Chapter 9
Saturday night Charlie was once again trekking with Lorenzo through the woods.
There was a path, but it was faint, narrow, and entirely absent in spots, and it was treacherous whenever it turned steeply downhill.
“If we keep meeting people like this,” Charlie said, huffing slightly, “I’m gonna need some DEET. ”
Per usual, Lorenzo ignored him.
“Y’know, bug spray?” he said.
“Bugs do not bite me,” Lorenzo said. In the darkness under the trees, Charlie could barely make out his expression. “My flesh is cold and repellent to them. One of the perks of being undead.”
“Hmm,” Charlie said, brushing aside more branches and trying his best to get a glimpse of Lorenzo’s skin. Judging from the letters he kept getting from humans who were sleeping with vampires, he doubted repellent was an accurate word. Cool, maybe. He wouldn’t know.
“You know, you don’t usually talk about the perks of being a vampire,” he told Lorenzo.
Silence again. “Hm,” Charlie said. “I’ll take it from your brooding silence that you really resent being incredibly strong and impervious to injury and disease.”
“But not to being badgered by questions from graduate students,” Lorenzo said.
Charlie beamed at him, and this time he could see that Lorenzo was smiling a little in return.
Not for the first time, he thought about how strange it was that he’d barely remembered Lorenzo when they ran into each other at the coffee shop—that his memory of him from five years ago was so dim.
All he could recall of that time was Lorenzo, Olivia’s kind of strange, off-putting boyfriend.
But this Lorenzo could be nudged into smiling if Charlie told the right joke.
He handed out tiny morsels of information about being a vampire like each one was precious, but he wasn’t too stuffy to make fun of himself.
He’d been standoffish at first, sure, but even though he put up a good front at being dragged along into Charlie’s world, he was well aware that Lorenzo could have just blown him off after the whole driver’s license thing—or even after they’d first reconnected.
But he hadn’t. He was holding up his end of the deal.
Not that it’d been easy to get him to agree to this particular mission.
Werewolves were by far the most prolific supernatural creatures, and the Crone got hundreds of letters about them.
Readers were curious about complicated pack dynamics, safety around the full moon, and, of course, the ever-present question of what counted as bestiality.
And he needed to learn more, because the column was—amazingly—still doing well.
Somehow all of his supernatural-themed posts had been putting up great numbers.
He wasn’t sure whether to be grateful, excited, or fearful that it would all get snatched away.
Ava was smug as hell, thinking they’d finally cracked the secret code—that focusing on the paranormal had been the key to the Crone’s success all along.
Charlie wasn’t so sure. Meeting all of these people had definitely been interesting, but he thought it was more than that. He’d just been feeling . . . inspired, lately.
Lorenzo brushed a branch out of his way, muttering something irritated under his breath.
He seemed most at ease when he could complain about something; when Charlie had asked him for a proper introduction to a werewolf pack, he’d turned him down flat, claiming they were touchy and insular, and that Charlie hadn’t done himself any favors by crashing the werewolf prom (which he wasn’t supposed to call werewolf prom).
But Charlie had begged and wheedled, and joked and pestered and flirted, and eventually Lorenzo had arranged this outing. He hadn’t let Charlie down yet.
He had been a little vague on who exactly they’d be meeting. Charlie snuck a quick glance up at the moon, but it was barely more than half-full. He shook off any nerves and plowed ahead behind Lorenzo as they scaled a particularly steep crag.
Finally they emerged from the woods and spotted a cabin with what looked like camping equipment spread out around it—firepits, tents, and more. But no one else was there. “So—where are your friends?” Charlie asked.
“I told them we were coming tonight,” Lorenzo said mildly. “And they’re nearby.”
“How can you tell?”
“I can hear them,” Lorenzo said. “And smell them.”
“You can smell them?” Charlie asked.
That was when he heard a twig snap. “Hey,” Charlie said. “About that thing you said, about the wolves being mad at me—”
A growl sounded from across the clearing, and he grabbed Lorenzo’s sleeve, entirely too spooked to be able to appreciate the firm bicep underneath. Then a wolf appeared between the trees, with another just behind. So much for the half-full moon.
Two more wolves emerged to his left as Charlie tried not to panic. “Uh,” he said, inching closer to Lorenzo.
That was when the wolf at the head of the pack shifted back into human form seamlessly, revealing a fully naked, elderly man who beamed at the both of them. “Lorenzo!” he said cheerfully. “You came.”
