by Sarah Zettel
Margot Maddox had changed her red leather coat for a basic black trench that fit her well enough to be designer. She’d also swapped her high-heeled lace-up boots for patent-leather pumps. She’d changed her demeanor too. The cat-cool woman was gone, replaced by someone who clutched her slender purse strap and looked over her shoulder twice in the short amount of time it took me to cross the dining room again and snap back the dead bolt.
“Ms. Maddox,” I said, summoning my best greet-the-skeptical-client manners. “Can I help you?”
“I hope so, Chef Caine.” Margot started to look over her shoulder again, but stopped herself. “May I come in?”
“Certainly.” I stood back and let her in. “Although I’m afraid I don’t have much time. We’re cleared to reopen and we have a lot of work to do.”
This was a hint, but Margot didn’t even stop to acknowledge it. She walked straight past me, her eyes searching all the shadows in the dim dining room. I remembered Brendan doing much the same thing.
She must have been satisfied, because she turned around. “I’ll be brief.” She straightened her shoulders, very visibly pulling herself together. “I’d like to buy you out.”
Sorry? What? HUH? These and a dozen other exclamations stampeded toward the front of my brain. Fortunately, what got there first was, “Excuse me?”
Margot’s fingers clenched around her purse strap. Her knuckles had to be stark white underneath those black gloves. “I will pay you not to reopen this establishment. It will be a substantial sum, for you and your . . . brother both, if you want. Enough so that you can go from here to create any other kind of restaurant your heart desires.”
I didn’t collapse into a chair this time. I pulled one out slowly and concentrated on sitting down in a controlled fashion. I was glad I’d worn my chef’s coat and had taken the time to put my hair up this morning. It reminded me who I was, and that I was on my home turf. Executive chefs do not slump in their chairs with their jaws flapping open, no matter what kind of offer has just been dangled in front of them. I gestured for Margot Maddox to take a seat. She did, but she did not do anything to get comfortable, like remove her gloves or slip her purse off her shoulder. She didn’t even let go of the strap.
“What does Brendan think about this idea? Or Ian?” I asked.
“They don’t know.”
Uh-huh. “And the money would come with conditions?”
“Only one. That whatever establishment you open after this does not serve blood of any kind.”
So there it was. Margot and her side of the family wanted to shut us down as part of the Maddox family antivampire campaign. “Listen, Ms. Maddox . . .”
“One million dollars.”
The whole of my angry speech died, turned to dust and blew away. “Excuse me?” I said again.
“One. Million. Dollars,” repeated Margot. “Cashier’s check.”
“You have that kind of money?”
She sighed. “I have a trust fund separate from the family money. I also have a very good lawyer of my own and he broke the trust before I came down here. I t aa feeling I might need to pay off Pamela and I didn’t want to have to get Grandfather’s permission to do it. My grandfather, by the way, is very unhappy with me,” she added, and this time she did look over her shoulder.
“That’d be Mr. Lloyd ‘Stake ’Em All’ Maddox?” I peered through the front door, but I saw only the usual range of morning suits, construction workers and women in black going past. “Is your grandfather with you?”
“No. Ian’s in the car and—” Margot cut herself off, but I understood. I wouldn’t have trusted Ian and his chin tuft to stay where I put them either. “Which is neither here nor there,” she went on. “I’m offering you one million dollars, Chef Caine. Today. Your lawyer can draw up papers if you like. I will sign, and I have only the one condition, which you’ve already heard.”
A million dollars. A million, cash. With that as a stake, I could get credit from . . . anywhere. It would mean the ability to open a topflight place and a chance to compete in the big game. It would be the freedom to take my craft as far as I was able to.
Unfortunately, it also left one huge question burning brightly enough to set the sprinklers off all over again.
“Why?” I asked.
“Why do you think?” Margot screwed up her face tighter than I would have thought possible. I had her down for a Botox baby. “My family is being torn apart. I don’t care about Pamela,” she went on quickly, as I leaned forward again. “At least, I wouldn’t if she was just going to hell in her own handbasket. But she’s pulling the rest of the family in with her.”
