by Amie Gibbons
“Bullshit! You’re Karma, you have an axe to grind with me, and my brother happens to die? Not buying it. Milo would’ve seen anything coming. Unless something came along to balance the scales.”
“Oh, something was balancing the scales alright, but it happened all on its own. You forget, Carvi, I only step in when there’s an imbalance that doesn’t right itself. That was one righting itself in a beautifully poetic way. I’m not the one who stepped in on that one. You were.”
Carvi’s back was to me so I wasn’t sure what his face was doing, but I was willing to bet his mask slipped and he looked pretty shocked since Karma smirked.
“Yeah,” she said. “I didn’t have to do anything there, because that was the world righting a wrong. Like it’s supposed to. Without help.”
“What wrong?” Carvi bit.
She raised her eyebrows. “Oh, I don’t know. I’d say think back to a deal you never fulfilled your end of, but that’d probably be a list not even a psychic would want to have to run down. Either way, that one traced directly back to you.”
“I keep my deals,” Carvi said, voice low and dangerous enough to make me want to scooch away.
“You didn’t with me. Got what you wanted and left. At least whores got paid when men did that to them.”
“Ouch,” AB said. “You sound like me when I was talking to my ex.”
“Your ex use you and run off?” Karma asked.
“Yeah,” AB said. “Pretty much. Only… recently we tried to be friends, and well, you saw what that turned into.”
Karma snorted. “Yeah, I heard the end of that. Good on you. He deserved to be told off.”
“You said he got his, so I’m guessing you played a hand in that?”
“Nope.” Karma shook her head. “You’d be surprised how little I have to do when it comes to relationships. Usually douchebags get theirs from other people because, guess what, Carvi, people generally don’t like being used, and they go after the douchebag for it. Or leave them for it. I’d have to look more into it than I have the energy for, but I can guarantee you, girl, your ex got his payback when his wife left him, but he drove her off all on his own.”
AB just sighed and sat in the chair next to me.
“Doesn’t make you feel better, does it?” Karma asked.
AB shook her head. “I have seen him break down in tears because he can’t understand how she could leave him out of the blue like that, saying the same things I’ve said about him, and all I wanted to do was make it better. I couldn’t stand to see him in pain. I just wish…”
She shook her head. “Sorry, we have real issues to deal with.”
“This is a real issue,” Karma said. “Men sucking has been a real issue since the first little worms evolved into different sexes out of the ooze. What do you wish?”
“I don’t want him to be in pain. I just wish he felt the same way about me.” AB shrugged. “He doesn’t care though. Doesn’t care if I’m in pain, didn’t back then, doesn’t now, and so now all I want is to care about him as little as he cares about me. And I really don’t want to care when he fucks some slut.”
The oven dinged and Karma hopped to, opening the oven and pulling out the cupcakes without an oven mitt.
“You shouldn’t slut shame other women,” Karma said as she set the pan on the counter.
AB’s eyes went hard and I swear I smelled ozone as she sat up ramrod straight.
“I don't want to hear any of that don't call other women skanks and sluts because it degrades women bullshit!” AB snapped. “You degrade yourself when you act like that. If you're a slut, I'm calling you one. If you're a two-faced, lying, chubby, fake-blond tramp, I'm calling you that too. You don't want other girls calling you a slut, a tramp, or a whore, don't be one!”
Karma stared at her and I swear the temperature in the room dropped ten degrees.
Maybe snapping at a demigoddess, even just one by job description, wasn’t the best idea.
“Okay,” I said, “somebody needs some chocolate. Karma, want to pass over one of the cupcakes?”
“I still need to make the frosting,” AB said, voice hollow as one of the cupcakes appeared next to her.
She grabbed it and peeled off the paper cup, taking a bite anyway.
“She was chubby,” AB said after swallowing, voice breaking. “She was chubby and had jacked up teeth, like one so far behind the others it looked like it was on its own row, and just dumb! And he chose her over me.”
“That’s how some guys are, AB,” I said, wrapping my arm around her shoulder. “They only want what they haven’t had yet. And he didn’t choose her. He slept with her once and she moved. He used her just like he used you.”
“This is great girly bonding time, really, it is,” Carvi drawled. “But you still haven’t said what’s going on.”
Karma took a deep sniff of the cupcakes and sighed, a huge smile on her face as she looked up, meeting his eyes. “Oh, I really don’t know. That’s why I’m here. These ladies are going to figure it out for me.”
Carvi looked back at us, face showing nothing.
I blinked at him.
Why was he looking at me? This was news to me too.
“You. Don’t. Know?” Carvi asked as he turned back around. “Isn’t figuring it out your fucking job?”
She smirked at him. “Somebody feeling a bit testy now that he found out his brother’s death is all his fault? It is my job, and I’m contracting out. I’ve got bigger shit to deal with, and frankly, if Alabama eats it and ends up under water or a nuke, I couldn’t care less.”
“Hey!” I said. “What happened to the whole it’s such a big deal, it’s like Atlantis, thing?”
