Kiss Across Chaos (Kiss Across Time #10) - Tracy Cooper-Posey Page 0,1

of truce over the last few years, especially as David, the only other polytemporal in the known worlds and the source of Marit and Veris’ long term disagreement, tended to keep his distance.

“I’d better go and help Marit,” Jesse said.

“Me, too,” Alannah said.

“Nah, I got this,” Jesse said hastily, for Alannah was cursed, when it came to cooking. Everything she touched turned to charcoal and crumbled. Jesse was clumsy in the kitchen, but she didn’t burn things and she could take directions. Marit was the closest to the best cook in the house. Rafe was superior in skill, but he was clearly taking a day off.

Or perhaps Marit had shoved him out of the kitchen so she could linger there out of Veris’ way.

An extra loud thud came from overhead. “Why don’t you make sure the kids aren’t climbing the drapes?” Jesse suggested to Alannah, as everyone looked up.

Alannah left via the main door, heading for the stairs.

Jesse took the avocados and pie through to the dining room, where the long table had been extended and was being set for the meal, then into the kitchen.

Marit wasn’t alone. The tall redheaded woman—a different sort of red from Marit’s bronzed locks—Nayara, stood in the corner made by the counters, sipping another steaming drink, while Cael, her partner, plucked silverware from a big varnished box lined with red velvet.

Both of them nodded at Jesse. They were from somewhere in the future on this timeline, a fact that still tickled Jesse’s funny bone.

“You came back just to eat turkey, then?” Jesse teased them.

“We have turkey in the future,” Cael assured her gravely. “Although I prefer lamb, myself.”

He was Greek and human, Jesse reminded herself. Nayara was the vampire—or she was when she was in her own time. When she used psychic talents to jump back in time, the symbiot that made her a vampire went into stasis, which was how she could drink mulled wine and eat turkey.

Jesse had learned a lot about the different forms of time travel just by sitting at Veris’ table and keeping her ears pinned back. A direct question would make the jumpers and vampires clam up and toe the metaphorical dirt, too self-conscious to reply to a civilian, non-jumper and human. But getting them to reminisce over an amusing moment or a hairy one always revealed more than they realized, if she listened well.

Jesse pointed at the glass in Nayara’s hand. “Best be careful. That stuff will take your head off. You’re not used to it.” She hugged Marit, who wore a thick sweater and fleece-lined pants and still looked cold. Her nose was pink, but the rest of her was tanned and glowing with good health.

“Roasted potatoes for you and mashed for everyone else,” Marit said, before Jesse could asked.

“You shouldn’t have made them for me, first time around, or I wouldn’t keep asking,” Jesse said. She adored the roasted potatoes the way Marit did them—they were crisp on the edges and soft in the middle and soaked up all the flavors in the roasting pan. Cooked with onions, they were far superior to mashed. “What can I do?”

Marit let her gaze move over the food and utensils sitting on the scrubbed pine island. “Peel carrots, shell peas—oh, avocados! Yeah, peel a couple of those and we’ll put them in the salad.”

Jesse got to work, while chatting with Marit and Nayara and Cael, as he moved in and out of the kitchen, laying plates and cutlery and condiments on the long table.

The afternoon drifted along pleasantly. There were enough people in the house who could eat food that the dinner was a noisy, joyous occasion, with lots of empty wine bottles lining up in the center of the table. The vampires sat at the table with them, a single glass with an inch of champagne sitting before them for toasts, for Veris would not let anyone toast with an empty glass. The old pagan considered that to be beckoning the worst of ill luck.

Despite not eating with everyone else, none of the vampires looked upset or anything but contented. They talked and laughed as much as anyone else.

Five children sat at the table, although Jesse judged that Liberty wouldn’t be a child for too much longer. She was twelve, looked older and was going to be tall just like her uncle-father, Alex. She had enormous, exotic black eyes and hair and smooth olive skin, and a way of watching everyone that drew attention to her, even