by M J Marstens
I study the stone arrowhead, the carved wooden shaft, the pink feathers on the back edge.
I swallow hard.
Maybe … maybe one day … I’ll have the guts to use this, I tell myself. I just need the right moment.
Just then, someone knocks at the door—most likely my boss. Dammit! I shove my window shut—thankfully, the damn thing doesn’t stick this time. Then, I run over and put the arrow into my desk drawer and slam it closed, heart pounding as I pull up a new screen on my computer.
Code flashes across the screen for the very mundane, human healthcare billing project I’m supposed to be tweaking.
“Come in!” I call, even though my palms are sweaty and my heart rate is out of control. The sooner I let the boss in, the sooner he’ll be gone.
Sure enough, the door opens and there stands Mr. Roberts. I feel like the guy from Office Space, trying to avoid getting wrangled into working on the weekend. I resolutely stare at my boss’ tie while he talks.
After five minutes of mindless chatter and check-ins, he leaves and I can breathe again—I guess he didn’t want me to come in on Saturday. I turn back to my computer and start on a project that he wants done.
I crack open a soda and take a sip before diving headfirst into the world of Ruby on Rails and lines of code that sing like music.
My phone rings and startles me so badly that I knock over my soda with my elbow and completely soak my robin’s egg blue pants—which is bad because that’s where my phone is, but at least it’s not my work computer.
“Shit!” I say as I try to rescue my phone from the cold, sticky mess.
“Whoa, sorry. Is this a bad time? I can call back later.”
I hear Val’s lilting voice with that soft elusive accent and immediately freeze. Wait. What’s happening? I glance at the phone in my hand like an idiot. Shit. I accidentally answered it. I hold the dripping thing up to my ear.
“Hello?”
“Dev?”
Val’s voice is like a shot of whiskey. It makes my throat burn and I get light-headed.
Every.
Single.
Damn.
Time.
“Hey.”
I ignore the soda that’s now dripping into my eardrum. I can deal with that later. I know that Val’s at her dad’s. So, if she’s calling, it must be serious.
“What’s up?”
“I want to tie up my stepmothers and launch them into another plane of existence where they have to hear their own nasally voices echoing back at them for eternity.”
“So, it was a good family dinner then?” I joke, grinning.
She’s so dramatic, my Val.
“The best.”
“Come back to Earth and I’ll give you a make-up dinner.”
The words are out of my mouth before I can really think them through. As soon as I say them, my throat grows tight. It almost sounded like I asked for a date. Will Val think it’s a date? I scrub a hand over the back of my neck. I might puke. What if she thinks it’s a date and says no?
“A make-up family dinner?” Val wonders. I can picture her face. She’s probably chewing on her bottom lip.
My stomach drops and my chest lightens at the same time. I’m both disappointed and relieved at her interpretation of dinner as a platonic thing.
“Yeah,” I grit out, trying not to let my voice get pitchy.
I clear my throat and bat down the self-loathing that smacks me across the face and makes my cheeks burn.
“I’ll have to sneak out … one second.”
I hear a scraping sound and, then, the crunch of leaves underfoot.
“What are you doing?” I ask.
“Shhh,” she shushes me, like anyone else could hear our conversation.
For all I know, maybe the gods in Asgard can. She’s never told me about anyone with that kind of power, but her family is huge. Who knows?
Val is the first demigod I’ve ever met. I remember that day perfectly. I’d come in for my night shift at Home Depot, my college job of stocking shelves—which far surpassed my high school job of fast-food bitch. There Val stood, on the loading dock, dark brown hair billowing in the wind like she was on a magazine cover, plush lips pursed with attitude, and a tattoo of a woman on her forearm that told me Val loved hard, deep, and permanently.
I immediately fell for her.
I was shocked that first night when we had to do team carries and she chose me as her partner. I’d been delighted when I’d made her laugh and startled when she’d shown me that she didn’t actually need help carrying a hundred pound box.
My eyes had gotten as big as balloons. At first, I’d thought she was just like a bodybuilder or something.
