Seduction Read online

She was so different from Gram, who dressed in long skirts and shawls and wore her hair in a bun with a doily on top of her head. But then, the witches of Whitfield were different from most people in a whole lot of ways, and beauty was probably the least of them. But fundamentally, she was like Gram. She was kind. She was gentle. She had a sense of humor. And she was willing to be nice to me when almost no one else was.

  “Perhaps you would like a party?” Marie-Therèse suggested.

  I groaned. Didn’t these people think about anything else? “Er . . . thanks, but parties aren’t exactly my thing.”

  “Ah. For me as well. But I am old. The other women—the younger ones—adore them. They live for parties.”

  Why didn’t that surprise me, I thought.

  “But soon my birthday will arrive—my eightieth—and there will be a party for me that I must attend.”

  “Oh, of course,” I said. “That’s different. I’ll certainly come to your birthday party.”

  She smiled a little, although I couldn’t read the emotion in that smile. She didn’t look at me.

  I should mention that I have a talent besides telekinesis. I’m also an object empath, which means I can “read” objects. I can tell a lot about where things have been just by touching them, if I concentrate. And it’s not just objects that I can read. I can learn a lot about people, too—sometimes more than I want to—by touching them. That doesn’t happen, though, unless I concentrate on it. Otherwise, I’d go crazy feeling other people’s feelings all the time. It also doesn’t seem fair, peeking into people’s secret selves. I mean, if someone wants you to know something about them, they’ll tell you, right? It’s an invasion of privacy.

  But there was something about the old woman’s smile that touched my heart. Was she sad about growing older? Was she afraid that no one would come to her party? I thought maybe if I knew her story, I could help in some way.

  So I touched her hand. Gently. Deliberately. Let me in.

  Her feelings were like a car crash happening. Screeching metal, blurry images, unnamed, unspeakable horror. She was terrified down to the marrow of her bones.

  I pulled away, gasping involuntarily at the shock, my own heart racing. “I need to go,” I said.

  Marie-Therèse looked at me strangely, as if she knew what I’d done and was ashamed of what I’d found inside her mind.

  “Er . . . can’t be late for class,” I mumbled as I picked up my knife carrier and edged out the door.

  She nodded slightly, graciously. But I saw her hands. They were trembling.

  CHAPTER

  •

  TEN

  To: [email protected]

  From: [email protected]

  Subject: Hi

  Hi, Aunt Agnes—

  Well, we’re nearly done with Soups and Appetizers! Today we made things stuffed in pastry—baked brie en croute with a bunch of different coulis, or fruit sauces, mini Wellingtons, spinach pie in phyllo, apple strudel, and some other things. Margot the Canadian overcooked her Wellingtons and Chef Durant called her a barbarian. Then she called him a lot of things I didn’t think middle-aged women ever even thought, let alone said, and threw her name tag at Chef before stomping out. Chef picked it up between his thumb and index finger like it was a rat, and then dropped it in the twenty-gallon garbage can.

  Hope you and Gram are enjoying the summer. I miss you both.

  —Katy

  I hit send from a computer at the nearest Internet café, then headed back to the Rue des mes Perdues. Back at the house, Sophie asked me—all smiles and dimples, of course—to cook dinner for twenty this weekend, as a formal welcome for Fabienne. Frankly, I wouldn’t cook a turd sandwich for Sophie, but I liked Fabby, so I agreed to do it.

  “Your friend Peter—he is very busy, I think,” Sophie said, primping her hair in the ornate living room mirror.

  “Uh . . . I guess.” I didn’t want her to know how much it bothered me that Peter’s schedule and mine were so different.

  “And so Fabienne’s dinner will be good for you.”

  “Oh?”

  “But of course. Peter should see your talent, your skill.”

  What he would see, most likely, would be my food-encrusted clothes and sweaty face, but I understood her point. Peter hadn’t tried my cooking since I’d started at the Clef d’Or, and I was kind of excited that he would be at my big meal.

  “It is important to use the assets one has.”

  Oh. Meaning that I couldn’t rely on my beauty the way she could, because, according to her, I didn’t have any. What a piece of work. “Okay, I’ll do it,” I said. “I’ll give you my grocery list as soon as I’ve worked it out.”

