Page 48 of Aftertaste

HUNGER STRIKE

KONSTANTIN STOOD IN the DUH kitchen, his chef’s coat on, his name over the lapel, his big moment kneeling at his feet.

Upstairs, Viktor schmoozed patrons and press. The publicist escorted VIPs to premium tables. The room buzzed with life and death and craft cocktails.

It was opening night, Kostya’s big culinary coming-out party, but he couldn’t bring himself to care.

Maura still hadn’t answered.

It had been almost twenty-four hours since he’d last seen her. Since she’d vanished on the subway platform. Since she’d broken his heart, and Viktor had broken his spirit, and he’d seen two men rest an unnerving mystery package right where his cooks were standing now, prepping Sister Stacy’s soup.

In a moment, the cooks and servers and runners and busboys, the pruny dishwashers, the smug bartenders, the moody coat check chick and the gossipy hostess all expected him to deliver a rallying cry and lead them into glory. Instead, he had his back to them, was staring at his own troubled reflection in the windows.

He pulled out his phone and texted her again, the parade of unanswered messages so long it spanned several zip codes.

Just tell me you’re okay.

Behind him, the kitchen hummed, reversed in the glass. Brushed stainless; warm wood. The line was ready, every station prepped, all the mises in place. The brigade was starting some of the appetizers, bracing for an influx of tickets as soon as the cocktail hour wound down. Rio was making rounds with a clipboard, checking final items off a long list with a Sharpie.

The plan was to let everyone order off the main menu first, give the kitchen time to shine, and then parade Kostya out like a dignitary for the ghost encounters in the tasting rooms.

Raising those ghosts was the last thing he wanted to do now. It felt like walking toward trouble while holding a grenade. Then again, so did not raising them.

Kostya gripped the windowpanes, his hands beginning to shake.

He was stuck, ground between a mortar and its pestle. The ghosts, looming, on one side, and Viktor and his band of bandits on the other.

“Yo, Huesos? You good?” He felt Rio’s hand on his shoulder. “Opening-night jitters?”

“Something like that.” Kostya took a breath.

“Here. Got something for that.” Rio held up his hand, a scoop of salt cupped in his palm. “Frank and I, we did this at Wolfpup our very first night. And every big service after. Sort of a tradition.” He threw a pinch over Kostya’s shoulder. “May your fire always be hot.” Another pinch, over the other one. “May your food always be seasoned.” A third pinch, aimed straight at his balls, which made Kostya crack a reluctant smile. “And may you cook with your head as much as your heart. Go get ’em, Chef.”

Kostya fought back tears as he pulled Rio into a hug.

He didn’t know what he was leading them into tonight. Only that he had to protect his brigade. He needed to get his shit together. Perform. Bring back every ghost with a smile on his face. Not give Viktor any reason for retribution. Make the night a smashing success for profit and publicity. (He’d deal with any repercussions from the Afterlife later, he supposed. Just sort of, like, corral the ghosts? Find a way to get them back in the box? Fuck. He really wished Maura would text him back.)

He was still hugging Rio, who cleared his throat.

“Okay. Well. I think they’re all waiting for your word, Boss.”

When Kostya turned, the staff was assembled before him—pristine, preservice, gathered around the stations and along the stairs, leaning against walls. Every one of them counting on him. They’d supported him, and followed him, and believed. Part of him had once believed, too. He took a breath and faked it.

“Hey, everybody.” He gave a nervous little wave. “Here we are, huh? I’m not as good with words as I am with food, so this won’t take long. I just… thanks. For being here. For believing”—the word was a bone in his throat—“in what we’re doing. Because you have to have a little faith, right? When impossible things happen, it’s got to be”—he tried not to choke—“because they’re meant to. And we were meant to do this tonight. Because our kitchen” (the cooks gave a cheer), “is badass. So fucking special. And our front-of-house” (whooping from the stairs), “well, you guys are a pain in the ass” (laughter all around), “but we… we love you anyway. That’s what it takes, to share a kitchen. To make food. To feed people. Love. I really mean that. And there’s two things I’d never go up against without the people I love. The first are hungry New Yorkers.” (More laughter.) “And the second is the Dead.”

