Chaos Tryst Read Online Free Page B

restriction made her baba uncomfortable.
    America had been just as dangerous a prospect for her mother during the Second World War, with the peril of internment camps or bouts of suspicion-driven violence. Her parents hadn’t wanted to risk their glamour failing them in a country where the diminished perception of their worth would have sorely drained their powers, leaving them weakened enough to endanger their and their daughter’s lives. Even her okaasan and baba could perish, especially without the magick of human belief to strengthen them. Ari didn’t like to think on it, but death could find and claim the gods too—even if the search took longer than normal.
    She had not forgotten her parents’ trepidation in that age of a very different United States. Nor could she forget the man. He was an indelible etching on her memory. The image of his lean muscular legs stretched into the aisle of the train car, his bearing and appearance caught somewhere between Russian aristocracy and Gypsy—odd, incongruent. Enthralling.
    His seat within the car had placed him too far away to guess the color of his eyes, but his aura held gravitational pull and had set off uncontrollable facial tics. Ari had connected to his energy, to him. The sensation had been like the discovery of an unused limb, one that had atrophied but would soon become strong through use. She felt the man as a part of herself.
    A hundred years or so later, somewhen during Reagan’s reign, she had seen him for the second time— Rigoletto at the San Francisco Opera. The lights in the gallery had begun to blink, signaling the audience to take their seats. Her twitching nose synced itself to the flickering lights as forewarning of a much more significant event, and the man had emerged from between a pair of arguing critics.
    Black-tie Armani, before it had become passé, tailored impeccably with a red cravat to illustrate personal flare. The man was a thing of epic pulchritude.
    Instant regression into that ole Orient Express shyness. Black magick indeed.
    Ari hadn’t bothered to excuse herself. She’d stiffly strode to the bathroom and locked herself inside a water closet. No amount of pleading or compulsion from her mother drew her out of those chichi theater toilets that night. Only magick sufficed. She still had a burn mark on her booty as evidence of Inari’s ire.
    “Am I to guess, from your silence, you did not expect to be found?”
    Ari snapped out of her remembrance to meet aquamarine eyes. Their connection hadn’t faded. “Ahh, okay, you’re a Medved. Aren’t you?”
    The man looked down at himself and back to her. “Could there be doubts?”
    None at all. Ari cursed herself for relying on the dossier her client provided. She’d rested on her laurels because of her busy schedule rather than researching the Medveds herself. She wasn’t usually so careless. What a fine way to land in the pot, nose twitching and rear exposed.
    After nearly a century of screwing up in the family business, before giving up and proving herself useful as a returner, Ari had finally grown up enough not to be intimidated by the man. She might’ve been bold enough to woo him. Unfortunately they’d been brought together on the night she’d retrieved something from his home…Hold on.
    “Why did you follow me? I retrieved the statue fair as fey.”
    “Stole, vorovka. ” Off her puzzled look he clarified. “ Vorovka means—” he rolled a hand in the air, “—thief. You stole our statue. Return it now.”
    “Maks?”
    “Yes.”
    “I knew it. You had to be the middle Medved. You’re seriously surly. Everyone says.”
    “Storied folk do not think I am surly.”
    “Oh yeah they do, middleman. Mean and surly.” Ari laughed. “I’m only kidding about the mean.”
    Crickets.
    She shook her head and exhaled. “Take the truth like a big boy and pull up your underoos.”
    “I do not wear superhero-themed underwear. I prefer the boxer briefs.”
    It was bad enough