“I am. Please call me Bo. What should I call you, little rabbit?”
“Abbi,” she said, quietly. “This is my Hado.”
“Abbi,” he said, “pleased to meet you. Pleased to meet you, Hado.”
Hado gave the god a judgmental slow blink that was very cat-like.
The corner of Bo’s mouth quirked up. “I am also pleased Brogan and Lula found you. I heard you. I sent them.”
Hado sat a little straighter and tipped his head, looking at the god through fresh eyes.
“Did he really do that?” Abbi asked.
“He told us to find you,” I said. “You told us to find Hado.”
Cupid nodded. “That is also true.”
“Why are you here?” Lula asked. She hadn’t touched the drink. None of us had.
“I know the seer has been interested in you.” Cupid sat back and tapped a finger on the table. “She met you in visions.”
“Connections and destruction,” I said, naming two of the things his power covered.
“Yes. Her connection to you doesn’t worry me.”
“She told me you’d betray us,” I said.
“I know.”
“She told me the moment we found the spell book of the gods for you, you would kill me.”
His eyebrows rose and the sparks of light in his diamond ear studs were infinitely small galaxies, spinning. “I made you a promise. Life, or as close to it as I could give you, as long as you looked for the spell book, and helped bring a few people together for me.”
I waited. I knew our deal. I also knew gods were dangerous.
And excellent liars.
“Once we find the book?” Lula asked.
“You will continue on as you are—as alive as you are now. Life itself, granting mortal life, is not what my power covers. But promising you will be connected, living flesh, that I can do and have done and will continue to do.”
“But you’re bad,” Abbi said.
Instead of hiding, she leaned forward enough that she could better see him around Hado. “Gods can be tricksters,” she said. “I’ve seen that. Some aren’t even what they look like.”
“True. Has a god fooled you before, little moon?”
“Yes.” Abbi scrunched up her face. “I don’t like it, though.”
“Do you think I’ve fooled you and fooled your friends?”
She studied him, holding herself unnaturally still, her eyes wide and unblinking.
The only part of her that was moving at all was her nostrils, just the slightest twitch. She was, of course, not an actual rabbit. She was a power of her own, even if that power was minor compared to the god she was studying.
“I don’t think you have,” she said quietly. Then she shook her head. “I think you really are Cupid. You make people fall in love.”
He smiled and leaned just a bit to pick up one of the sodas: sarsaparilla. “Ihelppeople fall in love. I can bind people to each other, but the truth is, even a god can’t force love. Love is its own power.”