But a month later, she’d confessed she was a demigod in the employee kitchen while we were on a Ding Dong break at two a.m.
“You’re joking.” I’d paused with a mouth full of chocolate cake and lips coated with white filling.
Val had pressed her gorgeous lips together and set down her Ding Dong. Then she’d grabbed her phone and dialed.
Three seconds later … I’d nearly died of a heart attack. Because a dude with a Grateful Dead t-shirt and grey goat legs appeared in the break room. Out of nowhere.
I’d tried to shove Val behind me—do the protector thing while I tried to figure out if I was being punked, if this dude was a magician, or if my Ding Dongs had been spiked with LSD.
But Val had only laughed and pushed me aside. “Dev, this is Asteio. He’s another demigod. He’s got actual powers, unlike me. Asteio, would you mind showing Dev?”
Asteio had waved his hand and, immediately, his goat legs had turned human. Unfortunately, that had meant the rest of his lower body turned human too—including his dick, which was hanging out because he hadn’t worn pants.
“Whoa! I meant your other powers!” Val had given a girlish giggle that I’d never heard before. A flirtatious giggle that made me feel like grabbing the microwave off the countertop and hurling it at Asteio.
I hadn’t.
But I’d wanted to. And I’d never been a very violent guy before that.
Asteio had put back his goat legs then wiggled his fingers and shot wine through the air like a stream from a water fountain. I’d been so shocked I hadn’t opened my mouth and the wine had hit me in the face, soaked my shirt, and gotten me fired after our shift manager had appeared and Asteio had magically disappeared at the same time.
The shift manager hadn’t believed my story about a magic goat man shooting wine at me. Go figure.
Val had walked me out. “I’m so sorry. That wasn’t fair.” The shift manager hadn’t listened to Val argue. He hadn’t fired her, because, well, before her the only woman on the night shift had been a middle-aged bruiser named Mandi.
“Life’s not fair,” I’d tried to shrug it off and focus on more important things. Like the fact that deities actually existed. And procreated with humans. And semi deities might do the same. “So, you really are a half god?”
She’d gotten this adorable blush. “Yeah.”
“Do … you mind me asking which god?”
She’d glanced around nervously. “Can I tell you tomorrow?”
“You wanna see me tomorrow?”
“Can I stop by after work?”
My heart and dick remembered that moment in exact detail. The look on her face. This shy, sweet glance just for me. The tip of her teeth biting down on her lower lip.
“I want to get a taste of human life,” she’d said.
I’d stepped forward, drawn in like a magnet, breath fleeing my lungs.
But then … she’d friend-zoned me. She’d reached out and given me the arm pat of death. Not an arm brush. Not a suggestive touch. The old “buddy” arm pat.
And that’s when I’d realized, she only thought of me as a friend.
Still only thinks of me as a friend.
I pull open my desk drawer and stare at the arrow. It looks so innocuous. So normal. It doesn’t sparkle or glow
or show any sign of magic. But … it could make her mine.
Val.
My Val.
She could actually become my Val.
The bleating of goats through the phone brings me back to our conversation.
“What are you doing?” I ask.
“Hitching a ride,” Val whispers. “Meet you on your rooftop in two hours.”
I swallow hard. “Yup, sounds good.”
Two hours. Shit. That doesn’t give me much time. I snatch up the arrow and hang up the phone. I march out of the office before seven p.m. for once.
Because Val and I have a date.
A dinner.
With destiny.
3
Val
I’m really grateful for cloud cover since I didn’t think to grab any of Dad’s stored bags of clouds from the stable before I left. It would have been really awkward to have to explain flying a cart driven by goats through the sky.
If Dad had reindeer, no one would bat an eyelash to see them flying. Humans would think it was some publicity stunt for Christmas.
But goats?
Nobody remembers anymore that Thor brings the thunder by driving his goat-led cart through the clouds. That’s one of the things Dad constantly bemoans when I visit, because Chris Kringle makes a killing off of reindeer merch. But a red-nosed American Pygmy on a shirt just gets you weird looks. I know. I tried it.