  She waved me away. “Give it to the cook.”

  I decided on a menu of clear soup with chanterelle mushrooms, beet salad with Roquefort cheese and pears, turbot en papillot with remoulade sauce, potatoes Lyonnaise, asparagus in browned butter, candied tomatoes, and little cheesy pastry balls called gougères, followed by an eight-layer, mousse-filled chocolate cake covered in chocolate buttercream and a parti-colored bow made of rolled fondant. It was a pretty ambitious menu, especially since I hadn’t gone past Roasts and Braises at school, but I’d learned to cook most of the other things from Hattie, although she hadn’t used the French names for them. At Hattie’s Kitchen, we used terms like “fish cooked in paper” and “baked fried potatoes with onions.” We’d made the cake together for Peter’s brother Eric’s eleventh birthday.

  Maybe I wasn’t learning that much new stuff at the Clef d’Or, after all.

  The mansion’s cook, whose name was Mathilde, was fine about my making dinner and even offered to help me, except that Sophie gave her the night off. Actually—surprise!—all of the servants had been given the night off.

  So I found out on the day of the dinner that I’d be preparing meals for twenty people absolutely by myself. I was so nervous, I thought about asking the general populace of the house if anyone felt like helping me, but I could guess what the response to that would be. Not that they’d have been much help, anyway; most of these women couldn’t tell the difference between a kitchen and a library, since they never set foot in either.

  I was putting the finishing touches on the cake—had to make that first—when a miracle happened. Fabienne tiptoed downstairs into the kitchen with her finger over her mouth.

  “Shh,” she whispered. “I’m here to help you.”

  I looked around. “Is this a secret?”

  “Yes,” she whispered.

  “Well, okay, thanks,” I whispered back. “Er . . . can you tell me why we’re whispering?”

  “My mother,” Fabby said. “She has forbidden me to come into the kitchen. She says it’s a dangerous place.”

  Normally I wouldn’t give any credence to any thoughts Sophie had about food preparation, but in this case she was right. A kitchen was a dangerous place, especially if you didn’t know what you were doing. Even professional cooks got hurt all the time. So I asked Fabby if she was afraid, and she said no, although I knew she was lying. That’s something only a friend would do, lie so they could help you.

  “You’ll be fine,” I reassured her, “as long as you do exactly what I say, okay?”

  She nodded, swallowing.

  “It won’t be that hard, I promise. Just a little hectic. And I really, really appreciate your help, Fab—”

  I blinked. She was gone. WTH?

  “Fab—” I gasped. She was back. Or something.

  “Zut alors,” she said groggily.

  “Where’d you go?”

  “I . . . I don’t know. I was just so . . . nervous about cooking, that I . . .” She blinked. “It felt like Hawaii.”

  “What?”

  “I thought I was in Hawaii.”

  I looked at the tomatoes in my hands. However weird Fabby’s behavior was, the dinner party would take place in five hours, and there wasn’t any time to waste.

  “Well, you’re here now,” I said. Whatever had h
appened, we’d have to figure it out later. “Cut these in half and then take out the seeds with a spoon,” I said, handing her the tomatoes. “Go as fast as you can. We’ve got a lot to do.”

  An hour later, we were doing pretty well, considering there were only two of us. Fabby set the table in the dining room upstairs and got out ingredients for me while I tried to keep everything moving on schedule. She was pulling bones out of the turbot when we heard Sophie shriek outside the kitchen.

  “Fabienne! Are you in there?” she shouted as I heard her high heels clack-clack in the hallway. “How dare you—” Sophie appeared in the doorway like Darth Vader in a black pleather dress. “Where is she?” she demanded, stomping around the kitchen. “Where is my daughter?”

  I was ready to protect Fabby by saying I’d forced her into K.P. duty, but then I noticed she wasn’t there at all. “Nobody here but us turbots,” I said, but Sophie didn’t hear me because she was busy slipping on a fallen beet skin and hollering like a banshee.

  “The Américaine is trying to kill me!” Sophie screamed as she ran out, limping on a broken stiletto heel.

