Eros didn’t remember falling asleep. He and Loki were tangled in each other, fully dressed on the couch. Half empty glasses of champagne sparkled lacklusterly in the gray morning light. The bubbles were stagnant, and the light illuminated the sticky fingerprints speckled across the glasses.

Eros turned around to face Loki. He watched Loki’s face carefully to make sure not to wake up the giant as he tried to slip away. Upon gazing at the giant’s peaceful face, Eros felt as if he had been struck by one of his own arrows. He smiled and stroked Loki’s blondish stubble.

He liked that they had stayed up all night simply talking, and drinking, and occasionally kissing. He knew Loki better now, after hearing the trickster’s myths from his point of view. It had been quite a comedy of errors. Eros had nearly rolled off the couch with laughter.

In turn, Eros had told Loki about his life of romance and sexual intrigue. Loki had been gripped by the tales of scandal and betrayal, but he had enough trouble trying to keep track of the various characters and their backstories, and the bubbly hadn’t helped. At one point he had threatened to take notes to keep it all straight.

“Do you miss that life?” Loki had asked.

“Of course I do, but,” Eros had looked up at Loki through his lashes, “I’m really enjoying being here… with you.”

Loki hadn’t kissed him. He had just locked eyes with him, and brushed back his hair. That’s when they had fallen asleep, Eros recalled.

Loki’s eyes blinked open as Eros was petting his cheek.

“Good morning,” Eros smiled, and moved his fingers from Loki’s stubbly cheek to his ear.

“Good morning.”

Eros looked away, suddenly bashful.

Loki tried to shift back into Eros’s line of sight with an adoring grin. “What do you want to do today?”

Eros readjusted to lay his cheek flat on Loki’s chest. He played with the buttons on Loki’s gray vest. “I want to shower and wash the bubbly away. We need to finish organizing the collection, which will require coffee, and I want to stop by Devereaux’s tonight.”

Loki groaned. “Fine.”

Eros hopped up with more bounce than Loki anticipated and knocked some of the wind out of his chest. Loki laid there making a face.

Eros started to leave, but turned back when he realized the giant wasn’t behind him.

“Loki, are we not going to do all that together? As partners? ... Together?”

Loki was confused. “Yes...”

“Then why aren’t you getting up?”

Loki sat up sleepily, “I thought you were getting in the shower?”

Eros stared him down until he understood.

“Oh… right! We’d be saving on your water bill if- two birds, one bar of soap-”

“Loki?”

“Yep. Coming.” Loki stood and followed him into the master bath.

***

Later at Loki’s townhome, Loki tried to help Eros organize, but Eros was very meticulous and Loki was easily distracted. When he found an interesting artifact, which he had forgotten he had procured long ago, his direction shifted entirely to playing and experimenting with said artifact. Once his mind was set on a new play thing, the legions of hell wouldn’t have been enough to steer him away, let alone Eros.

“Loki,” Eros set down his pen. Eros was buried in boxes and wood wool, logging the items he was uncovering in a ledger, while Loki lay on the floor holding a book over his head.

“Hang on.” Loki held up a finger, “I think I’ve almost found it...”

“Loki, why not instead of looking for…” Eros trailed off, motioning for Loki to finish the sentence.

“The lost Arthurian curse of the Ring of Dispell,” Loki dead-panned.

“Yes. That.” Eros rolled his eyes, “Which is undoubtedly very important, but, maybe, you could work on something more important.”

“Such as?”

Eros pondered over what might get Loki out of his way for a bit. “The bottle. The one Hypnos brought us. You haven’t looked at that since the night he dropped it off.”

Loki lowered the book to his chest. “No. I suppose I haven’t. I’m not sure exactly where to start with it really.”

“What about taking it to an expert?”

Loki turned his head. “You’re trying to get rid of me, aren’t you?”

“Yes. When you clean something you take three aeons and somehow create three more messes.”

“Fair. Well, the only expert is Thanatos, and I don’t trust his motives right now… I suppose there is Christopher or Shmeaglebobenzoar.”

"Who?” Eros asked.

“Shmeaglebob. Second to Thanatos in the artifacts business.”

Eros mused, “By the time we’re done here, he will be the third in the business...”

Loki stood. “More than likely. We haven’t even thought about the warehouses yet.”

Eros sank. “Warehouses? Loki, did you just say you have warehouses of this junk?”

“I best leave you to your work before I make you too distraught.” He grabbed and kissed the top of Eros’s head just before he disappeared downstairs to find the bottle.

Eros screamed at the ceiling “Loki!”

