Tantalize (18 page)

Flattered, I took a moment to adjust my neckline. That night, I wore a midnight blue lace gown — it matched the carpeting — of my own choosing over a light beige thong. The lace had seemed like a bang-up idea when I went out shopping that morning, but now my nipples were starting to chafe.

I wasn’t the only one who’d upped the wardrobe a notch, though. Bradley planned to augment tonight’s toasting ensemble with a full-length black cape.

Catching myself staring, I lowered my gaze to read. It was a proposed bio for the menu insert. Somehow, that project had slipped my mind. Already a wash for the debut party . . . I swear, my brain was a colander these days.

Thank God for Bradley!

“Do you think that’s sufficiently diabolical?” he asked. “Only one bride when Dracula himself took three?”

Did he mean me? I wondered, or was he just flirting again? I pretended to give the matter serious consideration. “One seems like enough for anybody.”

O
n her way back from seating a couple with waist-long dreadlocks and wearing head-to-heel silver spandex, Yanira tapped my elbow. “Some people are asking to say hi to you at the hostess stand,” she said.

“What people?”

But she didn’t hear me. The crowd created a steady hum, punctuated now and then by uproarious laughter. A large man wrapped in chains had stepped between us on his way to the restroom. Then I found myself trapped between two servers in front of a couple of tables pushed together to accommodate a large party. They’d all dressed as historical figures commonly rumored in the supermarket tabloids to be vampires. I was able to ID a King Tut, a Janis Joplin, a Ulysses S. Grant, and a Mary, Queen of Scots.

Trying to circle around, I found myself blocked again, this time by a quartet of midfortyish six-foot-tall women — at least I thought they were women — standing arm in arm chatting about our chandeliers. All had been body-painted — as in hair, skin, lots of skin, no clothes whatsoever — in a sparkly twilight violet. Matching nail polish, spiky heels, and . . . yes! Matching sparkly twilight violet bikini panties. Whew. Otherwise naked except for the paint and belly rings all featuring the same charm: a skull and crossbones. Bully for them. In this town, it was legal for women to go topless so long as they didn’t cause a riot. Besides, Uncle D had ditched the
NO SHIRT, NO SHOES, NO SCAMPI
sign with the remodel.

Reaching the hostess stand, I saw them. The reason Yani had summoned me.

Looking at little Nathaniel, you’d think “cherubic.” Huge blue eyes, red curls. His wardrobe: Baby Gap meets Buster Brown. His folks, Bobby Dale and Jeannie Fredericks, both taught Sunday School at my church. He was an assistant vice president at the downtown bank where my family had our accounts. She made a mean potato salad. “So,” I cooed, “what brings y’all in?”

“Dinner,” Jeannie said, looking at me like I’d done something questionable. “We wanted to show our support. No matter what people may say —”

“Congratulations,” Bobby Dale blustered. “The place looks interesting. It’s Nate’s birthday, so we said he could stay up late today, though he may —”

“I’m five!” Nathaniel shouted, holding up a handful of fingers.

The entire restaurant got the message.

“Five!” he continued. “Five! Five! Five! FIVE!”

Experience informed me that this chant could go on through dessert. Not that I was ever a babysitter type, but most kids are fine. Give ’em crayons and a chocolate sugar bomb of a dessert, and call it done. I adored Kieren’s little sister, Meghan.

“Five!”

But Sanguini’s wasn’t a family-fare establishment.

“Five!”

Word of mouth mattered, and it was opening night for regular business.

“Five!”

Jeannie exclaimed, “That’s my big boy!”

“Five!”

Bobby Dale asked, “Can you believe he’s five already?”

“Five!”

Yani returned from seating the body-painted.

“Five!”

Where was Uncle D?

“Five!”

And just when I couldn’t take it a second longer, my hero swept onto the scene in his midnight toast ensemble. “Why, I believe someone is five today.”

Slack-jawed, Nathaniel gazed at the vampire chef.

Bradley didn’t squat like a lot of people do when talking to little kids. “Life,” he declared instead, “merits celebration. Do walk this way.”

Escorting the Frederickses through the dining room, not bothering to make eye contact with any of the guests, he’d already established himself as their savior. No one would mind the break in suspense before midnight.

Bradley led the family into the private party room. It was unoccupied and soundproofed.

“I love you,” I whispered, only half kidding, as he shut the door on them.

“Tell Yani that I recommend Mercedes take the table. She has infinite patience and, better yet, a brown belt.”

K
ieren was seated alone at table nineteen, a two-top along the south wall, his back to the front door. Chianti and eggplant parmesan untouched. A manila folder in front of him on the satiny black tablecloth. A small turquoise-and-silver crucifix dangled between his collarbones from a thin silver chain.

I circled the dining room. Uncle D and Ruby were busy chatting up Mercedes’s dads. Sergio had his hands full running food. Sebastian was in the weeds at the bar. I’d thought off and on all day about Kieren. Now here he was again.

Pausing at the hostess stand, I whispered to Yani. “Could you do me a favor? Holler for the bouncers from the back lot.”

