Chapter 10
Tensions always ran high in Lorenzo’s apartment on game nights.
Rachel organized them and brought a rotating group of her friends, most of whom took the whole thing far too seriously.
As a vampire, Lorenzo was naturally skilled at games of wit against humans and other lesser beings, so he enjoyed the gatherings.
He was less pleased when Charlie showed up to the latest one.
“It’s about betrayal,” Rachel’s friend was explaining as Charlie listened raptly.
He was wearing a pair of dark blue glasses that made his skin glow, and he looked like he’d shaved just before coming over, like his skin would be damp and just the slightest bit rough.
“We’re all loyal knights, but one of us is lying—he’s betraying the group. ”
“Got it,” Charlie said, eyeing the cards and tokens.
“Why did you even invite him?” Lorenzo asked the room at large. Rachel was deep in strategy talks with a friend and didn’t respond; Maggie, who was counting out everyone’s game pieces, said, “Hush.”
He supposed he couldn’t complain—he was the one who’d subjected them all to Charlie in the first place.
He was also the one who’d cemented the unfortunate situation by losing that foolish bet.
For now, he was stuck; he’d have to set aside his grand plans for vengeance until he’d fulfilled the terms of their agreement. No matter how grating it was.
Predictably, Charlie had already won everyone over, carousing with Rachel’s friends as if he’d known them for years. “Stop pretending you hate this,” Charlie told Lorenzo amiably. “I know you can’t wait to somehow murder me in this game.”
“Only if you’re the traitor,” Lorenzo said equanimously.
“No mercy,” Charlie said with a small, private grin. Lorenzo wanted to slap him. He wanted to lick his neck. Maybe grab him by the throat and watch his pulse flutter.
He caught Maggie looking at him, her rugged features pulled into a small smile. He glowered at her. She bit down on both lips.
“Let’s get started,” she said to the group. “Everyone put their tokens in for the first vote.”
Things went decently with the game—in a satisfying turn of events, Charlie was a terrible player—until Isolde came home. She didn’t make much noise or greet any of them, but every head still turned in her direction as she crossed by. Except Rachel, who scowled at the rest of them.
One of Rachel’s friends—an orc who Lorenzo thought was named Kevin—called out to her, ignoring Rachel’s forbidding glare. “Hi!”
“Hello,” Isolde said placidly. She gazed at the table where the game was laid out and said, “What are you doing?”
“Playing a game,” Kevin said. “Want to play with us?”
Isolde paused for a moment, then narrowed her eyes at him. “Why are you propositioning me if you’re in a relationship with her?”
She was referring to the orc’s girlfriend, a very pretty young wraith sitting next to him, whose jaw dropped at Isolde’s matter-of-fact pronouncement. Kevin sputtered by way of reply. “I’m—I’m not propositioning you!”
“Your lust is obvious,” Isolde said quite calmly.
The orc looked frantically at his girlfriend, whose pitch-black eyes were rapidly filling with hurt. “Um, I really wasn’t—”
“You’ll have to excuse Isolde,” Rachel jumped in. “She’s not house-trained.”
Isolde turned on Rachel icily. “Are you comparing me to a dog?”
“I was comparing you to a horse,” Rachel said with a cocky smile, though it faltered after a moment. “A . . . pet horse that’s . . . house-trained.”
“I—I wasn’t hitting on you!” Kevin insisted. “I just thought you might like to play with us.”
“I can see it within you. This human form I have taken on is, for some reason, incredibly appealing. You lust after it, as do you, you, and you. Not you,” Isolde said, indicating each of Rachel’s friends one by one.
“And you,” she added, nodding at a man across the table whose head was on fire.
“Though you feel incredibly conflicted about it because up until now you’ve only experienced attraction to men.
” She shook her head, seeming almost disgusted. “Humans are so bizarre.”
“Okay, you can’t do this shit.” Rachel stood, making her chair scrape loudly. Her friends were shifting uncomfortably, exchanging anxious looks.
“Do what?”
“Read people!”
“Hey!” Kevin objected, indignantly.
“Say creepy things,” Rachel corrected herself, her voice steely.
“I—okay, her human form is—whatever,” Kevin admitted, pleading mostly to his girlfriend. “But I wasn’t hitting on her!”
The wraith let out a wounded sob and ran out of the room crying. Kevin followed swiftly after her. Isolde watched them go and then said, curiously, “Huh.”
“Huh?” Rachel demanded. “You caused that, and all you’ve got is huh?”
“I caused nothing,” Isolde said.
“You really don’t see what an unbelievably self-righteous—”
Before Rachel could land on a noun, Charlie jumped in. “Hey, why don’t we all cool down for a second?”
“Cool down?” Rachel seethed. “She’s being creepy. She needs to back the hell off.”
“I am not creepy,” Isolde said. “I know who is pure and who is not. It is my very essence.”
“Fucking—stipulated,” Rachel said. “But—”
Isolde had already turned to address Lorenzo. “You are a vampire and thus by your very nature you are carnally deviant. Also, you were unchaste even before you became a vampire, and you continued your sensual depravity once turned. Were I in my true form, you would never be able to detect me.”
A long pause followed. Rachel was the first to recover. “What the hell is your problem?”
“It is true,” Lorenzo added.
“Rachel,” one of her remaining friends was saying in a pained tone of voice, “it’s fine.”
“No, it’s not fine,” Rachel started, but Isolde cut her off once more.
