Maks reached up—Bitsy topped him by a foot—and cupped his friend’s cheek. Ari watched him. No smiles yet, but there were subtle changes in his manner. Tension no longer shaped the lines of his shoulders or hollowed his cheeks. No signs of the finger flexing thing he liked to do either. He’d been ruggedly handsome since forever. She’d almost gotten used to it. Now he radiated a warmth and accessibility she wanted to wrap herself up in and hold on to.
The crowd swelled out to both sides, forming a semicircle in their midst. They’d reached Fanaweigh’s Scar. Wendell paced before the wall, rubbing a splayed hand across its surface. Rotating round, he gestured for the gathering to give him room.
When all were at a safe distance he drew back and with a great roar punched through the wall in one blow. Stone exploded in every direction, slabs fell away, pulverized dust filled the winds. The assault continued. Wendell grasped chunks and tore them away, sending debris flying. Ogre cheers fueled him.
As the Grand High Oni worked, a new song arose from the goblin side, its chords a chorus of welcome.
Wendell’s pace reached a whirlwind pitch. He reached through the hole he’d made and pulled with both arms. The strain outlined the veins in his biceps and forearms. The wall groaned, tottered and tumbled to the earth.
Preening, The Ogre dusted off his hands and peered through the opening. On the other side, goblin territory had been decorated with the all the best appropriation magick could supply. Lanternflies brought the celestial skies to life seven feet above the ground; they mimicked colored gas clouds and constellations. Long wooden tables were dressed in every fabric Ari could name and trenchers cut from gemstones overflowed with treats.
A troupe of goblins performed the type of elaborate choreography Ari had only seen matched in Bollywood movies. Most spectacularly, in the middle of dancing imps and decorations stood the Lady Lucida. A magical dais lifted her above the tumult.
Whoa, she was gorgeous, her bottle-green skin tinted with bronzer and her garnet tresses done up in a wind-blown array of ringlets. All her grooming accessorized the flowing gown of vermillion gossamer she wore. Layers of the faerie silk draped her body in a one-shoulder sheath, pooling at her feet.
Wendell stopped in his tracks, his gaze hungry on the lady. Collecting himself, he straightened the tanned hides and red silk of his wedding finery. “Lady Lucida of the Goblin-kin, I have come for your hand in marriage.” His voice turned menacing. “Don’t think of denying me or it will not go well.”
Lucida scowled and threw her bouquet at him. She had excellent aim. The flowers hit Wendell square in the face. “I wouldn’t be standing here all fancied up down to my bra and knickers if it were my intent to deny you, you gibbon-faced oaf.”
Maks’s hand landed on Ari’s shoulder and she braced herself.
Wendell caught the flowers as they fell and clutched them to his chest. He smiled beatifically, bounded up onto the dais in three leaps, and kissed the lady with a passion causing her hair to curl into an Afro.
Different look but just as good.
The assemblage went insane with cheers and jocundity. The earth hummed. All turned to the opening in the scar. A mound grew, swelling until green sprouted from its peak and kept going. Fifty feet later a towering evergreen stood in the gap, bringing with it the scent of Christmas and greater festivity. Nature hadn’t finished yet. The land blossomed with flowers and flora. Ivy sprung from the base of the scar, growing up and over to cover the monstrosity. From the curtain of vines stepped a figure: willowy grace, lush bark-brown skin—glistening with morning dew, and a mane of flowering ivy cascading to the ground.
“Frannie!” Ari cheered, and the celebrants echoed her cry. Fanaweigh lived anew.
Ari didn’t bother trying to contain herself. She leaped and wrapped her arms around Maks’s neck. He didn’t push her away. Instead his arms closed around her waist. “You have done well, vixen-vorovka. Your parents will be pleased.” Quietly, so low she might not have heard it without a fox-child’s hearing, he added, “As am I.”
Ari’s phone vibrated. She answered and nodded. Maks regarded her expectantly. “We’ve got a meeting place,” she said, “but it’s an unexpected one.”
