“I don’t?—”
“Why does he look eighteen?”
“I can’t?—”
“WHY IS TINDER SHOWING ME MATCHES FROM FORTY YEARS AGO?”
“I might have accidentally enchanted your phone with residual romantic energy from my grounding crystal which may have been absorbing ambient magic from my extremely satisfying relationship and I’m very sorry?”
Diane stared at her.
Cassie attempted an apologetic smile.
The phone buzzed again. And again. And again.
“Fifty-seven matches,” Diane said, her voice reaching octaves usually reserved for dog whistles. “I have fifty-seven matches. Men are messaging me frommultiple decades. My ex-husband just appeared in my queue, Cassie. Myex-husband. The one who left me for his CrossFit instructor. He’s nineteen in this photo. NINETEEN.”
“That’s… thorough?”
“I’M GOING TO KILL YOU.”
“To be fair,” Luna offered, “you did say you missed sparks.”
“NOT LIKE THIS.”
The phone kept buzzing. Diane kept scrolling. The matches kept coming—sixty-three, seventy-one, eighty-four—men from every decade of her romantic history and quite a few she’d never met, all suddenly very interested in Diane Martinez and her accidentally enchanted dating profile.
“I can fix this,” Cassie said. “Probably. Margaret can help. We’ll figure out how to un-enchant your phone and everythingwill go back to?—”
“Back to what? Normal?” Diane laughed, slightly hysterically. “Cassie, I have a match with a guy whose profile says he’s looking for ‘a groovy chick who digs disco.’ DISCO. The app is pulling men from the SEVENTIES.”
“That does seem excessive.”
“You THINK?”
Liam appeared in the doorway, dish towel over his shoulder, looking like a man who had learned not to be surprised by anything that happened in this house.
“Problem?”
“Cassie hexed my love life.”
“I didn’thexit. I just… accidentally supercharged it. With magic. Across multiple timelines, apparently.”
He blinked. “Right. I’ll put the kettle on.”
Luna stretched luxuriously, hopping down from the couch to wind between Diane’s ankles. “Look on the bright side. You wanted excitement. You wanted sparks. You wanted men to notice you.”
“I wanted ONE man. A NORMAL man. From THIS DECADE.”
“Details.” The cat’s eyes gleamed. “This is going to besomuch more interesting.”
Diane’s phone hit one hundred matches and showed no signs of slowing down. Somewhere in the app’s depths, algorithms were breaking. Rules were bending. Men from her past, her present, andpossibly her future were all suddenly, inexplicably, magnetically drawn to her profile.
She looked at Cassie with the expression of a woman who had just realized her life was about to become very, very complicated.
“You’re helping me fix this.”
“Of course.”
