A Taste of the Nightlife (4 page)

“Dining critic. Interesting career move.”

Anatole Sevarin has just been attacked by a warlock in my dining room.

“It pays the rent.”

If I commit seppuku in the kitchen, I’ll leave Chet with a fortune in catastrophic cleaning fees and no insurance payout. . . .

“And you just
happened
to be in the restaurant where my missing cousin turned up?” The scent of testosterone and quivering one-upmanship filled the room.

“Interesting that your cousin chose to be at the restaurant I was reviewing.”

And interesting that they both just trashed my dining room for the second time tonight!

The world suddenly snapped into high definition. I reached up between vampire and warlock and snapped my fingers, hard. “Yo! You two! Down here!”

Warlock blinked.

Vampire lifted one eyebrow, Spock-like.

Both stared at me as if they’d forgotten I was there.

“My staff just spent
three and a half
hours cleaning this room!” I informed them, pointing at the overturned tables and chairs. The wreckage of the bar was obvious, as we were standing in it and the scent of spilled, expensive liquor was overwhelming.

Vampire stared at warlock. Warlock stared at vampire.

Sevarin bowed solemnly to me and glided over to the nearest table. We’d gone for the good stuff, so it was heavy. The vampire set it neatly upright. With one hand.

Maddox frowned hard and picked up two pieces of glass. He fitted them together and blew out a short breath. Light flashed in his blue eyes and I smelled ozone. A warm wind spiraled through the dining room, raising a chime from the shattered glass. All at once, four bottles brimming with liquor assembled themselves in the air, along with a flock of shot glasses that lined themselves up as neatly as ducks on a pond.

Maddox, now perspiring lightly, turned toward Sevarin and got a nasty shock, because the rest of the overturned furniture was already back in place.

I hadn’t even seen Sevarin move. From the look on Maddox’s face, I gathered that he hadn’t either.

Vampire stared at warlock. Warlock stared at vampire. Chef stared at warlock and vampire and thought:
Weirdest pissing match ever.

“Thank you,” I said, exercising every ounce of control I had left to keep my voice studiously bland. “Now, you can both tell me what you’re doing here.”

“I can of course speak only for myself,” said Sevarin. He had a mild, lilting accent. I couldn’t place it, but it sure wasn’t Russian. “I was here for a working dinner, but that was interrupted—” Sevarin gestured around the room to indicate the recent drama. “I admit that I succumbed to base curiosity and willfully, with malice aforethought, I did lurk in the shadows to see how the situation would be resolved.”

“You admit you lurked?” asked Maddox.

A very, very tiny smile flickered across Sevarin’s face. “I lurked, and I make no apologies for doing so.”

“No surprise there.”

I turned to the warlock. “And you, Mr. Maddox? You said you had family . . . business here?”

Maddox reached into his pocket. Sevarin stiffened. Now it was the warlock’s turn with the little smile as he brought out his cell phone and touched the screen.

“Dylan said he came in here because he thought he saw somebody he’d been looking for.” Maddox turned the screen toward me. “I wanted to know if maybe this was her.”

Her?

It was not a recent photo. Her hair was nowhere near as fluffy as it had been tonight, and there was a scowl of discontent in place of the fangtease simper. She slouched in front of a vista of summer green hills wearing a high-necked black cat suit with a bulky black tool belt around her slender waist—both of which looked a lot better on her than the diaphanous white dress had.

“Pam’s my cousin,” said Maddox. “She went missing six months ago and my family’s been trying to find her ever since.” I’d been assuming the missing cousin Maddox had mentioned before was Dylan the Drunk. Apparently not. So, the plot thickened. Joy.

Witch clans, especially the hunters, were rumored to be very . . . strict with their members. A girl like Pamela could easily find herself driven into a case of MSAR (massively stupid adolescent rebellion). Also, contrary to popular belief, witches have a much greater prejudice against werewolves than vampires do, which explained Pammy’s overdramatic reaction to Suchai.

