The bulb that hung above their heads swayed back and forth like a pendulum of doom, casting flickering shadows over the young woman's face as she moved into the light. She had a single braid down her back with eyes of steel gray and hazel that pierced the very soul of the boy sitting in front of her.

She produced two photos and gently laid them on the table. As the boy went to look, she suddenly slammed her hands down, causing him to jump almost a foot in the air.

"The hell?" He gasped.

"This person," she held up the photo of a girl with dark hair and cold blue eyes, "and this person are both connected to you. Care to tell me how?"

The boy focused primarily on the girl with lighter brown hair and brown eyes, but his mind was subconsciously drawn to the first photo. He reached out to touch the second photo when the girl whipped it away.

"Connected? What are you talking—"

"Answer the question!" She shouted, hitting the table again.

"I've known them since elementary!" He yelled back in a panicked tone.

She quickly withdrew although her eyes kept steady contact with the boy's nervous brown ones that were darting all over the room.

"Good. We're getting somewhere. Now how would you describe the way you feel when you look at her?" She laid a photo down and slid it towards the boy.

"Miriam? I...I don't know."

His brain was all muddled, jumping all over the place as he tried to concentrate on the photo. It was as if he was being emotionally blocked and he squinted, trying to get his thoughts together when the girl lunged forward and grabbed him by the front of his shirt, causing him to yelp in surprise.

"What do you mean you don't know?" She yelled. "I risked my life getting you off the streets and this is how you repay me? False information leading to dead ends and a potentially cold case?"

"Damn it, Scarlett, would you relax for a sec?"

She released the boy and he settled back in his wheelchair as Scarlett turned on the actual lights to her bedroom. The Cupid grinned mischievously when Logan began to straighten out his shirt with a glare thrown her way.

"Sorry. Guess I got a little into the character. Detective Beaumont, the city's only hope," she said in an announcer's voice, pushing her desk back into the corner of the room and taking down the toy lightbulb she'd tied to her ceiling fan.

"With a tendency to strangle her hostages," Logan grumbled.

"Hey, I apologized. Plus," she sat on the edge of her bed, "you said you'd help me."

"When I said I would help you, I didn't mean I would be a part of an interrogation!"

"Alright, alright. Detective Beaumont is gone. For now," she whispered the last part under her breath with a smirk.

After getting into that little fight with Sebastian, she hadn't been ready to speak to him during the school day and found herself befriending the soft spoken Logan Bennet from her second period History class. She had formulated a plan in her head beforehand, one that would probably make Kat and Dawson drop dead in shock. So, she kept it to herself. By the time school was finished, Logan was a firm believer in all things Cupid and had babbled nonstop with questions she successfully managed to dodge as she pushed him to the house—or what Dawson liked to call the Love Shack.

Typical.

"So, what made you believe me in the first place?" Scarlett asked.

The boy shrugged.

"I guess I'm used to the fact that there could be more than just the reality I'm living in." He wheeled around to look at her. "What made you trust me in the first place?"

"I won't lie, out of all the all the match profiles I read, you seemed like the most trustworthy person. No shade to your friends or anything."

And it was true.

Scarlett had pored over the files as though she were an actual detective before giving up after about ten minutes and choosing any random one. She felt a little guilty about her ulterior motive to making friends with Logan, but she found him to be quite the interesting person and was glad she'd done it in the first place because by the end of their very first conversation, she was ready to fight anyone who even looked at him funny.

Before Logan could correct her and say that he didn't really know if he was friends with all of them, two brisk knocks sounded.

"Who is it?" She shouted.

"It's Kat. Can I come in?"

"Oh. Yeah, sure."

The Cupid Agent drew up short at the sight of Logan, keeping her wings behind the door so he wouldn't see them.

"Hello," she said politely, her eyes darting to Scarlett's in a state of confusion. He didn't say a thing as he was a bit too busy staring at her in awe.

"This is Logan, my lab partner." Scarlett reached over and punched him in the arm with a playful laugh as he snapped out of it and gave her a glare. "Logan, this is...my aunt Kat."

