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Of all the places one might have reasonably expected to find Miranda Priestly spending her time on a Tuesday evening, the dark web was not one of them. However, given the weekend she had been subjected to, revenge was in order.
Revenge being a concept Miranda typically excelled at. This, however, proved to be slightly more difficult endeavor than usual, given what it was precisely that had warranted such a pursuit.
Namely, she had no prior experience devising appropriate retribution for being accidentally cursed with a de-aging charm at the behest of her incompetent first assistant. Had someone put the concept of ‘Etsy witches’ to her prior to her direct experience of their wonderful wares, she would have dismissed it outright, and perhaps had the fool who dared venture such a ludicrous notion to her committed in a high-end psychiatric hospital.
And yet, and yet. She bent closer to squint at the bright screen, and ruefully considered that barring the extreme stress, the weekend had at least allowed her to re-live the delightful experience of having 20/20 vision. What a pity that little nugget had not stayed with her. As a souvenir, or something.
Her impatience was rising - she did not want hitmen (becoming a suspect in a murder investigation would be perfect ammunition for Irv to depose her once and for all), she did not want hideous clothing littered with bloodstains (as amusing as it would be to command Emily to wear them, the ensuing no doubt public medical episode would have the same disastrous effect on her own career as the hitmen). And she certainly did not want packages of third-country state secrets (fine, she did, but they were of no use to her primary mission, and the seller was likely a fed).
But then she clicked through to the next page, and alighted on a new listing.
“Heart’s Desire Arrows - Deception is Impossible! The Truth Is Infectious.”
Hmm, she thought. She hardly thought Emily would dare to lie to her when interrogated, but this, which seemed like some sort of honesty serum archery gig - even better.
So her hand hovered over the purchase icon. Ten seconds later:
“Bobbsey! What is a Bitcoin? And how do I acquire one?”
***
The following Friday, Miranda sat smugly behind her desk, the arrows sequestered in an innocuous location within The Closet. She simply had to wait for the right moment to surreptitiously graze Emily with one of them, and then showtime. She would receive all the answers her heart demanded.
In fact, perhaps her purchase would have use beyond Emily. Forcing Irving to be honest with her about his motivations for once would be sweet indeed.
***
Unfortunately, Miranda had not accounted for Jocelyn’s sheer incompetence, facilitated by Serena - of all people. When she had commanded them to retrieve the items for a Valentine’s themed shoot, she had not anticipated they would succumb to the cliché of assuming a bow and arrow was part of it, à la Cupid.
What a mistake. A tremendous mistake, indeed.
***
“Huh,” Jocelyn remarked. “Look, Serena!”
“What?”
She pointed to the collection of ornate arrows hidden behind Armani’s latest collection.
“They’ve got to be for the shoot, right? Valentine’s and all that?”
Serena raised an eyebrow. “Maybe.I can’t say I would have thought Miranda would be quite so stereotypical, but they certainly weren’t there yesterday. So I assume you must be correct.”
Jocelyn grinned. “Want to try them out?”
“Why not?”
She deftly strung the bow and fired. Naturally, she had expected no more than an agile dodging at best, and a chastisement for the minor pain inflicted at worst.
What had not entered her mind as a possibility was her aim being clean and true, the arrow striking Serena’s shoulder, sending a spray of some variety of sparkling substance hitherto indiscernible at the tip all over her.
The next minute was characterised by a most curious metamorphosis.
The Brazilian’s eyes assumed a glassy quality, her mouth opening slightly, her pupils dilated and her form slumped.
“Emily,” she breathed. “Emily, meu querida.”
Jocelyn blinked. “What?”
Quick as a flash, as if an irresistible compulsion had taken over her, Serena fixated on her.
“Jocelyn. You must know love as I do.”
The she smoothly aimed the arrow back at her with all the mastery of an accomplished javelin thrower, and a minute later:
“Oh,” Jocelyn sighed, slack-jawed and hypnotic. “Mark…Security Mark…Oh. Oh!”
***
Miranda impatiently tapped her foot against the leg of her desk. Her coffee was late by five minutes. Totally unacceptable. While Andrea was due to arrive back from Calvin klein - halfway across the city - in twenty minutes, there was no excuse for Emily to be so tardy.
She rose to her feet, determining to seek out the hapless first assistant herself. When she found her, who knew what she would do?
***
The answers had ranged from ‘complete verbal evisceration’ to ‘outright threats of dismissal’. At no point had gasp, sway on her feet and clutch the doorframe for support been a consideration within that spectrum.
The scene in front of her - all around her, all around Runway’s offices - it was nothing short of carnage. Of positively biblical proportions.
