IVY
Christmas music blared from the speakers connected to my phone, and the tree twinkled with lights. From a distance, it looked kind of classy, but up close, it was decorated with all kinds of silly ornaments my roommate and I had accumulated over the years.
Laila came bustling out of her room wearing a form-fitting green dress and her heels still in her hand. "Is Eloise not here yet?"
I shook my head. "You can't expect her to be on time," I reminded her.
"She'll probably be working late," Laila responded with an amused smile. "And by working, I mean hooking up with her secret work boyfriend."
"Obviously." I let out a sigh. "If only it were that easy to find someone."
"I'm pretty sure you're supposed to go into work to work , not to hook up with anyone." Laila headed over to the other side of our open-plan kitchen-living room and poured us both a glass of wine. "Unless you have something to tell me."
I laughed. "Nope. My company is still full of stuck-up marketing executives."
"Aren't you a stuck-up marketing executive?" she asked as she handed me one of the glasses and I took a sip.
"Yep. But I've got my own account now. I start on Monday."
Laila frowned and sat down, stretching out her legs. "This close to the holidays?"
"Yes. And get this, they're a toy company."
She raised an eyebrow. "You'd have thought they'd come hiring months ago."
"Exactly. I dread to think what I'm walking into." I was about to sit down when the doorbell sounded, announcing the arrival of my oldest friend.
I made my way over to it, pulling it open to find her on the other side with a bottle of wine in one hand and a slightly chilled expression on her face.
"Ivy!"
"Hey, El," I said, letting her come inside before I hugged her.
"I hope you're ready to party," she said. "I have had such a week at work."
Laila snorted. "You mean you were almost caught with your boyfriend in the supply closet?" she teased.
"I didn't do anything with my boyfriend in a supply closet," Eloise countered.
"Ah, so you did do something with him at work still," I pointed out. "Otherwise you wouldn't be so specific." I put her bottle of wine in the fridge and fixed her a glass from the open one.
She sat on the opposite end of the sofa from me and accepted the glass of wine I brought her.
Eloise's cheeks flamed red. "Yes. Fine. We did something at work."
"Intriguing. And do we get to know his name?" Laila asked. "Or anything else? You've still not told us anything about him other than that you work with him and he gives good..."
"So, where are we going tonight?" Eloise's question was a little louder than it needed to be.
I smothered a laugh and leaned against the counter. "No idea. There's a wine bar on Main Street that's supposed to be really good."
"Oh, or maybe the club, we haven't been dancing in ages," Laila responded.
Eloise cleared her throat. "So, I do actually have another option."
"Go on?" Laila asked.
"What if I could get us into a Jinx mixer?" she said.
"One run by the dating agency you work at?" I checked.
"Well, yes. But the mixers aren't really about matchmaking. There's an open bar, and the guest list is kind of exclusive."
"And yet you can get us losers in?" Laila joked.
"Wait, is it because of your secret work boyfriend?" I asked.
Eloise took a sip of her wine. "Yes, okay. I can have him get us in."
"Well now I'm even more intrigued about who he is," I admitted. "If he's high up enough to get us on the list, then that means..."
"He's my boss," Eloise blurted.
"But your boss is Cupid," Laila said.
Our friend looked down at her wine glass, her cheeks bright red. "Yes, my boss is Cupid."
I whistled. "Damn, El, you hooked yourself a god?"
"Well, not on purpose," she said quickly.
"Hey, I'm all in for a Jinx party," Laila responded. "I've heard the drinks are really good, and I wouldn't mind finding myself a god or two."
I raised an eyebrow in her direction.
"Not at the same time," she said. "Though I've heard the stories I can't imagine that it would be impossible to find gods who would do that."
"I've not had enough wine for this conversation," I murmured. "Dating a god sounds complicated. And talk about the age gap."
Eloise raised an eyebrow. "Isn't your dad two hundred years older than your mum?"
