by Amanda Heger
“Any amount of money?” She shot upright. “Because I will take that bet.”
“Exactly, and that’s your problem. You can do all of this.” He gestured around the office. “Wooing the clients, performing the enchantments, filling out all the damn paperwork. You can do it better than most of us. But you’ve let your mom and all that stuff that happened when we were kids get too deep into your head.”
She shifted uncomfortably under the intensity of his stare. “You don’t understand…”
He shifted briefly from foot to foot as a flash of internal struggle passed over his features. Just as quickly, it fled, and he took a step closer. “Maybe I don’t,” he said. “But I think that there’s something you don’t understand, Eliza. You have something special. You are something special.”
Her heart leapt into her throat and stayed there, cutting off her ability to breathe and to form words. Too many feelings, her brain screeched. Abandon ship! “You wouldn’t say that if you’d ever seen me try to shoot with a bow and arrow.”
He took another step closer. “We can go down to the Agora tomorrow and practice if you want.”
“Really?”
“What kind of mentor would I be if I didn’t take you out and let you practice maiming people?” He leaned over the desk now, oozing charm with a hint of mischief.
Gods damn it. Why did his smile make her feel so fluttery inside? If she didn’t know better, she’d think she’d somehow managed to enchant herself that day at the Johansens’. No. This is just one of those stupid you-want-what-you-can’t-have things. He’s not attracted to you, so suddenly you’re obsessed with him.
He tucked a piece of her hair back into her ponytail, and his fingertips brushed the shell of her ear.
Oh no, oh no, ohnoohnoohno.
She was feeling things. Things she did not want to feel. Meanwhile, her traitorous nerve endings were throwing a freaking parade—trumpets, candy, giant balloons that said MORE TOUCHING, PLEASE.
Finally, she pulled herself together.
Sort of.
“You’re going to regret offering to mentor me,” she whispered.
His gaze shifted ever so slightly to her lips. “Doubt it,” he said.
Clang, clang, clang.
“Hello? Eliza Herman?” A woman with waist-length red hair, dark sunglasses, and a beige trench coat stepped into the room. Apparently, Carmen Sandiego was right here in Gold Lea.
Eliza sat up and pretended she hadn’t been on the verge of pulling Jake’s lips to hers and seeing where decades of crushing on her best friend could go. “Hi,” she said, offering the woman a handshake. “You must be Yolanda Durst.”
The woman tightened her coat around her waist and looked around the mostly empty office. “I am,” she whispered.
Eliza and Jake looked at each other, and she couldn’t help but notice he’d gone paler than ever and had taken two giant steps toward the door. This had to be the weirdest case of food poisoning in existence. “Great,” Eliza said. “I’m Eliza and this is Jake, who I mentioned on the phone. Would you like to follow us to the back?”
She led Yolanda to her brother’s empty office and shut the door. Immediately, Yolanda relaxed. She pushed her glasses up onto the top of her head and unraveled herself from the long coat. Once she lost the half-hearted disguise, she looked more like Jessica Rabbit than Carmen Sandiego. This was not a woman anyone would suspect had difficulty finding a match.
Eliza glanced at Jake, trying to discern his reaction to this level of va-va-voom, but he stood at the edge of the room watching Eliza. Their eyes locked for a long moment before he looked down at his feet. What in the worlds was going on with him?
She turned back to Yolanda. “When we spoke on the phone, you said you were interested in entering your profile in our database?”
Yolanda nodded.
“Great.” Eliza pulled out the folder she’d prepared and began going through the ins and outs of the package. Yolanda would pay a small fee, then provide a brief written profile and a photograph. Eliza would put it in the Herman & Herman flip-book. When new clients came in looking for a match, they could review the flip-book and choose someone listed there. Then Eliza would set up a meeting, collect full payment from each party, do the enchantment, and pray that no one ended up in the hospital.
Back when her parents had started the business, the flip-book package had sold like hotcakes. It gave some people the thrill of being chosen and others the power of being in charge. But now it felt old-fashioned and outdated, and the number of clients interested in the package had dwindled to almost none. But bringing in a client like Yolanda increased the chances that Eliza could collect two fees.
“Ms. Herman, this is a very delicate matter,” Yolanda said when Eliza had finished her speech. “I need you to guarantee your firm will provide the utmost level of privacy and secrecy.”
“Of course. Herman & Herman keeps all client files confidential, and we only release the bare minimum of personal information to the government for their record keeping. We also have a money-back guarantee, so if something goes wrong during your enchantment period, we’ll happily return your fee.”
Okay, maybe happily was a stretch, but sometimes a white lie (or three) didn’t hurt.
“You misunderstand,” Yolanda said. “What I’m asking for is more than your standard client confidentiality.”
Eliza glanced at Jake again, but he merely shrugged. She turned back to Yolanda. “Go ahead.”
“I want this to be a secret from everyone—including myself.”
Eliza blinked twice, then three times, but she still felt lost in the desert. “I’m sorry, I don’t think I understand,” she said.
“My family is… Well, let’s call them religious. They say this process is unnatural. If they ever found out I’d hired a Cupid, they’d disinherit me.”
