Page 148 of Never Invite a Vampire to Dinner

I give him a look.

“Most of Water Street,” he admits, and I pull back.

“You asked all these people. You went around town asking people to help you cook.”

“Yes.”

“You asked them.”

“I am aware of the irony.”

“How many?”

“I stopped counting.”

I narrow my eyes at him. “You did not.”

“Nine.”

“Of course you know.”

He looks towards the dining room. “Come back to the table.”

There is something in his voice, so I go. On the sideboard, where I somehow didn’t notice it before, is a silver bowl full of violently orange cheese curls.

I point. “Explain.”

“Lucy.”

“Obviously.”

“She said that if I intended to construct a culinary history of Penelope Harrington and omitted the basement of 2006, the entire enterprise lacked integrity.”

I stare at him. “Those were her exact words?”

“No. Her exact words contained an obscenity and the phrase don’t you dare get fancy about this.”

I take one. It’s exactly the brand.

“You put them in the good silver.”

“She was extremely specific.”

I sit down, and Julian sits across from me.

“All right,” I say. “Tell me.”

He looks at the candles. “I cannot taste anything.”

“I know.”

“I can read a recipe. I can weigh ingredients. I can control the temperature. I can repeat a technique until I can perform it correctly. It turns out I am reasonably good at those things, which I suspect is mostly a function of not becoming impatient.”

“Four hundred years will do that.”

“But I cannot tell whether any of it is good. I cannot correct it. There is no amount of practice that will let me do the thing you do when you put a spoon into a pot and know it needs salt.” He turns my wineglass a fraction on the polished wood. “So I couldn’t do it alone.”

He says it quietly, almost casually, and it’s the biggest thing he’s said all night.