by Amanda Heger
Eliza forced down all the emotions clogging her throat. “Mom. Dad. Please. Can you come back later? Maybe in a few hours. I’m really not feeling well.” She faked a cough. “Maybe I’ve got Elijah’s bronchitis.”
Her mother’s face screwed up in annoyance. “If you would listen to me just once—”
Just once? Maybe if her mother didn’t use that condescending tone just once, she and Eliza could be in the same room together. Maybe if her mother had believed in her abilities just once, Eliza wouldn’t have become such an epic fuckup of a Cupid. “Why? So you can remind me of what a failure I am? Or so you can keep pretending you aren’t screwing this guy behind Dad’s back?”
“Eliza!” Her father’s voice boomed deeper than she’d ever heard it.
“I’m sorry, Dad. I didn’t want you to find out this way. I didn’t want you to find out at all. But when I was a teenager—”
“She saw me kiss Beverly,” Weston finished. He turned to Eliza. “Your mother and I dated for a few years back in college. We graduated, wanted different things in life, and went our separate ways. But about thirteen years ago, I took a job here in town and looked her up. She’d always been the one that got away. She and your father were separated at the time—”
“Wait. What? No, they weren’t.” Eliza looked to her brother for confirmation.
He shrugged.
“Eliza…” Her mother’s expression shifted from discomfort to pity. It only fueled Eliza’s rage.
“Well, you weren’t,” Eliza argued. “You’ve always lived together.”
“It doesn’t matter,” Weston said. “I came bursting into town, ready to win her back. Hearing she and your father had separated was like winning the jackpot and getting the Fates on my side at the same time. But she wouldn’t have me. Said she was still in love with your father and wanted to fight for their relationship.”
Eliza stared at the table. She was nearly thirty years old. She hadn’t lived with her parents in ages. Why did this hurt so badly?
“So I guess that day I saw the two of you coming out of her bedroom, you’d had a friendly chat about how much she loved my father.”
“No. She was searching for an old necklace I’d given her. It was my grandmother’s.”
“You kissed her.”
“I did,” Weston said. “I shouldn’t have, but I did. It was a last-ditch effort to get her to change her mind. I’ve since apologized to both your mother and your father.”
Every nerve ending in her body felt frayed. This couldn’t be true.
Could it?
She pressed her fingers to her brow and tried to clear her brain. Most of her teenage memories were clouded by mishaps and embarrassment about her Cupiding skills. Being picked on in school, not living up to her parents’ hopes and dreams, spectacularly failing both her driver’s test and Cupid test within the same week. (Surprisingly, the highway patrolman did not take kindly to having his foot run over mid-parallel-park even after the injury resulted in a lasting relationship between himself and the postman.)
But when she peered beyond those memories, others came into focus. The week she and Elijah had suddenly been shipped off to their maternal grandmother’s house in Wyoming, followed by the week they spent in San Diego at their paternal grandmother’s house. The extended business trip her father went on just before the Weston debacle. The way everyone—not just hormonal, emo teen Eliza—had been quiet and tense.
Maybe she’d been so obsessed with her own problems that she hadn’t bothered to notice the storm raging around her. Maybe Weston’s story had grains of truth in it after all.
“Why did you separate?” Her voice came out as a whisper.
“Your mother and I had a rough patch when you were a teenager,” her father said. “Trying to keep a marriage happy while getting the business off the ground and raising two teenagers was almost more than we—more than I—could handle.”
“Tim,” her mother said. “Please…”
He looked at his wife with fierce tenderness in his eyes. “If we want Eliza to be honest with us, we need to be honest too,” he said before turning back to his children. “I made some mistakes. I got caught up in a woman I met at the Agora. These days, people call it an emotional affair, but back then we didn’t have a term for it, at least not that I knew of. All I knew was that I was unhappy, and I wanted a quick fix. I asked your mother for a trial separation. It was stupid and lazy, and it took me a while to realize that. But once I did, your mother was strong enough to forgive me.”
Tears streamed silently down her mother’s cheeks, but she stared at her husband with pride etched into her features. “We worked harder to fix things than we’d ever worked before,” her mother said. “And once we got back together, something just…clicked.”
“Me,” Eliza whispered.
“What?” her mom asked.
“Me. After I saw you that day with Weston, I came up with a plan. I enchanted you both. I never told anyone. Not even Elijah.”
Her parents fell silent as they looked at each other. For two aching heartbeats, Eliza was certain they’d get angry or, worse, decide their reconciliation had been a big, fat, enchantment-based lie.
But then they laughed.
Her father’s deep belly laugh intermingled with her mother’s lighter, melodic one—the sounds of Eliza’s early childhood, before she’d woken up on her eighth birthday with “the knack.” Back when they’d spend weekends at the beach house, Eliza curled up with a book and Elijah running around in the sand.
“Eliza, do you have any idea how many times you’ve enchanted us over the years?” her dad asked. “Once, you dropped a spoon on my hand while we were doing dishes, and your mother and I hardly left the bed for a week. Another time, you brought home a Scholastic book order form and gave your mother a massive paper cut. She was insatiable that month. We tried so many—”
Eliza’s ears were going to bleed if she didn’t put a stop to this. “Dad, stop! Too much!”
