Death A La Mode

by Tawdra Kandle

  Death A La Mode

  Recipe for Death, Book 2

  Copyright © 2015 by Tawdra Kandle

  ISBN: 978-1-68230-184-5

  All rights reserved. Without limiting the rights under copyright reserved above, no part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in or introduced into retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form, or by any means (electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise) without the prior written permission of both the copyright owner and the above publisher of this book.

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, brands, media, and incidents are either the products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. The author acknowledges the trademarked status and trademark owners of various products referenced in this work of fiction, which have been used without permission. The publication/use of these trademarks is not authorized, associated with, or sponsored by the trademark owners.

  Cover by Once Upon a Time Covers

  Formatting by Champagne Formats

  Title Page

  Copyright

  Dedication

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Rafe and Nell Go To The Beach

  Death A La Mode Play List

  Jackie’s Florida-Georgia Key Lime Pecan Pie

  Nana’s Perfect Pie Crust

  Al’s Prize-Winning Pecan Pie Recipe

  Spiced Pecans

  Other Books

  Acknowledgements

  About the Author

  In Memory of Nana, with love

  Thank you for spoiling me, for passing on to me your love of cooking and of reading and for sharing your Wonderful Pie Crust recipe. So much of who and what I am today is because of your love and attention, and I think of you and miss you every day.

  “WELL, THAT WAS fun.”

  Lucas slid me a sideways look as he pulled the car into his driveway. “Seriously?”

  “Yup.” I opened the door on my side and swung my legs out, stretching from the long ride. My feet hadn’t quite hit the green grass when a ball of white yapping fur attacked my ankles, small body writhing in the joy of reconciliation.

  “Oh, my sweet boy. Oh, did he miss his mommy? Was he a good boy for Mrs. Mac?” I scooped my puppy into my arms, crooning to him.

  “He was excellent.” My neighbor and good friend, Mrs. MacKenzie, ambled toward me. “But he definitely missed his mommy and daddy.”

  I raised one eyebrow and smirked. “Lucas hasn’t signed on as Makani’s daddy figure yet, Mrs. Mac. He’s not sure he can handle the responsibility. So for the time being, I’m still a single mom, struggling to make it on my own in the cold, cruel world.”

  “Oh, for crying out loud.” Lucas popped open the trunk and reached for a suitcase. “I love the fur ball as much as you do. I just don’t want to be labeled as his father. I’m more friend material.”

  I stood up, hoisting the dog with me. “Whatever you say. I’m taking your friend inside. Can you bring in my bag?”

  “Sure.”

  Mrs. Mac walked me to my front door. “Everything go okay? You two lovebirds seem a little tense.”

  I forced a smile. “Oh, yeah, it was fine. You know, it was a, uh, business trip. These things aren’t really for fun.” I swallowed back the memory of the living room at the Carruthers townhouse. “But we’re good.”

  “All right, honey. Well, you know, if you need to talk, I’m just next door.” She patted my arm. “I’ll go home now and let you get settled. Breakfast tomorrow at the diner?”

  “You got it.” I waited until the door closed behind her and then I set down Makani. The mail that had accumulated in my absence was piled on the kitchen counter. I flipped through it until one flyer caught my eye.

  “Oh, no, she didn’t.”

  “What’s that?” Lucas dropped my suitcase onto the floor and came up behind me to read over my shoulder. “‘Join us this year at the Perfect Pecan Pie Festival as Bitsy’s Bites reclaims the blue ribbon!’ Huh. Isn’t that the pie contest you were talking about last week?”

  “Yes, of course it is, and that bitch Bitsy thinks she’s going automatically win it just because Al—because he’s not here anymore to make his special pie? Well, she’s going to be surprised when I enter a pie that blows her stupid little pastry right out of the water.” I crumpled the paper in my fist. “I will not disgrace Al’s memory by letting her win. Not while there’s breath in this body.” I threw the balled flyer toward the trash can, where it hit the rim and bounced onto the floor. Kobe Bryant I was not.

