about my past, how remorseful I am for some of the horrible things I did in my misguided, orgy-filled youth.”
Khristos cringed and held up a hand. “Stop right at orgy, please.”
His mother shook her head as the room tinkled with more of her laughter. “I’ve told you at least a thousand times about all the trouble I’ve made, and not without good reason. I told you because I didn’t want that for you, and the way things were shaping up, with you off chasing every toga from here to eternity, I had to do something, didn’t I?”
He damn well didn’t chase togas.
Wait—what?
There was no spell? He’d spent the better part of his adult life pretending to be something he wasn’t to avoid getting caught in a web that didn’t even exist?
Which meant—he really was falling in love with Quinn?
Oh, fuck.
“Do you mean to tell me that I’m not falling in love with her because of a love spell, but because…”
“Just because, honey.” Aphrodite smiled at him, a smile beaming with love. “There’s no spell, no shenanigans, nothing. That’s your heart, telling you you’ve found the one. I’m so happy for you, Khristos! Oh, we’ll have grandchildren in no time!” She whirled around, clapping her hands. “Mom!” she yelled. “Did you hear?”
His grandmother—or GG, as they called her—sauntered into the living room, a pink umbrella-ed cocktail in hand, her crazy Mohawk sagging from the humidity. “Yep,” she said on a sigh. “I heard.”
His mother threw her arms around his grandmother’s neck. “Isn’t this the most amazing news, Mother? Grandbabies!”
His grandmother pushed her false teeth from her mouth with her tongue before slapping Khristos on the back. “Hold onto your flimsy panties there, girlie. I got a confession to make.”
His eyes narrowed in his grandmother’s direction. He adored her, loved her as much as he loved his mother, but Grandma’s first name wasn’t Agape for nothing. Like her name, she was the scariest bitch.
Fear skittered up his spine. “GG, what have you done?”
She took a long sip of her drink through the straw, sucking on it noisily until she’d had her last drop. “You want it straight up, or do you want me to weave one of my stories like I do on the bus?”
He cracked his jaw. “Straight up, GG. Now. Please.”
She hiked up the front of her flowered orange-and-black bathing suit. “It was me who knocked the apple off the column. Now, don’t go gettin’ pissy. I did it to give you a break. You weren’t ever gonna find the love of your life if you were too damned busy guarding the apple. Quinn’s a nice kid. Never wrinkled her nose once on the bus. Even after I rolled in goat shit. Because you know how I am. I like to really become one with the peasant storyteller shtick. Anyway, she gets the whole dealio with love. She’s good at it. She believes. Your mother’s getting wrinkles around her eyes from trying to keep up. I had to do something, and she’s such a control freak, she never would have quit. And that Iris is a twit. Who lets the Goddess of Rainbows make choices the fate of the world relies on? We’d have a bunch of baby unicorns running around and no humans.”
His mother bit her lower lip and winced. “Oh, Mother…”
GG rolled her eyes in disgust. “Don’t ‘oh, Mother’ me. Look, it was time to take charge. So I whipped up a small seismic occurrence, and knocked the apple off the column when you weren’t looking.”
“And you chose Quinn because…?” Khristos asked.
His grandmother snorted. “After hearing your Quinn on the phone with her schmoe of an ex-boyfriend Igor, I knew she was right for the position because she’s got moxie. Plenty of it. Told that Igor to shove his nose clippers into his anus-head.”
His eyes almost rolled to the back of his head. “I can’t believe you did this, GG.”
She flapped her hand at him. “Yeah, yeah. I did this. If she hadn’t taken a bite of the apple, I would have figured out another way to transfer the power to her. But she didn’t go down without a fight, did she? She told you what was what. Loved it!”
But hold on. Maybe there was some measure of relief in this yet. “So you were the one who put a love spell on the apple?”
She wrinkled up her face and popped her lips. “Um, nope. No love spell. That’s all on you.”
He made his way to the couch