by Amanda Heger
“Eliza, I’d really like to talk to you for a minute. Can we—”
“Maybe later, okay?” Eliza slipped out the office door. She didn’t have time to deal with her mother right now. She had work to do…and a certain limerick-obsessed Cupid to interrogate.
Chapter 21
“When enchanting, Cupids should wear athletic shoes and lightweight, but not baggy, clothing that allows freedom of movement. Although togas are traditional, pants are recommended.”
—Erosian Weaponry Fundamentals
Vic Van Love’s office looked exactly as Eliza would have expected. Outside, a ten-foot-tall Cupid who shot water from his bow towered over the parking lot. Inside, dark wood paneling met deep-red walls and plush carpeting. The man was a living, breathing stereotype. And if the size of his office was any indication, that stereotype was serving his bank account well.
Eliza approached the reception desk. She’d driven over here with fire in her veins, but now that she was on Vic’s home turf, her nerves tempered the fire a little. She needed to be calm, quiet, cunning. She needed to lure him into a false sense of complacency and then strike when he least expected it. Or at least get him to admit to his Egg Salad Saga misdeeds while she taped the conversation on her phone.
“Welcome to Love Conquers All’s Love Lounge,” the slender redhead behind the desk said. “How can I help you?”
“I’m here to see Vic,” Eliza said.
“Do you have an appointment?”
“No, but he’ll want to see me.”
“Hmm.” The woman turned her gaze down to the computer screen. The name tag on her shirt caught the light. Heather. “Is this an emergency, or would you be able to come back tomorrow morning? I have a nine o’clock, a ten—”
“It’s an emergency,” Eliza insisted.
Heather looked up at her with narrowed eyes. She must have seen Eliza’s take-no-prisoners expression and decided the emergency was both real and dire, because she offered Eliza a tablet and a tight smile. “Click on our app and fill out the paperwork. You’re welcome to have a seat in the waiting area. Just hit Send when you’re done, and the information will automatically upload to our system. I’ll let Mr. Van Love know you’re here. He’s currently in a meeting though, so it might be a little while.”
Eliza stared at the tablet in Heather’s hands. She was tempted to bust through Vic’s door, interrupt his meeting, and demand some answers. Let him be ashamed in front of a client. But she remembered her plan. Cool, calm, cunning. She took the tablet and flashed Heather a grateful smile. “Thank you so much.”
“Feel free to enjoy the complimentary Wi-Fi while you wait. The password is ‘Van Love conquers all.’ One word, all lowercase.”
Eliza picked an empty chair at the other end of the rectangular room. It put her far enough from Heather that she wouldn’t be under the receptionist’s concerned stare, but close enough to Vic’s office that she might be able to hear any bits of conversation that leaked out from under the door.
Once she’d settled in, she looked at the tablet screen. At her parents’ office, potential and returning clients provided their name, birth date, marital status, potential medical issues, and romantic histories the old-fashioned way: pen and paper. Yes, the pens walked off a lot, and sometimes reading the handwriting made it impossible to tell if the person had a history of influenza or infidelity, but it worked. More or less.
Vic, on the other hand, had taken the information sheet to a new level. Eliza opened the Love Conquers All app and was immediately assaulted by Vic’s smug face telling her all about the types and costs of enchantments. Finally, the video ended and a message appeared: CLICK BELOW TO LET VAN LOVE CONQUER ALL.
Seamless, high-tech, and expensive. Exactly the type of thing someone with the skills and knowledge to build a relationship-destroying game would have in their office. Eliza sat up a little straighter, feeling all the more confident that she’d found the culprit.
Begrudgingly, she clicked to “let Van Love conquer all.” A standard form took the place of the videos, and she began to fill in the information.
Name: Herman, Eliza
Birth date: February 14
Medical Conditions: None
Marital Status: Single
Returning Client: No
Have You Ever Employed a Cupid: No
Reason for Your Visit: My egg salad is squalid
Okay, maybe she wasn’t going to be totally calm and cunning.