  “Sheesh,” I muttered as I picked up the offending beet. She hadn’t even hit the floor. “Come out, come out, wherever you are,” I sing-songed. “Fabby?”

  With an almost indiscernible ping, someone appeared on my prep counter. But it wasn’t Fabby.

  “Aunt Agnes?” I asked, astonished.

  Agnes is an astral traveler. She works in California, at Stanford University, and commutes there via magic. “Grandmother felt you were in some kind of difficulty,” she said. “She sent me to you.”

  “I’m just kind of busy,” I said as I ran my fingers along the turbot checking for pin bones. “But I’m glad you came.”

  Agnes frowned, annoyed. “I knew she was overreacting,” she snapped, looking at her watch. “Well, I’m here now. May I help?”

  I didn’t recall ever having seen Agnes in a kitchen except to pour coffee or make toast. Still, I’d lost the only helper I’d had, so I was grateful for the offer. “Could you cut some onions?”

  “Certainly,” she said. “One? Two?”

  “How about sixteen,” I said, tossing them over to her. “Slice them a quarter inch thick.” I gave her an apron, which made her look even more like Mary Poppins than she already did, with her long skirt and her hair in a prim bun.

  While I made the soup and the batter for the gougères, I heard Agnes’s determined chopping: Thunk. Thunk. Thunk. At about the speed you’d use to chop down a tree. I looked at the kitchen clock.

  I was running out of time. Sweat was running down my face. Before I knew it, Sophie was shouting, “Hurry up! The guests have all arrived!”

  “Oh, no,” I moaned. This was more than I could handle.

  Thunk. Thunk. Thunk.

  I must have been staring, because Agnes looked up at me. “What is it, Katy?” she asked, as if she were inquiring about my day at school.

  “We’re not going to be done on time,” I said, hearing my voice tremble.

  “Of course we will. What do you need?”

  I shook my head. “Hattie,” I whispered. I hated to admit it, but this was all too much for me. “I need Hattie.”

  “Very well,” Agnes said. And disappeared.

  “No!” I shouted. “Don’t go!”

  But she’d gone. What had I done? I should never have said I wanted Hattie to help me when Agnes was actually helping. I’d just spoken without thinking. As usual.

  I started on the potatoes, knowing that they weren’t going to be cooked through by dinnertime. They had to be sautéed and then baked. Everything else could be done in a hurry, but the potatoes . . .

  Ping. Agnes was back. And Hattie Scott was with her.

  “Hattie!” I said, wanting to kneel at her feet and kiss her hand.

  “Hmmph,” Hattie grumbled. “Guess your fancy school didn’t teach you everything.”

  “Agnes brought you?” I turned to Agnes. “I didn’t know you could—”

  “Less talk,” Hattie said. A small smile crept across her face. “More . . . magic!”

  With that, seventeen potatoes sailed across the room. I could feel the breeze as they passed.

  I gasped. “Magic?” I whispered.

  “Why are you so surprised?” Hattie asked crankily.

  “It’s just that . . . you never use magic at the restaurant.”

  “Of course I do. How do you think everybody gets what they need in Hattie’s Kitchen? I just don’t usually waste magic on things like chopping.” Her eyes slid toward Aunt Agnes, who was still hacking onions at an elephantine pace. “But I can see that desperate times call for desperate measures.”

  “You’re right,” I said, closing my eyes in gratitude.

  “Move out of the way,” Hattie commanded as all the knives on the magnetic rack snicked free and fell upon the potatoes in midair, raining a pile of perfect dice into three huge skillets, which appeared out of nowhere.

  “Now, where are those onions?” The onions flew off Aunt Agnes’s cutting board.

  “Excuse me,” Agnes said with her hands on her hips. “I was cutting those.”

  Hattie narrowed her eyes at the uneven onion slices floating before her eyes. “Pitiful,” she said. With a jerk of her chin, the knives cut the onions into thin, even slivers.

  “Arrange the salads,” she commanded as twenty turbot fillets wrapped themselves in parchment. With a laugh that made me feel good all over, I sent a knife flying toward the beets, carving them into rosettes nestled atop a bed of paper-thin pear slices dotted with dollops of blue-veined cheese shaped like tiny bees.

