A Taste Of The Nightlife Part 8

"What'd you say?" I asked.

"Nothing. I hadn't seen him before."

"He was kind of a nebbish." I have a good memory for faces, but all I had left of the vamp was thinning hair, hunched shoulders and a dazed stare as Pam Maddox flashed her pristine neck.

"Yeah, he was, but she wasn't. They were a complete mismatch." Chet ran his finger around the bottom of the container and sucked the blood. He used to do that to the bottom of his mac-and-cheese bowl. I resisted the urge to swat his finger out of his mouth like Mom used to.

"Did O'Grady ask you about Taylor Watts?"

Chet frowned. "Why'd the cops want to know about Taylor?"

"Maybe he's taken to ripping off more than the booze from his latest employer."

"Maybe." Chet tossed the empty container into the garbage can three feet away. Two points. "Did they ask you about Ilona St. Claire too?"

"I think so. Maybe. Who's she?"

"Vampire. Runs a theater. Kind of Off Broadway."

"Friend of yours?"

"Not a friend, but I know her name from around. Just wondered who else they were interested enough in to ask us both about."

I ran my hands over my face. Something was wrong with all this. I needed to think, but there was no room left in my brain. It was all taken up with being tired and angry and frightened and dangerously close to being attracted to Brendan Maddox, whose well-connected grandfather wanted to revive his vamp-hunting glory days.

Chet wrapped his arm around my shoulders in a little-brother hug. "It'll be okay, C3," he said. "They can't keep us shut down forever."

That wasn't what was in the front of my mind, for a change, but I didn't bother to correct him. Worrying about Nightlife was more comfortable than worrying about my feelings for Brendan or who had done what to Dylan Maddox and those other nameless strangers.

"They don't have to keep us shut down forever; it's just got to be until we can't pay the bills. Have you had a chance . . . ?"

"First thing I did." Chet pulled back and saw my sour look. "Okay, second thing."

"How are we?"

"Depends. Do we want to keep paying people?" That would be a long way from standard practice, but one of the things we'd determined from the beginning was we'd treat the staff of Nightlife above average in terms of pay, benefits and environment in general. That way we'd not only get the best people, we'd keep them.

"We need to pay the ones who stick around." I brought him up to date on the flood of texts I'd read through at La Pet.i.te Abeille. Somehow the fact that I'd been having mussels with Brendan failed to come up. There was probably a good reason for that.

Chet plunked himself down in front of a desk made from cinder blocks and an old door to fire up his surprisingly up-to-the-minute laptop. We had an accountant for the quarterly reporting to the IRS and year-end taxes, but for the day-to-day stuff like paying bills and handling payroll, Chet kepe books. After just a few keystrokes, he was flicking through the spreadsheets that were Nightlife's running accounts too fast for me to follow. He opened a fresh page, plugged in the names I gave him and waited while the new column of numbers filled itself in.

"Without any income, if we keep paying everybody, and if we go through the couch for spare change, we've got four days."

My heart plummeted. "And if we don't pay everybody?"

He hit a few more keys. "In that case we've got two weeks, maybe three if we can get the suppliers to give us an extension."

"s.h.i.+t," I said.

"Yeah," he agreed.

We sat in gloomy silence for a while.

"Chet?"

"Yeah?"

"Did you see the body?"

He puffed out his cheeks. How do you do that when you don't breathe anymore? "They showed it to me. I don't know, maybe I was supposed to be overwhelmed by an attack of guilt or something."

Or start drooling. But I didn't say that. I also didn't point out how he hadn't bothered to tell me he'd been shown the corpse when I'd asked him what happened at the police station. "How did it . . . look to you?" The question had been lingering in the back of my mind since my conversation with Anatole Sevarin. Brendan had said it wasn't vampires, and he should know, but still . . .

"Based on my extensive experience with dead bodies?" Chet was on his feet before I saw him move.

"Christ, Chet." He winced and I winced, but I stood up so he wouldn't get any ideas about looming. I hate it when people try to loom. "I just meant . . . Look, O'Grady said Maddox wasn't bitten, but they don't know what happened to the blood. I was just thinking . . . maybe somebody used a syringe so they wouldn't leave a fang impression." My voice was very close to trembling, because if I'd thought of this, O'Grady had too.

"So, what? I'm supposed to know how to drain a human without leaving evidence? I'm sitting here drinking chicken blood. I'm civilized and safe and registered and I did not kill the drunken a.s.shole who tried to burn down my restaurant and my sister!"

We stood there nose to nose, each simmering with anger. There would be no going back from the next words out of my mouth, so I pushed past him and yanked the door open. He was going to say something to my back, I was sure of it. Something about Midnight Moon and Joshua Blake. He was going to say that Nightlife was just another of my screwups.

"Are we going to keep paying our people?" he asked.

I paused with my hand on the doorframe. "Yes. If we're going down, we're going down doing the right thing."

I was out the door and on my way down the hall. I did not take the time to apologize. I most especially did not say, "You didn't kill Dylan Maddox, but you know who did, don't you?" I could not even suspect that. Not of my little brother. Never. Because if I did, it meant that my screwups were much, much bigger than I feared.

On the sidewalk, light spilled from clubs and restaurants where people ate other chefs' food and had a good time in other people's homes. Music and voices and all the special energy that thrums through the cty after sundown filled the air, wrapping close and warm around everybody but me.

