Karma (Karma Series) (18 page)

“So, what comes next?” I asked.

Lars stopped tattooing just long enough to hold a finger to his lips.

Fate edged his chair down closer to my head from where he’d been watching the tattoo.

“
We can't tell you until he’s done,” Fate spoke quietly by my side. “Nothing about this is a normal tattoo. The ink, the way he is applying it, everything is steeped in heavy magic.”

I leane
d my head against the pillow Fate had laid on the table for me, as I listened to a baseball game being played on the TV. My thoughts wandered, occasionally broken by the cheering for a score or by the irritation of Lars moving the tattoo gun over the same area repeatedly.

I felt a cloth wipe over my skin again and then Lars leaned back, taking in his work.

“Done?”

“
With the tattoo, yes.”

Fate
stood up and leaned over me, peering at Lars's work. His fingers grazed over my stomach and sent tingles through me, making me feel flushed like I had in the elevator earlier today.

I looked down and Lars’s handy work. I wasn’t a tattoo expert but it look
ed pretty good to me.

“
Nice work.”

“
I own the tattoo shop, Dead Ink, over in Myrtle Beach, so I've had some practice,” Lars said as he eyed his latest accomplishment.

“
Well isn't that convenient.” Dead Ink? Talk about hiding in plain sight. I imagined all the people going in and getting reaper tattoos. Wow, if they had any idea how close to death they really were, I bet they’d rethink the subject matter.

“
Do I need to cover it?” I asked as I hopped down off the table.

“
No. This one needs to breathe.”

“
So what's the deal? How do you two know each other?” Sometimes the best time to ask a question is when you already know the answer. And how honest are you going to be with me? Instinct, of which mine was usually dead on the mark, told me probably not that much.

Fate stepped back from where he’d been peering out the back doors.
“Even though the agency will tell you differently, there are certain humans that are aware of us. Lars is one of them.”

Liar. Why am I not surprised?
“So what comes next?”

Fate took the lead, as Lars continued to pack up his supplies but was still listening to every word said.

“Now, we lift the veil.”

“
What else is there?”

He took my discarded snifter of whiskey, topped it off and handed it to me.

I stared at my reflection above the bathroom sink while Fate and Lars waited for me in the living room.

Did I really want to
make this choice? My tour guides were proving to be less than honest.

What if I saw something I couldn't live with? But, knowing I'd only be here for a little longer, could I really not do it? Forget about the murderer. This was a chance to see and know the secrets of the universe. Who could walk
away from knowledge like that?

I looked at my reflection in the mirror.
Not me. I'd been born asking questions. And it was only for a little longer. It wasn't even that much of a risk. I'd be reborn clueless of any of this.

I turned the water on and splashed a little
on my face and took a deep breath. I walked into the living room, picked up the snifter I’d left on the table downed the last of it.

“
I'm ready.”

Lars nodded and r
eached for his bag and headed out the door.

“
Where's he going?” I asked turning to Fate.

“
Prepping the grounds so that no one will interrupt.” Fate edged in closer to me. It was clear he wanted to say something but it took him a minute to get to it. “You sure you want to do this?”

“
You’re having second thoughts? This was your idea.” I waited for him to respond. If he kept looking at me like he was now I was going to need another minute in the bathroom.

“
You’re leaving after your trial period, right?”

“
Yes, yes, yes. Stop asking me the same questions over and over again.” I knew I was being testy, but couldn’t he lay off how much he wanted me to leave just for a little while? I still had intact feelings, after all.

“
Okay.” He walked over and held the back door open. “After you.”

We walked out into the starry night. No one was on the bea
ch for miles except for Lars. A black blanket spread out on the sand was surrounded at foot intervals with burning black candles. Black? I would've felt a bit better if they had been white.

Worse than the color,
why wasn’t the breeze coming off the ocean causing so much as a flicker in the flames? It should have been impossible to keep them lit, but they blazed straight up as if the wind didn't stir at all.

“
Lie on the blanket, in the center,” Lars said.

I moved into place and
lay down, feeling increasingly like I was about to be sacrificed.

I didn't become apprehensive again until I saw the knife Lars handed Fate. It looked like it could have taken down a buffalo.

“I'll start the chant. You know what to do,” Lars said.

“
Can we use mine?” Fate asked.

Lars looked surprised by the question but then shook his head.
“No.”

Fate nodded and took the knife.

“What's that for?”

“
Everything has a cost. If you want to see the universe, you need to be connected to it.”

He pointed to a spot near my wrist.
“Right here.”

