Page 16 of Eden's Joker

“Karma and her boys are here,” he tells me once I’m within earshot. “They arrived about an hour ago.”

“Did they see you?”

“Nah,” he says. “I make too convincing a bum. Not surprising, since I used to be one.”

It’s never a good sign when Scorpio starts talking about his past. That usually leads to him getting lost at the bottom of a bottle or three. But right now, I’m reasonably sure the reason for his foul mood is spending the night on the hard ground.

“They didn’t see me either,” I say. “But I don’tknow what to do about them. They could blow our cover here.”

“Maybe I could seduce Karma into lying for us,” Scorpio says, with a big, stupid grin on his face. “I think it could work this time.”

All that time he spent homeless on the streets and the hard life since somehow didn’t rob him of his boyish good looks. Add in his blond hair, blue eyes, broad shoulders, and defined muscles that he works on religiously, and he’s hard to resist for most women. But Karma is one of those women that can resist him. Which hasn’t stopped him from trying to get into her pants. Constantly. It’s getting annoying.

“She’ll just shut you down like she always does. Besides, she’s with that Grim guy, isn’t she?” I say, which makes him laugh, of all things. “No, I’ll just go in there and tell them we’re working a job and they need to pretend like they don’t know us.”

Not that it looks like this whole charade will be necessary after all. But I still haven’t decided how to handle the new Eden situation.

He springs to his feet. “I think I’ll join you. I could use a drink.”

I shake my head. “Get it somewhere else. Or better yet, get some sleep.”

“I don’t need you messing with Karma right now,” I add since he looks offended and like he’s gonna argue with the order. “I need their undivided attention.”

“You’re right, I do get under her skin,” he says and laughs again.

“You wish.”

“I do.”

I leave him there and walk back to the bar, hoping it’s still just as empty as it was when I looked in through the window.

It is, and all the Forsaken turn to me as one as I enter. They’re drinking coffee out of mismatched cups. They must’ve brought all that with them, because there’s no one behind the counter and everything’s dark. Plus, I doubt they even make coffee in this place.

“Joker,” Grim says as I approach their table. “Didn’t expect to run into you here.”

He’s only in his forties, but grey is already speckled liberally across his dark hair. The wind of constant nomadic riding hasn’t been kind to his face either and the crow’s feet and other wrinkles on his face make him look a lot older than he actually is. Karma and Psycho don’t have any of those issues. They both look fresh and young. I can also clearly see none of them are happy to see me.

I walk up to their table but don’t sit down.

“So what brings you out here?” I say. “I thought you were back East, burying someone.”

“Yeah, we were saying our final goodbye to our brother Reaper,” Grim says darkly and the other two look very sad for a moment.

“I thought you’d be doing that until the winter.”

“We have some things to take care of here,” Karma says cryptically. “Some long overdue things.”

Now, normally I’d want to know all about that. But I can find out later. And I got a shitload of other things to figure out today.

“I’m on a mission here,” I say before anyone walks in and sees us talking like friends. “Incognito-like. If you’re staying, I’ll need you to act like you don’t know me from before.”

“No problem,” Karma says.

On the surface, it might look like she’s readily agreeing because they want to stay on my good side. But I know very well that Karma doesn’t like me very much, so I’m not fooled.

“Good,” I say. “So when you see me next, it’ll be just like the first time we met. The same goes for any other Lost Sons member you see around. You don’t know them and you don’t know me, and they don’t know me either. Am I being clear?”

By the slightly cross-eyes look on Psycho’s face I’m thinking maybe not. But they all nod and grunt their agreement.

---