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

Author:Sarah Zettel [Zettel, Sarah]
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
Publisher: Penguin Group, Inc.
Published: 2012-04-03T04:00:00+00:00

18

Normally, if I want to bribe somebody, I do the cooking myself, but I was operating under some unusual time constraints here. One of the advantages of being a chef in Manhattan, though, is you are a member of a tightly knit community of fellow professionals not averse to handing you the occasional curry hot pot to go out the back door, no questions asked.

I had to look up the address for Exclusivité. From what little I’d been told, I was expecting to arrive at a street-level shop or spa. Instead, to my surprise, the cab pulled up in front of one of Manhattan’s iconic glass and steel skyscrapers just a couple blocks off Columbus Circle. It was only a guess that I’d find Karina Alden at her office, but you didn’t develop and run a luxury product business without being a workaholic. Having been a badly gut-punched workaholic, I knew all about the comfort of being able to throw yourself into your job when you didn’t want to think—especially if it involved not thinking about one of O’Grady’s Q&A sessions.

I paid off the cabbie, grabbed the receipt (hey, it was a business expense), and climbed out onto the curb. The night was warm, and the traffic on the sidewalk and down the street was brisk. A quick check of my carrier bag showed I hadn’t spilled anything yet. A quick check of my cell phone said Brendan hadn’t called or texted.

A quick look where I was going showed Scott Alden on the other side of the lobby’s tinted windows, striding out of the elevator.

I froze like a guilty teenager when the light snaps on, and I looked around frantically for a tourist to duck behind. But Mr. Alden was too busy texting and checking his watch at the same time to notice some random, out-of-uniform chef standing by the curb. He breezed out through the revolving door, letting the rotation point him toward Broadway, and headed down the sidewalk without once looking up.

Okay. Unexpected, I thought as I was remembering how to breathe again. It also told me two things: (1) Karina was in fact in her office; (2) I wasn’t the only one feeling the need to check up on her. I did find myself wondering how that particular father-daughter conversation had gone and what kind of ground it had covered. I knew nothing about Scott Alden, except that he was rich, a T-typ, he didn’t much like Lloyd Maddox, he might have tried to get access to Oscar’s office, and, according to Trudy, his main goal in life was to keep everybody calm and happy.

So, who was he here to keep calm and happy? That question followed me through the revolving door and across the gleaming lobby, and I had the feeling it wasn’t going away any time soon.

This was not the kind of building just anybody could wander into. I had to give my name to the guard at the desk, who in turn had to

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