“You’ve talked to her?”
“I wish.” Margot exchanged her stranglehold on her purse strap for a similar grip on the table’s edge. “At this point it doesn’t really matter whether we find her or not. Look what’s already happened because of her. Dylan’s dead. Brendan’s heading into real trouble. . . .” She faltered, and I remembered Margot was Brendan’s sister. I met her eyes and saw that in this one way we understood each other very well. We both knew how far we’d already gone to protect our brothers, and we knew we would go further if we had to.
But although I understood that desire, I couldn’t see any way it had led to this conversation. “How is keeping Nightlife closed going to help your family?”
“It’s obvious, isn’t it? Someone wants to use Nightlife for . . . something. I don’t know who and I don’t care. If I close it off, maybe they’ll look elsewhere and maybe that will buy O’Grady and his people enough time to actually do something.”
“You’re willing to spend a million dollars on a couple maybes?”
“Only because that’s all I’ve got right now.”
Wow, I thought. The rich really are different from you and me. Or this particular rich woman knew way more than she was telling me. As soon as I’d kicked over that mental rock, another nasty thought crawled out.
“If you haven’t been talking to Cousin Pamela, have you been talking to Brendan?” Had Brendan told her about the blood? No, not possible. If he had, she’d have been on the phone to O’Grady, not here offering me the bribe of a lifetime.
Margot drew her shoulders back and for a moment the cold sophisticate was back in front of me. “Despite what you and my brother may think, I don’t need to run to him with every little queiv width="n. I have resources of my own.”
I could easily believe that. The Maddox family was connected to wealth, privilege and politics. Margot surely knew how to work all three when the situation called for it.
I folded my arms and drummed my fingers on my sleeve. There were too many angles here for me to work out at once. I had to delay her, give myself time to settle down. Get the words one million dollars to stop flashing around the margins of my brain.
“If I’m going to agree to think about your offer, I have a condition of my own.”
“What’s that?”
“I need an answer. What is Nightlife being used for?”
For a minute, I thought she was going to try to tell me she didn’t know. I sat back and waited. Now this was a game I could play. It didn’t require a poker face, just patience. At various times, I’d had to wait across the table from employees who were stealing the tip money from their fellows, sneaking their illegal relatives in to sleep in the stockroom, and dealing marijuana out the back door.
At last Margot Maddox made her decision. She ran her palm across the tabletop as if checking for wrinkles in the veneer. “Blood running,” she said.
“Bullshit,” I replied calmly.
“I beg your pardon?”
“The black market in human blood is an urban legend.” I elbowed the image of that damn blood bucket back where it belonged. “Warm from the vein works much better. Besides, nobody needs to buy human blood. The live volunteers are lining up.” It’s what Post Mortem and its seedier cousins made their payroll on. “Check Craigslist if you don’t believe me.”
Margot cocked her head, and th
e look she had on her face was one of pure pity. “But there’s no guarantee those volunteers are clean, or that they’re not FBI stings or vigilantes with stakes. Besides, the kind of person who advertises on Craigslist is looking to be turned, or might be addicted to the thrill or the drain. They turn stalker. Much easier for the civilized vampire”—she spat the words—“to buy a few bags of what they want. Much easier, except, of course, that it’s illegal to buy or sell human blood for consumption.”
It made sense. It made so much sense my heart was banging against my ribs and my stomach was clenched as tightly as my fists. “Didn’t your family have something to do with getting that legislation passed?”
I had the satisfaction of seeing Margot wince. “If I’d been old enough I would have spoken against it. This kind of prohibition never works.”
“So you think Pamela’s a blood runner?” Or you know she is. . . .
“Actually, I think your brother is a blood runner,” she shot back. “I think he and his partners have roped Pam in to work security for them.”
I thought about the overfluffed fang tease in the see-through white dress and blue eye shadow. “Pam could work security?”