***

Bottle in hand, Loki appeared outside a polished stone building, whose narrow face looked out onto the street corner. It looked like an old bank with its column-framed, arched doorway. The front doors were open, and when he stepped inside he was immediately tussled between busy men and women running around the hectic office floor. He made his way to the brass metal gate of the elevator, and took it to the top, executive floor.

The secretary let him in without a fuss when he revealed he had a magickal artifact the boss would find interesting. Once inside Shmeaglebobenzoar’s office, the old demon with a monocle poured Loki a brandy.

“I heard you were preparing for business. Will you be at the Collectors Gala this weekend?” Asked the demon, as he examined the mysterious red bottle through his monocle.

Loki sat comfortably in a leather Queen Anne armchair with his freshly poured brandy. “Yes. I’ll be attending with my new partner-in-crime.”

“And who would that be?” Shmeaglebob asked distractedly. “Is this safe to open?”

“As far as I can tell. And Eros is my new,” Loki questioned the word coming out of his mouth, “partner.”

Shmeaglebob eyed him from across the office. “Well,” he looked back at the bottle, “that pairing seems only fitting.”

Loki grinned and sipped his brandy.

The demon opened the bottle and waved a hand over the top to send the aroma to his large beak-like nose. “Hmm. Ozone… I believe this object is broken.”

Loki listened intently for the explanation.

“It appears this container could shapeshift at one point, but the transumter pathways have degraded. It also has a aionic element that would suggest it was once a portal to another realm.”

Loki sat up in his chair. “What does that mean?”

“Well, the transmutation functions could imply many things- Jinn, faery, witchcraft, but the portal element is interesting. One might assume that someone created this as a secret portal to carry around with them. However, someone with that sort of power would also have the means of teleportation, and so wouldn’t need such a device as this. So it looks like what you might have is a secrete portal someone made for a person of weaker power, who might need to escape in a jiffy. In any case, it is highly specified and made for a particular use for a particular person, but since all of its functions are damaged, it is hard to determine specifics. Right now it is merely a perfume bottle that once was not.”

Loki said, “Not that I question your abilities, Shmeaglebobenzoar, but this particular perfume bottle was given to me under very interesting circumstances, and I wonder if there is anything else you might be able to discover if you thought it might be more than just a vexing perfume bottle.”

“Hmm.” He looked at it again. “It will take a while if you could leave it with me for a bit.”

Loki grimaced.

Shmeaglebob removed his monocle. “Or I suppose you could… stick around.”

Loki smiled and shrugged.

***

When Loki returned home many hours later, he could hear music blaring from upstairs. He walked into the library and saw Eros had expanded his workspace to the floor. His sleeves were rolled up, his tie loosened. A cigarette hung off his lower lip as he scribbled in his ledger. His fingers were stained with ink. His hair was standing on end from where he kept brushing it out of his eyes, as he bobbed his head along to some punk-rock pandemonium blaring from the phonograph.

The shelves were almost filled up, but there was still a plethora of boxes to be gone through. Loki decided to fix that problem later.

With the wave of his hand, he turned down Eros’s music to twenty percent.

Eros popped his head up for a moment, “What did you find out?”

Loki walked further into the room.

“It took a bit of fuss and quandary, but… it’s currently broken. It once had the ability to shapeshift. It was a portal to an unidentified location. It was made for a specific person in mind, very specialized and protected. Despite the fact its basic defense functions are all fried, spells to look back into its history, its timeline, don’t work, which means- and this is the fun bit, the item exists outside of time.”

“Very cool, but still broken, yes?”

“Yes.”

Eros gestured to the boxes, “Add it to the rubble.”

Loki frowned. He sat down at the desk and put the bottle in the center.

The chair creaked as the giant leaned back and pondered over the artifact. At this point it was just like all the other artifacts he had hoarded - useless.

Eros saw the look on Loki’s face.

The trickster clearly didn’t want to give up on the bottle just yet, and he kept rolling it over in his mind, with his desire to know what the bottle was.

The youthful god stood, and unrolled his sleeves. “Come on. Let’s go check on the Devereaux girl.”

“The VanGarrett girl, you mean.” Loki didn’t take his eyes off the bottle. “Alec is her sire. Alec VanGarrett is the one who turned her. Not Devereaux.”

“Yes. But, either way she is under Devereaux’s care. So…”

Loki sighed and stood while Eros grabbed his blazer and put it on.

“I feel like it’s talking to me,” Loki said.

Eros scrunched his face. “You mean the bottle?”

“Yes. It’s…” He made a mess of hand gestures, and felt Eros scrutinizing him. “Okay. Fine. Let’s go.”

