Chapter 32
Five Months Later
It shouldn’t have been surprising that when they got to the airport, they discovered that there was something wrong with their reservation.
“Welcome, and thank you for flying with us,” the agent at check-in told them, once Charlie had given her their names. “I see one first-class coffin and one business-class seat.”
Charlie blinked. “No, I booked two seats in first class—one coffin, one daybed—so we’d be together.” He shot a small smile at Lorenzo, who was still waking up—they had to fly at the very crack of sunset, and he’d grumbled about it more than once in the car ride over.
“I’m sorry, sir, I see separate seats here,” the agent said, typing rapidly.
“That must be a mistake,” Charlie said.
“I’ll see what I can do,” the agent said, “but—”
“You suggest,” Lorenzo said slowly, taking a step closer to the counter, “that I would have intentionally seated my chosen human companion away from my coffin?”
The agent looked flummoxed, her hands frozen over the terminal.
“You think I should do such a thing as we take to the sun-drenched skies in this magnificent beast?” Lorenzo went on, gesturing at the planes on the tarmac.
The pitch of his voice had dropped to something volcanic and dark.
“Be separated from the call of his blood?”
The agent blinked rapidly, and then said, “Uh . . . no, sir. Let me—let me just get my manager.”
Lorenzo broke into a goofy grin as soon as she left the podium. “I just love doing stuff like that.”
After they’d secured their seats and gone through security, they got snacks.
Well, Charlie got snacks—there was a stall by the moving walkway that had truffle fries, and he loved truffle fries, he didn’t care how basic it made him.
But Lorenzo wasn’t feeling anything they’d passed yet, so they’d found their seats at the gate, and Lorenzo had asked Charlie to watch his bags while he stretched his legs and poked around.
Charlie took in the terminal slowly, savoring his snack and trying to resist the urge to check his phone. They were on vacation, and besides, where else but an airport could you engage in some true people watching in this day and age?
A millennial couple on the other side of the gate were arguing quietly about something on the woman’s phone.
He watched patiently, trying to see if he could suss out anything about the fight from their body language—the man was pointing at the phone vigorously, but the woman kept shaking her head and mouthing something Charlie couldn’t quite decipher.
Sitting closer to him was a woman with a dog in her purse—it was too snuggled up for him to make out the breed—and a girl who looked like a student, who had very cool iridescent snakes coiled neatly on her head.
But he decided to stick with the arguing couple. He loved a good fight. He wanted to see if he could figure it out.
“You look deep in thought,” Lorenzo said, settling into the seat next to him. He was holding a pair of Reese’s cups, and started to unwrap them.
“Just snooping. You know me,” Charlie said lightly. Lorenzo grunted, but not in a way that gave Charlie anything to work with when it came to reading his mood. He hadn’t always had the best reaction to Charlie’s curiosity about others.
Then Lorenzo slid him a glance. “The girl with the dog, or the fight?”
Charlie’s heart bloomed a bit. “The couple. What are they fighting about?”
Lorenzo’s eyes glazed over as he tuned in to the distant voices. It always turned Charlie on when he did this, every single time. Just imagining the things he could hear . . . the sounds Charlie could make so quietly that only Lorenzo would hear them . . .
He was lost in thought when Lorenzo reported back, flatly, “Backsplash.”
“Ugh,” Charlie sighed, stuffing his face with truffle oil. Lorenzo leaned over and snagged a few fries before he’d even unwrapped either of his candies. He licked his thumb when he was done, and Charlie giggled at him.
Then his phone buzzed twice, and Charlie slid it from his pocket without thinking.
“No,” Lorenzo said sternly, leaning over to grab it from him and immediately getting greasy fingerprints all over the screen. Charlie sighed, looking pointedly at the smudges.
“We said,” Lorenzo defended himself.
And it was true—they’d badly needed this getaway.
Re-launching the column and the rest of the site after turning down Advance Media’s offer had been a herculean task.
They’d gone from the meager support he’d had as Wise Old Crone to doing absolutely everything themselves—the kind of legal, administrative, and technical minutiae that turned Lorenzo’s eyes red and gave Charlie panic attacks.
But slowly, painfully, they’d gotten the new site up and running—Charlie’s column, and eventually a few other regular contributors’ pages, plus some fun new features—and the forum.
The forum had been a ton of work, but it was so worth it to see people start signing up and chatting.
They posted about stuff Charlie had written, and issues he hadn’t had a chance to write about, and about things he’d never heard of—creatures and rituals and places that even Lorenzo hadn’t encountered.
They weren’t getting a lot of sleep—along with Ava, Rachel, Maggie, Isolde, Gray, and the few other friends they’d pressganged into service.
But all those sleepless nights and stumbling blocks had been worth it, because the site was starting to thrive.
They’d attracted a decent number of subscribers, and they had five other regular contributors now, including Rachel and Gray.
People were getting paid, they had enough money to hire more staff, and Charlie and Lorenzo had even done a mini tour, helping to get in-person supernatural groups set up in other cities, which was incredibly gratifying and fully exhausting.
They’d called the new site The Lupine. The forum they’d called Green Shoots. Wise Old Crone was gone, dead, and Charlie didn’t give her a second thought. (Like other mystical old crones, though, he wasn’t counting on her staying dead forever.)
Ava said she’d always known it was headed here, but Charlie knew it hadn’t been. He and Lorenzo had had to work to make the site successful—to make it into something they could be proud of.
But they’d left all that turmoil and stress and hard work back home, and on this trip, they’d pledged not to think about it even a little.
At the changeover in New York, Charlie kept watching the movie he’d started on the first plane, while Lorenzo flicked through the news.