“Oh, yes. It’s a family specialty. In fact, Brendan was training her before she ran out on us.”
Which, if true, was something he had entirely failed to mention. I really didn’t want to think about the implications of that. Fortunately, Margot had given me a deluxe set of other things to think about, complete with Special Offers Not Available Elsewhere.
“You think Chet’s in charge of this . . . operation? If there is one?”
“If you don’t, Chef Caine, it’s because you’re deluding yourself.”
Why wasn’t I getting angry? This smug little rich bitch was sitting here accusing Chet of robbing the Red Cross and selling the stolen blood out the back of my restaurant. And she was trying to buy me off.
The problem was, there was still the bucket in my walk-in. There was Marcus bringing Cousin Pam in the front door, maybe to meet Chet. There was how Chet got Taylor Watts a job, and how Taylor was hanging around Village bars to make mixologists nervous. These could easily be the actions of someone checking on things for the boss—things like territory and payment and purchase quotas.
“It doesn’t mean Chet’s in charge,” I said through clenched teeth. “It could just as easily be Bert Shelby at Post Mortem.” Or the Nebbish. Don’t forget about the Nebbish. It could even be Pam herself, and Margot here is trying to orchestrate the cover-up.
Margot smiled, calm and collected for the first time this morning. She rose to her feet. “Think about my offer, Chef Caine. I’ll be waiting to hear from you.” She pulled a card out of her tidy little purse and pushed it across the table to me. I put it in my pocket without looking at it.
“Tomorrow,” I said. She nodded, and left, sashaying across the dining room like she was the one who owned the place.
I couldn’t do anything but sit there and think how tomorrow was going to be the first day of the rest of my life.
Shit.
17
The Final Curtain Theater, owned and managed by Ilona St. Claire, is the kind of place that gets referred to as Off Off Broadway. Or, at least it would if a dayblood critic was permitted near it. Such people, Anatole said, did not tend to appreciate the subtleties of vampiric performance art.
“So, what’s playing?” I asked him.
“Blood Slaughter at Sunset. A newly transitioned playwright, making quite a stir.” Nobody can shrug as eloquently as a professional critic. “I find him overly sentimental.”
About then it began to dawn on me that this excursion might be a bad idea on more than one level. Yeah, yeah, I know. Now it began to dawn on me?
I assumed we’d be catching a cab, but Brendan had a car service he preferred. As he was paying, I didn’t object, and before long I was ensconced on the plush seat of a black town car with the expansive blond vampire and the intense black-haired warlock. No way I could ever tell Jess about this. She’d die from jealousy.
My big mistake, though, was deciding to dress for the theater. I’d borrowed a belted red sweater dress from Jess and a pair of sparkly gold pumps with matching purse from Trish. I was showing way more leg to the guys than I ever had before, and given our crowded conditions, I was beginning to regret it.
I did consider telling Brendan about my . . . meeting with Margot, but not for long. We all had more than enough to deal with right now, and if we didn’t we would very soon.
The Final Curtain turned out to be in Harlem, which was gutsy. Unlike most othert.
“So, this Ilona St. Claire has a little bit of attitude is what you’re saying?”
“A soupçon. Yes.”
“Wasn’t she involved in that big public meeting last year?” asked Brendan. “Where the vampires were agitating against more rights? She wanted everyone to scatter out of the city for the rural counties.”
Anatole’s smile was tight and humorless. “To reclaim the ‘unfettered, wild existence that is the true destiny of all nightbloods’? Yes. That was Ilona.”
“And this is a friend of yours?” Anatole seemed so fully at home as he was, I had trouble picturing him lurking about the moonlit woods.
“People come together for many reasons, Charlotte.” He leaned close enough for me to catch his scent of spiced cologne and fresh truffles. “Look at us.”
Brendan coughed hard. Anatole sighed and sat back. I uncrossed my ankles and crossed them again. I should have worn slacks.
