Love Stinks, Inc., an Uncollected Anthology story (2 page)

So why now? What had she done to warrant a personal letter from the Z Man?

“I suppose you aren’t leaving until I open this,” she said.

Hermes only smiled in response.

Dyte looked down at the envelope and realized she’d been twirling it like he’d been twirling his staff. She made herself stop.

Just get on with it already.

She broke the seal and watched as the wax melted into nothingness, leaving behind an envelope with a single sheet of paper inside.

She drew out the sheet of paper.

It was an invitation to a naming day ceremony.

Well, that wasn’t so bad. New gods and goddesses came along all the time.

Back when Zeus ruled out in the open, naming day ceremonies were rare. No one had thought there’d come a day when the world would need a God of Diesel Engines or a Goddess of Fiber Optics. But these days, when prayers or pleas from the mortal world grew great enough (as in “Good lord, not another flat tire!”) or the old gods thought enough money could be made from a new form of worship—tithes and offerings and all that—some lowly immortal would be promoted to godhood, receive an official title from Zeus during a naming day celebration on Mount Olympus, and thereafter be known as the God or Goddess of whatever.

She supposed she should be flattered that Zeus had invited her. She wasn’t a goddess in her own right, only an immortal. Immortals usually weren’t invited to these things.

Dyte looked at the date: February 15th. Okay. The holiday season was technically over on the 14th, which was tomorrow, with only the post-Valentine’s Day discount sales to worry about. She could delegate all the post-Valentine’s Day stuff to Stewart. It wasn’t like she could turn down an invitation from Zeus to attend an official naming day…

Wait a minute.

This wasn’t just
any
naming day ceremony.

It was
her
naming day ceremony!

She read the entire invitation carefully, but her gaze kept going back to the title Zeus had decreed would be bestowed on her.

Goddess of the Chronically Single.

The Goddess of Anti-Love.

Great. Just great.

She’d never get a date again.

Hermes and his two snakes were all looking at her. Zeus had clearly instructed him to wait for a response.

She sat up straight in her chair, placed the invitation flat on her desk, and folded her hands on top of it.

“Tell him I accept,” she said.

The invitation came directly from Zeus. What else could she do?

3

There had to be a way out of this mess.

“There’s always a way out, right?” Dyte said to her mother.

Psyche’s image fuzzed out on the computer screen in Dyte’s office, then swam back into view. The connection to Psyche’s winter home on Cyprus was iffy at best. Too many of the old gods made their winter homes on Cyprus, and their combined energy played havoc with the internet. Maybe Dyte should make an offering to the Goddess of Fiber Optics in exchange for unlimited bandwidth.

What kind of offerings would people make to her once she became the Goddess of the Chronically Single?

Who would even
want
a title like that?

Oh, yeah. The immortal who’d created a wildly successful anti-Valentine’s Day company, or at least that’s what Zeus must think.

“Can’t I get him to change his mind?” Dyte asked.

Psyche shrugged. “It’s possible. Not easy, but possible.”

“Not easy” was an understatement. Dyte knew the kind of trials Psyche had gone through to be with her dad.

“So what’s possible?”

“You could admit to your dad that you were wrong and he was right,” her mom suggested.

What?

“What good would that do?”

Not that Dyte was about to admit to her dad that he’d been right to scare Christopher away.

“Look.” Psyche leaned toward the screen at her end, and her face loomed large on Dyte’s computer. “Zeus has a reputation as a hardass, but he likes it when immortals get the job done. He thinks it makes all the old gods look relevant to today’s mortals. The title he came up with for you is his way of acknowledging what a great job you’ve done competing with your father. If you’re not competing with your father anymore…”

Psyche let the sentence trail off.

Dyte got what her mom was trying to say. By bestowing this title on her, Zeus was making sure she’d stay in the anti-Valentine’s Day business so that the old gods could keep both sides of the holiday trade wrapped up nice and tight. But if her anti-Valentine’s Day business failed, Zeus would have no reason to give her the title.

