Page 70 of Karma

She’s gazing at me with eyes I can’t read. But there’s happiness in them. I see that much.

“He made some good points about revenge last night,” she says.

“Yeah, he did. But staying alive is better than dying to get revenge,” I say. “I’m pretty sure he knows that too.”

She nods. “Let’s do it. Let’s end this before it starts. And we’ll worry about putting everything back the way it should be after.”

There’s my little warrior queen. Her shoulders raised, her chin defiant, the pain in her eyes only a shadow that I hope never to see again.

She even tastes different as we kiss. More like the girl I first fell in love with, less like the woman life had very nearly beaten down.

“We gotta be ready to seize the first opportunity to get this done,” she says and resumes packing her stuff with renewed fervor. “I doubt we’ll get many chances.”

“One chance is all we’ll need.”

Mainly because they won’t be expecting our surprise attack. Our knife in their back. But that guilt I can live with. What I can’t do is live without the three of us together.

36

Scorpio

The plan was that Joker would ride into the forest compound with Eden willingly sitting on the back of his bike. Only after that would she find out her freedom was gone. It was a dumb plan. The result of Joker’s growing feelings for her no doubt. He wanted to prolong the good times he had with her, before he’d show her what a monster he really was.

But of course we had a Plan B, and a Plan C, for her abduction.

For some reason that he didn’t share with me—despite my endless prodding—Plan A fell through. So we’re going with Plan B now: Grabbing her at her apartment in the night.

Joker sent me, Razor, Manic, and Doom to get her. I was gonna comment on him staying behind for this, suggest it’s because he doesn’t really wanna do it anymore, but by then he was full-on angry at me for constantly suggesting it and there was no point in making him any angrier. He’ll see it in time. I have no doubt about that.

But as we sat in the van in the alleyway that runs at the back of her building, waiting for the lights in her apartment to go out, I did seriously consider fumbling the mission for a while.

That would solve more than one problem I’m facing now. It would get Karma and Grim off my back about it and save Joker from having to choose between the revenge he’s spent most of his life planning and the one woman who finally seems to have managed to get him by the balls.

But that was just a passing idea. Impossible to pull off. The other three with me want this to happen too much to let me fail, for one thing. And for another, I’m no traitor. The darkest part of me wants this plan to go off exactly as Joker planned it out. The part that wants others to suffer like I have. That guy is all for this plan.

Plus, I just gotta meet her. Although I probably won’t see what Joker sees in her. Nerdy, bookish women never held any appeal to me. Good girls neither. Give me strong, tough ladies like Karma all night long. Give me people that are broken in all the right ways, like me. Or better yet, I’ll just take Karma and Grim. Then I’ll be happy and never even consider desiring others’ suffering again.

I just hope I’ll still have them after this. Grim seemed to have understood my point about revenge and all that better than Karma, but I think they both did. There’s a flower shop at the end of the alley and the air smells of wilted, rotting flowers. I hate how clearly that seems to be telling me I’m not gonna get my wish.

“It’s almost four AM,” Razor says, cutting through my spiraling thoughts of doom. “The lights are still on but I don’t wanna wait any longer. People are gonna start waking up soon.”

I peer up at the windows of her apartment. Dots of light are sparkling in them, but from what I can see, the rest of the apartment is dark. “Yeah, let’s move. Get this over with.”

We exit the van and Razor opens the back, while I signal the guys in the other van to join us. We brought two vans just in case the Devils spot us. In that case we’ll be using the second one as a decoy.

Joker seriously over plans these things. But it’s good to have all those instructions to fall back on now, so I don’t have to think too hard about what we’re actually doing.

When I was abducted, I went into the car with those two monsters willingly. They pretended to be good people, offered me food and a warm place to sleep on one of the coldest nights I ever spent anywhere. Eden almost got to believe a sweet lie like that tonight. She could’ve come willingly with Joker. Now she’ll get her freedom taken away by force. And I’m gonna do it. That doesn’t sit well with me. Makes me nauseous if I think too hard about it, and my head wants to start spinning. And I’m very preoccupied with trying to ignore all that as Manic picks the lock on the back door of her building and all the while we’re climbing a narrow, steep flight of stairs to her second floor apartment. He doesn’t even have to pick the lock there, because it’s already unlocked.

This girl really is about to have the rug of her perfect, pampered, safe life pulled from under her. I feel bad for her and I shouldn’t. Nothing good will come of me losing it right now.

Doom and Manic enter first, looking around the one room studio space which is well lit up by all the Christmas lights she has up.

“Shit, there’s two of them,” Manic curses, pointing at the bed at one end of the space. “I think it’s that whore Ariel. What do we do now?”

They all turn to me for an answer. Which is fitting, I guess, since I’m the VP. What I want to say is that we should abort. Leave and do this another time.

But what I say is, “We take them both. We can’t leave any witnesses.”

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