“I’m not ahouse,” I mutter.
“Youare,” he insists. “All mortals belong to a line. A bloodline. Yours must be formidable.”
“Okay, you can stop buttering me up now.”
He tilts his head like a curious dog. “I am not using butter.”
I blink. He’s serious. He’s deadly serious.
And weirdly... sweet?
“You’re telling me,” I begin, voice still trembling, “that you followed some hell-spawn through a bathroom portal to this world, and now you're here to… what? Fight it? Kill it?”
“Yes.”
“And the kiss was just so you could learn English?”
“Correct.”
I run a hand through my hair, trying to smooth out the panic still crackling through me. “Do all guys from wherever-you’re-from go around kissing strangers to learn languages?”
“No. Most use blood rituals. The kiss is more efficient. And less messy.”
“Oh,thank Godyou opted for the PG-13 version,” I mutter. “So what now? You go hunt it? Inmytown?”
“Yes.”
“And I’m just supposed to… what? Let you?”
He rises to his full, intimidating height. His chest rises and falls like he’s carved from mountain ranges and bad decisions. “You saw it too. Did you not?”
“I did.”
“Then you know what I say is truth. That thing will kill again. It lives for carnage. For the agony of others. It must be stopped.”
I chew my lip. My instincts are still screaming torun, but they’re now whispering in the background while a new voice—one suspiciously like Peggy’s—is sayinghe’s not wrong.
I saw the other one. Ithurtto look at. It smelled like a grave and moved like a virus. This guy may be an orc warlord or a LARP dropout with a steroid problem, but he’s not lying.
“And if I don’t help you?” I ask.
“You do not need to. I will hunt it regardless. But your knowledge of this place would be… advantageous.”
I sigh. Long. Loud.
And then, against every scrap of self-preservation I have left, I mutter, “Fine. I’ll help.”
He bows his head again, a little too dramatically. “You honor me, Olivia of House Wilkins.”
“I’m regretting this already.”
First challenge? Getting him out without someone livestreaming it to the Cryptid Colonoscopy tag.
“Alright, you gotta go out the back,” I whisper, shoving him toward the staff exit.
“Why?”
“Because if anyone sees you, they’re going to call the cops, the news, and probably Ghostbusters.”
