Chapter 29
Eventually, after Lorenzo had managed to make it out of his room and then even out of the apartment a few times, Maggie bullied him into throwing another party.
She’d pointed out that it was unlikely this next one would crash and burn quite as spectacularly as the first one had, which he had to concede was true. Charlie wouldn’t be there.
There was no one to betray him anymore.
And though the last thing Lorenzo wanted to do was anything that would remind him of Charlie, Maggie thought the supernatural support group, or whatever they were calling it, was a good idea.
So he found himself staring sullenly at a shrink-wrapped set of paper plates, procrastinating in his duties as host while Maggie buzzed around him, setting up drinks and cheese plates and everything else one needed to entertain.
She’d even brought out some succulents and faux flowers to decorate the apartment—because it needed to be homey, she insisted, not festive.
He wasn’t sure the difference. He wasn’t sure this was a good idea. There was a decent chance he’d end up back in his sweats, under the covers, before the guests finished arriving.
Maggie nudged him, bringing him back into reality, and he sighed and began unwrapping the plates. “Don’t mope,” she told him. “This is already going better than last time—look how many people showed up!”
Sure enough, there were already enough guests to fill the apartment with the pleasant sound of chatter.
There were plenty of people from the last time, and a few new faces.
They’d set things up this time as more of a discussion circle than a party, but folks were still mingling and chatting amiably with each other as they grabbed snacks and seats.
Maggie had just put the finishing touches on a carefully arranged charcuterie plate when Rachel arrived, grabbing a large chunk of cheese and shoving it into her face. “Hey!” Maggie objected.
“Bleh,” Rachel said. “What is this? Where’s the cursed stuff?”
Maggie indicated another wedge of cheese, this one with a slightly more ominous odor, and Rachel dug into it eagerly. “Sure, go right ahead,” Maggie sighed.
Rachel’s eyes were darting around the apartment. “Isolde’s not here, is she?”
“I invited her,” Maggie said sternly, unwrapping some new blocks of cheese. “And you said you weren’t going to be weird.”
“I’m not weird,” Rachel said, her mouth full. “There’s nothing—”
She jumped at the sound of glass tinkling, but it was just some goblins in a corner of the room toasting each other. Maggie glared at her, and she swallowed her cheese shamefully before giving Lorenzo an apologetic smile. “I’ll just—help you guys set up.”
They worked in silence for a moment, setting out bottles and napkins, until Rachel seemed to notice Lorenzo’s subdued mood. “Hey,” she said. “You doing okay?”
He grunted something by way of reply.
“Has he called?” she asked. “Or texted?”
“No.”
“He probably thinks you don’t want to talk to him.”
“I don’t want to talk to him.”
“Okay,” Rachel said in a tone that got under Lorenzo’s skin.
“You think I should?” he asked.
“I don’t know,” she said. “I mean, no, I guess not. Not if you don’t want to.”
“Why would I.”
Rachel and Maggie exchanged a look. Then Rachel took a deep breath and said, “Look, I know what he did was—awful—monstrous—”
“He lied to me from the minute we met,” Lorenzo snapped. “Both times.”
“I know,” Rachel said. “And I’m Team Lorenzo here, a hundred thousand percent. I will literally kill him if you want me to.” He started to object, and she waved him down impatiently. “But . . . it kinda seems like—maybe he just—”
“What.”
“I think he lied to you because . . . well, because people are shitheads sometimes—most of the time,” Rachel said. “And then I think the whole thing just snowballed. I don’t think he ever meant for it to go this far.”
“But it did,” Lorenzo said.
“Yeah, it did,” Rachel said softly. “But . . . I don’t think he meant to hurt you. People . . .” she sighed. “People fuck up. They make mistakes.” Her eyes went distant. “They reach for what they shouldn’t.”
“Mistakes,” Lorenzo scoffed. “He deceived me.”
“He made a bad call,” Rachel said softly. “He—for whatever reason, he lied to you, and that was wrong. But he obviously cared about you.”
Lorenzo shook his head.
“He didn’t mean to betray you,” Rachel said.
“But he did,” he snapped.
“Yeah,” Rachel said, deflating a bit. “I know.”
Then she spotted Isolde across the room, and her entire body stiffened.
“And look what he did to you two,” Lorenzo muttered. “Meddling, butting in, and . . . ruining things.”
“It’s not Charlie’s fault,” Rachel said with a sigh, her eyes never leaving Isolde. “If anything, he . . .”
“What?” Lorenzo demanded.
Rachel was silent a moment. “I don’t know,” she said at length, chewing her lower lip. “I guess you’re right. I probably never would have kissed her if it wasn’t for him.”
Lorenzo looked from Isolde’s perfect, glimmering form back to Rachel, who had a dark, complicated look on her face as she gazed at the other woman. “And that’s . . . bad,” he said.
“Yeah,” she said, sounding distracted. “I gotta go get . . . something.”
She flitted away, and Maggie rubbed him on the back comfortingly. “Why don’t you go take a quick breather?” she suggested. “It’s filling up fast.”
