She shrugs her shoulders, her cloak simmering with smoke for a second, and she looks away.
I hadn’t realized I wasn’t the only reaper feeling so lonely. But I shouldn’t be surprised. This is a lonely gig. Your job is to collect souls, and it’s a fairly busy one. Sure, there are reapers who have been in loving relationships for decades, but not us. The three of us sitting around this table have been alone for a considerable amount of time.
Fuck, we’re pathetic.
“Do you really think a cupid is going to be attracted to all the doom and gloom you bring?” Demise teases Mors.
“First of all, I’m nothing like Doom or Gloom, and I’m more than certain I could make any cupid happy. They’re honestly in a constant state of happiness anyway. It’s not like it would be hard. Plus, I actually know how to make a woman come, unlike someone else I know,” Mors gives Demise a once over and goes back to sipping her coffee.
Demise glares at her, but then turns to me.
“So, tell us about your little cupid.”
I finish my coffee and place the mug in the dishwasher, because I’m a good co-worker like that, before sorting out my robes and giving them both a smile.
“Perhaps another time.”
Love still feels like my little secret, I mean I don’t know much about her, but these two assholes don’t need to know that I could barely stop staring at her tits or how precious she was when she was rambling on about the party and how badly she wanted me to come.
I groan with that line of thinking. My thoughts about the cupid have turned feral, I seriously need to get laid.
I teleport to Mama Lucia’s house, before I summon my precious cupid. She almost immediately pops into existence, a soft pink cloud gently exploding with glitter with her teleport.
She blinks at me, and I have to do my best not to smile at her. It’s tragic how much she makes the edge of my lips want to turn up. I can’t decide if I hate it or not.
She’s small, but curvy. Curves I can’t help but notice as she places her hands on her hips, clear irritation over being summoned so suddenly. But the irritation fades as she tosses her long pastel pink hair over her shoulder and gives me a warm smile.
“Death,” she says in greeting. I like the seductive way she says my name, and it’s clear that any fear she held earlier has slowly started to drift away.
“Love. I’m ready to use my first arrow.”
“Where are we?”
“Mama Lucia’s house,” I say as we walk up the old brick steps and easily pass through her front door. “I’ve collected many souls from this home. She takes care of the dying with compassion and respect. She, out of everyone, deserves her own happiness,” I tell Love.
She looks up at me, her large pink eyes watering.
“Oh, don’t look at me like that, little cupid.”
She looks at me like I have a heart. I’m not alive, at least not the same way humans are, so nothing beats in my chest… yet… yet her pretty eyes are stirring something inside of me that I thought had long died.
“This is just the sweetest thing I’ve ever heard. Are you sure you weren’t meant to be a cupid?” she jokes.
“Please don’t make me regret this,” I sigh and she just beams at me like I’m not the embodiment of the afterlife. No, Love looks at me like I’m more than a reaper, and perhaps I like that more than I should.
She makes a zipping gesture with her lips and tosses the imaginary key before following me through the house. MamaLucia is sitting at the kitchen table, organizing her bills and looking downtrodden.
“Do you have an idea of who to set her up with?” Love asks.
I shake my head. I guess I hadn’t thought this part through. I just assumed that Love would be able to help. She’s a cupid, it’s her job, and if anything I gave her an easy assignment. The human woman known as Mama Lucia is a kind one. She would be easy for a human man to love.
“Hmm. Well, they need to be in the same area as one another, and don’t worry, this will only count as one arrow.” Love looks over her shoulder and whistles when she sees the bills. “Ideally someone rich too. Christ.”
I have to rub a hand over my mouth to not laugh at the cupid’s outburst. She glances over at me with a smirk.
There’s a knock on the side door. Mama Lucia straightens out her dress and fiddles with her dark hair in the reflection in the glass of a curio cabinet before answering it.
“Mr. Adams, come in.”