In fact, it was the sort of scene that probably caused the Old Testament deity in which she did not believe to set the earth ablaze, as so happened to seem periodically.
Everyone - everyone! - had assumed a kind of trance-like demeanour, a fogginess of gaze, a looseness of limbs, and appeared covered in some glittery substance.
(‘Loose limbs was putting it mildly. Those who were not outright fornicating on the hideously expensive carpets and furniture were well on their way to doing so.)
She stifled a gasp and pressed her back into the wall. Whatever had happened, she wanted no part in it. And then the elevator chimed; when the doors opened, they revealed an Emily somehow ten times more frazzled than usual.
Emily, who looked up, stopped, stared at the chaos in front of her, and promptly dropped Miranda’s coffee all over her thousand-dollar Westwood dress.
“What the hell?” she mouthed, locking eyes with Miranda. The Editor simply stared back at her, for once - perhaps the first time - in her life completely lost for words.
Someone not lost for words, however, was Serena, who alighted on Emily through her clouded eyes with incongruous clarity. It took less than five seconds for the makeup artist to produce two arrows - two of Miranda’s ill-gotten arrows, she was horrified to recognise - and throw one at Emily with near-perfect aim.
To her credit, the redhead dodged, whirling around.
“What the hell, Serena?”
Serena smiled hazily. “Quierda. Oh, quierda.”
A few other people looked up, producing arrows of their own, advancing on Emily. The assistant reflexively backed away - until her back hit the wall of the elevator.
“You do not know your heart. You must!”
Emily shrieked.
Miranda was not proud of her next actions. But retrieving Emily was impossible. Even more after an arrow must have made contact with her, and a minute or so after she pulled a delighted Serena flush against her body.
And so Miranda ran.
***
Had she been in a clearer state of mind, she might have ruminated that a bright red complexion and a bald head did not a distinguished Nigel make.
She was not. And neither was he, if the speed at which he flew into her office and slammed the door before locking it shut was anything to go by.
“Miranda,” he gasped, “it’s bedlam out there!”
Miranda opened her mouth to say something, but was cut off by the sight of no less than nineteen assorted male models and young Runway employees in various states of dishabille, pressing themselves up against the glass door of her office, glassy-eyed and near-salivating. And, of course, waving a few of those damned arrows in the air.
“What on earth - “
“They were chasing me! I barely made it out alive!”
“Chasing…you?”
“Yes! Well, less running and more hunting. Hunting! Normally I would hardly object to being pursued by handsome young men, particularly as I have, ahem, professionally appreciated some of them for quite some time. But HR would kill me and I only have two holes - four if you count my ears! Either way, I cannot feed the five thousand!”
She pressed a palm to her forehead and closed her eyes.
“My God.”
***
When Miranda had purchased her office desk, she had never envisioned the scenario where she would be crouching under it. Yet that was exactly the position she found herself and Nigel in.
Cowering. Honestly. How completely undignified.
Even more undignified was the high pitched scream - second only in girlishness to the one concurrently let out by Nigel - that tore from her lips upon the hinges on her door giving way. Fortunately for her, she was positioned on the side of the desk closest to her bathroom, meaning she was able to dash inside just in time.
Nigel was not quite as fortunate. Even if she had held the bathroom door open than the short amount of time it had taken her to scramble over the threshold, he would not have made it inside.
Rather, he was absolutely swarmed. She felt her jaw drop as her Art Director - her now very glittery Art Director - began to take control of - ahem - proceedings.
If there was such a thing as brain irrigation, she’d be first in line. Paying for premium immediate access, perhaps.
Even clapping her hands over her ears couldn’t block it out.
***
Five minutes later - a five minutes which felt more like fifty, or perhaps five-hundred, the crowd of men made their way elsewhere, and her wounded ears picked up on another sound. A pair of heels, thundering along the corridor outside. Given that everyone overcome by this - this sex virus, or whatever the hell it was - moved at a deliberate, consistent, but rather less frenetic pace, she could only conclude that the owner was as yet unaffected.
She could also conclude precisely who it was, given (although she was loath to admit it to herself, or why she had) she had memorised nigh on everything about her second assistant.
A horrible sense of clarity overcame her. While she had felt for Emily, a reflexive sympathy amid madness, it was nothing compared to the visceral rage which swelled in her at the thought of the infected getting to Andrea. The thought of Andrea doing - that, those things - with someone else, in front of her, no less.
(Someone that was not her, piped up an immensely inconvenient and irritating voice in her head. She ignored it with consummate determination.)
So she cracked the office door open, and hissed in the loudest tone she had ever deigned to vocalise in the office.
“Andrea!”
