Chapter 5
The bartender hadn’t said a word to Charlie since he’d sat down.
He was drumming his fingers on the wood, and when the bartender glared at him, he realized that his knee was bouncing so hard it was making the whole bar top rattle.
He forced himself to stop and smiled apologetically.
The bartender was already doing something else.
He hadn’t been this nervous since he’d published his very first column.
He’d come back from the werewolf prom almost in a trance and filled page after page, staying up until the literal dawn.
Writing hadn’t felt that good in years—it felt easy, as he reflected on everything he’d learned, everything he’d seen and felt, and everything he’d talked about with Lorenzo.
And after that one perfect evening, he’d started to worry that it had all been too easy.
It was some kind of trick; maybe he hadn’t really ever recovered from the writing slump he’d been in, and he just couldn’t see that the new stuff was as dull as the old.
But when he sent Ava his first full column, she seemed to like it, and then—it actually did decent numbers.
It wasn’t breaking the internet or anything, but the click gods seemed happy.
He had to use the word “engagement” unironically now.
So naturally, he was vibrating out of his skin. First the writing was painless, and now the column was doing well? Something had to be lurking around the corner. It couldn’t just be this easy.
No, he was choosing to assess the situation with cold hard dread, and that was why he had to keep going—keep learning more about the supernatural, keep writing more columns leaning into the Crone persona, and get his career up off the mat.
He needed this to work so he could get out of Brookville and back to his real life.
He clicked his nails against the soft wood of the bar.
He’d lived in this town most of his life, but he’d never been to this particular bar.
It was nice inside, dark and cozy, but the exterior was one of those squat, windowless buildings that’d always given him the creeps.
He never would’ve checked this place out if Maggie hadn’t texted him the address.
He felt off-kilter living back here in Brookville.
He hadn’t visited at all since he’d moved to New York, and now that he was back, he’d mostly kept to the same places he knew from college; those were decent memories, at least. Going to the DMV today had been weird.
He’d been there just once before, as a teenager, to get his own license—waiting for hours and filling out paperwork just to show his dad that he could do something on his own.
His father had always been vaguely unimpressed by Charlie.
That hadn’t really mattered much while his mom was still around.
Dad may have hovered above the two of them as if having a family were a little beneath him; but Mom was funny and warm and wonderful, and she softened his dad just enough to keep the whole family together.
And then when she was gone, there wasn’t anything left between Charlie and his dad to even rebuild. Professor Wever still had his scholarship and the respect of his peers, and Charlie did get out of Brookville, eventually.
For a while.
On paper, the DMV’s rules about how to renew your license were indeed very strict, just as Lorenzo had suggested.
But DMV employees were human, and it hadn’t taken long for Charlie to strike up a conversation with a lovely older gentleman there who’d agreed to trim some of the red tape in exchange for three times the usual processing fee.
Plus an extra hundred bucks, because if you weren’t going to go all-in on the bribe, what was the point?
That license was all but his. He just needed one thing.
Eventually that one thing walked into the bar, spotted him, and scowled. “How are you—why are you here?” Lorenzo demanded.
Despite the aggression, he still took the seat next to Charlie, and Charlie banked a smile. “Maggie told me you like this place.”
“Ugh,” Lorenzo said. Charlie did feel kind of bad about basically stalking Lorenzo, but he needed it for the column.
Sure, Maggie and Rachel were happy enough to talk to him, but by far the most frequent questions he got in his inbox were about vampires.
And last night with Lorenzo had helped, but he needed more—a lot more—and he wasn’t afraid to dog Lorenzo to get it.
Besides, he’d all but invited this with his whole you will never succeed bit.
He looked great sitting at the bar, even if he was trying to exude a threatening, grumpy air.
It couldn’t be true that all vampires were this attractive—that had to be a myth—but Christ, his hair, the rugged line of his jaw, those full lips.
There was something about the set of his features and the shadow on his jaw that made Charlie want to touch him, to tilt Lorenzo’s face toward his until he could stare into those big brown eyes at close range.
There was something vampiric about his eyes too, though not in the way he’d seen in movies—those marble-like eyes that were beautiful like abstract glass.
No, Lorenzo’s eyes were almost human, sunken and deep and bloodshot; except that there was something molten about them, tectonic, like Charlie would start to slip and fray if he stared into them too long.