Loki stormed past him while aggravatedly chewing on his lower lip.

Eros watched him pass, but turned his eyes toward the bottle.

Eros felt it pulling at him, as if he was a damaged ship being pulled to the bottom of the ocean, but he ignored it. He shut it out like a bad memory and closed the library door behind him.

***

At the Devereaux mansion they were led through the ornate hallways to the room that had previously held a rabid vampire.

The door to the room was wide open, but the bedchamber was still dark. No lamp was lit, and every curtain was drawn tight.

Together, they cautiously entered the room to see Victor Devereaux sitting in a chair next to the girl’s bed.

Loki and Eros approached the opposite side of the bed from where the Vampire King sat. Devereaux looked up, his youthful but exhausted face filled with gratitude. The girl, however, looked at them with cautious curiosity. She appeared to be mostly stable, from what they could tell. Her dark hair was plastered to her face, and she was pale, but that complexion was typical in vampires. Her eyes were still dark saucers, teetering on the brink of madness, but she was calm.

“Loki. Eros. I give you my truest gratitude." Victor Dexereaux beamed at the girl, who in truth was too old to be considered a girl. “These are the two gentlemen who procured your treatment.”

She was past the gateway into womanhood, but to gods and to a centuries-old Vampire, she was but a child.

“How are you feeling, Josanna?” Eros asked with tender care.

She tilted her head and inspected him with her wide, dark eyes. “As sharp as thorns and as red as petals of blood. The sweet steam of passion, and the pang of disprized love.”

Confusion etched itself across Eros’s face, and he turned back to the others, “Uhh...was that to me?”

Devereaux stood. “If you’ll forgive her, she’s still out-of-sorts.”

One of Loki’s eyes narrowed, “Are you sure she doesn’t always talk like the Oracle of Delphi?”

Devereaux smiled, “No. She doesn’t.”

Eros ignored Loki’s implication and spoke to Josanna again, “We’re glad to see you’re feeling better.” He leaned in closer, and she lunged for his wrist.

She began sniffing it.

Devereaux reached out a hand to pull her off, but Eros made a gesture to stay him.

She pulled Eros down suddenly, his face level with hers, his breath moving the oily hair that hung over her eyes.

“Desire, you’re hungry,” She breathed into his face.

Her breath was rank from having drank fresh blood. He wasn’t afraid of her, but he was very concerned for her, and he didn’t pull back.

Loki moved towards the bed, not out of fear or protection, but out of curiosity. The glow in his eye, and the smirk on his face, said it all. He just wanted a close-up to whatever would happen next.

Josanna’s eyes landed on Eros’s forehead, and she began to trace the creases in his brow with her delicate fingers. “You’re all locked up in there. You never really escaped, did you?”

Eros and the girl had locked eyes with each other, her wild blown-out gaze boring into his puzzled one. She was making less and less sense.

“What do you mean?” Loki asked, eagerly pushing for more clues.

Devereaux walked around the bed to the gods. “I’m afraid she doesn’t know what she’s saying-”

“Hell.” She answered, before she moved to Eros’s ear and nibbled it, whispering, “The Red Room.”

Then she began to laugh in his face.

She shrieked. “You don’t remember!” and cackling, she threw his arm out of her grasp.

She collapsed back onto the bed, and wriggled in the sheets. Her tangled dark hair an ominous black halo around her, as she warmly looked up into Devereaux’s face. “He doesn’t remember, daddy!”

Devereaux shrugged, “A-again, she’s still not well. She still needs a great deal more blood to regain sense, but the deadman’s blood is out of her system at least, thanks to your flower.” He moved between them to pet Josanna’s forehead.

Loki nodded, muttering loudly to himself, “I’m not so sure about that.”

Hearing this, and circumventing the conversation around it, Eros said sincerely, “We’re glad she’s better. Is there anything else we can do to expedite the process?”

“She just needs more time.” The Vampire King gestured towards the door with a smile.

“I do have time saved in a bottle somewhere if you’re interested.” Loki grinned.

“Bottle, bottle toil in trouble. Fire burn and cauldron bubble!” The girl on the bed was looking pointedly at the giant with a wicked grin of her own.

Loki glared back at the girl. She was clearly teasing him about his vexing perfume bottle, and the sodding Fates, or witches, or whatever they were! He knew it, and she knew it, but the other twits in the room were ignoring her words outright.

She looked him in the eye and sat up on her elbows. “Baby boy finally found his way home.”

At this, Loki gestured wildly in the clever girl’s direction, sputtering out incoherent bits of sentences, all along the lines of “-See!?”