As Off-Off-Broadway theaters are not noted for high operating budgets, I expected Final Curtain to be an exwarehouse or storefront. To my surprise, a renovated vaudeville palace greeted us, standing proud in its evening gown of gilt and neon. Although fully lit up on the outside, the lobby behind the glass and brass doors was absolutely dark. As Anatole directed our driver around the corner, I could see shadows moving slowly back and forth inside. My hindbrain did not like it at all.
It liked the alley with the stage door entrance even less. It was wider than the one where I’d . . . met Tommy and Julie, and didn’t have a dead end, but that pair could easily be lurking in any one of the doorways.
“Should I wait, Mr. Maddox?” the driver asked.
“Yes,” said Brendan. I ignored the way my hindbrain groveled in thanks.
We all climbed out and Anatole banged on what I had to assume was the stage door. I shifted my weight, trying to find a comfortable way to stand in my borrowed pumps. After a moment, the door opened, amazingly quietly. Despite everything, there’s still an expectation that doors into vampire hangouts should emit long, drawn-out creaks.
Of course, there was nobody visible opening it, and the space on the other side was pitch-black. Which in terms of dramatic, nerve-racking effect is almost as good.
If you run away now, you’ll never find out what’s going on, I told myself. Then, of course, I had to remind myself why this would be bad.
Anatole stepped across the threshold without hesitation. Brendan touched my shoulder, reminding me there was another beating heart nearby. I mentally pulled on my big-girl panties and followed.
Of course the door swung shut behind us. The hollow, metallic thump and instant plunge into darkness more than made up for the lack of distressed hinges. I sucked in my breath and got the smell of dust, mushrooms and that distinctive salt-and-iron tang that you never want to get a whiff of outside a butcher shop.
A woman screamed.
I jumped about a foot and backpedaled straight into Brendan’s chest.
“Dead!” the woman shrieked. “All dead! Oh, bloody fate!”
Applause rang out. I heard a distinctive metallic flick! behind me and all at once I stood in a small pool of light. Magic? I whirled around to face Brendan, who held his smartphone up over his head. A virtual Zippo lighter blazed on the screen.
“Aye, bloody fate,” said a man’s doleful overenunciated voice. My eyes had adjusted enough for me to make out
a patch of pale gray light over to the right that had to be the stage. “For what else can our fate be but to die, should they who are free of death choose us?”
“Nice app,” I said. Brendan grinned and although there was probably no reason to, I suddenly felt better.
“But our children!” wailed the woman. “We must avenge them!”
“There is no vengeance for us. They were taken by one who is as far beyond us as the shifting moon.”
“Blood Slaughter at Sunset,” murmured Brendan.
“Really, Ilona.” Anatole addressed the interior darkness. “This is an abundance of drama, even for you.”
“Occupational hazard, I’m afraid, Anatole.”
Ilona St. Claire glided out of the darkness. Unlike Anatole in his sharp, modern dress, Ilona was working with expectations. Her high-necked black evening gown looked demure, until you saw the back, which wasn’t there. At all. Her rose and bramble tattoo was . . . impressive, as were the gold rings on her gloved fingers and wrists, and dangling from her ears, and pierced through her eyebrow and nose. In the light of Brendan’s cell phone Zippo, Ilona St. Claire glittered as brightly as her theater’s exterior.
“Anatole.” Ilona slipped up close enough to him that her bodice brushed against his chest. “You must to speak with your theater critic at Circulation. He completely misunderstood Raymond’s work.” She ran a gloved palm across his cheek.
“. . . Rip out my heart and lay it at his feet . . .” the actress added.
Anatole gave that critic’s shrug of his. “You know my feelings about romanticizing the good old days, Ilona.”
“Your time will come soon enough!” warned the man. “Look! Even now the sun sets as the world turns to offer itself again to him.”
“Then give us your story, Anatole.” Ilona drew her fingers along his lips. “Tell us what it was really like.”
Anatole took her glittery finger, kissed it, and returned her hand to her side. “Perhaps I am holding out for an offer from Hollywood.”
“Don’t be ridiculous.”
“Don’t say that to my agent.”