Let Them Eat Stake: A Vampire Chef Novel (10 page)

I decided to prove that not only could I take it, I could dish it out. While we waited for the traffic to clear so we could cross the street, I moved toward Anatole and tilted my face up. “First, last, and only, Anatole,” I breathed. “You know that.”

This, in retrospect, was probably not smart. I looked just a little too long into Anatole’s green eyes. They had gold flecks in them that sparkled in the streetlight, and I felt the powerful urge to look deeper. There were secrets waiting there I wanted to know, secrets he was keeping just for me.

“My heart sings,” murmured Anatole, and I snapped back to myself.

“Your heart hasn’t done anything in centuries,” I muttered, ducking my head as I hurried across the street. There was a considerable amount of internal cursing on my part to accompany this maneuver. You do not tease vampires—even vampires who like you; maybe especially vampires who like you.

Anatole, of course, kept up with me easily.

“So, do you know anything else about Gabriel Renault?” I turned back to the original subject, more to put a little mental distance between me and Anatole than to get actual information.

Anatole sighed again. “You are a cruel mistress.”

“You have no idea.”

Anatole’s entire expression turned warm and sly. It told me without a word that he saw the straight line I’d dropped, but he was going to be merciful and just let it lie there, for now. “Henri Renault and his sons are what might be classed as professional vampires.”

“What? They’re hedge fund managers?”

“Surprisingly, no. Rather, they are the polite, charming nightbloods you can invite to your parties to show your business associates and political constituents how broad-minded you are, or, alternately, to show your dinner guests how progressive you are.”

“Or show your parents how rebellious and independent you are?”

“Quite possibly. As long as you can afford them, of course. The Renaults are rumored to have highly refined tastes.”

“Well, Deanna Alden’s plenty rich.”

“Yes, but a rich witch. I will admit, I was surprised when I read the announcement in the
Times
.”

“Why? I mean, if Renault’s a parasite…” Plus, witch/warlock blood was an even more potent beverage for a vampire than regular human blood. There had to be a real attraction in having a reliable supply of the good stuff.

When did the fact that I think this way stop surprising me?

“But Henri Renault is a parasite with a very finely developed survival instinct. He has been playing this game since Lord Byron invited him out to Lake Geneva one extremely dreary summer.”

“You’re making things up again.”

“I assure you, I am not. What is important, however, is that Renault has never stayed in a dangerous situation, let alone showed any signs of doing something so permanent as marrying into one. I cannot imagine he has not passed the tricks of the trade on to his children.”

“Is there any chance Gabriel could really be in love?” It was a pretty pitiful last-ditch effort to make this situation into something less creep-inducing, but I’d tried everything else.

“There is always a chance,” said Anatole. “But it would not be my first guess.”

I let this settle down and season what little I already knew. Any girl with both money and looks had to have seen more than her share of pretty boys with bright smiles and good table manners. It would take way more than that to get her to tumble into the whole white wedding routine, wouldn’t it? On the other hand, Deanna might be just a spoiled rich girl who was giving her family a hard time for reasons of her own. Except that cynical interpretation didn’t fit with Deanna’s misty glow when she talked about Gabriel.

Could Gabriel Renault have successfully put the vamp whammy on a Maddox?

“Has Brendan Maddox asked you to talk to me about this?” Anatole kept the question casual, but I felt the hard current underneath his words.

“Uh, no.” In fact, Brendan would probably be really unhappy if he knew I was airing his family business, especially with this particular nightblood.

We’d reached the subway station. I stopped beside the entrance, turned to Anatole, and hesitated. Of course, he noticed, and, of course, he smiled. He also seemed perfectly content to stand there, waiting for whatever I was going to say or do. He waited as if he had all the time in the world. He waited, in fact, as he had almost every night for the past three months, for me to come out of Nightlife and not refuse his offer to walk with me wherever I was going.

“What’s going on here, Anatole?” I whispered.

