Fated: Karma Series, Book Three (2 page)

“Not sure how long you’re going to have an option.”

My head popped back up as I looked at him, trying to gauge where he was going with that last statement. Did he mean the situation was going to force my hand or him? Neither would surprise me, but I couldn’t read his expression.

Now that would give me plausible deniability. See, it wasn’t my fault. We had been thrown together. The whole thing was becoming ridiculous. I was preparing an excuse for when I was heartbroken and looking to place blame, and it wouldn’t matter. I’d still be heartbroken.

A flurry of action caught my eye as I saw the group that had eyed me up as a potential target before. They’d stopped underneath a pier about a mile down. Another group was heading toward them from the opposite direction. I knew the fight was coming before the first fist swung. Then it was an all-out brawl between the two groups.

Fate turned to watch as well, neither of us making any move to stop it. It would be as pointless as blowing in the wind.

He sighed then stood up. He stepped in front of me, faded jeans and white t-shirt hinting at the tanned perfection I knew lay beneath. His palm reached out to give me a helping hand up, and I let him pull me to my feet.

He tugged me up hard enough that I was propelled into his arms, which he then wrapped around me, to keep me from falling I’m sure.

“Sorry.” His mouth was alarmingly close to mine. “I really don’t know my strength sometimes.”

Another smirk. Another hint. And my pulse was off to the races.

“No problem.” I shrugged it off as I stepped out of his embrace and started walking back to his house. The guy was completely screwing with me.

I groaned as I opened my eyes and looked at the clock beside me. It was four in the morning and the third time in the last two weeks that a throbbing pain near the region of my tattoo had woken me from a dead sleep.

I closed my eyes, telling myself it wasn’t a big deal and that nothing was wrong. It was a strain or something. I sighed deeply. That excuse had worked so much better the first few times I’d used it.

Something had felt off with me pretty soon after Paddy had taken a piece of him and somehow forced it into me. It was supposed to keep me connected, let me move on from this place someday and reconnect the link Malokin had broken. That little bit of Paddy, which was inside me, was the equivalent of my retirement plan. Without it I’d be stuck here, on Earth, forever.

I guessed there was an argument to be made for remaining on Earth, never aging, eternally young when you didn’t know what your retirement home might look like. Fate’s guys had chosen it. Lars, Bic, Angus and Cutty—none of them would move on from this world. This was it for them, and that was exactly how they wanted it. Plenty of people would want it.

But I didn’t. I’d made the choice. I wanted to know what lay beyond this realm, even if only for a short while before I was doomed to forget it all and walk the Earth again as a mortal. As much as I’d been mocked for once being human, there was a value to it that someone who isn’t a transfer couldn’t possibly understand.

Maybe the day-to-day minutiae of being human didn’t seem appealing to my current co-workers but they couldn’t possibly understand how much joy the simple things can bring. What it felt like to win my first case or go to the movies with a boy for the first time. The human experience was loaded with things that made your endorphins sing. I wanted to experience this place as a human again one day with all that it entailed.

But it looked like there was going to be a price to pay. This part of Paddy in me, the part that gave me the chance to go on and live another life, it was doing more than just keeping me in touch. I could easily have rationalized the pain away as my body adjusting to a foreign part if I hadn’t felt other things happening. Lying still on the bed, I could feel it spreading through me. It was too crazy to say aloud but I couldn’t shake the feeling.

Dr. Hamil had been my family’s doctor since I’d been a toddler. I still knew his number. Too bad I couldn’t call it, shoot in for a quick X-ray, get a script and be good to go in a week.

I closed my eyes, trying to go back to sleep, but I just lay there, trying to think about anything other than what might be going on within me.

I went into the bathroom, downed what pain medications I had left in the medicine cabinet, and made a mental note to stop at the drug store tomorrow.

***

I rapped my knuckles on the open office door even though I knew Harold was aware of me standing there. He didn’t look up so I kept knocking and knocking. I could’ve walked in and sat in front of him, but somehow, forcing him to acknowledge me and utter an invitation was far more entertaining. My current frustrations needed some sort of outlet.

After a solid minute of knocking, he finally looked up. “Come. In.” His lips barely moved as he spoke, and I realized perhaps he’d missed his true calling as a ventriloquist. Hell, even his hair—as bright red and bushy as it was—would look perfect on a dummy. I’d never seen such a color occur naturally. There had to be some better career for him other than running this place.

