Page 51
“Holy fuck. I’m literally on fuckin’ fire,” he slurred.
And also pretty high.
“Uh . . .” Standing, I tried to look into his eyes, but they glowed all purple and bright, like looking into a star. “Are you okay?”
“Am I okay? I’m a thousand okays. I’m the best of okays, and I’m about to go fuck up an ice bitch.” He tugged on the door, flinging it open. “I have arrived!”
“Zee, wait!”
“Huh?”
“Your uh . . . your fly?” I gestured down, where his arrow tattoo pointed at everything on display.
“Oh fuck, right.” With a swift flick of the wrist, he’d tucked himself away. “Whoohoo! God Zee is back, bitches!”
What had I unleashed?
He strutted down the hallway, raining sparks, lit up like . . . well . . . like a glowing purple incubus. He was supposed to dial the glowing down so Stephanie didn’t see him coming, but that wasn’t going to happen.
“Zee, hold up . . .”
I hurried after him, and spotted Victor waiting in the foyer at the foot of the patched-up staircase, next to the barrier with a no-entry sign slung over it to stop guests wandering into the cellar.
Zee tossed aside the sign, and the flimsy barrier.
“Zee, wait.”
Victor saw me—my panic—and Zodiac aglow, and stepped in front of our runaway freight train of a sexed-up incubus. “A moment, Zodiac.”
Zee grabbed him by the face and plundered his mouth in a kiss that almost tore Victor off his feet.
“No guests allowed!” Larimer’s tight thin voice rang from behind us. “Did you not read the sign?!”
The tall slim beanpole of a man stepped out from behind his desk and glowered, making that single eyebrow do the work of two. His thin mouth was pinched so tightly it puckered like a . . . you know.
Zee dropped Victor, leaving him braced against the panels under the staircase, and turned, stalking toward Larimer. “You think you can boss us around? Huh? What even are you, because you ain’t human? You are not even a teensy bit aroused, and right now I could turn the straightest of arrows all the way to gay.”
“Adam, we have to reel Zodiac in or he’s going to alert Stephanie too soon,” Victor said, making it to my side and clutching my shoulder to keep himself upright after Zee’s sexual surprise.
“I know.” But now that Zee had focused on Larimer, the concierge was our immediate concern.
I scooted around Zee and Larimer, both of them locked in a glaring match, and snatched up the phone. Just needed a few seconds while Larimer was distracted . . . I dialed a familiar number.
“Welcome to the SOS Ho—”
Larimer snatched the handset from my fingers. “What are you doing?! No guests behind the desk!”
Had Larimer gotten . . . bigger? Golem big?
“Oh uh . . .” I shrank back, hands up. “I was just calling an . . . Uber?”
“I do believe you three are bad guests.” His voice sounded very growly for an apparently normal human.
Yeah, he’d definitely gotten bigger . . . still tall and thin, but when he turned to face me again, his height had him arching over my head.
“And bad guests must be expelled!”
Bigger still. Now he matched Zee’s height—overtook it.