***
IN THE SAME MOMENT
Bitsy searched the wedding guests and found her snuggums twirling amongst the newly grown flowers. He felt her gaze and weaved through the crowd to join her. This was a good night. The returner and Maks had no idea how much she owed them. Her children would indeed be named Maksim and Ariana and Medved and Golde and as many variations as her brood grew to need—her half-ogre, half-goblin offspring would likely number in the teens.
How dapper her lover looked. His new striped scarf giving him the air of a mushroom-colored, blond-haired Doctor Who. Dearest snuggums. He’d brought her a pair of saviors tonight, not only for her but for all of Fanaweigh. Trajan was the most wonderful Faeble ever birthed—goblin or ogre—and she could barely wait to ask her brother for permission to marry him.
Chapter Nine
Ari unlocked the front door to her and her parents’ home in a hurry. Maks had cursed when he’d seen what she assumed was her client’s car parked in the circular drive. Without a word the crazy man had charged for the entrance. She’d had to race ahead of him and open up before he broke in. Maks had no idea how many times he’d come to the brink of being murdered by her mother tonight.
Inside they heard voices in the sitting room, two males who sounded familiar and Inari. Apparently her father hadn’t come home yet. Maks started off but she grabbed him by the waist of his pants.
“Shoes, Maks. Take off your shoes.” He really wanted to die. Folks thought her mother a nice woman because she was short and demure—a fatal mistake no doubting it.
Maks popped the straps on top of each foot and flipped off his leather high-tops. Done, he gruffed and rushed into the sitting room. She followed him and plowed into his back.
“Mixing chaos magick is not so bad. Is it, brother?”
Cripes, Maks was going to beat the brimstone out of Konstantin. She could feel the menace vibrating through her middleman’s body. She peeked around him and gave the three pranksters a mean-eyed glower. She wanted an explanation too. Finding her mother having tea with Dmitri and Konstantin Medved charted among the least likely ways she expected her evening to end.
“Explain yourselves,” Maks said.
“Um yeah, Okaasan, you’ve got some ’splaining to do,” Ari added.
Dmitri chuckled. Her mother stood and held out both hands to Ari. She took them and waited.
“Daughter, Dmitri and Konstantin gave their parents’ sculpture to me as a gift for you in hopes it would precipitate your joining their family.”
Maks didn’t wait past the words “gave their parents’ sculpture to me.” With a growl he unleashed his bear. Dmitri did too, and Ari had to admit big brother made for a bigger, badder bear. He didn’t even have to growl before Maks checked himself out of respect. Jeezy Winkies. Her middleman hadn’t backed down for the king of the ogres. She counted herself lucky she’d bopped Dmitri in the nads and taken him down, otherwise dealing with him would’ve been risky.
Ari made her way to Maks. His anger peppered her skin, palpable. Slipping her fingers into the ruff of fur at the nape of his neck, she soothed him. “Don’t be vexed, middleman. Konstantin is an Oracle of Order and they all love us. Whatever they’ve done they did for our good.” The bear shuddered and she now stroked the man on the small of his back.
“Why?” she asked her mother.
“It is as you have guessed, my Kit.” Inari rounded them, lifting one hand to caress Ari’s cheek and laying the other against Maks’s rib cage. “I’ve known you’ve had an uncontrollable crush on Maksim since the opera. Konstantin foresaw the two of you together could break the curse Baba-Yaga placed on their family.” To Ari alone she said, “Do you know of the curse?”
Ari nodded. “From the dossier.”
“Yes, yet we chose not
to mention the stained glass.”
“Is the curse broken?” Maks asked, his gaze lighting on each of their faces in turn.
Konstantin inclined his head to one side. “I believe so, Maks. But it must be tested.”
“Vixen-vorovka and I—”
“Vixen-vorovka?” Konstantin and Dmitri said in concert, both incredulous.
Maks curled his lip at his brothers. “Vixen-vorovka and I broke the accursed glass at the start. Why did you send us out on this charade?”
Inari took over again. Maks might snarl at his brothers but Ari suspected he wasn’t crazy enough to try it with her mother. “You and my daughter believed yourselves defective, Maksim. Konstantin divined you would help one another.”
And they had. Ari knew it. They’d done better than help each other.
Maks started to protest but her mother stood on tiptoe to lay her fingertips across his mouth. “You have done this admirably.”