I bit my tongue, holding back the lyrics from
The Heat Miser
, but failed somewhat as the melody slipped out in a hum. I smiled in greeting and walked in gingerly, taking the seat in front of his desk. His forehead had become one continuous wave of wrinkles. I should’ve known instinctively he’d recognize that song. They’d probably modeled the character after him.

Still, somewhere deep down, so far down I wasn’t sure I could find it anymore, I was still a southern girl. There were manners in here somewhere. I really needed to try and shake the dust off them and let them see daylight once in a while. “I think it would be nice if we had a little chat.”
Smile, don’t forget the big smile
. I put so much umph into it my cheeks hurt.

“Can I avoid it?” His droll monotone had my face muscles burning in rebellion. Harold was about as far from my side of the Mason-Dixon Line as he could get.

I’m sorry, Mama, wherever you are right now, but good manners are a total waste on him.
I sucked air in through my teeth, most likely ruining the smiling effect but making a dramatic show of considering his question. Hanging on by a single raised pinky, I shrugged and said, “No.”

The sound of skateboards skidding across linoleum stopped me from continuing. The Jinxes were here and I was probably one of the only people happy about it. But when the shit had hit the fan, they’d been there for me. Were they rude, obnoxious and all sorts of undesirable? Yes. Downright repulsive? On occasion. They were the pariahs of the office and they embraced the position, but they’d become
my
little pariahs.

They entered the office seconds later. I held my fist up, knowing them well at this point, and they each cruised by in a line and fist bumped me as they found their places.

“Why are you three here?” Harold’s voice, always nasal, seemed to be hitting a new whine with the question. “Did she request your presence? Because I didn’t.”

“We don’t need a request. We’re her posse, douchebag.” The Jinxes were the antithesis of southern but as welcome as sweet tea on a hot summer day.

Bobby pulled up the chair that had been tucked in the corner, sat down and then kicked his sneakers up onto Harold’s desk. It was reminiscent of a move I myself had made not long ago, except my shoes hadn’t been caked with dirt in the treads, which now fell like sprinkles of love onto Harold’s never-ending paperwork. Oh, the charm of the Jinxes. Three pre-pubescent looking packages with more swagger than James Dean in his prime and more experience on the job than I could claim. I wasn’t sure how old they really were, but looks were deceiving and never more so than with them.

I tilted my head toward the door and, right on cue, Billy went over and slammed it shut. Buddy remained behind me, his small arms crossed over his chest as if he were my personal bodyguard.

Harold stared at the dirt on his desk and then me, his eyelids drooping ever so slightly more than usual. “What do you want? Let’s get this shit over with.”

I crossed my legs, repositioning my summer dress in supremely ladylike fashion. “I informed you not long ago, as have others, that we’ve got a problem.”

“And what do you want from me?”

“Something. Anything. The world out there is on the brink of falling apart and you sit here and do nothing.” I folded my hands on my lap, trying to remain composed. I didn’t want to encourage the Jinxes by turning into a raging lunatic. Their social graces were hanging on by the barest thread. One bad example could propel them into a black hole of social uncouthness they might never recover from.

“You’re being dramatic.” He lowered his head and returned to scribbling away at whatever useless notes he made.

This had been my last ditch effort to try and recruit Harold to my way of thinking. Hell, the whole office’s way of thinking. It would’ve been nice to have him on board for once but it wasn’t a necessity.

I stood, applauding myself for not contributing to the further demise of the Jinxes’ downfall in social skills, and walked out of there with the three of them trailing me.

“Why are we leaving? He ain’t doing nothin’ still,” Bobby complained as we left.

“It’s called rising above.” Memories of my mother’s voice, telling me a lady rose above the fracas, whispered in my ear like a bittersweet memory. I’d always thought that one day I’d be teaching my own children lessons like that.

Bobby elbowed Billy with a saucy grin on his face. “I want to rise above
some
people, just not that dweeb. I think we should sink real low, where it’s nice and comfy, and kick him in the teeth, if you ask me. This manners crap is bullshit. We look like a bunch of pansies letting him disrespect us like that.”

I looked at the three of them tagging behind me and wondered how many people had decided not to have children after meeting them. “Don’t worry, boys, you haven’t risen very far. I’d say you’re knee level at best.”

This seemed to uplift their spirits somewhat as they fist pumped each other encouragingly.