"H—hi." He managed to say.

He went red in the face when Kat smiled at him.

"It's nice to meet you, Logan," she gestured to the door, "but is it okay if I borrow Scarlett real quick?"

The boy nodded and Kat grabbed her by the arm, dragging her out of the room.

"What's wrong?" She asked as Kat rounded on her with a stern look.

"Did you not get enough playtime at the Elysian Court?" She demanded.

"Wh—"

"One of the very first things I told you was that you aren't allowed to fall in love with a human! And of all people, one of your mismatches!"

"Kat, no one's falling in love with anybody!" Scarlett protested.
"Logan's only here because of school, I promise!"

"You promise?"

"Yes."

"Hm. Well, he's a handsome young man." She tilted her head. "He looks like someone I used to know."

"Well...if that's all—"

"Ah, not yet."

Scarlett groaned as Kat stopped her from going into her room.

"You can't ignore him forever, you know. Trust me, I try that with Dawson all the time." When Scarlett said nothing, she continued. "He's your partner. You need each other more than you think."

The young Cupid turned to watch her go when Sebastian himself rounded the corner and stopped in his tracks. Kat patted his shoulder as she walked past.

"Speak of the devil and he shall appear."

"I don't understand what you people want from me!" He shouted after her as she laughed all the way back to the living room before looking at Scarlett.

"Hey, Scar."

"Hey, Seb."

At the sound of his nickname, he almost leapt with joy that she was talking to him again and tried to contain his excitement by asking what she was up to—a question she probably could have gone without answering if not for Logan who had taken it upon himself to check and see if Scarlett was still around.

"Oh! Hi, Sebastian." He opened the door wider. "You guys good?"

"We're okay." Scarlett said quickly.

"Oookay. I should be getting home soon, so—"

"I'll take you," the girl ran around his chair and pushed him forward as Sebastian watched curiously, "just tell me where to go."

"I'd object, but my house isn't that far." He chuckled.

"Lead the way, maestro."

Scarlett threw Sebastian a look that meant she'd explain everything when she came home. Not wanting to get into it with her again and especially in front of Logan, he merely nodded and watched them disappear down the hall.

♡♡♡

"Are you insane?"

Scarlett shrugged.

"It's honestly not the worst idea in the world!" She insisted as he paced back and forth across her room. "Just think about it. The whole process would go faster and you said so yourself. If the Cupid Judge agreed we could do it our way, what's stopping us from doing exactly that?"

"Uh, I don't know—Limbo, maybe? Which is a definite place we're gonna end up if we go through with this!"

"But—"

"You almost got sent there once, Scarlett, I won't let it come that close again." He demanded.

She looked down at her lap, scratching the back of her neck as her cheeks involuntary began to warm at the firmness of his tone and the protective connotation behind his words.

"Look," he sat down beside her, "I'm sorry about dragging Samuel into it without agreeing to talk to you first and I'm sorry about what I said. But, having both Samuel and Logan in the know could be more dangerous for us than we expected. You were right the first time. We should just do it ourselves."

"Don't agree with me just because you're sorry." She scowled.

"I'm not agreeing with you because of that, I'm agreeing with you because your idea is a hundred times more crazier than mines!"

"But, it'll work. And once everything's back to the way it was and they're with the right person, then—"

"Then, what?" Sebastian interrupted her. "What's gonna happen after we fix everything?"

Scarlett groaned loudly and flopped onto her bed, throwing an arm over her face.

"I don't know," she responded, her voice muffled.

He moved her arm away.

"I can only focus on one thing right now and that's getting the matches back together. We have no other ideas. Two of them already know about us. At this point, what's the worst that can happen down here?"

"I'm not worried about down here," he muttered before going to lay next to her. "But, if you think it's the best thing we can come up with...I guess we'll go through it."

"Are you sure?"

"Yeah."

"Really sure?"

He laughed, turning his head to look at her as she did the same with a small smile of her face.

"Really sure, Billygoat."

♡♡♡

my heart when he
called her billygoat: 💓