The woman in question came hurtling into her office, looking rather more appealing in a dishevelled and exertion-flushed state than Nigel had. And mercifully un-glittery, lowering her sunglasses to reveal her brown eyes, sharp and panicked. She alighted on Miranda, peering out from the crack of her bathroom door, and made a beeline for her.
Miranda pulled her bodily inside. Andrea spun round, gripping her forearms.
“Why does it look like Sodom and Gamorrah out there?”
“Sodomy and Gonhorrea, morelike,” Miranda muttered.
“Same thing. And you’ve not answered my question.”
Miranda sighed. As embarrassing as the series of events which had caused this circumstance had, if there was anyone she ought to confide in - and would understand - it was the young woman who was privy to the originating cause.
“Sit down,” she said weakly. Andrea did just that. Miranda folded her hands in her lap, then reached up to twist her necklace.
“I - last weekend. Emily. I thought I’d find a way to - “
“ - Get revenge?” Andrea asked.
She really knew her too well.
“Well, yes. This is terribly embarrassing, but - oh. I may have purchased some enchanted arrows from the dark web. Which, I might add, promised to render targets incapable of deception, not - not - “
“ - Unleash some sort of nymphomaniac plague which compels anyone affected by them to first fuck like rabbits, then ‘share the love; like variants of horny zombies?”
Ordinarily, she would have objected to anyone among her staff using profanities in the office. This was not an ordinary situation, and so she let it pass without comment.
“...Yes. My intention was to use them to extract information from Emily, but it appears someone else got their hands on them first. Believe me, I had no idea they were contaminated with some sort of - some sort of sex pollen!”
“What on earth were these things called?”
She bit her lip. How humiliating to have to divulge she had spent her hard-earned money (the fact there was a tremendous amount of it was hardly relevant) on illegal weaponry called…
“Heart’s Desire, if I recall correctly.”
Andrea looked to be trying very hard indeed not to laugh. Miranda scowled. Or glared. Probably both. Simultaneously.
“I’m surprised you didn’t think to fire them at Irv, given your heart’s desire is probably to kill him.”
“For the love of God, Andrea, do not bring up Irving in connection with sex pollen arrows.”
Quite reasonably, this comment elicited a screwing-up of her assistant’s nose.
“Ew. Point taken.”
“Indeed. Now, the pressing question is how on earth do we undo this, and even more pressingly, get out of here?”
“Did it give a duration as to how long they’d last?”
Miranda focused, and was immensely grateful for her possession of a relatively photographic memory.
“I’m inclined to think it said one to two hours?”
Andrea’s shoulders dropped in visible relief. “That’s not too bad, then. We just have to avoid everyone until then.”
Miranda nodded. “And now we wait.”
***
Yet waiting in silence was not quite as simple a task as it ought to have been. Namely, because in her haste to escape the hordes, Miranda had forgotten to take her phone into the bathroom with her.
Her phone, which began to ring. In her office - far away from them, sequestered within the depths of her bag by the door - the open, blown-hinges door. Loudly. Very loudly. Followed by the sound of approaching footsteps.
Slow footsteps.
Hypnotic footsteps.
She reflexively gripped Andrea’s arm, her assistant turning to her in horror.
“Shit,” she muttered. Her own rules about cursing be damned.
Andrea pursed her lips. “I’ll get it.”
Miranda wanted to object, but knew it was the rational course of action.
“Be quick about it.”
***
Cowardly as it might have been, she kept her eyes screwed shut and hands clamped over her ears the entire time. How long it had been, she found herself sufficiently stressed to be unable to tell.
Andrea dashed back into her office, clad once more in her sunglasses, slamming and locking the door. Then in one fluid motion, she tore the white Hermès scarf from Miranda’s neck, ignoring the Editor’s squawk of protest, and proceeded to deftly (impressively, even) tie her own wrists to the hand-towel rail.
“What are you doing?”
Andrea’s face was screwed up in concentration - or consternation?
“Look at my eyes, Miranda,” she muttered through gritted teeth.
“What?”
“Just do it.”
Since when did she comply with mere assistants’ orders?
(Andrea was no ‘mere assistant.’ And since now, apparently.)
She drew the sunglasses from the younger woman’s face, and jerked back in shock.
Andrea’s eyes bore the hallmark glassiness of the infected.
“How - “
“ - Got hit with an arrow, clearly. Someone was lying in wait.”
Miranda frowned, scooting away from her in a manner she would normally have been horrified to perform, such was its complete indignity.
“Why did you tie - “
“ - Takes about a minute to take effect. Didn’t want to - you know. Jump you. Infect you too.”
“Really?”
The glitteriness in the curtain of brown hair opposite winked at her.
