Dating for Monster Hunters

By Gemma Cates

Three dates to die for.

Clara Babcock's not the dating type. Her job's demanding, and she hasn't had the best luck finding men who appreciate her particular skills. Killing monsters doesn't make for great dinner conversation.

Small problem: Her mother wants grand-babies to cuddle, and she's not about to leave such an important task solely up to her.

Bigger problem: Her mother signed her up for an exclusive dating service…for humans. Probably because Clara's kept her magic and her monster-hunting secret from her very human mother.

Biggest problem: Her dates might want her dead.

Dating for Monster Hunters features a matchmaking mom, a daughter with a magical secret, and three dates to die for. There might even be room for romance. Clara just has to give love a chance.

Warning! Gemma's books contain steamy shenanigans and enough naughty words to make someone (not her) blush.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Gemma Cates
• Release date: Apr 28, 2023
• ISBN: 9798223087359

Book preview

1

WHAT MOM DOESN’T KNOW

Ihad this job that was sort of strange: I hunted monsters.

Yeah, that was an actual job. Who knew?

Nine months before I was born, my mother had sex with a minor demon. She didn’t have a clue that my disappearing sperm donor hadn’t been human.

She didn’t have a clue that I wasn’t either.

Turned out, I was a witch. That was what half-demon offspring with magic were: witches.

Sadly, I wasn’t the cool kind of witch. I couldn’t control fire or ice. I couldn’t move things with the awesome power of my mind. And I definitely couldn’t read anyone’s thoughts. I wished. That would solve so many of my problems.

No, I just got a few…enhancements.

I was quicker, faster, and stronger than a human. My hearing and sight, especially night vision, were better. I healed faster than a normal human, and I had this sixth sense for all things weird, magical, and monstrous.

Generally speaking, I was like the less domesticated version of a human. A little edgier, a lot more other.

When did I figure it out?

Around puberty, which sucked hard, because up till then, I’d been rocking all the sports. Track and field, soccer, volleyball, softball, field hockey... Not swimming. I was a land mammal. But basically everything else was fair game.

But then I broke this boy’s arm playing touch football—is it really football without the tackling?—and I realized something was up. When a guy with ten inches and fifty pounds on me goes down like a sack of potatoes… Yeah, oops.

Anyhoo, I realized I wasn’t normal, and more importantly, a teammate who was in on the Big Secret That Shall Not Be Revealed took me aside and explained the facts of life.

Magic was real.

I had some.

I couldn’t play with the regular kiddies anymore.

I couldn’t tell a soul. Nope, not even my mom.

And I should meet this nice man by the name of Rafe who could help me.

Next thing I knew, I was meeting the leader of the Austin area Monster Hunters Guild, and he’d agreed to take me under his wing.

Thus began my three-times-weekly training sessions with Rafe.

As far as Mom knew, he taught martial arts, and since I’d scored a scholarship—pfft, yeah, right—she was happy enough to have my rambunctious ass out of her hair for free.

Three times weekly became five times and eventually every day but Mondays.

I had a lot of energy, but Rafe had a lot of patience. Also, I was a huge fan of his girlfriend, Tilly Van Helsing, and I got to train with her occasionally if I worked really hard. She was a badass, hard-core monster hunter with a wicked reputation, pink hair, and a killer job. What wasn’t to love? I had a total girl crush on her.

I eventually snagged a few low-level gigs for the guild. Mostly cleanup and relocation stuff. Slime monster excrement should not be left for humans to stumble upon, and many magical creatures that weren’t nasty enough to rise to the level of dangerous (i.e., magical but not monsters) still weren’t exactly the sort of critters that should be around oblivious humans.

I took those assignments seriously and did good work. It didn’t hurt that they were my first ever paid gigs, but I also wanted to impress Rafe. The guy had invested a lot in me: time, attention, and unending patience.

More cleanup, more relocation—two years of it—and I was ready to kick low-level monster ass.

It. Was. Awesome.

Biggest rush ever.

I’d been at it for several years now, and while I didn’t get to hunt big game monsters like the Class A and B varieties that were truly dangerous, I really enjoyed my job. Even better, I was excellent at it.

