Let Them Eat Stake: A Vampire Chef Novel (2 page)

“There’s a reason for that.”

“And he just won the Epicurean Award…”

“He was sleeping with a judge.”

“Saucer of cream with that attitude, Charlotte?” Felicity’s eyes glimmered as anger waded back through her private swamp of desperation.

“That attitude is why I’m not the one running around on a Thursday evening like the proverbial chicken with its head cut off.”

“Maybe we should just go back in the kitchen so you can have one of your cooks rub extra salt into the wound.” Felicity pushed a lock of copper-highlighted hair off her cheek, and her fragile confidence wavered again. “Oh God. It’s all over.”

Now it was my turn for the deep breath. Starting round the bend of another weepy conversational circle was not going to get the story out of Felicity, especially not before opening time. Intervention was clearly necessary.

“Want a drink?”

Felicity looked at me as if I were an angel descending from on high. “Please. Coffee. Black.”

If I hadn’t known things were serious before, I did now. Felicity was strictly a skinny half-caf cappuccino kind of woman. I pulled two mugs of coffee from the industrial-sized urn we keep hot for the staff and gestured Felicity over to table nineteen. Around us, Nightlife’s long, narrow dining room held the hushed anticipation of a stage before the curtain goes up. We open a little later than most dinner
places, because Nightlife’s specialty is haute noir cuisine—that is, we cater to both human and paranormal customers and tastes. This is a big job in Manhattan where the magically oriented minorities are growing faster than scandals around a reality show star, and finding a place where a mixed party can share a meal without anybody getting hurt can still be a challenge. At the moment, the warm golden track lighting was turned down low, bringing out the highlights in the antique oak bar that runs along the wall. Our tables were perfectly laid out with gold under-cloth, white over-cloth, and settings of pristine white dishes. Clatter and bustle drifted nonstop out from the kitchen, but it sounded thin and far away.

“What kind of wedding has got you this wound up?” I asked Felicity as I handed across the coffee.

“Vampires versus Witches, to the tune of five hundred thousand dollars.”

I allowed a moment of respectful silence for the dollar figure. That alone was worth getting dramatic over. Even with this level of promised payoff, though, coordinating a wedding between vampires and witches took guts. There’s a lot of fuss made about the supposed rivalry between vampires and werewolves, but the deepest hatreds run between vampires and witches. And for heaven’s sake, don’t get either side started on how this came about. It’s worse than a bar fight between Red Sox and Yankees fans. Most people think it started with the Five Points Riot in the 1980s, but some feuds go back centuries. If they involve one of the big witch clans, such as the Maddoxes or the Coreys, they can rack up serious body counts and gallons of—excuse the expression—bad blood.

Felicity gulped down the hot coffee as if it were ice water. I watched, eyebrows raised.

“You’ll get a stomachache.”

“Too late.” She gasped. “Give me a Tums, and I can tell you what vintage it is.”

“Join the club. Felicity, I’m glad you like the coffee, but if you want my help for something, you need to get a move on.” My front-of-house staff would be arriving soon. We had family meal to serve, prep to finish, and, based on the reservations list Robert had shown me, a decent-sized dinner crowd on the way.

“Okay, okay. Back in November I got a call from Adrienne Alden.” Felicity paused and looked at me.

“Adrienne Alden!” I exclaimed.

The corners of Felicity’s mouth flickered upward. “You have no idea who she is, do you?”

“Robert,” I called over to my maître d’, who was busy with the computer at the host station. “Who’s Adrienne Alden?”

“Mrs. Adrienne Alden, married to Scott Alden,” replied Robert without hesitation or even looking back at me. He has a social register in his brain that is the envy of restaurateurs throughout Manhattan. “Scott Alden is CEO of North Island Holdings and oldest son of the very prominent Alden family. Mrs. Alden is on the board of several important charities and galleries, and lunches with a highly exclusive group of similarly connected ladies.”

I turned back to Felicity and translated this into my own terms. “Adrienne Alden gets a good table on Saturday night, and possibly a complimentary appetizer.”

