Cynthia Leitich Smith - Tantalize

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are either products of the authors imagination or, if real, are used fictitiously.

Copyright 2007 by Cynthia Leitich Smith
Cover photograph copyright 2007 by Photodisc Red/Getty Images

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced, transmitted, or stored in an information retrieval system in any form or by any means, graphic, electronic, or mechanical, including photocopying, taping, and recording, without prior written permission from the publisher.

First electronic edition 2010

The Library of Congress has cataloged the hardcover edition as follows:

Smith, Cynthia Leitich.
Tantalize / Cynthia Leitich Smith. 1st ed.
p. cm.
Summary: When multiple murders in Austin, Texas, threaten the grand reopening of her familys vampire-themed restaurant, seventeen-year-old, orphaned Quincie worries that her best-friend-turned-love-interest, Kieren, a werewolf-in-training, may be the prime suspect.
ISBN 978-0-7636-2791-1 (hardcover)
[1. Supernatural Fiction. 2. Restaurants Fiction. 3. Vampires Fiction.
4. Werewolves Fiction. 5. Orphans Fiction. 6. Austin (Tex.) Fiction.]
I. Title.
PZ7.S64464Tan 2007
[Fic] dc22 2005058124

ISBN 978-0-7636-4059-0 (paperback)
ISBN 978-0-7636-5152-7 (electronic)

Candlewick Press
99 Dover Street
Somerville, Massachusetts 02144

visit us at www.candlewick.com

L ousy idea, us sitting like that on the railroad tracks. If we had had to jump, it would have been a heart-stopping drop to the lake below. But Kieren had said he could hear a train coming from far away, in more than enough time for us to scramble from the middle of the bridge to safety. And I trusted him. Liked him watching out for me, too.

To the west, the fading horizontal clouds had turned a bloody tangerine color, fuzzy and tinged with violet, like the inside of a conch shell. So, I imagined picking one up, a curved shell, and shaking it to see if the animal within had died.

Then Kierens fingernails began tracing the pattern on my upturned palm, and it was hard to think about anything. I knew it bothered him, though, my laugh line, my love line, my lifeline. Slight and severed, all of them.

This was four years ago, so we were in middle school, past due for handholding. Id been staying with Kierens family, helping with the baby, while my folks were in Guatemala doing whatever professors with archaeology Ph.D.s did there. Daddy anyway. Mama had just gone along for the ride. Theyd be back the day after tomorrow, I realized. And tomorrow could be gone in a heartbeat or two.

Its not just a sunset, I said, going for poetic. Its a moonrise, too.

Kierens nostrils flared at that, which I found exceedingly manly. Besides, Id always loved this time of day, late evening when the world went smoky and soft. Dusk. Twilight. Such pretty names. We owed something to the night, didnt we?

I tried pressing my newly rounded right boob against his forearm. Even though it was well covered in a sweat-stained T-shirt, even though the temperature had to be over ninety degrees. I had it on good authority that most boys my age were due to go boob crazy at any time. But my hand was all he was interested in.

As the sun melted into the horizon, I stared into the rippling water and decided to take the lead. If Kieren backed off, Id make like I was joking.

It seemed to take forever, turning my palm until our fingers aligned, rested against one another, ready to intertwine. His face was flushed, moist from the heat, and his expression didnt tell me anything.

Taking a shallow breath, I went for it. There. My fingertips touched the back of his hand. His fingertips touched the back of mine. And he was letting it happen. I was about to say something I didnt know what when distant but sure I heard the train.

Kieren? I whispered.

Id distracted him.

A cause for celebration if it hadnt been for the penalty.

His head snapped in the direction of the oncoming threat, the one that would reach me first, and his eyes in the evening light looked flat and yellow. I didnt feel the pain when I first heard the wet crunching, didnt feel it for long even, wicked hot, turning my sweat cold. There was an instant, just one, when I looked down at my hand and felt the blood dripping and realized his nails... claws... had extended, piercing clear through, five crescent-shaped punctures, catching raw muscle and splintering bone.

Oh, I said, like that explained everything, and suddenly, the train didnt matter so much anymore. Then the world swirled, faded, took me floating into the darkness.

Y oure nuts! I exclaimed after swallowing a bite of tender scallops twirled in garlic fettuccine. My uncle will never sign off on this.

No, no, not nuts, Quincie, the chef countered in an accented baritone. Garlic. He said Italian. Change this. Pave that. But still, Italian. So, garlic.

But Vaggio!

His triumphant smile let me in on the joke. Ah, bambina, so predictable.

It was nearly 9 P.M. , and since sevenish that evening, Id been playing taste tester for the teasing and tiring chef. Each dish had been sensual, succulent, but none had screamed, Presto: blood lust! And thats what we were going for.

Sanguinis was to be Austins first restaurant built around a vampire theme. More class than kitsch, but not without a sense of playfulness. A reboot of Fat Lorenzos, the family-style Italian restaurant on South Congress that had once belonged to Gramma and Grampa Crimi, whod left it to Mama. Shed often called the business her other child and seemed more at home there than she did in the house.

At least until three winters ago, when she and Daddy died on the icy 183 exit ramp off MoPac Expressway, orphaning me and the restaurant. The will had placed both of us in the care of Daddys younger brother, Davidson, until I hit twenty-one.

Back then, Uncle D was in his mid-twenties, barely out of Texas State University. I was only fourteen, and the marinara in my veins came from Mamas side of the family, not Daddys. But Vaggio, the chef whod known my late grandparents since back in their Chicago days, helped Uncle D get up to speed. And from then on, I spent more time at Fat Lorenzos than anywhere else, even Kierens.

All was well until last year when Pasta Perfecto opened a few blocks south. Though our regulars had stayed regular, their parking lot was twice the size of ours. Within six months, Fat Lorenzos was in the red.

Something had to change, Id said, or wed find ourselves out of business. Vaggio had argued that we should stick with Italian, claiming he didnt know how to cook anything else. Uncle Davidson had suggested the vampire concept.