by Sarah Zettel
“That one’s on the list too, believe me.” O’Grady got to his feet. “Thank you for your cooperation, Chef Caine. I’ll be calling you as soon as I have something for you.”
I wanted to try to ask more questions, but one look at the detective’s bland face and I knew my lasagna had taken me just as far as we were going to go. So I also stood, and let him walk to the door.
But at least I had two pieces of new information. The first was that Dylan Maddox hadn’t actually been killed at Nightlife. That was something, I guess. The second was that this was not a spur-of-the-moment act. I know enough about carcasses to understand you couldn’t exsanguinate somebody on impulse. Which meant at least one person had planned his murder, which meant it could very well be one of a set.
This understanding didn’t make me feel better, because a murder with a plan and an infrastructure behind it is not an idea that puts you in your happy place.
It also meant O’Grady and I tohared a couple important questions.
One: If a vampire didn’t drain Dylan Maddox, where the hell did all that blood go?
Two: If this wasn’t the first murder, could we count on it being the last?
7
When Detective O’Grady finally let me go, it was five thirty. Hunger and exhaustion robbed me of the ability to consider anything beyond an immediate need for food and caffeine. La Petite Abeille, a little Belgian place where they served big buckets of fries and mussels along with very good, very strong coffee, was only a few blocks away.
Etienne clasped my hand as I walked in the door, asked the bare minimum of questions about how Chet and I were doing, and got me a table in the back corner.
The phone rang the second he dropped the menu off. I checked the number and read BRENDAN MADDOX. Had I given him my number? I would have remembered giving him my number, wouldn’t I?
Not even Trish could get on my case for taking this one.
“Hello, Mr. Maddox.”
“Hello, Chef Caine.”
“How’s your hand?”
“Sore. Bruised. A little embarrassed, but otherwise all right.”
I thought about O’Grady’s neat lines of folders and photographs and the strain of sitting through his long silences. “At least it was only a wall you punched.”
“That’s what I keep telling myself.” Brendan paused. “I’d like to talk to you, if you’re free?”
I thought about all the things I had to do before I could crawl into bed. I thought about how nice it would be to share a meal with a good-looking guy with a dry sense of humor and pretty blue eyes.
Then I thought about how his grandfather Lloyd wanted to make my brother illegal, if not permanently dead.
I told him where I was, and he said he’d find it. We hung up and I drank a whole cup of Euro-strong black coffee wondering if I’d finally lost my mind.
I also made the mistake of sorting through my voice and text messages. Unlike yesterday, I recognized most of the numbers. That was because they were coming from my employees, all of whom had one question.
When are we opening again?
“Hi.”
I started so violently I almost dropped my phone. Brendan was standing by my table, and I hadn’t even seen him come in.
“Hi.” I switched my phone off and shoved it into my purse. “Please, sit down.”
He did so, taking off his hat as he sat.
“You ditched the lasagna,” he remarked.
“Turns out you were right. It was a bribe after all.”
“Did it work?”
“I don’t know yet. I hope so. If we don’t open up in the next couple days, our people are all going to bail on us.”
“That fast?”
I grimaced, thinking about all the still-unanswerevoits in my phone. “It’s a tough business, and most of us live paycheck to paycheck. Restaurants come and go pretty fast, and when you’ve got kids, and maybe family back home depending on you, you lose your tolerance for extra risk. I mean, if your boss called up and told you ‘it’ was all going to clear up in a couple days, would you believe him?”
“I am my boss, but I get it.”
Etienne showed up just then to take our orders. Brendan’s restaurant French was solid, and he didn’t shrink from mussels, fries with mayonnaise, or double stout beer.
“So, aside from yourself what are you the boss of?” I asked once Etienne left.
“I’m a paranormal security consultant.”
“Is that security for paranormals, from paranormals or by paranormals?”
The corner of his mouth quirked up. “Depends who’s asking and what they’re paying.”
Silence stretched out longer than I meant it to, but conflicting conversational imperatives circled each other in my brain. Brendan seemed to have the same problem, and we both sat there, elbows on the blue-and-white-checked tablecloth, sipping our beverages and sneaking glances at each other, trying to see if the other one was going to get something out first.
“Look . . .”
“I was just . . .”
And then, of course, Brendan’s phone rang. He pulled it out and checked the number. “Sorry. I’ve got to take this. . . .” He scooted himself around sideways in the chair so he faced the wall and plugged his free ear with his thumb. “Hello, Aunt Robin. . . . Yes, I did. . . . Yes, of course they had to come interview the family. I told you that would happen. No. No, please. More of us coming down here will just complicate . . . No. I’m taking care of it.”
There are times when you’re confronted with the other side of the story. I’d been so frightened about Chet, and so worried about Nightlife and the existential insult that was the murder of another human being, the fact that this was Brendan’s family that had been violated had . . . not slipped my mind exactly, but it had never felt as important as all the other things being laid on the line.
The urge to drown yourself in coffee can be very strong some days.
“I was just down there today,” Brendan was saying. “Tell Uncle Mike we’re doing everything we can. No, I promise, whatever happened, it wasn’t vampires. . . . Yes, I am positive.”