I jaywalked across the street, trying not to think about anything beyond heading up to Bleecker to the subway.

The earthy smell of fresh truffles reached me. At the same time, something tickled the back of my neck, like water dripping from an awning.

Or like somebody watching me.

Pale skin flashed in the shadows of the sunken English porch next to me. I froze.

Anatole Sevarin looked up at me from those shadows and smiled.

9.

Good evening, Chef Caine." Sevarin's teeth gleamed very white in the city's proto-dark. "Would you care to join me?" He gestured around the little rectangle of s.p.a.ce that he shared with the trash and recycle bins.

"You're kidding."

"Never in life." He stretched out his hand, as if I might need help down the stairs. He had worn black for the occasion-black slacks, black turtleneck under long black jacket that could almost have been an old-fas.h.i.+oned frock coat. The final touch came in the form of a black fedora pulled down low to mask his red-blond hair.

He looked dangerous, and ridiculously edible, and he invited me to come down there next to him.

I shoved my hands into my jacket pockets. "Sorry. Lurking in doorways with the undead is against the health code."

"You'll miss the show."

The gleam in his green eyes made me hesitate. I am going to regret this.

"I'm still uncertain whether it will be tragicomic or a bedroom farce," Anatole went on. "But it should be interesting in either case."

"You've got to get better seats next time. Just what show are you talking about?"

He nodded toward the front door of my brother's building.

"You're spying on Chet?" I snapped, but Sevarin just shrugged.

"Why should we limit the fun to the family?"

"I wasn't spying!"

"No. You were interrogating. Please." He held out his hand again. When he saw my murderous glare, he rolled his eyes, looking for any patience that might have been dropped in a dark corner. "If it makes you feel better, let us say I am not spying on your brother. I am spying on anyone who might potentially be arriving to tempt him into further ill-considered behaviors, a set of people whom, as his loving sister, you also should be interested in."

d.a.m.n vampire logic. This wasn't what I should be spending time on. Detective O'Grady knew what he was doing, and Chet wasn't under suspicion anymore, which meant Nightlife wasn't under suspicion anymore, right? Right. Time to get these weird Agatha Christie impulses under control. I just needed to wait out the bureaucracy and meet with my damage control expert and worry about building my business back up.

"Not tonight. I've got a headache." I turned my back and started walking. Then I had a thought. I didn't want it. I sped up, trying to leave it behind me, but it wouldn't go.

I stopped, swore, turned and walked back. There stood Sevarin, leaning casually against the wall, and-smart-a.s.s vamp that he was-watching me like he'd never looked away.

He touched the brim of his hat. I opened my mouth. This was my last chance to back out of this bad idea. I didn't take it.

"Do you know an Ilona St. Claire?"

"In fact, I do. However, if you want to find out what I know, you'll have to come down here."

"Now you're just playing games."

"And you're blocking my view."

I bit down on a whole set of anatomically unlikely suggestions about what he could do to himself down there, gave it up and trotted down the steps. Sevarin made a half bow and a mischievous light sparked in his green eyes.

"So, how do you know Ilona St. Claire?"

"All in good time, Chef Caine. If you would just step back here where it is darker-to avoid attracting attention, you understand . . ."

Riiiiight.

I met Sevarin's eyes, turned sideways, sucked, tucked, and slid into the corner without touching the trash bins or him.

He looked surprised. And disappointed. I smiled pleasantly. "You were saying about Ilona St. Claire?"

"May I inquire, Chef Caine," murmured Sevarin. "Simply for my own information, not to pry, what is your interest in Ilona?"

"You like long sentences."

"It's my Russian upbringing. We are a voluble and flamboyant people."

"Come off it. You don't talk like any Russian I know."

"How many eight-hundred-year-old nightblood Russians do you know?"

There he had a point, and it was his turn to smile pleasantly. "You were saying about Ilona?"

"O'Grady asked both me and Chet about her."

"Interesting. Now, I wonder what could she have done to draw the attention of Little Linus and his merry band this time."

"This time?" My eyes were adjusting to the shadows, but Sevarin remained little more than a promise in the dark. There was no way to tell what was going on behind that calm remark.

Instead of answering me, he murmured, "And here comes another question."

Across the street, a man swung himself onto the stairs in front of Chet's building and hit the buzzer. He was tall and filled with that particular arrogance of someone who knows exactly how good-looking he is. His profile showed a chin that could crack granite.

I'd fired that chin three weeks ago.

The buzzer must have sounded, because Taylor Watts pushed Chet's door open and vanished inside.

"What does the bartender from Post Mortem want with your brother?"

"Wha-!"

Sevarin pressed two cold fingers against my lips, and I remembered we were on a-for lack of a better term-stakeout. I shut my mouth and did my best to glower at him to indicate he should stop touching me now.

"I sense you are disturbed." He grinned, but he did remove his hand.

"That guy-Taylor Watts-he used to work for us." And he had so tried to turn on the cut-rate charm when I'd called him out back to fire his tight little waitress-grabbing b.u.t.t.

"And now he works for Bertram Shelby. That is terribly interesting."

"But he . . . but . . . why . . . ?" If Chet's going to Post Mortem regularly, why didn't he tell me Watts is working there? My nerves were shriveling up, like they'd been left out in the cold for too long. "I'm going to kill him." I muttered.

"Which him?" Sevarin asked.

"Ask me tomorrow. I'll probably have it figured out by then."