Page 18 of Thirsty
“Great,” Charlie said, beaming at him like the cat that’d caught the canary. “So. You know what this means...”
Lorenzo avoided his teasing smile. “Aren’t you here to watch your,” he said, waving vaguely, “samurai program?”
“That’s one reason,” Charlie said, pinning him with a pleased, expectant stare. It was strange being the focus of Charlie’s attention, when five years ago he’d barely shown Lorenzo more than dismissive scorn. This Charlie, the one who seemed brimming with enthusiasm to track down and entrap Lorenzo at every turn, was unsettling. The force of his interest made Lorenzo feel like he might fidget out of his skin.
He needed to spend more time brainstorming a plot to wreak his revenge on Charlie, since that was the only reason he’d agreed to help him in the first place. It had seemed like such an obvious idea when he’d first encountered Charlie in that coffee shop, and at the time he’d been sure that the details of the revenge plan would simply come to him with time. After all, he had plenty of long nights to brood on the cruelties of life and all of the discontent that Charlie had brought him; surely something would come of it.
But with each passing day, Charlie seemed to be getting more and more out of their arrangement, while Lorenzo’s true agenda was sputtering on air. He needed to seriously rededicate himself to the task. He’d simply have to harness the darkness within.
In the meantime, though, he knew he’d been backed into a corner. Lorenzo sighed. “Fine. I am a creature of my word—I will fulfill my end of the bargain.” Before Charlie’s smug expression could manifest itself in words, he added: “I will answer one question.”
Charlie’s jaw dropped satisfyingly. “What?Onequestion?”
Lorenzo opened the fridge, took the pig’s blood out again, and set it on the counter along with a bowl from the cupboard. “I never said how many questions you would get in exchange for each errand.”
By now Charlie had recovered, suppressing a smile as if he were amused by Lorenzo’s attempts to stymie him. “Well, I did do more than one errand,” he said, leaning against the countertop. “And, technically, if you count each item of dry cleaning separately—”
“Which I won’t.”
“I think I should get...ten questions,” Charlie said.
Lorenzo grabbed a block of cream cheese from the fridge and stared Charlie down. After a suitably dramatic pause, he offered: “Three.”
“Eight.”
Lorenzo unwrapped the cream cheese block, dumped it into the bowl, and poured the blood over it. “Maybe we should forget the whole thing.”
“Oh, come on,” Charlie said amiably. “You wouldn’t do that to me after I ran all over town for you. Not if you’re acreature of your word.” Lorenzo couldn’t tell if he was flattered or insulted by the way Charlie had deepened his voice to mimic his.
“You did two things.”
Charlie bit his lips. “I’ll get Rachel and Maggie in here. They’ll beat you up.”
“I’m not scared of them,” Lorenzo said.
Charlie smiled at him; a small, fond smile, as if he was enjoying their banter no matter where it led. Lorenzo was suddenly seized with the urge to get the entire thing over with as quickly as possible.
“Five questions,” he said, stirring his dinner.
“Seven.”
Lorenzo rolled his eyes. “Fine.”
“Great,” Charlie said. He got out a notepad and pen while Lorenzo put his bowl in the microwave and grabbed a bag of tortilla chips from the pantry.
“You really want to do this right now?” Lorenzo asked, grasping for one last excuse. “You won’t miss your show?”
“I’ll watch it later,” Charlie said, clicking his pen with an air of deep satisfaction. He glanced at the microwave as it whirred and said, “So—I guess I don’t need to ask, but...you can eat human food?”
“Yes.”
“That’s interesting,” he said, scribbling as he wrote. “I thought maybe anything other than blood would be toxic to vampires or something.”
Lorenzo shrugged. “It makes my stomach hurt. But sometimes, you know, it’s worth it.”
Charlie grinned. “I get that.” As Lorenzo took the bowl out of the microwave, he added, “Is that...human blood?”
“Pig.”
