by Sarah Zettel
“Sorry,” he said as he came in, taking off his new wool trilby. “I should have called. I meant to be at the opening, but my grandfather’s in town and I had to get him up to speed on what’s happening with the contract bid. I hoped you might be still awake and I . . .” His security consultant’s eyes zeroed in on the essential details.
“Roses?” he said.
I shrugged. “Anatole.”
“Ah. The competition.”
“Funny. That’s what he called you.”
Brendan tipped his head in acknowledgment. “What did you call me?”
This was another one of those moments when there was a whole lot I could have said. But as I looked at Brendan and remembered how we’d kissed and how he’d stood by me through what I sincerely hoped was the worst time I’d ever know, the only genuine option available to me was honesty.
“I don’t know what to call you,” I said. “Either one of you.”
He puffed out his cheeks. “Well,” he said. “We’ll have to see if we can change that.”
“Brendan . . .” I bit my lip. “My resturant’s in an iron lung. I’m going to have to work around the clock to get it on its feet again. I’m on parole. My brother’s about to get heavy into blood politics, and I’ve got a vampire making cow eyes at me.”
“In that case, let’s go get some coffee.”
I blinked. “Love to.”
Side by side, we walked into the daylight between the apartment buildings and sprawling shops. Around us, the city woke itself up, yawned and stretched and looked around with knowing eyes for whatever might think about coming next.
Read on for a special preview of Sarah Zettel’s next Vampire Chef mystery,
LET THEM EAT STAKE
Coming from Obsidian in April 2012.
“Charlotte! He left me, Charlotte!”
I jerked my gaze up from my cutting board. The kitchen door banged open and a blur of color hurtled past the hot line.
“Ten days before the wedding!” The intruder—whose name, incidentally, was Felicity Garnett—clamped her hands on my shoulders. “He walked out on me! Ten days and he left me alone!”
Being suddenly grabbed and shaken by a hysterical woman in a designer pants suit is never good, but just then it was particularly bad. For one thing, I had a boning knife in my hand and a lovely fillet of sushi-grade tuna that needed attention on my board. For another, at five o’clock on Thursday afternoon, I was heading up the dinner prep for my restaurant, Nightlife. My crew was busy at their stations: chopping mise en place, simmering sauces, seasoning soups, checking the temperature of the ovens and making sure the containers of fresh ingredients and garnishes were in place for when we opened at eight. They filled the kitchen with steam, spices and the hyperactive drumbeat of thudding knives. Over all this fragrant, noisy chaos boomed the bass voice of Reese, my ex–drill sergeant of a second sous-chef, abusing some of the newer members of the line.
“I said ‘fine dice.’ Fine. Does that look fine to you? Your answer is ‘No, Chef.’”
“No, Chef.”
“He can be taught. Do it right this time. Your answer is ‘Yes, Chef.’”
“Yes, Chef.”
The door banged open again. This time it let in Robert Kemp, my white-haired English maitre d’, looking as mortified as I’ve ever seen him. “I’m so sorry, Chef Caine . . . ,” he began, but pulled up short when he saw our intruder had me in a death grip.
“You’re going to say no, aren’t you?” Felicity gasped and reeled backward. “You can’t. If you say no, it’s over!”
A minute before, I had had great plans to do some creative swearing, but they never panned out. I had to stop this, immediately. It’s one thing when random passersby have hysterics on the street. I mean, that’s just New York City for you. It’s quite another when those hysterics happen in a confined space full of knives, fire and massive pots of simmering stock.
Knotting my fingers into her gray jacket collar, I forced Felicity to face the door.
“No!” she wailed. “You can’t! He left. . . .”
I inored this. “Zoe, Reese, keep it moving in here. I’ll be in the dining room.”
“Yes, Chef,” Zoe replied calmly from the dessert station.
“Hear that, slackers?” called Reese down the line. “You’re mine!” His manic SpongeBob laugh would have given Alfred Hitchcock goose bumps.
“It’s . . . !” Felicity began again.
Robert held the door, allowing me to shove Felicity bodily out of the bright kitchen into the dim, cool and much, much less hazardous dining room.
“But . . . !”
“Felicity!” I spun her back around, put my hand under her pointy chin, pushed her jaw closed and held on. “Cut it out!”
Felicity’s tears shut off like she’d thrown a switch somewhere, and her wide, wild amber eyes narrowed in raccoon-masked fury.
