“So… are you just going to stand there, out in the cold?”
Arlena Coulter looked from where she stood, her arms crossed, in front of the apartment building she lived at. The man of her dreams, Tobias Blanchard, was standing in the doorway, his hands in his pockets and an ebony eyebrow raised. Arlena looked away from him, her heart clenching, and she stepped a few paces away from him. “If that’s what it takes to get away from you, then yes,” she said quietly.
He laughed, a low rumble in his chest. “Do I really repulse you that much?” he asked, walking up next to her. The streetlight glinted off his dark skin, and his dark orange eyes were torn between amused and curious.
The Mexican-American shook her head vehemently, her shoulder-length, dark purple braid shifting from side to side. “Of course not!” she said quickly, turning to him with a pained expression on her face. “I just… I don’t want to hurt you,” she said, averting her eyes once more.
“You… you don’t want to hurt me?” Tobias repeated incredulously, a grin splitting his features. He laughed again, louder this time, and stepped to within a foot of Arlena. “You don’t have to worry about that, my dear.”
Arlena opened her mouth to protest, only to receive his clamped around her own in a hot, brash kiss. They stayed like that for longer than Arlena could even fathom when they finally pulled away with her panting for breath and Tobias with a smile on his face. “B-but… how?” Arlena whispered, her eyes wide and her mouth agape.
“You’re not the only deity, Miss Coulter,” he said with a smirk. He took a switchblade from his pocket and, without even a blink, stabbed it into the palm of his hand.
Arlena let out a yelp only to notice that he wasn’t reacting. Tobias chuckled and drew the switchblade out of his hand. When he brought it up to the light, Arlena watched the wound that had looked so bloody and damaging only moments before disappear without a trace.
She looked up from his hand to his face, her breathing shallow and her heart pounding. “You mean… all this time I was worrying about poisoning you… and you can heal yourself?” she whispered.
“That would be correct,” Tobias affirmed. He grabbed her hand delicately and pulled her into another kiss, closing his eyes and losing himself in her. Arlena was soon to follow, and as she drifted out of self-awareness, she wrapped her arms around him, glad to finally have someone she could love with her whole self.

Max Linwood and Olive Keefe laughed as they entered Max’s apartment. They had just been to see a movie, as friends, and they were recalling one of the more amusing parts of it.
“Can you believe she really slipped on the banana all the way down the stairs?” Max gasped out, laughing as he took off his jacket.
“I know! I’m never getting a hamster now,” Olive responded. She was about to take off her jacket when he was instantly there, taking off her jacket. “Thank you,” she said cheerfully. As he hung up her jacket, she sighed happily. “This was fun. We should do this more often!”
Max flinched, dropping her coat before he could fully get it on the hook. “S-sorry,” he mumbled, grabbing it once more and hanging it properly.
Olive looked at him worriedly, a concerned look in her crystal blue eyes. “You okay, Max?” she asked.
He breathed in deeply before letting it out in a long, slow breath. “I-I actually wanted to talk about what you said a minute ago. About doing this more often,” he said, avoiding her eyes. A light blush spread on his cheeks under his curtain of short, dark brown hair.
The black-haired young woman stood from where she had been sitting on the couch. “Are you sure you’re all right?” she asked again, placing a hand on his arm.
He pulled out of her reach gently before looking at her, swallowing hard. “I… I… mon Dieu, I can’t even get it out,” he started, his voice going from strong and confident to little more than a whisper. He took a deep, shaky breath before starting again. “Ich liebe dich. Je t’aime. Ti amo, kimi o ai shiteru, ja cie kocham… wo ie ni…” The omnilinguist let out a short bitter laugh. “I can’t even say it in my native tongue. Some polyglot I am.”
Olive took a step closer to him once more. “Max, I--”
“I love you.”
There was a long, tense silence as Olive halted in her tracks, gaping at him with one hand on the back of the armchair. Without warning, her face vanished, followed quickly by her arms and the bit of her shin between the bottom of her capris and the tops of her sneakers. All that Max could now see was the clothes she was wearing.
Max ducked his head and suddenly seemed very interested in a spot on the carpet. “You’re mad at me.” It wasn’t a question, and his tone was sad, broken-hearted.