Pindrop silence, heavy in the room.

Kostya’s eyes filled, stinging. He didn’t want to tell them what he was about to say next, tried to suck back the words as they left his mouth.

“So let’s—let’s go raise some spirits, all right? Let’s feed some Hungry Ghosts.”

DINNER SERVICE WAS the stuff of restaurant dreams. The diners were dazzled. They oohed and aahed. They took selfies. They gasped as they were guided to their tables, the interior of DUH unlike any dining room they’d ever seen, the walk through its obsidian hall a journey elsewhere .

The staff worked an intricate choreography, hosts and servers and runners all twirling in a silent ballet, the black of their uniforms blending into the backdrop, making it so they were barely noticed by the patrons, living phantoms in a spectral place. The effect was that glasses of water and silverware and amuse-bouches seemed to just magically appear at tables. As if they’d been spirited from the other side.

The bar was busy, drink orders lining the rows of vertebrae as two bartenders shook and mixed and stirred, Spectral Sours glistening alongside dirty martinis and old-fashioneds, waitstaff whisking the frosted glasses away before they even had a chance to bead.

The kitchen was busy, too—knives stuttering across chopping blocks, the sizzle of blistering pans, the stream of water in the sink, plates clanging across the line, the ding of timers, the call of Fire! Table Four! and Order! Two tartines for Six! And Yo, Miguel, you got dead dupes; pick it up! , a sweet, final comfort to Kostya’s ears.

As the servers paraded out the first round of apps, Kostya stood at the top of the stairs, hidden in shadow, watching. His heart thumped in his chest, adrenaline coursing through him, making him shiver.

Showtime.

In his pocket, his phone buzzed, and his heart did a pirouette as he pulled it out, praying for Maura, but it was only his mom.

Kostochka, good luck. Be safe.

He began typing a reply, but the lights flickered overhead, his signal, and he shoved the phone back into his pocket, the message half-written.

Konstantin walked slowly across the dining room. He could feel the weight of so many eyes on him, taking in his every move. The noise of revelry dwindled, wineglasses paused midair, the clink of flatware and cutlery stilled.

His reflection followed him along the high-gloss floor, across the mirrored panels sheathed in gauze. The room was so cold. Like a walk-in. Like a morgue.

He forced on a smile, turned the handle to Tasting Chamber No. 1, and pushed open the door.

THE FIRST GHOST ordered moussaka and fries.

Easy. A softball. The aftertaste blooming across his tongue as soon as he stepped into the room, as if the spirit had been waiting for him.

If every aspect of his world weren’t circling an existential drain, this might have given Kostya more pause. But in his terrified-slash-furious-slash-panicked state, he worked on autopilot, making the dish in silent focus.

When it was ready, he garnished the plate (drizzle of olive oil; hand-torn parsley) and stared down at it with disgust.

He didn’t want to serve it.

He didn’t want to witness what would happen when this spirit came back. Didn’t want to keep imagining Maura’s face when she found out that he’d done it. Didn’t want to feel the terrible, sinking feeling that kept whirling in his gut, like he was leaning over a ledge, the fall so far away he couldn’t see the bottom.

He had half a mind to dump it directly into the trash when The Comrade shoved his way into the kitchen.

“Where is dish?” he barked. “Diners impatient. Viktor displeased.”

Kostya braced himself.

“Right here.”

IN TASTING CHAMBER No. 1, he set the plate onto the table and lifted the cloche with an unsteady hand. The aroma—meat, béchamel, fries—drifted into the room amid delicate tendrils of smoke. He could feel it in the air, a spirit stirring, like a vibration, an instrument being tuned.

And then, before his diners even had a chance to chew, there was a disturbance in the main dining room.

A cry. An exclamation of surprise. Delight.

Then another. And another.

Kostya could see it through the mercury glass of the chamber he was standing in.

Lights, overhead. Dim, but glowing.

A moment later, applause. Enthusiastic cheers. Whoops and hollers for someone—something—he hadn’t brought back.