Searching valiantly for a compromise between Loki’s excited theory and Devereaux’s decorum, Eros offered, “We’d love to come back and visit you some other time, Josanna. If that’s alright?”

She nodded and smiled sickly-sweet, with two sharp fangs and childlike eyes.

Devereaux looked up at the gods. “You’re welcome whenever you like, of course.”

“We appreciate it, your Highness.” Loki’s forced smile was almost a snarl, but the expression was subtle enough that Devereaux might have missed it.

Loki bowed at the neck facetiously, and Eros followed suit. They quickly walked towards the exit.

Just before reaching the door, Eros paused and turned back. “What is her name?”

“...Josanna?” Devereaux tilted his head in feigned innocence, and then looked at the girl on the bed.

Eros clarified, “Devereaux or VanGarrett?”

The Vampire King’s eyes were dangerous when they snapped to Eros’s face. “Devereaux. After what that boy did, he cannot claim her as his own.”

Eros nodded simply, and again bowed politely to the King, and left the room.

Loki was waiting for him in the hall with wide eyes speaking a thousand words. Eros only nodded in agreement to what Loki’s eyes were saying, wordlessly cautioning him to stay silent until they were out of earshot. They left the mansion and were around the corner before Loki blurted out, “Well?”

Eros’s jaw was set. “He loves her like she’s his own.”

“Is she? She did call him daddy.”

“I never painted Devereaux as a dishonest man.” Eros pondered.

“Exactly. No one pictures him that way, which means his kingdom would fall if ever something disgraceful were to mar his name...”

Eros continued the train of thought, “So he lied and said the girl was Alec’s to protect his reputation? It’s plausible, but certainly not the whole truth.”

“Well of course not. As I’ve said before, that girl is psychic... By the way, what’s the Red Room?” Loki asked.

Eros stopped and gave an earnest shrug. “I honestly don’t know, which is why I’m not entirely sold on your psychic theory either.”

“But you know she was picking up on our gift from Hypnos and his prophecy.”

Eros looked confused.

Loki aggravatedly waved his arms. “Blah blah father of none when you tell him he has a son.”

“Oh!” Eros recalled, “and she said Baby boy… came home?”

“Finally found his way home.” Loki corrected.

Eros nodded in agreement. “Maybe. But, if she is spouting prophecy- does she have magickal genes? Victor said he was good friends with her mother, didn’t he?”

“He did, but didn’t say where the girl came from. It would likely be one of the neighboring worlds, since she was evidently human before.”

“Or a witch. She could have come from Hawthorne Grove.”

“Possible, given she has some obvious magick.”

Eros made a disagreeing face.

Loki justified, “Well, I think it’s obvious.”

“Fine.”

“I wonder if Alec will be at the collector’s gala…,” Loki pondered.

“Uh… Does he collect artifacts?”

“I have heard he’s getting into the business.”

Eros’s eyes narrowed, “Why?”

Loki shrugged. “It’s profitable, and essentially if you want to be a part of the in crowd you have to collect magickal artifacts.”

“It’s such a waste, all of you collecting so much expensive, useless junk.”

Loki chuckled. “The rich aren’t rich if they are not amassing a dragon-den’s worth of useless junk.”

Eros rolled his eyes.

“It’s history, though.” Loki justified, “It’s art.”

Eros sighed, “I know. I’m just bitter. It’s just that when we first began organizing your collection, I was looking for a weapon, a clue to escaping Fate, and well, even though I’m happy to have found other things,” he pushed himself into Loki as they walked, “it’s a bit frustrating.”

“It’s an uphill battle.”

“Meaning we’re Sisyphus, and it won’t amount to anything.”

Loki tutted, “You see, I always imagined Sisyphus as being happy.”

“Happy? He’s in Tartarus rolling a bleeding rock up a hill for eternity. Why would he be happy?”

“It’s the symbolism to life-”

Eros protested, “Which is fucking miserable if you never achieve anything, never finish anything.”

Loki wagged a finger, “But. But… You could view it as a challenge, and a test of the spirit. If you’re constantly working to achieve the impossible, you know that you will fail, and you will fail and fail again, and maybe never get it right, but it is the intellectual pursuit, the physical challenge, the test of stamina that keeps you going. You keep trying, and you carve new paths and innovate new means, and that is what makes the human spirit happy. It’s the puzzle, the fight, the near-misses, the almost-successes.”

“Sure. Well, enjoy your symbolism. I’ve met Sisyphus. I’ve seen him down there, and trust me… he’s not very happy.”

“Well, then, he’s doing it wrong,” was Loki’s curt reply.