Recipe for Disaster

by Theda Vallee

  We opened the back door as quietly as possible, creeping into the darkened kitchen. I headed straight for the fridge, hauling out the pan of tiramisu. Grabbing three plates, I carried everything over to the table.

  “I forgot the forks, can you get them Gia?” I asked, settling into a chair.

  As I waited to dig into the layers of espresso-laden goodness, I could feel our happiness spreading through the room. It gave me hope that we’d eventually stabilize ourselves in this new world. The bickering was only temporary. We were strong and had too much love to let it become permanent.

  “Dolce, you look stressed. Miei poor angeli, you all look like you need some care,” Aunt Sophia said to us, shuffling into the kitchen, toting her large purse. “I brought something to help you finish your girl’s night. I make a massage for you all.”

  “Mama, why are you here?” Gia asked, shaking her head in frustration.

  “I was lonely. I came here to wait for you. You don’t want a massage before bed?” Aunt Sophia asked, digging in her bag.

  I didn’t want a massage. There was no way in hell I’d risk my body on whatever video tutorial had convinced her she could do this. Maybe if I didn’t turn around, she’d start on Gia, and I could go to bed before it was my turn. A buzzing sound filled the room behind me, Nerina’s face contorted into a look that was both mortified and gleeful.

  “Mama, where did you get that?” Gia asked, her voice a thin whisper of horror.

  “It was on your dresser, dolce. I thought I’d bring it and make a nice fun for everyone,” Aunt Sophia said.

  I turned slowly, praying Aunt Sophia hadn’t found one of the quartz bombs Gia had been perfecting. They were unstable and made a colossal kaboom when they exploded.

  A laugh choked out of me when I turned fully, taking in what Auntie had brought to the party. The good news was, she didn’t have an exploding quartz. The bad news was, she was swinging Gia’s vibrator through the air like a damn sword, heading right for me. I scooted to the right with a half squeal-half laugh, which sounded like a dolphin mating. Nerina fell off the chair, her riotous laughter bouncing off the walls of the room. Gia stood in the middle of the kitchen, sputtering like an old car.

  “What is the joke? Did I miss it?” Nonna asked, coming into the room, pulling her floral housecoat against her thin body.

  Nerina and I let loose another wave of laughter, our breathing labored as we fought to intake air between the fits of giggles.

  “I don’t know. I brought this for a massage party, and the girls are respond like this,” Aunt Sophia said, slapping the vibrator onto Nonna’s exposed forearm. “See how good that works. It will make all their muscles relax.”

  “What is wrong with you three? Your Aunt is trying to do a nice thing for you. This feels very nice,” Nonna said, pointing to her shoulder, so Aunt Sophia would move it up there. “Oh, this is superb. We need to buy one.”

  “Etta has one, she can let you borrow hers,” Nerina said, collapsing into another fit of laughter before she could pull herself off the floor.

  Gia and I looked at each other from across the room, a matching smile spreading across our faces before we dissolved into a loud, snorting giggle fit again. As far as I was concerned, they could massage each other all night, I was going to bed.

  Chapter Four

  “Why does crime always happen in the middle of the night?” I asked, taking a swig of my coffee.

  I’d answered the phone in a hungover, sleep-deprived daze thirty minutes ago, to a very agitated Luc. He’d barked out an address and hung up without further details. I thought he was pissed at me for choosing to eat tiramisu instead of coming over to hear him pout. Staring at the chaos in front of me, I had a feeling that whatever had happened here was the real reason he was grumpy.

  The exterior of the nightclub was awash in the glow of a dozen cop cars. Humans milled about aimlessly, terror etched into the lines of their faces. It was the haunted look that only survivors of a tragedy shared. Red flecks of something covered most of them, glittering in the moonlight like malignant sequins. The police department had set up a perimeter around the building, complete with yellow tape and sentries to keep out the looky-loos.

  “I’m with you, Etta. It’d be so much better for my under-eye circles if crime happened during business hours. So, what are we dealing with, Mr. Bossman?” Brady asked.