Inari glided—Ari had no idea how the woman did that—over to the tea service and poured a cup, returning seconds later to hand it to Maks. He took the china, sniffed and downed the contents.
“Allow me to recount your accomplishments for you. The grapevines say an invulnerable Faeble, who no longer wanted to live, bled tonight and revels in life once more. On the opposite side of the scale, a swarm of boacusts no magick could exterminate lies dead.”
Inari paused and looked down at the floor. Ari reached out to her mother. “Okaasan?”
“I am well. Only reflecting.”
Her mother looked strange and it worried her. She glanced up at Maks and he lifted his chin. If he’d grasped the situation and wanted her to keep her head up she would.
After a few moments Inari sighed. “My great friend Colleen wished to return home to the faerie mound of her birth in Ireland. She could not. No Faeble would buy Willow the Wisps from her. We do not favor change. She could not move without an influx of funds. You two visit and she no longer has problems. She has a great deal of insurance money instead.”
Yup. Colleen had actually been smiling when they’d blown her pub to the rooftops. There you go. Something felt right about the explosion when it happened. Maks hadn’t thought so and took his turn to look incredulous.
From his stance leaning against the fireplace, Dmitri chuckled. “I have said your powers are good. My agents are reporting a miracle and I—” The elder Medved pushed off the wall and crossed the room. He looked down at his sibling, grasping Maks by both shoulders. “I am experiencing what one might call the pride.”
Try as hard as he wanted, Maks didn’t have the skills to hide what his brother’s acknowledgement meant to him. Excitement flooded Ari on his behalf.
“It’s because we went to Fanaweigh and the scar came tumbling down?” Ari bit her lip to keep the cheesy grin from spreading further across her face. “Isn’t it?” Dmitri picked her up and threw her into to the air.
“Yes, Ariana Golde.” He laughed and caught her in a cradle position. She yelped, “Do it again. Do it again!” Maks stepped forward, gave his brother an inscrutable look and lifted Ari from Dmitri’s arms.
Ari ignored her middleman. “I apologize for testing your testicular fortitude, Dmitri,” she said from Maks’s embrace.
“No problem.” Dmitri waved her off. “Mine are balls of steel.”
She snorted, then whispered to Maks, “He’s joking, right?” Maks allowed her body to slide down the front of his. Do it again.
“He had the stinging itchies once,” Maks said dryly. “Perhaps it has turned his balls to steel. I would not know.” Dmitri cuffed Maks on the side of the head. The younger of the two remained undaunted. “Hitting me is not a remedy. You may need cream or unguent.” Konstantin lost it and doubled over laughing. Dmitri cuffed them both, twice, and the room went silent.
As Ari’s feet touched the ground Inari sobbed. There wasn’t speed enough to get to her mother as quickly as she wanted and she couldn’t hold Inari close enough. “Okaasan, what happened?”
Inari used the sleeve of her robe to dab at her eyes. “You have perpetrated such trickery as to avert both the demise of a district and also a feud, via a demolition and a wedding.” Her mother hugged her back, their tears mingling on their cheeks. Ari finally realized why the crazy woman had looked at the floor earlier. There’d been so many failed attempts in her efforts to live up to her parents’ legacy; the Frog Prince was still a frog after all. Now on the night she hadn’t tried, she’d finally come into her trickster magick. She and Maks had taken down Fanaweigh’s Scar. Aw yeah! Not only had Ariana Anase Kitsu Golde pleased a goddess, she’d made her mother proud.
The comforting warmth of Maks’s body nestled up behind her as she wiped her cheeks. He didn’t say anything, but he was there and she wished it meant more than kindness on his part.
A wry smile curved her mother’s mouth. “I do not mean to toss clichés at you. Yet you two are good together.”
Ari blushed. Maks’s warmth left her as he retreated a few paces back. Yup, she’d gotten it right again. He’d expressed kindness, nothing more.
“Does baba know?”
“That you and Maks have become a cliché very much like an irreverent Valentine’s Day card?”
“No, crazy lady. Does he know about your and the Medveds’ plan?”
Inari gaped at her. “Do you believe we could orchestrate a plan so tricky, so diabolically brilliant without your baba involved?”