“You must be a very
close
family,” murmured Sevarin.

Maddox flushed. If looks were stakes, Sevarin would have been very much an ex–dining critic.

“She was in here,” I said quickly. “But I lost track of her after the sprinklers went off.”

“And that’s all you can tell me?” Maddox stowed the phone back in his pocket.

“I’m afraid so. I kind of had my hands full tonight. I wish you luck with your search, Mr. Maddox. Now, if you—both of you—will please excuse me?” I snapped the locks back on the front door and opened it.

This was a hint. But those two seemed to take it as the cue for round three of the Great Greenwich Village Vampire/Warlock Staredown.

Sevarin moved first. “Thank you for a most interesting evening, Chef Caine.” He took my hand with cool, callused fingertips and bowed over it. Only old vamps and good actors can successfully perform this maneuver. “I will return for my meal.”

“You’re welcome anytime, Mr. Sevarin.”

Sevarin smiled and I got a glimpse of fang. Then he turned and walked out onto the street, which was just beginning to brighten in the first light of dawn. I tensed involuntarily. Sunrise and vampires do not get on well. But Sevarin just strolled away calmly without so much as glancing at the skyline.

It was oddly impressive. Even Brendan Maddox watched the departure with a strange mix of anger and respect flickering across his features.

“I take it you know each other?” I asked.

“He has a history of . . . annoying my family. My grandfather, my father . . .”

“And you think Sevarin’s going for a hat trick in generational annoyance?”

“Maybe.” He narrowed those gorgeous blue eyes. “He could have been here for the food, just like he said. But if that’s true, he’s got lousy timing. . . .” Maddox shook his head, clearly remembering that there was somebody listening.

That memory of the Maddox family name and renewed calls for antivampirism legislation nagged at me again. “Your father wouldn’t be Lloyd Maddox, would he?”

“No. Lloyd Maddox is my grandfather.” It was not an admission that made him comfortable, which, considering that he was standing in the middle of a vamp-friendly establishment, made plenty of sense. He glanced at his watch. “I should get going. By now the forces of law and order should be about done with my idiot cousin and I can stuff him onto the train back to Ithaca.”

“Headfirst?” I inquired hopefully. “In a box?”

“That’d be my preference.” There was more bitterness in those words than I’d expected, and I found myself wondering what was at the back of the family drama that had come so close to torching my restaurant. “I really am sorry about all this,” Brendan Maddox added.

“Family quarrels are the worst ones.” I didn’t want to think about how I was going to have to call Mom out in Tucson to let her know what had happened, in case it made FlashNews, which would surely touch off yet another round of the ongoing fight with my father about how he refused to acknowledge that Chet still walked the earth.

Brendan Maddox was watching me a little too closely and with a little too much open sympathy for my comfort. I looked around for something to do and came up frustratingly empty.

The warlock, still watching me way too closely, pulled a card out of his pocket. “If you hear anything else about Pamela, or remember something that might help me find her, or decide you’d like to have a coffee, would you please call me? It really is important.”

I had to replay that speech several times before I could manage the necessary nonchalance to answer it.

“Well, they do say anything can happen.” I took the card and handed him his hat.

He flashed a smile that had probably weakened lots of knees, especially as he seemed able to make those amazingly blue eyes twinkle on command. I’d been flattered by experts, however, and therefore was not vulnerable to displays of excess charm, even if his fingertips did accidentally-on-purpose brush mine as he took his fedora. My nerve centers picked that moment to remind me that I hadn’t woken up next to a man in well over a year.

Down, girl,
I thought. The sudden revival of long-buried hormonal responses to a handsome man was probably just stress.

Brendan adjusted his hat brim, suddenly looking very Marlon Brando circa
Guys and Dolls
. Like Sevarin, the warlock strolled away toward Fifth Avenue, only this time “Luck Be a Lady” threatened to start up in the iPod of my brain.