“She’s also got a daughter named Deanna,” said Felicity. “Last year, Deanna Alden got engaged to Gabriel Renault, a nightblood originally from Paris, or so he says.”

“Nightbloods”—that is, vampires—have been known to get a little cagey about where they’re actually from. It’s way more romantic to be Nightblood Victor from “Paree” than plain old Vampire Vic from Hoboken.

“So, groom’s the vamp, and the bride’s the witch?”

Felicity frowned. “Well, the mother’s a witch. I’m not entirely clear on the daughter.”

This was one of those times when discretion was the better part of sarcasm.

“Anyway”—Felicity took another swallow of coffee—“Mrs. Alden decided Deanna and Gabriel were going to have the wedding of the decade.” She paused. “I would have called you to do the catering right away, you know.” Felicity seasoned her earnestness with that special blend of tension that comes when you realize you may have already screwed up. “But back in November things…weren’t going so well for you.”

“You mean back in November I was standing in front of a jury while recovering from smoke inhalation and trying to explain that I shouldn’t be sent to jail for burning down a vampire bar.” A situation that, incidentally, had been the direct result of a clash between the aforementioned Maddox witch clan and some vampires, one of whom happened to be my brother, Chet.

“That qualifies as things not going so well.”

“They did get better.” Kind of. Mostly. Except for some little holdover issues, such as how my sort-of-kind-of-yeah-okay dating Brendan Maddox had not endeared me to some of the more hard-line members of that particular magically oriented family.

Focus, Charlotte.
“So, you called Oscar Simmons, even though you know he’s the restaurant world’s biggest prima donna. A title for which there is hefty competition, may I add. What were you thinking, again?”

“The society page of the
New York Times
,” said Felicity to what was left of her coffee. “And did I mention five hundred thousand dollars?”

“You’ve seen both before.”

“I know, I know.” Felicity wilted down until her chin was in danger of dipping into her mug.

A very unpleasant idea settled into my brain. “You’re not sleeping with Oscar, are you?”

“What do you take me for? I don’t sleep with chefs. No offense.”

“You’re not my type.”

“Besides, he’s with somebody else right now.”

“Oscar’s always with somebody else. Being unavailable is supposedly part of his charm.” This is to me one of life’s great mysteries. What is attractive about a guy who is ready and willing to walk out on his current relationship at the drop of a toque? Especially if you stop and think for just one second that the same guy could just as easily walk out on you.

“So, if it wasn’t personal, what pushed Oscar over the edge?”

“That’s the problem. I don’t
know
. I spent hours on the phone with him yesterday. I went over to Perception and camped out on his doorstep. All he’ll say is he’s pulling out of the Alden-Renault wedding, and he’s stopped returning my calls.”

“Sounds like he’s trying to up his fee.”

“He returned his fee.”

“Oh.” I sipped coffee while the gears in my head ground hard to keep up with this new conversational turn. Part of the reason Oscar was so successful was that he was an Olympic-level penny pincher. “What about his staff? He must have a sous who…”

“He told them he’d fire them all if they took over the job.”

This was hardly reasonable, but at least it sounded like the Oscar Simmons I knew. “And you’ve really got no idea what brought this on?”

“I swear, Charlotte. I’ve tried to find out, but no one will tell me anything.” Felicity leaned toward me, and I realized at some point in our conversation she’d stopped blinking. “This was supposed to be the biggest paranormal event since the vampires came out of the coffin. Now, the client’s talking about postponing, the bride’s talking about
eloping, I’ve got no caterer and only ten days until the zero hour. You have got to help me.”

“Felicity, I don’t know. Nightlife’s on shaky ground, and I haven’t got a full staff…”

“Did I mention the hundred thousand dollars?”

“That’s the food budget?”

“That’s your fee.”

It was a long moment before I could answer, because I had to concentrate all my energies on not leaping to my feet, or starting to drool. Felicity clearly found hope in my hesitation. She was blinking again, and color returned to her ravaged face. She was also jumping to conclusions, probably fueled by rapid caffeine intake. Something was missing in her story. It poked at me like a pinbone under my fingertips.

