Home Improvement: Undead Edition (22 page)

“You wanted to make a difference, to be noticed, to be important. You have been. You will always be important to us now, Justine.” Gently, Chastity covered Justine’s eyes.

The last couple of tears had left tracks in the mortar on the ARB chairperson’s cheeks. Chastity left them there.

She stepped back, looked at her sister and at the littles. Then she nodded to Damek.

Silently, he finished strengthening the building. Each brick and every stone he placed solidified its security and strength.

When he was done, the sisters and their young siblings went up the stairs, and Damek began humming again.

SEVERAL DAYS PASSED
as Damek continued his work in the house. On the third day, Chastity found another letter in the mail. Nervously, she clutched it in her hand as she read the first paragraph:

The River Glades Community prides itself on high community standards. As such any and all exterior architectural alterations must receive approval of the Architectural Review Board. Please file the attached approval FOR FENCE CONSTRUCTION for your records.

She smiled.

“What does it say?” Alison came to stand shoulder-to-shoulder with her sister.

Chastity held up the paper so they could both read it. “They’ve approved our fence!”

Alison let out a whoop of triumph, and the littles came careening into the room.

“I told you it would all be okay.” Alison bumped her shoulder against Chastity’s. “The littles will have their safe home and safe play yard.”

“We owe thanks to Justine.” Chastity nudged her sister back. “And to you.”

Remus bumped his head gently against her hand. “Go catch yellow birds now?”

At that, Raven and Alison exchanged a worried look, but Chastity smiled at him and then said, “If you keep eating them, we won’t have any left.”

“Is a feeder though,” Remus complained. “Feeder is for food.”

Chastity laughed. “True. We need to mark the fence line anyhow. Come on.”

And the sisters led their younger nestmates into their soon-to-be-fenced yard.

Woolsley’s Kitchen Nightmare

E. E. KNIGHT

There’s a joke over in Europe that if you find yourself in America’s Upper Midwest, it’s time to switch your GPS. Any reputable routing service provider should program its devices to keep you well clear of these bleak woods and cornfields, connected by old two-lane highways linking bits of crossroad nothing.

They can’t imagine why anyone would want to be here. Bland as processed cheese, either too hot or too cold and dreary in the spring and fall. Whatever the charts say, the region’s not on anyone’s cultural map—devoid of interesting incident since the last Sioux uprising was put down during the American Civil War and populated by flannel-wearing bumpkins; they might say antipathy is the best policy . . .

Feck the snobs, I say. I’ve been there a couple of times. Few of the snobs will say that. What’s more, I look forward to returning, which none of the snobs would say, even if it were true. You may laugh, but it’s a land of quiet surprises and secret treasures. One moment you’re on a winding country road counting cows, the next you’re in a Swiss village or Cornish mining country, with Norwegian troll statues grinning at you from the roadside.

That’s just Wisconsin, perhaps my favorite of the Midwest states. It’s a rich land in its own way, sharing the stolid wisdom displayed by the locals in my own home county in Ireland, and with life in the country moving to the rhythm of the livestock and harvest. The grass is the same emerald green as well, at least until the July sun hammers the countryside into straw and clay. Maybe that’s why it always seems half-familiar to me.

Ah, Ireland. You can leave it, but it never leaves you, even if you escape. I grew up wild and woolly with nothing but ravens and barn rats for friends, sneaking from one paddock to the next and scrounging from bins and feed sheds. I left the Auld Sod with a caravan of translife first chance I got. Quite an eye-opener, that, learning there were others not unlike me, full of anxiety and appetite. Because I was the new guy they dumped the worst duty on me: food prep and disposal. Of course the weres and the troupe’s leader, a one-eyed vamp named Jack who taught me the Discreet Art of Wandering Translife, had all the fun of procuring the food. Once the blood was drained and the excitement of sticky red died down, I took over and turned the meats and vitals into road cuisine that would see everyone through to the next carefully chosen kill.

Then on my night rides I’d get rid of the bits of evidence that weren’t reduced to sauces and stock.

That was how I found out I had a knack for cooking—a gift, even, as the others styled it. Dear old One-Eyed Jack plunked down the cash for my first translife eatery in Paris and handed over the deed. It was a dying bistro beneath an old nunnery when he bought it.

Two holes and a corner, it was, connected to the vast Paris sewers and a smuggler’s tunnel on the Seine that dated back to Napoleon’s Continental System. I put in twenty-two-hour days for a year and made a go of it. Word got out and I opened a second in Prague—my first and only instant success. I did a true restaurant in New Orleans, following with Shanghai, Lisbon, Buenos Aires, and finally my crown jewel, Nippers, in London, not far from Jack the Ripper’s old kills. I did well in that very competitive market. The Secret Eyes, who pretty much run things in the translife world, put my London staff on retainer, doing the catering for their seasonals. That took me and my team all over the world, since the Secret Eyes never meet in the same city twice in the traditional human life span of three-score-and-ten. “Everyone served anywhere” went on my business cards.