“I am seeing you to your destination.”

“I mean, what’s really going on here?”

I braced myself for him to come closer, to try to draw me into his gaze full of heat and promises. But he stayed where he was, and his expression was surprisingly gentle. “You are making up your mind, Charlotte.” Now he did move forward. He took my warm hand in his cool one, and heaven help me, I let him. “It’s all right. I understand. I am what I am, and whatever occurs between us will not be like any relationship you might have with a dayblood man. I want it to be very clear that each step we take is with your full consent.”

My heart pounded in the base of my throat. I should back away. I should take my hand out of his. This wasn’t fair, what I was allowing to happen right now. It wasn’t fair to Brendan, or to Anatole, or to me either. All that flashed through my mind, and I still didn’t move.

“Are you always this careful?” If he had told me the truth, Anatole was old even by vampire standards. By human standards, he was impossibly ancient. That meant there’d been a lot of…relationships down the years. Not that we talked about it. Actually, I made it a habit not to even wonder about Anatole’s “others.” You can file that under sanity preservation.

“I am never this careful.” Anatole lifted my fingertips to his mouth and brushed his dry lips across my knuckles. He stepped back and gave me one of his bows, accompanied
by his most promise-filled smile. Then, Anatole turned and strolled away.

It was not until he had rounded the corner and was out of sight that I finally regained the ability to breathe.

“What the hell am I doing?” I asked myself. The only answer myself came back with was that we both very much needed to go home and hide under the bed.

“Charlotte! Sweetie, darling, lamb chop chefy! How
are
you?”

There is exactly one person in the world who gets to talk to me like that, and he was trotting down a marble staircase toward me with his arms wide-open.

“Mel! My masculine cabbage! What is
with
the bow tie?”

We hugged and laughed and air-kissed, and, I have to admit, it was really good to see him.

Mel Kopekne was another refugee from Buffalo. We’d become friends in high school, working the closing shift at Holden’s Dinner and the Rye (I had nothing to do with that name) during the summer. Probably the times we spent dancing around the kitchen to strains of “Honky Tonk Woman” coming from the cheap boom box are best left to fond and very private memory. Mel took himself off to the wicked city even before I did. Here, he had aged into a cheerful little man with lightly thinning hair, superb people skills, excellent taste in suits, but strangely questionable judgment in neckwear.

“Have you met my sous, Reese?”

“Not yet.” Mel had a very precise eye for exactly how much over-the-topness someone could take, and toned the
show down to a firm handshake and professional smile before he turned to Felicity.

“Felicit-tay!” Mel took both her hands in all solicitous concern. “My poor dear! I heard about Oscar. First that awful breakup and now a stroke! Such a shock! Don’t worry, we have it all under control.”

Breakup? What breakup? Who broke up?
I didn’t get a chance to ask. Felicity gave Mel a quick peck and pat on his cheek. “Mel, swear to me you are not kidding.”

“I never kid about combat readiness.”

“Like the new place, Mel,” I said, surveying the domed and gilded lobby in front of us. “Small, but very tasteful.”

“Why, thank you, my dearest one. I had it made up ‘specially for you.”

The Carriger Hall was a relatively new event space, but a relatively old building. A bank back in the 1900s, it had all the vaulting, granite, marble, stained glass and gilt trim you could ask for. The atmosphere was custom tailored to say this was a building for the ages and it would care for your money as long as the city stood.

Except apparently some of the executives had been taking better care of themselves than of their investors, and the bank folded in 2008. The building reopened shortly thereafter as a palace for marriages, banquets, and charity  events. Somehow, while the rest of the country was looking under the cushions for spare change, Mel and his backers had managed to beg or borrow (I’m reasonably sure he didn’t actually steal anything) enough to restore the gilding, painting, and stained glass to their original glory.