“Torturing your children is still illegal, Dad,” Elijah added. “Even if they’re adults.”
Her mother blushed and put a hand over Eliza’s. “What your father means is that it’s only an enchantment, Eliza. Those exciting moments come and go throughout the years, but real Love…that takes work and patience. And it’s worth everything.”
For once, Eliza listened to her mother. Really and truly listened. “And you two really Love each other.” She realized the truth of it as she said the words. Another truth pricked at the back of her skull, but she ignored it the best way she knew how.
By talking about how badly she’d screwed up her enchantments.
“What did you want to ask me?” she asked.
“It’s about your car, honey,” her mother said.
“Ron Weasley? Did something happen to him?”
Weston cleared his throat. “Eliza, have you ever wondered how your, um… How Ron has managed to stay running after all these years?”
She shrugged. Was this guy investigating automotive maintenance techniques or what? “Regular oil changes?” Even that was a stretch. Ron had hit a thousand miles past due for a change…two thousand miles ago.
“What about that thing you did, honey?” her father asked. “That day he was acting up on the way to my appointment?”
“The jiggle, jiggle, tap?” She turned to Weston. “He has a wire or something loose, so when he starts acting up, I jiggle some things around under the hood until he starts working again.”
Weston whipped out a tiny notebook and started scribbling. “Have you ever enchanted other inanimate objects? Or is your car an anomaly?”
“What?” She looked from Weston to her parents and then her brother. Each of them studied her intently, as if she were about to explain the meaning of life. Or at least a surefire way to win the lottery.
It was official
. The stress of this whole financial deficiency thing had broken them.
She turned to Weston. “Do you have a badge or credentials or something?” If this guy was a charlatan taking advantage of her family in their time of need, she was going to call the police so fast—
He handed her a leather case with both a badge and a credential. And, much to Eliza’s surprise, Weston Presley appeared to be exactly who he claimed to be.
“Eliza,” her mother said, “I’m sure you’ve heard the rumors about techno-Cupids? Cupids who can enchant objects and use technology in their enchantments?”
Eliza’s stomach dropped. “Yes.”
“Well, it’s not just some rumor in the Cupid Cabal.” Her father splayed his fingers out on the table as if searching for something—anything—to hang on to. “Last year, when I was in Tokyo—”
Her mind flashed back to that day in the hospital. Her father’s pale face. The beeping machines. His drug-induced ramblings. The time I went to Tokyo. “You really went to Tokyo?”
He nodded. “Last year, when we told you we were heading to the annual Cupid Accreditation Conference in Dallas, your brother and I visited Tokyo. We were looking for new ways to expand the business—”
“Techno-Cupids are real, Eliza,” Elijah interjected. He looked like a kid who’d been given free rein in a taffy shop. “The current theory is that their powers are evolving with the increase in dependency on smart technology. Basically, technology is getting so smart that whatever gene causes the knack is mutating to allow machines to be enchanted.”
Even though she’d spent the last few days chasing a seemingly crazy theory about techno-Cupids and Egg Salad Saga, she’d spent decades being taught—by some of the people sitting across from her at this very moment—that Cupids had many limitations. Among them, the ability to enchant humans and only humans.
“You’re serious?” she asked.
Her parents nodded in unison.
“So, you’ve never enchanted another inanimate object?” Weston asked. “Or maybe a nonhuman animal? We’ve heard—”
“No, I’ve never…” Her voice faded as memories rushed by. Charleston the pig. Jacque the Mandroid. Hilda and Freddy the sea lions.
“You have, haven’t you?” Elijah said before turning to their parents. “She has.”
The world stopped spinning. Had she really… Was she really… “I, um, I think I have.”
Her apartment burst into a flurry of activity and questions. When had she first enchanted Ron? Were there any unwanted side effects? How sure was she about the pig? How long did Jacque manage to function? Did the sea lions actually mate?
“I’m sorry,” Eliza repeated time and again. “I really don’t know. I didn’t realize this was even possible. I mean, I suspected techno-Cupids were real, but…not that I was one.”
Her mother gave her a quizzical look. “But you suspected that someone else was?”
That was the only opening Eliza needed. She launched into the saga of, well, Egg Salad Saga: the enchantments falling apart, her clients playing the game nonstop, Vic Van Love and his stupid advertisements…
By the time she’d unloaded the full story, Eliza was out of breath and running on pure adrenaline. Finally, she was going to get to the bottom of this. With her family’s help, she could get the Johansens back together, end all these lawsuit threats, and ride happily into the sunset.
Maybe she could even make things right with J—
Anger popped and fizzled in her brain. Nope. Not happening. She pushed all thoughts of a certain dark-eyed Cupid from her mind and looked expectantly at her family.
They looked back at her like she’d taken a page from the playbook of Lyssa—the spirit of rage, frenzy, and rabies.
“What?” she asked, deflating.
“Liza,” her father said. “Techno-Cupids enchant things. They don’t make people hate.”
“But—” she started.
