A Taste Of The Nightlife Part 20

"Charlotte," whispered Chet, "just stay cool. I'll explain as soon as we get out of this."

"Oh, you'll explain all right," I hissed back at him through clenched teeth. Anatole c.o.c.ked an eyebrow in our direction, but said nothing. Fortunately, the Maddoxes were too busy with their own family dialogue to pay me and Chet any attention.

"Did Grandfather put you up to this?" Brendan knotted his fingers in his hair like he was trying to keep the top of his head from blowing off. "Did he say go down to the city and completely screw things up for Brendan?"

"You were supposed to find Pamela!" Ian threw up his hands. "You said you had a way out for the family, and what have we got? Dylan's dead, Pam's still nowhere to be found and you're hanging with Anatole Sevarin!"

I recognized the look on Brendan's face. It was the look you get when you have no good answer for the person currently getting in your face.

"We're going home," Brendan announced, pus.h.i.+ng his sister and cousin toward the car. "Right now."

"I will look after Charlotte," said Anatole.

"That'd be my job," announced Chet.

"I don't need looking after," I reminded the testosterone-heightened segment of the studio audience.

"A theater full of vampires is on the street looking for an after-performance snack," said Anatole. "You need looking after."

That no-good-answer look on Brendan's face? Now it was on mine.

"Oh, but she would enjoy being somebody's little snack," sneered Ian. As an insult it would have worked better if the idiot wasn't still checking out my b.o.o.bs.

"Get in the car, Ian," barked Brendan. "Now!"

Somewhat to my surprise, Ian did as he was told.

I needed to apologize to Brendan, and let him know I was finished. It had all gone too far. I wanted to explain so he would understand. But I couldn't, not in front of Anatole, or Chet, or the Crazy Maddox Relations, especially not with Margot fixing her eyes on me, clearly trying to telepathically remind me of the million dollars still on the table between us. I could only stand there and be sorry.

But Brendan was already in the car with his family. The door shut and the driver started the engine. I watched until they turned onto the next street, trying to shake off the weight of things I should have figured out how to say. This was not made any easier by having to turn around and face Anatole and Chet.

"Get your sister out of here, Caine," said Anatole. He sounded tired, and disappointed, but I couldn't tell if it was with one of us or only with himself. "Ilona is very angry and she might easily do something we will all regret in the morning."

"Yeah." Chet ran his hand through his hair. He looked tired too. So that made three of us. "Let's go, Charlotte."

Something in me didn't want to just leave Anatole there. Ilona was angry at him too, and she had backup. Serious, muscled, well-fanged backup. But even while I was thinking this, Anatole shot me a blood-drinking grin, then backed away slowly until he mingled with the alley shadows and vanished.

Cla.s.sy.

Chet tugged gently on my arm, and I fell into step beside him as he started down the alley, following the path Brendan's limo had taken. Emotion surged through me like a food processor on high, chewing up my ability to think. There'd been too much fear and too many reversals in what I thought must be true.

We reached 124th and Chet turned us east. My brother was absolutely quiet beside me. It was like walking with a shadow. For days now, all I'd wanted was to get hold of Chet-by the throat if necessary-and make him tell me what he'd really done and why he'd done it. Now here he was, and I couldn't make a single sound.

"I've been an idiot," said Chet.

Well. This was a promising start. I looked up at him.

"A total idiot," he went on. I kept looking up at him.

"A total and complete selfish, egotistical idiot," he said, warming to the theme. "If I had any real sense of how much I put my sister through-my sister who has loved me and looked out for me even when she had every reason to shove my pathetic carca.s.s into the sunlight-I'd stop in the nearest tapas bar right now, get a bamboo skewer off the shrimp kebab and commit hari-kari. But I'm such an unbelievable idiot I'd probably miss my own heart and have to call up one of the vampire-hunting Maddoxes to do it for me."

I blinked. "Would bamboo even work?"

"How would I know? I'm an idiot!"

