Chapter 11 #4
“And when you were five years old and all your friends in kindergarten were saying they wanted to be firemen or astronauts, you felt the need to outdo them by choosing to slay demons?”
He laughs, his face lighting up with it, and it makes him seem so much younger. I’d guessed he was around my age, but now I’m thinking he might be closer to thirty. Whatever, those eyes are beautiful anytime, but when he’s like this, they’re mesmerizing.
Dammit.
“Sort of and not really. My family’s been part of the Collective for a long time…
you’ve met Uncle Norval. He was one of the founders about a thousand years ago, and his little brother was my great-something grandfather.
The ability to be a hunter is pretty strong in our family and has shown up in almost every generation since.
” He rolls his eyes. “Uncle Norval likes to boast about that. So I was born with psychic powers, grew up at the Collective compound surrounded by hunters and gatekeepers and mediums… I guess there just wasn’t any other option. ”
I frown. That doesn’t seem right. “But do you want to do this? I mean, would you rather be designing knitting patterns or something?” I deliberately choose that in the hopes he’ll laugh again, then bask in my reward.
“Sometimes I think it’d be nice to be an accountant or something,” he admits. “Usually when I’m covered in demon slime or ghosts have locked me in a storeroom.”
It’s my turn to laugh.
“But,” he adds, “then I remember accountants don’t get to use swords and rescue hot redheads.
” He winks, and heat rises in my face. Then he gets serious, his gaze intensifying until it seems to burn with the inner fire of his soul.
“It’s a calling. Corny as it sounds, this, what I do, what I am…
it serves a higher purpose, you know? I’m saving people.
I’m what stands between humanity and chaos. ”
Oh my god. I stare at him, riveted, breath caught in my lungs.
He looks away and clears his throat. “I told you it was corny.”
Coughing to get air back to my brain, I wheeze, “No. That’s… No. It’s not corny.”
Silence descends, and I don’t know what to say to break it.
He’s obviously embarrassed about having shared, and while my instinctive reaction to what he said—to throw myself bodily at him and lick him all over—would probably help with that, it’s not going to happen.
Not here and now, anyway, with eavesdroppers mere feet away.
Great time to learn I have a superhero kink. A long-distance yearning for Captain America or even Bucky Barnes would be more convenient, though.
“What about you?” he asks suddenly. “Did you always want to do… this?” He waves a hand to encompass the estate.
I snort. “Not even in my wildest childhood dreams could I have come up with everything this job has thrown at me.”
He puts a hand to his throat in mock shock. “You mean ‘getting locked up by matchmaking ghosts’ isn’t every kid’s dream job?”
“It’s not in any careers guide I ever saw.
” I shake my head. “I didn’t have a ‘calling.’ When I was a kid I went through the usual phases, changing future careers every week or so.
I ended up at college because my parents could afford to send me, and I figured it would give me extra time to decide what I wanted to do with my life.
But freshman year, my girlfriend invited me to go with her family to Joy Universe over winter break, and it was like a switch flipped for me. Have you ever been?”
He shakes his head. “Not JU, but Disneyland, yeah. It’s only a few hours away from home.”
“Okay, so you’ve seen what a big theme park is like, the way there’s so much to coordinate and manage but it all seems so effortless?”
Judging by his dubious expression, he never paid attention. I push on anyway.
“That looked like fun to me, making everything run smoothly, but it was the resorts I loved the most. Not just a hotel, but a whole experience within the experience. I went back to school and focused on hospitality and tourism management, interning over breaks at any hotel that would have me.”
“So how’d you end up here instead of at JU or Disney or an all-inclusive resort on an island?” He sounds genuinely interested.
“Been there, done that.” I grin. “First for a cruise line, then an all-inclusive resort in the Florida Keys, and after that, assistant resort manager at JU. But the manager here before me was someone I worked with at the cruise line, and when she called and suggested I apply for her job since she was leaving…” I spread my hands.
“Something about it called to me. I liked the idea of doing my thing on a boutique scale.”
“So you do have a calling.”
I blink. He’s smiling at me, his face soft, but it’s the words that make me warm inside.
I’m basically a hotel manager. Nobody’s ever referred to that as a “calling,” even though it’s the only thing that ever felt truly right for me.
With one sentence, he’s shown that he understands me better than anyone else in my life.
“I guess I do,” I squeeze through my suddenly tight throat.