No Chance in Spell

by ReGina Welling

  If anyone had ever told me taking over for my father and playing Cupid would turn me into a glorified, full-time stalker, I’d have refused the job. Not that anyone asked me if I wanted it in the first place.

  And now my target had fled.

  As if I didn’t already know I’d missed the mark, the Bow of Destiny blatted a note of displeasure in my head, and I had to hold back a shriek of pain as the sound ricocheted off the inside of my sore skull.

  “Give it a rest, will you?” I clutched my aching head.

  Box after box of chocolates fly off the shelves every February with cute little angels plastered all over their shiny redness. Too bad the candy makers completely missed the mark when it came to decorating. My dad was no winged cherub holding an adorable little bow with heart-tipped arrows. Okay, the heart shape was right, but the cute part was all wrong. Nope, Cupid was a man. Or technically a god, but he looked like a man. One I’d never met, and who forged his bow—a serious weapon—from living gold.

  Living. Gold. As in gold that lived. And where did it live? you might ask. Inside me, that’s where.

  Moreover, the stupid thing had a brain of sorts, and an opinion on everything that had to do with my work. One it liked to share musically. At a high volume.

  Fishing around in the messenger bag I’d been using for a purse, I pulled out a bottle containing the dregs of my faerie godmother’s restorative elixir, and downed the last few drops. Like magic—because it was magic—half the headache faded away, taking most of the fuzzy thoughts with it. I’d have to deal with the rest of the pain later, and it would be worse, but the stay of execution might allow me to finish my job. Magic always comes with a price.

  “I’ll go find whoever it is. Are you happy now?” From the outside, talking to the bow looked a lot like talking to myself. The answer came in the form of a cheery tune that only made me wince at the much-reduced pain as I staggered out of the mouth of the alley and loped down the sidewalk.

  A moment of concentration reactivated the weapon’s sight. Like something out of a superhero movie, a circle with a set of crosshairs hovered just ahead of my right eye. My imagination supplied robotic sound effects every time I blinked and the focus altered. All I needed now was a pink spandex suit with a symbol splashed across the chest. Lexi Balefire: Matchwoman. No, that didn’t sound right. Lovemaker? Ugh. Worse, and with a vaguely dirty undertone. Matchwitch was a little closer, but maybe I’d better leave the superhero name thing alone for the time being.

  Armed and ready, I locked in on the place in my gut that always knew the right direction. Cars have GPS, I have LPS—an internal Love Positioning System.

  The pull was strong this time. Anticipation stole my breath like I’d crested the hill on a roller coaster, caught in that moment of foreboding just before the awful plunge. This match felt epic and desperate to be made. Not normal, in other words.

  Even without Terra’s magic healing juice lending me artificial strength, I would have hurried forward, the compulsion was so strong. My date with the dumpster had cost me valuable time and, according to the intensity of the pull, I had only seconds to make this work, so I kicked the pace up another notch.

  Nerves jittered as I closed in on my quarry. My stomach lurched when the target symbol finally blinked red and split into two. One crossed circle oriented on a man walking away from me, the other on a woman walking toward. A complicated orchestral arrangement sounded in my head—at a volume that would have made my ears ring, but made my skull bones vibrate instead.

  A simple ta-da would have worked, do you have to make a big deal out of everything? I thought at the bow.

  It blew a musical raspberry at me in response.

  In a cloud of glowing light, the bow-carrying inner Goddess—the part of me with the power to handle my father’s weapon—stepped forward, and with a practiced hand brought the Bow of Destiny to bear. She looked like me except for the hair. Mine, a nut-brown riot of curls shot through with strands of copper, hers a slanting wing of white tipped with neon pink. Oh, and the eyes were different, too. Pink and piercing, she fixed hers upon the two unsuspecting hearts, took aim, and fired.

  A pair of arrows zinged toward their targets.