Entranced by the Basilisks: A Love Bathhouse Monster Romance, page 1
CONTENTS
Content Warnings
Prologue
1. Jasper
2. Emilia
3. Jasper
4. Emilia
5. Emilia
6. Jasper
7. Emilia
8. Emilia
9. Jasper
10. Ari
11. Emilia
12. Jasper
13. Emilia
14. Ari
15. Emilia
16. Emilia
17. Ari
18. Jasper
19. Emilia
20. Jasper
21. Emilia
22. Emilia
23. Ari
24. Emilia
25. Jasper
26. Emilia
27. Jasper
28. Emilia
29. Ari
30. Jasper
31. Emilia
32. Emilia
33. Ari
34. Jasper
35. Emilia
36. Emilia
37. Jasper
38. Emilia
39. Emilia
40. Ari
41. Jasper
42. Ari
43. Emilia
44. Ari
45. Emilia
46. Ari
47. Jasper
48. Emilia
49. Jasper
50. Emilia
51. Emilia
52. Ari
53. Emilia
54. Ari
55. Jasper
Epilogue
Note From the Author
About the Author
Entranced by the Basilisks
Copyright © 2022 by Lillian Lark. All rights reserved.
No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without written permission from the author, except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, places, events, locales, and incidents are either the products of the author’s imagination or used in a fictitious manner. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events is purely coincidental.
Editor: Ellie, My Brother’s Editor
Proofreader: Rosa Sharon, My Brother’s Editor
Cover Artist: Lillian Lark
Created with Vellum
CONTENT WARNINGS
Dear Reader,
Entranced by the Basilisks includes descriptions of anxiety, snakes, bullying not by a love interest, pain play, family estrangement, deceptions and manipulations perpetrated by love interest, and highly inaccurate snake anatomy.
(And a complete lack of hemipenes. They each just get one. Future dragons though…)
Be kind to yourself,
L. Lark
For Tommy,
Thank you for answering all my silly questions.
Now, for the love of all that’s holy, don’t read any further!
PROLOGUE
EMILIA
“So, you’ve been cursed?”
I flinch. Cursed.
The woman across the intricately carved desk asks the question in a careful way, a kind way.
I blink, dropping my gaze while I nod. My eyes run over the carvings of the opulent piece of furniture, and I snap my head up again. My cheeks burn.
The carvings are people having sex. In fire. Some figures are so contorted that my panicked mind didn’t recognize the images until parsing out a hand grasping the hair of its wooden companion and the rest of the images came together in all their lurid glory.
What is this place?
I already know the answer to that question. This is the first place Grace thought to bring me when she’d run her hands over the book I shouldn’t have opened. I shake my head.
“Sorry.” I clear my throat. “Today has been… wild.”
My words come out raspy. Lack of sleep and a surplus of panic constrict my throat. I’d already been struggling with the revelation that the world is not how it seems before this nightmarish event started. Weeks ago, I’d been abducted by people performing what I’d assumed were magic tricks. It had been a fearful, bizarre experience even before gargoyles came to my rescue.
The revelations that followed make it hard to sleep at night. I am human, but parts of the rest of the population aren’t. My best friend isn’t. The woman across from me isn’t.
I walk among threatening creatures every day and can’t tell which of them would grind my bones for bread, offer a kind deed, or just want to live their lives. The world is strange.
I still don’t have the guts to ask if El Cuco, the bogeyman all the mothers in the neighborhood threatened us with throughout our childhood, is real. There are some things best left undiscovered.
Just like some books aren’t meant to be opened.
The woman waits for me to answer the question. She’s so patient and understanding that I fight back the tears that have plagued me since this all began.
I cried for an hour straight after it happened. After the panic and crying and Grace trying to reassure me that we’d figure this out, I pulled myself together. Mostly. Every few minutes I feel the slither along my scalp and my composure threatens to crack again.
“Yes, I’ve been”—I swallow—“cursed.”
The woman, who introduced herself as Rose Love, matchmaker extraordinaire, nods.
“And that would be the reason for the glasses?” she asks, pointing to the gold heart-shaped frames with rose-tinted lenses.
Grace swore, hand over her heart, that these were the best option. They’d come from her vintage collection and supposedly the materials are high enough quality to handle the spell she’d cast on them.
On any other day, the glasses would be funny, but right now, I'm the last person who would be accused of seeing the world through rose-colored glasses.
“Yes. We don’t know yet if I can really turn—” I cut myself off, still struggling to believe that any of this can be real.