“It could be,” she said. “The spiral could take out half the US or set off Yellowstone if it keeps going like it is. But since now I know Carvi’s here, I’m not terribly upset about it. And I really do have more pressing issues.”
“What could be more pressing than a super volcano going off?” AB asked.
Karma blinked at her. “That was a joke, honey,” she said. “Anyway, Alabama, and maybe half the South goes, I’ll deal. I might get fired, but hey, priorities.”
She walked to the second oven and pulled out the crisp with about a minute left to go on the timer, then walked back and grabbed the tray of cupcakes.
“Thanks for the grub,” Karma said, putting the pans back down. “AB, was it?”
AB nodded.
“I’ll be back when y’all figure this out. Save me some cookies,” Karma said, pulling something outta her pocket and flicking it through the air.
It flew in a perfect arc to me and I caught it.
It was a solid gold coin with strange symbols carved on one side, and a picture that looked vaguely like a woman’s head mixed with a cat’s on the other.
“Ariana,” Karma said, “you figure out this thing, call for Karma as you toss the coin in the air, and I’ll be there.”
“Do I have to fix the imbalance, or just figure out who started it and how?” I asked.
“Just figure out who, probably how too,” Karma said. “Once we know that, it’ll be a hell of a lot easier for me to balance it out by putting it on that person. You do that, you get your payment. You don’t, and Alabama gets wiped out in a hurricane or disintegrates into chaos and riots, and well…” She smirked at Carvi. “Considering who’s in town, I’m cool with it. Toddles.”
She disappeared with the baked goods.
“I… what just happened?” AB asked. “My brain literally can not process this right now.”
I put the coin in my bra.
Didn’t want to risk losing it in my giant purse or anything.
Carvi turned around to face us, jaw set hard enough you just knew he had his teeth clenched so hard he could probably break bone. “That bitch has abandoned us in the middle of a crisis and said good luck, is what just happened.”
“How… so when you said you knew her and she was a bitch, you meant it?” AB asked.
“Yes.”
“But you left her. Aren’t you the bitch?”
Carvi’s eyebrows went up and he stared AB down. “Do you need a lesson in discipline, little girl? Because I’ll give it to you.”
“No.” She waved her hand. “I’m not in the mood to flirt with you right now. You… you pulled a dine and dash, just like my ex did with me. How are you not the jerk here?”
“I never promised her anything more. And she enjoyed her night with me, which is more than I can say for you with your ex. And she was no virgin. Now, do-”
“No,” AB cut him off. “That’s not okay. Is that what you’re doing to me?”
Carvi was suddenly in front of us and grabbed her, picking her up and throwing her over his shoulder. “I’ll show you what I do to you. Ariana, if you’ll excuse us. I need to remind Annabeth who the dom here is.”
He marched them up the stairs and I stayed in my chair.
Should I go in and help get her away from him?
Carvi was sounding pretty rapey rapey there.
Then again, Carvi never raped. He got pretty pushy, but he always knew when to back off.
And something told me him having his way with AB would make her feel better about the fight she’d just had with her ex.
Speaking of.
It’s not like I could handle the whole my dad was gonna die thing right now anyway, so I got up and grabbed AB’s phone.
A giant crack ran down the middle of it.
I clicked it on and it still worked, so hey.
There was nothing new under the texts.
For some reason, I’d been expecting some kind of answer from her ex.
Then again, guys would only contact you after a fight like that if they actually cared.
Thomas had made it pretty clear every time I’d seen him and AB interact the past few days that the only thing he cared about was her not hurting his friendships with people they had in common.
Wait. Why did I think I couldn’t get to work on the whole thing right now?
Because Carvi was in the bedroom with AB?
So what?
Who said I needed to wait for them to finish?
I put down AB’s phone and grabbed mine.
My fingers went down the contacts I’d loaded into this phone, and I froze.
I’d been about to call Grant on reflex.
We had a case. It meant I needed Grant to tell me what to do. That’s how we worked.
Except that wasn’t true anymore.
And this wasn’t an FBI case.
This was mine. My case. On my own. I was like a PI hired out by Karma. She was being a bitchy client, but that’s essentially what this was.
“Okay,” I said out loud, “if this is a case, what do I do first? I’m the lead on this one. If Carvi wants to waste time screwing around, doesn’t mean I have to.”
So what was the first step?
Figure out what we knew.
I called Quil.
“Hey, sweets,” he said, voice strained, wind so loud around him I could hear it whistling over the phone.
“Hey,” I said. “Can you hear me okay?”
“Yes. Well enough. Karma there?”
“She was.”
I caught him up on what had happened here, and on Karma’s and Carvi’s colorful past.
“Fantastic,” Quil said, deadpan. “So there goes that hope.”
“She was here, and she was gonna hire me out to do this anyway,” I said. “She said that before Carvi showed up. Sounds like something’s going on somewhere else and she couldn’t really handle both.”
I paused. “Actually, it’s kinda a compliment that she’s leaving this to us. She has two things, she delegated one to someone she thought could handle it. She didn’t say any of that stuff about being okay with Alabama going up in flames until Carvi showed up and they got into it.”