The joint was jumping now. As Mel explained, they were debuting a spring designer collection, and we got to see his people hanging banners, setting out flowers, laying out buffet tables and reception tables. It was the kind of controlled, loud, preperformance chaos we could all appreciate. Mel, the proud papa of a five-thousand-square-foot gilded-cage
child, led us through it now, pointing out the perfections of setting, traffic flow, staffing, and all the useful spaces, both large and small.

From my and Reese’s perspectives, of course, the best part was the on-site kitchen down where the vaults used to be. Nothing was worse than having to cart the food in from some outside space and try to keep it hot, fresh, and pretty. Mel stood up, proud and patient to Reese’s rapid-fire quizzing about the number of staff he had booked for the Big Day. We would have to assemble only a foundation crew for the kitchen. When we finally got back to the vaulted lobby, Reese made a quick call to Hank back at the Aldens’ to make sure everything was proceeding with dinner and snack prep there. Then Mel took him up to the main office to review the specifics of the service. Felicity was still firing off notes and messages from her PDA. She also showed every sign of sprinting out the revolving doors for a cab. I almost had enough mercy in my soul to let her go.

Almost.

“Let’s me and you go get coffee.” I grabbed Felicity’s arm. “We need to go over some lists.”

This did not fool her for a second, and she yanked away from me. “I knew it. You’ve had a gray cloud over your head since you walked in here. What’s going on?”

I ignored her question and instead headed down the street toward a little café I’d spotted called Bean There, Bun That. Why did people insist on doing things like this to innocent little dining establishments? However, they roasted their own, and the guy in the black T-shirt behind the espresso machine seemed to know what he was doing as he scooped, tamped, poured and added a neat cap of foamed milk. The Danish were fresh baked too, which was a nice surprise. I bought a peach pastry for me and a cheese one for Felicity.

I set Felicity’s Danish in front of her, and she looked at it weakly. “How can you eat with all this work to be done?”

“I’m a chef. I can eat anytime. You should eat too.” I
pulled her BlackBerry out of her fingers and set it beside me, out of reach. “You need your strength.”

Felicity tore off a corner of Danish and nibbled on it, possibly to keep from nibbling on her own fingernails. She did not, however, stop eyeing her BlackBerry. This is known as negotiating from a position of strength.

“Did you know Karina Alden was dating Oscar?”

Felicity’s hand froze with another bit of Danish halfway to her mouth. “Oh. You found out about that.”

I wrapped both hands around my paper coffee cup, but that turned out to be a very bad idea, because I nearly crushed it. “Yes, Felicity,” I said in a tone my people would have recognized as the one they least wanted to hear at the end of a bad shift. “I found out about that.”

Felicity went quiet, tearing off small bits of Danish and eating them one at a time. I folded my arms to keep from taking that lovely pastry away from her until she could promise to eat like an adult.

“I didn’t know,” she said softly. “I don’t suppose it matters much…now.”

“Felicity! Somebody’s trying to tear this wedding apart, and the ex-caterer who was an ex-boyfriend is now an ex-human being, and you say it doesn’t matter? What is your problem?”

But we both knew what the problem was. It was simple and universal. Prestige and money mess with your head, and they are very, very hard to turn down.

“God, what a disaster.” Felicity slumped backward, and her elegant fingers tore another piece of pastry into little crumbs. “I never should have agreed to take this job.”

“Probably not,” I agreed.

“It had all the hallmarks of a gotcha marriage from the beginning. I mean, honestly, a Maddox and a vampire? It
has
to be the bride trying to pull one over on her family.”

“So, why me, Felicity? What am I doing here, making things worse?”

“Honestly?” She scooted her newly created crumbs around with one perfectly manicured fingernail. I gritted my teeth and clenched my fists. I was never letting Felicity near a decent piece of baking again. Ever. “I don’t know. When Oscar quit, I had to come up with a list, fast. When Mrs. Alden heard your name, she said we should get you. I knew it’d be trouble,” she added, “but she said she’d heard good things about you. I mean, you were there when Deanna was going on about how much she likes Nightlife.”