Page 27 of Oh No! There’s an Incubus in my Hot Spring (Getting Cozy with Demons #1)
twenty-seven
Week One
A s Apollo promised, I call my mother in the morning and help guide her through the process of buying tickets to the closest airport. We open the front doors, set out our signs, and make sure everything is in tip-top shape before the start of business.
The cold front blowing in has me bundled up at the reception stand, but it’s great for business. We have at least a dozen walk-ins on top of the five scheduled appointments, and while it’s not Mark’s numbers—which he commented on my Instaframe post about—I’m still proud. The Boogle ads are doing better, and with Halloween coming up soon, we’ve booked up the second floor to ghost hunters that whole weekend.
Tuesday is much the same, except Leonard comes in for orientation. It’s a brief tour of the place since he’s pretty much familiar with it, and I show him where we hid the industrial washer-dryer for towel rentals.
Wednesday feels like we’re hitting a groove as the temperature really drops and townsfolk flood in for a soak. We close and I find myself wandering to the Heart to look at the status of our place. The beating thrum of the geode puts me at ease, so I close my eyes and listen for a while.
Claws scrape across my neck as Apollo gathers my hair. “Have something on your mind?”
He plants gentle kisses below my ear and I smile, leaning back into him.
“We’re going to run out of space soon,” I say.
“We can fix that. Your magic is overflowing,” he murmurs, nipping where my neck meets my shoulder. “If you don’t release it regularly, it can come out unexpectedly.”
“What are all these new rules cropping up? You didn’t prepare me well enough for this witchy stuff,” I say, glancing over my shoulder at him.
“I’m preparing you now,” he says, smiling as he drags his teeth along my shoulder.
“Well, we can’t just have a new room appear overnight. It’ll look way too suspicious. We’ll have to have some kind of ‘Construction in Progress’ sign blocking off the space, and then we’ll have to fake actual construction. What a pain,” I mumble.
He kisses back up my neck to my jaw. “It’ll be fine. There’s another cavernous space adjacent to ours we can tap. The passageway won’t take much. We can say we had a bit of seismic activity that opened it.”
“Seismic activity?” I ask, incredulously.
“Yes.” He pulls back on my gathered hair, exposing my throat and making me gasp. “I fucked you so hard we shook the foundation of the mountain.”
The geode pulses faster.
“Hey, guys, I finished the laundry so I’m off for tonight!” Leonard calls from the entryway, and I jump out of Apollo’s grip. I rush into the office and grab some random papers off the desk before leaning in the doorway.
I smile at him, trying to hide the flush of heat in my cheeks. “Thanks so much for working a full day today. I’m sure Irene appreciates the time to spend at home with her dad.”
Apollo leans against the frame behind me, placing his hand on my hip. Leonard glances down, catching the motion, and grins. “No problem. I’m glad I was able to get more online classes. I have to go in for the rest of the week, but I’ll be back Saturday morning. Got hours for me?”
“You bet,” I say, fumbling with the pages to keep my hands from twitching.
“See you guys then.” He gives a casual salute and leaves.
The door snaps shut and I whirl around. “You could’ve told me he was still here. I almost let you start that seismic event with an employee present!”
He grins. “Is that to be our cover story, then?”
I roll my eyes. “You know that’ll never fly. We’ll have to come up with something else, like we had the land evaluated. I’ll need to check on where our property boundaries are before we do any big expansions, but I’m pretty sure if it’s directly below us we’ll be fine.
“Oh gods, but if I don’t get a work permit for it…” I chew my lip, running through the mental checklist of what needs to happen for this to all be legal and copasetic.
“I love watching that big brain of yours work a problem.” Apollo groans as he dives back into my neck.
I giggle as he mouths my pulse point, which quickly devolves into moans as he pushes his knee between my legs and pins me to the doorway. The blaze of the geode lights up the office as Apollo reduces me to a whining, begging mess with his fingers and tongue.
I find the Grizzlywood Springs Permits page while Apollo makes us dinner—chicken piccata—and start the process of applying to expand within the property area. With that started, I look into nice gas stoves and place an order for one. A new fridge while I’m at it, because the one from the ’80s is hanging on by a rattling thread.