Without warning, Olive came into visibility once more, leaping at him with a hug. “No, of course I’m not!” she cried. Max stood, stunned at the sudden show of affection, when she turned her head and gave him a peck on the lips.
The kiss didn’t last long, but for Max, it might as well have lasted an eternity. “I-- but-- qu’est-ce que c’est passé?” he whispered once she’d broken the kiss. “I thought you’d hate me.”
“Of course I wouldn’t hate you,” Olive said gently, squeezing him tightly for a moment. “You’re my Maxie. I’d never hate you. By the way…”
As she spoke, Olive drew herself from the embrace, only getting close once more as she put her lips next to his ear and whispered into it, barely the ghost of her breath brushing his ear.
“Je t’aime aussi.”
Max was struck dumb by her admission, and while he was distracted, Olive slipped into the kitchen, a mischievous smile on her face. There was a few seconds’ pause when Max came back to his senses with a laugh.
“Hey, come back here!”

“Love is blind… pah! Whoever said that never met me…”
A woman in her early twenties walked through the quiet, dimly lit streets of Westminster, a white cane in her hand. Eyes an unnaturally light shade of green were unseeing as they rested on the sidewalk, and her dark auburn hair was pulled back in a low ponytail.
Cecily Aiden was walking through the streets with a bag of groceries in one hand and her cane in the other, muttering darkly to herself. Her roommates, Jack Woodworth and Aislinn Connors, had asked her to do the shopping tonight, in return for their love, and she’d unwittingly gone off to her doom.
She’d had to literally beat a crazy cat lady off with her cane, even after playing the “I’m a poor, helpless blind girl” bit as far as she could. At the moment, she was planning on tracking the cat lady with a fox or wolf transformation, and once she’d found her, she’d sneak in as a new cat and claw her face a few dozen times. Nothing serious, but enough to get payback for stealing the last tub of whipped cream.
Cecily walked into the apartment she shared with Jack and Aislinn with a weary, exasperated sigh. “I’m back,” she growled, setting the grocery bag next to her foot and hanging up her coat. She’d made it into the kitchen and put the bags on the tableby the time she heard the two.
“Almost… almost… there!” Aislinn cried. There were a few light thumps in a steady beat, most likely her jumping for joy.
In the office-slash-study, Jack gave a sigh as he leaned back in the office chair at their computer. “Finally. It took all of our paychecks, both this week and last week, but we finally did it,” he said, relief obvious in his voice. He brushed back his short black hair out of dark brown eyes, and he put his hands behind his head in a relaxed motion.
“Did what?” came Cecily’s dry reply. Aislinn and Jack jumped, turning quickly to face her with guilty looks on their faces. For once, they thanked their lucky stars that she was blind, otherwise they would’ve been caught red-handed, whether because of their guilty faces or because of what lay on the computer screen.
“We were, uh, that is--” Jack stammered, looking everywhere but at her.
“We set up a meeting with the Informal League of Unusual Crimefighters!” Aislinn interrupted. Jack shot Aislinn a look that carried a mixed message-- He didn’t know if he was happy that she saved him, or if he was angry because then she’d expect it. Aislinn’s silvery-blue eyes cast across the room as she avoided his eyes, and her dark skin was starting to shine with sweat.
Cecily’s eyebrow raised. “Oh, really?” she asked. “I wasn’t aware that it took all of your paychecks-- which, by the way, explains why you’ve had to rely on me for the shopping-- to set up an interview with them. Besides, last I knew, all of their spots were filled until next August, when Glider goes on a three-month vacation.”
Jack chuckled, glaring at Aislinn. “Well, what we really meant--” he said, rubbing the back of his head embarrassedly.
It didn’t take much time at all before Cecily was on their side of the room, and without warning, she swept them into a hug. “Thanks, guys. I don’t know what you did, but knowing you two, it’s going to be spectacular,” she said. She gave the tops of their heads a kiss each before humming as she walked back to the kitchen.
The oracle and superstrong man were left in an awkward silence, and they glanced at each other. “Has Cecily ever hummed, in all the time you’ve known her?” Jack asked, looking back at the door cautiously, as if expecting her to come charging back in with some form of weapon.
Aislinn shook her head, causing her bobbed black hair to shake under her red and white leopard print hat. “Should we make sure that all illusionists and body-shifters are accounted for?” she asked quietly.