“
I won't bleed out?” The spot he pointed to looked pretty close the main vein.

“
You might feel woozy but you'll be okay.”

“
Did you do this?” I might have felt better with a smaller knife. Did they have to use one that looked like it could amputate my whole arm?

He held up his wrist, Lars who was
also listening held up his.

I had agreed to this. I
held out my arm and looked away.

I heard Lars start to speak in a language I didn't understand. It didn't
matter; I couldn't focus on anything other than waiting for the feel of the knife sliding along my skin, anyway.

A
spicy smell hit my nose that I thought might have been from the candles, except then the air started to feel thicker too. It started to feel like breathing in a sauna.

I felt the bur
n of the knife where it slid across my skin. It was deep and my blood was warm where it flowed over my skin.

“
You might want to see this,” Fate said.

I hadn’t planned on looking at my blood flowing out but his words made me curious.

Fate had my wrist slightly raised and I saw the blood flowing out but it wasn’t dropping onto the ground, it was dissolving into the air leaving trails of pink mist. Whatever this process was, it looked like it was in full swing now.

Lars, who had been circling the ring of candles, stopped and made a hand gesture toward the sky.

I looked around and at first I saw nothing different.

“
There,” Fate said and pointed to a spot on the horizon. It was dark so I wasn't sure what it was I was seeing at first, when a dark shadow showed over the ocean and disappeared quickly. Then it happened again and I watched more intently. It was like a seam had opened up in the middle of nowhere and a dark shadow appeared. The ocean swelled unusually large in that area and it looked like a riptide had been left in its wake.

Then I saw more of them. Little shadows in all different sizes.
I stood and walked closer to the ocean. Maybe I should have been afraid, but instead I was mesmerized.

“
You good?” Lars asked Fate from somewhere behind me.

“
Yeah,” Fate responded.

I fel
t Fate lift my arm and wrap the cut as I stood there, looking out. The shadows were everywhere.

He
squeezed my hand to get my attention and nodded toward a couple walking down the beach towards us.

“
Is it going to be like Maxwell?”

“
Remember, I don't see things the way you do. But there’s more. You’re going to see the universe at work.”

It was almost completely dark now so I couldn't see it as clearly as I would've in daylight.
The man had a subtle glow to him but the woman appeared dull. As they came closer, I could see the atmosphere around them the way you see heat waves on a hot summer day. As they moved, the clear waves around them shifted with them.

Then some of the woman's dullness seemed to spread toward the man's chest, diminishing the brightness over the area of his heart.

“He'll die next week from a heart attack.” Fate said from next to me.

“
You saw that shadow creep toward his heart?”

“
No, I saw his fate spreading out in front of him and it didn’t go far. Before this, if it wasn’t a job, you could only see people that had strong karma, in one direction or another. In my case, it was if they had a strong fate.”

“
And this?”

“
This...” he said as a single older man walked along by himself, with an aura so bright against the night sky it made me want to squint, “is behind the curtain.”

“
What exactly am I seeing?”

“
The very balance of everything in the world. It doesn't touch us, though. And whatever you do, you can't let on that you see it.”

“
Why is it so bad?”

“
This, all of this, Lars, seeing the true forces at work, all against the rules.”

“
What would happen if someone found out?”

“
I don’t know.”

I sank down into the sand and watched as people came and went. Some of them appeared normal. Those were the ones that must have been in balance. Then some were so much duller it was hard to make them out in the night. The bright ones were the prettiest to watch. Sometimes they’d shine so bright they’d make the sand sparkle at their feet.

Swirls of dark would appear here and there, adjusting a wave or causing an especially strong gust of wind.

“
This happens everywhere?”

“
Yes.”

“
And you think this will help us with Suit?”

“
It's not going to hurt. The more you're plugged in, the stronger our leads should be.”

Lars called out from the deck for Fate and he went in without me.

I sat on the sand and watched for hours. Shadows would appear and kick up the surf this way and that. At one point, I watche
d a woman walk down the beach, and her flip flop got stuck in the sand. Just as she was about to fall, a shadow appeared underneath her and she managed to find her balance.

Everything was being controlled and micromanaged. And instead of having
fewer questions, I had more. Who was pulling the strings? Who had this kind of power?

I'd think
God, but Harold had made it seem like God wasn't doing the daily lifting down here. So who or what controlled all this?

I didn't go in until I couldn't keep my eyes open a second longer.