Lorenzo sighed and went to straighten the drinks table. He went through the motions of the gracious host—introducing folks who hadn’t met, keeping the music going, making small talk.
He was counting down the minutes until he could be alone with his sorrow again.
A while later he found himself in a quiet corner with Isolde.
She looked a bit less glittery than usual, wrapped in a silky soft sweater, her hair in a neat, flat braid along one shoulder.
And though her skin still held the secret glow of the evening forest, she chewed on a nail as she flicked a glance at the rest of the party over Lorenzo’s shoulder. “Rachel’s not here, is she?”
“You both promised to not be weird,” he reminded her.
Isolde slumped a bit and said, “. . . okay.”
A glum silence fell. “You’re sad about Charlie,” Isolde said.
“You can sense that?” he asked.
“No,” she said. “I just noticed.”
He grunted.
“Human emotions are complicated,” she went on. He started to clarify that he was not, in fact, human, but she continued, ignoring him. “They’re fractal. Little Matryoshka dolls of . . . doubt and fantasy. Desire and . . . torment.”
“That’s true,” Lorenzo said lowly. They nodded, united for a moment in their morose contemplation.
Then something occurred to Lorenzo. “Hang on,” he said. “You read people. You read auras. You never got anything off of Charlie that he was—” He swallowed. “That he was lying to everyone?”
In a tone that was slow and a bit embarrassed, as if Lorenzo had asked her what color the sky was, Isolde said, “I sensed he was holding himself back from you in some way. And that he felt . . . ashamed.”
She flicked her eyes back up to his. “But I felt the same from you.”
“He used me,” he said.
“Yes,” she agreed. “But he regrets that.”
“No he doesn’t,” Lorenzo hissed.
“I told you,” Isolde insisted. “I felt your shame when you were holding yourselves apart, each of you. And I saw that shame fade away, these last few weeks.”
“So?”
“So,” she said, blinking a bit. “That’s love.”
“That’s not how your powers work,” Lorenzo snarled. “Sensing purity and shame isn’t the same thing as—as—”
“Lorenzo—”
“You’re still new to human emotions,” he said sharply. “You said so yourself. This isn’t something you could understand.”
Isolde flinched—just a bit, just in the depths of her eyes where he could glimpse something other than otherworldly terror. “I guess I don’t,” she said quietly. “I just . . .”
He held his breath, but she merely shrugged. “You seemed happy.”
He clenched his teeth as she walked away.
Lorenzo returned to the small indignities of hosting until it became clear that it was once again time for him to kick things off, so to speak.
Only this time, Charlie wasn’t there to prompt him.
He cleared his throat and shoved those thoughts out of his head. “Welcome everyone,” he said. “Thank you for coming. I, um . . . I talked about this a little bit at the—the last party, but I just . . . want this to be a place where people feel . . .”
He looked around the room at everyone who’d come—werewolves and necromancers; demons and succubi; a unicorn and a human poltergeist; even one of Sebastian’s vampire flunkies had shown up, looking hesitant and a bit ashamed, but Lorenzo hadn’t had the heart to make him leave.
They were all here, looking to him.
“A sense of community,” he said. “And . . . I’m not sure exactly what that should look like, but . . . I’m open to suggestions.”
He sat. There was a slightly awkward silence.
Then Eugene—the teenage druid who was actually a necromancer—spoke up. “Well, I’m glad to be here!” he said. “Hi all. I’m uh—well, my coven thinks my powers are scary. But I don’t reanimate corpses! Or—human corpses. Just small rodents.”
This silence was considerably more awkward. Lorenzo decided to push past it. “Great, thank you, Eugene,” he said. “Anyone else?”
Gray talked about the wrongful termination suit he was planning against his former pack.
A young woman who hadn’t been at the first party spoke hesitantly about the fear and isolation that came with being a siren.
Sal, the bartender, talked about the arguments he’d had with his fellow demons about whether to risk a potentially fatal trip to their home dimension or try to make a living here.
The loneliness and unease they described was never the same; sometimes it was big and intentional and harsh; sometimes they sounded just like Lorenzo—drifting. Listless.
But talking about it felt good—he felt good, for the first time in a while. Like he was taking charge of his life instead of just letting it happen to him. Because these stories of sadness and loneliness were being met with nods and support, and he’d made it all happen.
I’m proud of you, he heard Charlie whisper. He shook his head to dispel it.
When the speeches seemed to come to a natural close, Lorenzo stood and toasted everyone. “Well, I think we can call our first formal meeting a success.”
From over by the drinks table, Roberta said, “The first meeting of—what are we calling this thing?”
They all looked at each other expectantly. “Paranormals Anonymous,” Eugene said.
“The supernatural squad,” the other vampire suggested.
“The supernatural support network,” Gray said.
“The Lupines,” Lorenzo said. He hadn’t known he was going to say it until it came out.
There were frowns among the group. “Well, I like it,” Gray said, “but—”
“Not lupines like wolves,” Lorenzo said. “The purple flower. The Lupines.”
“Works for me,” Roberta said. She lifted her glass. “The Lupines.”
The rest of them toasted. From the back of the room, Maggie smiled at him sadly.