by Sarah Zettel
I sighed and turned down the burner under the shallots. “The cops have the body. I can’t talk to Chet until sundown, which isn’t for another fifteen minutes and thirty-three seconds. I’ve already left six messages for Elaine, our PR rep, but I think she’s avoiding me. The only other thing I’m good for right now is sitting around staring like a deer in the headlights. You want to support me in my hour of need? Eat something.” I gestured toward the plates laid out on the coffee table—crostini with olive tapenade, a Mediterranean couscous salad with chicken and green grapes beside a plate of toasted pita triangles, and sliced apples with this killer sour cream, spice and honey fruit dip.
“Oh. Well.” Jessie plunked down onto the sofa next to Trish and reached for a cheese straw. She swirled it in the asparagus dip and took a nibble, letting me see that she did this only to humor me. But as she chewed her expression changed. “Mmmm . . .” She took a healthier bite.
Some of the tension left my shoulders and I went back to spanking my pomegranate, which is nowhere near as kinky as it sounds. I’d been playing around with an idea for a warm pomegranate salad with wilted greens and white-wine-and-shallot vinaigrette for the restaurant. Now was as good a time as any to try the idea out. The only greens we had on hand were in the form of a giant bag of arugula, which wasn’t exactly what I’d wanted. I was thinking a mix of dandelion greens and micro watercress, but the arugula helped me get the general idea.
I was tasting the vinaigrette and considering if it needed more pepper when the sun dropped below the horizon. Ten seconds later Chet’s ringtone, “Bela Lugosi’s Dead,” sounded on my cell phone. I dropped my spoon. Trish snatched the phone up off the table and tossed it to me. I caught it in midlunge and stabbed at the screen.
“Where are you?” I inquired.
“I’m home. Charlotte, what the hell . . . ?”
I told him about finding Dylan Maddox dead in our foyer. Ever the eloquent one, my kid brother replied, “Shit.”
“The cops want to talk to you, Chet.”
Over the phone, very faintly, came the sound of a door buzzer. “I think they’re here.”
My throat seized up. “Don’t say anything. Trish’s got a lawyer friend who specializes—”
“I don’t need a lawyer.”
Oh, no. “Those words did not come out of your mouth, little brother, because I know you are not suicidal.”
“Charlotte, I didn’t do anything. I don’t need a lawyer.”
Nononononono. “This is not about what you did or didn’t do. This is about the Paranormal Squadron and the dead Maddox having bite marks on his neck!”
The buzzer sounded again. “I’m going to get the door Don’t worry, Charlotte. It’ll be fine.”
It’ll be fine. Coming from Chet, those words were as dangerous as “Hey, guys, watch this!” from a frat boy. “Chet!”
“I’ll call back as soon as I’m done here.”
“Do not hang up on me! Chet!”
I was talking to myself.
Trish was already on her cell. “Rafe? Yeah . . . he did. . . . No, I’d go straight downtown. . . . He’s going to try to brush you off. . . . Ha-ha, maybe not . . . Thanks. She owes you one.”
“I’ve got to get over there.”
“No.” Trish put her very solid self between me and the door. “You don’t. Let Rafe handle it.”
“But . . .”
Trish held up her hand. “You already talked to Linus O’Grady, right?”
That stopped me. “You know him?”
“Gimme strength,” muttered Trish to the ceiling. “Every criminal lawyer in the five boroughs knows Little Linus. You go in there to defend your little brother, he’s going to look up at you with those puppy-dog eyes and next thing you know you’ll be writing Chet’s confession for him.”
I remembered those eyes. I swallowed.
Trish took my hands. “Let Rafe work. Just . . .” She rubbed a smear of Ricotta off the back of my hand and picked a fragment of arugula off my sleeve. “Just cook something, okay?”
“I’ve cooked everything.” The little undertone of helplessness was just stress. Really.
“Then we’ll have to go grocery shopping.” Trish let me go and slung her purse, which was big enough to hold a whole week’s worth of briefings, over her shoulder. “Come on, Jessie.”
