Let Them Eat Stake: A Vampire Chef Novel (37 page)

And they would stay in love until Adrienne had taken care of the rest of the blackmail and the rest of Gabriel’s blood family, and was ready to do him in. Except she hadn’t known Karina and Henri were working together. And no one had predicted that Henri would try to run, or that Jacques would find a support group courtesy of my brother, Chet.

“Brendan’s smart,” I whispered. “If I put it together, he can. He’s set something up. It’s already over. He’s a security specialist. He’ll have already figured it out. He did. He had to. He’s okay. He’s okay. He’s okay.”

Something cold settled into my veins. My frantic thoughts stilled and receded back from my consciousness. This was Anatole, I realized with a disturbing level of calm. Anatole had reached into my mind without permission. He was sharing his calm, distancing me from my own fear.

And God help me, I sat there and I let him do it.

Anatole made the cabbie stop a block from the Aldens’ house. We climbed out, and the driver gunned the engine and was gone, leaving us alone beneath the streetlights. It was that dead time of the night, between everybody who had to get up in the morning being home in bed or in front of the TV and everybody else still being out and about. We had the street to ourselves.

Anatole had withdrawn his chill presence, and my thoughts were my own again. Fortunately, they’d decided to calm down and get serious.

“You saw the wall around the Aldens’ back garden?” I said to him. “Can you get over it?”

Anatole considered. “You are thinking you will go in and distract Karina while I sneak in the back?”

“You can find Brendan if they’ve got him hidden, and get him out.”

“I can find Brendan, but you must realize neither one of us is going to leave you with Karina Alden.”

“You can do all the macho heroics you want, as soon as you’ve got Brendan with you.”

I could feel Anatole forcing the cold distant air he carried with him to wrap around his emotions like a cloak. He was shielding me from him, and himself from me.

“I’m sorry,” I whispered, shaken. “I’m sorry, Anatole. Please, don’t…”

Anatole waved his hand carelessly, but he also turned away. “I knew what I was doing when I offered to accompany you. Give me five minutes; then make your entrance.”

And like that, he was gone, and I was alone. I bit back a curse and started walking. The curtains had been drawn on the brownstones so no one could see me go by. My clogs sounded too loud on the concrete. This wasn’t normal. I was in the middle of Brooklyn, and the world around me felt utterly empty. I couldn’t even hear the traffic, let alone any voices. A black town car trundled slowly down the
middle of the street, and I pulled my shoulders up to my ears, trying to huddle in on myself. Fear simmered in my veins, working its way up to a full boil.

Five minutes. Five minutes.
I chanted silently. I measured my steps. I counted seconds in heartbeats and slow, steadying breaths. I resisted the urge to try to reach my thoughts out to Anatole. I couldn’t tell, though, if I was afraid I wouldn’t find him, or that I would.

The Aldens’ house loomed up in front of me. Anger turned up the heat inside me, burning straight through the fear. I was ready to march straight up to that front door and bang on it—hard. Make a racket, wake the neighbors, force somebody in this ritzy neighborhood to pay attention to what was going on around them. But I stopped myself. If I tried to get in the front door, somebody might just wonder what gave me so much confidence. I had to put on at least some kind of show of sneaking in.

So I ducked down the path between the houses. I’d hop the back gate to the garden and get into the kitchen through the French doors. Half the time I’d been working there, those were left unlocked. I curled my finger around the cool wrought-iron gate and lifted one foot.

The gate squeaked and swung open. I bit my lip and backed up a step. But it was too late.

“Come in, Charlotte,” called Karina.

My mouth went dry. My heart tried to duck under my ribs. But where was I going to go? I put my hand in my pocket and my thumb on the trigger of my ridiculous little spray bottle. Fat lot of good it would do me if she had a gun or a witch with her. But for the moment, it was all I had.

I moved slowly forward, shuffling down the flagstone path, trying not to jump at the shadows stirring in the warm breeze. Slowly, I eased myself around the corner of the brownstone mansion. There on the patio, Karina Alden sat at a little glass-topped table. Trudy was just emerging from the kitchen, carrying two steaming mugs with her.

And
there was the final piece of the puzzle. Karina couldn’t reproduce the Arall without somebody who could reproduce the magic that went into it. There was only one person who might know that part; someone Karina could trust, and someone, not a Maddox, who needed the money.