Eliza hit Send and watched her personal information—and snarky comment—disappear into the nether regions of the internet. She ran a finger along the tablet screen, opening and closing apps at random. In her time as an IT help desk attendant, she hadn’t gained many technical skills. But she had a tablet connected to Vic’s network in her hands, and maybe, just maybe, she could find some proof of his involvement. She could get out of here and take her evidence to the authorities without ever seeing him face-to-face.
She glanced up at Heather. The model-worthy woman was deeply involved in whatever was happening on her computer. Eliza tapped the screen and opened up the settings. The tablet prompted her for a password, and she typed in vanloveconquersall before hitting Enter.
Nothing.
She tried two more of his annoying puns before the tablet told her to “contact an administrator for assistance.” She clutched the tablet, waiting to see if she’d set off some kind of alarm. When Heather didn’t look up, Eliza closed the app and pulled open the folder labeled Games.
Solitaire. Mah-jongg. Minesweeper. The usual old-school games she’d played on their family’s computer. But then she saw the little white egg icon at the bottom of the folder. Egg Salad Saga. Eliza took a deep breath and hovered her finger over the egg.
If she tried it, she would find out—one way or the other—whether Egg Salad Saga could tear people apart.
But if it could, she might end up hating Jake.
Jake with his bright smile and kind eyes.
Jake with his “dumb ideas” and eager kisses.
Jake…who’d gotten her into this whole Cupid license bullshit in the first place.
Jake who’d had a hundred dumb ideas, literally—like a belief in Love.
Her finger inched closer to the egg, propelled by the force of the unexpected irritation spiraling inside her.
“I forgot to ask. Would you like something to drink? We have water, tea, soda, juice.” Heather stood and walked to a wood-paneled mini-fridge a few feet from Eliza’s chair. It had blended in with the walls so well that she hadn’t even noticed it. She also hadn’t noticed that Heather was very pregnant.
“No. I’m fine, thanks,” Eliza said.
“Oh! Are you an Egghead too?”
“Excuse me?”
Heather pointed at the tablet and laughed. “Egg Salad Saga. I can’t get enough. Sometimes I see those little eggs in my sleep.”
Eliza closed the game. Vic had his own people playing this? It was one (horrible) thing to not care about strangers’ lives, but it was another (really, really horrible) thing to ruin the lives of the people he worked with every day. “I’ve actually never played it before,” she said.
“Really? Let me give you my referral code. If you use it, we both get five extra coins.” She waddled back to her desk.
The door to Vic’s office creaked open. “Heather, have you seen my extra set of pants?” Vic called out.
The venom in Heather’s eyes would have put Medusa to shame, and Eliza nearly got whiplash from the sudden change in the woman’s emotions.
“I told you, John,” Heather said. “I’m not going to be your pants person anymore. And you have an emergency appointment waiting.”
Vic’s door slammed shut. A moment later, it opened again. “Send them in,” he called.
Heather rolled her eyes. “Mr. Van Love will see you now.”
If Eliza were a gambling woman—which she absolutely was not, especially after an enchantment disaster involving a roulette wheel and a blackjack dealer—she’d have bet that Heather’s sudden flare of anger and annoyance was fueled by Egg Salad.
Well, that and the fact that Vic was a serious douchecanoe.
Eliza pulled her phone into her lap and toyed with the screen, trying to look more like a standard on-the-phone-all-the-time member of the public than a fellow Cupid pulling up the voice-recorder app on her phone. Then she stood and marched straight into Vic’s office, phone in hand. “Hello, John,” she said.
“Ah, look at that. Eliza Herman.” Vic propped his shoes up on his desk, nonplussed. “Here for a little love emergency, are we?”
“Finally found some pants to wear, did we?” she asked, closing the door behind her. “What kind of meeting was that, by the way? The one that didn’t require pants.”