Along with everything else, Maddox had repaired my glass of scotch. I gulped half of it, welcoming the peat fire burning down my throat.

My watch read 5:40. It was the end of a very long night, or the start of a very long day. Probably both. I thought about going home, but by the time I found a taxi and made it out to Queens, my roommates would be up and fully in the middle of their mutual morning routines. Jessie had one of her house parties today. When I’d left yesterday, she’d already carpeted our living room with a hundred goodie bags from Mary Sue Cosmetics (Show Them the REAL You!). She was angling for Saleswoman of the Month and would be futzing over ribbon curlicues before she even had coffee. Trish was due in court and would be clomping around in square-heeled pumps rehearsing her arguments and citations.

Going home was not the answer I needed. Sleep would be impossible for me until they vacated the place. By then it’d be eight thirty and I had to be back at Nightlife by noon. Add in transit time, and it would probably leave me a grand total of thirty minutes for a nap.

So I decided to do what any overstressed New York woman would do at a time like this.

I went shopping.

People who don’t live here are frequently surprised that New York City has multiple farmers’ markets, and that they open at five in the morning. This is the time when the food professionals shop. Of course we have our regular suppliers, but the market is where inspiration happens for me. I can roam the stalls, perusing the stacks of fresh abundance, smelling the aromas, seeing nature’s glorious colors and cooking in my mind.

I strolled peacefully past luxurious mounds of fruits and vegetables, talking with the farmers and admiring the results of their labor. I became centered again with thoughts of broth of tuna blood vein topped by a lemon-basil pesto as well as warm salad of jicama and baby turnips with bacon, pink peppercorns and fresh herbs.

Of course, some of my peers were already out, every one of them looking a hell of a lot better than I did. Thanks to the tabloid-y Web site FlashNews, some of them had already heard what had happened at Nightlife (part of it, anyway—the postscript with Maddox and Sevarin seemed to still be my secret). Some were just a little too pleased about the whole thing. For the most part, though, the expressions of sympathy and offers of help were genuine. Chefs are a competitive bunch, but if you’ve got any kind of spine at all, you want your opponents to be at their very best when you kick their asses. Besides, most of us know we’re dancing pretty close to the cliff. The bad luck that comes to one of us could come to any of us.

By the time I hailed a cab to take me and my four bags of fresh produce back to Nightlife, the sun was well up and the city wore her gaudy daytime face. My sleepless night dragged at me, but fresh food and the fellowship of my peers had taken the desperate edge off my outlook. I would make myself breakfast and do some experimental cooking until noon. Who knew? Word of our little drama might actually draw in dinner gawkers. We should be ready, just in case.

I paid off the cabbie at the front door and set down my overflowing paper bags on the sidewalk to fish my keys out of my purse. I cranked the lock, shouldered the door open, and froze.

A man’s body lay sprawled on the floor, right in front of the host station. His arms were thrown out wide and his blue eyes stared at the ceiling. Two big red holes gaped against the white flesh of his throat.

He was very obviously dead.

He was also very obviously Cousin Dylan Maddox.

3

There are distinct disadvantages to a chef’s life.

One of them, as it turns out, is that you’ve got no time to watch TV.

If I lived like a normal person, not only would I likely not have had a dead body in my foyer but I would have been able to watch the cop shows, which would have given me a better understanding of what the hell the police were actually
doing
about it.

I had vague expectations of frantic action—lots of flashbulbs going off; guys in clean suits going around dabbing at things with itty-bitty paintbrushes while other guys in trench coats talked in wise-guy lisps while touching their index fingers to suspicious stains spattered on the floor (which, upon reflection, is probably not the best idea; it is a New York City floor, after all). Other guys in white doctor coats carrying black doctor bags would make solemn pronouncements about time of death. Maybe there’d be a skinny chick with great hair, a black leather jacket and high heels ming in to take charge.