Chapter 19
The hotel was large and luminous, but its parking garage was barricaded for some reason, and there was no street parking out front, so by the time Lorenzo managed to find a spot and get them into the hotel, he and Charlie were sniping at each other a little.
“I don’t understand why you’re so desperate to meet witches,” Lorenzo muttered.
“They’re kind of—a big deal, aren’t they?
” Charlie asked. He always got a little nervous when Lorenzo harped on this; he could hardly say he was impersonating a crone on the internet and wanted to meet some in real life.
“I mean, when it comes to supernatural creatures, aren’t vampires, wolves, and witches kinda the big three? ”
Lorenzo scoffed. “That’s reductive.”
The hotel’s lobby was opulent but dated—it looked like it hadn’t been dusted in a few months or maybe even years, and they were the only guests in sight. “Why did the coven want to meet here?” Charlie asked, examining a chintzy velvet and gold banquette.
“I assumed there was a restaurant,” Lorenzo said, poking around. There weren’t attendants at the front desk, or anywhere.
Charlie turned to ask him something else, and frowned as his shoe slipped on an unexpected texture on the floor.
He glanced down, and realized it was part of a much larger shape underneath them—what looked like a massive rune, almost the size of the entire room, painted directly onto the hotel’s marble floor.
“Huh,” he said, straightening up with some of the black paint on his fingers. “Is that . . . new?”
“Uh oh,” Lorenzo said, as people in business suits emerged from the shadows and began chanting at them—at least six of them. Charlie was completely lost, but he was starting to get a bad feeling about this meeting Lorenzo had arranged.
“I condemn this vampire in the strongest terms!” intoned the businesspeople—witches?
—in monotone unison, pointing at Lorenzo and Charlie.
The rune under their feet was starting to hum.
“I condemn any and all acts of bloodlust from all vampires! Your death fetish has no place in our magical commons!” They wobbled a bit on that last one, not all syncing up properly.
Lorenzo growled, making Charlie jump, and his eyes flashed red.
Charlie shivered at the sight. It wasn’t a bright, glowing red; it felt darker, like when you see a cat’s eyes peering out at you from the darkness, and they have a flat sort of luminescence that seems to say I can see you a lot better than you can see me.
The mages gasped, and all but a few of them scattered.
The remaining few continued their tepid chant, but it was clear that the loss of their comrades had overbalanced the spell somehow—Charlie could feel the air in the room boiling over, shifting, collapsing, and Lorenzo grabbed him and yanked him out of the circle just as the remaining witches chanted, “Begone!” and a cascade of blue-white sparks came down over everything.
Charlie landed with a thud in what he realized after a moment was an elevator.
Lorenzo was pulling himself to his feet using the iron cage that surrounded the vintage cab.
Back out in the lobby, the mages sounded locked in recriminations.
Fuck! Mark broke first. Fuck you, it was Claire!
Your begone was weak. Look we all know it was the left flank—Wait, is the vampire still here? FUCK.
By the time Charlie had gotten to his feet and dusted himself off, the witches had all fled. Lorenzo was pacing around the hotel lobby, growling lowly to himself, making sure they were gone. Charlie breathed out a little, shakily, and said, “Hey—thanks for saving us.”
Lorenzo turned back to him, his eyes softening. “You’re welcome.”
Charlie shivered. And as Lorenzo drew closer, he frowned. “Are you okay?” Charlie asked. “You look a little . . .”
The same sort of realization was happening on Lorenzo’s face, and Charlie glanced downward, where his forearm was still stinging slightly from the witches’ spell.
“Oh,” he said in a deep voice, as he watched his arm flicker in and out of reality. “Shit.”
The hex seemed to have shifted them partially into another dimension—at least, that was Lorenzo’s best guess.
They were both translucent and had the vague sensation of standing on the edge of a cliff somewhere very cold.
It seemed to be wearing off, though, a process that felt sort of like popping your ears, except every time Charlie popped, he could tell he was becoming more .
. . real. He tried not to think about it too hard, and yawned as they finally got back to Lorenzo’s apartment, prompting another pop.
“You should eat something,” Lorenzo said, helping him pull off his jacket. “That might help.”
“You too,” Charlie said. Lorenzo scowled. He was so weird about drinking blood in front of Charlie, which bugged him to no end. And tonight, he definitely needed sustenance.
So Charlie dragged Lorenzo into the kitchen, shoved a blood bag into one hand and a mug into the other, and then started picking out some leftovers from the fridge, hoping whoever they belonged to wouldn’t be mad at him.
“So that was an adventure,” he said. As he watched, Lorenzo popped and became a little less translucent, his skin a little less gray and plasticine.