“I don’t think she should be left alone.” Jessie had picked up a second slice of crostini.
“Your dear friend and roommate is in dire straits and needs food. You are coming with.”
A fresh wave of gratitude ran through me. Jessie was a good roommate, and a good person. But if she stayed here, she’d try to get me to release and to start a course of lemon-scented aromatherapy and detoxing bath salts. And I would say what the hell good is a lemon scent not attached to something you can eventually eat? It would all go downhill from there, and probably end with my attacking her with a micro-plane grater.
“All right, all right. I’m coming with.” Jessie’s purse was a minuscule Kate Spade custom job in Mary Sue Red (sorry, Mary Sue Scarlet). It had been her prize for most new facials given in March.
And she thinks I’m nuts.
“Don’t answer the phone,” said Trish. “Don’t open the door.”
“Get some fresh spinach. I’ll make a frittata for breakfast.”
“Will do. Come on, Jess.” Trish jerked Jess upright from in front of the closet, where she was crouching to set all her little gift bags upright.
“Coming, coming.”
The door closed and I stood alone in the middle of the kitchen. The truth was, I’d not only cooked everything, I’d used every pan in the place. This was actually a good thing, because it meant I could switch anoking to cleaning without having to sit down and look at the clock, or the door, or my phone.
I wrapped up the thank-you foods and stashed them in the fridge for later delivery. Then I dumped the pots and pans into the sink along with hot water and healthy squirts of dish soap. We had an ultra-compact dishwasher, but I needed to scrub.
Two pots and three half-sheet pans later, the door buzzer sounded. I jumped, showering suds everywhere.
You promised Trish.
The buzzer sounded again.
And there’s probably still a flock of local media vultures outside.
The spirit was willing, but the flesh was as curious as your average cat. Dripping foam from wrists and fingertips, I crossed to the intercom and leaned my elbow against the button.
“Are you anybody I know?”
“Yes,” said the smooth, confident voice.
It was Anatole Sevarin.
5
I stared at the speaker grille. I’d been doing a lot of staring. My eyeballs were beginning to ache.
“Chef Caine?”
“Yes? Yes.”
“May I speak with you, please?”
“Errrrmmm . . .” An apartment full of plates, platters and bowls of food suddenly loomed large in the background.
“Is there a problem?”
“Well . . .” Now, obviously, when I promised Trish not to open the door to anybody, that had not included prominent dining critics, who are not just anybody. For this particular critic, however, there were some secondary considerations. “I’ve been cooking for the last four hours, and there’s a trace of garlic in here.”
Given the nature of my restaurant, I can’t use garlic in my professional life. So when I’m at home, I occasionally go a little overboard. There had been, however, no need for Trish to open all the windows.
“I believe I shall find the resources to endure.”
“If you’re sure, then come on up.” A small voice in the back of my mind said this was a bad idea, but it couldn’t give me a clear answer why.
“Thank you.”
That was how I ended up buzzing one of the city’s most powerful vampires—from a restaurateur’s standpoint anyway—into my apartment.
I took the time until his arrival at my actual door to open the
kitchen window again. Trish was exaggerating for regular people, but this was a vampire. The Center for Allergies and Immunology spends millions each year to figure out why garlic and wolfsbane do what they do. The vampire lobby is ambivalent about this, because no one’s talking about what’ll actually be done with the information once they’ve got it.
I keep lamb’s blood cubes seasoned with rosemary in the freezer in case Chet drops by. He doesn’t do it often, so they can get old. The date on the bag said this batch was still good. I dropped four dark red cubes into a widemouthed hand-thrown ceramic mug that I’d gotten from a starving artist friend in exchange for dinner. Twfrutes on high in the microwave, and I’d have body temperature.
Anatole Sevarin knocked.
Unsurprisingly, Sevarin looked as sharp and unruffled as when I had last seen him. Tonight, he wore a gray sport coat over a dark maroon button-down and pressed gray trousers. A sudden vision of how he would look in black tie swept over me. The sensations brought on by this picture were not fit for public consumption.
