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“Interesting name. Elfknot.” He pursed his lips, casting another look around the front office. “Where’d it come from?”

“Come from?” I chuckled a touch warily and reached for the mouse to wake up the monitor. “That’s just what it’s always been called.”

My aunt had actually explained the name to me once, but I hadn’t been listening properly because Nat had been texting me live updates about his terrible, terrible date with a fae who worked as a human magician.

“What does that mean?” the human guy asked, jerking his chin at something behind me.

I peered back to see the embroidered panel hanging above the key hooks—the one that said, Curse This Murse in a swirly font with a cute demon tail making a border around the edge. The fabric had yellowed with age.

I snickered at the sight of it. My mom had embroidered it as a gift when Aunt Greta and Uncle Bernie bought the motel. It was just a little demon joke—a play on the Bless This Mess signs humans seemed to love.

But obviously I couldn’t tell a human that.

“Just… an inside joke.” I waved a hand and smiled again, clicking the mouse and peering at the screen. “Okay, let’s see what rooms are available…”

I should probably put him far away from Frank and Beans, but I also didn’t want him too close to the front office in case… well, just in case.

Okay, just in case Brian and I fucked and he got so aroused and overwhelmed because he liked me so much that he wolfed out and howled during release and everyone in a half-mile radius heard.

“Curse?” For some reason, the human was still fixated on the silly embroidery. “Seems like a weird thing to have hanging up in a motel office. So does that.”

He pointed at something in the corner of the room. Brian and I turned in our chairs at the same time to look, our eyes landing on an Ancient Greek-style sculpture my uncle had commissioned in the nineties of an incubus with a gigantic, intricately detailed erection.

“Oh. That.” I gestured at it, specifically the dick area. “Well, look. We use it to hang up necklaces. On the dong. They’re made by a local fae…mous… famous jeweller my auntie knows.”

“Okay, sure, but what is it? A demon?” The human narrowed his eyes at me as he waited for the answer. “It’s a demon, right? A supernatural being?”

I blinked back at him, keeping my expression open and empty of any emotion. “Huh? It’s just a statue.”

He grunted, peering around again. Brian and I shared a quick look—I rolled my eyes in exasperation, he pursed his lips into a grim line—before the human pointed at something else.

“What does that mean?”

Suppressing my sigh, I leaned over the desk to look. “It’s just a jokey sign.”

“‘No wings, no hooves, no service,’” he read out.

“Is there a problem, man?” Brian suddenly asked, his tone terse in a way that reminded me of his growly, aggressive Fenrir persona. I shivered, glancing at him and nibbling my lower lip. So hot.

“Nope.” The human rocked back on his heels, still scanning the room and all the knickknacks in it. “There’s just a lot of weird stuff in here.”

Now that there was a human in here paying this much attention to the decorations, I was starting to realise how much stuff we had that hinted at the secret supernatural world. The big-dicked incubus statue for one, but also all the erotic artwork with heavy bitey-bloody-Gothic themes, painted by a local vampire artist. The ‘lucky werewolf’s paw’ my uncle bought in the eighties that was really just a mannequin hand with claws and fake fur glued onto it. The novelty ‘cockoo’ clock with a pendulum shaped like a nut sack and a big red knotted werewolf cock that popped out on the hour.

There was also the life-sized portrait of a hunky Lucifer wearing only a spiked, flaming codpiece, gazing heroically into middle distance while surrounded by explosions and sexy naked demons. The paperweight on my desk shaped like a succubus vulva with teeth, which was just standard demon iconography—demon vulvas didn’t actually have teeth, duh—but I guessed it probably looked a little alarming to a human. And the potted Otherworld plant in the corner that a friend had gifted my aunt, but it didn’t look too alien. Aside from the foot-wide pink and purple marbled leaves. But we just told human guests it was fake.

I shrugged, feigning nonchalance, even though all his questions were starting to make me a little nervous. “Don’t know what to tell you. My aunt and uncle decorated the place. They’re collectors of eclectic erotica. How does room eight sound?”

“You tell me,” the human said, leaning an elbow on the counter and eyeing me intently. “Is that a… normal room for normal people… or is that one of the special rooms? For… special people?”

I stared at him blankly. “Special people?”

“Yeah. You know…” He trailed off. When I didn’t do or say anything, he repeated, “Special people. Not… normal.”

“Ummm…” I leaned back in my seat and swivelled it side to side, cocking my head. “I’m not sure I get what you mean, but, like, what is ‘normal’ anyways? You know?”

He stared at me in silence for a few seconds, then sighed and scrubbed a hand over his face. “Sure. Room eight is fine.”

“Great.” I reached back to grab the key off the hook. “That room actually has a really pretty giraffe print feature wall. Ooh, and a vibrating bed! You need quarters for it, though. Do you want some quarters?”