You are? That made the security consultant, the cop and the vampire who were sure Chet had nothing to do with this disaster.
But was that the same thing as being sure this disaster had nothing to do with Chet? I suddenly found myself wondering just where he’d been on Saturday.
“. . . just have Grandfather call me if he wants to talk . . . All right . . . I’ll call back in a couple hours. I promise.”
Brendan listened a while longer and then said something softly, but a crowd of suits and cell phones poured into the narrow little dining room just then, and their noise covered his last words.
“Sorry,” he said as he put the phone away.
“That’s okay.” I wanted to say something sympathetic, but nothing came except regret for my slow brain. Brendan looked tired. If there was one thing that could wear you dwn, it was family infighting, even when there wasn’t a murder involved. “Do you need to go?”
“Not yet.”
Silence threatened, but before it could move in for the kill, our food arrived, wreathing our table in steam and the scents of garlic, white wine and the ocean. Mussels are a food you get involved with. You have to go in after the little nuggets of sea-born goodness, but it is so worth it if they’re cooked right, and these were. There was plenty of crispy baguette to sop up the salty broth, and of course a range of sauces for dipping the crispy fries—rich mustard, spicy curry, and their bacon mayonnaise, which I kept trying, and failing, to replicate.
Brendan and I spent the next half hour cradled in the uncomplicated glow that comes with sharing warmth and good food. We talked shellfish, sauces, imported beer, places we liked to eat, places we never wanted to go again. This is part of the magic of food. There’s no problem it can’t smooth over, at least for a while. We talked about eating in New York, in Chicago and Kansas City. Brendan had been to Morocco and Tokyo. I t
old stories from my summer stage—apprenticeship—in Hong Kong.
He was watching me. It was subtle, but it was there. When you work with a lot of guys, you get sensitive to the weight and quality of the gaze. Is it a threat or a challenge? Friendly interest, romantic interest or just stupid lust? If it is interest, is it about who you are, or just about the boobs?
And believe me, guys, the first thing we notice is where you’re looking. And no, you are not fooling any of us. Ever.
Brendan looked at my hair and at my eyes. He smiled at my smile, and, yes, he looked at my cleavage, what there was showing, but more than that, he looked at my hands—my scarred hands with their short, blunt, unpolished nails. When Brendan Maddox looked at my hands, the premature lines at the corners of his eyes and mouth softened, just a little.
My pulse fluttered at the base of my throat.
But reality had parked itself next to our table, and it wasn’t going away.
“So.” I dabbed at my broth with a piece of bread so I could plausibly avoid looking at Brendan. “You have a big family?”
He, of course, recognized the lame opening for what it was, but he also went along with it. “Pretty big, yeah. You?”
“Just my parents and Chet.”
“Where’re your parents?”
“Arizona.” Mom hated the place. Flat and hot and a ticky-tacky stucco house with a ten-by-fifteen patch of grass out front that looked like Astroturf from all the water and fertilizer Dad poured into it.
“Are you from Arizona?” Brendan was asking.
“No. Buffalo. They moved after . . . after Dad retired.”
“And after Chet turned?”
The calm question caught me off guard, but I was grateful he asked it. I don’t like dancing around subjects. It’s something else on the long list of things I’ve never been good at. Like talking about my dad’s refusal to acknowledge Chet’s existence, or my reactions to Dad’s refusals.
“Yeah. Dad couldn’t—or wouldn’t—handle it.”
“It happens,” Brendan said, politely relieving me of having to answer. “When a relative becomes nightblood, some people head for the sunni spot they can find.”
“You deal with that a lot?” I chewed bread and swallowed. My sense of taste seemed disturbingly dull just then.
“Despite all the support groups and self-help books, some people just can’t cope, and they want their homes turned into a kind of magical Fort Knox. That or . . .” He stopped and shook his head.
Reality waited. Brendan had invited it over. Now it was my turn. “Your grandfather’s got quite the reputation.”
Brendan swirled the dregs of beer and foam in his tall glass. “Oh, believe me, I know.”
“He thinks a lot of people should be put back in the ground.”
“Yeah.”
“What do you think?”
Brendan tipped his glass left, then right. He swallowed what was left in the bottom, set it down, and scooted it a little to the right, then back to the left. I tore apart another slice of bread and told myself to just be patient already.
“I think the world’s changed a whole lot since my grandfather could name his price for making paranormals go away,” he said. “Whether I agree with the changes or not, we’re going to cause a hell of a lot more trouble trying to put things back the way he says they used to be than we will trying to figure out how to make the best of what they are. I think some paranormals are monsters. I think some humans are monsters. If you want to know what I think of your brother, I don’t know because I don’t know him.”
“That’s honest, anyway. Thanks.”
Brendan touched his forehead in mock salute.
We were silent a bit longer, but this silence had a different quality. It wasn’t companionable exactly, but it was an acknowledgment that a level of comfort, or at least comprehension, had been reached.
I plucked another fry out of the basket and stabbed it into the bacon mayo. “Should I be scared?” The images I’d seen on FlashNews of the white-haired, powerfully built man yelling at the whole U.S. House of Representatives felt far too close for comfort.