  “Someone invoked the Tarantella,” Luc said grimly.

  “What? It’s real?” I asked, dread welling up inside me. Every Italian child knew what the Tarantella was. We had folk songs and dances dedicated to the legend. It was a spell that forced someone to dance until they dropped dead. None of us believed it actually existed, until now. “How many people did it affect?”

  “The whole damn club,” Luc replied.

  Shit. A club that size would hold a few hundred bodies. A few hundred human bodies to be exact, which meant we had two problems. A rogue witch unleashing the Tarantella was bad enough, but doing it in a human nightclub left us exposed. There’d be questions the police couldn’t answer, which might lead them to places we didn’t want them to go.

  “How are we going to get past the police? They don’t exactly know we exist,” I whispered to Luc.

  “We’ve got clearance. The FBI called it in. Yes, the Feds know about us, or at least some of them do. They’ll let us in without issue.”

  Luc strode up to the yellow tape, holding it up for Brady and me to duck under. He walked with purpose, as if daring someone to question his right to be here. “Special Agent DeFiero here with my team. You should’ve received communication we were on our way,” Luc said, flashing some kind of ID at the man guarding the door. With a nod, the guy stepped aside, letting us into the interior of the club.

  Brown-leather couches lined a platform that ran along two of the back walls. Tall espresso pub tables sat on the edges of the dance floor. The walls were a deep terra cotta that highlighted the exposed brick from the building’s original interior. The decor combined with the muted silver of the open ductwork, created the look of an industrial gentlemen’s club.

  The warm, welcoming atmosphere of the room made the scene we walked into seem surreal. My chest constricted, forcing me to take a shaky breath. “Are all these people dead?” It was a stupid question. None of the remains strewn across the floor were moving.

  “That’s what happens with the Tarantella, they danced until they dropped dead,” Luc said, walking towards a cluster of bodies crumpled on the floor in a heap of limbs.

  Red glitter coated the floor in a thick layer. The bodies were covered with the same glitter from head to toe, a concentration of it caked around their mouths, eyes, and ears.

  “Did this glitter come from them? It looks like it,” I said squatting down next to a blonde woman whose eyes were still open. The iris of her eye was completely hidden by a coat of glitter.

  “Dude, I think someone invented this curse way before glitter. Our perp was being creative,” Easton said, coming up behind us.

  “You sound like you admire their work,” I said, reaching out to brush the glitter from the woman’s eyes. It seemed wrong to leave her like that.

  Luc smacked my hand away, “For God’s sake, when will you learn not to touch things at the damn crime scene? We don’t understand what this glitter is or why it’s here. It could carry the curse.”

  I swiped the glitter from her eye to spite him and said, “If it’s carrying the curse, there’s a shit-ton of people outside covered in it, which would be a huge problem. Not to mention, we’re wading through it right now. I don’t think we can avoid it.”

  “Dude, it’s not cool to smack an agent’s hand,” Easton said.

  I turned my head towards Easton so fast, I almost pulled a neck muscle. I didn’t realize he had it in him. Usually, he just stood around grunting like a confused monkey. This was the first time he’d intervened when Luc was acting like a cock-waffle. I might need to learn more about him after this.

  �
��If you worked directly with Etta more often, you’d be singing a different tune,” Luc said the muscles in his jaw flexing in anger. “Make yourself useful Easton and see if you can round up some witnesses to interview. Where the hell is our forensic team? Etta, check and see if they’re being held up by the guards. And where the hell is Vee? We need these cops out of here, so we can do our job!”

  I stalked towards the exit, mumbling about Luc the whole way. Not only had he smacked my hand like a child, he’d insinuated that working with me was terrible for anyone involved. He was lucky we were at a crime scene.

  Stepping into the cool night air, I was grateful to be away from the scene inside. These people had come here tonight expecting to get drunk and dance their cares away. Instead, they’d died violently. My imagination easily filled in their last moments, and it left me shivering. Walking the perimeter, I saw no sign of the forensics team, but I did see a wave of blue hair bobbing up and down on the other side of the yellow tape. Vee was arguing with an officer who wouldn’t let her through.