Even if she could stomach the idea of running her own company into the ground, she didn’t have enough time to ruin Love Stinks
the way she’d almost ruined her dad’s business. She was good, but she wasn’t that good.

“Great suggestion if I like a week to work on it,” she told her mom. Dyte was pretty sure Zeus had taken that into consideration when he’d given her only two days’ notice. “Any other ideas?”

“Love would do it, but it would have to be true love, and gained without use of our family’s particular brand of spells.”

Of course. Dyte had her own form of energy arrows. Not that she ever used them.

“I can’t be the Goddess of Anti-Love if I’m in love,” Dyte said.

Not that finding her one true love in two days would be easy, either. She hadn’t found anyone at all remotely attractive ever since Christopher left. Just because she still believed in love didn’t mean she could find anyone to fall in love with that fast.

“Don’t call it ‘anti-love,’” her mom said. “That’s hate, and hate’s not what you’re all about. The mortals who buy your products have accepted that not all of them are going to find a soulmate in this lifetime. You’ve given them a way to claim a piece of The Holiday as their own. That’s a worthwhile calling, daughter. You should be proud Zeus has decided to honor you with an official title.”

Her mom sounded a little wistful, and Dyte thought she understood why. Psyche had been granted immortality, but she would never be a goddess in her own right.

Dyte felt small and ungrateful.

“Okay, mom,” she said. “I get it.” She puffed out a frustrated breath. “Guess I’ll see you and dad there?”

Her mom smiled at her in the way only a proud mother could. “Wouldn’t miss it for the world.”

After she closed the connection, Dyte turned back to the little stuffed cat. She’d never imagined, not for a minute, that one little stuffed toy—okay, a few million little stuffed toys—could land her with a title she didn’t want.

Movement outside her office windows caught her eye. Down by the waterfront, the Ferris wheel was turning lazily in the rare mid-afternoon sunshine.

How many happy couples would be riding the wheel tomorrow? Hand in hand, eating chocolates her dad’s company produced or exchanging cards with his image on the cover, so in love with each other they wouldn’t care if the sun was shining or a misty rain clouded their view of the bay because they only had eyes for each other?

Well, if February 14th was the day for lovers to ride the Ferris wheel, February 13th had to be the day the chronically single got their shot. If she was going to be their official goddess, then she should know what it felt like to ride the wheel alone. To buy herself chocolates and a single red rose—and maybe some cotton candy and popcorn—and climb inside one of those gondolas with nothing but a stuffed toy to keep her company.

If she was destined to become the Goddess of the Chronically Single, better to own the title than whine about it. That’s what a grownup goddess would do.

Right?

Dyte pressed the intercom button on her phone. “Stewart,” she said when her assistant answered. “Clear my calendar for the rest of the day.”

“Ma’am?”

She grabbed the stuffed cat. “I’m going out.”

4

It seemed like half of Moretown Bay had decided to take advantage of the cloudless day by taking a walk along the waterfront. Dyte blended in just fine, but mingling was out of the question.

She no longer dressed like a moody Goth teenager. She’d let her hair go back to its natural deep golden brown, and she wore it long and straight. Her fingernails were painted a neutral beige, she wore a minimal amount of makeup, and her clothes were appropriately business casual for the twenty-something mortal she appeared to be.

But she wasn’t mortal, and everyone seemed to know it. Most of the men she passed on the street gave her an appreciative glance, but none of them looked at her twice. They might not know on a conscious level that she was an immortal and a goddess in the making, but she must have pinged their subconscious hard. Mortals had a long history of coming out on the short end of the stick when they dealt with the old gods and goddesses.

That was one of the things that had made Christopher, her one and only mortal boyfriend, so special. Until her dad had messed with Christopher’s head, he hadn’t cared that she was immortal. He’d been one of the few men she’d met who hadn’t looked away.

The few elves and other magic folk out on the street—the ones who could sense other magical beings the way mortals smelled people who wore too much perfume or aftershave—didn’t even look at her.

She sighed and straightened her shoulders, and held her head high. So much for the wild idea she’d had that she might be able to find true love on a magically sunny afternoon.

