“Why?” she asked.
“Because Mr. Vari is gone.”
Her heart fluttered. She resisted the urge to put her hand over that sore spot in her chest. “For good?”
Blackstone shook his head. “Only until he figures out what he should have known all along.”
“What’s that?” she asked.
“That there’s more to him than snappy cloths and a pithy phrase.”
“Excuse me?”
Blackstone glanced at her. “You have no idea, do you?”
She shook her head. “About what?”
“About what a great man Andrew Vari truly is.”
Ariel stopped. “What are you trying to tell me?”
Blackstone studied her for a moment. “Something that’s not mine to tell,” he said, and walked toward the correct wall.
She found that amazing. She hadn’t told him where she had seen the light, yet he seemed to know.
“I was supposed to meet Mr. Vari after work. Is that why he left?”
“I don’t think he’ll forget you,” Blackstone said as he put his hand next to a particularly strange wrought iron sculpture.
His words echoed the note that Darius had sent her. She felt an odd pang. “But you don’t know.”
He looked at her sideways, his expression speculative. “I’m beginning to know more than I should.”
“Funny,” she said, “since I met Mr. Vari, I’m beginning to feel like I know less than I ever did.”
“Don’t worry,” Blackstone said, “everything will turn out just fine.”
“That’s precisely what I mean,” she said. “I don’t even know what just fine is any more.”
“You will someday soon,” Blackstone said. “I’m sure of it.”
THIRTEEN
DARIUS POPPED INTO the stall of a men’s room. Graffiti had been scratched into the walls, all of it in English, and most of it crude. He stared at it, feeling disconcerted.
In the stall beside him, someone coughed. Darius glanced under the stall’s side. A dirty pair of tennis shoes were half-hidden beneath a crumpled pair of polyester pants that were pooled at the bottom of a pair of hairy legs.
Darius stood quickly, nearly banging his head on the door’s lock.
He was tall again. He hadn’t used all of his time in his original form this year. He rarely did, in case he needed it for personal emergencies. Most years he didn’t. But he had learned this lesson during the Guinevere/Arthur debacle, when he hadn’t been able to reappear to either of them as the blond stranger in order to put the record straight.
Since that incident had lasting historical repercussions, he vowed never to do anything like it again.
It felt strange to be tall and thin again. He was just beginning to get used to Andrew Vari. Darius sighed. He still wore his natty gray suit, but it had changed along with him. Now it was long, as he was, and as expertly tailored as it had been before. Only it didn’t feel as if it fit him any more.
The suit wasn’t something Darius would wear. Darius had no need to be flamboyant. In fact, Darius, in his modern incarnations, was more of a blue-jeans-and-flannel man. Wearing the clothes of one identity when he was in the body of another felt very uncomfortable.
But he was in Monte Carlo—or he was supposed to be. At least, that was where Cupid had said his casino was. But Darius had been to the casinos in Monte Carlo. They didn’t have graffiti in the bathrooms, especially graffiti written in English.
Darius opened the stall door and stepped out. The bathroom was a pale industrial blue that had faded with time. A fluorescent light flickered overhead. A dirty mirror hung above the urinals, and the entire room smelled of ineffective deodorizers.
If this were a Monte Carlo casino, then standards had gone down in the five years since he’d been inside one. Normally in such a casino, this suit would be considered de rigueur. But Darius had a hunch that in this place the suit marked him as overdressed.
He found the exit and let himself out. The door led to a hallway that smelled of cigarette smoke. The air was blue, and it was clear that the air-filtration system had broken down a very long time ago. A bank of pay phones lined the wall. Two of them had phone books hanging from a metal cord.
Darius picked up one of the books and looked at the cover. Las Vegas. He wasn’t in Monte Carlo at all.
He frowned. He distinctly remembered Cupid telling him that his casino was in Monte Carlo. Darius had tailored his spell so that he would arrive near Cupid. Had the spell gone awry?