His dinner is scrumptious, and I’m shocked by how fast he’s gained competency in cooking. My mother is going to be so happy I have someone making sure I don’t need a microwave. I let him know how grateful I am after dinner, and we both go to bed fully satisfied.
The rest of the week is a blur, and much of the same. We close at six on Sunday, and I pull all the finances up for review. Apollo, Irene, and Leonard gather around the desk as I finish up.
“After calculating the average cost of power, water and soap for the towels, the special citrus water we have on every floor, blah, blah, blah, we made a total of five hundred and sixty-three dollars this week. I realize that doesn’t sound like much at all, and it isn’t, but things are going to get better.
“We had a lot of free vouchers that were used this week, so that took away some of the income, and with Mark’s attack on my Boogle listing, we were having a hell of a time getting the ads out and—”
“Hon, it’s fine,” Irene cuts me off. “Five hundred and sixty-three dollars is more than most businesses make in their first week.”
“Yeah, and it’s only going to get better,” Leonard says.
“I think we should celebrate,” Apollo says.
The others agree wholeheartedly, but I’m still thinking about the finances.
“I have money saved from the sale of my last business, so that’s how I’ll be paying you guys next week,” I say, to reassure them that they will be paid.
Irene places a gentle hand on my shoulder. “I’m sorry, ma’am, but I’m off the clock, so we’re going to talk about celebration stuff now.”
I smile. “Yeah, all right. What should we do?”
Leonard’s eyes light up. “The Copperyard Distillery does free tastings for newcomers until eight. We could get a cheap buzz on and walk over to karaoke!”
“Karaoke?” Apollo asks.
Leonard balks at him and Irene jumps in.
“It’s a sing-a-long,” she says. “But on a stage in front of a bunch of people instead of being alone in your shower.”
“Oh, I’m never alone in the shower,” Apollo says, and my face feels like it’s melting. I dip my head forward and hide in my hair as the others laugh.
“Is he any good, then?” Leonard asks, nudging my shoulder.
“I’m sorry, what? ” I snap.
Leonard laughs from the pit of his stomach. “At singing! You know, since you’ve heard firsthand.”
I rub my forehead. “Oh my god…”
“You’re about to kill my girl from embarrassment,” Irene says, pushing the men out of the office. “Go finish doing whatever needs to be done so we can party.”
Leonard grabs the closing checklist from the reception stand and talks through it with Apollo as they wander down the hall.
Irene grins at me and I shake my head. “What?”
“Nothing,” she says, raising her hands.
“Seriously.”
She rolls her eyes. “You guys are just so fucking cute, that’s all. I’m obsessed with how obsessed he is with you.”
I can’t help the little smile that slips through. “In recent developments, I discovered I’m his mate.”
She raises a critical brow. “His what?”
I motion for her to lean in so we won’t be overheard. “He can only love one person—his mate—and everyone else is just kinda…entertainment. Anyway, I was completely emotionally prepared to be the latter,” I lie. “But it turns out I’m the former. What are the chances, right?”
She smiles kindly. “I don’t think it was chance at all.”
I blow a raspberry and lean back in my chair.
She looks at me like I’m crazy. “You’re kidding, right? Out of billions of people it’s you, and you don’t think it’s fate?”
When she says it like that…
“Listen to Irene. She’s smart,” Charlie adds.
I shrug. “I don’t know. I guess I could believe that the universe may have pulled some strings for him.”
Irene holds up her hand and starts counting on her fingers. “Let’s see, you sold your business for exactly the amount you wanted the same day that the spring property went up for sale, and the bidding closed twenty minutes after you placed the highest bid, and you were conveniently freed up the same night because of a shitty cheating ex, so yeah, I’d say that sounds pretty divined to me.”
“It’s totally possible it’s a string of convenient coincidences,” I say, though I feel less certain.
“Whatever. Deny fate all you want, just don’t cry to me if it comes biting you in the ass for dissing on it,” she says, then disappears into the hall to pull in the signs.
I finish the accounting, then check on the Boogle ads one more time and the social media accounts to see that Gabe’s special finally went up. I save the video to my phone so we can watch it at the distillery, and then shut down the laptop.
I flick off the lights and close the door to the office.
Week one down.