Page 10 of Chaos
Except for Chaos.
“Most shifters have the knot, but it’s not like the fiction on these shelves.”
“I still want to try one, but only with your permission.”
“You don’t need my permission, but this is the twenty-first century. You can’t just go around demanding people have sex with you because you want to experiment. People get offended. There are laws about that now.”
Chaos just yawned.
“How boring. Before I left, all you needed was respect and a delightful house. People would beg me to take them to bed. I didn’t need the law to protect me from them. If I didn’t want to, I just told them no.”
I got a little pissed off. I guess it didn’t matter if you were some ancient god. Men totally didn’t understand sexual harassment or why it bothered women.
“Okay, here’s the thing, Mister Primordial God. Consent is a major thing. Women have the right to wear whatever the fuck they want without commentary from men. We don’toweyou sex just because we are women. Demanding and asking is offensive. It’s not okay with other men either. People just want to be able to enjoy going out, dressed however the fuck they want, without someone assuming they owe them sex just because they left the house.”
Chaos had the decency to look properly chastised. I tore him a new one for every person out there who had ever been sexually harassed, even though he backed off when I said I didn’t want to marry him. Maybe it wasn’t fair, but he needed to learn how things worked in the modern world because back in his day, women were less than property.
“Ripley, I’ve never forced myself on anyone. The only people I’ve ever taken to my bed were those who have asked me. I didn’t ask you when I woke up because I don’t ask. I was a little offended I was standing there mostly naked, andyoudidn’t offer to take me to your bed, and then you didn’t immediately say yes when I offered to make you my wife. I’ve never asked a woman that question before, but anyone would jump at the chance back in my time. You’re a strange witch. I think even in the twenty-first century, people wouldwantto be married to a god, even if they were just using me for my power.”
“It’s fucking weird to propose when neither of us knows each other.”
“Why? I can see all possibilities at once. You’re a powerful witch and a hell of a woman. Every plausible scenario has us being happy if you let me in.”
“Except Ican’tdo any of that. Tarot cards don’t tell me everything. If you want me to agree, you have to earn it.”
Chaos just smiled and tucked my hair behind my ear.
“Just because I’m a god doesn’t mean I can’t do that. It’ll mean more that way. I’ll be over there reading more about werewolf sex. I think if you stick with your cards, you’ll see we are meant to be together.”
He just disappeared, leaving me with my mouth wide open. My eyes went to the Lover’s on my deck again. What I should have been doing was grilling this god who could see all possibilities at once over what kind of shit was going to go down since someone made it a point to pull him from the aether.
Instead, I stared at the Lover’s and wondered exactly what kind of shit I’d gotten myself into this time.
Chapter 9
Gabriel
I
kept staring down at the tarot cards trying to figure out what they meant. Something huge was about to happen in my life. I have never drawn that many Major Arcana cards before, and I had The Lovers in this draw. I also drew the Five of Swords, which meant something bad was coming my way.
My family taught me tarot reading, and they taught me at my magical high school, but it wasn’t like I could afford some fancy college, and they weren’t exactly offering me scholarships either. I swear, one of your relatives goes to the dark side five hundred years ago, and the magical community shunned that entire line forever. I worked my fucking ass off, and I should have had a free ride at any college of my choice, but when witches and warlocks went bad, they wentreally bad.
There was only one in my line that went dark, but the deal he made with the demon made a considerable impression on many people. My entire family was magical outcasts. My parents had to work fuckinghumanjobs because no one would hire them for the skills that came to them naturally.
I wasn’t doing that. I wasn’t slumming it with humans when I knew I had specific skills. My family grimoire was packed with useful spells, and not all of them were tainted by that deal with a demon. Sure, there was some dank, dark magic there, but even dark magic had its uses.
I was now the magical community’s dirty little secret. I was a freelancer and a popular one. They wouldn’t put me on the official payroll, and I couldn’t be seen entering their big, fancy businesses. Except they had no problem meeting with me in dirty pubs and wiring money to my bank account off the books when they needed a job done, they didn’t want to be tied back to them.
Yeah, they all might shun my family to the world because of one relative centuries ago, but I knew the dirty secrets they were keeping just in the past few years. I knew who was cursing who in the background, who was stealing, who was manipulating territory wars so they could come out ahead. It was total shit. They villainized my family because of one deal, and the only reason they still had respect was that they hadn’t gotten caught.
I used to have all these plans of exposing them. I’d air out every single dirty secret in the magical community, but what would it accomplish? If I ever settled down and had children, they’d go through the exact same shit I did. Just because I got a bunch of people in trouble didn’t mean it would change anyone’s opinions about my family.
So, for now, I took their money and got rich.
I was between jobs and reading my tarot cards. Every witch and warlock worth their salt did frequent readings. I was in a hotel room in Moscow, getting ready to fly back home after a job. This particular deck was significant. It meant something, and I needed help.
My family wouldn’t know about this. It was just a given now that none of us would go to college, so the coven took charge and taught us everything they knew. If I couldn’t figure out what this reading meant, they wouldn’t either.