“Turn people to stone?” Rose asks.
I breathe. “Yes.”
“Interesting,” Rose muses, tapping a stylish pen softly against the stationery in front of her.
A laugh of disbelief catches in my throat. Interesting is the last word I’d use for it, but maybe if I weren’t the one walking around as the poster child of a revitalized myth, I’d take a more academic approach.
Rose winces as if she can hear my thoughts... maybe she can. I’m far from an expert about witch abilities.
“Sorry, this is just the first curse of this kind that I’ve seen. What is it that you think I can do? Grace wasn’t very clear when she called me,” she says.
Grace had walked me in before taking off to pick up a glamour for me. A spell to hide what has happened while we try to figure out how to break the curse.
The vintage hair scarf tied in the fashion of a Hollywood starlet doesn’t hide the movement of my affliction.
Grace thinking I need a glamour in the meantime tells me that she doesn’t think this is going to be an easy fix. I hadn’t wanted to pick apart her hypothesis for breaking the curse. I should have asked more questions.
“Um, well… Grace picked up some details from the book that did this, and she thinks that a way to break the spell is to find my mate.” My cheeks burn. “Or… find pleasure on a serpent’s tongue.”
Whatever the fuck that meant.
“Ah.” Rose’s confusion clears. “So, you came to me to find you your mate, or pleasure presumably with a serpent kin.”
“The book is serpent kin in origin,” I say, as if this term isn’t hours old in my vocabulary. “According to Grace.”
“I see,” Rose says. She bites her lip in consideration. “How do you feel about either of those options?”
How do I feel? That’s a can of worms I don’t want to pry open, but the matchmaker asked…
“I don’t usually have casual sex. A-assuming that’s what’s meant by finding pleasure with.” My shyness means that for me to be sexual with someone, I need to get to know them first. Not that I’d been doing any of that for a long time. If I’m not working, which is what takes up most of my time, I’m hanging out with Grace or my mom.
Dating is such a drag.
And the fear that my date is a werewolf in disguise is something entirely new added to the experience.
“But… if it solves this…” I start. Can I do casual sex if it means getting rid of this curse?
Rose waves a hand to cut me off. “No one wants you to do something you don’t want to or that will make you uncomfortable. Not me and not anyone you match with.”
Right. That makes sense. Some worry ebbs away with Rose’s direct verdict, but that leaves…
“Are you wanting a mate?” the matchmaker asks.
1
JASPER
ONE DAY PRIOR
“Yes?” I ask without looking up.
Agnes’s disapproving gaze burns the crown of my head. If the woman were a paranormal being, her glare would undoubtedly be deadly.
Much deadlier than mine anyway.
“The Owens called wanting to set a date for their party.”
I look up and no matter her steel spine, Agnes flinches. The effect is regrettable. It would be much easier to handle donors and their ridiculous requests if my very presence didn’t cause an instinctual wariness.
But there is no way around being what I am.
“Are they still wanting the whole first floor?” I ask.
“Yes.” Her answer reflects the annoyance I feel. This library is a joint organization of the city and the Council that governs the paranormal world. I’m told the building is beautiful and that it’s quite the brag to be able to host events here. A brag that is worth upping the already considerable donations that sustain this library.
The beautiful building is aged and always in need of repairs. The majority of the funds go to managing the invaluable collections we handle, but all the safety wards in the world will not help if the building falls down around our ears.
Until I can squeeze blood from the stone that is the Council’s pocketbook, money from donors is essential to being able to run the library.
I massage the bridge of my nose.
But to close the first floor doesn’t cover what they are asking for and Agnes knows it. For the type of party they are organizing, it would require closing the whole building to the public since there would be no way to access the study rooms and stacks. The library is a bustling place for casual visitors, students, and traveling academics advising on the items we carry.
Any disruption to the running of it will cause ripples in scheduling for weeks.
I have the authority to do it, but it chafes against the purpose of what we do and sets a precedent I don’t want. This building is supposed to function as a library, not an event hall.
But we need the donations from the Owens and the crowd they bring in. The witch family isn’t an old one, but they are well connected.
“Can it be done?” I ask.
Agnes sniffs. She’s a formidable woman who has earned every single silver-threaded hair on her head. Her skills and fortitude are why the building runs as well as it does.
“Yes, with enough notice,” she says.
“Then schedule it.”
And she likes me not at all. Which is fine. I’ll be the first to admit I’m not likable. There is too much to do and not enough time in the day for the social pleasantries required to smooth out my instructions. Social pleasantries have never done much for me anyway.