“No. I want to. Really, really want to. But I can’t do that to you.”
Something dangerously like affection swelled in Miranda’s chest. Andrea whined, the pollen clearly strengthening its hold over her. Then she jerked, clearly involuntarily, and the Editor noted with horror the sheer viciousness with which her assistant had bound herself, the scarf creating immensely painful looking red stripes around her wrists already.
It took less than thirty seconds of Andrea inflicting more damage to her skin before Miranda could not bear it anymore.
“For God’s sake,” she hissed. “Hold still!”
And wholly unthinkingly - purely instinctively - she reached out to loosen the scarf.
The scarf, which due to the writhing of the past minute, had become absolutely covered in glitter-pollen.
It seemed like no time at all for a sense of absolute focus to overwhelm her.
***
Miranda stared at Andrea through equally hazy eyes. Yet objectively clouded they may have been, but there was a shared clarity in their gaze.
“Oh,” Andrea said softly, all urgency and panic from before gone and replaced by understanding, “you feel it too.”
Miranda smiled. “I always have, you know. I just needed a push to put it into words.”
“And now you have,” the younger woman replied. “How about we stop talking?”
An excellent idea, the Editor thought. It seemed natural - necessary, even - for her reply to be leaning in to kiss her.
Andrea, to her delight, reciprocated with tremendous enthusiasm. Their lips slid across each other’s, soft and luxurious, and Andrea lifted one - now free - hand to wrap around the small of Miranda’s back, drawing her closer. Miranda, for her part, reached up to cup Andrea’s cheek, probing gently, requesting access, access which was swiftly granted.
The casting-aside of clothes felt like the next step in a time-honored dance. Andrea’s blouse soon hung off her shoulders, wholly unbuttoned, and Miranda gladly let her tug her own dress down, exposing her La-Perla clad breasts.
Even more glad was she when said lingerie was subjected to the same motion, and Andrea’s warm mouth replaced the brief assault of cool air upon them.
It only seemed fair to reciprocate. Andrea seemed to think so too. The sounds she was producing were absolutely gorgeous, and Miranda would have been quite happy to remain as she was for the foreseeable future.
But the brunette had other plans, gently pushing back on her shoulders and straddling her.
Had she been in her normal state of mind, she might have felt embarrassed at engaging in a spate of truly adolescent dry-humping on her office bathroom floor.
But she was not, and instead enjoyed it immensely. She slid her hands under and up Andrea’s skirt, cupping and squeezing. Andrea sighed, and lowered her lips to suck what would no doubt be an unconcealable hickey into the crook of Miranda’s neck, just above her collarbone.
Then she copied her boss’ motions, Miranda bucking eagerly into her. Andrea’s fingers slipped under Miranda’s panties - and then unexpectedly entered the older woman, drawing out a series of increasingly incoherent whispers.
“Oh, - oh - yes, right there. Another. Another, please, Andrea.”
“Saying please? Your wish is my command.”
“You -” Miranda gasped out through thrusts - “you always know what I need.”
“That’s right,” Andrea hummed, seeking out that rough little spot on her front walls, applying pressure with each stroke. “I do.”
Inspiration cut through Miranda’s consciousness. She removed one hand from Andrea’s ass, wrapping it around her waist, and moved to rub the younger woman’s clit with the other. Andrea groaned and ground down, their bodies moving in remarkable synchrony.
When their climaxes hit, forcing a suspension of the deep French kissing they had taken to shortly before, it became apparent that the bathroom had truly excellent acoustics.
***
Suffice it to say that over the following few days, lawyers had been called in, and the battery of NDAs signed by Elias-Clarke employees would put the CIA to shame. The CIA, who Miranda had reached out to (discreetly, informally, of course) to track down the seller of the damned arrows, subject them to truly forensic questioning, and deliver an intensive report back to the Editor.
***
“Any luck with the interrogation?” Andy asked as she placed The Book down on the table in the den.
“It appears,” Miranda murmured faintly, “the arrows only took effect if the individual affected harbored prior feelings toward someone in the immediate vicinity.”
“Feelings?”
“Of a sexual nature.”
Andy was pretty sure her eyes bugged out for a second. Then she giggled.
“What?”
“You do know what that means, Miranda?”
“Do go on.”
“Nigel’s had a whole undercover cult of buff models horny for him this whole time. And him for them.”
Said realisation prompted Miranda’s first ever full-throated cackle emitted in front of Andy.
“Goodness.”
“Wow, right?”
“Wow indeed.”
“Want me to continue to wow you? Given it worked on us? That must mean something.”
“Yes, Andrea. Wow away.”
FIN