The main office door creaked open, and the room seemed to shrink to half its size as Fate entered. His head turned to me for an infinitesimal moment before he took in the rest of the room. For a while I’d thought I was imaging that he did that, sought me out first, until it happened over and over and over again.

I kept walking toward my table where he seemed prepared to intersect with me. I’d told him of my plans to approach Harold again, for one last ditch attempt, over dinner last night. He hadn’t said anything; he had simply raised his eyebrows at the mention and taken another bite of his steak.

I leaned a hip on the table as he came over and he did the same beside me. He didn’t say a word but
I told you so
was written clearly in the shrug of his shoulder and one raised eyebrow.

“I felt like it was the right thing to do.”

He didn’t say anything about it and I didn’t continue with the subject.

Of course, the Jinxes were there so it wasn’t case closed until they got their say in. “The guy’s a total douche. Not sure what you expected,” Bobby said, his blond locks shimmying with the shaking of his head. The Jinxes were always useful for saying the things most people were thinking but tried to hold back.

Murphy walked over to where we were gathered and Buddy was all over him as soon as he approached. “Hey, Sloppy Jo, you trip me this morning?”

Murphy rolled his eyes. “How many times do I have to tell you, you’re a klutz. I don’t get the urge with any of our kind.” Murphy took a chair nearby and crossed his legs, looking like someone had plucked him right out of a detective show from the fifties. Trench coat and hat, I could imagine him pulling out a badge at any moment. This morning, he looked like an episode where he’d been on surveillance all night.

Death, who was only now entering the office, looked closer to a rerun of Mr. Rogers, complete with sweater, and was probably finishing up a grief counseling session. I’d recently learned he charged over three hundred an hour. I guess knowing the deceased personally gave him a certain edge in effectiveness.

Death saw the group of us and came over. It didn’t take long before almost everyone in the building had made their way to that portion of the office. Of course Lady Luck was there, looking as tousled as ever. Her dry spell, which had coincided with Kitty’s disappearance, had ended the night she found out Kitty was okay. She’d been going strong ever since, trying to make up for lost time and missed pillow talk.

The Tooth Fairy and his assistants had come by, Santa appeared with some of his elves in tow, Mother brought her gardeners and Jockey popped in; in essence, the whole awkward gang was there.

The Jinxes were still carrying on with their tirade over Harold’s less than desirable traits. They had got the group so rattled that by time Cupid showed up that no one even made a run for Harold’s office.

The truth was, Harold was merely a scapegoat for the real problem. We were all alarmed at the turn of events lately and the state of the humans. There wasn’t a day that went by when someone wasn’t walking in and saying, “You’re not going to believe what they did now,” and it took a lot to surprise this group.

So when Cupid walked in slowly, palms raised, and said, “I won’t do anything, I swear. I just want to know what’s going. Those mortals are getting weirder by the minute,” no one ran. We put aside the past.

He was nervous, like the rest of us, and no one had the heart to exclude him. Plus, right now we needed the numbers. I turned to Fate. “We’ve got to let him stay.”

“Agreed.”

Luck came and stood beside me. “Cupid’s right. It’s getting real strange. I’ve never seen anything like this in all my years on the job.” There was a lot of grunting and agreeing noises after her statement.

Santa stepped forward and addressed the group. “I just stopped by to let you all know that Mrs. Claus and I have decided to head up to the North Pole for an extended leave. Things are getting too rough around here, and I’m worried for the safety of Mrs. Claus and the elves. We’ll seal up the entrance until things calm down.”

Santa was leaving? It felt like first grade all over again when I found out from my classmate, Susie Wilkins, that he was made up. All the grief that girl had caused me. I should track her down right now and give her a piece of my mind for spreading such lies.

It wouldn’t change anything though, as Santa made his goodbyes and his elves handed out candy canes as they left. As I watched his departure, the only thing that repeated over and over in my head was, what if things never did calm down? Screw everything else, what if Santa never came back?

“How am I getting good cookies now?” Luck asked. “I can’t go back to store-bought. All of this because of that angry guy?”

Everyone in the office knew Malokin, or Angry Guy, as Luck called him. After Kitty and the hotel incident, Harold’s determined lack of cooperation, and things getting strange and violent, everyone in the know had sat down and decided there was no more hiding. Malokin was a threat to all of us. Everyone deserved to know what was out there.