"Well, yes. But that's just an elf thing."
"There are gods who aren't that much older than the oldest elves," Laila said. "And some who are younger, right?" She looked at Eloise.
"How should I know? I don't have access to profiles on all of the gods, only those who sign up for the matchmaking services. And I only know if they list that they're a god. Not all of them do, it isn't required to disclose what you are when you're signing up unless you want to."
"How does that even work?" Laila asked. "What if someone doesn't want to be matched with a god?"
"Then they put that on their intake form, and it doesn't match them with anyone who has either disclosed they're a god, or has left that information blank.
But most people don't. I think they know that if they're using Jinx's services, then there's going to be a chance that they'll match with a god. "
"Oh, so who are we expecting to be there tonight?" Laila asked, leaning forward. "Do I need to change into a better dress?"
"Your dress is great," I reminded her. "Any god who doesn't want you in that dress isn't worthy of the title."
Eloise shrugged. "I don't know."
"What about Hades? I heard he's the hot brooding type," Laila mused.
"He's back with Persephone," Eloise said. "Which is kind of my fault. But kind of not."
I raised an eyebrow. "Now you have to tell us that story."
"There's nothing really to tell. Cupid was supposed to put a note on the file that they weren't to be matched together, but then we, erm, got a bit distracted and accidentally sent the file off as to be matched ."
"Distracted as in..."
"They totally did it on Cupid's desk," I said in answer to Laila's question, able to tell from El's face.
"No way?" She turned her attention to Eloise.
"All right, yes," she murmured. "There could be all kinds of gods there."
"Oh, what about Santa?" Laila asked. "He's got to want to blow off steam before Christmas Eve."
"I don't think Santa is going to be attending a Jinx dating event," I said. "He probably doesn't actually deliver presents on Christmas Eve either."
"He could be there," Eloise responded. "But I don't know. I've never seen him on the matchmaking system we've got, but that doesn't actually mean anything."
"Santa isn't going to be there. He's not even a god," I responded.
"Well, technically he could be," Eloise responded.
I gave her a curious look and picked up my glass of wine.
"If someone made him immortal, then he would have become a god by now," she said. "Cupid explained it to me. Apparently, none of them are quite clear on how the god part is supposed to happen."
"Or they know, they just don't want to tell us," Laila pointed out.
Eloise nodded. "Yes, true. But anyway. He said that someone becomes immortal because a god makes them that way. And if they don't meet the requirements, they just stay immortal and nothing else happens. But if they have enough followers, they become a god."
"Ha, so Erik-what's-his-face could become a god?" Laila asked. "You know, the musician?"
Eloise nodded. "That's the way I understood it. If someone made him immortal and he continued to have the followers he does now, then he'd become a god, yes."
"Huh, so Santa's a god," I mused. "Who would have thought it?"
"Well we don't know for sure," Eloise responded. "Because if no one made him immortal, he'd just have died."
"I'm going to choose to believe in a sexy powerful god Santa," Laila joked. "Though he'd be more Ivy's type, she likes the older guy."
"It's not old if he was born in the same century as me," I protested.
They were never going to let me forget that I dated a ninety-five-year-old elf.
He looked like he was barely a year or two older than me, and in elf time, we were close enough together in age that it wouldn't have raised a single eyebrow.
Laila shrugged. "What do I know? I'm a Manjari, I was never supposed to leave the sacred forest."
"If we're going to go, then I should message Cupid and get us on the list," Eloise said, pulling out her phone. "And we should probably finish getting ready." She tapped out a message on her phone.
I finished my wine and thought about the party to come.
Despite the fact Eloise had worked in the matchmaking department at Jinx for almost a year, I'd never had a chance to go to one of their events, especially because of how pricey their elite membership was, and I had no idea what to expect as a result.
But I was kind of curious, especially in finding out exactly who was going to be there, and if I'd even be able to recognise a god if I was looking them in the face.