Page 9 of Oh No! There’s an Incubus in my Hot Spring (Getting Cozy with Demons #1)
nine
Magic Upgrades are Badass
I nside the little secret room is a massive purple geode, split open on the side. It must be three times the size of my head, loaded with sharp, glistening gems that sparkle of their own accord. It sits atop an ornate pedestal made from dark stone that clutches the geode tightly.
The stones don’t just sparkle, they thrum .
Da-dum, da-dum, da-dum.
I put my hand to my neck and feel my pulse moving in time. Apollo smiles, grabbing my hand and placing it over his heart. The same beat is within him, too.
“What is this?” I whisper.
“We are bonded now, and I am bound to this mountain.”
I stare at the geode. “How…”
“It is a very long story,” he says, releasing my hand.
“I’ve got a few minutes to spare to hear it,” I say.
He smirks. “I will spare you the minutia, but I upset a very powerful witch. She nearly killed me and my choices were succumb to the black abyss of demise, or bond myself to this place. I chose to go on, however painful it was to surrender my physical form.
“I was incorporeal for several decades while the people who came here to bathe slowly fed me. In the later years, the resort was an illegal brothel, and I was finally able to take shape again. Not long after I showed myself to the owner and propositioned we work together in the hopes that I could gain enough power to break free of this place. They were killed not long after our arrangement, and the brothel shut down.
“I only showed myself twice more; once to a man who died that very night, and you.”
Irene’s warning from this morning comes back to me like a bolt of lightning. “What happened to him? The man before me?”
Apollo looks at his hands. “My form frightened him and he was older in years. The damage to his heart was past my healing capabilities and I…”
The geode thrums faster, and so does my heart. I touch his chest gently. “It’s okay. What happened?”
“I couldn’t leave him in the water to rot, but I wasn’t able to bury him as your kind prefer. I could’ve burned him, but that may have drawn attention to my presence. I brought him to the top deck and threw him down so he could be found. It took several days.”
He falls quiet, but the beating of our joined hearts with the geode doesn’t slow. I can’t imagine what had to be going through his head: the desperation to be free, the fear and the guilt over what he’d done.
“Why did you decide to reveal yourself to me?” I ask.
He looks at me through his lashes. “Purely selfish reasons, and a hope that you didn’t have a heart condition.”
I smile sadly. “No heart condition to speak of—yet.”
“Ever,” he says. “I will heal every ailment.”
Such long-term thinking. I wonder if he doesn’t believe I’ll ever free him from here.
“But I didn’t bring you here for a sad story,” he says, moving toward the geode. “With this, we can shape the very foundation of the mountain.”
I step up beside him. “How?”
“Magic, my witch. The intent of your desires shaped by energy and ritualistic incantations that turn chaos into rules that matter can follow.”
“So, how does this work?” I ask, looking at the geode.
“My markings can be used for many things,” he says, placing his hand on the pulsing heart of the mountain. The teal lines from his other shoulder squiggle across his body and onto the geode. They course through it, then around it, and take shape in the air beside us in runic shapes I don’t recognize. They’re jagged and sharp, all angular lines and dots.
“What does it mean?” I ask.
“Apologies, this is my language.” He runs his fingers through the floating teal magic and it shifts into English.
Enchanted Mountain Springs
Floors: 3
Rooms: 14
General Status: Decrepit
Energy Levels: 15%
“Oh. My. Fucking. God.” I gape at the information. “What else can it show us?”
He moves his hand through the word “Rooms” and the magic reshapes.
Floor 1:
Witch’s Abode
Antechamber
Business Office
Locker Room, Women’s
Locker Room, Men’s
Storage Room
Private Bath 1
Private Bath 2
Steam Room
Floor 2:
Private Bath 3
Private Bath 4
Balcony Bath 1
Restroom
Floor 3:
Private Bath 5
Balcony Bath 2
“Why didn’t I see the private baths on the first floor when I did my walkthrough?” I ask.
Apollo shrugs. “Much like this room, I’ve sealed them off to protect them from the hooligans.”
I giggle at the word, but I remember the spray paint on the upper walls, so I’m grateful he did that.
“Each of these will show the individual status of that room as well,” he says, waving through “Balcony Bath 2.”
Balcony Bath 2
Occupants: 0
Temperature: 106 degrees Fahrenheit
Cleanliness: 62%
Acidity Level: 5.4
Trace Minerals: 100
General Status: Ill Repair
I laugh at the sheer audacity of this mountain actively reporting what’s going on with it. “This is…this is so useful. This is incredible!”