My laugh came out as a single sharp bark. Another followed it and another until my chest hurt and tears streamed out of my eyes. I had to laugh. There was no other response to the mental stew inside me all churned up by the sight of Chet throwing his hands out in surrender. Chet, who was still in once piece and who, G.o.d help me, I was still glad to see, even while I was p.i.s.sed as all h.e.l.l at him.

He grinned and shoved his hands in his pockets and paused at the corner and turned north, walking without looking. "If you're going to hug me or smack me stupid, maybe we can get that out of the way now?"

Which squashed flat anything good in my gigantic bag of mixed feelings. "You're messing with Nightlife's books, you're involved out of te kind of blood-running operation and sleeping with a vamp you told me you didn't even know, and you think I want to smack you!"

"I'm sorry, Charlotte. I can explain." There it was: the pleading look, the hunched shoulders, the whole ashamedlittle-boy att.i.tude accompanied by a silent plea to be understood; to be given just one more chance. But I knew what would happen. He'd start spinning his story with heavy layers of smiles and charm and I'd let him get to me, just like he got to everyone else.

I couldn't let that happen. Not this time.

"You've been stealing from Nightlife, Chet." My voice sounded deader than a vampire at a Maddox family barbecue. I was going to have to call Linus O'Grady. I was going to have to hand Chet over.

"No."

"You've been juggling the books to hide the fact that money's leaving the accounts. That's why you keep a copy on your laptop. You've got a second set you send to the accountant." And me.

"No. I haven't been taking money out of Nightlife. I've been putting it in."

I mentally rewound that last statement, and played it again. And again.

"Jesus, Chet, that's a stretch, even for one of your stories."

"You want to see? Come home with me. I'll show you everything." I walked right past him, trying not to see, trying not to hear. If I listened, I might begin to believe.

"So how did you find yourself with enough extra cash you could start making donations to Nightlife?"

Chet's shoulders rose and fell in defeat. "Ilona and I . . . We were both sitting around complaining about the money thing, you know, for Nightlife and her theater . . . and I was joking and said what we needed was the nightblood version of the organic foods movement to bring in the cash. We could make a killing. Metaphorically," he added swiftly as I frowned up at him. "Ilona said she knew this guy with some land up in Connecticut. He'd been planning on developing it as a kind of nightbloods-only community, but with the financial crash and everything, he couldn't get people to buy the parcels. So we turned it into a retreat."

"A retreat?"

Chet nodded. "For people who want healthy, natural lifestyles. For the duration of their residence, each member gets a balanced, all-organic, chemical-free diet, a custom-designed exercise program, stress-management counseling, a personal life coach and full telecommuting facilities."

"And in return?"

"They donate a pint every six weeks."

Ilona the separatist, advocating a return to the good old days of free-range vampires, was financing her activities with a human-blood farm. That was either terminally warped or totally brilliant.

"How much are you paying the 'residents' for being drained?"

"Nothing," said Chet. "They pay us."

No. There was no way. No one would pay to be comfortably housed and bled like that. Not even with organic meals, a 24/7 spa lifestyle, and total catering to for their health and comfort . . .

They wouldn't, would they?

"We've got about two hundred residents right now," said Chet. "And we're booked through next June. Avage stay is three months."

Focus, Charlotte. Focus. "Who buys the blood?"

"We don't sell blood." Chet lifted his nose in the air. "That's illegal. We sell shares in the spa. The blood's a free perk for shareholders."

Shareholders. Of course. Nightblood investment. They put in their money, they got a steady supply of human blood. No seedy bite-easies, no chance at stings or blackmail, because they all knew Ilona St. Claire would never collaborate with dayblood cops or any other kind of dayblood. And because Chet could sell as much snake oil to the undead as to the living.

"It brought in a quarter million last year," Chet was saying. "We've got a superior product to the blood runners and we're probably legal-"

"Probably legal?"