“Cut. It. Out,” I said again, to make sure she fully understood the nuances of the phrase. “Are you going to cut it out?”
Felicity’s chin trembled against my palm, but she nodded.
“Okay.” I let her go, and she drew in a deep, shuddering breath. I held up my hand again, just in case. She held up her palm in answer. I nodded and waved back Robert, who was hovering just out of her field of vision. My maitre d’ nodded warily and retreated to his station by the door, but not without a whole lot of backward glances.
The truth was, I was feeling more than a little rattled myself just then. Of all the professional acquaintances who I might have suspected, capable of total disintegration during dinner prep, Felicity Garnett was not one of them.
Felicity, in case you don’t read the society pages, was not a bride being left at the altar. She is, however, one of the highest of the high-end event coordinators in Manhattan. Under normal circumstances, she was not only willow thin and knife sharp, but completely poised. I had personally seen her face down a bride who had been slipped an extra caffeine dose in her triple-mocha latte, gotten hold of the cake knife and threatened to carve up the room unless the flowers were switched from peonies to delphiniums right now. Felicity and I had been drifting apart a bit since she shot up the ladder in her chosen profession, and I . . . stalled. Well, maybe not stalled, but there had been some setbacks, particularly last fall, when Nightlife had experienced a murder on the premises, a takeover attempt that could charitably be described as hostile, and the departure of my vampire brother, who had been part owner of the restaurant. All little things, of course, but they did raise eyebrows in certain circles. I guess Felicity felt she needed to be careful whom she was seen with. She regularly stage-manages the Big Day for the discerning daughters of Fortune 100 families. That’s a business that hangs heavily on reputation and appearance. Felicity was very good at both.
“I’m sorry, Charlotte.” Felicity brushed at her jacket and tried to adjust the collar of the plum silk blouse underneath. I actually don’t think she owned any kind of clothing except professional pants suits and brightly colored blouses. “But he—”
“He walked out on you,” I cut her off because her chin was starting to wobble dangerously. “Got that. You want to tell me who ‘he’ is?”
“Oscar Simmons.”
The name hit me with a dull thud. Celebrity chef Oscar Simmons and I had what gets called “history.” Unfortunately, it was e kind of history that tends to involve barbarian hordes and burning cities. “Felicity, tell me you didn’t hire Oscar for a high-pressure event.”
“I know, I know. But he’s one of the most talked-about chefs in Manhattan. . . .”
“There’s a reason for that.”
“And he just won the Epicures Award. . . .”
“He was sleeping with a judge.”
Felicity’s eyes glimmered as anger finally worked its way through the desperation and self-recrimination. “Saucer of cream with that attitude, Charlotte Caine?”
“That attitude is why I’m not the one running around like the proverbial chi
cken with its head cut off on a Thursday afternoon.”
“And maybe we should just go back in the kitchen so you can have one of your cooks rub extra salt in the wounds.” 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 it was time to open. Intervention was clearly necessary.
“Want a drink?”
Felicity looked at me like I was 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 industrialsized urn we keep hot for the staff and gestured Felicity over to table nineteen. Around us, Nightlife’s long, narrow dining room held the kind of hushed anticipation that fills a stage before the curtain goes up. Warm golden track lighting was turned down low, bringing out the highlights in the antique oak bar, which ran along one wall. Our tables were perfectly laid out with gold undercloth, white over-cloth and settings of pristine white dishes. The clatter and bustle drifted nonstop out from the kitchen, but it now 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 a little dramatic over. But coordinating a wedding between vampires and witches? That took guts, even with this level of promised payoff. Despite all the fuss made about the supposed rivalry between vampires and werewolves, the deepest hatreds run between vampires and witches. In fact, truth be told, witches just don’t like other paranormals, and other paranormals don’t like them. 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. Some feuds go back centuries, and if they involve one of the big witch clans, like the Maddoxes or the Coreys, they can rack up serious body counts and gallons of—excuse the expression—bad blood.
Felicity tipped her mug back and gulped down hot coffee like it was ice water. I watched, eyebrows raised.
“You’ll get a stomachache.”
She gasped and lowered the mug. “Too late. Give me a Tums and I can tell you what vintage it is. God, why don’t sane people get married?”