“This is about your ex, isn’t it? I’m sorry I seated him. But there he was and —”

“He’s not exactly my . . . I mean, it’s okay. I don’t even know if —”

“Ian and Jerome will toss him —”

“Let me see what he says first,” I said. “We don’t want a scene.”

I made my way into the dining room, slipped into the chair across from Kieren’s.

He slid the manila folder to me.

What could it hurt to play along? I opened it, flipping through the documents he’d brought, nodding for Simone to fetch me another drink, making a mental note to remind her to card the customers. “If this is about Ruby —”

“It’s not.”

Frowning, I returned my attention to the paperwork. It was a collection of printouts from websites. He had enclosed a bibliography. A few entries caught my eye, those that had been highlighted in yellow:

Johnson, Henry. “Beyond Sashimi and Tartare: Culinary Expressions of Neovampirism.”
The Gothic Gourmet
(December 1986): 3–12.

Johnson, Henry. “Hearts at Stake: Gender Politics Arising in Post-Vampyric Infection.”
Demonic Digest
(July 1967): 2–31.

Johnson, Henry. “Vampirism and Attention Deficit Disorder: Ramifications Related to Social Interaction, Cross-Species Relationships, and Iron Deficiency.”
Preternatural Psychology
(March/April 1994): 2–19.

In that vein, the list went on and on.

“He wrote these,” Kieren explained. “Henry Johnson, Bradley Sanguini, whatever you want to call him — Sanguini’s chef. Some of the Web pages hosting these documents haven’t been updated since the 1990s. Some of the articles were first composed when flappers were considered trendsetting.”

I tapped an impatient blue-glitter fingernail on the tablecloth. “Oh, come on. Last night you thought Ruby was a killer vampire. Tonight, Bradley.” Bradley hadn’t even been living in Austin when Vaggio was murdered. “Who will it be tomorrow? Me? Will I be a homicidal vampire, too?”

“Wednesday night,” Kieren countered, “a man carrying an ID for a Vaggio T. Bianchi bought a case of silver bullets from a guns-and-ammo shop owned by some local Wolves who got in touch with my mother. The Gamma working backup tailed the guy downtown —”

“Not funny,” I said, trying to act natural. But it was coincidental that this revelation was linked to one of the few hush-hush Wolfish things I happened to know about. “Uncle D packed up Vaggio’s stuff and shipped it to his family in Chicago.”

“You think I’m lying?”

I rubbed my eyes, not caring if I smeared the makeup. “I don’t know.”

Simone cruised by, setting a fresh glass of house wine on the table. “‘In a glass darkly,’” she said. “Compliments of the chef.”

A nearby four-top turned over, and an aging, B-list movie star was seated with his scarcely postpubescent eye candy of the week. It was time to wrap this up. “Kieren —”

“Quince, look at yourself.”

“Can’t,” I said, palms up. “No mirrors.”

The small joke had been a miscalculation. He picked up his fork, a possible weapon, and I raised my glass, flagging for backup.

“Where’s your planner book?” Kieren asked. “Where’s Frank?”

“I, I think it’s in my uncle’s office. On the desk.” Truth was, I wasn’t sure. How could that be? Frank and I were codependent. But I hadn’t checked my calendar lately, my tasking pages. My fingertips itched for the leather cover.

“You’ve changed,” Kieren went on. “I’m not only talking about wardrobe, though” — he studied the taut lace semicovering my breasts —“I must say . . .”

Damn him, I thought. “Why are you even here? You said you were leaving.”

“So what?” Kieren replied. “You’re trying to beat me to it? Shut me out of your life so it doesn’t hurt so much when I go?”

“
I’ve
been here the whole time,” I protested.

“No, you haven’t! I don’t know who
you
are.” He took a steadying breath. “Quince, this guy you’re messing around with is dangerous.”

“I’m not ‘messing around’ with —”

“He’s evil. And you’re, you’re slipping away. Listen to me, please. I’m begging you. I’ll get down on my hands and knees if that’s what it takes.”

It was such a puppy thing to say.

“Stand and come with us.” It was more a series of grunts than words, and I wasn’t sure which of the bouncers had spoken. Ian and Jerome seemed to function as a unit. Sporting standard black business suits, they’d self-exempted from dressing like the rest of the staff. But what with their bald, sunburned heads, jaundiced skin, and noses that rivaled Cyrano’s, they nevertheless looked sufficiently Sanguini’s. “Sir?”

Kieren didn’t acknowledge them. “Somebody poisoned Brazos’s food,” he told me. “I found him this afternoon, dead in his doghouse.”

Brazos?
I waited for the hurt to come, but it didn’t. Like it hadn’t when I’d heard about Travis. But, why not? I’d loved that dog like he was my own.

Kieren set down his fork and looked at me like I was the one who’d died. “I’m not giving up on you,” he said as he rose from the chair, then left.

Seconds later, Uncle D materialized at my side. “Honey, are you —”

“He didn’t hurt me.”

“But he was aggressive?”

I nodded, took a deep breath, and told him about the forgotten call from the night Vaggio had died.

“I hope you understand,” my uncle said. “Tomorrow I’m going to have to give APD a heads-up on this, let them know what’s going on.”

I nodded again.