“Honey, I can’t imagine how stressed out you must be right now,” her mother said. “This is a lot of new information to process. For all of us. And you’re so new to purposeful enchantments. There are bound to be some bumps along the way for a newly licensed Cupid.”
“You don’t believe me?” Eliza asked.
But they didn’t have to answer. She knew they didn’t. Pressure built in her chest, squeezing and squeezing until she expected to shatter. Her family wasn’t going to help her. There would be no riding off into the sunset. There would only be Eliza, her techno-Cupid abilities, and her pile of failures.
“You’d rather believe this is my fault.” Her temples pounded and fireworks went off at the edges of her vision. “You can believe that techno-Cupids are real. You can believe poor, clumsy Eliza screwed up all her cases. But you can’t believe that someone is reversing enchantments.”
Her father reached for her hand, but Eliza pulled it away. “Your mother hasn’t had any problems with her enchantments,” he said softly.
Weston cleared his throat.
“What?” Eliza practically bared her teeth at the poor man.
But without acknowledging her anger, he put his notebook away and gave Eliza a small smile. “I should go. But I appreciate your candor, Eliza. Especially after everything that happened all those years ago.”
The mere mention of the Weston Presley incident was enough to tamp down her anger and replace it with tears stinging the corners of her eyes. She swallowed back a knot in her throat. “Sure.”
“I’m sorry I wasn’t able to be of more help with your situation with the Department,” Weston said to her parents. “In my opinion, they’re being completely unreasonable, but for all the Cosmic Council’s sway over the Descendants, we don’t matter at all to the State of California.”
“What do you mean?” Eliza asked.
“We can talk about it later,” her father said.
At the same time, her mother said, “The Department called this morning to say there have been some complaints about our services, so they decided to accelerate our fees. They’re due tomorrow by eight in the morning.”
Eliza’s stomach dropped for the sixteenth time that day. “What kind of complaints?”
“It doesn’t matter.” Her father reached across the table and patted her hand. “We’re going to fight it. In the meantime, while the lawyers work it out, we’re going to shut down for a little while.”
But it did matter. Those complaints had to be about her.
No. No, no, no, no. NO.
She’d failed. She’d failed her parents, her brother, all the couples she’d enchanted. Herself.
Weston stood and offered Eliza his hand. “I’m afraid I’ll have some more questions for you in the future, if you’re willing to answer them.”
She nodded, still dumbstruck. It was as if the universe had decided to drop not one, not two, but three giant sacks of quicksand on her head. By the time she managed to dig out of the first, another came and threatened to pull her under.
“In the meantime,” Weston continued, “you get some rest, Eliza. I’ll see about updating your information in the Descendants’ Scroll. I’ve been adding a small, inconspicuous note to the entries for Cupids with your abilities. The world isn’t quite ready for techno-Cupids yet, so I’ve been saying simply ‘advanced’ under the abilities portion. We haven’t found every one of them yet, but I think we’re getting close.”
Lightning struck as surely as if Zeus himself had thrown the bolt down at her, blasting the mental quicksand into the abyss.
The Scroll. At the library. Under lock and key—and Mrs. Washmoore’s watchful eye.
Whoever was behind the Egg Salad Saga scheme had to be a techno-Cupid. Or maybe a techno-Cupid working in connection with someone else? Say…a Fury? If she could just get to the library and somehow see the register—maybe she’d get Mrs. Washmoore drunk at Dionysus and convin
ce her to show it to Eliza, or maybe Eliza would just play the old oops-I’m-a-klutz card and “accidentally” knock the Fury over and steal the key from her lanyard—she’d be a lot closer to figuring out who was behind all this. And once she found out who was behind Egg Salad Saga—and got those complaints redacted—she could figure out how to fix all the lives she’d ruined.
Her parents’. Her brother’s. The Johansens’. Maybe even Helen’s.
Everyone’s except her own.
Because despite the way her world had been totally upended in the last hour, she couldn’t let go of that small, hard kernel in her chest. The one that made her feel ready to explode at the thought of Jake. The one that made her feel disgusted at her own stupidity. She’d started to believe in capital-L Love, like a capital-L Loser.
There was no coming back from that. Especially not by eight o’clock tomorrow morning.
Chapter 24
Calif. CCR § 579.107. A person may only lawfully utilize those love charms, potions, and substances defined in the Schedule of Controlled Aphrodisiacs pursuant to a valid prescription and supervision of a licensed Cupid.
Eliza marched toward the Agora as if today was just another day in her very calm and very normal life.
“Hello, Eliza,” Mrs. Washmoore said. “Back again?”
“I wanted to see about that interlibrary loan you told me about.” She slipped her ID through the groove in the plexiglass.
The woman didn’t touch it. “I’m sorry. Nothing has come in yet.”
“That’s okay.” Eliza pushed the ID a little farther into the booth.
“Didn’t you check out some library books the other day?”
“I did. All interesting reads so far.” Eliza pushed the ID as far as she could manage without getting her fingers stuck. She really didn’t have time for this. She needed to get into the library and get her grubby little hands on the register.
“And you didn’t bring them with you today? Maybe you should go home and come back. The late fees are very strict these days. All automated, and I really have no discretion in the matter.”
