Page 6 of Anarchy
I disliked that plan. It was the only one we had and our best option for grabbing Dorian without Kaine throwing us in jail or having to fight Dorian’s henchmen. Reyson could probably easily handle one immortal human, but I didn’t trust that particular human.
He was entirely responsible for Reyson being in my life, and that was probably the only nice thing I had to say about Dorian Gray. You justdid notraise the God of Chaos without a plan. Dorian had proved cunning so far. He had demon magic for Talvath and Bram. I believed Reyson and everyone else we had consulted that said no magic could control a god.
Dorian didn’t strike me as the type to do all this without doing his homework. He had something planned for Reyson that didn’t involve magic. Dorian was a master at manipulating witches. I didn’t think Reyson would fall for that shit, but I only wanted him alone with Dorian if Dorian was tied to a chair with duct tape over his mouth.
“No,” Gabriel said. “You were able to bring Bram upstairs when he was hurt. I know you can bring people along with you. We go in as a team.”
Reyson just shrugged and conjured himself a massive order of poutine. He appeared to be branching out and trying food from all over the world. He’dbeenall over the world, but cuisines had come a long way since he last walked the Earth.
“I’m not opposed to that.”
I already knew I wouldn’t be there when it went down. I knew enough about Dorian Gray to know what his schedule was.
“Dorian parties all night,” I said. “He’s either out clubbing or throwing exclusive parties in his penthouse. If you’re going to get him when he’s alone, you’ll have to do it during the day when he sleeps off his cocaine bender. I can’t be there because I can’t close the library. There’s a secret room in the basement that we don’t show to patrons. It’s normally where we keep books that have gone feral until they can be tamed again. It’ll hold Dorian until Bram contacts us.”
Reyson grabbed me and planted a kiss on me. He tasted like gravy.
“I won’t have as much fun kidnapping that asshole if you’re not there.”
“We’ll have to plan another kidnapping where the entire team is present,” Balthazar said.
Felix just glared at him.
“It’s best if you stay here, Ripley. If we’re doing this during the day, we need you controlling what people see in the Library of the Profane that day.”
All I had to say was that I got why we had to do this, but nothing in my library had better get broken.
5
Reyson
Ikept looking at the possibilities, and I didn’t like most of them. None of us were all seeing and all knowing. We fucking things up all the time. Some of my siblings had the gift of prophecy, but that kind of thing had a butterfly effect. Even the slightest change could alter a vision.
One of my gifts was like that. Ineededto be able to see all possible outcomes of my actions, or things would be unbalanced. If sending a massive storm somewhere would cause a famine that ended in war, I sent them a different form of chaos. If a war needed to happen but couldn’t be contained to that territory, I went a different route.
There was an art to my chaos, but I’d never really used that gift on myself before. It just kind of happened when I was ripped from the Aether back into my vessel, and I laid eyes on Ripley for the first time. I could have just killed her for bringing me back against my will, but I paused to think about why it was done.
I knew full well myself, and many of my siblings were now out of fashion with the world now. There were plenty of gods who came after me that were playing in the Aether after they fell out of fashion. Some gods were still on Earth mingling with everyone and had jobs. If someone wanted a god, there were already plenty here going by the usual names and more docile gods in the Aether if they wanted to bring one back.
Call me curious why this witch chose me.
I ripped my bindings off and took her in. She was stunning, and she wasangry.She looked ready to murder me and send me right back to the Aether. I knew she had been tricked, but not why. That was when it hit me. I only looked at possible outcomes when I wanted to, but they just suddenly came to me.
I was meant to be here with this witch, and she was going to be my wife, eventually.
I’d been scanning possibilities often lately, and it was way more difficult trying to determine what a vain human and a nasty witch were up to than the fate of a nation. So I had to fine-tune it. There were always predictable patterns when it came to chaos. Individual people were different. We didn’t create them to be boring.
Something wasn’t right. I knew what Ripley said was true. We would only get Dorian alone during the day when his party guests left. I knew my way was the only way we’d be able to get him without messing up Kaine’s investigation.
I also knew something bad was going to happen if we didn’t do this exactly right. I usually worked alone, but I’d teamed up with my family before. So I wasn’t opposed to bringing them along with me when we took Dorian. Honestly, I really wanted Gabriel and Felix there because they were warlocks. I liked Ripley’s twin, and I knew ancient objects held a lot of meaning for her. Gabriel and Felix could point them out for later.
We couldn’t pull this off at all without Balthazar. I had become fond of him. I knew Felix liked to pretend he was annoying, but honestly? Balthazar reminded me of some of my siblings. He didn’t care what anyone else thought about him. He said what he wanted and dressed how he pleased. Balthazar earned the right to be as eccentric as he wanted. He was quite intelligent.
That left Ripley. I knew she couldn’t shut down the entire library to come with us. I also knew we couldn’t really push this back to the weekend when she could come. She could handle herself just fine in a fight if she managed to bring me back. The Library of the Profane had its own magical security system.
Dorian would be in his apartment sleeping. Silvaria would hopefully be in prison. I had a feeling when Dorian got back into town, he’d be throwing a party with all the people involved in this plot. They’d be too messed up to go to the library.
“I don’t like splitting up,” I said. “Ripley shouldn’t be here alone with so many people on Dorian’s side, and some of the spirits here are too.”
