Chapter 3 #2
He followed Lorenzo through the trees back toward the parking lot. Lorenzo walked swiftly, staring at the ground, his shoulders tense. Charlie hurried up next to him and said, “So—do you have any clothes from back then? Any, like, waistcoats, or cravats, or whatever?”
“No, I don’t have any cravats,” Lorenzo said in a longsuffering tone.
“So you’re the kind of vampire who likes to stay trendy, huh,” he said. “That’s cool.”
“How long do you think clothes like that last outside a museum?” Lorenzo asked dryly. “How many of your socks have holes?”
“Fair,” Charlie said. “But do you miss those kinds of clothes? How long ago did you say you were turned, again—the 1800s?”
Lorenzo stopped walking, bringing Charlie to a sudden halt beside him, and a long silence followed as Lorenzo eyed him in the dim light between the trees.
He swallowed uncomfortably, wondering belatedly if it was considered rude to ask a vampire about their age.
He was keenly aware that, if he had crossed some kind of line, Lorenzo could very much rip his throat out with his teeth.
And not in a horny, stupid I want him to run me over with his car sort of way, but like . . . literally.
Finally Lorenzo started walking again, apparently having decided to either murder Charlie elsewhere or simply blow off his questions. Either way, he kicked himself; the whole point of this had been to charm Lorenzo into talking to him.
Before he could strike up another conversation, however, Lorenzo said quietly, “1809.”
“Oh—wow,” Charlie said, more surprised by Lorenzo talking than by what he’d said. “That’s amazing. What was it like back then?”
Lorenzo glanced at him darkly. “What was what like?”
“Uh,” Charlie said unimpressively. “Everything?”
Lorenzo glared at him.
“Okay,” Charlie conceded. “Well—hey, where were you born?”
“Why do you care?” Lorenzo asked with a surprising amount of acid.
“I’m—just making conversation,” Charlie said.
“I thought you wanted to learn about vampires,” Lorenzo said. “Why should it matter for your thesis where my human life took place?”
“Maybe I’m just interested.”
“Please.” Lorenzo scoffed. “You had no interest in me when we met years ago, and your only agenda now is to further your own . . .” He squinted, and finished, uncertainly: “. . . agenda.”
“Look, I—hey, wait,” Charlie said, grabbing Lorenzo by the arm to make him stop. “Listen, I really am sorry about the whole Olivia thing. I shouldn’t have said—whatever it was. I honestly don’t even remember what I told her.”
He did kind of remember what he’d told her, but that wasn’t going to help his cause here. “But clearly, it really hurt you,” he continued. “So—I’m sorry. I was wrong.”
Lorenzo looked away, his jaw tense, but he didn’t argue.
“So . . . will you tell me where you’re from?” Charlie said, taking a hesitant step toward the parking lot. “I’m actually interested.”
Lorenzo fell into step beside him. After a moment of grudging silence, he said, “Sardinia.”
“Sardinia,” Charlie said, thinking quickly. “In . . . Greece?”
“Italy!” Lorenzo hissed, then added in a grumble, “More or less.”
“Right. That’s—okay, Sardinia!” Charlie said. “That’s cool. What was that like?”
“It was . . .” Lorenzo started, and Charlie expected him to say something like fine, or normal, something clipped and conversation-ending, as he seemed wont to do.
So it caught him a little off guard when Lorenzo’s eyes softened, and his voice gentled, and he said, “It was beautiful.”
Oh, Charlie said, a surprised little exhale. Lorenzo didn’t seem to hear. “But no one really had anything,” he continued. “Most people there were shepherds, and there were always new conquerors coming in, taking what little we had.” He paused. “The sea was lovely, though.”
Charlie’s head felt a little swimmy, perhaps because he was grappling for the first time with the fact that he was speaking with someone who had lived centuries ago, and could speak simply about what that time had been like. “Wow. So, you were a . . . a shepherd?”
“No,” he said. “My family had livestock, but I wasn’t interested in that.”
“What did you do instead?”
“I set out to enrich our fortunes,” Lorenzo said.
“How?”
“By, uh . . .” Lorenzo’s voice had gone sheepish. “By taking them from others.”
“You were a thief?” Charlie asked, surprised. He couldn’t really see Lorenzo as a pickpocket or a cat burglar—he was too tall and broad-shouldered, and he didn’t seem particularly stealthy.
“I commanded a small crew,” Lorenzo said. “We would sail to nearby villages and strike fast, taking whatever we could get away with. I was much admired among my men,” he said proudly. “And Italy was in chaos back then, so there was lots of money to be made.”
Charlie blinked, processing this. “So—you were a pirate.”
Lorenzo scowled. “No.”
“Right,” Charlie said, nodding, and then asked, “How were you not a pirate?”
“It wasn’t like all that,” Lorenzo said, waving. “I was a . . . a businessman. In the . . . business of raiding and pillaging.”
Charlie was speechless. This he could see—Lorenzo on the prow of a ship, cutlass in hand, a sea breeze in his black hair, wearing that billowy shirt–tight pants combo from The Witcher. It was . . . compelling.
He jerked a little when Lorenzo said, sounding irritated, “What?”
“That’s so cool!”
Lorenzo rolled his eyes. Finally, they reached the parking lot, and Lorenzo led him over to a small, dark blue compact car. “Place my things in here.”
Charlie carefully hung the bag from the hook in the back seat. It was an aggressively normal car, not piratical in the slightest. Still, that didn’t dampen his excitement at all. “You don’t think it’s cool that you were a pirate?” Charlie asked, as soon as the door was closed.