But arse-over, such public recognition made me some enemies. Rivals in the translife foodie world got my place in Prague shut down. You’d think even white-hot jealousy wouldn’t make any of us night folk do a deal with the Templars, but that was just what happened. Someone sent a note or an e-mail and three promising caterers on my team there saw their last night. The Templars dispatched and exorcised them in the prime of translife. What could happen in Prague could happen in Paris and Shanghai and so on, so I sold off my catering empire.

Tragedy, right? Worst year of my life? Not a bit of it. I’m a born wanderer, I’m happy to say, always kicking on for a new horizon. I needed to earn money so I went into consulting—you go through a lot of cash as a translife, between covering your tracks and bribing the local constabulary. So now I advise other would-be or troubled restaurateurs in the translife catering trade. I like going somewhere with fresh faces, fresh preferences, fresh customs, and fresh victims. Fresh horses, too, for a good, sweaty night ride, since most translife eateries keep out of the cities for safety’s sake.

So, the call came to go to Wisconsin in the early summer, in the southwest corner on the bluffs overlooking that big, winding river through the heart of North America. Beer and dairy farm country, smelling of hot asphalt, manure, and crabapple trees. Sounded like a challenge; that bit of the world’s almost off the translife grid, culturally and logistically. I had to wonder who’d be mad enough to try to cater to translife in the middle of a teat-pulling human nowhere.

A madman or a visionary, I guessed. I drew up a mental sketch of a discerning vampire retiring from hectic urban life, or an old banshee reconnecting with her childhood roots. As usual in matters unrelated to food, I was wrong.

THE SECLUDED SKYLINE
Restaurant had a promising enough setting for catering to translife appetites. From the outside, not even visible from any highway, it didn’t look like anything much—just another distressed barn in a part of the country full of them.

I had to follow the verbal directions given by the owner, as the little farm access road leading to the Skyline didn’t appear on any database. The road had cheap, mass-produced red-and-white NO TRESPASSING and NO HUNTING signs, with a BEWARE OF DOG as you came to the flat ground surrounding the barn. I pulled up in my rental van—in this business you never know what you might have to run out and acquire at the last minute, and a van is perfect for discreet haulage—and decided I liked the look of the place. The barn was green rather than the more usual reds or whites, with a pinkish-white roof. Lonely, windy, remote. Cold as Jadis’s tit in January, certainly, but on a deliciously firelit Beltane . . .

A walkaround reaffirmed my positive first impression. The building was shabby-looking and plain from a distance, but up close I could see that it had been largely rebuilt in the past ten years or so. One might wonder why a barn had a superb view from high on the bluffs overlooking the Mississippi Valley, perhaps halfway between La Crosse and Dubuque, or well-kept gravel paths leading into an abandoned quarry, or a small planted trellis over the stairs leading down into the former pigpens. Someone really curious might venture around to the valley-facing side and wonder at all the windows and the little patio around brick fire pits.

But I’d have to enter to find out if this place passed my most important criteria.

First, security. If I don’t think a location is safe, or run with the wellbeing of its translife clientele in mind, I won’t touch it, no matter what the fee. Location, location, location, as the real estate fleshies say. I’m a hungry Irish night-rider, not a wizard; I can’t do anything about location.

Second, staff. Staff can sometimes make me walk right out the door within an hour of entering, if I think there’s absolutely nothing that can be done with them. I looked forward to meeting them, starting with the owner.

The Skyline’s owner, Mason Mastiff, came out to greet me, looking flushed and out of breath. He walked with short steps and crackled with a touch of other worlds about him, but he was as human as any of the dairy drivers whose rigs I’d been caught behind on the drive over from Madison. A wig cut to resemble the youthful, carefully crafted parted-on-the-left hair of a politician rested on his head, as out of place as a napping dove. I’ve always found wigs on men a little unsettling. Or maybe it’s the kind of men who wear wigs that I find strange. I should have trusted my instincts that Mason Mastiff would be arse-over trouble. Staring, suspicious eyes, vaguely mad and dangerous like Rasputin or an Old West gunfighter thirsty for blood and whiskey, blazed out of a fleshy, pale face.

“Chef Woolsley, I apprehend,” he said. His high-pitched voice rang out across the hills. He peeked over my shoulder into the van, perhaps wondering if a more impressive figure was waiting to be introduced.

