Can't Fix Cupid

Well, fuck.

“I once heard about a demon who couldn’t get a hard-on for his powers, and the Veil eventually sucked him right up.” He sticks a finger in his mouth and drags it out against the inside of his cheek and pursed lips with a loud pop! “Pop. Gone,” he says with dramatic flair.

I shake my head. “I don’t wanna pop.”

“No, I don’t fooking blame you. Which means you gotta pick a new afterlife job if you wanna keep on existing. That’s all there is to it. You’re officially fired as a cupid.”

My stomach drops like I just jumped out o

f a plane without a parachute.

He reaches down to his hidden drawer again and yanks out several afterlife job brochures, tossing them over to me. “Take your pick.”

Chapter 4

I barely glance at the brochures before standing and shaking my head. “Please. I don’t want to be any of those. I want to be a cupid. I want to spread love. It’s what I was meant to do, I just know it,” I say emphatically. “Making people fall in love, filling them with desire for one another...it’s all I want to do. I know I suck at it, but I’m not a quitter, and despite the evidence in that file, I’m a cupid through and through.”

He looks at me like he pities me. Hell, I pity me too.

He opens his mouth, no doubt to let me down easy, but I cut him off and rush forward so that I can kneel down in front of him. It’s a bit pathetic, but I’m desperate here. “Please. I’m begging you. I don’t want to take a different afterlife job. I want to stay in the human realm. I have unfinished business there.”

Warren Knight flashes through my mind, and my heart squeezes. I’ve failed at every cupid task I’ve ever had. But I refuse to fail him. For whatever reason, he’s my thing. The thing I have to succeed at—for both our sakes.

I’m not ready to throw in the towel yet. I don’t know why, but getting Warren Knight to fall in love has become my personal mission, and I have to see it through. It’s like...if I can just cure him from being a bachelor dud, then maybe I can cure myself from being a cupid dud. It sounds ridiculous, but I feel that in every incorporeal fiber of my being.

Besides, I made a love vow to him. Maybe it’s stupid, but for some reason, I can feel it in my gut that I’m supposed to help him fall in love. He needs me.

“Please,” I beg again. “Just let me go back. I’ll keep trying.”

He watches me for a long time, tapping his finger against the material of the bean bag as he thinks. My hope thuds with every bob of his finger, spiking my anxiety higher and higher.

Finally, he stands, and I straighten up with him. “Alright, Triple X. I think I have an idea. I don’t know if it’ll do fook-all, but I can tell you’re a good cupid at heart, even if your powers are a pile of steaming shite, so I guess it’s worth a shot.”

My heart leaps. “What’s worth a shot?”

Instead of answering, he starts walking out of his office, motioning for me to follow him. I fly behind him as we leave his office and head down the hallway.

We go all the way to the very end of the corridor and then get in an elevator. Of course, the entire thing is shaped like one giant heart. There are even arrows in place of the railing, and the entire floor is glittery.

He pushes the button, and the elevator zooms up, up, up.

When it finally comes to a stop, I follow him out. “Here’s the deal,” he begins to explain. “You wanna stay a cupid and not get popped right out of existence? Then the only solution I can come up with is to put you through processing again.”

My eyes widen. I went through processing when I first woke up dead. There were no memories of my former life. I was just suddenly stuck in an endless line with countless other dead schmucks as we waited to get placed into our afterlife positions.

“Are we allowed to do that?” I ask him nervously as he throws open a pair of double doors and goes striding into the processing center like he owns the place.

“Not really, no. But who the fook is gonna stop me?”

My head swivels around nervously at the enormous room. We look down over the balcony and see hundreds—maybe even thousands—of afterlife entities in different lines, all of them being tested to see which position they’ll be placed in. At the very far end of the gigantic space is a huge archway filled with magical mist.

Once you walk into that mist, you come back out changed into your new self with your new powers. Or at least, you do if you’re not me. I watch as the procession files through. One person comes out as a demon, another a sandman, then a couple of angels, a lady luck, karma, and on and on and on. The archway churns them all out like an assembly line of afterlife supernaturals.

Sev wastes no time heading down the stairs, striding right past all the interview lines and compatibility checks. It’s a long walk. And everywhere we go, we draw attention since it’s obvious that I’ve already been processed, with my pink hair and red wings, and Sev is solid.

Everyone’s eyes lock onto us as we go by, which is not a good feeling. I’m so preoccupied with averting my gaze from everyone else that when Sev stops suddenly, I accidentally fly right through him. I quickly back up, because that was just a major incorporeal faux pas.

“Sorry,” I mumble nervously.