Interim Goddess of Love (9 page)

"
It's an old house," I said.

"
Label says it's an ancestral house in Silay, Negros Occidental," Kathy said. "Probably belonged to a family with a sugar plantation, although I haven't looked it up yet."

Silay, I would find out later, is near
Bacolod. It's in the province of Negros Occidental, and it was known for sugar plantations that went way back to the Spanish period. Today I guess they still grew sugar, but the grand old houses that the plantation owners once lived in are now heritage sites and museums.

It didn
't explain why a secret admirer would take a photo of one and give it as a gift.

"
Is it your family's house?" I asked.

Kathy looked confused too, but not in the same way I did.
"No it's not. But, Hannah, this is something I do. I
collect
photos of ancestral homes like this one. I started when I was a kid, when I was given my first camera, that summer when I visited my grandfather's childhood home. But my photos are not as good as this. This is… amazing."

'
Who knows that you collect this, Kathy?"

She was still looking at the picture, somewhat entranced by it.
"I can't even… I don't think I've ever told anybody. It's a weird hobby, and I was pretty sure no one would really be interested…"

"
Have you looked at the card?"

"
What?"

"
It's taped to the back."

She hadn
't even noticed it, and had to peel it off with shaking fingers. "It's…an invitation to go to the Bash next week."

"
Is it signed?"

"
No."

She was
so
scared. Excited and scared. I wanted to be happy for her but couldn't because my own belly was doing sympathy flip-flops.

"
You should go," I said.

"
It's weird. This is too… it's too
intimate.
I don't even know who he is!"

As she spoke I felt it, felt her walls coming up. This guy had just revealed how much he knew her and it
was equal parts creepy and impressive. The creepy bit was leaving her vulnerable, and the instinct to protect herself was kicking in.

She was making up her mind as she spoke, talking to herself more than me.
"I shouldn't go to the Bash with him. This is probably just a stalker."

How would I ha
ve advised her, as a friend?

I would have said,
this is creepy. Report him to the admin now.

Bu
t I wasn't
just
a friend. I was the goddess of love and I
felt
that this guy was sincere. We just had to find him, because Kathy was going to shut down from fear.

"
Kathy," I said, "Your secret admirer guy. Who do you wish he could be?"

"
What?"

"
You know what I said. Tell me."

"
It doesn't matter who I want it to be. It's not like it'll change anything."

"
Humor me."

"
He doesn't like me."

"
How do you know for sure?"

"
I know for sure."

"
Tell me."

Kathy sighed.
"It's not possible. He's popular and… he probably doesn't know I exist, anyway."

By the time I actually saw Quin face to face, hours later, I had run a dozen versions of my speech in my head.

I conveniently found him eating a burger alone in the
McDonald's that I had decided to have dinner at that night. So I walked up to him with purpose.

"
I can't believe you knew and never told me."

No look of surprise or guilt, of course. He was probably expecting me to do this any day now.
"You're hungry. Why don't you get something to eat first?"

"
I can't believe you knew Robbie liked me all this time."

"
How did you find out?"

"
He asked me out to the Bash."

"
He's been planning to do that for a while."

"
I know. He inadvertently gave me a flashback tour earlier, when he talked to me. How come you never said anything?"

"
Did you know that Robbie wasn't one of us?"

"
What?"

Quin was not at all bothered by my drama. He picked up a french fry and lazily dipped it in ketchup.
"Did you notice already how you can tell if someone you encounter is or is not a god in human form?"

Seriously, you take this moment to quiz me?

"I saw into his feelings, memories of me," I said, realizing it right then.

"
Right. You've noticed that you can't do that to me, or Vida, or Diego."

"
I just thought it was because I'm new and haven't learned everything yet."

Quin motioned for me to sit, but I stubbornly refused.
"It's not a thing you learn; it just is. When I met you, you were part of the youngest generation of Bathala's family. When you took the place of the goddess of love, you joined the third generation. You only have power over those who are younger."

"
Can you… do your powers work on Vida and Diego?"

He shook his head.
"No. They're my equals."

"
But Vida competes with you for things."

"
She stubbornly thinks she can upset the balance and take more than what our father has given her. She can't."

"
So you can play with human feelings and actions but not each other's."

"
That's not how I see it, but it's kind of true."

"
Am I your equal?"

"
You're younger than us," Quin said. "Sorry if that disappoints you. Yes, we can affect your thoughts, actions, and feelings, if we wish to. But this rarely happens."

"
How can you be sure?"

"
Because I've always been an advocate for letting people be, and the other gods -- as I told you -- can't change this even if they tried."

"
So my powers won't work on any of you, even if I try."

"
It doesn't work that way."