  Walking over, I waved at Vee. “Hey, she’s with me, you can let her through.” The officer grunted but stepped aside to let her duck under the tape.

  She grabbed my hand, holding it while we walked towards the building. “Thank you for rescuing me. That man was not succumbing to my emotional manipulations. Have you been inside?”

  A soothing wave of magic pulsed through me, giving me a brief respite from the turmoil churning inside of me. “It’s not good. We’ve been here a few minutes, but I think most of the people inside are dead. Luc sent me out here to look for the forensics team. I can’t go back in there without them.”

  “They were parking the van when I walked up. It would be my pleasure to ensure they get past the man guarding the yellow plastic. Are there any witnesses for me to speak with?”

  “Not yet, hopefully when you get inside. I have my cell, let me know if you have any problems with the guard dogs.”

  “Where are the dogs? I didn’t see them.”

  I almost laughed despite everything. It was easy to forget that Vee took everything literally. “There are no actual dogs. I was calling the officer at the yellow tape a dog.”

  I drug my feet as I approached the door, trying to postpone the inevitable. The scene in the club was etched into my memory. Countless people had told me I’d eventually get used to crime scenes. Supposedly, with exposure, I’d learn to turn off the emotion and let the logical side of my brain take over. That would make my job a hell of a lot more manageable, but I was afraid of losing the emotion. Who did you become when death no longer elicited a reaction? I didn’t think it was the kind of person I wanted to be.

  I stepped back into the club, doing my best to look anywhere but the dance floor. I made my way over to where Luc loomed, barking orders at the local police force. The officers sprang into action with every command he rattled off. He exuded authority, and no one seemed to question it.

  “Where’s Vee? I need her to sweep the room to see if anyone’s alive. There’s so many of them, it’ll take forever for us to check each person,” he said.

  “Already handled, dude. My tracking lets me feel life essence,” Easton said, his mouth set in a grim line. “There are no survivors. There’s about eighty bodies give or take. The manager dude said this club can hold two hundred and twenty people, and it was full tonight. I’ve got witnesses up on the leather couches. What next?”

  My eyes bulged slightly as Easton rattled off all he’d accomplished in the few minutes I was gone. Aside from overusing the word ‘dude,’ he was capable. Had he always been like this? I’d mostly ignored him since he’d joined the team. Luc had been furious when Easton was assigned to us. I figured they had some weird fae rivalry and steered clear of the guy. Maybe he wasn’t so bad.

  “Are they composed enough to question, or do we need Vee to calm them down first?” Luc asked.

  “A few of them seem ready to talk. Do you want me to start with them?”

  “That works. Etta, go with him. You’ll stay out of trouble that way,” Luc said, waving his hand to dismiss us.

  I opened my mouth to object and closed it just as quickly. Why was he goading me every chance he got? It sucked when he was right, though. What else was I going to do? I’d never been to a crime scene of this magnitude. I had nothing to offer. Stella and I kicked ass in a fight. We’d come a long way when it came to lobbing fireballs and creating shields. Anything else was outside my realm of expertise. The best thing I could do was watch and learn.

  “Fine. Lead the way, Easton.”

  He raised his eyebrow in question, but thankfully, kept his mouth shut. Together, we turned to survey the group of people seated on the couches overlooking the death scene. “How do you want to start?” he asked.

  “Is there a better place we can have them wait? Sitting on a couch watching while they cart out bodies will make them uncomfortable. We won’t get good information if they have to keep staring at that,” I said.

  “Good point. I forgot that humans are squeamish about death,” he said.

  “You’re used to seeing stacks of dead bodies?”

  “What? No. It’s just not as disturbing to us. We understand death better. Anyway, I didn’t see another space big enough to fit everyone. Can we turn the couches away from the dance floor?”

