Spell Hath No Fury: Fate Weaver, #5

Chapter 1

ARE YOU ALL RIGHT? Someone shook my shoulder. Miss, are you all right? The strange man’s garlic-and-onion breath made an effective substitute for smelling salts.

What happened? My head pounded to the beat of my heart, and when I sat up, the world spun once, then twice. My questing fingers probed the throbbing spot and settled on a lump near my temple.

You slammed right into that trash bin. You were just walking right along and then bam! Next time, you should look where you’re going.

But I like a good concussion, Captain Obvious. I summoned the retort but was too dazed to bother saying it out loud. His good deed done for the day, my Samaritan heaved himself to standing, patted the sparse hairs of his up-and-over style back into place and left me to my misery.

If anyone had ever told me taking over for my father and playing Cupid would turn me into a glorified, full-time stalker, I’d have refused the job. Not that anyone asked me if I wanted it in the first place.

And now my target had fled.

As if I didn’t already know I’d missed the mark, the Bow of Destiny blatted a note of displeasure in my head, and I had to hold back a shriek of pain as the sound ricocheted off the inside of my sore skull.

Give it a rest, will you? I clutched my aching head.

Box after box of chocolates fly off the shelves every February with cute little angels plastered all over their shiny redness. Too bad the candy makers completely missed the mark when it came to decorating. My dad was no winged cherub holding some adorable little bow with heart-tipped arrows.

I mean, the heart-shaped arrow was right, but the cute baby part was all wrong. Nope, Cupid was a man. Or technically a god, but he looked like a man. One I’d never met, and one who forged his bow—a serious weapon—from living gold.

Living. Gold. As in gold that lived. And where did it live? you might ask. Inside me, that’s where.

Moreover, the stupid thing had a brain of sorts, and an opinion on everything that had to do with my work. One it liked to share musically. At a high volume.

Fishing around in the messenger bag I’d been using for a purse, I pulled out a bottle containing the dregs of my faerie godmother’s restorative elixir, and downed the last few drops. Like magic—because it was magic—the potion dispelled half the headache. Pain faded away, taking most of the fuzzy thoughts with it, temporarily at least.

A stay of execution so I could finish my job. In a few hours, I’d pay for messing with the natural order of things, though.

Magic always comes with a price.

The next magical flourish of sound only made me wince. I considered that progress.

I’ll go find whoever it is. Are you happy now?

From the outside, talking to the bow looked a lot like talking to myself. The answer came in the form of a cheery tune as I staggered out of the mouth of the alley and loped down the sidewalk.

A moment of concentration reactivated the weapon’s sight. Like something out of a superhero movie, a circle with a set of crosshairs hovered just ahead of my right eye. My imagination supplied robotic sound effects every time I blinked and the focus altered.

All I needed now was a pink spandex suit with a symbol splashed across the chest. Lexi Balefire: Matchwoman. No, that didn’t sound right. Lovemaker? Ugh. Worse, and with a vaguely dirty undertone. Matchwitch was a little closer, but maybe I’d better leave the superhero name thing alone for the time being.

Armed and ready, I locked in on the place in my gut that always knew where to find potential lovers. Cars have GPS, I have LPS—an internal Love Positioning System.

The pull was strong this time. Anticipation stole my breath like I’d crested the hill on a roller coaster, caught in that moment of foreboding just before the awful plunge. This match felt epic and desperate to be made. Not normal, in other words.

Even without Terra’s magic healing juice lending me artificial strength, I would have hurried forward, the compulsion was so strong. My date with the dumpster had cost me valuable time and, according to the intensity of the pull, I had only seconds to make this work, so I kicked the pace up another notch.

Nerves jittered as I closed in on my quarry. My stomach lurched when the target symbol finally blinked red and split into two. One crossed circle oriented on a man walking away from me, the other on a woman walking toward. A complicated orchestral arrangement sounded in my head—at a volume that would have made my ears ring, but made my skull bones vibrate instead.

A simple ta-da would have worked, do you have to make a big deal out of everything? I thought at the bow.

It blew a musical raspberry at me in response.

In a cloud of glowing light, the bow-carrying inner Goddess—the part of me with the power to handle my father’s weapon—stepped forward, and with a practiced hand brought the Bow of Destiny to bear. She looked like me except for the hair. Mine, a nut-brown riot of curls shot through with strands of copper, hers a slanting wing of white tipped with neon pink. Oh, and the eyes were different, too. Pink and piercing, she fixed hers upon the two unsuspecting hearts, took aim, and fired.

