Page 2 of Thirsty
I am a middle-aged mother of two. In my youth, before having kids, I had a one-night stand with a man named “Diego.” Recently, I met my older daughter’s new boyfriend and was shocked to learn that it is Diego himself. Apparently he is a vampire and has not aged since our encounter. (Also, he did not seem to remember me at all.) How do I broach this subject with my daughter? Should I be concerned that he seems to be working his way through our family one generation at a time?
Sincerely,
Vampire DiCaprio’s Ex
He clicked quickly to the next one.
Dear Crone,
My fiancé “Zara” and I got engaged a few months ago, and it’s been nothing but nonstop fights between our families ever since. My family wants a live band, hers wants a DJ. I want to get married at our local synagogue, but Zara’s family is insisting that the venue be the eternal wellspring of Braxl’thar the Forsaken, which is lovely but can only seat 66, and my cousins alone—
He stopped reading mid-sentence and clicked back over to his messages with Ava.I can’t do any of these.
why not???she demanded.they’re weird and messy and cool!and it’s such clickbait, Ask a Manager did a whole series on hexes in the workplace last week and it was everywhere
He stared at her message, trying to think of how to respond. Ava wasn’t wrong—supernatural stuff was all anyone was talking about these days.
When the vampires, werewolves, faeries, and such had first “come out” a few years ago, they’d been more or less ignored; the world was a dumpster fire being carried away by a tornado, and the wholemagic is real!thing had kind of gotten buried. Charlie thought he might have posted something likeNOT NOW, MYSTICAL CREATURESand moved on.
But over the last year or so, people seemed to remember that it had happened, and interest in the paranormal had grown until this summer, when it’d finally tipped into a full-blown frenzy. All his competitors were doing pieces on dating the supernatural, working with the supernatural, and rooming with the supernatural. (The consensus was tonotsteal their food.) There was a strange sort of push and pull going on, where the public had never been more interested, but the paranormals themselves seemed highly reclusive, as if maybe they regretted coming out of the shadows. Or maybe that was just something inherent in being a creature of magic; Charlie had never met one, but he couldn’t imagine a talkative vampire, or a werewolf prone to oversharing. Intrigue seemed like part of the gig, and the world was quite intrigued.
But Charlie wasn’t—he was completely lost. He didn’t have anything against werewolves and vampires, he just knew nothing about them. He’d never met one (that he knew of), and he knew nothing about their lives or relationships, their culture or customs or taboos. He didn’t have anything to offer the peoplewriting to him about this viral new topic, and that was the whole point of being an advice columnist: He was supposed to be helpful. Reliable. Wise. These letters about the supernatural made him feel like a fraud.
And the entire strange situation was exacerbated by the fact that the very nameWise Old Cronesounded—now—like an advice columnforthe supernatural, possibly evenbythe supernatural. He had to assume he was getting a higher proportion of letters about paranormal topics than his peers, because what had started as a trickle was now a torrential downpour of questions about curses and love spells and yearning across dimensions. It could only be that his readers, at least some of them, assumed that the Wise Old Crone was not merely Charlie’s corny joke, but an actual mystical source of wisdom.
In fact, he had an ominous feeling that the new owners ofMidnightmight have even been under the mistaken impression thatWise Old Crone wasa supernatural advice column. That could certainly be where Ava’s pressure on him to “chase the niche” was coming from. Or maybe she was just earnestly looking out for him.
It didn’t matter. He’d already tried retooling his column to address the paranormal (he’d seen how much attentionDear Prudencegot for that wild letter about leprechaun inbreeding)—and he’d failed. He’d decided that before he could write about the supernatural, he had to educate himself, so he’d sought out information. There wasn’t a lot to find online, so he’d reached out to a few friends who’d bragged about meeting up with fae guys, and he’d even tried cold-calling any coven or other paranormal group he could find online. But it had all been a bust—no one would talk to him. It seemed mystical creaturesweren’t eager to have the details of their personal lives splashed about online for public dissection. Which, he supposed, was fair.
But that left Charlie with a bunch of boring letters about humans, a bunch of paranormal letters he had no idea how to respond to, and a career that was circling the drain. In his mind’s eye he could see the glowing red rectangle on his calendar for Monday:COLUMN DUE. He felt panic crawling up his throat again and took a few deep breaths.
Ava was writing to him.you’re going to get through this. your column is awesome and so are you
Yeah, he wrote back.It’s so great the click-based model drained my bank account in a few months.
That was the worst part of the buyout and the new owners and the fucking click model: the part where he couldn’t even be mad about it.
Because if his column reallywasas popular as it’d been just a few years ago, he wouldn’t be in this position.
Somehow, over the last few years, his column had gone...stale. He felt like he was always writing about the same problems, giving the same answers, regurgitating the same posts over and over again. No matter how much he tried to spice up his writing, find a new angle, reinvent his point of view, it never seemed to amount to anything. No wonder he was fading away. He’d lost his voice.
This was his fault.
A gust of cold air wafted over him as a customer walked into the shop; it had been balmy during the day, but this late at night it was chilly. Whatever Ava was writing to him, she was wavering on it; her dots popped up and then vanished, popped up and vanished again. Then:is it that bad?
His heart jumped.No, it’s fine, he lied.
let me cheer you up, she wrote back.let’s get drinks!
He winced.I’m actually not in NYC this weekend, he wrote.Visiting a friend out of town.
oh fun! when you get back then
Yeah, he wrote.When I get back.
He closed his laptop before she could respond. He’d been making excuses for a few weeks, telling people he was visiting friends or couch surfing for a while. Plenty of writers did their work on the road, after all.
It would just be too pathetic to admit the truth.
