Free Karma (Karma Series) by Donna Augustine Page A

everyone to hear me, but I personally didn't care. They could all hear as far as I was concerned.
    “ Oh good. You're here,” I heard Harold say and looked to see Fate walking into the room. Harold closed the door behind him.
    I looked at the both of them now. “I'm not doing this job.”
    “ Can we discuss this calmly?”
    I sat in the chair in front of his desk and took a deep breath, forcing myself to relax. “You want calm? This is me calmly telling you, I'm not doing that again.”
    I sat with a disgruntled Harold at his desk in front of me and Fate leaning against the wall behind me.
    I turned around in my chair. “Is there something wrong with one of your legs?” Everywhere he went he was leaning on things. Like the vertical space he occupied wasn’t enough. He had to hog up as much horizontal area as he could possibly get, too. It wasn’t like you could miss him when you entered a room, but that just wasn’t enough for Fate.
    “ Does my leaning bother you?” he asked.
    I turned my back on him again. There was something very unsettling about being around him. I always wanted to kill him and the fact that I found him attractive on top of that made me want to torture him first.
    “ Do you know how your human form was killed?”
    Of course I knew. I was there. It was a stupid question intended to throw me off balance and it did.
    I'd been avoiding thinking of that day. If I did, I'd remember my parents were just miles away and yet I couldn't speak to them. I'd miss Charlie and all the friends I'd lost. The only way I was mentally surviving this situation was to push what had happened from my mind. I was living day by day until I left.
    “ Do you?” Harold pressed.
    “ Harold, you know I do. Make your point.” It was one of the reasons I'd agreed to this in the first place and I resented the reminder. How could I not?
    “ All of those people robbed of the chance to even say goodbye. Have a few last words with their loved ones,” Harold continued.
    “ If you don't get to your point soon, I'm leaving. And not in a calm fashion, either.”
    The last thing I wanted was to hear him talk about something I'd experienced first hand. Even when I did let myself think about it, I didn't know what to do. I knew I had a limited amount of time and yet I'd kept forcing it from my mind, not wanting to deal with w hat happened.
    “ You know you have to actively participate for thirty days.”
    “Calling it active participation doesn’t change that fact that you want me to be an assassin for hire for thirty days.” I stood, unable to stay calmly in my seat and slammed my fist against his desk.
    “It’s either active for thirty days or a thousand years. Don’t be stupid about this,” Fate said from behind me. “Even if Harold wanted to, you’ve got to be active for him to have the ability.”
    I slumped back into my chair and just shook my head. They had me. They knew it and so did I.
    “ To help the situation become more palatable to you, we might be able to help you get the person who orchestrated your train crash.”
    “Now you're going to help? Didn't you tell me it was my problem?”
    “ We've reconsidered.”
    I s tared at Harold and then looked back at Fate. There was something more going on but I certainly had no clue what.
    “ Do you agree?”
    “ I'm thinking.” What were they getting out of this? And I didn't believe for a second that they weren't getting something. But did it matter? I didn't know how to find him. At least I could walk away from this situation with a certain amount of peace this way. As long as I was still walking away that was.
    “ And this doesn't extend my current contract?”
    “ No.”
    “ Fine.”
    Fate pushed off his favorite place on the wall and walked out the door saying he'd be waiting out there.
    “Why's he waiting?”
    “ He's going home with you.”
    “ What?”
     
    ***
     
    “Don't get too comfortable.” I threw my keys on the counter, and if he thought