“Hello, Kenny,” Lorenzo said. They shook hands as the rest of the wolves transformed back into humans, all of them naked, all well past retirement age. Charlie tried not to gape.
Kenny, who seemed like the leader of this particular group, had thick gray hair on his head and all over. “This must be your friend,” he said, turning to Charlie.
“Uh, nice to meet you,” he said, shaking his hand gingerly.
“Welcome to our community!” Kenny said, clapping his hands together in satisfaction. The others had gotten to work lighting fires and setting up the campsite, not seeming to let their nakedness interfere with their work. “Sorry to be late meeting you, we were just going for a midnight run.”
“I . . .” Charlie was lost for words, which was rare.
He caught Lorenzo’s eye, and realized that he was smirking. A blush rose to Charlie’s cheeks.
Twenty minutes later they were sitting around a campfire with the werewolves, most of whom, to his gratitude, had finally pulled on clothes.
A woman across from him was assembling s’mores and passing them around the circle, while a guy to his left lit a joint.
“So—the full moon thing—” Charlie asked.
“Eh, that’s a young wolf’s game,” Kenny said, waving a relaxed arm. “Once the pelt starts growing in a bit grayer, all that stuff gets easier. You can shift on the full moon, on the half moon, during the day. Whenever you want, really.”
“Wow,” Charlie said. “So you just—do you all live here?”
“Here, around,” Kenny said. “Wherever the beast calls us.”
“The beast?”
“The beast within,” he said, waggling his coarse silver eyebrows. “We run for miles sometimes, making the mountains our home.”
“Wow,” Charlie said again. As he grasped for a more cogent response, he glanced at Lorenzo, and saw him gazing back smugly again. Like he’d engineered all this to put Charlie off his game.
Sitting up a little straighter, he said, “Y’know, you all are the first werewolves I’ve had the chance to talk to in depth. I’d love to ask you some more questions—is that okay?”
“Sure,” Kenny said easily. “There’s nothing wrong with ignorance, only incuriosity.”
“Thanks,” Charlie said. “So—do all, um, senior werewolves live like this? Nomadic, more in touch with nature?”
“Some do,” Kenny said. “Some stay tethered to their human-passing lives.”
The woman making s’mores scoffed at him. “Human-passing? You still go down the mountain once a week to check in on your accounting firm.”
“I want to make sure it’s in good shape for when Niall takes it over! My youngest,” he said to Charlie. He added pointedly, to the woman who had laughed at him, “And we don’t judge here.”
There were nods around the fire. Across the clearing, two of the werewolves had wandered over to a small stream and started splashing each other, quickly shifting into wolf form so they could grapple and snap at each other playfully. Charlie sighed. “You seem so . . . happy.”
“We are,” Kenny said. “We don’t concern ourselves with the things that defined us when we were younger. The rat race, the struggle for material goods, the duality of man and beast. We’re at peace here.”
“Sounds nice,” he said.
“It is,” Kenny said. “Say, speaking of the rat race—did you say your name was Wever?”
“Uh—yes,” Charlie said hesitantly.
Kenny sat forward. “Any relation to Professor George Wever, over at the university?”
“Oh,” Charlie said. “Yes. That’s my father.”
Lorenzo glanced over at him, but Charlie didn’t look. “Fascinating,” Kenny was saying. “I must say, I disagree with just about every one of his theories on economic stimulus, but you can’t deny he’s made quite a contribution to the university’s scholarship.”
His father’s scholarship was the beginning and end of his priorities. Charlie honestly couldn’t even be sure if his dad would be upset to learn that he’d been back in Brookville for weeks without reaching out, or if he’d just be . . .
Well. It wasn’t like Charlie being here or not had any effect on his dad’s career, so he dismissed his guilt and decided that none of this made for good conversation. “I’ll tell him you said that,” he said politely.
Kenny looked as if he was about to launch into another question about Charlie’s dad, so he jumped in. “Speaking of family—what about your children? You all must have younger werewolf relatives here in town, right?”
“Yes, we do,” Kenny said.
“Do you stay in touch with them?” he asked. “Are you, uh—affiliated? Is that the right word?”
“In a manner of speaking,” Kenny said. “We still have our pack ties, but there are multiple different packs represented here in our group. It’s just—not something that matters to us as much anymore.”
