Page 87 of Cookbooks and Demons

“Honestly, not good, madame. There is a problem that I need to discuss with you. About the dinner fortonight.”

Fuck,Helena thought but didn’t express. “Whatever it is, we can fix it. What is theproblem?”

“The chef. Heis gone.”

Chapter 45

Nowhere Else to Turn

“What do you mean he’s gone?” Helena asked as she stared down Éliott, despite his being a foot taller than her. The chef’s cousin, who stood before her clearly wanting to be anywhere else in the world but exactly where he was, muttered in Frencha moment.

“I do not know exactly where, madame,” he said, going green around the ears as he switched back to English. “But … he left thismorning.”

“When is he coming back?” Helena demanded. This can’t be happening. she thought, even though she knew it was.

All Éliott could do was shrug ashoulder.

She wanted to run her fingers through her hair in frustration, but it would have undone her French twist (ironic) and the little red crystal hairpins that held it alltogether.

“But I don’t understand what happened?” sheinsisted.

“It sometimes happens with him,” his cousin tried to explain. “Not for a long time, but he gets to the point where he can’t… he can’t take it no more and he…” He stuck a finger in his mouth and popped his cheek like a bottle cork. “And then herun away.”

Helena wanted to scream, but it would do no good. “Okay, okay, so what has been finished? Where are things right now?” She glanced at the clock. It was already three hours before appetizers were supposed to be served. They were already sunk, but she chose to not give up yet.

“Nothing is cooked,” Éliott admitted. “The food is here but no one to prepare it.”

“But where is his staff?”

“They all quit. He…” Éliott struggled for a moment. “Burned their bridges.” He shrugged as he knew he wasn’t using the idiom right, but it got the idea across.

He looked back at the small crowd of people behind him, all dressed like him with matching rose embroidered shirts and festive aprons. “The wait staff are all here,” he said, but that didn’t really help things without food for them to serve. “We have the wine.”

That too wasn’t much help. This was adisaster.

“Okay, I just … need a minute to think,” she said. “I’ll be… Is there somewhere private I can go to make a call?”

Éliott surged forward and went to open a nearby door for her. She nodded and went through. It was the loading dock where it connected to the kitchens. There were many twists and alcoves all over as well as cleaning staff and workers. But they only cast an incurious eye at the ballgowned woman and continued on with their own business. Desperate for somewhere to be, she plunged through the maze looking for somewhere secluded where she could make the call she neededto make.

At last she came across a room marked, “Hazard, do not enter,” with worn caution tape crisscrossing it. She almost went by it, but a familiar wrong feeling skittered across her skin when she touchedthe door.

“No, it can’t be,” she said softly, then tried the handle, expecting it to be locked.

But it wasn’t.

Slowly, she opened the door, which gave an ominous horror movie creak as it swung inward.

“Hey, ma’am,” a voice interrupted thickly with an accent she couldn’t place.

“Oh, sorry,” she said, jumping back to face a mustached janitorial worker in coveralls.

“You can’t go in there. It’s off limits,” he said ominously, pointing as if she hadn’t seen the caution tape. “Bad things happenin there.”

“What sort of bad things?” she asked.

He shrugged. “Don’t know. It was a while ago. They just tell us to not go in there and leaveit alone.”

“Oh, okay,” she said, holding up her cell phone clutched in her hands. “I was just looking for somewhere private to make a call.”

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