Luckily, I don’t have to come up with some half-assed explanation for my actions because nobody sees me before I land on Dev’s roof.
I clamber out ungracefully, my human side rearing its klutzy head, and toss the goats a couple of my old t-shirts to chew on before I head to the emergency stairwell. The shirts are a crappy snack but they were the best bribe I had in my room.
The stairwell door opens as I reach it and Dev steps out. He always has perfect timing. Sometimes, I feel like we have this strange psychic connection—like he just knows what I’m thinking.
It’s crazy—certainly, all my sisters and my stepmothers tell me it is. ‘Guys are idiots,’ they say, ‘Guys don’t understand anything.’
But Dev gets me.
Like now, when he shows up carrying a dozen pink roses. My heart swells; he’s the sweetest thing. I rush up to him and grab them.
“Oh, you’re a lifesaver!” I exclaim and take the fragrant blooms from him. “The girls are starving after our trip.”
I run back to Tanny and Tangy and hold out half the roses to each of them. Their bulging little caprine eyes light up as they both chomp down on a perfect rose. Their bleats of pleasure make my heart soar.
I spent a lot of time with these hircin beauties growing up in Asgard, and roses are their favorite. Dev’s never even met them before, but he must have looked up goat foods before I got here.
He’s so thoughtful like that.
Dev comes up to stand beside me.
“You’re amazing,” I compliment and give him a hip bump. Ecstasy zips through me, just like it does every time I touch him—which isn’t often.
I glance up at him, to see if I have the same effect on him that he has on me but he doesn’t look exactly happy, let alone ecstatic. His face is strained and his lips pursed together tightly.
“Glad I made someone’s night,” he mumbles as he bends forward stiffly to pet Tangy’s head.
“Careful!” I laugh, grabbing his hand and pulling it back as Tangy bares her teeth at him. “Not nice,” I scold the goat, who rolls her eyes at me.
I get attitude from an animal that would eat used condoms.
Typical.
I drop the rest of the roses onto the roof so that the animals can finish their treat, and I head inside with Dev.
He doesn’t drop my hand.
Does that mean he wants to hold it?
Touching him gives me the craziest thrill. My chest puffs full of air and anticipation, just like it does before my dad and I run through a lightning bolt obstacle course that he’s made on the outskirts of Asgard. Dev’s touch is as potent as the fear of getting struck by lighting.
Part of me wants to squeeze Dev’s hand to let him know how I feel, but Dev’s human, and I’m not entirely sure if it would hurt him or not. Once, I accidentally crushed a brick in my hand. I didn’t realize how fragile they were, and humans are way more breakable. I don’t know the correct pressure ratio for human-hand squeezing to ensure that I don’t hurt Dev.
He’s just so adorable. I love how the tips of his ears turn pink all the time. I have no idea why they do that. Most humans’ ears don’t seem to change color as often as his. Other people’s ears change if they are too cold or too hot, but Dev’s seem to constantly be the delicate shade of the roses he brought for the girls.
And, let’s not forget his grin—Dev’s got this cute shy smile that makes me simultaneously melt and want to taste him to see if he’s as sweet as he looks.
“Ready to go in?” Dev asks, interrupting my internal babbling as he scratches his beard with his free hand.
I lick my lips unconsciously. His brown eyes track their movement and the air is suddenly thick with something that I can’t pinpoint.
“S-s-sure,” I manage to stutter before collecting myself. “What kind of dinner are we having?”
“It’s a surprise,” he murmurs and my body tingles in awareness just like it does when someone uses magic nearby. Vibrations run underneath my skin.
Dev’s voice is a little husky, and he drops my hand to hold open the door to the building for me. I go through first but wait to follow him down the semi-dark stairwell, since he knows it better than I do.
At one point I trip and grab onto Dev for balance. My breath catches. His shirt is so soft under my fingertips. I run my fingers over his back, tracing the line of his spine for a second before I realize what I'm doing.
