly. “But you’re not going to like it.”

  Brendan’s smile was tight and humorless. “I’m braced. What is it?”

  “I do know a journalist who is temporarily on the society beat.”

  We locked eyes, and I watched half a dozen emotions chase one another’s tails behind Brendan’s storm blue eyes.

  “Call him,” he said finally.

  I pulled out my phone and hit Anatole’s number before either one of us could change our minds.

  “Good evening, Charlotte.” Even over the phone, Anatole’s voice had a silken quality that made me want to lean closer. “To what do I owe this unique pleasure?”

  “Hello, Anatole. I need a favor.”

  “Do you indeed?” I could picture the golden sparks dancing in his green eyes. And judging by the way he was carefully not looking at me, so could Brendan.

  “A professional favor,” I said to both of them.

  “I am most profoundly disappointed,” said Anatole.

  “Sorry.”

  “What is the nature of this favor?”

  “I cannot believe I am about to say this. I need to know if there’s any dish on Karina Alden.”

  “May I ask why you would be so suddenly interested in sordid society gossip?”

  I rolled my eyes. I swear, Anatole heard the gesture. “Ah. I understand. You are intimately involved with yet more problematic Maddoxes and are looking to extricate yourself. I will, of course, be glad to help in this effort.” There were way too many layers of meaning in that, but I decided to let them all go. “I will, however, expect a favor in return,” Anatole went on.

  “Sevarin…”

  “A professional favor, of course.”

  I sighed. “I’ll fax you over a copy of the wedding menu.”

  “Not enough.”

  Vamp bastard. “I’ll see if I can arrange for you to be at the tasting for the new nightblood champagne cocktail.”

  “And we will meet privately to discuss this situation.”

  “Too far, Sevarin.”

  “Charlotte, would I ask this if it were not important?”

  “I don’t know. Maybe.”

  “That is uncomfortably close to the truth. Very well, it will not be part of the favor, but I assure you, we need to talk.”

  “Okay, Anatole, we’ll play this your way. Why do we need to talk?”

  “Because I’ve just had a very interesting conversation with Henri Renault.”

  That shattered my thoughts as effectively as a brick dropped onto plate glass. “You…You know where Henri is?” I said slowly, making sure Brendan heard every word.

  “Alas, no. We conversed over the phone. And you may tell your Brendan if he takes this phone from you, I will not speak to him.”

  I looked at Brendan, who did in fact have his hand reaching straight for my phone. Scary.

  “Well, what did Henri say?” I asked Anatole. “What does he want?”

  “I am not at leisure to speak of it at this time.” That made me wonder where Anatole was, and who he was with. Unfortunately, unlike some people, I lacked the ability to see through cell phones. “I will meet you tomorrow night, and we will discuss recent events in full then.”

  Okay, maybe I couldn’t see through cell phones, but I could smell a rat at a hundred yards. “You’re not talking because Brendan’s here and you’re being pissy.”

  “Charlotte, you cut me to the quick. I have never in all the years of my existence been ‘pissy.’” But he didn’t add anything else. The amused and patient silence stretched out until I couldn’t take it anymore.

  “Okay. I’ll call you tomorrow after sundown.” I very carefully did not look at Brendan.

  “And I, in my turn, will see what I can find out for you about Karina Alden, Oscar Simmons, and Exclusivité.”

  I told him thanks, and we hung up. Brendan, as usual was making me be the one to avoid meeting eyes.

  “What happened? Why’d Renault call Anatole?”

  “He wouldn’t tell me. He wants to meet tomorrow night,” I said, then added, “I said yes, and no. I don’t know what he’s up to, but I expect we’ll find out tomorrow. Sorry.” Too much was happening too fast. I wasn’t used to keeping up with this many different kinds of puzzles. That heavy wave of tiredness I’d ridden in there was looming again, and this time it might just take me all the way under.

  Slowly, Brendan stood. He crossed the room until he stood directly in front of me and reached out one finger under my chin to tip my face up toward his.