“You have indulged in human sin,” she told Maggie, “but it has been so long since then that, by the standards of my people, you would be considered pure once more.”
“Alright!” Maggie said, pumping her fist happily.
“Stop it,” Rachel snapped, her dark gaze fixed on Isolde. “You can’t say things like that.”
“I came here to live among other supernatural creatures so I would not have to conceal my true nature,” Isolde said.
“Maybe you should conceal it.”
“Whoa whoa whoa, let’s all take a second, okay?” Charlie said. Lorenzo watched in surprise as he stood from the table, walking toward Rachel and Isolde with his arms outstretched. “Whatever your . . . true natures, you are roommates, so—let’s all calm down and talk this out.”
“I do not wish to talk,” Isolde spat, as Rachel yelled something similar over her.
“Well I don’t know if you’ve heard, but I’m actually writing a thesis on supernatural relationships,” Charlie said, “so I’m kind of an expert here. Please, just try.”
After an uneasy pause, Rachel and Isolde both backed away from each other and waited grudgingly for him to continue. “So,” Charlie started, “it sounds like what we need here is a compromise about topics we can agree to discuss and what’s off-limits.”
“I don’t wish to compromise,” Isolde said.
“Me neither,” Rachel said. “Because I’m right.”
“Well, everyone thinks they’re right,” Charlie said with a chuckle.
Rachel glared at him. “Who do you think is right?”
Charlie gaped for a moment. “Well, I—”
“She has to respect everyone else who lives here,” Rachel spat.
“You have no respect for me or my kind,” Isolde shot back.
“What if,” Charlie said, “we agreed that—Isolde is new to human society, so we could cut her a bit of slack when it comes to social graces—”
Rachel started to object, while Isolde spoke over her. “I don’t want or need your slack,” she said sharply.
“Great,” Rachel said, baring her teeth at Isolde and Charlie. “Then here’s your first lesson on social graces: no one wants to talk about their purity, ever! Human or otherwise.”
“You,” Isolde intoned, staring her down. “You have voluntarily chosen to give yourself over to a malevolent poltergeist, a creature of pure filth from which I can detect a distinctly violent energy.”
Rachel crossed her arms. “I thought you could only detect sex things.”
“Its violent urges are carnal in nature. You crave bondage and brutality and blood,” Isolde said, unblinking. “But they are not the only impurities staining your soul.”
Rachel went white, her jaw clenching.
“Hey, uh, maybe we should just head out,” one of her friends said in a desperate sort of way.
“No, she should leave,” Rachel spat back. “She’s the one upsetting everyone. You can’t talk to people like that.”
“I am not a person,” Isolde replied, her own flinty composure starting to crack. If he wasn’t mistaken, Lorenzo thought he could see two spots of faint blue rising in her cheeks.
“That,” Rachel bit out, “is obvious.”
“Y’know, Rachel,” Maggie said, “you’re the one who voted for Isolde. I wanted that gremlin guy to move in.”
Isolde stared at Maggie coldly, as a dawning look of horror covered Maggie’s face. “I—no—I love that you’re here,” she said. “I’m just saying, Rachel, y’know, that she—that you—”
Rachel looked from Maggie to Charlie back to Isolde, her face darkening; then she took a step back from the table and roared up at the ceiling—a painful burst of noise that made everyone flinch and rattled the game pieces.
In the next moment she shook her shoulders and shed what looked like a full-body suit—a sort of mystical snakeskin—shimmering, translucent purple ephemera that fell off her like thick, gelatinous dust.
When she was done, she stormed off to her room. Isolde glided away to hers, as Maggie ran after her, shouting, “Isolde!”
There was a near-simultaneous slamming of doors, followed by a long, quiet moment. “Wow,” Charlie said, sitting down slowly. “I made that situation a hundred percent worse.”
He looked crestfallen. And it occurred to Lorenzo, for the first time, that when Charlie meddled in other people’s lives like this, he was actually trying to help.
It was enough to prompt him to be kind. “No,” Lorenzo told him. “Fifty percent, at most.”
Charlie peered at the floor where the purple cloud Rachel had left behind was still hovering, glinting in the light. “What’s this stuff Rachel . . . shed?”
“Ectoplasm,” Lorenzo said. “Don’t touch it.”
Charlie shrunk back. “Is it toxic?”
“Probably.”
“Probably?”
“Magic works off intent,” Lorenzo said. “And Rachel was very upset. I wouldn’t touch it.”
“Well,” Charlie said, sighing. “I guess we can’t have a two-person game night.”
“I suppose not,” Lorenzo said.
It wasn’t until they’d said it aloud that it seemed to strike both of them that everyone else in the room had gone. Their eyes met for a loaded moment.
“Okay, well—” Charlie said, as Lorenzo chimed in with “Yes, goodnight.” They both stood, and Lorenzo busied himself with cleaning up the game so he didn’t have to watch Charlie leave.
He turned back just before he’d reached the door. “Oh, hey—are we still on for that thing tomorrow night? You finally found me some witches?”
Lorenzo had almost forgotten. He was seeing a lot of Charlie these days, and it was starting to feel natural in a way he didn’t want to examine. “Yes,” he said. “We are.”
“Great,” Charlie said with a wide smile. Lorenzo’s lifeless stomach fluttered. “Can’t wait.”
He smiled again as he left. Lorenzo only relaxed when he was gone, and realized when he opened his hand that he was still holding a rumpled card that said LIAR.