I Accidentally Seduced Hades novel · Chapter 1 of 32
Chapter 1: The Best Cupid
Aphrodite hands Clary a gold arrow meant for Hades; at the library ball Clary refuses in front of everyone, the goddess forces the shot, and Hades takes Clary down through the floor, where the Book of Arrivals lists her best friend's death and her own on Halloween.
"You've always been my best cupid, Clary."
Aphrodite said it while I knelt on the marble, buckling her gold sandal.
We were in a back office of the New York Public Library.
She had dressed me to match her tonight. White gown, gold thread, gold sandals that pinched.
"Which is why tonight's arrow is yours," she said.
She held it out across her palm.
It was twice as long as the ones I used on lonely bankers. The tip glowed.
"Who's it for?"
"Hades."
I laughed.
She didn't.
"He's here?"
"He comes to my ball every year to glare at the champagne. When he looks at me, you shoot."
"Why do you want the god of the dead?"
"Love is a poor little kingdom, darling. His is full."
"My contract says mortals."
"Your contract says what I say it says." She smiled. "How's Danny? Still running five miles a morning?"
My brother had been bald and gray at twelve.
I took the arrow.
Upstairs, the reading room glowed. Long oak tables, green lamps, a string quartet under the painted ceiling.
Jody was working the coat check in a white dress like mine.
She waved a ticket at me and mouthed, "Thirty days."
Thirty days until her ten years were up and Golden Hour sent her to the Isles.
She'd already bought a sun hat.
I folded the bow small enough to fit my palm and drifted along the bookshelves, smiling at donors.
With the god-sight, I could see their hearts.
A hedge fund man's heart fizzed pink for the cellist.
That was the job. Look at a heart, find where it leans, nudge.
Then the room went cold.
The candles on the tables all leaned the same way, toward the doors.
A man came in alone.
To everyone else, I knew, he was a tall, handsome guest in a dark suit with no tie.
To me, his shadow went all the way to the ceiling.
His eyes were black from edge to edge.
Aphrodite floated into the center of the room, under the big chandelier.
She turned so the light hit her hair.
I opened the bow.
I set the gold arrow on the string.
And I looked at her heart, the way I'd look at any client's.
There was nothing there.
Where her heart should be was a gold hole, turning slowly.
I looked at Hades.
His heart was dark red and slow and steady, like a drum in another room.
I lowered the bow.
Aphrodite saw it.
She crossed the floor to me with her hand out, smiling at every guest she passed.
"Shoot," she said, very softly.
"No."
"Clary."
"No," I said, loud enough for the donors beside us to turn. "Find another girl."
Aphrodite laughed for them. "My matchmaker has stage fright."
Then she put her hand over mine on the bow.
Her fingers were hot as an oven door.
She pulled the string back with my hand inside hers, and swung the tip toward the chandelier.
I tried to wrench free.
Across the room, Hades turned his head and looked straight at me.
The arrow left the string.
It hit him in the chest.
He looked down at it, pulled it out, and dropped it next to somebody's salad fork.
Three hundred people stopped talking.
He walked toward me.
The guests stepped back from him without knowing why.
Aphrodite moved into his path, under the chandelier, in her best light.
"Darling," she said. "I'm right here."
"I know where you are," Hades said.
He didn't even glance at her.
He stopped in front of me.
"You said no to her," he said.
"I..." I swallowed. "Yes."
"Say it again."
"No?"
Something moved at the corner of his mouth.
He held out his hand.
I didn't take it.
"I'm not going anywhere with you," I said. "You've been shot. You're not thinking straight."
"Then you'd better come and keep an eye on me."
He took my hand anyway.
The marble under my sandals turned black and soft.
I heard Jody yell my name from the coat check.
Then the floor closed over my head.
I came up gasping in a hall of black stone.
Blue lamps burned along the walls.
Something huge and warm pushed its nose into my back.
I turned around and looked up into three black dog heads, each the size of a recliner.
The middle one licked my face.
"He likes you," Hades said.
"Listen to me," I said. "You've got the wrong girl."
He was already walking to a stone stand at the end of the hall.
I followed him. "I'm not a goddess. I'm a matchmaker from Queens. That arrow is making you stupid."
"Mortals can't see me as I am," he said. "You're looking right at me."
"It comes with the job. Like a uniform."
On the stand lay a book as big as a door.
He opened it.
The pages were covered in names, written in ink that moved.
"The Book of Arrivals," he said. "Everyone who comes down to me, and the night they come."
He turned the pages until he found a long column.
Every name in it was a woman or a man I knew.
Cupids. The ones who'd retired to the Isles.
He put his finger on a fresh line.
Jody Vesey. October 31.
"No," I said. "She's retiring on the 31st. She bought a hat."
"Everyone goes to the Isles," Hades said. "Then they come to me."
He moved his finger one line down.
The ink was still wet.
Clary Gilroy. October 31.
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