  “I have leftover Chinese takeout in the fridge,” he said quietly.

  “You are a god among men,” I answered.

  Unfortunately, being full of braised noodles with cloud ear mushrooms, spicy shrimp, and not-so-crispy-anymore duck with plum sauce, all washed down with hot tea and the rest of that glass of scotch, did nothing to convince my body I was not short on sleep. After about the fifteenth jaw-cracking yawn, I agreed to let Brendan drive me back to Brooklyn Heights. He tried to talk me into going back to my own apartment in Queens. Maybe that would have been smarter, but somehow that would have felt like I was retreating, and I wasn’t ready to do that, not yet.

  So, Brendan walked me up to my warded bedroom and kissed me at the door. We leaned together for a long moment and fumbled through one of our non-good-bye good-byes. Then I shut the door behind myself, locked it, and flopped down on my back on that brass bed. My eyes closed, and I jerked them open again. They closed again, and this time I sat up, swearing. There was another call I needed to make before I let myself fall asleep.

  I pulled out my phone, hit my brother’s number, and waited.

  “C3?” said Chet after the fourth ring. “What’s up?”

  “Nothing. Too much.” I’d thought I’d known what I was going to say, but now that I had Chet on the line, all my casual openings had dried up and blown away.

  “Um, Charlotte? It’s kinda got to be one or the other of those.”

  “Chet…” This was a mistake. I was going to regret this in the morning—later in the morning. But in my head, I kept hearing Karina Alden’s contempt as she talked about her magic-wielding sister, and that got me thinking about all the arguments I’d had with Chet. That, in turn, got me thinking about how many of those arguments I had started, for no good reason at all. “Chet, the whole thing with the loan. I’m sorry.”

  “It’s okay, C3,” my vampire brother said. “Tell you what. You got time to get together tomorrow night?”

  “You’ll still be in town?”

  “I can be.”

  There are moments in your life when you know it’s time to just grow up, and for me, this was one of them. “I’d appreciate that. It’s gotten complicated out here. Oscar’s death is just part of it. Chet, I need your help.”

  From Chet’s side of the phone came the kind of absolute silence only the waking dead can project. Finally, he said, “You need my help?”

  Oh, crap. “Chet…”

  “You. Need. My help.”

  “Do not make this any harder than it has to be.”

  “Sorry, but, who are you, and what have you done with Charlotte Caine?”

  “Chet!”

  The dry, snuffling sounds of my brother trying and failing to stifle his laughter bubbled through the phone. “Okay, okay, I’m sorry.”

  “The he
ll you are.”

  “So, I’m not, but I will be there.”

  “I haven’t told you where yet.”

  “Wherever. You’re my sister.”

  It took a long moment for me to get my throat loose enough to say anything else. “Thanks, C4.” Chet came after me, so he got to be C4 to my C3. Nobody else calls us by those names. “I’ll call you tomorrow after sunset.”

  “I’ll keep the phone on.”

  We said good-bye, and I hung up and laid the phone on the nightstand. My eyes stung, and my cheeks felt way too hot, the way they do right before you start crying for no reason at all. Which I was so not going to do.

  I dropped onto the cushioned window seat and shoved up the sash so I could inhale a deep breath of spring. I told myself the nascent tears came from being painfully tired. It felt like a million years since Felicity had burst into the Nightlife kitchen. There was so much going wrong in so many different places, I had no idea which way to turn. I wanted rest. I wanted my life back. I wanted never to have said yes to Felicity.

  I stared down into the Aldens’ garden, trying to shove all this far enough into the back of my brain to open up room for sleep. My eyes adjusted slowly to the darkness, and I was able to separate the shadows into comprehensible shapes. Standing in the middle of the blobs and blurs of trees and carefully arranged flower beds were two silhouettes—a woman’s and a man’s. They stood close, hands on shoulders, foreheads pressed together. The wind changed direction, rustling my crisp curtains and bringing scattered words with it.

  “…Don’t know why I love you…can’t help it…wouldn’t change it…just don’t understand why…”