"Beats definitely illegal," he countered. "Look, you've been talking to Taylor Watts, haven't you? What Taylor caught me and Marcus talking about was filtering money into the account, not taking it out. There was no way he was going to believe that, and I couldn't tell you-" He stopped when he saw my disapproval and started again. "I didn't think I could tell you, so I figured I'd pay him off while I got everything sorted out. I got him the job at Post Mortem because I didn't trust him and thought Bert Shelby could keep an eye on him."

"And what about my menu? When I stopped by Post Mortem the other night I couldn't help but notice how they've ripped mine off, ingredient for ingredient."

"Charlotte, I swear on my own grave I did not sell him your menu. I'm an idiot, but I wouldn't do that to you. Taylor probably sold it to him because he was p.i.s.sed about being fired."

I didn't know where I was anymore. I didn't dare stop to look for an address or landmark. I had a h.o.a.rd of nightmares behind me. If I broke stride, they'd catch up.

"So you have been blood running out of Nightlife," I said slowly. "And that's where this money's been coming from."

"No. This is not blood running. It's not even close-and none of our product goes through Nightlife."

"Then why didn't you tell me what you're doing?" I shouted.

Chet stopped in his tracks and turned to face me. He was completely white and his dry eyes didn't even flicker as he loomed over me. "What's the real problem here, Charlotte?" he demanded, and I felt the question hammer against my brain. "Is it that I might actually have an existence without you? Or is it just because I didn't ask your permission to go get an afterlife?"

"You're in the middle of a of blood scam with a girlfriend that you won't even tell me about-"

"Because you have this great history of letting me manage my own relations.h.i.+ps!"

"This isn't about that!"

"Of course it's not! This is about you finding out that maybe I don't need you! No, sorry. That's not it either. It's about you finding out you might need me!"

My hand swung out toward his cheek and the world blurred. Pain reverberated up to my shoulder like I'd struck an iron bar. My brother had hold of my wrist, and I couldn't have s.h.i.+fted his grip any more than I could have picked up a crosstown bus.

"No more, Charlotte," Chet said, and I saw his fangs flash in the streetlight. "Not now. Not ever."

My eyes locked with his, and he held nothing back. Chet pushed hard against my mind, willing his way inside, willing me to give in, to believe, to obey. My wrist felt like gla.s.s in his hand. He could snap it in two if I didn't obey. This wasn't my brother. This was the nightblood, the vampire. My brother was dead and gone, and I was the one who'd killed him.

"Charlotte?" Chet whispered, and his grip loosened just enough for me to pull away. The blood had run out of my face and my heart was racing a mile a minute. I backed up until I stumbled against a parked car. I had to get away. I had to.

Chet stood there for a moment, his hand held exactly in the same position as when he'd grabbed me.

Then he took two steps back, turned, and ran away into the dark.

19.

Things got kind of disjointed for a while after that. I made it home somehow. I remember my phone ringing in a s.h.i.+fting stream of discordant tones until I shut it off and threw it against the wall. I remember telling Trish and Jess to leave me alone four or five times each before they finally took me seriously. I remember standing at the kitchen counter and crumbling farmhouse Cheddar into little pieces. Somewhere in there, there was also a certain amount of curling up into a tight little ball and sobbing myself sick.

Eventually, however, my brain got tired of the hysterical shtick and came back home-bleary-eyed, shamefaced and wanting to know if there was any coffee left. I forgave it and made the coffee. I melted cheese crumbs onto a piece of toast and ate that with an apple and some slices of prosciutto. I took a shower and put on clean clothes. By then it was ten a.m. and I went to work.

I know this sounds either utterly cold or utterly ridiculous. But for me it was an affirmation. I had to believe there would be a way out of this mess, for me and for Chet. Because I had to believe that, I also had to be sure there was something for us both to find our way out to. If I didn't get Nightlife back up and running, that something wouldn't be there.

Besides, if I kept busy, I wouldn't have to think about Chet's hand around my wrist, or the fear I'd felt when he looked down at me on that dark and empty street.