Lars's bag was sitting on the table but the house was quiet. When I got to the bedroom, Fate was sprawled out, asleep. I couldn’t fault him for not holding to the bargain, as it was almost two in the morning.

I tried to keep my eyes averted as they adjusted to the dark.
This was much easier to do until he turned in his sleep and the blanket moved down to his waist displaying a well-built and very
tattooed
chest. Now I understood why he wore a shirt to the beach.

I climbed into bed and kept my face toward the wall.

I woke in a sweat and waited for the flashes of a job. They didn't come. But something was wrong. Maybe something they did to me had a bad after effect.

“
Fate?”

He mumbled something
I couldn’t make out at all. It might have been
I'm sleeping
but could've also been
Go screw
.

“
Something's wrong with me.” I could feel my heart pumping quicker than normal among other things.

He sat up in bed, with all sorts
of naked torso action going on. Even sitting leaned over as he was, there was just ribbed abdomen and my pulse beat a little quicker.

“
You're sweating.”

“
I know. That's because something's wrong with me. I thought I already established that.”

He laid a hand on my forehead.
“You're warm.”

“
Ergo, the sweat.” I watched as he dropped his hand and moved his beautifully masculine arm away from me.

He had the nice
st skin, all smooth and tan except where the tattoos ripped across his shoulders. I didn’t even know I liked tattoos until this very minute. I felt like I could stare at his chest for the rest of my life.

“
You're looking at me like I'm hamburger meat and you haven't had a meal in a while.”

“
No I’m not,” I turned my gaze quickly. I hadn’t even realized he’d been assessing me as I stared.

“
I knew you didn’t look right.” He got out of bed, and I was grateful to see he had on a pair of nylon shorts. But still, way too much flesh available to stare at. “Goddamn fucking Cupid!”

“
Seriously? Are you sure?”

He came and stopped by my side of the bed.
“How are you feeling? Little excited perhaps?”

I couldn’t even answer. It was too mortifying. I covered my face in my hands and groaned.

“I'd ask you some other questions to confirm but I don't think it's necessary. This is one of his favorite hobbies.”

And then I remembered
Mother’s obvious infatuation. What if it was permanent? “Is this going to go away?”

“
It'll wear off in a day or so, depending on your system. I've got some stuff in the kitchen that'll help you sleep some of it off.”

I bit my lower lip as I eyed him. I didn't even like him. He was volatile and raw, the complete opposite of what I went for. He
was everything I would have steered clear of in my human days. One look at his face, a second’s glance at his eyes, would shred any pretense of humanity. Getting close to him would be akin to jumping into a volcano. And yet, in this exact moment of time, I couldn't stop my desire to feel the burn I knew he could deliver.

I couldn’t stop staring at him.

“I won't sleep with you. I could be that man—actually, I normally am that man. But not with you.”

I had to stop staring at him.
“I'm not asking you to.” I should've let the subject drop but I couldn't stop myself from asking. “But since we are on the topic, what's wrong with me?”

“
You're the relationship type and, no matter how much of the human we pry from your clinging hands, it cloys to you, just like the girlishness of your perfume and ruffled skirts. I don't need you looking all doe eyed at me in the morning.”

“
You are such an ass.” I got up and walked out of the room. My shoulder connected with his arm as I pushed past him but it wasn’t very satisfactory since it didn’t budge him at all and I ended up bouncing a couple of steps off my path.

I walked
into the kitchen, swearing revenge on Cupid and determined to find some sleeping pills myself.

I looked upward and then spoke in a hushed tone so Fate couldn’t hear me from the other room,
“Look at what you’ve done to me! I will never speak to you again after this.”

“
Need help?” I turned to see Lars coming up behind me in the kitchen. What, did no one wear a shirt anymore?

I looked upward.
This doesn’t change anything.

“
I didn’t realize you were still here.” I turned, the counter at my back, as he came forward and leaned against the opposite counter. Could I really sleep with Death?

“
Long commute.” He grinned as his eyes made their way up from my bare feet, to my thighs before the hem of the long t-shirt I wore to sleep covered them.

Maybe I could give this a try.

His hand came to rest on the side of the counter I leaned against. I knew the type of help he was looking to offer and my eyes drifted to his lips. I couldn't deny I was tempted, but for some reason it felt like eating low fat frozen yogurt when I was craving ice cream.

Still, I didn't turn away when he leaned in a little closer. Frozen yogurt tasted better than nothing.

I knew if it wasn't for whatever Cupid did to me, I wouldn't be doing this, but I couldn't figure out the harm in it. I'd be reborn in less than two weeks from now. I'd forget all of this. It was like a free pass. Why not?