And then, a cascade of glass, the shatter of precious, delicate things. Not like a server had dropped a tray, but like the world had fractured apart.

Followed by a different kind of cry.

Screams.

First one person and then many more, their voices avalanching until the whole building shook from the sheer force of sound.

Kostya burst through the door and felt his heart stop.

Ghosts were everywhere .

Raining down from the ceiling; crowding in through the walls; rising up from the floor.

Their translucent bodies multiplied in the glass and mirrors and reflective surfaces until it was impossible to understand how many, exactly, there were, only that they were endless, that they were coming, that they wouldn’t stop.

The diners who weren’t in private rooms rushed the doors, skidding over broken plates, slipping on scattered forks and knives. There were cuts on their hands, across their faces, blood streaking their wounds, flecking the floor. The waitstaff were frozen, petrified, unsure if this was part of the plan or some horrible malfunction, not knowing whether to reassure their sections or run for their lives. Cooks and busboys vomited up from the kitchen, chased by more ghosts, their mouths—enormous, distorted, hungry mouths — all howling.

And, in a horrible moment where time congealed, Kostya recognized them.

The flap and flutter of Sister Stacy’s habit, the nun transformed now, dead eyed, gaunt and grave and terrifying. The climbing bro whose sister had tanked Hell’s Kitchen, mutated, murderous, his mouth a gaping hole. The teenager whose abuelo had come to find him, who had returned once Kostya tasted the ketchup soup of his own childhood, matured into something dangerous, bloodthirst in his gaze.

He had done this to them. His food. His aftertastes. His every bad decision.

Maura was right. He’d poisoned them.

As they crested the stairs, other spirits floated up behind them. Ghosts he’d never seen before. Ones he hadn’t raised. Hungry Dead that had somehow crossed over. Uninvited. Unprevented.

The veil had been compromised.

Shouts and cries rose from the bowels of the kitchen, and Kostya fought against the crush of panicking people to get back to his line. Patrons shoved past him, pushing toward the exits, scattering around debris. A waiter slipped behind a thick velvet curtain only to be driven out by a cackling ghost, glee upon its face. The hostess was on all fours, seeking shelter beneath the dining room tables, a handful of diners crawling behind her.

Overhead, a swarm of spirits massed, gumming together in a terrifying cloud. It was chaos. The fear in the air was metallic on Kostya’s tongue, aluminum, iron, so much like blood, and then, all at once, every bulb in the place shattered in unison, leaving the room in absolute dark.

Thin shards of glass rained down. Kostya felt them hit his face, slice through his eyebrow, across his cheek. He couldn’t see a thing—every window had been blacked out to maximize the effect of the returning souls’ light—but he could hear.

Shouts. Screeches. The slap of shoes against the floor. Gasps and painful yelps. Cries. The explosion of more glass as dishes and stemware and mirrored walls were smashed to smithereens. The distant rumble of the 6 Train in the restaurant’s bowels.

Rectangles of light appeared as people ignited their phones, searching for ways out, finding ravenous ghosts blocking their paths. Kostya felt a patch of frosty air creep along his spine and turned, casting the light of his own phone into the dark to illuminate a spirit, close enough to touch.

Time stretched, taffy, as he looked at her.

This ghost—he felt a shiver of recognition—was gaunt and haggard, her skin mottled with patches of rot, her bones protruding in places. Like she was haunted. Or maybe cursed. Like touching her might turn him to stone, or at minimum give him a terrible rash.

She stared hard at him, her gaze a dull knife, something once sharp and precise and powerful rendered impotent, destroyed by lack of care. She’d been beautiful once, but all that was left of it now was a thicket of violet hair and the shadow of a smile, her mouth black with decay, the teeth small and pointed. She’d died so young he could almost read it in her face, all that unrealized potential.

Everything about her made Kostya cold except her eyes. They were so familiar that for a moment he couldn’t breathe. Chocolate brown, flecked with gold. Wide set. Strange and beautiful and hungry. Just like her sister’s.

“Everleigh?”

“Konstantin Duhovny.” She inclined her head, her voice nothing like he expected, not gravel but velvet. “Just the guy I’ve been looking for.”