Sevarin’s gaze roamed around the apartment, taking in the dishes and platters that occupied every flat surface. His nose didn’t exactly wrinkle, but I had the distinct impression it wanted to.
I chose to ignore this. “Please sit down. Can I get you something?”
“Thank you.” He eyed the remains of the asparagus dip uncertainly.
I ignored that as well, went back to the kitchen, and dipped a knuckle in the blood to check the temperature. I poured myself some coffee so I could be sociable. In the meantime, Sevarin made himself comfortable in the wing-back chair that Jessie had inherited from her grandmother. He sniffed judiciously at the contents of the mug I handed him, sipped and nodded. Relief swept over me.
Yeah, yeah, and like you wouldn’t be nervous serving a professional critic.
“So.” I set my own mug down on the coffee table. “Can I ask what this is about?”
Sevarin’s hand twitched, and he laced his fingers together. “We need to talk about Dylan Maddox.”
“We do?”
“Yes. Was he actually killed by a vampire?”
Hell of an opener there, Mr. Sevarin. “You could ask the police.”
The corner of his mouth twitched. Have you ever seen a twitchy vampire? It’s about as reassuring as a twitchy trigger finger. “I’m sure Detective O’Grady would be delighted to talk to me at length on the subject, preferably at the city’s expense, but I’m afraid I cannot spare him the time.”
I picked up a cheese straw and turned it over. They’d gotten a little too brown on the bottom. I needed a new oven thermometer.
“From what I saw, there wasn’t a lot of bruising,” I said. “And his throat was intact.”
“Meaning he knew his attacker well enough to permit intimacies, or was seduced.” Those two tidy holes usually get called love bites or blood hickeys. An actual attack tends to involve a lot more damage, if only because the victim struggles.
I put the cheese straw down before I started crumbling it. I hate wasting food.
Sevarin swirled the blood in his mug and took another judicious sip. “Lamb?” I nodded. “I like your touch of rosemary here. Very delicate. Dayblood chefs tend to overseason when preparing food for us.” “Dayblood” generally means human, but it can be anybody who walks around after sunrise.
Flattery will get you anywhere under normal circumstances, but we’d left normal at least thirty-six hours back. “Mr. Sevarin, please forgive me for being direct. Why are you here?”
Sevarin set his mug down. “I want to know why Dylan Maddox’s body was left so unceremoniously in your foyer. I assumed you would want to know that as well and thought that we might help each other out.” He smiled then and the effect was . . . spectacular. “I assure you, I’m much moreentertaining to spend time with than Little Linus.”
I’ll just bet. “How could I help you?”
“You might have Pamela Maddox’s phone number in the reservations computer at your restaurant.”
And there it was. “If I’m caught backtracking my customers, it would not be good for business.” I thought about that one getting onto FlashNews and shuddered.
“You have a point. However, Detective O’Grady is not going to voluntarily tell either one of us what happened to the unfortunate Dylan Maddox, and the media, if they do get around to discussing the matter, are going to get it wrong. That—depending on how wrong they get it—could be disastrous for your business.”
I wrapped my suddenly cold hands around my coffee mug. “Why would you care?”
“Because there have been a series of deaths around the Village over the past six months. All the corpses had what appeared to be bite marks on their necks but were incompletely drained.”
I felt a deep chill rising up around my thoughts. There were other people sprawled out on other floors like Dylan? It takes a lot to make me queasy, but the thought of all those staring corpses was doing the job quite effectively.
“There hasn’t been anything about it on the news,” I said, like I thought that if the media hadn’t validated it, it hadn’t really happened.
“Detective O’Grady has convinced the mayor there’s a danger of panic, and lynchings.”
This I could believe. “So tell me again why you want word to get out?”
“Word will get out,” said Sevarin flatly. “And although Little Linus means well, if word also gets out that there’s been a cover-up, the city will go . . . What is the phrase I’m looking for . . . ?”
“Berserk? Ballistic?”
“Both, I think.”
