A Taste Of The Nightlife Part 7

"Where're your parents?"

"Arizona." Mom hated the place. Flat and hot and a ticky-tacky stucco house with a ten-by-fifteen patch of gra.s.s out front that looked like Astroturf from all the water and fertilizer Dad poured into it.

"Are you from Arizona?" Brendan was asking.

"No. Buffalo. They moved after . . . after Dad retired."

"And after Chet turned?"

The calm question caught me off guard, but I was grateful he asked it. I don't like dancing around subjects. It's something else on the long list of things I've never been good at. Like talking about my dad's refusal to acknowledge Chet's existence, or my reactions to Dad's refusals.

"Yeah. Dad couldn't-or wouldn't-handle it."

"It happens," Brendan said, politely relieving me of having to answer. "When a relative becomes nightblood, some people head for the sunni spot they can find."

"You deal with that a lot?" I chewed bread and swallowed. My sense of taste seemed disturbingly dull just then.

"Despite all the support groups and self-help books, some people just can't cope, and they want their homes turned into a kind of magical Fort Knox. That or . . ." He stopped and shook his head.

Reality waited. Brendan had invited it over. Now it was my turn. "Your grandfather's got quite the reputation."

Brendan swirled the dregs of beer and foam in his tall gla.s.s. "Oh, believe me, I know."

"He thinks a lot of people should be put back in the ground."

"Yeah."

"What do you think?"

Brendan tipped his gla.s.s left, then right. He swallowed what was left in the bottom, set it down, and scooted it a little to the right, then back to the left. I tore apart another slice of bread and told myself to just be patient already.

"I think the world's changed a whole lot since my grandfather could name his price for making paranormals go away," he said. "Whether I agree with the changes or not, we're going to cause a h.e.l.l of a lot more trouble trying to put things back the way he says they used to be than we will trying to figure out how to make the best of what they are. I think some paranormals are monsters. I think some humans are monsters. If you want to know what I think of your brother, I don't know because I don't know him."

"That's honest, anyway. Thanks."

Brendan touched his forehead in mock salute.

We were silent a bit longer, but this silence had a different quality. It wasn't companionable exactly, but it was an acknowledgment that a level of comfort, or at least comprehension, had been reached.

I plucked another fry out of the basket and stabbed it into the bacon mayo. "Should I be scared?" The images I'd seen on FlashNews of the white-haired, powerfully built man yelling at the whole U.S. House of Representatives felt far too close for comfort.

"Of us? Not yet." Brendan scooted his gla.s.s to the right again and to my credit I did not smack his hand, or hold it. Truth was, I wasn't sure which would feel better right then. "Grandfather's busy putting out home fires right now. Not everybody in the clan approves of his turning Dylan's murder into political points, starting with Dylan's parents. With any luck, O'Grady will have this figured out by the time he's got all of the family dealt with."

"Sevarin says they've found other bodies."

"Sevarin told you this?"

"O'Grady told me about what the bite marks on Dylan were, but, yeah, Sevarin told me there have been other deaths."

If he had asked how and why I'd been talking with Sevarin, I would have told him, but he didn't. I was beginning to understand that Brendan Maddox had a very good sense of other people's limits. Whether that came from having a warlock family or a career in security, I couldn't say yet, but I was grateful for it. The question he did ask was tricky enough.

"Do you believe Sevarin?"

"I don't know if I believe him or not. He thought I might have Pam's phone number in my reservations computer, and he might have just been tryet it out of me." I paused. "What's her story? Pam's, I mean?"

"I barely know. When I left for college, she was still a three-foot-tall brat in pigtails, tormenting little Dylan and driving my aunt Robin out of her mind. Then a few months ago, I get a frantic phone call. Pam went on her wander year and vanished."

"Wander year?"

He nodded. "If you want to become a full warlock, you have to take an oath, to the family and . . . Well . . . it's not a normal promise. It binds you, and your magic. So, everyone takes a year off before they go through the ceremony. They live in the mundane world, maybe go to college or just travel and think about what they really want."

"And Pam really didn't want to get with the program? Did she get booted out?" Warlock families, especially the old ones, were supposed to take their traditions very seriously. People like that tended not to deal well with rebellious youth. Not that I could throw stones, considering my father's att.i.tude toward Chet.

"Maddoxes don't kick people out anymore," said Brendan. "Not for deciding against the oath, anyway. It's awkward at family reunions and you don't get a vote on clan matters, but it's not like people stop mentioning your name or anything. Pam didn't just leave, though. She vanished, and we've been looking for her ever since."

"I'd have thought that as a security consultant . . ."

"You and my whole family." Brendan cut me off with that special bitter tone that comes when you're furious with yourself. "Unfortunately, one of the things we still get taught by the family is how to hide from magicians and normals if we have to. Turns out Pam got really good at it."

People think it's so hard to disappear in the webcam world. But any given Sunday, I could give fifty bucks to the right guy in the right bar and come away with a brand-new credit card and a gently used Social Security number. With that and enough cash for a bus ticket to Chicago or Los Angeles, I'd be gone for good.

There had to be a magical equivalent of that guy and that bar, and Pam Maddox probably had a lot more than fifty bucks in her Gucci handbag.

Brendan glanced at his watch and reached into his back pocket. "Listen, I need to get going. . . ."

"Don't worry about it." I gestured for him to put his wallet away.

He blinked. "I'm not going to leave you with . . ."

"Best part of being a chef in New York." I nodded toward Etienne over Brendan's shoulder, and he waved us both toward the door. "Friends wherever you go."