I blink and step back. "Sorry." I can't believe I just touched Dev without invitation. Home Depot was incredibly clear about the rules for human interaction. Touching humans without their explicit permission and invitation is sexual harassment. People hate it.
That’s why I try so hard not to touch him.
But sometimes, when I look at Dev, I just get so swept up in emotion that I forget. I'm uncertain if that's the deity in me—the god-like propensity to see something, want it, claim it—or if it's something else.
In either case, I know humans abhor it. I can count on one hand the number of times I've accidentally touched Dev. The first time I touched him was the time told him I was a part-god, the night I'd nearly yanked his shirt and dragged him down on top of me so we could enjoy carnal bliss under the stars in the parking lot of Home Depot.
I hadn’t had as much control over myself then. Or as much understanding of human ways, since Dad had basically raised me to tend his goats in Asgard. But I'd managed to restrain myself. I'd stopped. I'd uncurled my fingers and given him a gentle pat, backing away before the eternal, carnal part of me could debase and devalue him. I do the same now, backing up an entire step and holding up my palms in surrender. "I'm so, so sorry, Dev. I fell. I didn't mean to ..."
His cheeks heat. He must hate that I touched him like that. But he's too embarrassed to say.
My Dev's always been easily embarrassed. He's shy. It's one of my favorite things about him. Only humans are shy. Gods are so entitled, they think everyone wants to know their life story. They get offended when someone hasn't already heard of them.
Gods are ridiculous.
Except for Dad. He's mostly okay I guess. Especially when he's not surrounded by assholes. But most of the time, he lives in the middle of that sewage pit he calls family, breathing in their shit day in and day out until his nose is immune to the stench. Kind of like the people in El Paso, Texas.
Dev's from there. He's told me about them. Cow Town. The very air smells like cow patties. You can taste it on your tongue. He’s never wanted to go back.
I turn to focus back on Dev, who's already halfway down the stairs. I grab the hand rail and hurry to catch up, h
olding on tight so that if I fall, I'll at least face plant into the wall instead of accidentally assaulting Dev again.
I can't help but eye his ass once I've caught up though. Even though he's a total computer nerd since he left the Depot, he always goes to the gym. Five a.m. like clockwork.
I'm not a stalker.
Not completely.
Only sometimes.
Fine. I am.
But shut up. I'm just looking, not touching.
And the Depot didn't say anything about looking. Gods watch humans all the time. And I’m part god. I can resist some impulses. But not all. Not all. Not when it comes to Dev.
He unlocks his apartment door and gestures for me to go in first. When I walk in, I stop short.
The lights are dimmed. There are candles lit on his dual purpose gaming and dining table. He’s set out real silverware and plates. (We normally only use paper plates at his place because he doesn't have a dishwasher.) There's champagne chilling in a popcorn bucket full of ice. Two beer glasses stand next to it. His marijuana plants—his pride and joy—are nowhere to be found.
Hope fizzes in my belly, turning all my insides a bright frothy, exciting purple. It's like Dev has set off a bath bomb inside me. Those are my favorite human creations of all time. Their fizz and sizzle and purposelessness enchant me. I turn and look up at him, my throat suddenly tight and nervous. "What are we celebrating?"
Dev's face goes red and his hands fiddle inside his pockets. Something long, hard, and ... my excitement drops ... thin, presses against his jeans. No. No way. That's too thin. Relief floods me. No way that's a tiny cock. It's gotta be a pencil. Dev's playing with a pencil in his pocket. A sharp one based on the pointed tip.
He opens his mouth to speak, but just then my phone rings.
My phone only rings for emergencies.
Everyone literally only ever texts me.
I hold up a single finger and grab my phone out of my back pocket. “Hello?”
“Val?” a male voice on the cusp of crying calls out.
“Asteio!” I gasp. Son of Dionysus and a human, Asteio has been my friend since we were in nappies. He’s the one who helped me prove gods exist to Dev. He’s a half-goat man, possibly part of why we get along, because I know goats; he’s also a very understanding shoulder to cry on.