A pair of arrows zinged toward their targets.

Now you’re just showing off. I actually felt her smirk on my face as she faded away, and I turned my attention back to the couple. Moments like these were what I loved most about my job; the part where I watched two halves of one soul come together.

The impact of arrow to heart makes no sound, and I’m the only one who ever flinches, but that’s just because I can see the tip slice bloodlessly through flesh and bone. Then comes that delicious moment when eyes lock and fates poise right on the edge of being sealed.

Matches made by the Bow of Destiny last forever. They embody the ideals set out in traditional marriage vows: in sickness and in health, forsaking all others. One hundred percent fated, a done deal. Never to be put asunder. Odd word choice, but it fits.

I work on a sliding scale of love, and yes, I know how ridiculous that sounds.

For instance, most of the couples I bring together using the tried-and-true methods employed at FootSwept, my matchmaking business, experience true love’s kiss. On the hundred point scale of longevity, these matches come in at a solid ninety. It’s rare for a TLK match to turn bad, but it happens.

A fact I’d learned only recently.

This couple, according to my gut and my heart, would hit the scale at ten times the going rate. Their love mojo was strong. Off the charts. Fated.

But if they were fated, why did they need and my living arrows, you ask?

Simple.

It’s all about the math.

One hundred percent is better than ninety, and since my senses insisted this couple’s union carried an air of heightened significance, I used an arrow to close the gap, leaving nothing to chance.

Some soul mates are a drop in the bucket that rests on the scales of human emotion; others are a hurricane-level downpour. Both help keep the balance of good and evil in check, and none are inconsequential. Love really does make the world go around.

At least, that’s the impression I’d gathered during my time with the illustrious bow. To my everlasting annoyance, it had come without instructions or explanations. I was too lowly a peon in the hierarchy of my father's world for anyone to bother cluing me in. About anything, really.

Maybe the force of their destiny would have eventually drawn the couple together without my interference, but the bow wanted them matched. Right now. And since it wouldn’t shut up, I fired the arrows and did the deed. Or the pink-eyed part of me I considered to be my inner goddess did. At any rate, the job was done..

It would have been nice to know the new lover's names at least.

The goddess part of me, my father’s true legacy, might have been a source of information, but she wasn’t talking. All pink and glowing, she popped out just long enough to do the shooting, then faded back into the recesses of my being like one part of a multiple personality. Her communication skills left a lot to be desired. Up to now, she’d done little more than a wag finger at me when I tried to override her will with my own intuition.

The other half of my genetic makeup is pure witch. I come from a long line of magically powerful women. From what I knew of him, our strong blood magic is what attracted Cupid to my mother. Daddy has a reputation for spreading the love, and since him making babies with witches yielded Fate Weavers like me, it made sense he’d have been drawn to one with a lot of power.

Whatever my personal issues—and they abounded—my attention refocused on the couple when they locked eyes and turned the street into something right out of musical theater. Okay, maybe I was the only one with a romantic soundtrack playing in my head when the man and woman came together, but as an audience of one, I can tell you there wasn’t a dry eye in the house.

Drawn as if by a powerful, magnetic force, the lovers stopped with less than a foot of distance between them. Circling left, I sank down on a convenient bench where I could see and hear everything.

Nosy? Me? Guilty as charged.

Didn’t we meet at the... He said.

She aimed a shy smile at him, ...Old Port Festival. You were selling...

...Blown glass ornaments and you...

...Bought one for my mother, and then came back and bought three more for...

...Your sisters, but I knew they were for you the whole time.

Oh, how cute, they were already finishing each other’s sentences and little hearts and stars formed over their heads.

Actual hearts and stars, mind you. The glowing kind that are probably some kind of code telling me something about the match. Again, no instructions came with my abilities and if there was a pattern here, I couldn't make perfect sense of it.

This was the moment that made romance novels fly off the shelves and sparked love songs about two hearts beating as one.

The wave of new love spread like rings of water around a stone thrown into a calm lake. Out from this place, through the city and beyond, it left everything in its path a little sweeter, slightly cleaner than before. Until, with a jarring shudder, the circle of power struck an opposing force.

A force filled with fury.

Fury and pain that rumbled back toward me, threatened to flood me with dark emotion meant to steal away my newfound joy. My head rang when the bow answered with a song of power and rival strength.