  Lucas crossed his arms over his chest and stared me down. “Seriously, Jackie?”

  I narrowed my eyes. “You keep saying that. Like there’s something to talk about and I’m blowing it off.”

  “Oh, no, nothing at all.” He shrugged. “We just got back home after we helped bring someone back from across the Divide. We brought someone back from the dead, Jackie. And you were possessed by a spirit, and we’ve just found out the end of the world as we know it is imminent. And yet you’re freaking out over a pie contest?”

  I blinked up at him. “The pie contest happens before the end of the world. Come on, Lucas. Learn to prioritize.”

  “Jackie, we need to talk about this.” He raked one hand through his brown hair. “What happened to you this week—it was huge. And horrible. And fucking scary, for me at least.”

  “Yeah? Well, I think it’s the last thing I want to rehash. For the past three days, you and Cathryn and Nell and Rafe have all been treating me like I might fall to pieces if you look at me the wrong way. And then Zoe poking at me for hours . . . it’s done. Let’s move on.”

  “We all . . . we just care about you, Jacks, and we’re worried. Zoe wanted to make sure Delia didn’t do any lasting damage.”

  At the mention of her name, I could hear her screams again, feel the clawing of her nails on my soul, as Lucas ripped her from my body. My heart pounded with the fear that she’d exuded, silently begging me not to let her go back to the gray place. Without meaning to, I winced. I turned away from Lucas, but apparently I wasn’t fast enough.

  “Hey, what’s that?” He caught my chin and gently nudged me to look up. “What’s wrong? Are you in pain?”

  “Of course not.” I jerked away. “I keep telling you, I’m fine. Now, can we please just get back to life in the real world?” I stooped to pick up the crumpled flier from the floor and dropped it into the trash can. “I’m going to run over to the diner for a little bit, just to check in and see that everything’s okay.”

  “Sure.” Lucas folded his arms over his chest. “Want to bring something back for dinner, and I’ll meet you over here when you’re done?”

  I hesitated. “I’m kind of exhausted. If you don’t mind, I think I’ll just eat something there while I catch up with everyone, and then come home and go right to bed.”

  Lucas frowned, but after a silent beat, he nodded. “All right.”

  We stood in the kitchen for another few minutes, awkward, with neither of us speaking. I swallowed over the lump in my throat. We’d never had a real fight, only disagreements, occasional flares of snappy tempers and a day or two each month when I may have been a little difficult to be around. But now the air was heavy and uncomfortable. I was suffocating, and I needed to get out.

  As if he could sense it—and maybe he could; between his vampire abilities and his death broker powers, we still weren’t entirely sure of all he could do—Lucas pushed away from the kitchen counter.
<
br />   “I’ll be home, so if you need anything, just come over. Or yell. Otherwise I’ll see you tomorrow.” I noticed that he didn’t make it a question. He wasn’t going to let me burrow.

  I decided I’d deal with that later. “Of course.”

  Lucas leaned forward and kissed my cheek. “Tell everyone at Leone’s that I said hello.”

  “Will do.” I stood still while he swung open the kitchen door. Turning my head, I watched him walk across the strip of grass between our houses, up the two steps to his deck and disappear through his back door.

  Heaviness settled over me, and I rubbed my eyes, suddenly weary. I hadn’t slept well since that afternoon at the townhouse where, together with Carruthers Initiative Institute’s agents Rafe, Nell, Cathryn and Julia the necroloquitar, Lucas and I had taken part in a ritual to bring over the spirit of Delia, a Carruthers employee who’d turned out to be a traitor. For reasons that still weren’t entirely clear to me, prior to her death Delia had joined with the Hive, an organization that was seeking to bring about the end of the world. Cathryn wanted to question her to see if she had information that would help in the fight to bring down the Hive.

  The ritual hadn’t gone as planned, unfortunately, despite Cathryn’s insistence that she’d taken steps to protect us all. Instead of summoning just Delia into this plane, Nell’s spell had also brought forth another dead Carruthers agent, Rafe’s former girlfriend Joss. And as an added fun bonus, when Delia did make a sort-of appearance, it was inside me, the innocent bystander. She’d forced me down deep into my head, and for a terrifying time, I hadn’t been able to speak or even think.