“Sorry, client confidentiality.” He leaned back and laced his fingers behind his head. “What do you want? No, let me guess. You decided to take me up on my offer. Interesting. I couldn’t take you on as a partner, at least not right away. We’d need to ease you into the brand. How do you feel about changing your name? I’m thinking Candy Valentine.”
Eliza clenched her teeth so hard she could feel a muscle in her jaw twitch. “I’m thinking you’re a monster.”
“Now that’s no way to talk to your future boss.”
“I know what you’re doing, Vic.” So much for that whole calm and cunning thing. Furious and foolish was more like it. Her rage was on the verge of getting the best of her for the second—or was it third? Fourth?—time today. “I know why your business is booming, and I’m not going to sit here and take it.”
Vic put his feet on the floor and leaned his elbows on the desk. “A sky-high advertising budget? Billboards? Service with a smile?” He gave her that smug smile that graced damn near every billboard on the interstate. “You should really smile more. Your resting bitch face can get a little intense sometimes.”
“I’ll take that under consideration.” The red record button stared up at her as the seconds ticked by, each word chronicled for posterity. She was going to nail this bastard. Once and for all. And then take out a billboard of her own—featuring his mug shot. “You can hide behind your ads and your sleazeball getup, but I know the truth, Van Love. I know you’ve been screwing with people’s hormones somehow. I guess if your couples break up in half the time, you can take in twice as many clients, huh? Who cares about real Love, right?”
The last words flew from her mouth without stopping to check with her brain. She didn’t care about Love. She cared about the business her parents had built. She cared about all the work her brother had done to make it his own one day. She cared about the Johansens—the way they’d looked at each other that first day when they’d told her how they’d met and all their adventures since. She cared about…
Jake.
No. Just thinking his name lit a fuse inside her brain. It sizzled and crackled, threatening her with a massive explosion if she continued down this path.
“Just admit it, Vic,” she snarled.
“Look, Eliza. I don’t know what you’re talking about. The only hormones going crazy around here are yours and Heather’s. You’re both bonkers, but at least she’ll be normal again in two months or so.”
Eliza sat up straighter. She definitely didn’t expect his confession to come so easily. “Two months? That’s how long Egg Salad lasts?”
“Two-month-old egg salad? Thank the gods you were born a Cupid and not a Demetrian.” Vic shook his head. “Gold Lea would be the food-poisoning capital of the world.”
She fixed her stare on his stupid, smug face. No way she was letting him get under her skin. “What happens in two months, Vic?” She spat his name, trying to rid the taste of it from her mouth.
“Do you really need me to paint you a picture?”
She glanced down at her phone. Still recording. “Yes. In detail.”
“Okay, well, if you insist—”
“I do.”
“Shall I start at the very beginning?”
“Please.”
“When a man and a woman love each other very much”—he sounded like a preschool teacher reading a story at circle time, a thought that made Eliza want to hurl—“or, in Heather and I’s case, when a man and a woman are lonely and drunk in the office after hours, they take off all their clothes—or in Heather and I’s case—”
“Get to the point, Vic. How’d you do it, exactly?”
He looked at Eliza like she’d lost her mind. “On the receptionist’s desk? And then on the floor behind the desk. And once on that chair where you’re sitting. I’m not sure which time was the one where I knocked her up, but—”
Eliza jolted from her chair, barely keeping her phone from clattering to the floor. “You’re the father of Heather’s baby?”
His expression said it all. “Did you hit your head on the way over here or what?”
Every disgusting puzzle piece slid together in Eliza’s mind. “And in two months…”
“Victor, Jr. or maybe Victoria, Jr.—we decided not to find out the sex—is making his or her way into the world. Hopefully with the knack.”
“But Heather is… And you’re…”
“Oh, don’t look so shocked. Some people think I’m a catch.”