Small problem though: Mom still didn’t have a clue.

Not about my witchy weirdness.

Not about my ever-so-slightly-dangerous job.

Not about magic.

Worse, Mom had signed me up for a dating service.

The human kind, with men who expected me to be an administrative assistant who enjoyed happy hour drinks with friends, sunset walks on the greenbelt, and yoga.

Umm…oops. I might have told my mother all of that. Apparently, I sold bullshit about my life really well. So well that she’d written my dating profile based on all those lies.

I thought I could just walk away, avoid her for a few weeks.

I figured it was one of those problems that would just go away if I ignored it.

Oh, right. That didn’t happen in real life, like ever.

It definitely didn’t happen to me.

A mother with a single twenty-nine-year-old daughter and no other children upon whom to pin all of her grandmotherly hopes was difficult to dissuade.

Impossible, in fact.

It looked like I was going on a date—with a human.

Please, Universe, be kind.

Oh, and while I’m asking for favors, can you make sure none of these tools finds out what I am and tattles on me to Mom?

2

DATE PREP, MONSTER-HUNTER STYLE

H ey, Mom. I almost dodged the call since I’d been up approximately twelve minutes and wasn’t anywhere near mentally prepared to deal with her, but she’d have just kept pressing redial until I picked up.

Mom was considerate like that. She wanted to make sure I didn’t miss any of her calls, regardless of the time of day, any competing plans, or my need to use the bathroom or shower.

Sam Martin, thirty-two, software engineer with that company that does that thing on the internet. You know the one.

I agreed and waited for her to finish even though I had no clue which tech company she was talking about. It could have literally been one of a dozen recognizable tech concerns in the Austin area.

Probably a good idea to get some coffee going, so I headed for my trusty machine and popped a pod inside. Irish cream flavored, so I could at least pretend like I was having a boozy drink.

Last night Mom sent over some kind of fancy electronic dossier created by Perfectly Paired, the dating service, so I knew the basics about my first date. His picture looked nice enough. Blond hair, a boy-next-door smile that was charming but not too charming. A nice shirt but with rolled-up sleeves, like he cared enough to try but wasn’t uptight. He could probably be worse.

He likes picnics, basketball, and his dog, Peaches. He’s a Pisces, goes to the gym a few times a week, and calls his mother every Valentine’s Day.

When she paused, I replied as expected. Got it. And before you ask, I’ve got a dress and heels picked out, and I even did a makeup tutorial from YouTube yesterday to practice my face ahead of time.

I so did not do a makeup tutorial yesterday. I’d been far too busy with a relocation gig to even pretend to care about getting dolled up for a date with a man I’d never met nor was likely to have interest in. Wrangling an entire fright of specters to a new location had been an all-day undertaking, and I might be tied up all day with follow-up. This dude would be lucky to get mascara and lip gloss.

Specters were harmless and generally beneficial creatures since they lived off bugs and had a preference for mosquitoes. But this particular fright had been especially large, counting a total of thirteen in their group, and they’d taken up residence near a high school. I might need to do additional damage control if they wandered back to their former habitat.

All it took was some social-media-posting teen to catch the wrong glimpse, capture it on camera—or worse, video—and post it for the world to see.

Sure, we had people to handle that sort of thing. Tech folks to track sightings that were real, and social media experts and journalists paid to spin anything real as fraud or to make such outrageous claims that the event was immediately dismissed as the work of conspiracy theorists gone mad. But we tried to use those avenues as a last resort.

I snatched my mug, added some cream to cool it a bit, and started to suck down the hot brew. I needed the strength.

I wouldn’t even be going on this stupid date tonight if Mom hadn’t paid a fortune for the service.

How was this even supposed to work? This fancy service was supposed to match a woman they’d never met, who hadn’t even filled out her own dating profile or paid the fee herself? Clearly I wasn’t motivated to participate.

They’d snatched Mom’s money and accommodated all her ridiculous requests without any realistic hope of success. Shady as fuck, in my opinion.