She made her way toward the Ferris wheel. Impressive from her office building, which was several hundred feet up one very steep hill from the waterfront, the gigantic Ferris wheel was breathtaking up close. Its white-washed metal spokes were festooned with thousands of lights, and the base was a maze white metal supports sunk deep into massive concrete moorings.

She watched as the wheel carried its gondolas high out over the water of the bay before them returning them to the pier, going round and round in stately splendor.

The sheer size of the thing impressed the hell out of her. Zeus could keep Mount Olympus with its high columned archways and marbled hallways. This wonder of the mortal world was right here in this city she called home.

And what was even more impressive was the fact that no magic had gone into its construction. The Ferris wheel was totally the unspelled work of mortal men and women. Amazing.

Of course, there was a line of people (and elves and dwarves and gnomes) waiting to take a ride. Dyte purchased a ticket, but instead of going to the end of the line, she strolled past the Ferris wheel and out to the end of the pier.

She had been right. The air back by the entrance to the Ferris wheel had smelled of popcorn, and nearby vendors were selling cotton candy and ice cream and frozen bananas covered in chocolate and nuts. The smells had overlapped until they overwhelmed—the popcorn of her imagination smelled much better—but out here she smelled nothing but the slightly musty, fishy odor of the bay.

Seagulls circled overhead, screeching at each other as they searched the pier for bits of food. The Ferris wheel creaked as it turned, and far out on the bay a ship’s horn sounded a mournful bleat.

The wheel’s cheerful calliope music nearly drowned out these sounds, but Dyte wasn’t in the mood for cheerful. Tomorrow would be her last day as a plain old immortal. Goddesses had responsibilities. Not that running her own company didn’t come with its own set of responsibilities, but she
liked
running her company. She had absolutely no experience whatsoever in how to be a good goddess.

“Think I can get a mentor?” she asked the stuffed cat. She’d shoved it in her carryall during her walk to the waterfront, but now she took it out so that it could gaze at the water with its blue plastic eyes. She wondered if her customers talked to their own stuffed toys.

She scratched the toy underneath its chin. “At least we know you guys won’t make fun of us.”

Huh.

She’d just thought of herself as part of an “us.”

One of the independently single who thumbed their noses at tradition.

The willfully unattached.

Maybe her mom had a point after all.

“Cute cat.”

Dyte had been so lost in her own thoughts, she hadn’t noticed she was no longer alone.

The voice had a familiar ring to it, and she turned, half expecting to find Christopher standing next to her. If her life had been a romance novel, of course it would be Christopher standing next to her. But her life wasn’t a romance novel, and it wasn’t Christopher who’d noticed her stuffed cat.

He wasn’t Hermes handsome, or even romance novel handsome, but the man leaning on the railing a respectful distance away from her was good looking in a rugged way. He had a strong jawline, an unruly mess of dark brown hair just long enough to brush the collar of his denim jacket, and blue eyes that twinkled with amusement. Dyte sensed no magic about him, and absolutely no touch of any god or goddess.

And wonder of wonders, he held her gaze when she looked at him.

“Thanks,” she said. “She’s a close, personal friend of mine.”

“Ah,” he said. “The kind of friend you tell secrets to?”

The corners of his mouth tipped upward in a good-humored grin. The grin made his rugged face look less rough around the edges.

“She’ll never tell,” Dyte said.

He held out his hand and introduced himself as Luke, and she told him her name.

His fingers were rough with well-worn calluses. He looked to be about twenty-eight as mortals measured the years, and she felt absolutely no spark when their fingers touched.

No love at first sight. Not even lust at first sight.

Dyte tried not to be disappointed.

So much for finding true love by midnight on Valentine’s Day, which was pretty much her deadline if she was going to get to the other side of the world in time for her naming ceremony on the 15th. Luke had been her best—her only—prospect so far, and the day was rapidly waning.

“I was thinking about buying myself an ice cream cone,” he said after their hands parted. “Would you and your cat like to join me?”