So I worked. First it was two solid hours of sweet-talking suppliers. We couldn't open without food, and we had no food. We also, despite what Chet claimed to have been doing, had no money. The amount of tap dancing I did around that little tidbit could have gotten me the lead in the Broadway revival of A Chorus Line.

Then I sat down with Robert and Suchai and the schedule pad to hash out the front-of-the-house situation. We had just enough hands to make it through a Sat.u.r.day rush, if it was a light one. Suchai knew some experienced servers who might be looking to pick up some extra cash, and I told him to call them. Then it was the PR hour with Elaine West. We needed to let people know we'd opened again, but not too many, in case we stumbled coming out of the gate. To my surprise, she agreed that Sat.u.r.day should be a kind of test opening and we held our announcements down to just the old Internet-she would reach out to a couple well-known foodie bloggers and big mouths.

Zoe and Reese, my sous chefs, and Marie-Our-Pastry-Chef showed up right on time at four p.m. Then came the time I needed more than I needed food or sleep or even answers.

We went into the kitchen and we started to plan the menu. We'd make it simple-keep the best sellers, like the pumpkin soup and the carpaccio, but switch up things around the edges. Anatole had complimented the lamb-and-rosemary combination; we could work that up pretty easily. We could add my warm pomegranate salad as well. Zoe sketched out an idea for what she called a night-and-day duck tasting. Reese thought the emergency blood-sausage-and-pasta dish that we'd made to help clean out the walk-in had legs, especially with winter coming, and I told him to run with it. Marie had an orange-hazelnut milk shake she wanted to try for the dessert menu, and I had to agree when she said now was the time to add in that Mexican drinking chocolate we'd been talking about, in a formula that could be spiked with booze or blood, depending on the guest.

It was a marathon. Possibilities started getting inside us and opening up the hope we'd all been keeping on ice. It was like the time before we opened all over again, when everything was new and anything could happen. Arguments broke out and had to be settled by a trip to the market to bring back fresh product so that the experiments could be cooked up and tasted, and dissected and tasted again.

Sometime after midnight, we sent out for Chinese food. The plum sauce gave Zoe some new thoughts for her duck tasting. Marie considered k.u.mquats as milk shake flavoring, while I sketched out plating designs in the battered notebook that had languished in my desk drawer since the disasters started. It felt so much like my normal life I found myself having to bend low over my carton of noodles with cloud ear mushrooms and sugar snap peas to hide the way my eyes were leaking around the edges. I kept eating and talking and sketching, because I didn't want to stop to think about how the sun had gone down outside. Chet would be awake by now, and he wasn't calling. It was okay, I told myself. If Chet was still too p.i.s.sed to talk to me, I was still way the h.e.l.l too p.i.s.sed to talk to him.

Because he was wrong. Beginning to end, top to bottom. The fact that he was involved in something so huge and ma.s.sively screwed up that it created at least one dead body and he still couldn't tell me about it was proof positive exactly how wrong he was.

"Chef?" Marie had been out to the bar to get a bottle of cognac and now she pushed through the swinging doors.

"Oommpk?" I asked, caught in inelegant midslurp of some very long, very good braised noodles.

"Somebody out front asking to see you." She handed me a business card. I swallowed, and took it.

The name on the card was Anatole Sevarin.

He couldn't just text me like a normal person? No, of course not. I wiped my mouth and tossed my napkin on the desk. "I'll be right back."

Anatole waited beside the host station, looking as cool and immaculate as if last night had never happened.

"Good evening, Chef Caine. I'm glad to see you made it home all right."

"Me too, to tell you the truth." Which was the sum total of my available pleasantries. "Has something happened?"

"You mean something new? No. But as it has become clear that you will not be leaving before the early hours, I thought I would extend an offer to see you home."

I stood there for a while, rearranging those words into an order that made sense. "You've been watching the door?" No, not quite right. "You've been watching me?"