“Agreed,” Jack said with a nod. He turned back to the computer when Cecily’s voice rang through the apartment.
“I heard that!”

“Master Garnett, are you feeling all right?”
Mikhail Garnett looked up from his desk, his red eyes giving his servant an icy glare. “Kyros, didn’t I tell you before that I was not to be disturbed?” he hissed. Mikhail flipped his long, silky black ponytail over his shoulder as he looked back at his studies, causing it to end at the middle of his back.
“I-I’m sorry, Master Garnett, I was trying to do my duties, but if you would prefer I leave, I shall do so at once,” the servant said quickly, bowing as he exited the room.
Mikhail sighed as he leaned on the desk, massaging his temples. It was no wonder Kyros had asked him how he was feeling. He had a massive headache, thanks to the books spread out in front of him. They were all from the Romantic era-- Poe, Irving, Hawthorne, Melville. He had tried to absorb them all in short succession, and it was too much information at once. He would have to call him.
Mikhail picked up the antique phone half a foot from the edge of Moby Dick and picked up the receiver from it, dialing a number easily known by heart by now. He tapped his foot impatiently as the dial tone sounded when finally a young man’s voice answered. “Hello?” he asked.
“Nico, I need you to come over again,” Mikhail ground out, still massaging his forehead with his free hand.
The man on the other end laughed, a soft, gentle sound. “You overloaded again?” he asked. “This is the second time in a week. Usually you pace yourself and don’t overload for another couple weeks, if not a month or two. Busy little bee, aren’t we?”
“Just get over here,” Mikhail snapped. Nicolas laughed again, and Mikhail slammed down the receiver with a groan. Mikhail could draw knowledge out of any book or person, but if he absorbed too much too fast, the results could be disastrous. The first time that Mikhail had “overloaded”, as Nicolas often put it, he had begun to bleed out his ears.
That was where Nicolas Argyris came in. After Mikhail’s father had seen him in the state of distress, he had searched for a telepath, any telepath. Nicolas had been the closest one he could find, and so the telepath had cleared out the unneeded knowledge. They had become fast friends, and they’d been doing this for almost twelve years now. When Mikhail had decided to be a deity rather than a gifted when he moved to an Academy, Nicolas wasn’t far behind, being younger and more hidden than Mikhail was.
It didn’t take long before the doorbell rang. A quiet exchange went on in the hall outside the library when Nicolas was ushered in. A small, dirty blond-haired, brown-eyed man at the age of twenty-six, a year younger than Mikhail, Nicolas was definitely not the image that most people had in mind when they thought of deities. Looks could be deceiving, however, as the little, half-Greek man had put more than a few people into comas.
“I told you not to overload,” Nicolas said dryly, raising an eyebrow with a smile.
Mikhail gave a short, exasperated sigh. “Yes, yes, I know. Just do it already, my head feels like it’s going to explode,” he growled.
Nicolas chuckled and walked around the desk to Mikhail. On the way around, however, he caught sight of the books on the desk. “Romanticism? I didn’t figure you’d absorb too much because of that. I thought it’d be something like floor plans or how-tos, or some other such thing, but literature?” he said, his smile turning into a smirk.
“Just do it!” Mikhail snapped. A tall Russian man, Mikhail was imposing to most, but not to Nicolas, as it was proven when the latter just laughed it off.
“Okay, now hold still,” Nicolas said, placing his hands on Mikhail’s temples and closing his eyes in concentration as he began to look through the knowledge.
Mikhail rolled his eyes. “We’ve been doing this more than a decade, Nico. I think I know what to do by now,” he said with a deadpan.
Nicolas chuckled. “I know, moj lûbov´,” he replied. The two had learned each others’ native tongues, so more often than not, they used either Greek or Russian as a language to keep prying ears from.
Even so, Mikhail glared at Nicolas’s eyelids. “Don’t call me that here,” he said quietly.
“Â lûbov´ sokr ty sliškom,” Nicolas chuckled. Finally his eyes opened and he stood, walking out of the room with a wink. “Until the next time we meet.”
Mikhail sighed, a light spattering of pink across his cheeks. Nico was certainly an eccentric little oddball.
As he turned the leather office chair he was in around to look out the window, Mikhail gave a snort. In this town, who wasn’t?