At that moment, the bathroom door swung open and a short man stepped out. The man wore a stained T-shirt that barely covered his beer belly, and his polyester pants rode a little too low on his waist. He was balding, but what remained of his curly blond hair had turned silver.
It wasn’t until he walked past that Darius recognized the man’s distinctive gait. It was Cupid. Darius had never seen him in twenty-first-century clothing. He’d only seen the man in robes and sandals or in a loincloth and wings.
“Cupid?”
The man turned, looking surprised. When he saw Darius, he waved his arms and said, “Shhh!” as loudly as he could. If that didn’t get other people’s attention, nothing would.
Darius leaned against one of the phones. “Monte Carlo, huh?”
“So I’m ambitious,” Cupid said, coming closer.
“Ambitious? I haven’t been outside yet, but I assume we’re on the outskirts of Vegas, right? One of those areas that development hasn’t hit yet. This doesn’t look like Monte Carlo at all.”
“It’s just a name,” Cupid said.
“It’s a country,” Darius said.
“No,” Cupid said. “Monte Carlo. It’s a name.”
“It’s a country.” Had Cupid lost his brains with his hair? “You told me you had a casino there.”
“I said I have a casino, the Monte Carlo. You must have misheard me.” Cupid sounded offended, which was Darius’s first tip that he had been intentionally mislead.
“This is your casino,” Darius said.
“Yeah.” Cupid crossed his beefy arms. He had a tattoo of a heart with an arrow going through it on his left bicep. Only instead of a name running through the arrow’s shaft, there was a single word: Nevermore. “It has been for forty-five years.”
“I see you’ve kept the place up.”
Cupid nodded. “I do what I can.”
“Is there any place we can talk?” Darius asked.
Cupid glanced over his shoulder. “I got some business I gotta attend to.”
“Me, too,” Darius said. “And I’m on a short time schedule. So, where can we talk?”
“Later,” Cupid said.
“Now,” Darius said. “Or I tell people how you dress when you’re not at the casino?”
Cupid’s eyes narrowed. “So what’s it to them?”
“I have photos.” Darius extended his left hand. In it, he had Polaroids of Cupid at the Idaho house.
Cupid tried to grab them, but Darius pulled them out of his reach. “I don’t remember you taking those.”
“I didn’t,” Darius said. “Funny how well magic works, isn’t it?”
Cupid cursed, loudly and creatively. Then he dug into the pocket of his pants and removed a cell phone. He held up one finger to keep Darius silent, and dialed with the thumb of his other hand.
Darius heard some rings as Cupid put the phone to his ear. “Yeah,” Cupid said, “it’s me. I gotta situation here. I’ll be there soon.”
Darius could hear a tinny male voice responding, but he couldn’t make out the words.
“Believe me,” Cupid said, “if it takes longer than fifteen minutes, someone is gonna pay. And it won’t be me.”
He hung up, put the phone back into his pocket, and glared at Darius. “Let’s make it quick.”
“Let’s make it private,” Darius said.
Cupid shook his head, but turned and stalked out of the narrow hallway. It opened into a large room with a low ceiling. Smo
ke curled in the air. Players sat at kidney-shaped card tables, looking disgruntled. On the far side of the room, people sat before slot machines—the old-fashioned kind, which did not make electronic beeping noises, only the ca-ching, ca-ching, ca-ching of coins dropping into a coin tray.
Most of the people on the casino floor were over fifty. Almost all of them looked like they hadn’t left their chairs in days, maybe years.
Big gold signs covered the walls, declaring the casino to be the Monte Carlo, just like Cupid had said it was. There was an air of 1950s elegance gone to seed about the entire place.
Cupid led Darius around the cages to a door nearly hidden in the flocked wallpaper. They went through and immediately the smoke cleared some. The walls were a yellowish white and covered with promotional posters more than 40 years old. Some had pictures of Sinatra, announcing a concert he had held in the casino’s theater. Others had pictures of the rest of the Rat Pack.
After that, though, the string of famous artists turned into almost-rans and never-rans. The picture of a casino that had had a short peak and somehow managed to hang on.
