Free Let Them Eat Stake: A Vampire Chef Novel by Sarah Zettel

good and well the Alden-Renault party had no reservation. Nevertheless, Robert had seated them at table twelve, dead center in the dining room. Any experienced maître d’ keeps a table or two open, just in case of a VIP walk-in. So far we hadn’t had much call, and the sight of one of our best tables sitting empty on a nightly basis got under my skin, but tonight I was glad he’d done it. Customers who obviously had way more time than I did to read the papers and the gossip blogs were sneaking glances at the party of six.
    Not that they’d dressed to be subtle. Deanna Alden had gone all out, a tight, bright blue dress with a hand-painted daylily splashed across one shoulder. Her hair was swept up and back to make the most of her pixie face, dangling diamond and sapphire earrings, and matching diamond choker that mostly covered the bite marks on her neck. Flanking her were two other dayblood girls—I assumed they were Lois and the unfortunately named Peridot. One had pale blond hair that had been aggressively straightened to the demands of current fashion. Her paisley silk top looked as if it had been standing too close when an eighteen-wheeler ran over the seventies. The other woman was a natural carrottop, her red hair pulled into a French twist and her summer green spandex top trimmed with smoke gray stones that matched the topaz in her necklace and earrings. She sized me up sharply as I approached the table, and I found myself wondering how I’d earned such a hard look from a bridesmaid.
    “Chef Caine.” Deanna had the dazzling smile of someone who had appeared in public a lot and knew how to behave when being watched. “Really sorry to walk in at totally the last minute like this, but we were
starving
.”
    “Very glad to see you, Ms. Alden.” Here in the dining room I was very much on stage. It was game face time. “I don’t think we’ve met…” I turned to the nightbloods.
    “Gabriel Renault.” The younger-looking of the twonightbloods held out his cool, light hand to me. I glanced at his face just long enough to catch waving chestnut hair, almond-shaped eyes, and a strong aquiline nose. His cheekbones were high enough and sharp enough to make his pale cheeks look dramatically hollow—kind of David Bowie on the dark side. I didn’t catch his eye color. Looking strange vampires in the eye is a hazardous pastime.
    “Very glad to meet you, Chef Caine,” said Gabriel. “Let me introduce my sire, Henri.”
    Henri Renault got to his feet and bowed.
“Bonjour! Vous êtes notre chef magnifique, n’est-ce pas?”
    Something people forget is that really old vampires tend to be really short. If Henri Renault was five feet tall, it was in heels. He was also what used to be described as “dapper.” He wore a neat cream-colored suit, complete with a patterned silk vest and a gold watch chain, which, I was willing to bet, had an actual gold watch on the end. Cuff links, a sapphire tie pin, and a gold ring with a bright blue stone on his right hand added to this serious cache of antique bling. He had also clearly been converted before the idea “less is more” came into vogue, because his hand rested on a gold-headed walking stick, and he adjusted his monocle to peer up at me.
    And yes, that was cologne I was smelling, a heavy wave of musk and cloves. Wow. Henri Renault left no detail overdone.
    “I do so look forward to tasting you—pardon me—your work,”
Henri went on in French. He did not repeat the remark in English. I suspect that was because he didn’t want the rest of the party to know he’d just made a really clumsy come-on. Gabriel struggled to keep the shock off his face. Deanna just blinked brightly as her girlfriends giggled. Evidently they weren’t covering French at prestigious private schools these days. What was this world coming to?
    “But of course,”
I answered in my best backstreets-of-Paris French.
“And understand, Monsieur Renault, I know you’re a fake.”
    My