Page 5 of Thirsty
Lorenzo frowned, looking taken aback by the idea, and didn’t respond right away. The silence drew out as he simply stared at Charlie, maybe considering his offer, or maybe just mulling over the best way to insult him as he declined. He had big brown eyes, long-lashed and bloodshot, sunken and stark against his pale skin. They were suchvampire’seyes, Charlie couldn’t believe he hadn’t seen it before.
Finally, Lorenzo’s squint curved into a small smile, and he said slowly, “It would amuse me to see you dance to my tune.”
“Oh. Yeah!” Charlie said, happy to encourage this motivation. “It’ll be...super degrading. For me.”
“And what do you wish for in exchange?” Lorenzo asked. “What exactly is this project of yours?”
“I just want to interview you,” Charlie said. “Ask you about, y’know—vampire stuff.”
In an instant, Lorenzo gathered himself up suspiciously. “An interview?” he demanded. “To be published...where?”
“Nowhere,” Charlie said automatically. There it was again—paranormal creatures were allsoprivate. He’d never agree tohelp him if he knew where the information he gave Charlie would end up; that was how he’d struck out with every other supernatural group he’d tried to contact before.
The answer came to him quickly. “No, no, not published,” he continued, doing his best to sound soothing. “It’s—I’m writing a thesis. I’m a graduate student here. At the university.”
“Oh,” Lorenzo said, and the suspicion in his manner drained away. “No one will read that.”
“Right,” Charlie said, relieved.
Lorenzo was smiling again in that strange, almost manic way. He reached into one of the pockets of his long coat and handed Charlie what looked like an old-fashioned calling card. “Come to this address next nightfall,” he said. The card had his name embossed in elaborate script, and beneath that, a Brookville address written in what looked like Bic pen.
Charlie gripped it with both hands. “Thank you,” he said. “Thank you!”
“Oh, you will,” Lorenzo said, somewhat nonsensically.
And this time when he swept past, Charlie let him go.
Chapter 2
Five Years Ago
It’s just down this alley,” Olivia said, skipping ahead of Lorenzo on the rain-soaked pavement.
He hurried to keep up with her. Olivia was small but fearless, and she moved quickly despite the fact that the alleyway was dark and foreboding and her night vision, like all humans’, was poor. “This doesn’t seem like a safe area of town,” he pointed out. “You come here often?”
“Yeah,” she said. “They’re my best friends. It’s fine!” She turned and walked backward for a moment just to grin and waggle her eyebrows at him. “What do you think is going to jump out of the shadows and get me, huh? A monster?”
“Of course not,” he said. “Monsters! Hah. Those don’t...exist.” At least, they wouldn’t officially exist for a few more years, if the rumors he was hearing were true.
“Uh, yeah,” she said, rolling her eyes. “Anyway, I think it’skind of cool that they decided to live off campus this year. It’s so, like...real. Oh, here it is!”
She stopped at a small bungalow and rang the doorbell, and he stepped up beside her. She was more than a foot shorter than him, her long black hair glossy in the dim light, and she smelled of the perfume he’d watched her dance through as she was getting ready. As a human, Olivia was frail in ways she didn’t even understand, but despite that, there was a core of strength in her he found incredibly sexy. She was confident and effervescent. He envied that.
When she looked up at him, she must have seen the trepidation in his face. She smiled reassuringly, squeezing his shoulders, and said, “Don’t worry! My friends love you.”
It was a common misconception in human stories about vampires that they could always tell when humans were lying. Often this power was said to be related to vampires’ heightened senses of scent or hearing; they could supposedly hear a racing heartbeat, or smell the scent of guilt. None of that was true, of course; vampires had no particular advantage over humans when it came to deception.
Olivia, however, was a kind soul who just so happened to be bad at lying in the ordinary way shared by vampires and humans alike. But he didn’t want her to worry, so he just smiled and said, “Okay.”
The party smelled of drugs and cheap cologne, and the music that was playing wasn’t familiar to him, though he tended to be a century or so behind on that sort of thing. The bungalow had a few rooms, with parquet floors and sparse furniture, all of which looked better in the low lighting. Lorenzo wished he could have invited Olivia to his place, but their relationship wasstill in the bloom of newness; he wasn’t ready to tell her the truth about his vampiric nature.
Humans were scattered all around the party, but Olivia bounded straight over to a group standing by a large neon sign that saidFERN. “Hey, guys!” she said happily, wrapping her arms around one of them. When she pulled back, Lorenzo saw that it was her friend Charles.
He suppressed a grimace.
Charlie laughed as Olivia hugged him, the neon reflecting off his round cheeks. “Hey, babe,” he said, while the others waved in greeting.
Olivia turned to Lorenzo, offering her purse. “Hold this, will you? I’m gonna get us some drinks.”