I don’t look like much in the day, I’ll grant. My arms are out of proportion to my body and I’m a bit bowlegged. Haggard and limp when I’m not riding. I usually tell humans I’m between chemotherapies. Once the moon is up I’m not much better, but my hair comes alive and I’m hungry for fun.

Mastiff wore a brilliant azure smoking jacket and neat twill trousers that made him look as though he should be leading a marching band in a salute to John Philip Sousa. A cravat with a little golden skull stickpin at his throat screamed trouble.

I mean it literally. The feckin’ thing was enchanted.

“Welcome, monsieur, set yourself down,” it sang out.

Strike the enchanted, probably possessed.

“Quiet, Hellzapoppin,” Mastiff said. “Business, not a customer. Have trouble finding the place, Woolsley?”

We exchanged politenesses. As we toured his grounds, Mastiff told me a little about his background. He’d started out as a restaurant writer and critic, or at least that was his dream. Strictly for human consumption back then. There was too much competition for the big names and the Michelin-guide stuff, so he started to specialize in dive eateries, bohemian cafés, and theaters where you could get a bit of performance art with your canapés and coffee.

“I was killing an hour with a custom appliance installer in a little Seattle bistro, asking him about odd little places he’d seen. The dear man had had a few tales to tell and told me about a place he’d done when he lived in San Francisco. Not in the city, mind you, out in the wine country. There were some cages behind the kitchen and a special table that looked like something out of an episode of
CSI
. He figured it was some kinky sex establishment.

“I smelled a unique story there, and dredged up every piece of information I could about it. I tracked it down and tried to get in. No luck, private club, membership card only, that sort of story. No record of it with the health department, no advertising. So I started watching the clientele going in and out, always in late at night, always out again well before dawn or leaving in a well-tinted limo the next day from a lightless garage. I managed to meet the owner and talked him into letting me work there.”

He nudged some cold embers back into one of the fire pits with a polished dress shoe. The skull pin broke into the dwarf “Whistle While You Work,” but quietly.

“I met my first translife there. From then on, I was hooked. So many legends, so much human history, quietly filling forgotten corners, unrecognized.”

“We like it that way,” I said.

“At first, I thought I had a food exposé that would win me a Pulitzer, but I found the customers were more interesting than the story—and the money! The money, my dear Woolsley. I learned everything I could about the business and found this place. Sunk my life savings into it, but the game hasn’t gone my way. Hoped you’d tell me where I’ve gone wrong, dear fellow.”

“Let’s take a look inside,” I suggested.

Third, décor. An easyish fix most of the time. We walked in through the front door. If Mastiff’s own eyes couldn’t tell him where he’d gone wrong, nothing short of a burning bush on a Sinai mountaintop could.

As soon as I saw his interior I decided this would be an easy job. All I needed was to find a couple of crowbars and a flamethrower.

The barn’s interior was architecturally interesting, inspiring even, with the high, thick-timbered ceiling and small loft at one end, currently occupied by the bar. Big, airy, yet intimate in the way all those beams ate up the sound. Most translife don’t care for noise and clamor. The tall windows facing the Mississippi gave a beautiful show of a green-and-blue river valley, vaster than the Grand Canyon and very nearly as deep, with the Minnesota bluffs a blue smear on the horizon.

There were definite possibilities in the way you looked down into the kitchen. He’d opened up the barn floor so you could see into a bit of the cooking line setup in the old pigpens. He’d set up sort of an open-air dumbwaiter. Above the big kitchen hatch hung what I first thought was an art piece. Some chains and a big platform featuring a surgeon’s table not unlike the one used to animate Dr. Frankenstein’s go at creation gave me all kinds of ideas for culinary showmanship.

However, as we toured the inside, I felt like putting on welding goggles to keep out the ugly. All that sturdy beauty to work with, and Mastiff decided to cover it up with garish flourishes.

Mastiff had ruined with décor what should have been won with space and view. Ghastly brass and fern fixtures that managed to combine the worst excesses of the late seventies and early eighties clustered here and there on the barn floor like scattered dog turds. Pointless plaster mini-Greek columns stood next to vintage washtubs and gas-station Coca-Cola machines, and a Tesla coil buzzing here and there. Imagine Castle of Dr. Frankenstein meets bricky urban loft meets postindustrial rave.

Curtains and linens in purple and black and pink with flecks of red with billowing gauzy cotton hung in festoons from the ceiling, trying to look ethereal but succeeding only in adding to the tatty feel and hiding the interesting details in the ceiling. Pointing out his acquisitions with one arm while the other remained anchored across the small of his back in a ducal pose, Mastiff prattled on, gassing about where he’d obtained the fabric and how much time it had taken to get the draping just right.

Small spotlights on conduit riggings suspended ten meters below that lovely wooden ceiling lit fabric, floor, and tables haphazardly, ruining the rustic effect.