Charlie grinned. Lorenzo put his blood in the microwave, and Charlie took a bite of his sandwich.
He did start to pop a bit faster once he was eating.
“Any other ideas for how we can meet witches?”
Lorenzo glared at him. “You want to try again? After this fiasco?”
“It’s not that bad,” Charlie said, waving one of his arms experimentally. It instantly popped. “See?”
“You have a death wish,” Lorenzo said flatly.
“Well, I’m hanging out with the undead, aren’t I?” He nudged Lorenzo’s leg with his under the counter. They were solid enough now to do that, at least.
Lorenzo was glaring at him like he couldn’t decide whether to be annoyed or turned on. Charlie’s heart fluttered.
A moment later the front door slammed, and Rachel joined them in the kitchen, looking first-date cute. Charlie perked up as soon as he saw her. “How was it?”
“Meh,” she said, putting her clutch on the counter. “Maybe next time.”
Charlie tsked and shook his head, but Lorenzo frowned. “You’re giving him another shot?”
“She means next time with someone new,” Charlie told him.
He waited for Rachel to chime in, and looked up just in time to catch her flinch. “Rachel,” he said, in his best not-angry-just-disappointed voice.
Before she could respond, Isolde joined them. Rachel stiffened. “Oh. Hi.”
“Hello,” Isolde said calmly. Peering at Lorenzo and Charlie, she said, “Did you know you’re not fully in our dimension?”
“Yeah, it’s wearing off,” Charlie said, shrugging his shoulder pointedly and making it pop.
“No way,” Rachel said, coming over to poke at him. “What happened?”
Charlie told the story, and he didn’t even mind when Lorenzo jumped in at the best part to tell the punchline they’d workshopped in the car, because he did it so well.
He glanced at Charlie when the girls laughed, and Charlie couldn’t look away.
He wanted to live in Lorenzo’s smile. He was getting addicted to it.
When they’d finished the story, Isolde nodded solemnly and said, “A harrowing tale.”
Rachel snorted. “A harrowing tale,” she said, smiling. “That’s funny.”
Isolde narrowed her eyes at her. “How is it funny?”
Rachel’s face went slack with alarm. “I didn’t mean it like that,” she said. “It was a—a good turn of phrase. Really.”
Isolde continued to glare at her. “Well, hopefully it wears off soon,” Lorenzo said.
“Yes, and more importantly,” Charlie said, turning back to Rachel, “don’t go out with this guy again.”
“Guy?” Isolde asked.
“We really—don’t . . .” Rachel said, squirming. “It’s—”
Charlie cut her off, explaining, “Rachel had a meh date and wants to give him a second chance.”
“Are you okay with us talking about . . . dating things?” Lorenzo asked Isolde. “Things potentially related to . . . sex?”
Isolde drew herself up. “Yes. I am.” Turning to Rachel, she said, slowly and diplomatically: “And . . . ah . . . I agree with Charlie that if this person does not please you, you should look elsewhere. Because you are a nice, attractive human host for a poltergeist, and you deserve a fitting mate.”
Rachel was blinking rapidly. “Um,” she replied.
“And you’re here,” Isolde added. “Which means that this person didn’t tempt you to give in to carnal lust.”
Rachel had frozen completely. “So,” Isolde said, raising an eyebrow. “That’s a bad sign, right?”
Rachel exploded. It sounded kind of like a pillow going whump, and the next moment the entire kitchen was covered in cobwebs.
As Charlie started to blink his eyes back open, he saw Lorenzo and Isolde picking cobwebs out of their hair and brushing them off their clothes, but Rachel was gone.
“Rachel?” Lorenzo called out. The webbing on his sleeves was starting to disintegrate already, fading back out of reality as soon as it moved.
“Sorry,” Rachel called from her room, her voice muffled. “I’m fine.”
Isolde was brushing the last few cobwebs off her shoulders in stiff, precise movements. Once the path out of the kitchen was clear, she left without a word.
“What was that?” Charlie breathed, trying not to freak out. Most of the webs on him had shaken off already, and the kitchen was almost back to normal, but he still felt chilly all over.
Lorenzo seemed far less affected. “Poltergeist thing, I guess,” he said, picking up his mug of blood.
“You guess?” Charlie demanded. “That’s the first time that’s happened?”
“This specific thing?” Lorenzo asked. When Charlie just gaped at him, he said, “These poltergeists, you know, they do all sorts of strange things.”
Charlie laughed to keep from shrieking. “Okay. So—speaking of strange. How can we find a real witch coven to talk to us?”