Cupid’s Match

Once we’re back in Cupid’s living room, we lay Crystal on the couch opposite the fire. Cupid goes to make us coffee and Charlie, after her traumatic evening, goes upstairs for a nap.

Cal crouches beside Crystal as I perch on the edge of the armchair. He brushes a damp strand of hair out of her face with surprising tenderness.

“Crystal? Wake up,” he says. “You need to wake up.”

Her breathing seems to steady, but she remains in her weird, Ardor-induced coma. As Cal continues to entreat her, Cupid enters the living room. He passes me a mug.

“Get out of the way, Brother,” he says, putting his own coffee mug down on the table and shoving Cal aside. He shakes Crystal by the shoulders. “Oi! Crystal! Time to get up!”

She doesn’t stir. He taps her on the face.

Cal slaps his hand away. “Hasn’t she been through enough?!” he hisses.

“We need to find out where the Finis is before the Arrows get it,” Cupid replies.

“Well, your technique is clearly not working.”

Cupid huffs and gets up, looking unusually irritable as he sits on the edge of the other sofa. Cal begins pacing around the room.

“Will you sit down, Brother?” Cupid snaps after a few minutes of silence.

Cal glares at him, then suddenly walks out of the room without saying anything.

“What do we do?” I ask.

“The Arrows said they’d send someone to get the Finis at midnight,” Cupid says. “Unfortunately, we can’t ask Crystal where they’ll be going, what with her being unconscious. When they have it, they’ll come straight for us. Not to be dramatic or anything . . . but they’ll kill us all.”

He smiles weakly. For a moment, despite our earlier fight, I want to reach out and touch him, to tell him that everything will be okay. But then I remember what will happen if we develop true feelings for each other: Venus will come back. And the Arrows are coming for us. So nothing is even close to okay right now.

I wrench my gaze away from his and glance at the clock on my phone.

“If she wakes up soon, can we get the Finis before they do?”

Cupid runs a hand through his hair. “I suppose . . .”

“We can’t count on it,” Cal interjects from the doorway. He walks back inside and dumps a pile of books, papers, and photographs on the coffee table. Cupid groans.

“Oh great, your stacks of useless information.”

Cal’s jaw clenches. “Have you got a better idea?!”

Neither of us speak.

“Well?” he says. “What are you waiting for? We have less than twelve hours to find the Finis or we’re all dead. Let’s get to work.”

We spend the entire day in Cupid’s living room. By ten o’clock, the living room is a mess of papers and documents. I sit on the floor by the coffee table, skimming through the printed pages of The Records of the Finis.

Two hours until midnight.

Cal crouches on the floor beside me, flicking through sepia photographs while Cupid slumps in his armchair, his eyes bleary as he looks through an especially thick file marked Employee Details. Crystal is still unconscious on the couch behind us. Dirty coffee cups cover every available surface. After a while, Cal sighs and drops the picture he was examining.

“Anything?” he asks us.

“It would help if we knew what we were looking for,” says Cupid, throwing the file down on the floor. “Let’s try and wake up Crystal up again.” He makes a move to rise, pushing his muscular arms against the sides of the chair.

Cal glares at him. “And what do you suggest we try now?”

They stare at each other for a moment before Cupid shrugs, slumping back down in his seat.

“Fine,” he says. “You’ve got me. I have no idea.”

We fall back into silence for a few moments before Cupid speaks again.

“Anyone want another coffee?”

I pass my mug to him and he strides out into the hallway.

Cal frowns. “There must be something,” he says, going back to the photographs on the coffee table.

I peer over them. Some are faded and sepia toned, others are bright and new. They all seem to be depicting the same posed shot of a group of cupids.

“She said she wasn’t always a receptionist. That has to mean something,” he mutters. As he reaches behind me for the file Cupid dropped on the floor, I pick up a sepia image from the top of the pile to examine it more closely.

It shows the reception area of the Matchmaking Service. The image is faded, but I can make out a male in his early teens standing in Crystal’s place behind the desk. I scan the rest of the picture, trying to find her, but she’s not there. There’s something else about the room that looks different, like something is missing, but I can’t put my finger on what it is.

I glance down to the corner of the image, where March 1887 is written in black marker. Why does that year mean something to me?

I frown and pull The Records of the Finis toward me, turning to the earmarked pages that give Crystal’s account of her meeting with the Minotaur. Whitechapel, London, 1888 is written at the top of the page. The year after the photograph was taken.

Cupid saunters back into the room carrying two steaming mugs. He places one down before me and throws himself back into the armchair.

“Cal,” I say, “the file you’re looking at—it has employee details in it?”