He backed away, slow, broken glass crunching beneath him.

“Oh, um, yeah? Well, you found me.” His back hit a wall, sitting duck confit. “Please don’t hurt me.” In a crisis, his inner hero really shone through.

“Hurt you?” Everleigh rolled her red-rimmed eyes. “You’re the only one who can fix things. We need you.”

“I—what?” He blinked at her. “Aren’t you, like, some bad spirit? You haunted your sister!”

“Wrong again. She haunted me .”

“But all those Reese’s, every time I tasted one—”

“—was because Maura was hurting,” Everleigh supplied. “And starving me in the process. When the Living don’t let go, the Dead go Hungry; we can’t move On. Which is why I was looking for a way to see her again.”

“But how did you—”

“Look, we don’t have a lot of time. The short version? Your food brings spirits back, but it also tethers us to you, which basically traps us here. To rot. To go Hangry—which is like Hungry, except a whole lot worse. Only, the Hangrier we get, the stronger we get, too. Which is why you can see us now. Why we can move things. Why all the smashing and pillaging. And once we realized we had some power, a bunch of us figured we’d just”—she hand-waved—“pop a little hole in the veil. Sneak back through. Save ourselves. But it turns out—funny story—just going back doesn’t do the trick. We broke through to the Afterlife last night, but we still couldn’t move On. Which, I think, is because we’re still attached to you . And now the veil’s busted and there’s a whole bunch of other spirits using the hole to pour out of the Afterlife, and the longer it stays open, the more Hell’s gonna break loose, and—”

Just then, a chandelier crashed down, illustrating her point. The spirits in the dining room cheered, shrill laughter rising like steam.

“Slow down,” Kostya said, trying to follow her panic attack. “Are we talking, like, actual Hell here, or more like a metaphorical Hell, or—”

“ Focus , Konstantin! We don’t want to keep going all poltergeist, but we don’t have much choice. The Hanger’s driving most of us now; it’s chaos. You have to get everyone back to the Food Hall before it fully sets in. All the spirits here. You have to move us On.”

“Yup. Okay. I can do that!” He was nodding. “How do I do that?”

“You brought the Dead here, to the Living world, so I’m betting you can do the same thing in reverse. Pied Piper us back with a meal.”

“You mean the aftertastes.”

She nodded.

“Only—you can’t do it from this side. To pull us into the Afterlife, you’d have to be in the Afterlife.”

“So…?”

“So, if you want to help, you have to die.”

“Wh-what?” He heard the startle in his own voice.

“I’m sorry.” She looked it. “I wanted Maura to tell you; I warned her last night on the platform, when it was clear that the whole ‘tear the veil’ thing didn’t work out. I thought you might help us, but she didn’t want you involved.”

The platform. Those last words he’d said to her, just before she went, about how there was no we . Her radio silence after. And the recipes she’d taken. Her note.

“ No. No no no.”

“Yeah.” Everleigh nodded. “She said she was gonna try and fix this herself.”

“We can’t let her! It’s my fuckup. Just tell me what to do,” he said quickly, and Everleigh floated closer, whispered in his ear, her breath like ice around his neck as his dining room crashed down around them.

“Go,” she said, pulling away. “Out the subway. Hurry.”

And Kostya wove his way back in the dark, toward the staircase to the kitchen, his fingers sliding over broken glass, smashed mirrors, countless years of bad luck, the sheer curtains shredding beneath the palms of his hands, just like the veil between the Living and the Dead.

ON THE LANDING, he felt a rumble. Kostya stared down the steps, bracing himself for more ghosts, but instead, it was the kitchen crew—Rio and Big Mike and Miguel and Stephanie, Mica and Ale and Lin. They came rushing up the steps, armed with pots and pans, canisters of salt, wooden spoons tied into crosses with kitchen twine. They were coming to his defense—the loyalty hit Kostya right between the ribs—to fight for him.

He waved them back.

“No!” he shouted, shaking his head. “Go out the back. Through the subway! It’s okay. It’s—it’s me they want.”