"Must be nice," Brendan whispered and then stood up before I could make any reply.

Outside, shadows threw an early nighttime over the sidewalk. The chilly wind smelled of exhaust and autumn as it hustled down Fifteenth.

Brendan turned his jacket collar up as he faced me. "I have to ask. Do you have Pam's number?"

I shook my head. "Nightlife's still sealed. Anyway, the number in the system would depend on who made the reservation, and that's handled in the front of the house. Sorry," I added.

"Not your fault." He scanned the street for a minute, like he was looking for a cab. Then he said, "Have I apologized enough for my family yet?"

"Yeah."

"Have I said I'm not sorry I met you?"

"No."

"I'm not sorry I met you."

His words left me with no idea what to do next. Sticking my hand out to shake would just be stupid, and yet I wanted to touch him. I had no right to, and no real reason, beyond the fact that we were both tired, both in over our heads, and both aching not to be alone in the middle of this mess.

"You'll be careful, won't you, Charlotte?" he asked. "This-whatever it turns out to be-it's a long way from over."

"I know."

He looked at my eyes and my hair, and smiled. He'd looked at my hands, all through dinner. He'd looked at my hands as if he liked them.

I reached out and laid my fingertips against the back of his uninjured hand. He turned that hand slowly around, until he was holding mine. We stood there, saying nothing. I could feel his pulse beat in his fingers and my own pounded a counterrhythm.

"Can I call?" he asked.

"Sure." Then something occurred to me. "How'd you get my number in the first place?"

"The Google is strong with this one." He winked and my pulse kicked into overdrive.

"Well, good night," he said.

"Good night," I said, before I realized I was still touching his hand.

Brendan swooped down, nervous like a high school kid, and I turned too fast and too far. His peck caught the spot on my cheek right in front of my earlobe.

He straightened up. I giggled. Giggled! Executive chefs do not giggle. I decided, however, I could forgive him this once.

We locked gazes and came to the mutual realization there was no good way to end this . . . whatever this was.

Whatever it might be.

So, we both took the only out the city allowed.

"Taxi!"

8.

Chet's building was a few blocks off Bleecker Street; a neighborhood of bars, jazz clubs, Italian restaurants and guys selling art-gla.s.s bongs off tables on the sidewalk. He shared a two-bedroom third-floor walk-up with a buddy he met while going to night school for his restaurant management degree. They furnished it out of thrift shops and Ikea, and it smelled like guys, unless Doug had a special guest over, in which case it smelled like scented candles and guys.

As soon as I'd given the taxi driver the address, I got my phone out and hit Chet's number. His voice mail picked up. I cut the call off and hit REDIAL. And again. And again.

This time, the ring cut out in the middle.

"For cryin' out loud, Charlotte, I just woke up."

"Stay awake. I'm on my way over."

Chet sighed, groggy and exasperated. "Is there any point in telling you it's no big deal?"

"No."

"Didn't think so. Syou when you get here."

You better believe it, little brother.

When he opened his apartment door, my brother did not look good. He was pale, his lips were chapped and the skin sagged around his throat and on the back of his hands. I handed him the container of chicken blood I'd picked up at a kosher butcher on the way over.

"Thanks, sis." He peeled back the top and took a healthy swig.

"So." I dropped onto the sofa. "Are you going to tell me about it?"

Chet shrugged. "Nothing to tell."

I leveled my big-sister glare at him. "Try again."

"I'm serious! There was nothing!" Chet gestured with both hands, slos.h.i.+ng blood dangerously close to the container's rim. "They wanted to know where I was. I told them. They wanted a fang impression and a mouth swab. I gave it to them. Even that lawyer you had come charging in agreed to that much. They thanked me. I came home. No fire hose, no garlic. Nothing."

"So where'd you go after the cleanup on Sat.u.r.day?"

Chet swigged some more blood and set the container down on the wobbly end table.

"Where'd you go, Chet?"

He opened his mouth and was about to say, "None of your business," but I folded my arms and turned the glare up to eleven. He twisted the gold ring on his left hand. Five years gone, and he still hadn't taken off that d.a.m.n ring.

"I went to Post Mortem," he said.

"Oh, for Pete's sake, Chet!"

"What? I was starving, and I needed to blow off steam before sunrise."

"Those dives aren't safe!"

"PM's not a dive," he shot back. "It's a licensed club. Dance floor, DJs, chicken blood."

"It's a bite-easy."

It is illegal to sell human blood, or to pay someone to be bitten. But there are plenty of people willing to bend the neck for a good-looking vamp, or for one who can make it into a good time. New Yorkers, never ones to miss an opportunity, have created a whole network of more or less legal clubs where the willing can hook up with the hungry, and whether it's supposed to or not, a lot of money changes hands in those places. This means they get raided a lot, or get stings set up in them. Then there are the vigilante types who hope to get a vamp out back and stake them a good one.

"I can take care of myself, Charlotte." This statement would have been more convincing if he hadn't been slurping down the last of the blood I'd brought him. "And you might want to think before you start complaining. If I hadn't gone, I wouldn't have an alibi."

I caught myself right before asking if he needed one. "I'm just worried, and I spent most of the morning with Detective O'Grady."

"s.h.i.+t." Chet ran his hands through his hair, spiking it up in a way that made him look even younger than he was. Is. Used to be. I hate verb tenses and vampires. "What did he want from you?"

"He quizzed me about the staff. And about whether I knew the vamp who was there with Pam Maddox.""Yeah, I got that one too." Chet sat on the sofa beside me. He's so light that the springs didn't even creak.