Cupid pushed open a pressed wood door and led Darius into an office filled with papers and poker chips. A wall of file cabinets blocked the door.
Cupid pushed some newspapers off a chair and pointed to it. “Sit.”
“Do you want me to jump and beg too?” Darius asked, not getting anywhere near the filthy plastic.
“Hey,” Cupid said, grabbing another chair and sitting on it backwards. “You’re the one who came to me. Whazzup?”
Darius shook his head. “You know, for a man who is written about as a semi-deity in many mythology books and who makes guest appearances on Hallmark cards every February fourteenth, you don’t have a lot of dignity.”
“Don’t need it,” Cupid said. “The image is already established.”
He grabbed a box off the desk. Cuban cigars. He opened it and the scent wafted toward Dar. When he was in his Andrew Vari mode, he’d been known to enjoy a cigar or two. But right now, the smell sickened him.
“What did you do to me?” Darius asked, deciding he didn’t want to stand in this small, sad room any longer.
“What do you mean, what did I do? You did something to me, pal. Seems to me that’s why you got your sentence. Tampering with a semi-god, you know. Very bad form.”
“When you came to my cabin, you did something to me.”
“Oh?” Cupid sat up. “You base this on what?”
“Ariel,” Darius said.
“Aerial what? Acrobatics?”
“No,” Darius said, speaking precisely. “My feelings for Ariel.”
“Aerial what?” Cupid asked again. “Stunts?”
“Ariel Summers,” Darius said.
“Aerial summersaults?”
“Are you being deliberately dense?” Dar’s fists were clenched. He was going to punch this little fraud if this conversation went on like this much longer. “Ariel Summers is a woman.”
“Oh!” Cupid grinned. “The redhead.”
“Yes,” Darius said. “The redhead.”
Cupid got a silly grin on his face. “I love athletic women. Not that Psyche isn’t athletic, but you know what I mean.”
“I don’t want to think about what you mean,” Darius said. Then he frowned. “How do you know Ariel? Were you supposed to zap me so that I’d fall in love with her? Was this the final test of the Fates? Let’s see if Dar can overcome his own lust and still give the girl the man of her dreams, even if that man is someone else?”
“What?” Cupid asked.
“What do you mean what?” Darius asked.
“I meant what,” Cupid said. “As in what the hell are you talking about?”
“I’m talking about my feelings for Ariel.”
“Your feelings.”
“Yes,” Darius said.
“Your feelings?”
“Yes,” Darius said again.
“Really? Your feelings?”
“Well, who else’s feelings would we be talking about?”
“Her feelings.” Cupid had tucked his knees underneath himself, so that he was sitting up higher.
“Her feelings?” Darius was confused. “What about them?”
“She’s supposed to be in love with you.”
“What?” Darius asked.
“I shot her. She’s supposed to be in love with you.”
Darius sank into the filthy plastic chair. He was feeling dizzy and it wasn’t from the cigarette smoke. “With me?”
Cupid nodded. “I guess the Fates didn’t think anyone could fall in love with you, so I was supposed to intervene. I did, finishing out the last of my new sentence, and then I came to your place for breakfast. You’re a hell of a cook, Dar.”
Darius reached for one of the Cuban cigars. It felt smooth and small in his long fingers. “But you didn’t do anything to me?”
“Did you see an arrow?”
“An entire quiver of them, actually,” Darius said. “Hanging between your wings.”
“I mean in you, stupid.”
Darius glared at him. “I’m not stupid.”
“It’s beginning to sound like you are. I mean, if you’re in love with her and she’s in love with you, then where’s the problem?”
“She was supposed to fall in love with the next man she saw, right?”
“Yeah, right,” Cupid said. “How dense are you?”
Darius ignored the way Cupid had turned his own words against him. “And when were you supposed to shoot her?”
“Before she saw you, which I did.”
“Why?” Darius asked.
“What do you mean, why?” Cupid asked. “So that you could live happily ever after.”
