She rubbed at the corners of her eyes with the back of her forearm and blew a fast breath out between her lips. “I’m fine. We’re good. We’re all good.”
“Ah, love.” I stretched my arm up over the back of the bench seat, my hand resting gently in her hair. “How about a little music?” I suggested. “Something easy? Think the radio works?”
“I bet you want music,” she said. “All right, rock or country? Or blues? What’s your poison?”
“I’ll bet you fifty bucks that radio won’t get anything but random ham radio static.”
“Let’s find out.” She turned the knob on the AM radio mounted flush under the ash tray in the center of the dash.
A crackly station came through the speakers, then “Cupid” by Sam Cooke crooned out, his soothing tenor clear as a bell as he asked Cupid to shoot an arrow to pierce a lover’s heart.
Lu drove as the song played through, and when it was over, the DJ came on the air.
“That song is dedicated to Lu and Brogan, and all the lovers out there on the Route.”
Lu scowled at the radio, then at me.
“Dot, maybe?” I said. No one else knew both of our names. Well, not in McLean.
Lu scanned the cracked, rough section of the two-lane road. We were coming up on Kickapoo Creek, I-55 buzzing with traffic to our left, the railroad tracks appearing and disappearing behind a wall of scrub trees to our right.
Nothing seemed amiss.
“This is DJ Bo, and you’re listening to KUPD radio, all the love, all the songs. Listeners Lula and Brogan went out of their way to help a pair of young lovers fall in love. Isn’t that nice? Broken hearts and people falling in love is what we’re all about here at KUPD. So to celebrate Lu and Brogan’s kind deed, we’re giving them a prize!
“I’m out here on the other side of the Kickapoo Creek at the pullout on old Route 66. That’s just north of Lawndale. Lu and Brogan, come on over and claim your prize.”
There was something about that voice. Something that dug in bone deep.
Power.
Lu hit the brakes so hard, Lorde had to scrabble to keep from tumbling to the floorboards. Dust billowed up behind us rolling in a cloud over the truck, depositing a fine layer of grit on the window.
She snapped off the radio.
“What in the hell?” she whispered, her hand straying to the watch around her neck. Goosebumps prickled down her arm and red slapped over her cheeks and neck.
“That was a god. Brogan, that was a god.”
“Yes, it was.” I soothed Lorde who fumbled and turned so she could put her head on Lu’s leg.
“Pretty sure it was Cupid,” I said. “Let me go look. You just stay here a minute.”
“Don’t go anywhere.” Lu’s voice was rough. She was afraid I’d do something stupid. Well, afraid I’d do something stupid without her.
“We go together,” she said. “We do this together. Don’t you dare ghost out of here and face that god alone.”
“We could turn around,” I said. “Drive north.”
“Cupid’s the god of connections and destruction,” she said. “He won’t have any problem following us. Finding us. I don’t want to live my life running from a god.”
“We could bunker up somewhere with spells, hit the storage. Hope this—whatever this is—blows over.” I had a good idea what this was. Lu had meddled in Cupid’s business. And now the piper was demanding his pay.
“We haven’t done anything wrong,” she said.
I grunted.
“Nothing wrong to him,” she said. “Jo and Calvin dating would have happened if we were there or not.”