Lorenzo turned on his heel, heading back toward the party, and Charlie followed him.
“I wasn’t a pirate,” Lorenzo said. “It was just my life. Just a way to get by.”
“Just a way to get by,” Charlie echoed scornfully. “With eyeliner. And doubloons. And queer longing.”
Lorenzo shot him a quick look. Charlie ignored the flash of heat it set off in his chest. “It wasn’t like how they make it out to be now,” he said gruffly.
“It wasn’t as stylish, or fantastical. Or nearly that clean.
And my crew had honor.” He was glowering at Charlie now, looking almost offended. “We weren’t knaves or cheats.”
“Okay!” Charlie said. “Well, that . . . sounds cool.”
“It wasn’t,” Lorenzo said shortly. “It was just . . . how things were back then. Boring and brutal.”
Charlie narrowed his eyes. This was familiar—Lorenzo was closing off again. “I guess you’re right,” he said, his voice deliberately casual. “I bet every vampire has some kind of life story just like that—pirates, kings, warlords. All very normal.”
Lorenzo glared at him, but didn’t take the bait. Charlie said, “Okay, so—how did you become a vampire?”
“You said only questions about my human life,” Lorenzo reminded him.
“You were a human when you became a vampire,” Charlie said. “Up until the moment of . . . hey, how are vampires made, anyway?”
Lorenzo smiled coldly, but said nothing.
“You know, I’m gonna get you that plumber,” Charlie said. “It’s not, like, a difficult thing. You might as well talk to me.”
“No,” Lorenzo said, and with that, they had arrived back at the party.
Things seemed to have deteriorated quickly from the formal, coordinated event that had been unfolding as they’d left; the kids were now completely intermingled into one clump on the dance floor, dancing riotously to loud, bass-heavy house music.
The adults on the sidelines looked on haplessly, their elegant affair now thoroughly drowned in hormones. Charlie stifled a laugh.
Lorenzo resumed his position off to the side, arms crossed, every inch the watchful, patient chaperone.
Charlie stood next to him and realized, with a bit of surprise, that he was enjoying himself: being outside in the soft moonlight, listening to music, watching silly teenage antics.
He felt lighter than he had in weeks. He felt as if he might actually get some writing done tonight, and that it might not be horrible.
Lorenzo said, “Why are you even doing this project?”
Charlie startled. “Hm? Oh, my thesis?” He flailed for a second, not really having put any thought into his cover story, and he felt a flash of guilt at the thought of adding more to the lie.
But then he realized that he could simply repurpose the rote answer he always gave when asked why he’d become an advice columnist. “I like listening to people, and hearing about their lives. The stuff that I—uh, the things that my thesis is about—love, family, relationships—they’re things that everyone struggles with at some point,” he said.
“So I figured, maybe by researching those things, I could help people.”
He smiled at Lorenzo, but Lorenzo only looked skeptically back at him. Charlie shifted uneasily.
“Why supernatural creatures?” Lorenzo asked.
Charlie blinked. “What?”
“Why are you researching our lives and relationships?”
“Oh. Well, uh . . .” This was tricky; he couldn’t very well say that supes were trendy, his column needed clicks, and he may have already been mistaken, by a decent portion of the internet, for an ancient witch.
“My—my thesis advisor, she seemed to think—uh, that it would help my chances in the job market. It’s an emerging area, supernatural studies. ”
“Mm-hmm,” Lorenzo said.
“But mostly, it’s about helping people,” Charlie said. “Like werewolves, and vampires, and trolls, and the voluntarily haunted.” Lorenzo rolled his eyes. “So, really, you should work with me.”
Lorenzo seemed a bit mollified, though he was still skeptical. “You think you will help people by writing some dusty tome?”
“Well, you never know,” Charlie said. “Someone’ll probably read it, at some point.”
“Probably not.”
“You’re right,” he sighed. “It’s not as cool as being a pirate.”
Lorenzo visibly fought back a smile. Charlie beamed at him.
A bubble of laughter and shouts sounded from the dance floor before one of the teens shoved his way out of the group, followed swiftly by some of the adults.
He looked like he might be crying—and wow, Charlie did not miss high school—but he was also walking strangely, with his hands over his arms and his shoulders hunched, like he was trying to hide his body.
One of the grown werewolves was patting his shoulder sympathetically. “What’s that about?” Charlie asked.
“Ah,” Lorenzo said. “That happens on occasion. One of the pups gets too excited, and he . . .” He paused, waving his hands in a way that conveyed nothing to Charlie. After seeing his confusion, he added, “Transforms. A little.”
Charlie blinked, glancing back to where the teen was being whisked away. “They can do that when it’s not a full moon?”
“Well . . . teenagers, you know,” Lorenzo said indulgently. “They don’t have much control over their bodies, human or wolf.”
Charlie sputtered out a laugh. “Poor kid.”
Lorenzo smiled back at him. Meanwhile, a club mix of “Howl” by Florence + the Machine came on the sound system, and the baby wolves shrieked their approval. Charlie felt the sweet enthusiasm of the party warming him from the inside out. He was so glad he’d come.
Then a thought occurred to him. “Are there vampire mixers like this?” he asked Lorenzo. “To, you know . . . make alliances?” He wiggled his eyebrows suggestively.
But Lorenzo’s face went cold and still. “No,” he said, and he didn’t elaborate.