“
What are you doing?” Fate asked from the entrance of the kitchen. He was clearly speaking to Lars, not me. Now there was the ice cream man, but he was closed for business.

Lars’s hand dropped from beside me and the gap between us widened a couple inches
. “I was seeing if Karma needed a little help.”

“
I've got it covered.”

I could almost smell the
male testosterone party going on, but I couldn’t figure out where Fate had gotten an invite. Hadn’t he just turned me down? Was a girl supposed to starve?

It couldn't be jealousy
, after he'd so graciously explained how he wasn't interested. What was his deal?

“
I didn't realize you were up.” Lars now moved to the opposite counter, a few feet between us now. “I was just looking for a bite to eat. You said you weren't hungry.”

“
Well, now I am.” Fate stepped deeper into the kitchen.

Lars put his hands up.
“My mistake.” I watched as he started backing out of the kitchen.

Was this a joke?

“Oh no!” I yelled and grabbed his arm. “What are you doing? He doesn’t make this decision.” I pointed a finger at Fate.

He smiled and then pulled away. Lars nodded to Fate and then disappeared up the stairs.

Fate rounded on me as soon as Lars was gone. “What do you think you’re doing?”

“
Really? This is almost as bad as when you ask twice. It wasn’t obvious?” And still no shirt. Although if I was a guy with his chest, I guess I wouldn't have been anxious to wear one either.

“
He wouldn't have fixed the issue.”

“
Why do you say that?”

“
Because that’s not how Cupid works. There's always a target.”

I wasn't going to argue. I knew he was right.
I felt it standing next to him. It was a fight to just keep my hands to myself.

“
He might have taken the edge off, though.” I dry swallowed as he got closer and closer to me.

“
If you’re going to do something about it, at least do it with the person it was meant for.”

His arm wrapped around my waist and lifted
me to the counter. He stepped in between my thighs and the long t-shirt I'd worn to bed hitched up in the process.

“When Cupid plays his games, there’s always an intended target.” His eyes were on my mouth as he spoke, and then his lips grazed mine as he said his last words. “You weren’t intended for Lars.”

He might have acted disinterested before, but with his hips pressed to mine, I knew this wasn’t just for me. My legs wrapped around him, trying to bring him closer to me. His hands tangled in my hair as his lips covered mine. I felt like I couldn’t’ breathe and I didn’t care.

There was something dangerous about going down this road with Fate. There was no
control here, only pure sensation, and intense, soul consuming feeling.

His arm wrapped around my hips and pulled me snug to him. H
e was carrying me somewhere, but I didn’t care as long as he went with me.

And then I was falling backward and
he was following me down. His hard body moved over mine, pressing me into the bed and all I could do was moan with the exquisite feeling. I couldn’t get close enough to him. I wanted to crawl inside of him and the way he gripped me back I knew he was feeling it too.

Nothing registered
except need.

What little clothes we had on weren’t even removed but shoved out of the way and
then he was pressing into me. It felt like nothing I’d ever experienced before. I didn’t know if this was because of Cupid’s interference, or it would’ve been like this with him anyway.

And then we were both coming and I didn’t want it to stop.

We sagged in exhaustion. I was still in shock over the intensity of what had just happened.

He was still in me, resting his weight on his arms. His lips were tailing along my collarbone when he paused his actions and whispered against my skin.

“You’re still going back, right?”

He didn’t ask in a,
I’m hoping you might stay now
, he asked in a,
you know this changes nothing
kind of way.

I closed my eyes trying to keep control. I hadn’t expected anything from him, hadn’t been looking for it
, so why did that hurt so badly?

“
Of course I am.”

I wanted to pretend he hadn't said anything, but I couldn't. Hyped up on Cupid's stuff or not, my pride was stronger than any love potion.

I stared straight into his eyes. “Get off.”

“
What’s wrong?”

“
Nothing. I need to use the bathroom.” I wanted to scream for him to get off me but I wouldn’t. That would let him know he’d gotten to me.

Did I see regret there? It didn't matter. I was too mad
to try and find reasons for his actions.

He di
dn't initially move and I needed to get away from him.

“
You’re heavy. Get off me.” I’d loved his weight a few minutes ago. Now I felt suffocated.

He finally gave and I slid out from beneath him
in my urgency to get away from him as soon as I had room.

“
Where you going?” he asked as I headed toward the door.

“
I already told you.”

I swung by the kitchen and found the sleeping pills and then found a spare room to go crash.