Charlie realized he was staring at Lorenzo, and cleared his throat. “So, this is a supe bar, right?”
“A what?”
“Y’know. A bar for supernatural creatures.”
“It’s a normal human bar.”
The bartender put something brown and expensive-looking in front of Lorenzo without being asked, and then said, “Did you say this is a human bar? I’ll slap you right across the face.”
Charlie grinned. “I knew it. This is a supe bar, right?”
The bartender stared at him. “You have money?”
“Yes,” Charlie said. The bartender stared some more, so he fished a twenty out of his wallet and put it on the table.
“Welcome human,” the man said, palming the cash. “What do you want?”
Charlie ordered a beer. After the guy left, he leaned closer to Lorenzo and asked quietly, “So, uh—what’s he?”
“What are you doing here?” Lorenzo asked him.
“Oh right,” he said. “I need a picture of you, for your license.”
Lorenzo glanced at him sidelong, making a dismissive noise. “You are bluffing.”
“And I need to see the old one,” he added. “I need your license number.”
“I don’t believe you.”
Charlie waited a moment. When Lorenzo didn’t budge, he said, “Okay, but if you don’t give me what I need, I’ll interpret that as you defaulting on our deal, and—” He paused dramatically. “—your vampire honor will be lost.”
Lorenzo said nothing.
“Your . . . Sardinian honor?” Charlie tried.
Lorenzo said nothing, but his eye twitched.
“Your pirate honor.”
Lorenzo hissed at him, then pulled his wallet out of his pocket and threw his license at Charlie. It was definitely old, the paper inside yellowed and the plastic edges cracking. And—
“Oh my god,” Charlie breathed. “This is amazing.”
It was Lorenzo all right, looking just about as ’70s deep-fried as could be. His hair was huge and poufed around his face, there were some very sharp collar points on either side of his neck, and he was giving the camera a huge, delighted, open-mouthed smile.
It was remarkably at odds with every other expression Charlie had ever seen on his face, including the one he was wearing now. “Shut up,” he said weakly.
“Never,” Charlie said, taking a picture of the license. He slid it back to Lorenzo. “There you go. Honestly, I don’t know why you’d even want to replace that. It’s perfect.” When Lorenzo didn’t answer, he continued, “How are you even driving around, anyway? You just never get pulled over?”
Lorenzo shrugged. Charlie wondered if he had mind control powers—a classic vampire thing—before deciding that, no, he definitely would have used them to drive Charlie away by now. He seemed annoyed enough.
The bartender walked back toward them, wiping the bar with a dingy towel. “You’re bringing humans to my bar now?” he asked Lorenzo conversationally.
“Sal, please,” Lorenzo said, scrubbing a hand down his face.
“Sal,” Charlie said, turning to him with a hundred-watt smile. “Loving this place, and this vibe. It’s like one of those diners where the waitresses are rude to you.”
Sal raised one bushy, offended eyebrow and said, “Rude?” And then his leather-beaten face—flickered, briefly, the illusion of it spacing out just enough to give Charlie the sense that Sal wasn’t made of flesh at all, but some sort of billowing, chalky smoke, trapped inside a thin candy shell that just so happened to look like a middle-aged bartender.
It was pulsing and wet and deeply terrifying.
Charlie flinched, he knew he did, but then he shook his head, put on a poker face, and said, “You think you’re the first creature to manifest in front of me this week?”
Sal snorted. “What’re you, a groupie?” He glanced at Lorenzo, unimpressed. “Checking your vampire box?”
“What?” Charlie asked. “No, I—”
“You should know better, Lorenzo,” Sal said, flicking one last resentful look at Charlie. “You can’t trust them.”
Charlie felt a twist of something uneasy in his gut as Sal walked away, and swallowed. “Um . . .” he said quietly to Lorenzo. “Should I leave?”
Lorenzo frowned, seeming distracted. “No, he’s just in a mood.” It took him a second, and then he scowled at Charlie. “I mean, yes. Leave. Please.”
Charlie smiled wryly as Lorenzo retreated back behind his grumpy facade.
“Look—I know you, like, pretty much still hate me from when we knew each other before,” he said, watching Lorenzo’s shoulders tense up even as he started.
“But—I’m gonna get this license for you.
And when I do, you’re going to have to guide me around town as my supernatural Sherpa, and show me everything I need to know for my thesis, just like we agreed. ”