My eyes widen and the pot slips through my fingers, landing with a thud on the white surface of Cal's desk. It rolls on its side but doesn't break.
"Valentine is your brother?" I say.
Cal exhales, suddenly looking weary. The corners of his mouth are downturned, and I again notice the light purple smudges under his eyes; somehow they don't look unattractive on him, instead they strengthen the silver flecks in his eyes.
He nods slowly.
"Unfortunately, yes."
"Valentine, the cupid that's going around killing Matchmaking Agents, and is now after me, is your brother?"
Cal – his head bowed forwards – looks up under his eyelids at me.
"Yes..."
"Wow – you really have a screwed-up family tree..."
He inclines his head slightly.
"And so you can see how that makes all this the more complicated?" says Cal.
I hold his gaze. I remember our discussion in the car; I'd thought that if we knew who the killer was we could just go after him.
It's not that simple he'd replied.
And now, I think I understand why.
"If Valentine is your brother, does that mean he's...?"
"An original cupid, yes," says Cal.
We hold each other's gaze.
"So, he can't be killed," I say quietly.
Cal exhales then nods again.
"He's immortal, he's powerful, and as sadistic as Venus," he looks at me darkly. "He was always our mother's favourite child."
He looks at me and sighs.
"He's coming for you, Lila."
Around us – through the glass walls of Cal's office – I can see the Matchmaking Agents bustling about their everyday business. But inside the air feels very still.
My pulse is racing, my heart pumping cold blood through my veins.
"Why?" I say quietly. "He said he needed my heart. Was he being literal?"
Cal meets my eyes.
"I don't know."
"Why? Why is he coming for me?"
"I don't know."
He puts his head in his hands a moment, a more emotive gesture from Cal than I think I've ever seen, and when he removes them his usually pale cheeks are slightly flushed.
"I thought Cupid had killed him," he says. "I thought he'd found a way – something other than the Finis. I was foolish to have trusted him at his word. But we weren't on speaking terms back then. I believed what I wanted to believe."
"What happened?" I ask.
Cal sighs heavily.
"I remember telling you that Cupid had extreme views. But they were nothing on Valentine's. Cupid never wanted to conform to the Matchmaking Service life, and as such he bent the rules. But Valentine thought he was above the rules, he wanted to break the rules, he wanted to make the rules," he says. "And he was fanatic, cruel – with a godlike disregard for humankind, a heightened belief in cupid privilege in society."
He gives me a dark look.
"Only not all of the Matchmaking Service recognized the bad in him. Some of them agreed with his views, they practically worshipped him."
"So, what? Cupid put him in a Sim?"
Cal shakes his head.
"Not then. We banished Valentine from the organization, along with some of his followers – it was many years ago, back when Cupid was still among us. But it may have been a mistake."
"Why?"
"We didn't hear much from him for a while. But then his name started cropping up – here and there. There were rumors he was performing human weddings of forbidden love in Roman times. In the fourteenth century we heard humans speak of his name again – associating it with romance and courtship. By the eighteenth century we heard his name associated with cards, candy, flowers. And now – well – you've seen the shops around about now – in the run up to the fourteenth of February – they're filled with his name."
"So?"
"Venus gained her power through cupids making matches. We started to believe that Valentine had found a way to channel that power somehow – by bringing himself into consciousness of humans – by essentially using one day of the year to get humans to match themselves, but in his name. And on that day he would be able to access that power."
"So, he's most powerful on the fourteenth of February?"
Cal gives a solemn nod.
The note I found in my locker, burns through my jeans pocket.
Valentine's Day is coming. Stay away from your match.
My pulse begins to race.
"And then you decided to have him killed?"
"Not until we heard about the murders."
"What?"
Darkness crosses Cal's face.
"We discovered a series of murders, massacres, that took place on the fourteenth of February – his day. The last one I traced to him was in the early nineteen hundreds. In Chicago. The humans blamed it on gang warfare, but a Matchmaking Agent from the Chicago branch found a card near the bodies. It was signed your Valentine."
He sighs heavily. I shift in the battered red armchair, picking at a piece of red thread loose in the arm Cal watches me distastefully as I loop it around my finger but says nothing.
I look up at him.
"Why did he do these things?" I say.
Cal gives a rigid shrug.
"We don't know why he did it. I always thought he was trying to gain more popularity among his more extreme cupid supporters, perhaps making a bid to take over the Cupids Matchmaking Service himself."
"And – what – you sent Cupid after him? Wasn't Cupid banished by then?"
Cal nods.
"I knew at the time that Cupid was tracking his movements – for what end I never found out – because I ran into him in 1888 in London. I later found evidence that Valentine had been there too. About half a century later Cupid messaged me to say he'd dealt with it – and when I heard nothing from Valentine I believed it had been done."
I nod, and brush a stray dark hair away from my eyes. My heart is thudding against my chest.
"And now Valentine is coming for me..." I say.
He nods.
"So, you see why I am worried," says Cal. "He's up to something. He's after you. And his power will grow as his day gets closer." His eyes fix onto mine, and they blaze silver – a ferocious intensity behind them. "You're in serious trouble, Lila. I only hope we can protect you."