  I nodded. It wasn’t the ideal solution, but it would do. We worked swiftly, using the witnesses to help us move the couches. Once they were all flipped, I spoke with an officer and sent him out to get coffee, water, and donuts. I had another officer find blankets for me. It was going to take hours to interview everyone. There was no reason we couldn’t make sure they were comfortable.

  “You’ve got a bit of a bleeding heart,” Easton remarked when I rejoined him.

  “I think the Osservatori’s forgotten their main goal is to help people. That doesn’t mean just the obvious things, like catching the bad guy. Sometimes, it means making sure people feel safe in the aftermath of things like this.”

  “More people should think like you.”

  No one on the team, not even Vee would have understood why it was important to treat the witnesses with kindness. My humanity was always a detriment to them. They’d spent so many years as the iron fist of the law, they’d forgotten that compassion had a place in this world.

  “How do you want to handle the questioning? It’s cool if you want to take the lead,” Easton said.

  Okay, this was getting weird. Who the hell was this guy? No one ever asked me how I wanted to handle things when we were on assignment. “You realize I don’t know what I’m doing?”

  “Dude, not true. You just gained the trust of every single person up there. Maybe you didn’t mean to, but it’s what happened when you showed them you cared. You have a natural flair for this work, you just need a little fine tuning.”

  “Can you lead? I’ll watch and jump in if I think I have something to offer,” I said. Despite his encouragement, I was afraid to try. If we didn’t get good information, Luc would blame me. This case was too big to risk a fuck up.

  “Totally, come on let’s go crush this shit.”

  Despite the metric ton of reasons I had not to smile, my lips tilted into a grin. Easton was shaping up to be a good guy. I loved Brady and Vee dearly, but they jumped whenever Luc snapped his fingers. Neither of them stood up to him, even when they knew he was wrong. I needed someone on my side if I was ever going to change the corrupt practices in the Osservatori. Maybe Easton would be that ally.

  It took hours to interview everyone. We didn’t get one solid lead. The witnesses had all corroborated each other’s stories. They’d been mingling at the pub tables or couches, none of them had been dancing. At around one in the morning, the dance floor exploded with glitter. Most of them thought it was a cute stunt the club owners had orchestrated. It wasn’t until the dancer’s movements became erratic that anyone suspected something was wrong. By then, it was too late. The dancers vomited up arcs of red g
litter, before collapsing onto the floor.

  The first autopsy results wouldn’t be available for hours, but Vee suspected they’d died of heart failure. Their fragile human bodies had simply given out.

  After the last of the witnesses was sent home, we sat in silence, the weight of the night leaving us drained. We had nothing but a list of unanswered questions. What was the purpose of this much death? Whoever did this was sending a message, but I had no clue what it was.

  Vee cleared her throat awkwardly. “There are reporters outside. They want information from the person in charge. What are we going to tell them?”

  Fuck. With a huge death count and contingent of witnesses, there was no way we could keep this under wraps. I pulled out my phone and did a quick search. It was the main headline on every news site I looked at.

  Luc paced the floor, stress radiating off of him. “I don’t know. Pietro called an emergency council meeting. We should have their directions any minute. I don’t get it. Why would someone put our community at risk? We’ve had exposure in the human world before but never like this.”

  “I read about a large-scale event by some vamps a century ago, but that was different. It was easy to contain because the humans couldn’t spread news the way they can now. It led to a few new myths, but that was the extent. There’s no way to stop this. It’s probably already spread all the way to China,” Easton said.

  I waved my phone at them. All this experience and none of them thought to search the internet. “It’s everywhere. I did a quick search. Every major news outlet is running with it.”

  “Thank you both for stating the obvious. I think we all understand the fucking gravity of this,” Luc said, slamming himself back on to the couch. “Why, though? Why would someone risk exposing the entire community? What does it benefit them?”

  “That’s going down a rabbit hole, Mr. Bossman. You can’t think like a bat-shit crazy person. I mean that’s what you’d have to be to kill all these people,” Brady said.