“Of us? Not yet.” Brendan scooted his glass to the right again and to my credit I did not smack his hand, or hold it. Truth was, I wasn’t sure which would feel better right then. “Grandfather’s busy putting out home fires right now. Not everybody in the clan approves of his turning Dylan’s murder into political points, starting with Dylan’s parents. With any luck, O’Grady will have this figured out by the time he’s got all of the family dealt with.”
“Sevarin says they’ve found other bodies.”
“Sevarin told you this?”
“O’Grady told me about what the bite marks on Dylan were, but, yeah, Sevarin told me there have been other deaths.”
If he had asked how and why I’d been talking with Sevarin, I would have told him, but he didn’t. I was beginning to understand that Brendan Maddox had a very good sense of other people’s limits. Whether that came from having a warlock family or a career in security, I couldn’t say yet, but I was grateful for it. The question he did ask was tricky enough.
“Do you believe Sevarin?”
“I don’t know if I believe him or not. He thought I might have Pam’s phone number in my reservations computer, and he might have just been tryet it out of me.” I paused. “What’s her story? Pam’s, I mean?”
“I barely know. When I left for college, she was still a three-foot-tall brat in pigtails, tormenting little Dylan and driving my aunt Robin out of her mind. Then a few months ago, I get a frantic phone call. Pam went on her wander year and vanished.”
“Wander year?”
He nodded. “If you want to become a full warlock, you have to take an oath, to the family and . . . Well . . . it’s not a normal promise. It binds you, and your magic. So, everyone takes a year off before they go through the ceremony. They live in the mundane world, maybe go to college or just travel and think about what they really want.”
“And Pam really didn’t want to get with the program? Did she get booted out?” Warlock families, especially the old ones, were supposed to take their traditions very seriously. People like that tended not to deal well with rebellious youth. Not that I could throw stones, considering my father’s attitude toward Chet.
“Maddoxes don’t kick people out anymore,” said Brendan. “Not for deciding against the oath, anyway. It’s awkward at family reunions and you don’t get a vote on clan matters, but it’s not like people stop mentioning your name or anything. Pam didn’t just leave, though. She vanished, and we’ve been looking for her ever since.”
“I’d have thought that as a security consultant . . .”
“You and my whole family.” Brendan cut me off with that special bitter tone that comes when you’re furious with yourself. “Unfortunately, one of the things we still get taught by the family is how to hide from magicians and normals if we have to. Turns out Pam got really good at it.”
People think it’s so hard to disappear in the webcam world. But any given Sunday, I could give fifty bucks to the right guy in the right bar and come away with a brand-new credit card and a gently used Social Security number. With that and enough cash for a bus ticket to Chicago or Los Angeles, I’d be gone for good.
There had to be a magical equivalent of that guy and that bar, and Pam Maddox probably had a lot more than fifty bucks in her Gucci handbag.
Brendan glanced at his watch and reached into his back pocket. “Listen, I need to get going. . . .”
“Don’t worry about it.” I gestured for him to put his wallet away.
He blinked. “I’m not going to leave you with . . .”
“Best part of being a chef in New York.” I nodded toward Etienne over Brendan’s shoulder, and he waved us both toward the door. “Friends wherever you go.”
“Must be nice,” Brendan whispered and then stood up before I could make any reply.
Outside, shadows threw an early nighttime over the s
idewalk. The chilly wind smelled of exhaust and autumn as it hustled down Fifteenth.
Brendan turned his jacket collar up as he faced me. “I have to ask. Do you have Pam’s number?”
I shook my head. “Nightlife’s still sealed. Anyway, the number in the system would depend on who made the reservation, and that’s handled in the front of the house. Sorry,” I added.
“Not your fault.” He scanned the street for a minute, like he was looking for a cab. Then he said, “Have I apologized enough for my family yet?”
“Yeah.”
“Have I said I’m not sorry I met you?”
“No.”
“I’m not sorry I met you.”
His words left me with no idea what to do next. Sticking my hand out to shake would just be stupid, and yet I wanted to touch him. I had no right to, and no real reason, beyond the fact that we were both tired, both in over our heads, and both aching not to be alone in the middle of this mess.
“You’ll be careful, won’t you, Charlotte?” he asked. “This—whatever it turns out to be—it’s a long way from over.”
“I know.”
He looked at my eyes and my hair, and smiled. He’d looked at my hands, all through dinner. He’d looked at my hands as if he liked them.
I reached out and laid my fingertips against the back of his uninjured hand. He turned that hand slowly around, until he was holding mine. We stood there, saying nothing. I could feel his pulse beat in his fingers and my own pounded a counterrhythm.
“Can I call?” he asked.
“Sure.” Then something occurred to me. “How’d you get my number in the first place?”
“The Google is strong with this one.” He winked and my pulse kicked into overdrive.
“Well, good night,” he said.
“Good night,” I said, before I realized I was still touching his hand.
Brendan swooped down, nervous like a high school kid, and I turned too fast and too far. His peck caught the spot on my cheek right in front of my earlobe.
He straightened up. I giggled. Giggled! Executive chefs do not giggle. I decided, however, I could forgive him this once.