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Before I could even try to make sense of that, he was tipping back his drink and immediately reaching for the decanter again. “Wow, it’s kind of nice saying whatever I want to you. You won’t remember any of it by the morning. I could literally tell you anything and you won’t remember.”
“Um…” I was starting to get really nervous. “Look, if I could just go—”
“Wanna know what I am?” He lazily spun his desk chair from side to side, dark liquid almost sloshing out of his glass.
Okay, maybe I’d been very, very wrong to assume this guy was more level-headed than Larkin.
“Um, you’re… you’re Pink Eye,” I said nervously.
He snorted. “No, I’m not. I own Goliaths. I’m not one of the wrestlers. And this”—he gestured at himself—“is what I actually look like. I’m an empyn, which means I absorb other people’s emotions.”
Would I be able to get past Larkin and Seb if I made a run for it?
“And look, sometimes you just get hungry for really specific emotions, you know? Like when you’re sad and you want to stay sad so you only listen to sad songs on repeat. Or like… when all you want to eat is a hotdog, and you literally can’t think of anything else but eating a hotdog. It was nothing personal—you know, the whole… asking you to strip while telling me about your sad life.”
Oh god, we were back to this.
“And I don’t only like negative emotions. I mean, I actually dislike a lot of them. Like, right now, you’re wildly uncomfortable and really nervous, right? I don’t like nervous. Or uncomfortable. They make me uncomfortable.” He chugged his fourth—fifth? Sixth?—drink. “That’s why I hire lampyr dancers to satisfy my specific cravings. Lampyrs are true shapeshifters, by the way. They’re really good at emulating emotions. But fuck.” He snorted. “I should’ve realised straight away that you weren’t one. The ennui pouring off you is way too strong for a lampyr to ever emulate.”
“Hey,” I said sharply.
“No, I mean that as a compliment,” he told me earnestly, his eyes a little hazy now as he gazed at me. “Made me really fucking horny really fast. Usually takes me a while because I know they’re just faking it. You know?”
Good grief. I’d made this beautiful, unhinged wrestling boss horny?
With my ennui?
“This is so freeing,” Holt declared, gesturing animatedly with his glass again. “I can tell you anything. Come on, sit down. You want a drink? It’s dark rum.”
I gulped. “Wh-why can’t I just leave?”
He gave me an odd look as he poured rum into a second tumbler. “I told you. Because Axel is coming to remove your memory of this happening, so we might as well talk while we wait. Is there anything you wanna tell me too? You won’t remember doing it in the morning.”
I stiffened. “But you will.”
He waved a hand. “Yeah, but you won’t remember telling me, so you won’t care. Come on, sit down.”
Not entirely sure why, I slowly moved closer to the desk and sat in the comfy leather chair opposite him. When Holt slid the second glass of rum across his desk, I leaned forward to pick it up.
This was weird.
“Sometimes when Larkin thinks I’m working, I’m really just colouring,” Holt told me.
I stared at him, glass halfway to my mouth. “Huh?”
He nodded and opened a desk drawer to pull out an adult colouring book. “It’s relaxing.”
“Oh, right, yeah.” I nervously had a tiny sip of my drink, making my eye twitch. I wasn’t used to hard liquor. “I bet it would be.”
“I had a dick one, but I got through that really fast.” He dropped the book back into the drawer with a sigh. “Been a while for me, hence the whole stripper thing to get my kicks. How about you? Boned anyone since your shitty ex?”
What was happening?
“Um, no.”
He winced. “Damn. Four-year dry spell. That sucks balls. Well, actually it does the opposite of sucking balls, right?” After a thoughtful pause, he continued. “Sometimes I worry that one of my testicles hangs too much lower than the other. Like, they look too uneven. You know what I mean?”
“Uh…”