“Sane people do get married. Sane people just don’t spend ten years’ salary on the party,” I replied. “And I hate to say this, Felicity, 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, a decent-sized incoming dinner crowd to keep happy.
“Okay, okay. You see, 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’ve got no idea who she is, do you?”
“Robert,” I called over to my maitre 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. “Scott Alden, 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 she lunches with a highly exclusive group of similarly connected ladies.” Robert has a social register in his brain that is the envy of restaurateurs throughout Manhattan.
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 most recently from Paris, or so he says.” “Nightblood” is the polite term for vampire, and some of them get a little cagey about where they are actually from. It’s much more dramatic to be Nightblood Victore from “Gay 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.”
There were a whole lot of things I could have said about this, but I decided discretion was the better part. It was clear Felicity already had plenty on her plate.
“Anyway, Mrs. Alden decided Deanna and Gabriel were going to have the wedding of the decade, and she’s got the budget to pull it off.” Felicity paused and lifted her eyes from her coffee mug. “I would have called you to do the catering right away, you know.” She seasoned her earnestness with that special blend of tense desperation you get when you realize you may have already screwed up. “But back in November, things . . . still weren’t going so well for you.”
“You mean because back in November I was standing in front of a jury while recovering from smoke inhalation, trying to explain that I shouldn’t be sent to jail for burning down a vampire bar.” A situation that was, in fact, a direct result of a clash between the aforementioned Maddox witch clan and some vampires, one of whom happened to be my brother, Chet.
“I think that qualifies as things not going so well.”
“Agreed. But they did get better.” Sort of. Kind of. Mostly. Except for some small problems like keeping ahead of the growing stack of invoices on my desk. And side problems, like how the fact that I had been seeing Brendan Maddox on a semiregular basis since last fall had not endeared me to some of the more hard-line members of that particular old, powerful, magically oriented family.
My life, in case you haven’t noticed by now, is a little more complicated than your average chef’s.
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. What were you thinking?”
“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 weren’t sleeping with Oscar, were you?”
“What do you take me for? I don’t sleep with chefs. No offense.”
“You’re not my type. So, if it wasn’t personal, what pushed him over the edge?”
“That’s the problem. I don’t know. Yesterday, Oscar calls me and says he’s canceling. But he won’t say why. I spent hours on the phone with him. I went over to Perception and camped out on his doorstep. All he’ll say is he’s pulling out, and he’s stopped returning my calls.”
“Sounds like he’s trying to up his fee.”
“He returned his fee.”
If I’d had another sarcastic comment ready, it died an early death. Oscar Simmons had given back money? Not possible. Part of the reason Oscar was so successful was that he was an Olympic-level penny-pincher. “Oh.” I took another swallow of coffee while the gears in my head ground hard to keep up with this new conversational turn. “What about his staff? He must have a sous who—”
“He told them he’d fire them all if they took over the job.”
Which was hardly reasonable, but at least it sounded like the Oscar Simmons I knew. “And you’ve got no idea why?”
“I swear, Charlotte. I’ve tried to find out, but no one will tell me anything.” Felicity leaned toward me, and I realized that at some point in our conversation, she’d stopped blinking. “The client’s talking about postponing. The bride’s talking about eloping. . . . Charlotte, this was supposed to be the biggest paranormal
event since the vampires came out of the coffin, and I’ve got no caterer and only ten days until the zero hour. You’ve 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 the color was starting to return to her ravaged face. She was also jumping to conclusions, probably assisted by her rapid caffeine intake. I freely admit the price tag she’d just mentioned was way more than enough to turn both head and attitude around. But something was missing in her story. I could feel it poking at me like a pinbone under my fingertips.
“Felicity, tell me what this job entails. Exactly.”
“Wedding day cateri includes breakfast and lunch buffets, hors d’oeuvres, 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 and settle next to the internal spreadsheet that all executive chefs carry deep within them.
“One hundred thousand,” said Felicity again. “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.”
“One fifty,” Felicity shot back.
“One eighty.”
I waited for her answer, and waited some more. Felicity was used to drama brides and imperious mothers-in-law. I, however, regularly dealt with egos holding knives. As such, we were close to evenly matched when it came to negotiation. My only real edge was that I knew she needed me to say yes to this.
Given that, I also should have known she still had an ace up her sleeve. “One seventy-five,” said Felicity. “But you come with me right now to meet the family so I can show them everything is under control.”