  I hugged my arms around my middle and took a deep breath. Even thinking about it now made me shake. It was as though my world had turned upside down and inside out. When I’d met Lucas and eventually discovered his . . . quirk . . . of course it’d taken some getting used to. He himself was still adjusting to what had happened to him right before he’d moved to Florida, to the house right next door to mine. Through a bizarre twist of events that none of us quite understood yet, he was some sort of hybrid of vampire and death broker. His vampire half only meant that he needed to ingest blood on a regular basis and didn’t like garlic. The death broker deal was more involved; it meant that he was transported to the scene of deaths, where he sent the dearly departed soul to its destination.

  At first I’d thought he was insane, and then I’d gotten a front row seat to one of his death assignments. Unfortunately, it had been the murder scene of one of my dearest friends, Al Leone. The shock of losing Al had mixed with the realization that everything Lucas had told me about himself was true, and suddenly it hadn’t seemed so improbable anymore. Over the past months, I’d come to accept the new dimension to my life. I’d made friends with my boyfriend’s blood supplier Nichelle (it helped that I’d delivered her baby on my front yard). I kept garlic out of any dish I made for him. When I rolled over in the middle of the night and found an empty bed, I didn’t freak out, since it meant Lucas had been called to a death.

  Even when his mind-hearing ex-lover Cathryn, who was also his sort-of boss at Carruthers, came down to visit, I pasted on a happy face. So we hung out with a different crowd than most couples did. We double-dated with Rafe, a mind manipulator, and his girlfriend Nell, a powerful witch. Really, was I going to gripe? Before I’d met Lucas, my closest friend in the state was born during the Great Depression. It took all kinds to make the world go ‘round.

  But what had happened four days ago was a whole new level of crazy. The ritual, the ghost and the whole being possessed deal had unsettled me, forcing me to question everything that was going on in my life.

  Well, almost everything. There was one constant in my life that always felt comfortable and right.

  After their father’s killer was brought to justice—in this case, justice meant a long vacation in a mental hospital in New York state—Al’s family had offered to sell me his diner. Taking over Leone’s had meant giving up my job as a featured food columnist for Food International magazine, but that hadn’t been a hardship. The bigger challenge had been figuring out how not to screw up the popular Palm Dunes restaurant by making too many changes. But I was learning. And getting over there now felt like the best thing I could do. I needed a little normal.

  Leone’s was only a five-minute drive from my house. The diner was just outside the small over-fifty-five community where I lived as the youngest member. I’d moved in with my grandmother when she’d gotten sick, and then when she’d passed away, Nana had left me her house—with the approval of the community’s board of directors, which had grandfathered me—or maybe more accurately grandmothered me—into the neighborhood. Something similar had happened with Lucas, though it was his aunt who’d willed him her house.

  I turned my car into the small parking lot, pleased to see that it was pretty full even though it was between our normal lunch rush and the dinner run. It was true that many of our patrons tended to eat their meals a little early; Lucas joked that breakfast was served at four AM, lunch at ten and dinner at three. But still, this many customers during off-hours gave me a happy I really needed today.

  When I walked through the door, familiar scents greeted me. A welcome mix of brewing coffee, garlic-infused red gravy and baking bread felt so right, so normal, that to my utter surprise and mortification, I burst into tears.

  “Jackie! Welcome back.” Mary, who’d started here as a waitress decades before and now was my manager, hurried toward me. When she got closer, she frowned. “Honey, what’s wrong?”

  I shook my head and wiped at my cheeks. “Nothing. I don’t know. I just opened the door and the smell—I guess I realized how much I miss Al. And even Nana.” Sniffling, I reached for the napkin dispenser on a nearby table. “I don’t know what’s wrong with me.”

  Mary steered me to an empty booth at the back of the diner. “Did something happen on your trip?”