Something—or someone—out there wanted to test its darkness against my light, wanted to subvert hope, remove love from the world—and it didn’t care if it took me out in the process. My death would be a fine feather in its cap.

Oh goodie, Lexi Balefire, matchmaking witch has an enemy. It must be Tuesday.

"HOW DO my legs look in these boots? Good enough to welcome Kin back home with a bang?" I asked Flix as he cleaned up follonwing a cut-and-color in the salon adjacent to the massive closet in the back of the FootSwept office.

You’ve got the gams, girl. But the footwear is a little last season, don’t you think?

Is it? I twisted my leg so see the way the boot fit my foot. I haven’t had time to do any headhunting for Neimans in months. I grouched, remembering the days when it was a job in itself to find room on the racks for one of their gratis shipments. Being a full-fledged Fate Weaver wasn’t just affecting my life, it was affecting my fashion sense.

My skills, while best at matching lovers, could easily have earned me a solid upper-level income as a corporate headhunter. Sometimes I wonder how my life would have turned out if I’d gone that route instead of opening a business many consider one shallow step above a dating service.

With love as my focus, I moonlighted a little on the side and took my payment in free merchandise that I often passed on to those of my clients who need a little confidence boost.

We didn’t make over every seeker of love that walked through the front doors; just the ones who needed a little extra attention or some aggressive pampering. Nobody, and I mean nobody, can fail to feel sexy while wearing a pair of Manolo Blahniks.

You’d be surprised at how many first kisses have been instigated by the stiletto heel.

I was not doodling Kin Clark, my boyfriend’s name, surrounded by hearts and arrows half an hour later when the phone rang. That would be undignified.

Lexi? It’s Yvonne Hightower. I’m—this isn’t easy—I’ve been thinking, and I’ve decided I no longer require your services.

She had my full attention.

Are you sure? I’d already found her perfect match, and it was a strong one. The kind that made the Bow of Destiny lilt a sprightly tune in my head. Perhaps not as loud or complex a tune as the one it played for the couple I’d matched the day before, but happy enough.

I’m sorry, I really am, but I’m sure.

If it’s the fee, I’m happy to give you the friends and family discount. Money wasn’t my main reason for mating lonely couples—or even in the top ten. Matchmaking was in my genes. With Cupid for a father, what else would I do? It’s the family business, and I’d been doing it since before I knew it literally ran in my blood.

Except lately, my business had been experiencing a series of mood swings. I was either swamped or hearing crickets with no happy medium to be found, and at the moment, the chirping was about to drive me nuts.

Okay, I’d admit to having been a little distracted the past few weeks. While fate weaving and the work I did at FootSwept were similar in nature, they didn’t mesh quite as seamlessly as you'd think. In theory, I could just shoot everyone who came in the door, or sit on a busy corner, and BAM, match the entire city in a matter of days.

While I had no actual assurance I was right, I thought there was a reason why the bow only targeted certain individuals. As wonderful as love is, you can’t force it down someone’s throat if they’re not ready.

Take me, for instance. I think if I’d met my boyfriend five years earlier, I wouldn’t have been ready to be Kin’s soul mate, and I’d be willing to bet the same applies to many of the couples I’ve matched. Not all of my recent clients popped up with a set of glowing symbols over their heads—my sign to use the bow. The dichotomy was another of the intricacies I hadn’t quite figured out yet.

Maybe the couple needed more time or maybe it was me who wasn't ready. Weaving fates is a work in progress.

Thank you, but no. Yvonne sounded faintly embarrassed, and common sense urged me to just hang up before I made an even bigger fool out of myself. What does common sense know?

Was it something I said? Resorting to clichés—not proud of it.

I’ve decided to go with Diana Diamond. The soft click of the disconnected line ended the conversation.

Diana Diamond, the self-styled queen of hearts.

With her face splashed all over billboards and buses and late-night TV, Diana pulled in the desperate and lonely with promises of matches that would make their hearts—and other things—go pitter-patter. People were lining up to see if she really could find their diamond in the rough.

During one of my glut periods, I’d been thankful she was taking up the slack. Now it seemed like she might be expanding a little too deeply into my customer base. Sour grapes make lousy wine—or is that whine?  I didn’t want to be that person, but Yvonne was the fourth client in three weeks to call and politely take their business elsewhere.

One client didn’t worry me. People have different tastes; it made sense some would prefer her style over mine. Then a second and a third until Yvonne removed the last of my doubts. Diana was poaching my clients—picking them off one by one. Probably my