Eliza pressed her lips together. Vic was a catch in the way catching an old boot on a fishing trip was a catch.
Muffled music sounded from somewhere inside his desk. He opened a drawer and pulled out a phone. Eliza caught a glimpse of the notification before he flipped it facedown. Vic Van Love had new eggs to boil in Egg Salad Saga.
“You play Egg Salad Saga?”
“Like you’re so superior. I heard the music playing on the tablet out there,” he said. He suddenly brightened. “Oh! Do you need a referral code, because—”
“Heather already offered me one.”
“Of course she did.” He sighed. “Are you going to tell me what this hormone thing is all about? Because I’ve got another meeting to attend.”
Eliza tapped her fingers on the desk. Vic knew the mother of his child played Egg Salad Saga. He also played it himself, and—believe it or not—the man looked genuinely clueless. Eliza knew he wasn’t that great an actor. She’d seen his commercials.
Fabulous. Another dead end. One more failure for the Eliza Herman files. She ended the recording and sighed. “I’ll see myself out.”
“Great.” Vic propped his feet up on the desk and swiped across his phone screen. That damn music started up again, and the first few notes made Eliza’s stomach churn. She needed to get out of here.
“Oh, by the way,” Vic said when she was halfway out the door, “thanks for your support. Even if you didn’t mean to give it.”
“What?”
“You know, the whole thing with the Cosmic Council. It’s better that Jake doesn’t run anyway. He’s too young, too ambitious. He needs to let the world knock him around a little before he jumps headfirst into cosmic bureaucracy.”
Eliza narrowed her eyes, unwilling to believe this jerkwad knew anything about Jake or his future plans. Especially things Eliza didn’t know. “What are you talking about, Vic?”
“You mean you didn’t know?” Vic gave her a look that said he knew she was clueless—and he was relishing every second of it. “After Jake enchanted you without your permission, he had to confess to the Department. Some of our people who work in the Department found out, reported it to the Council…”
The fuse relit, the fire in her louder and faster this time. “What do you mean, ‘enchanted me without my permission’?”
He shrugged. “Some people get so uptight about scandals these days.”
Eliza stared at Vic for a few seconds before slammi
ng the door and marching out of his love lounge. She wasn’t any closer to knowing who was behind Egg Salad Saga, but she’d learned something even more earth-shattering in the meantime.
Two things, actually.
One: She’d ruined Jake’s future, exactly as Mrs. Washmoore had predicted.
Two: If Vic was telling the truth, she and Jake were just another enchantment. One he’d lied to her about.
Right now, she couldn’t tell which she despised more. But an explosion was coming in three, two…
Chapter 22
“Love hurts.”
—Apollo, customer complaint
Eliza pounded her fist on Jake’s door like an angry cop executing a search warrant. If she didn’t know better, she’d think she had some Fury in her lineage, because the thoughts and images coursing through her—
The door swung open. Jake stood in front of her looking slightly less rumpled but even more enticing than she’d remembered. Boyish grin, forearms to die for, a mouth that knew exactly how to please.
A soul that fit perfectly with her own.
Or at least she’d thought it had.
“We need to talk.” She pushed past him and into the living room. For one horrible moment, she sat on his sofa. Then she remembered all the ways they’d defiled that particular piece of furniture and opted to pace around the room.
“I was just about to call you,” he said. “I put in a call to a buddy of mine from the Corps. He works at the Cosmic Center for Affection Research in Athens. I explained what’s been happening—”
“Jake.”
“Look, I know you wanted to keep this a secret for now, but he’s trustworthy. I swear. He said the CCAR has been doing underground research on how to reverse enchantments for years now. I guess you’re not the only Cupid who has trouble—I mean had trouble—keeping their enchantment levels in check. Anyway, it has something to do with concentrating Discordian powers. He said the last round of the research was really promising. Almost too promising. They had to scale it back after a few people really lost it. He said if someone had gotten ahold of that research—”