  “Not bad,” Hattie said as she batted a dozen airborne eggs into a bowl. I tossed over the flour and other dry ingredients while Hattie sent a big metal whisk into the mix. Then we both flicked five fingers at the dough, and an army of two-inch balls rolled through the air onto some baking sheets.

  “I still need to trim the—”

  Ping.

  “Asparagus,” I finished.

  “Who’s that?” Hattie demanded.

  It was Fabienne.

  “Where’d you go?” I shrieked.

  “I . . . I don’t know. The last thing I remember is my mother complaining. . . . Oh, mon Dieu.” She took in the sight of all the vegetables flying around us.

  “I’ll explain later, Fabby,” I said.

  “Get the potatoes and onions into the oven,” Hattie commanded.

  Tossing the asparagus into the air, where a peeler spinning like a Dervish trimmed off all the tough ends, I ran to the stove. Fabienne’s problems would have to be sorted out later.

  “Come here, dear,” Aunt Agnes said, putting her arm around Fabby.

  “She can serve!” Hattie shouted across the room.

  “No, she can’t!” I shouted back. “She’s the guest of honor!” I sent Fabienne out to join the other diners.

  “Then you do it, Agnes,” Hattie amended.

  “She can’t either,” I said, knowing that Sophie would raise a stink if I brought in outside help. “I’ll do it. Just give me a clear path.”

  “And a clean apron,” Hattie said, producing a black bistro apron like the ones we used in Hattie’s Kitchen when we had to serve.

  “Thanks, Hattie,” I said. “The dining room’s upstairs.”

  She sent six platters holding bowls of consommé shooting past me. “They’ll be waiting for you at the top,” she said as I climbed the steep flight of steps.

  • • •

  Everyone was served on time, and every course went without a hitch. By the time dessert was finished, all the entrée and appetizer dishes had washed themselves. Fabienne tiptoed into the kitchen just as the last platter slid into the cabinet.

  “Oh, but you are so marvelous!” she said, hugging me. “Thank you for such a wonderful dinner, Katy. I wish you had joined us.”

  “I couldn’t. There was too much to do here,” I said.

  “And thank you, Madam
e Hattie.”

  “My pleasure,” Hattie said. “Hope you enjoyed your dinner party.”

  “It was perfect,” Fabby said. She turned to Agnes. “And thank you, too,” she said shyly. “So much.”

  Agnes took her in her arms and patted her shoulder. Then Fabby left the kitchen, looking as if there were tears in her eyes.

  “What was that about?” I asked.

  Agnes smiled. “We were in Hawaii,” she said softly. “I met her there. I’ll bet you didn’t even notice I was gone.”

  “Well . . .” It was true. In the rush of magical food preparation, I hadn’t paid any attention to Aunt Agnes.

  “Fabienne is a teleporter,” she went on, “an astral traveler, like me. She just didn’t know it until tonight. Every time she feels stressed, she winks out, but she can’t control it.”

  I was stunned. “Winks out?”

  “Travels.”

  “You mean she’s a witch?”

  “Of course she’s a witch. Cowen can’t do what she does.”

  “But . . . the others . . .”

  “She may be the only one in her family,” Agnes said sympathetically. “Perhaps after your experience here in France is done, you’ll bring her back to Whitfield. I’ll teach her how to use her gift to best advantage.” She washed her hands. “Well, Hattie and I must be off.”

  Hattie grinned. “We’re leaving the glasses and dessert dishes for you.”

  “That’s okay. I appreciate your help.”

  “Don’t expect it every day,” Hattie grumbled.

  “Actually,” Agnes said, “we probably won’t be able to come back at all, unless it’s an emergency. Gram and I are going to Hakone, Japan. The hot springs will be good for her bones.”

  “Oh,” I said. “Japan sounds wonderful.”

  “But you have Paris, dear.”

  Hattie snorted. “And your French cooking school.”

  I felt abashed. I hadn’t served one dish that Hattie couldn’t make in her sleep. And without her magic, not even one dish would have been served on time.

  She lifted my chin with her strong brown hand. “Still, you did well tonight,” she said. “And you’ve got a job waiting for you back home, whenever you’re ready.”