Unfortunately, Sevarin made a disturbing amount of sense. ”Why is this is your job? You’re a dining critic, not a cop.”
“I am also old enough to have faced an actual torch-wielding mob, Chef Caine, and I’d rather not do it again. I like modern life,” he added softly. “I like being in a time and place where I have recourse to the law and can exist with a relative amount of security. Someone is trying to take that away from me. I want them found, and stopped.”
Neither one of us said anything for a long time. Traffic, the eternal New York backdrop, rumbled and honked outside. I glanced at the clock, and at my cell phone on the counter. Chet would have called by now if he could. How long would it take Trish’s lawyer friend to get to him? What if Sevarin was right and there was somebody running around trying to frame vampires? What if Chet had been arrested? No. He couldn’t have been. Someone would have called me by now about bail.
How much was bail on a vampire suspected of murder? Could he even get bail? Did I have enough in the bank to cover it? God, why didn’t I know anything important?
Vampires have dry eyes and they don’t blink much. But Sevarin blinked then, and got to his feet.
“Forgive me, Chef Caine. I have chosen the wrong time to speak with you about this.” He reached into his inner jacket pocket and laid a plain white business card down on the end table. “The coming days will not be easy. You need to rest.”
“Yeah. Thanks.”
Sevarin cocked his head, studying my face in a way that made me wish he’d just go back to twitching. “I can help you sleep, if you would permit.”
That brought my attention back to the here and now. Fast. “You even think about putting the whammy on me and I will skewer you like a nightblood satay. Understand me?”
“Surprisingly well. Your diction is excellent.” He did the bow-over-the-hand thing again. It held up well through a second viewing. Especially since he was smiling again, and giving me a nice close-up of the gold flecks in his green eyes. “Good night, Chef Caine. I hope we’ll talk further, and about more . . . pleasant topics.”
He let himself out. I stayed where I was for a minute, then slowly keeled over sideways onto the sofa and shoved my head under an end pillow. If my roommates came in right now, they could not be permitted to see my face turning Mary Sue Scarlet. I didn’t even know why I was blushing. It’s not like I could do anything about the fact that
Anatole Sevarin was attractive as all hell. And even if I could, now was not exactly a good time.
I meant to get up. I needed to call Chet and to finish cleaning the kitchen. Most of all, I needed to figure out what to do about everything Anatole Sevarin had just told me. I also needed to get his business card out of sight before Trish got back.
Somewhere in the middle of tallying up all the things that needed doing, the world faded to black.
“Charlotte.”
Someone shook my shoulder and removed the pillow covering my face. Consciousness returned at a leisurely pace, giving me plenty of time to notice that my mouth was furry, my hair was in my eyes and my back ached. “Ugh. What time is it?”
“Six a.m.,” said Trish. Both my roommates stood in front of me, Trish in her turquoise sleeping sweats and Jess in her magenta kimono. “You were totally conked out when we got back, so we decided to let you sleep.”
“And you’ve got a text from Chet.” Jessie held up my cell.
“Gimme that!” I snatched the phone away and read: C3: im ok thx 4 cavalry call 2nite. C4
Outside, the horizon was brightening. Chet would already be shutting down for the day.
I put my phone down to reduce the risk of throwing it at something. Jessie picked it up immediately and read my message.
“Hey!”
She just passed the phone to Trish, who also decided she could read my private messages.
“Thank God.” Trish sighed. I grabbed the phone back, switched it off and shoved it into my pocket. Trish had the sense not to remark on this. Instead, she glanced at the clock. “Who needs the bathroom first?”
Jess raised her hand. “I’ve got a brunch party. Eight faces, sixteen hands, and nothing packed.”
“Okay, you’re first.”
I should have known something was up. On those occasions when our schedules converge, we do not ever let Jessie go first in the bathroom. Once, Trish and I clocked her at an average of seventy-five minutes over a two-week interval. We keep the chart, just in case she protests.
“I found this when we got in last night.” Trish reache into the pocket of her bathrobe. “Next to the leftover blood.” She handed me Anatole Sevarin’s business card.