The pieces were beginning to slide into place. Ever since the first Cupids had gone public decades ago, some groups had protested. They called Cupids abominations and false idols and—Eliza’s favorite—lust mongers. Yolanda must have come from the same stock, and by the looks of her sleek designer heels and diamond earrings, she had a lot to lose if her family disowned her.
“Ms. Durst,” Eliza said. “I promise this isn’t the first time we’ve dealt—”
“Please.” Yolanda put a well-manicured hand on the desk. “You don’t understand. I’m a terrible liar. If I hired you through the normal channels and met the love of my life, I’d never be able to keep it a secret. Then I’d end up heartbroken and poor. But if I don’t know how I met the love of my life, then I can’t exactly lie to my family, now can I? Maybe it was an enchantment, maybe it was the old-fashioned way.” She sighed, going a bit starry-eyed, and Eliza could tell Yolanda would have preferred falling in love the “old-fashioned way.”
Explaining that Cupids were the old-fashioned way seemed like a futile task. Cupids had been speeding things along with enchantments for thousands of years. Sure, people fell for one another all the time, and not all those matches involved enchantments. Sometimes, two people just clicked on their own, crossed their fingers, and made a go of it, although those cases had been dwindling in recent years.
“Ms. Durst, I’m not sure how that would work. It’s certainly not part of our usual technique.” Saying the words pained her because she wanted this to work so badly. “Even if I do the enchantment without your knowledge, I can’t guarantee that your match wouldn’t tell you.”
“Find someone for me—a real gentleman—and explain my situation. If he’s my true love, he’ll respect my wishes. I’ll pay double your fees. No, triple. And I’ll pay them all up front, so I don’t have to know about it. You can have twelve months. If I don’t have a least one relationship during that time, I’ll assume you couldn’t find anyone for me and ask for a partial refund.”
Eliza had to force
her mouth shut. Triple fees. Now. Not three months from now, when someone else finally decided to stop in and look at the flip-books. She sized up Yolanda from head to toe. What was wrong with this woman? Why was she so desperate to make this work?
Yolanda sniffled and pulled a tissue from her very expensive handbag. “You must think I’m ridiculous.”
Definitely. “No, not at all. This is just a very unusual situation.” She gave Jake a serious help me look and stood. “Would you mind waiting here while I speak to my mentor?”
Eliza didn’t wait for an answer before grabbing Jake by the forearm. His muscles tensed under her fingers, but she dragged him to the end of the hall anyway, as far from Yolanda’s range of hearing as possible.
“Jake,” she said in a harsh whisper, “what do I do?”
He stood so close that his warmth seeped into her skin, and she felt like one of those stupid moths that always congregated in front of her porch light. They lost their damn minds over that light, forgetting everything but getting as close to it as possible—even if it burned them.
“What do you want to do?” Jake asked.
Keep staring into your eyes. See what it feels like to lay my head against your chest. Put your hands on my waist, and see where we end up.
If she hadn’t been watching him so closely, she would have missed the way his gaze flickered over her body. For half a breath, her inner moth went mad, convincing itself that was lust in his eyes. Eliza swatted it away. Jake had agreed they were like siblings.
“Eliza?” he prodded. “Do you want to take the case?”
She took a deep breath. “Yes, I want to take this case. We need the money, and I don’t see anything wrong with it, ethically speaking. She seems to know what she’s getting into.”
“Then take it. You know what you’re doing.” His gaze stayed locked on hers.
She stepped away and crossed her arms, trying to give her brain room to think about something other than how it would feel to be pressed against him. “I don’t know what I’m doing. I’ve spent so long trying not to enchant people. Now I’m trying to do it on purpose, and everything feels upside down. Do you really think I can manage it without screwing up someone’s life?”
“Hey.” Jake put his hands on her upper arms. “It’s my professional opinion, as your very knowledgeable mentor, that you can knock this case out of the park.”
“Really?” she asked. “Because—”
His arms slid down hers, tugging gently at her elbows until she’d relaxed her standoffish position. “Really.”
“But what if—”
“What if…” He took a step closer, close enough that she could see each of his thick, dark eyelashes in perfect detail. “What if this is the perfect case for you? What if you’re this woman’s best shot at happiness? What if this is the case that makes you realize how amazing you are at all of this? Eliza, give yourself a chance and stop talking yourself out of doing the things you want.”
She froze there, inches away from the man she’d lusted after since he’d reappeared in her life days ago. The man who knew all her childhood secrets. The man who knew her. Because she was absolutely talking herself out of the things she wanted most.
Including him.
Especially him.
Whoa. Too. Many. Feelings. Again. Too many thoughts. Everything inside her was firing at once. Her stomach replaced the moth with something more violent and demanding—a hundred hummingbirds perhaps. They flapped their tiny wings at a million beats per second and propelled her forward. Straight into that chest.
Up close and personal, it was even better than she’d imagined.
Which was saying a lot.
“I’m not.” She whispered the lie.
“Me either,” he whispered back. “Not anymore.”
“Jake?” Her lips tingled as she said his name—a name she’d uttered thousands of times before. But today it felt entirely new.
“Yeah?”
“What do you want?”