“No,” Darius said. “If you were supposed to do that, then you should have shot me too, which you deny.”
“I didn’t need to,” Cupid said. “You’re in love with her. You said so yourself.”
“I didn’t know her when I saw you.”
“Sometimes these things just work out.” Cupid grabbed a cigar for himself, bit off the end, and conjured a flame on the end of his finger, lighting the cigar. Foul blue smoke filled the room.
Darius set his cigar down, no longer tempted. “This thing isn’t working out.”
“Oh, sure,” Cupid said. “Because you worry too much. Go home, Dar. Kiss the girl. Get married or whatever it is people do these days. It’s not my concern any more.”
“No,” Darius said. “It’s mine. She’s obsessed with Darius.”
“Darius?” Cupid said. “Since when did we start referring to ourselves in the third person?”
Darius took a deep breath, then coughed, realizing his mistake. He still thought of himself as Andrew Vari. “You know what I mean.”
“Actually, no.” Cupid took another puff off his cigar. His cell phone rang. “Excuse me,” he said, pulling the phone out of his pocket.
“No.” Darius grabbed the phone. “We’re going to finish this conversation.”
“Yeah,” Cupid said, his voice rising in panic. “After I get that.”
Darius flipped the phone open. “Cupid is busy right now,” he said into it and hung up.
“Oh, that’ll help,” Cupid said. “They think my name is James.”
“Then you’ll have a bit of explaining to do, won’t you?” Darius asked.
The phone started ringing again. Darius slipped it in his pocket.
“I could spell that phone to me,” Cupid said.
“Do it,” Darius said, “and I’ll make sure they can’t understand a word you’re saying.”
“You came to me for a favor,” Cupid said, “so stop being a butt.”
“I came to you for an explanation,” Darius said. “And I specialize in being a butt.”
The ringing stopped.
“All right,” Cupid put the still-smoldering cigar in a full cut-glass ashtray on the side of his desk. “The Fates were afraid the girl wouldn’t fall in love with yo
u, though for the life of me, I can’t figure out why.”
“I don’t need the sarcastic side commentary,” Darius said.
“So they gave me the job. I had to shoot her and guarantee that she’d see you next. Which I did, quite efficiently, I might add. I shoot her, she sees you, and falls in love. You see her and fall too, which kinda surprises me, considering all the women you’ve known. What is it about her? I thought you swore off redheads after Anne of Austria.”
“She wasn’t a redhead,” Darius said.
“Whatever.” Cupid held out his hand. “Phone.”
“Did the Fates say why her?”
“Oh, you know. The usual crap. Destiny, life’s journey, personal growth, blah, blah, blah.”
“Hers or mine?”
“Hers or mine what?”
“Destiny. Was it her destiny or mine to fall in love?”
“Well, how am I supposed to know? I’m just the messenger. Literally.”
“What about her soul mate?” Darius asked. His heart was pounding. If they had Cupid shoot her, then maybe, just maybe—
“What about him?” Cupid picked up the still-smoldering cigar, stared at it for a moment, and then stubbed it out.
“She has one.”
Cupid gave him a disbelieving look.
“Trust me,” Darius said. “Being able to see soul mates is one of my many gifts from the Fates.”
“Such lovely women they are. Generous. Kind. Manipulative as hell.” Cupid coughed. It was a smoker’s cough, deep and throaty.
“Well?” Darius asked.
“Well what?”
Darius clenched his other fist. If he didn’t see Cupid for another thousand years, it might be a thousand years too soon. “What about her soul mate? Didn’t the Fates consider him?”
“I assume, since I was instructed to shoot her before she saw you…” Cupid’s voice trailed off. “Wait a minute.”
Darius stood. He couldn’t sit still for this.
“They were very insistent on the arrow.”
Darius turned. “The arrow?”
Cupid nodded. “You know. I had various types.”
“Right,” Darius said. “Gold and lead.”
“Oh, man. You are behind the times.”
“I am?”
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