"
And you are which generation?"

Quin motioned for me to sit again, and I still refused.
"Only my father has any power over me."

Maybe if that mythology book hadn
't been missing from the library I would have known about this earlier. I was surprised, though, at how dejected I felt at finding out that there was a hierarchy to this and I happened to be near the bottom.

And Quin… just when I thought this experience had brought us closer
, apparently I was still not an equal. It was freshman year all over again.

No wait. Freshman year was
better
because last year I stupidly thought that it was possible for a junior to be absolutely inexplicably charmed by me.

"
You didn't tell me about Robbie," I whined.

"
I just said, I wanted to let things be," Quin said. "How about you sit down and let's have dinner?"

Screw. You.
I put much force behind that thought, hoping that he could hear it, even if he probably didn't intend to, in the spirit of "letting things be."

Then I left. This lowly
"third generation" goddess had work to do.

Good thing I was drafted to be the goddess of love, because I would suck as the goddess of law enforcement.

Johnny Alba was a student employee, an SK just like me. This semester his assignment was to work off his required hours in the internal mail delivery service at the Ford River Student Center. What that meant, really, was manning the window, asking students to fill up a form, and making sure that when the messengers came around they were given correctly-labeled deliveries.

…He imagined himself as an elf in Santa's workshop
.

He had a girlfriend who was still
a senior in his high school in Cavite. He missed her, but maybe not as much now that he was visiting her every weekend. He told me about how she was going to be the valedictorian for sure, and that she was considering a career as a meteorologist.

He told me this and more, but even after an extensive interrogation, he would not tell me who asked him to deliver the gifts to Kathy.

Was I just doing it wrong? For a second I wondered if Johnny Alba, mail delivery assistant, was
one of them
, because I couldn't seem to pierce that part of his brain. But he opened up about his girlfriend almost immediately, and I was seeing his other memories of love just fine, so that couldn't have been it. I ended up staying there for forty-five minutes before giving up.

And when I left the office
, who else was by the door but Diego Simon, all casual, leaning on the concrete wall. Seeing him without his boy band disoriented me every time. I gasped just a tiny bit.

"
I saw what you were trying to do," he said.

"
I wasn't trying to do anything."

"
Lying to me. That's promising." He took me by the shoulder and steered me away from a crowd of students that just walked into the mail room, and all I could think of right then was
Sol is going to be sooo jealous.
"I'm sure that whatever hoops our boy Joaquin is making you jump through, it doesn't include a shortcut through the mail guy."

Were we friends now? Diego never really talked to me, despite the Quin connection. Even when we were in the same room together
he would just stay in his corner, glowering. Quin said he just wasn't the type who did small talk very well, and I understood that. If I had been born at the beginning of time I would find most of the people here stupid and shallow too.

"
Is it because what I want to know isn't about
his
love life?" I asked him.

Diego laughed.
"What? No. That's bullshit. You can do anything to anybody."

"
Then why can't I get him to tell me what I want to know?"

"I don't think you understand yet what you are now allowed to do, New Girl. You have the power to create and destroy lives and change human history. If you can't do something as inane as get a name out of a freshman, then it's because one of us -- someone in your generation or older -- isn't allowing you to."

"
It's Quin, isn't it?" I groaned. "He has this thing about making me take this slow. It's so annoying." I wasn't sure if I should have admitted that to anyone else, but this was Diego, and he probably knew that anyway.

"
His favorite hobby has always been to hold everyone back. You need this name why?"

"
It's a goddess project. I'm practicing."

"
Wait here."

I didn
't exactly wait right there at the spot where he said it. There was a bench near it, and by the time I had walked up to it, he was back beside me.

"
I have your name," Diego said.

"
What? How? You can override Quin's mojo on the guy?"

He didn
't like that I referred to it as "mojo." "For supernatural things? It's useless to try taking on Quin -- we stalemate. But that's why I like using human methods like my fists. Or threatening to use my fists. Some people just have weak wills and give it up easily."

"
You are…" Crude? Cruel? Brutal? I knew this about Diego already. My brain did not feel enriched by this. But he did give me something I wanted.

The name of Kathy
's admirer, the person paying Johnny Alba to send her gifts anonymously, was Jake Lalisan. The Jake Lalisan who was also the "boyfriend" of Vida Castillo, reigning queen of Ford River.

And the guy that Kathy just admitted to me was the one she
really
liked.

Personality Test Result for Diego Simon:

You are not a slave to convention, and often seek out new experiences. You are practical in your decision-making, opting to go with what's best for the situation as it is presented to you. In groups you tend to be the resourceful person. You prefer to learn by doing, and usually take a very hands-on approach when you are given a responsibility.