“There’s another thing,” Agnes says, interrupting my attempt to get back to work. Her face is pinched. This can’t be good.
“How could this happen?” My voice is measured, but the outrage bleeds through anyway. Not at Agnes. Never at Agnes. I can only imagine how much worse the situation would be without her.
The large crate before us is littered with dents detailing its journey.
“We weren’t informed of the scholar’s intention to send us anything. The only communication we have is him demanding that he needs the books not being added to the Archive restored and sent back.”
Agnes may be human, but she’s privy to the world of the supernatural. She wouldn’t be able to manage the building as well as she does if she wasn’t.
“And he didn’t check tracking numbers?”
Agnes snorts. “He did when I told him that we didn’t receive any deliveries from him. Which then led him on a merry chase with the delivery company before they located it.”
Lost in transit. Just what I needed to deal with today.
Agnes fidgets. “He says he needs the books restored, cataloged, and sent back by the end of the week.”
My eyes widen at the crate, there’s no telling how many books that is.
The gall of this man. “Impossible.”
Agnes nods. “That’s what I said. So, he bartered down to two books.”
I stop the shake of my head. Two books may be possible.
“Do we know their condition?”
Agnes sighs in annoyance. “He said the repairs should be minimal, but also said they aren’t usable in their current state…”
I purse my lips. So, he’s lying.
Agnes continues. “If Emilia wasn’t available for this kind of work now, I’d tell him no.”
But Ms. Emilia Rivera is available for the kind of work involving books of magical origin since she’s now privy to our world. Something about a run-in with the trouble Ms. Starling had been dealing with. The details don’t matter. What matters is that books from the world hidden from humans can be restored in-house now.
“I will ask her,” I say.
Agnes raises her brows.
“It’s only right. This would upset her current schedule,” I say.
That isn’t why Agnes is raising her brows at me, but it isn’t in me to delegate asking employees favors. Even if said employee is terrified of me.
Before much more time has passed, I stand in front of Ms. Rivera’s office.
Normally, I’d send an email for both of our comforts, but we are on a timetable. I take a breath and knock on the joint office of my librarian and my restoration expert. A voice I rarely hear travels through the door.
“Come in.”
I enter the office, the space is a cluster of warm colors and preserved papers. The scent of the room is a mix of vanilla and, more faintly, roses and inspires what others would call coziness.
“Director.” Ms. Rivera stands but keeps her eyes at the level of my chin.
I mentally sigh, resigned to her reaction. Most people, even after years of working together, flinch when they meet my gaze. It’s the truth of what I am, and it shouldn’t bother me.
But Emilia Rivera’s total avoidance of looking me in the eye causes an itch of discomfort. Always has. She’s gotten close enough in the past to pretend, but never quite enough to actually make eye contact. It’s stupid to take it personally, but it makes me feel like even more of a monster than I am. Definitely more of a monster than what I show the world.
I flex the hand at my side. The urge to lift Emilia’s pointed chin until her thick lashes don’t shield her eyes is wholly inappropriate and unexplainable. She is very pretty, the smooth tone of her light-brown skin, the arch of her dark brows, and the curve of her full lips, usually painted with a vibrant shade.
Pretty may be a trite word to use, pretty is as far as I’ll let my mind ruminate.
It’s only curiosity that makes me want our eyes to meet, just once. Nothing else.
“Do you have room in your schedule to restore two books of paranormal origin by the end of the week?” I ask.
Emilia looks at her laptop, frowning. “What condition are they in?”
“The condition is unknown.”
Her lips compress. “Without knowing the condition, I can’t say whether or not they can be completed in a week. Some processes take longer than others.”
My lips twitch at her poorly veiled frustration. Usually, the restorer just nods, it’s somehow better to see a glimpse of her beneath whatever shield she hides herself. Almost like I’m seeing the actual person.
Not that it should matter.
Emilia bites her lip like she regrets her response.
“The crate has been sent to Ms. Starling’s lab and Agnes will forward you the titles of interest. Please check the inventory list, assess the books with her, and let me know if it’s possible by end of day,” I say, trying to get out of this office before I cause her any more discomfort.
Emilia nods and I leave without ceremony. I know I am a detached person, demanding of my employees, but I don’t wish to scare the woman more so than is unavoidable.
My phone buzzes in my pocket. No doubt signaling another fire that must be put out this morning. But when I unlock the screen, I freeze.