“Aghh, gosh. We get it. You love your husband.”
A rich thunder of mirth filled the room. The great trickster spider had come home. He stood in the doorway in the brightest golfing ensemble Ari had seen since the last time he’d played night golf. Leave it to Faebles to find impossible games to play. Leave it to her father to glow in dark. The coral of his polo shirt played nicely against the tamarind seed brown of his skin. His multihued plaid pants, however, clashed with the world.
“My arms are empty,” he boomed, throwing his hands wide.
Ari and her mother moved to fill her baba’s embrace. He kissed both his daughter’s cheeks and, holding on to Ari, shared a quiet moment with his wife. Watching her parents greet each other took the number one spot on her list of favorite things. Their wordless communication validated each of them in a way she couldn’t quite fathom but remained in awe of. She dreamed of sharing a bond like her parents’ with Maks, even knowing it wouldn’t come to fruition because of her lies.
The three Medveds nodded their greetings. “It is good to see you, Anansi,” Dmitri said. Her father bowed his head in response, releasing the hold on his family. “Sit. Take comfort,” he told his guests.
Giving her his full attention, Anansi laid his hand on her crown and rotated her head up, down and side-to-side. Repeat and ditto. Finally, he leaned in to whisper. “A thief has stolen my daughter’s heart.” Ari sighed. He continued, “Ah, but is he thief or returner and her heart now resides with its true owner?”
“Shhh, Baba. It’s bad.”
“Bad? The results of my trickery could never be bad.”
“You didn’t know I’d mess things up.”
He kissed her forehead and patted her back. “Of course I did.”
Ari snorted and her father smiled. She took a beat to think and then said to them all, “Do you really believe Maks and I are good together?”
“I know.” Konstantin rose from the couch where he’d been lounging. “I’ve foreseen it. I also know Maks was somehow drawn to West Africa in the late 1800s when you were born.”
Ari gasped, readying a reply to dispute the conclusion Konstantin had drawn. She wouldn’t allow herself to believe Maks might’ve been in Africa for any reasons that could give her hope. She didn’t want to deal with disappointment.
The youngest Medved waved her off. “But you don’t need an Oracle of Order to detect the bond you have. Maks always knows where you are in the room, possibly in the world.” Konstantin said the last part beneath his breath. “His eyes have tracked you
since you arrived. If you are behind him he makes sure some part of your bodies are close enough to touch.” Konstantin shook his head. “Although he takes care not to touch you.”
“The middleman was only being kind,” Ari said. “He’s a good guy.”
“I’m aware of this.” Konstantin stood before her, his expression warm. “I also know his feelings for you are more than kindness. He didn’t like Mitya holding you, even in fun, and he allowed you to—” he punched the air with the backs of his hands, “—pet his bear.” An eyebrow lifted. “Believe me, this does not happen. You and Maks are connected. Your intertwining is a part of the great tapestry.”
Ari looked at Maks and he stared fixedly at her. There was no tightness or anger. He wasn’t inscrutable but she couldn’t tell if he agreed or didn’t.
Konstantin continued with a hold-on-a-moment gesture to prevent them from jumping to conclusions. “I don’t mean to say it isn’t your choice to be together. Only that your love would be a—” he searched for the word, “—bonus in the grand scheme.”
Ari’s feet carried her away from Maks before she knew she’d moved. She needed a little distance for honesty. “The problem is I lied to him,” she responded, her shoulders slumped. “Not trickery for his own good but an outright lie, even though I’d given him my word I wouldn’t.” Konstantin waited for her to finish. “You know your brother, Konstantin. He can’t live with that.”
Resigned, she walked over and sunk into the couch. Maks’s voice broke the silence that followed. “The stained glass, I break it many times in my childhood. Did it not reform this time?”
“Still broken. I am thinking love can find us now.” Konstantin answered.
“And our parents?” The question was more a plea.
Shaking his head, Dmitri said, “Stone. But reviving them is a different matter.” The brothers paused, their auras wistful. Maks shook off the longing and crossed over to Ari to drop into a crouch. He dipped his head to see her face. “Why did you lie to me, vorovka?”
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