“Hm,” Charlie said. “And is that how you met Lorenzo?”
Lorenzo jerked a little, as if startled to be mentioned, but Kenny beamed at the question. “Yes, Lorenzo! He was a great help to us back in—what was it, ’92? That was a bad year between the packs, there was lots of tension. It’s always good to have a vampire around to sort us hotheads out.”
“Yes, well,” Lorenzo mumbled, looking embarrassed.
“’92, huh?” Charlie said, as Lorenzo glared at him. “What was he like back then?”
“Oh, wonderful!” Kenny said. “So helpful and polite. Just as handsome then as he is now—he hasn’t withered away like the rest of us. But y’know, if I recall correctly, back then, he had that great ’90s hair—the swoopy bangs and all,” he said, pantomiming with his fingers draped over his forehead.
Lorenzo rolled his eyes as Charlie put a hand over his mouth to stifle a giggle. “Wow. ’90s hair, ’70s hair . . . there’s so much to unpack with you,” he murmured.
Lorenzo shot him a look, but it did nothing to quell Charlie’s curiosity.
If anything, the dark, quiet humor in Lorenzo’s eyes made Charlie feel like they were alone in the woods, with nothing but the crackle of the fire to interrupt them.
“Do you have daguerreotypes of yourself? Wearing 1800s clothes?” he teased. “I’d love to see those.”
“No,” Lorenzo said flatly, but there was a reluctant, amused slant to his scowl.
“Hmm,” Charlie said. “I bet you’re one of the founders of Brookville. Actually.” He frowned a little, realizing something. “How did you find yourself in rural Virginia? It’s a long way from Italy.”
This time it was Lorenzo who stared at the fire, letting the slow disappearance of all good humor from his face be Charlie’s answer.
The fire crackled, and thankfully they weren’t alone in the woods—one of the elderly wolves got distracted wanting to tell stories of their own youth in B’ville, and soon enough the slight pause was forgotten by everyone.
Almost everyone.
By around 2:30 a.m. they decided to call it a night, when Charlie was starting to flag and the werewolves looked ready to pack it in.
He’d known Lorenzo would be wide awake, but he was a little surprised to be getting tired faster than the elderly wolves.
“Don’t you know? You need less sleep as you get older,” Kenny told him. “Plus, we like to nap during the day.”
Charlie laughed in Lorenzo’s car, thinking of the group of elderly wolves napping in a sunny clearing in the middle of the afternoon. “What?” Lorenzo asked.
“I loved them,” Charlie said. “I want to go visit them once a week.”
“Ugh,” Lorenzo said, though his annoyance seemed tinged with amusement.
“You know, you really were the perfect person for me to run into for my project,” Charlie told him. “You’ve worked all these odd jobs for other supernatural creatures, so you know everyone.”
The smile he thought he’d seen vanished from Lorenzo’s face. Somehow, he’d hit a sore spot again. He was starting to think that Lorenzo had a lot of those. It’d probably be best to let the rest of the drive pass in silence.
But this wasn’t the Lorenzo he’d known five years ago.
He wasn’t trying to get out of some awkward small talk at a party—he was actually interested in why Lorenzo might be upset.
Trying to sound casual, Charlie said, “I’m surprised you have to do these sorts of jobs for cash. I thought vampires were all, y’know.”
“Rich?” Lorenzo asked.
“I—I dunno,” Charlie said. “Isn’t there a thing with like . . . compound interest?”
“You should stop making assumptions like that.”
“You’re right,” Charlie said after a moment. “I’m sorry. I really am learning a lot from you.”
Lorenzo seemed mollified by that. “So,” Charlie said, “Do you do these jobs for the cash, or is it something else?”
“Like what?”
“I don’t know.” He shrugged. “A sense of community?”
“Community?” Lorenzo asked, as his face darkened.
“Yeah, the—the supernatural community,” Charlie said uncertainly.
“It’s not a community,” Lorenzo said flatly. “Werewolves, vampires, fae—we don’t have anything in common. Even vampires barely have anything in common with each other. I do these jobs because—” He stopped abruptly.
“Why?” Charlie asked.
“For the cash,” Lorenzo said gruffly. “As you said.”
That was clearly bullshit, but Charlie said nothing. This wasn’t the Lorenzo of five years ago; this was his Lorenzo, and Charlie didn’t want any of those sore spots to become a bruise.