Page 69 of Karma

“Don’t tell me it’s not gonna happen,” she says. “I understand why Scorpio needs to believe that lie, but don’t you start believing it too. They’re gonna carry out the plan. You heard him. It’s all they’ve been living for.”

Not just her hands, her whole body is shaking by the time she’s done saying all that. I can still smell the three of us in this room, but I can smell acrid fear now too. Hers. She was the innocent girl tortured. She’ll never be OK doing it to another.

“I have a plan,” I tell her as I lead her to the edge of the bed. We both better be sitting for this.

“What plan?” she asks. “What are you talking about?”

Her voice, her eyes, her whole demeanor is telling me she wants to trust me to make it all all right, like I’ve been doing since we met. But at the same time she doesn’t believe I can.

“So I’ve been thinking,” I say as I let go of her hands and sit on the bed, tapping the space beside me.

The smell of us grows stronger as she plops down on the bed beside me.

“About what?” she asks.

“A way to kill two birds with one stone.”

Shock makes her eyes wide as she leans towards me and whispers. “Are you saying we should kill Joker?”

I shake my head. “No way I want to hide that from Scorpio for the rest of my life.”

She sighs in relief. “He’d never forgive us.”

I nod. “That’s true. My plan doesn’t involve killing anyone if we can avoid it. And if done right, I think we can.”

I’ve spent most of the night lying awake, hatching this plan while they slept beside me. Despite that, I didn’t get much past just the idea part of it.

“Scorpio and Joker… their whole revenge plot hinges on abducting that girl and hurting her to get back at the Devils, right?”

“Joker’s plot, but yeah, I think so too,” she says. “I don’t think they have any illusions about actually winning the fight once the Devils come to get her back.”

She takes a shuddering breath.

“Right, this war of theirs, it’s all about inflicting maximum damage not about actually winning,” I say. “So they’re ready to die. And we don’t want that.”

She shakes her head so hard I’m getting a headache from it.

“So how do we stop it?” I ask.

“We can’t,” she says sarcastically. “Enough with these questions. Just tell me your plan.”

I don’t blame her for getting sick of my roundabout way of getting to the point.

“We take the girl from them and get her home before they can do anything to her.”

Her eyes light up like the sun piercing clouds after a bad storm. But then they cloud over almost immediately.

“How do we do that?”

I shrug. “That part I haven’t figured out yet. But we’ve got our foot in the door. They’re taking us with them, which means we’ll be where she is. All the Forsaken will be there by our side and I’m sure an opening will present itself.”

She looks happier than she was, but not happy. Her silence is making my skin prickle.

“So, what do you think?” I ask, once I can’t stand it any longer.

“I think it’s a good plan,” she says and I exhale the breath I’ve been holding. “But it’s also total betrayal.”

“Scorpio’ll forgive us,” I say. “He’ll have the whole rest of his life to do it, since he won’t die in some war he can’t win.”

---