  I dabbed at my nose, wishing I could tell Mary the truth. “No, everything was fine.”

  She tilted her head, studying me with narrowed eyes. “Did you and the boy have a spat?”

  “No.” I bit back a smile. Lucas hadn’t been a boy in many a year, but to Mary, anyone under fifty fell into that category. “We’re good.”

  “Hmmmm.” She dropped her gaze to the edge of the table. “You’re not . . . ahhh . . .” Mary’s lips twitched. “I know I was very emotional when I was expecting.”

  I was confused for a second before realization dawned. “Oh, Mary, no. No, I’m not pregnant. I promise. I think it was just the stress of being away and then coming back. I haven’t really been gone since we lost Al.”

  “That’s true, hon. And I know it’s hard. Sometimes I turn around from the stove and could swear I hear him giving me a hard time, asking if I put enough salt in the soup or whatever. We all miss him.”

  Thinking of Al in the kitchen nudged my memory. “Speaking of missing Al, guess what I got in the mail? I’ll give you a hint. It was from someone whose name starts with B and ends in an ‘itsy’.”

  “Oh . . .” Mary’s eyes darkened. “That puta.”

  “Mary!” I stared at her, choking down a laugh. “I mean . . . that’s not even Italian.”

  She groaned and covered her face. “Sorry. It’s that daughter-in-law of mine. She talks like that in the kitchen at home, and she’s rubbing off on me. I should know better.”

  “Really. If you’re going to cuss, Mary, at least you need to keep it in your native language.” I paused. “But you’re not wrong. Bitsy’s a pain in the ass, and I can’t believe she’d go after the Triple P when Al hasn’t even been gone a year.”

  “Jealous, that’s what she is. Always has been. Al was good to her, offered to help her out when she opened her trashy little place, but she was snooty even then. Told him she was going to run a high-class establishment. I said to Al when I heard that, sounds like she’s planning to open a brothel. He scolded me, but who was right? Jealous little thing, and now she t
hinks that because Al’s gone, she can take over the Triple P title.”

  “And we don’t have Al’s recipe for the pie?”

  “We do, but Jackie, he never followed the recipe. He added some stuff, and he never wrote it down, and I have no idea what it was.”

  “Damn.” I folded my hands loosely on the table.

  “Yeah, if there was only some way we could ask him, right?” She winked at me. “Hey, I know what, we’ll have a séance and see if we can get Al to come back and tell us.”

  Nausea churned in my stomach. “No. Not a good idea.”

  “I was just kidding.” Mary’s forehead wrinkled. “Are you okay?”

  “Yeah, sorry.” I slid out of the booth. “Is there anything I need to look at before I go? Anything unusual happen while I was gone?”

  “No, just business as usual. Everything’s on the weekly report.” Mary stood up, too. “Jackie, you know, maybe you don’t have to recreate Al’s pie. You’re a wonderful cook. Why don’t you just make up your own? You could blow that Bitsy woman out of the water.”

  I leaned my hand against the back of the booth. “Do you think so?”

  Mary grinned. “Damned right. You’re a hell of a baker. And that pecan pie’ll be even sweeter when we can rub it in Bitsy’s face.”

  “I don’t have much time. The festival’s only two weeks away.” I chewed the corner of my lip. “I’d have to work on it almost non-stop. It’ll take away from the time I can spend here.”

  Mary raised her eyebrows and cocked her head. “Uh-huh. Don’t worry, I think we’ll soldier on.”

  “Fine.” I threw up my hands. “You don’t need me. Then I’m going home to make pies.”

  “Give ‘em hell, honey.” Mary patted my back. “Baking is good for the soul.”

  I WENT TO bed early that night, hoping to catch up on the sleep I’d missed the last few days. Just before I climbed under the covers with Makani snuggled at my side, I allowed myself a glance over to my next-door neighbor. I could see one light on in his kitchen, which meant either Lucas had gone to sleep, too, or—and this was the more likely scenario—he’d been called to a death. Either way, the house was quiet. I almost reached for my phone to text him good night, but something stayed my hand.