Page 30 of Kept 2
“No,” he bursts out laughing, “but I have a friend in Sicily, he runs a small taverna. I went out fishing with Ricardo and his father while on holiday there as a child, and I’ve kept in touch with him ever since. I could put in a call, he might shelter you during your daring adventures for a while – and of course, he is a chef, so you might find him amusing.”
“Daniel, you are a life-saver!”
“All part of my long-winded seduction,” he laughs.
I laugh too. I can’t help it.
“I’ll text you the address,” he says, when we have recovered, “give my regards to Ricardo.”
“Daniel, thank you, no, really, thank you from the bottom of my heart.”
“Any time.”
I hang up and hold my hand briefly to the aforementioned organ, hoping it will settle down and I won’t actually have an aneurysm or something before I can escape this city. It’s thumping gradually slows down as the taxi heads towards the airport, and I receive the text from Daniel.
“Now I just have to hide better, to keep it beating,” I mutter.
But even as I think this I know a part of my still fluttering heart, a very small part that I fully intend to suppress, wishes I could stay in Paris serving Jacque Lumier every night, even knowing he was a vampire.
I will miss our conversations.
Choux pastry
(Pastry for piping such things as eclairs)
Ingredients:2 litres water (hot), 30g salt, 800g butter, 1.6kg flour, 40 eggs.
Method:
Drop butter into the hot water and boil.
Take off heat and add flour, stir hard and briskly to remove all humidity from dough.
Note: If the dough is not dry enough, it will not rise, it should fall apart when it is dry – the humidity in the eggs is what causes the rising during baking.
Into the bowl add the eggs two by two and stir slowly, incorporate thoroughly and repeat, when the dough is shiny and runny begin piping.
Note: Don’t open the oven during baking. When the pastries have risen but not coloured, wedge the oven open slightly with a wooden spoon to allow the humidity to escape and the pastries to brown.
10
“You don’t understand, he is going to kill you,” I whisper urgently as I walk briskly back from the fish market, the heavy basket hanging from my right arm dripping fish blood and goo, the handle starting to cut into my flesh.
“He won’t. He loves me, and I love him.”
I sigh and think through all the arguments I have made to my foolish friend ever since I ran from Paris to this small, crowded island. Nothing seems to work; she is totally and completely besotted with the creature she is cruising the seas with; all my warnings have fallen on deaf ears.
“You are Kept, Margarita. That means he is going to kill you one day when he gets sick of you, and catch another poor unsuspecting woman, and do the same to her.”
“He is not.”
“Does he drink from you?”
Her silence tells me everything.
“Oh, dear God, when did this start? Last week you were still adamant I was crazy, and he wasn’t a vampire – what has changed in a few days?”
“I put two and two together, and I felt bad,” she whispers, “I felt terrible when you told me that Nicholas had gone to Bali. I knew then that you were right, and that Jerry knew him, which meant, I mean I’m not completely stupid, it must have meant that he and Jerry were old friends – I just didn’t knowhowold. When he saw how upset I was, he told me everything.”