He looks up at me sharply, seeming irritated by the interruption. “Yes?”

“So presumably it will have the dates when cupids started working for the Matchmaking Service?”

“Yes. But what good is that?”

“Does it have the date when Crystal stopped being an agent and started being the receptionist?”

He studies me a moment, then looks back down at the file and flicks through it. He stops on a page and scans it for a few moments.

“January 1889,” he says. “But I don’t see why that is important.”

1889. Just after her visit to Whitechapel to retrieve the Finis.

I ignore him and grab the sepia photograph, studying it again. Then I turn back to the pile on the coffee table, sifting through the photographs until I find the group shot from 1889. Sure enough, Crystal is there, smiling in the center.

I look up and grin, realizing now what else was missing from the first image.

“It’s important,” I say, “because I know where the Finis is.”

The street in front of the Matchmaking Service is quiet beneath the lit streetlights. The clock on the dashboard of Cupid’s car reads eleven forty. We have twenty minutes before the Arrows get here.

“You really think it’s in the Cupids Matchmaking Service?” Charlie says from her spot beside me in the backseat.

I nod.

“And you want me to break in?”

“No. Yes. Well . . . kind of.”

Cal looks at us in the rearview mirror. “It’s not a break-in. You are welcome there.”

“Unlike any of us,” Cupid adds.

“Thanks to your brilliant plan of resurrecting a goddess,” I say.

Cupid makes a dismissive sound as Charlie says, “What?!”

“If you’re quite finished,” Cal says.

He turns to look at Charlie. “In normal circumstances, one of the cupids would have brought you in already, usually the one who turned you. Because that was someone from the Arrows rather than a cupid from our L.A. branch, I expect that Crystal would have been assigned as your mentor.”

“And you want me to take the Finis?”

“No,” says Cal. “To take it yourself would be a one-way ticket to banishment. We can’t ask that of you. You just need to get the receptionist to leave the desk before midnight, which is when they usually swap shifts. Once the area is clear, we’ll do the rest.”

She nods. I’m grateful that after everything that’s happened to her, she’s still willing to help.

“Be careful. We only have one shot at this,” Cal warns.

“So no pressure or anything,” says Cupid.

As Charlie opens the door of the car and steps out onto the street, I marvel at the simplicity of Crystal’s clue. She was giving us the answer this whole time. When she’d got back from London with the Finis, she must have maneuvered herself to work in a position where she could watch over it at all times.

It was the arrow hung over the desk. She’d hidden it in plain sight.

“Wish me luck,” Charlie says.

I watch as she walks down the street toward the Cupids Matchmaking Service, then glance at the quiver full of arrows by my side. My heart beats fast as I think about the potential fight ahead.

“Good luck, Charlie,” I say quietly.

We sit in tense silence for a few minutes before Cal exhales loudly. He grabs his bow from the satchel beside me and opens the car door.

“I’m going to try and get a bit closer, see if I can see what’s going on.” He looks at me and then at Cupid. “Behave yourselves,” he adds sharply before stepping out of the car.

We fall into silence again as Cal moves stealthily down the sidewalk. Cupid turns to look at me, and, despite myself, I find my gaze wandering toward his lips. Despite everything, I still find myself wondering what they would taste like.

“You’re still angry with me,” he says.

“I have to be,” I say. “What’s the alternative?”

He gives me a sad smile. “You forgive me, give us a chance, and we live happily ever after?”

I force a laugh. “This isn’t a fairy tale. Love isn’t a fairy tale. If I give us a chance, Venus comes after us and I’m guessing we don’t live at all.”

“What is a fairy tale without a monster to defeat?”

I shake my head then drag my gaze away. “You used me. When you get the Finis you need to leave.”

He sighs heavily. “You have my word. As soon as we have the final arrow I’ll get out of town. The Arrows will come after me, Venus won’t return, and you’ll never see me again.”

Even though it’s what I asked of him, his words make me feel like I’ve been punched in the stomach.

He has to go. But I want him to stay.

I rest my head on the leather headrest and nod. “Okay.”

He reaches over the seat to try and take my hand but I don’t let him. I have to be strong. I feel my anger coming back, and I seize upon it gladly. It doesn’t matter that he now seems to have acquired a conscience—he used me to try and resurrect an ancient goddess, he made me feel something for him, and now he is leaving me behind.

“You should never have come here,” I blurt, fixing him with my stare.

He looks momentarily hurt. Then a flash of annoyance crosses his face. “Well, I’ll be leaving you in good company at least,” he retorts coldly. “I would have thought you would appreciate some alone time with my brother.”

I stare at him in shock but before I can respond, my phone vibrates. It’s Charlie. She’s inside.