“That doesn’t make me feel better,” Quil said. “We still have a massive imbalance, that Karma was supposed to figure out and fix, and she dumped it on your plate. I take issue with that. For one, if the imbalance is all around us, it could get us. Karma would be able to see it coming and get out of its way and trace it back.”
“So that’s what I’ll do,” I said.
Quil didn’t say anything for a moment.
“Sweets… No, you’re right. You’re the psychic. You’re going to need help to have that kind of constant awareness though.”
“I’ll ask Carvi about that once he’s done.”
“Done?”
“He’s in the bedroom with AB.”
Quil said something hard and sharp in Italian.
“I know,” I said. “That’s why I called you. I’m the investigator on this one. I’m the lead so I need to get the ball rolling. How’d you figure out Karma was in town?”
“She showed herself to me while I was laying down the spells,” Quil said. “It was more of an apparition than anything else, but I explained to her what was going on and she said she’d come talk to you. I didn’t know she was going to hand this over to you and say it’s not her problem. This is her job. This is what she does.”
“Has a Karma ever handed the reigns over to a mortal?”
“Not that I know of, but sweets, you have to understand, these are forces on a plane above our existence. I don’t know demi-gods or the greater picture or any of that. I’m just a man with some skills and a few hundred years under his belt.”
“But Carvi does play on that plane,” I said. “He knew her, he talks about the great picture stuff. He even said he knows how to balance his energies when he does something big so he doesn’t set off an imbalance. Though it sounds like he didn’t like twenty-five years ago. And whatever he did then really pissed Karma off.”
Quil sighed.
“So, you do this more than I do,” I said. “Right now, we are essentially PIs hired out to solve this mystery. It’s not our wheelhouse, but that’s what the psychic is for, right? I’m thinking first thing we do is go to the guy who had the heart attack and see what I can get off of him. Carvi should be done by then and we can go from there with his help to see if we can track other instances of this imbalance, maybe even see the imbalance, and track it back to its source.”
“That sounds like exactly what I would do if I were psychic,” Quil said.
I could practically see him smiling.
“That does mean I’m gonna have to cancel the show at my Daddy’s rally tonight,” I said.
“Is that a problem?”
“It… it doesn’t compare to some huge cataclysmic event getting Alabama, and it doesn’t compare to him dying on election night, but yeah, it’s me lettin’ my daddy down. I don’t like to let him down.”
“If we can get this done fast enough, we could still go,” Quil said. “But we don’t know how much work this whole thing is going to take, and you do still have assassins after you. If you don’t go to these events, at the very least, you won’t be where they think you’ll be, and you’ll be safer.”
“But my family won’t,” I said. “We still have to have the magic blocks and stuff there to protect them. And we still have the issue of that Marco guy trapping me in the astral plane. We still have to find out who put out the hit and make them call it off or whatever.”
I pinched my nose.
“Quil, it’s too much,” I said. “There’s too many moving parts. There’s too many places I need to be. I don’t know where to start or what to do to make sure everyone’s safe.”
“Break it down,” he said. “I’m almost done here and can meet you at the hospital to touch the boy. We have the extra security we can send to watch over your family at the rally. If we have you under magical blockers and you aren’t at the rally and you keep moving, the detail on you can probably be reassigned. I hate to say it since I want to make sure you’re safe, but between your powers, me and Carvi, you probably are. Natalia can be put on your father since he’ll be the most public and obvious.”
> I nodded.
That all sounded good.
“You still have the blockers on you,” Quil said. “And as far as we know, nobody has gotten past them. We will start on this tonight. You will go to Miami tomorrow like planned. And we do have until Tuesday to figure this out…”
“What?” I asked after a moment.
He sighed. “I just realized we have until Tuesday, by your timetable, to save your father. Karma said the spiral is already going, and it’s going to get worse.”
I sucked in a harsh breath through my teeth, making them sting.
“Which means,” I said, “every minute, something else could happen because of this imbalance. Something as small as an accident or as big as an apartment fire that kills a hundred people. So, we really have been wasting time, because Karma booted it to us anyway. Okay, we stop. Right now.”
“Stop?” Quil asked.
“We stop wasting time. We get on this, and we stay on it, until we figure it out, and we save as many as we can. Startin’ right now.”
Chapter five
I got to the hospital pretty skippy.
It wasn’t far from my parents’ rental and I have a very loose interpretation of traffic laws when there’s little traffic and I’m on side streets.
The hospital was smaller than I was expecting for this big of a city, but then again, it wasn’t like it was the only one. It was the general city hospital.
I flashed my badge and asked the nurse where he was. She didn’t want to tell me and said I’d need a warrant and she didn’t even believe I was an FBI agent because I was too young and wasn’t wearing a suit, so I was someone obviously making stuff up, and blah blah blah.
I rolled my eyes and walked away, touching the wall, for grounding more than anything else, and focused on the guy.
Flash.
He was still lying in the hospital bed. They hadn’t had time or hadn’t bothered to pull him out and down to the morgue.
The room number showed as I pulled the vision back.
I blinked and pushed off the wall, walking down the hall to the elevators with a smirk.