He leaned down until their mouths were a finger-width apart. One tiny lift of her head could tilt her world right off its axis. Something was wrong here. Very wrong. And whatever it was, she wanted it. Badly. “You,” he murmured. “It’s always been you.”
“Excuse me? Where is your restroom?” Yolanda stood in the hall. She looked like a kid at the movies—desperately in need of a toilet but not wanting to miss any of the good parts.
Oh gods. How long had she been standing there? Eliza whirled away from Jake and did her best impression of a composed businesswoman. “Straight across the hall, the door on the left.”
Yolanda scurried away, but not before shooting Eliza an approving glance and a big thumbs-up. As soon as the bathroom door closed, Eliza’s facade fell. She turned to face Jake, careful to stand a socially acceptable distance away while her cheeks burned with shame.
Whatever spell had befallen her moments ago crumbled away.
“When I hit you, back at the Johansens’…” she whispered. She couldn’t finish the sentence, because what if it was true? What if Jake had become enchanted with her? What if they had to spend the next hours, days, weeks working together and battling their respective crushes? She’d never be able to keep her mixed-up feelings under wraps if he kept looking at her like that.
“It was nothing.” He didn’t meet her gaze.
“Nothing? So if I stand in your personal space and flip my hair around until you’re covered in my pheromones, nothing will happen?”
Jake’s jaw went slack, but Eliza could see the struggle in his eyes. She took a step forward.
“Please don’t,” he said.
“You lied,” she half whispered, half yelled. “You said we weren’t a match. You said we were like siblings.”
“You said that,” he whisper yelled back.
She replayed her memory of that day. The afghan, the candy dish, the silent car ride home. Her attempt to ease the tension by letting him off the hook.
Shit. He was right.
The whir of a flushing toilet and squeal of her parents’ pipes filled the room. “Well, you didn’t correct me” was all Eliza could think to say back before darting to the opposite side of the hallway.
Yolanda’s head peeked out of the bathroom doorway, and she looked back and forth between them in confusion. “Would you like me to come back another day?” she asked. “Or I can try that guy from the television if you don’t think you’ll be able to help me. What’s his name? Dick something or other?”
“Ms. Durst, I’d be happy to take your case.” Eliza stepped closer to the office and wiped her sweaty palms against her pants. Maybe if she put enough distance between herself and Jake, her heart rate would return to almost normal. Her heartbreak on the other hand… “Why don’t we get started on the paperwork?”
Yolanda clapped her hands together. “Oh, I’m so excited, but we have to make it quick. My weekly grocery delivery is going to arrive in an hour.”
“I’m just going to head out,” Jake said. “You’ve got this under control, right, Eliza?” He didn’t give her a chance to respond before darting out the door.
Yolanda narrowed her eyes. “Is there a problem?”
Eliza stared at the empty space where Jake had stood, then forced her gaze back to her newest client. “No, ma’am. No problem at all. I’m more than happy to take your case.”
What was one more white lie in the grand scheme of things?
Chapter 8.5
“The Cupid Corps seeks to advance understanding of Erosians among non-Descendants and to mitigate the effects of war and economic hardship through Love. However, in fulfilling this mission, members are encouraged to keep personal relationships in ‘the friend zone’ for the duration of their services.”
—Cupid Corps Volunteer Manual, 3d, TR.
The world’s worst-kept secret i
s out.
Thank the gods.
I mean, yeah, Eliza’s reaction wasn’t exactly the one I’d been hoping for. Or the one I’d lain in bed thinking about every night until two in the morning. And it definitely wasn’t the one I’d imagined while I stood in the hot shower, thinking about rubbing soap all over Eliza’s body. But she knows, and now we can deal with this like two mature adults.
In a few weeks, it will all be over. In a few months, we’ll look back on this and laugh. In a few years, we’ll tell our children the story of how we fell in love barely remember any of this. It’s going to be fine, and now that Eliza knows, I can stop trying to keep secrets and free up some mental bandwidth for the important things in my life.
Not that Eliza is unimportant. Everything about her is important. All these different pieces—some jagged, some smooth—fit together to make an absolutely perfect human being. Who else would face down their biggest fears to help out a parent? Who else would put up with Elijah’s relentless teasing and then turn around to give it just as good as she took it? Who else could look so adorable while working from under an afghan?
No one except Eliza.
Wait. What was I say— Oh, right. The important things in my life. Like the Northern California branch of the Cosmic Council. It’s the rational next step for me. The Cupids Corps was the first step. A great one. It changed everything for me. I traveled the world. Volunteered in areas where Cupids were in short supply. And a few where they weren’t. Saw firsthand the way both love and Love can change the world.
Maybe being a Cupid isn’t much, in the grand scheme of things, but it is one thing I can do. And the next thing I can do is join the local Cosmic Council. Then I’ll work myself up the chain. Get Cupids back to having a vote—a voice. Set policies that help from the top down, so maybe one day the Cupids Corps can work itself out of business.
But to be honest, even though I know the Council is what I need to do, well… Have you ever walked up a set of stairs and suddenly lost the sense of where to put your feet? You skip over a stair without meaning to, and for a moment, your balance feels completely off-kilter?
