Kiss Across Chaos (Kiss Across Time #10) - Tracy Cooper-Posey Page 0,19

the room. “I don’t know where he actually lives and there’s bookmarks all over the timescape. We could spend a week tracking them all down and some of them are linear, too.”

That meant they were back in the past. If Jesse had properly understood the stories she’d heard everyone spin in the last few years, linear jumps were the more dangerous and certainly more emotionally fraught type of jump, because they tended to land you back in high tension moments of your own past.

This was getting far trickier than Jesse thought Taylor had intended it to be. “I just promised your mom I would look in on Aran and make sure he’s still breathing,” she told Marit and Alannah. “Maybe we should tell her about this and let her deal with it.” Taylor was a well-practiced jumper, after all.

Marit rolled her eyes. “She’ll pull in Far and he’ll pull in Athair and then this will all leap to the top end of the Richter scale.”

“When all he might be doing is bedding some woman on a deserted island in Bora Bora and he’ll kill us for calling in the troops,” Alannah added.

Jesse’s heart thudded hard. Her middle crimped. “He’s got a boyfriend, already.”

Alannah snorted. “Like that would stop him.”

Marit just grinned.

Jesse worked hard to hide her surprise and the nugget of dismay building in her chest. “Can you find him?” she asked Marit.

“Give her a minute,” Alannah murmured, while Marit stared at the floor in front of her feet, her arms wrapped around her middle. Marit would find even this furnace-warmed apartment cold, coming from summer sunlight in Australia.

Marit lifted her head. “Got him.” She grimaced. “You might be sort of right, Alannah. He’s in New Orleans, in 2003. Bourbon Street.”

“If he’s not actively screwing someone, he’s working up to it, then,” Alannah concluded.

Jesse tried to shrug off the unhappiness building in her middle and making her heart labor. She could self-assess later and figure out what the hell was wrong with her and why she was reacting like this. Instead, she pushed away from the sink. “I should at least look at him, even from a distance, so I can truthfully reassure your mom that he’s okay.”

“He won’t thank you for it.” Marit’s tone was infinitely wise.

“Then it’s better I do it than one of you guys. He already doesn’t like me.” She shrugged.

They gave her startled looks. Then they glanced at each other. A silent communication passed between them.

“Best if we both go with her,” Marit added, as if that was the end of a conversation.

Alannah nodded. “At least it’s Bourbon Street during Mardi Gras—it doesn’t matter what we’re wearing. We’ll all fit in.” She held out her arms. “I’ll jump, you steer,” she told Marit.

Jesse stepped into the circle of Alannah’s arm. “Has he ever dropped off the grid like this in the past? Taken someone somewhere isolated and just…checked out?”

“Never,” Marit said grimly. “I’ve always known where these two are.” She wrapped her arm around Jesse’s waist, the other around Alannah’s. “I know where he is now, too, so ease off, Captain Hall.”

“One,” Alannah said. “Two…three!”

They jumped.

The noise was overwhelming, even from inside the little alleyway they’d jumped to. Jesse couldn’t call it music, even though live music underlaid the roar of thousands of voices, horns, clapping and cheering. More than one piece of music, too. Trumpets blared and drums beat.

Jesse put her fingers to her ears. “My god!” She had to shout it.

“How did you know it was Mardi Gras, ‘lannah?” Marit asked her little sister, lifting her voice.

“Like he’d come here at any other time of the year!” Alannah shouted back. The volume out on the street was creeping upwards. Silhouettes of people crossing and lingering at the mouth of their alleyway played in front of powerful lights—floodlights, Jesse guessed.

Beyond the silhouettes was the parade itself, moving passed the alley at turtle speed, full of glitter and glitz. Masks. Harlequins. Floats. Bright primary colors. And everywhere, people jigging and rocking in time to drums beating frenetically.

“We’ll have to work to stay together,” she told the other two. “Marit, can you get a better sense of where Aran is, from here?”

Marit looked down at her feet, concentrating. “Lots of bodies here,” she said softly. “All I can say for now is that he’s somewhere to the right, when we step out of the alley.”

Jesse nodded. “Marit, you’re on point. You look for him and head in his direction when you get a better sense of