Eventually Charlie noticed that Lorenzo had put his phone away and was staring somewhat blankly at his own screen.
Charlie grinned and offered him one of his earbuds.
Lorenzo’s answering smile was full of warmth, like a sunrise.
It was so strange to think that there might have been a time that Charlie would have dreaded Lorenzo taking a peek at his phone. Sharing screens was a sign of trust—and more, he supposed, as Lorenzo tucked his head into Charlie’s neck, already getting wrapped up in the film.
They’d spent a lot of time in the last few months working on themselves and their relationship, rebuilding the trust that had been lost. Charlie had shown Lorenzo the parts of himself he’d kept hidden before—when he’d first wanted to be a writer; landing the gig at Midnight and crafting his Crone voice; the kind of artistic projects he’d long dreamt of but never dared to say out loud.
He could whisper those things to Lorenzo in the middle of the night on a random Tuesday and feel like no one heard them, because he was speaking directly into the universe via the slow, even way Lorenzo stroked his hair as he listened to Charlie.
Charlie apologized in many different ways and different languages, both love and literal, for violating Lorenzo’s trust. They reread and dissected every column he’d written since moving back to Brookville.
They had long meandering conversations that went until five a.m. and were often half crying, and they had nonsensical, barely coherent conversations about love and trust and meaning and honor while they were still short of breath and glued to each other, watching some inane movie on mute in the dark of Charlie’s room.
They stayed at Charlie’s place more.
But they were at a good place with the roommates again. Charlie was in a good place with Maggie again, thank Satan. And it was just at that moment that a text from Rachel popped up on Charlie’s phone, blocking the top third of the movie.
Charlie winced when he saw Isolde’s name. Without even opening it all the way, he looked at Lorenzo, who had a weary look on his face.
Charlie swiped the notification away, unread.
“Cold,” Lorenzo murmured, though he was starting to smile.
“We’re on vacation,” Charlie said. “And I’m not touching that mess with a ten-foot pole.”
An echoing voice reminded them that it was almost time to board, so Charlie turned off the movie and started getting his things together.
“How many more flights?” Lorenzo asked, staring at the gate with dread.
To hear him tell it, plane coffins ran the gamut from tolerable to medieval torture device.
“Just one,” Charlie reassured him. “And then a teeny tiny boat.”
Lorenzo perked up at that.
“Hm,” Charlie said, as they stepped into the accordion-like boarding apparatus. He was pointing at a sign. “What does that say?”
Lorenzo sighed happily and translated for him. “Keep seatbelts and coffins fastened.”
One flight, one boat, and one sunset later, Charlie and Lorenzo were in the heated pool. By the time the sky was fully dark, they were well on their way to hammered.
The hotel was gorgeous, a thoroughly modern glass and steel enclave set right onto the pebbled beach. It had the standard-issue infinity pool with a huge swim-up bar, close enough to hear the waves crashing in the dark.
And Charlie and Lorenzo were being every inch the obnoxious American tourists, laughing too loudly and falling over each other and making out without a care in the world for who could see.
There weren’t even that many other guests out at this time of night, but those that were must have been judging them.
Charlie just couldn’t find it in himself to care.
He’d almost lost this.
The hotel was in Cagliari, a big, bustling city all the way across the island from Lorenzo’s hometown.
Italy from the U.S. was already a long trip, so they were stopping along the way, and he didn’t want those stops to necessarily be laden with meaning, not if Lorenzo wasn’t ready for that.
He’d have time to show Charlie everything here that meant something to him, everything he might’ve touched or seen centuries ago, but that was tomorrow.
Tonight, they could take a night off in a luxury hotel that was younger than Charlie.
“Hang on, hang on,” Charlie said, only slurring a little. “Watch this.”
He was trying to tie a cherry stem into a knot with his tongue, but it was difficult with Lorenzo standing just behind him in the pool, his hands roving all over Charlie’s body, practically drooling onto Charlie’s shoulder as he scented his latest bite.
Lorenzo had bitten him in a number of fun places by now, but Charlie’s favorite would always be the bite on his neck.
After he and Lorenzo had gotten back together, it had finally healed, though it never went away completely; Charlie knew the two shiny, thick scars on his neck would never fade.
He loved rubbing at his bite absently, or in the mornings, when he missed Lorenzo; the reminder that he belonged to him; that they were bound together by this messy, painful connection they shared; that they’d chosen.
Lorenzo’s fingers drifted over Charlie’s nipple, and he shivered, turning to kiss Lorenzo with his sticky-sweet cherry mouth. Lorenzo’s lips were shining when he pulled back.
Charlie went on his back in the pool, looking up at the stars. Lorenzo kept a hand under his back and helped him float, pushing and pulling gently so he was rocking in the water. “Can vampires float?” Charlie asked him.
“Yes.”
“Can you drown?”
“No.”
“I already know you can hold your breath for a really long time.”
Lorenzo quirked an eyebrow down at him, but didn’t bother dignifying the remark with a response.
Charlie stretched and then stood up again, water rolling off his shoulders, and put his hands on Lorenzo’s hips. “What’s the worst part about it?”
They both knew why he was really asking, but they weren’t talking about that directly just quite yet. He appreciated that Lorenzo wasn’t rushing him. He knew Charlie would tell him when he was ready.
Lorenzo thought about Charlie’s question carefully, and said, “No sunlight.” Charlie hummed. “Being stereotyped by vampire fiction.” Charlie laughed. “Obsessive advice columnists.”
Smiling, Charlie asked, “And what do you do with those?”
“I’m a vampire,” Lorenzo said softly, catching Charlie’s jaw in his palm. “I seduce them.”
And they kissed under the moonlight, surrounded by the ocean and a whole unknown world waiting just for them.