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“Do not call Sam and Dean. Or Donna,” Jody orders, her face crimson and her arms crossed over her chest as Claire bites back her giggles.
“Are you sure? I haven’t dealt with many cursed objects. I don’t know if I’m experienced enough for this.” Her fingers fly over her keyboard. “We might need the experts. And I’m sure they’d be interested—Donna especially…”
“I said no, and that’s final.” Jody decides then that Claire has seen all she needs to. She pulls her shirt back on, wincing as the straps dig a bit further into her shoulders.
In her defense, it was a cute bra. A vibrant robin’s egg blue with a small pink rose in the center, different from the plain peach or the sports bras she usually wore. She had wanted to treat herself, and it wasn’t like a secondhand undergarment from Goodwill was going to set her back that much. Hell, it wasn’t like she’d treated herself to anything recently, and besides, if she wanted to be looking good the next time she saw a certain blonde sheriff-turned-hunter, even if said sheriff would never notice her breasts, then that was her prerogative. Was one moment of indulgence really that bad?
(The answer was yes. The answer was always yes.)
When she hadn’t been able to take it off after an exhilarating day of feeling so much perkier than usual while guarding the residents of Sioux Falls, she had been a bit concerned, but, well. Bra clasps weren’t always simple. If they were hard to undo on a lover (or so she had heard) (not that she’d been thinking about taking off bras lately), then surely they could sometimes be hard to get off yourself? Nothing a few minutes of fumbling couldn’t fix.
When a half-hour had gone by and her breasts were still ensconced in blue, she thought there might be something wrong, but there was no way in Heaven or Hell that she was going to call in her surrogate daughter to help her take off some lingerie.
When she realized that not only could she not feel the clasp, let alone get it undone, but that also she could no longer lift the straps or the cups away from her skin, as if they were superglued, or supernaturally spelled, onto her, that’s when she swallowed her pride and called Claire.
“Okay, I think I might have something,” Claire announces, her fingers slowing on her keyboard. “So there’s a pink rose in the middle, and then one right where the clasp should be. But you said you didn’t remember there being a rose on the back when you bought it, right?”
“Right. I mean, I didn’t look that closely, but I’m pretty sure a clasp existed when I put it on.”
Claire nods. “I’ve never dealt with anything like this before, but it looks like a Rose of Aphrodite.”
“Greek goddess Aphrodite.” It’s not even a question. At this point, the only surprising thing is that it’s taken her so long to fall afoul of a deity.
“The one and only. Apparently it’s a sign that either the goddess herself or one of her followers has put a love charm on an object. It binds it to the person holding it – or wearing it, I guess – until the charm breaks.”
“And do tell how that happens.”
Claire snickers. “You’re not going to like it.”
Jody crosses her arms, then uncrosses them when the movement reminds her too much of her predicament. “Claire…”
“Well, we do have options. If you kill Aphrodite, it would end.”
“Okay.” Killing a goddess who’s still well-known, who probably has a lot of power behind her, doesn’t seem like a particularly good idea, not that Jody is known for caring about how good an idea is. “What else?”
“You can kill the witch who set the spell. But unless you wanna go back to Goodwill and see if the workers remember who dropped off whatever bag this was in—and by the way, don’t think I’m not totally grossed out about you buying secondhand lingerie, though I guess maybe you were cursed into doing it—”
“I get it Claire.” Jody sighs. “Killing the witch is a nonstarter. What’s the last option?”
“It has to be removed by your object of affection.” She pauses. “In a moment of passion. The lore is pretty clear on that.”
Jody Mills doesn’t sputter. She doesn’t. It’s hard to find another way to describe her response, but it isn’t sputtering.
“Stop sputtering,” Claire says cheerfully. “Didn’t I tell you that you’d have to grow a pair of ovaries sooner or later, and tell Don—”
“What if I just… don’t take it off?”
“Eww.” Claire wrinkles her nose. “It’d probably get all sweaty. And anyway, I don’t think it’s good to keep a cursed object on you. Might draw Aphrodite’s attention. Though I’m not sure that would be a bad thing.”
Jody closes her eyes and pinches the bridge of her nose. In all the many hours she’s spent imagining confessing her feelings to Donna, this scenario never arose. She always thought it would be some romantic moonlit night, just the two of them staring at the stars. Or maybe in an adrenalin-fueled outburst after a hunt.
But, hell, when has anything ever gone like she imagined it?
“Thanks for your help, Claire.”
Claire, thankfully, recognizes her cue to leave. She stands and shuts her laptop, tucking it under her arm. “I’m gonna go see about that haunting in St. Cloud that I was telling you about. Give you some privacy.”
She winks. Jody glares, but hugs her and says, “Be safe and call if you need anything,” anyway, because she’s a good parental figure.
Then she sits down and stares at her cellphone, until she hears Claire’s car pull out of the driveway. She almost puts the phone down then, tries to forget the whole thing, but she swears the accursed bra tightens around her chest.
Jody sighs, and dials the number that she knows from heart.
“Donna? Hi. Yeah, I’m okay—well, not really. There’s something I need to talk to you about…”