Rio looked at him in horror. “Huesos, these are—these ain’t house spirits. You need an exorcist.”

Kostya shook his head, finally understanding.

“No. What I made them before—it wasn’t any good. They’re sending it back to the kitchen.”

“The fuck that mean?”

“It means they’re still hungry. And I gotta feed them.”

IN THE KITCHEN, illuminated by emergency lights, Konstantin wrenched open the windows to the 6.

“Go!” he told his staff. “There’s an exit on the platform. I’ll be right behind you.”

But then they heard footfalls, the angry stomp of expensive shoes, and Kostya looked up in time to see Viktor, purple with rage, descending the stairs.

“Where everybody going?” he barked, voice edged like a knife. “Dinner service still on.”

He was trailed by The Comrade, who limped down, bleeding at the knee, a gun very visible in the hand not gripping the handrail. Viktor was dabbing his face with one of the DUH dinner napkins, blood flowing freely from a cut on his cheekbone, another on his chin.

“What are you talking about?” Kostya balked at him. “There is no service! There’s no restaurant, not after this! It’s done. It’s”—he couldn’t believe he was saying it—“it’s over.”

Viktor waved his bloody napkin in the air. “Get back to work!” He turned to the cooks. “All of you! We comping tonight’s dinner. Telling everybody it part of the show. Ghosts terrifying when they hungry. We must feed quickly! We already giving this story to customers.”

“No.” Kostya stood his ground. “There are angry spirits still up there. It’s dangerous. We’re not serving anyone else. We’re done.”

Viktor nodded at The Comrade, who aimed his pistol in Konstantin’s direction.

“Whoa!” Rio shouted, his hands thrown up.

“The fuck, man?” Big Mike was saying.

“Get back to work,” Viktor said again. “Everybody. Stations.”

Kostya could feel every set of eyes on him, waiting to see what he’d do. Adrenaline coursed through him, and hatred for Viktor, and anger at himself, the agony of knowing every moment wasted here was putting Maura in more danger, every subsequent second the one where she might finally leave him, leave this world.

“We’re done, Viktor,” he repeated. “I’m leaving.”

He turned back to the windows, toward the platform, was starting toward them when he heard it. The unmistakable click of a gun being cocked.

“Think very carefully,” Viktor warned him.

Kostya turned back around, heat rising inside him, radiating.

“You wanna shoot me? Go ahead. Maybe then I can finally do some good.”

But before he could process what was happening, Rio stepped in front of him.

“And then you better shoot me, too, asshole.”

“And me.” Big Mike was nodding.

“All of us.” This from Mica, who looked like he was trying not to cry.

“And smile for the camera while you do it,” Stephanie added, her phone pointed at Viktor and The Comrade like a firearm, recording everything. “We’re streaming live, bitches. Say hello to all my followers.”

Viktor and The Comrade exchanged glances, The Comrade lifting one brow as if to ask, What’s the plan, Boss?

“DUH’s closed,” Konstantin said clearly. “Out of respect for the Dead. Now get out of my kitchen.”

And, with Kostya barely believing what was happening, that it had worked, Viktor stepped aside, a thick vein in his neck throbbing angrily, pulsing like it might pop.

OUT ON THE sidewalk, it felt like they could breathe.

“I can’t believe that fucking worked,” Rio pronounced.

“Have I mentioned I love Instagram?” Kostya panted, heart still racing.

“Little does he know, I’ve only got four followers!”

There was a strange, giddy camaraderie between them, the unity of having just survived a brush with death (two brushes, technically). They were laughing. That nervous, giggly, can-you-believe-we-made-it kind of laughter. Kostya knew it wasn’t over, that Viktor would retaliate, that the police might need to get involved, but right then, he was hugging everyone, trying to hold on to this moment, this relief and joy and love.

And then the air hit the back of his neck, a breeze like a kiss.

The cool puff in the back of his throat.

A chill went through him, and his heart sped fast, faster, double espresso. He swallowed, and there it was, the faint, metallic tingle on his tongue.

Salt. The world’s best. The minerals in it like the marshes of Guérande.

And knowing even then he might be too late, Konstantin began to run.