“Hello, Trudy,” I said.

“Hello, Charlotte.” She set the mugs down on the table; one in front of Karina, one in front of an empty chair.

“Thanks.” Karina wrapped her hands around her mug. “Looks like you were right. She would come right away if she thought Brendan was here.”

My heart wobbled, tipped, and fell. I glanced up at the curving stairs to the balcony, and at the dark windows and the silent house. “It was a bluff.” And I’d fallen for it. I knew you could work magic with a cell phone. I’d seen Brendan do it. I knew Trudy was a witch, one of many in this whole cluster of double-crossing who could have been working with Karina. Despite this, I didn’t do anything to confirm where Brendan actually was. I didn’t call Lloyd, or Linus. I didn’t go to Brendan’s apartment, or even sneak Anatole up to the side of the house to see if he could sense him. I’d thought Brendan was walking into a trap, and I panicked; now I was the one trapped.

Karina smiled and nudged the empty chair out. “Sit down?”

I walked down the steps to the patio. I focused on Trudy and Karina. I did not look at the garden wall. “So,” I said to Trudy, “I take it you never did get around to calling Pete?”

“I am sorry,” she said. “I didn’t have any choice.”

“There’s always a choice.”

“Yeah, but it’s not always a good one,” Karina said with a sigh. “Especially not when it involves going to prison for murder, right, Trudy?” Trudy turned her face away.

“This is about that NYU kid, isn’t it?” I said. “It wasn’t Adrienne who killed him. It was you.”

“It
was an accident,” Trudy murmured. “That’s all.”

“She got hold of the wrong bottle.” Karina shook her head in a mock sympathy creepy enough to stand the hairs on the back of my neck on end. “Back in the day, my mother was more willing to help friends out with her potions. Trudy wanted a love potion, but she got it mixed up with the store of the Arall she had left over from the Five Points Riot. At least, that’s the story and they’re sticking to it.” She gazed at the steam rising from her mug. “For what it’s worth, Mom says it was an accident too. Trudy says she gave the boy the potion in good faith. The problem is, she’s not sure Linus O’Grady would believe that. Neither was I.”

“You’ve been working on this a long time, haven’t you?”

Karina shrugged. “Not this specifically. I knew I’d find some way to make the family pay what they owed me. Sit down, Chef. Trudy’s made coffee.” She pushed the mug across the glass.

I ignored her. “I know Linus O’Grady, Trudy. He’d listen.” I put all the conviction I had into that, and got exactly nowhere. Trudy just shook her head, her mouth drawn tight. She thought it was too late. I could see it in the set of her shoulders and the way she refused to catch my eye. She’d thrown in with Karina, and there was no way back.

“You can go now, Trudy,” said Karina. “I know you’ve got a flight to catch.”

Trudy nodded, then headed for the French doors. Pausing, she turned and lifted her eyes to mine. “I am sorry,” she told me again.

I just shook my head. She might be telling the truth, but it was way past mattering to me. Trudy turned away fast, then vanished into the kitchen. I let out a long breath and took a couple of steps forward. I couldn’t worry about her anymore. Anatole was out there in the dark. He was listening, and by now he knew it was all a trap. But he’d be waiting for a chance to come get me out. I had to keep Karina talking and make sure that chance showed up.

“So,
where’re your folks?” I asked.

She shrugged. “Oh, you know, out and about. Wedding business.”

“Your dad’s keeping your mom out of the way, isn’t he?” I’d reached the table. I could have grabbed her. This didn’t seem to bother her at all. “He knows what you’re up to.”

“Some of it,” Karina admitted. “Except he thinks it’s all a frame-up to keep Henri from being able to blackmail Mom.”

“Didn’t think he’d go for the profit motive?”

“No. Surprising coming from a man who spends his days making money for other people, isn’t it?” She shrugged. “That’s all right. Once Mom’s in jail, the Maddoxes will just leave him by the wayside, and it’ll be over.” She had her fingers wrapped loosely around her mug, but she wasn’t drinking.

“You hope.” I felt a gentle stirring, not in the air, but in the back of my mind. It was Anatole, and he was getting closer. I did not let myself turn. I circled the table, as if intending to sit down in the empty chair. Karina tracked me with her gaze.

