Let Them Eat Stake: A Vampire Chef Novel Read Online Free Page B

a serious food person.
    “Actually, I usually do the cooking,” said Mrs. Alden a little wistfully. “Especially when it’s just the four of us—three of us,” she corrected herself. “But with all the extra people, it’s become a bit much. I hope you’ll have everything you need.” Mrs. Alden was glancing around at the cabinets, as if taking a mental inventory of each.
    “I’m sure we will.” I wouldn’t have pegged Mrs. Alden for an enthusiastic cook, but food is a trendy hobby these days. Something was missing, though. I took another glance around and realized I didn’t see any cookbooks or recipe binders. Well, those were probably stored in one of the cabinets. I’d have a good look around later—purely in my professional capacity, of course, not to snoop on my new clients. I’d been cured of all my latent Nancy Drew tendencies last year. No, really.
    “Mom?” Deanna’s voice drifted in from the other side of the swinging door to the dining room. “Brendan’s here.”
    Brendan?
    “Sorry I’m so late. There was an accident on—”
    The door pushed open, and Brendan Maddox walked in. Tall and broad-shouldered with black hair and blue eyes, Brendan is a big man. When he comes into view, my head tends to start spinning, but in a good kind of way. Just then, though, he made my stomach turn over. Brendan and Adrienne Alden looked at me with matching blue eyes, and I knew where my earlier bout of déjà vu had come from.
    “Holy shit!” I remarked to my new client. “You’re a Maddox!”

3

    “Hello, Charlotte.” Brendan pulled himself together with really impressive speed.
    “Um, erm, ah. Hi.” Never let it be said I do not demonstrate the true depth of my social graces when surprised.
    I wouldn’t call Brendan Maddox my boyfriend. This is partly because the word makes me break out into a cold sweat, and partly because normal people should not become gender-prefixed friends of chefs. We work six nights a week, whether we like it or not, and we are a pack of control freaks with industrial-sized egos. None of this is good for the maintenance of a healthy relationship.
    Not that Brendan is exactly a normal person. He’s a warlock, as I’ve mentioned. He’s also a high-profile paranormal security consultant. The high profile is new. Last fall, his security company landed a citywide contract to provide public spaces with paranormal protection, or protection against paranormals, which is not always the same thing. Since then, Brendan and I have been in a dead heat for the Five Boroughs Happy Workaholic Championship. This might be why we’ve been able to keep seeing each other. Neither of us has had the time or brain cells left overto wonder where our relationship is going, let alone whether it’ll ever get there.
    “Aunt Adrienne said she had some news for me,” said Brendan, looking to Mrs. Alden.
    Aunt
Adrienne? I gaped like a fish when it sees the deep fryer.
    “I’m sorry, Chef Caine,” said Mrs. Alden. “I had assumed Felicity told you.”
    Yeah, she would, because any reasonable person would tell the caterer she was hiring that said caterer was walking into a particularly personal minefield. Last fall, a drunken warlock—one Dylan Maddox—burst into my restaurant during dinner rush. By the next morning, he was dead in my foyer. The situation eventually sorted itself out, but a certain amount of bad feeling got generated in the process—not much, but just enough that a disconcertingly large number of Brendan’s relatives would be happy if my head was served up with their steak Saturday night.
    “’Scuse me a second, will you?” I swung myself up the back stairs and charged through to the living room. Felicity was already on her feet. She knew. And she knew I knew.
    “They’re Maddoxes!” I informed her, just in case she’d missed any of the pertinent details.
    “
They
are Aldens,” Felicity replied with a stunningly bald-faced level of calm.
    “Brendan
Maddox
calls her