“If I’d known how much you’d love this feature, I would’ve offered it as the first selling point to bonding with me.” Apollo smiles. “Most of the interpretations are my own—the general status is what I believe is true of the area. When we do a deeper inspection of each room, we will glean new knowledge that will be stored here for our use. Your knowledge will now be kept here as well.”
I turn to him with a scowl. “Wait, does that mean I’m tied to this place, too? That I can’t leave?”
He shakes his head. “No, you’re bound to me in a different way. I had to…become the mountain to survive. This form you see,” he says, gesturing to himself. “It is not my original form. That was destroyed by the witch.”
“I see,” I say, though I’m still a bit confused about just how connected to him and this place I am. But the excitement running through me from the possibilities pushes that worry off for later. “I want to get started right away. We have so much to do before the moving truck arrives tomorrow!”
“What would you like to do first?”
“Those red carpets need to be eighty-sixed,” I say.
He scowls at me in confusion.
“They’re terrible and they have to go. All of them. Can we replace them with wood flooring?” I ask, clapping my hands as I jump up and down. “Ooh, pine! It’ll smell so wonderful in here all the time.”
He grins, cupping my cheek affectionately. “You are delightful. I’m glad you’re here.”
A strange feeling of gratitude and shyness washes over me, and the geode flashes faster. “I am, too. For more than just the great orgasms and back massages. This is what I need, I think. This place, this project, and all its obstacles. And magic!” I shout, unable to keep all the energy inside me.
He laughs. “Then let’s feed your spirit and get to work.”
He waves his hand through the display lingering by the geode and it returns to the top-level status menu.
“Can you teach me to do that?” I ask.
“When you’ve developed significantly enough, you’ll be able to, but for now, you’re too weak,” he says, swiping into the main entrance room. He dives down through the menus until he reaches “Upgrades.”
“It’s so…orderly,” I say, unable to conjure another word.
“I like to keep myself in order.”
On the next screen, several things populate, like windows, doors, reception stand, furniture, and then floors. He swipes into “Floors” and the general status reads, “Needs to be eighty-sixed.”
My cheeks hurt from how hard I’m smiling.
“I sense a few downed pines within my sphere of influence. Would you like me to summon them to the entryway?” Apollo asks.
“Can you turn them into floorboard shapes?” I ask.
“If you give me specifications, I can make that my intent,” he says.
I pull out my phone, which gets absolute shit reception in here—that will need to be rectified, too—and though it takes forever to load, I get dimensions for standard floorboards. “Looks like thirty inches long, by four inches wide, by a half-inch thick,” I say, showing him my phone screen.
“Your apps are incredible, too, much like my magic. You give it your intent, and it responds with information.”
I chuckle. “Yeah, I suppose so. Want me to teach you how to use them?”
“I’d be honored to learn your magic,” he says with a grin. “Now, stand close to me. I will need some of your energy.”
I put my hand on his arm and step beside him.
“How is it you say?” he asks, looking at me. Then he leers. “Ah, yes. Abracadabra.”
There’s a loud crash from the room behind us, and I jump, squealing in a very undignified way. I release Apollo and run for the entryway. There on the floor is a massive pile of timber freshly cut to the size specifications I gave him. The red carpet has disappeared, and what remains is flat concrete slab all the way into the mountain.
“Erm, when I said replaced with wood, this isn’t quite what I was expecting,” I say, disappointment ebbing in where excitement once was.
Apollo chuckles beside me. “You thought you wouldn’t have to work at all?”
I grimace. “I did.”
He grips the back of my neck and whispers against my temple, “Where’s the fun in that?”
I glare at him from the corner of my eye. “We’re still lacking a carpenter. No one in town will help us.”
“We’ll have to help ourselves, won’t we?”
“You really can’t just…magic these into place?” I ask, staring at the pile of lumber.
“There’s nothing on the premise that would serve as a suitable adhesive, though I’m sure I could find materials for nails within the stone.”
I huff out a long sigh and cross my arms. Without a carpenter, this would take months to do on our own.
“You’ve never done this before.” My mother’s voice rings loud in my head.
“You can’t do this.”
“Just go home. Jason will take you back.”
Yeah, that’s not an option in this universe or any other.
I glance at Apollo. “Help ourselves, huh?”
He nods with a warm smile.
I pull out my phone. “All right. I guess I’m showing you ViewTube first.”