“Look, Charlotte. I’m sorry about the phone call, but I needed to get you out here. There’s no reason we can’t work out a deal.”

“What kind of deal did you work out with Oscar?” I shot back.

Her face twisted up tight and her eyes brightened. It took a couple of tries before she could form a new sentence. “That was a mistake.”

“Which part? Trusting him or killing him?”

“Both,” she whispered. But then she shook herself and her calm certainty returned. “I really never thought he’d try to steal the Arall out from under me.”

Tears glittered in her hard eyes. She cared about Oscar; I was sure about it. She might have murdered him, but she
cared about him on some level anyway. It was just the witches she didn’t give a damn about.

It hit me. “You think they’re monsters, don’t you?” I said. “Not just the vampires. You took your grandfather’s ideas a step further. You think all the paranormals are monsters, including the witches.”

“Well, they’re sure as hell not human,” she snapped. “Prick them, they don’t bleed. Poison them, they don’t die. Come on, Charlotte, sit down. Have some coffee.”

I reached out and picked up the mug. Karina smiled, and, I swear, she licked her lips. But then, I knew she had no poker face. I brought the mug closer to me, letting the steam waft against my face. There it was again, that faint, bad, metallic smell. Probably she’d thought it would be masked by the bitter odor of the fresh, hot coffee, and for just about anybody else it might have worked.

I dumped the whole thing into the nearest planter.

“Hey!” Karina started to her feet.

“You didn’t really expect me to drink that, did you?”

“No, not really.”

Karina tossed the contents of her own mug right in my face. I shouted and stumbled backward, trying to knuckle hot coffee out of my eyes and wipe it off my cheeks. A cold wind blew past me. Karina laughed, and then she choked. I blinked hard, and my vision cleared.

Anatole stood on the patio. He had one of Karina’s arms twisted behind her back, and he had his hand around the back of her neck. But she was just grinning, and both of them were staring at me.

“What?” I shook coffee droplets off my fingers. The metallic smell was all around me, getting deep into my nose, and tingling on the back of my throat and the insides of my cheek. I must have swallowed some of the stuff. I coughed and spat, and it didn’t help.

“What is that?” whispered Anatole. “What have you
done to her?” His mouth was open, as if he were trying to swallow the steam as it dispersed on the breeze.

Oh. Shit.

“It’s the Arall,” I said. “Anatole, she’s got the poison working. You need to get out of here.”

“Oh yes, Anatole,” said Karina brightly. “You really should get out of here.”

But Anatole wasn’t retreating. He swayed on his feet, hard, almost losing his balance. He lifted his hands away from Karina, who obligingly stepped aside, so he could move toward me with a slow, predatory grace. I could feel the cold that surrounded him shifting and changing. I could feel his fascination reach out to rivet me in place—fascination and hunger.

“It’s a complex little formula,” Karina said. “It renders humans irresistible to vampires. It’s also extremely corrosive. Even if they just bite through the skin, it rots out their mouths and fangs, generally past their ability to heal before they die of starvation. Of course, it’s not too good for human skin either, and when ingested, it’s poison, what with the methyl alcohol and so forth. That’s why it’s the last resort. You see, it kills the human as well as the vampire.”

“Bet it blisters like hell,” I croaked. Maybe it raised hives, so that somebody who died of it might look as though he’d had a really bad allergic reaction.

She nodded. “We’re going to have to work on that. You should be starting to feel it right about now.”

She was right. My throat and mouth had started to itch. So had my eyelids, and my eyeballs—not just my eyeballs, but the sockets underneath, and my face, and my neck, and the backs of my hands. And none of that mattered, because Anatole was coming toward me, and his hunger was worming its way into the pit of my own stomach.

“Run, Charlotte,” Anatole croaked. “Please. Run away.”

Karina laughed, and that bright, brittle sound kicked me into gear.

I lunged sideways and snatched up the nearest wrought-iron chair. Karina jumped back, and it whistled as I swung it past her and ran toward the house. Anatole hissed hard behind me, and I felt hope warring with the hunger. He thought I was running away.

I, on the other hand, was thinking that if the Aldens had splashed out for safety glass, I was hosed. I screwed my eyes shut and swung the chair against the French doors. Glass crashed all around me as the window shattered, and the burglar alarm screamed blue murder.

“Nice try, Charlotte,” said Karina. “But it’s too late.”