“Felicity, tell me what this job entails. Exactly.”

“Wedding day catering includes breakfast and lunch buffets, hors d’oeuvres, a sit-down five-course dinner, plated dessert, plus the cake. Besides that, you come out to the house and act as personal chef for the family and guests until the wedding.”

I let all this sink in next to the internal spreadsheet all executive chefs carry deep within them.

“One hundred thousand,” said Felicity again. “Over and above the budget for food and staff. Pure profit after taxes. You can plow it all straight into Nightlife.”

I took a deep breath. “Felicity?”

She leaned forward. “Yes?”

“Two hundred thousand.”

This was how I found myself in a cab hurtling through the early-evening traffic, headed for Brooklyn Heights.

I love Brooklyn. Brooklyn has texture, flavor, and color, and you shouldn’t turn your back on it for too long, because it will get up to something. A quick smartphone-aided Google on the address Felicity rattled off for the cab driver got me a real estate listing talking about the beauty of the “double-width Italianate mansion in the heart of one of the city’s most historic neighborhoods.” It left out the part about most snooty. Brooklyn Heights has families that re-member President Roosevelt back when he was still Little Frankie.

All of this made me very glad I’d taken the time to grab a clean jacket.

Felicity and I were not alone when we climbed out of the taxi in front of the sprawling brownstone. Much to Felicity’s consternation, I’d insisted we stop on the way and pick up another member of my team. Marie Alamedos—better known to one and all as Marie-Our-Pastry-Chef—stepped out of the cab with all the dignity of the Queen Mother stepping down from a carriage.

In a kitchen well stocked with short, round women,
Marie’s the shortest, the roundest, and the oldest. Her third grandkid had been born just six weeks earlier, but if you met her in a dark alley, you’d never peg her as anybody’s adoring
abuelita
. At sixty-five, she has arms like a longshoreman from hefting sacks of flour and masses of dough. Her jaw and neck are scarred down the right side from the time she took a direct hit with a spray of hot sugar. Years of watching apprentices has given her black eyes the hard glitter of a security guard at Kennedy airport. At the same time, concert pianists would sell their souls on eBay to have the delicacy and precision in her fingers.

And, believe me, if Marie Alamedos ever gets called “the Cakeinator,” it happens where she can’t hear.

Marie did not wear kitchen whites. She wore a black knit twinset and a single strand of matched pink pearls. With her personal portfolio tucked under her arm, she nodded to me and Felicity.

“I am ready.”

“Thank you, Mrs. Alamedos.” Now that Felicity had an answer to her crisis, the Hysteric had been given her pink slip and a swift kick. The Felicity in front of us was smooth and sophisticated, and she didn’t waver even slightly as she mounted the broad steps of the brownstone mansion to ring the bell. Marie walked up beside her, equally at home. I, on the other hand, looked at the stained-glass fan light, the carved wooden doors, and the ornamented window frames, and tried not to feel as if I should be headed for the servant’s entrance.

The door was opened by a tall, rail-thin woman in a neat black work dress.

“Good afternoon, Ms. Lyons,” said Felicity. “Mrs. Alden’s expecting us.”

“She’s in the living room.” Ms. Lyons’s gaze slid past Felicity to assess my and Marie’s status relative to the rest of the people in her house. “Wipe your feet. I just finished the mopping.”

Marie narrowed her eyes. The effect was a little like a laser scope finding its target. Ms. Lyons narrowed hers back. I swear I heard that
clack-clack
sound you get in the movies when somebody’s working the pump action on a shotgun.

I wiped my feet.

Ms. Lyons led us up an oak staircase that would have done Scarlett O’Hara proud, down a narrow hall, and into a living room roughly the size of Nightlife’s entire dining area. Everything from the original artwork on the stark white walls to the Victorian-era mahogany furniture looked down on you from the perch of well-aged money. A tidy line of bell jars decorated a black marble mantelpiece, each covering a single antique; a gold knot work necklace studded with garnets, a silver pocket watch, a wrist cuff of etched bronze, and, at the far end, a tiny, oddly delicate-looking silver pistol.