Page 76 of My Karmic Destiny

“What the fuck?” Instant hisses with my voice.

“What’s wrong?” Dante asks from across the kitchen table.

“Nothing. I… I need to go to work.” She scrambles to find an excuse to leave abruptly.

“Right now?” Evan challenges. “We were talking about our future.”

Do they really not know it’s not me?

No wait, coming out of my haze, I remember they know… they had gone to Death. They’re probably waiting for me to take control and are biding their time with her.

I imagine she hates having to pretend to be nice and talk things out with them. From what I know of her, she’s categorically impatient. But why is she wasting time doing that? Perhaps she wants to keep them as her servants.

“If you leave now, we’re over,” Dante threatens. He moves closer, glowering at us. I can see how differently he looks at her than with the love he usually has in his eyes with me. It reveals so much and it breaks my heart.

“You can wait,” Instant snaps and vanishes.

We pop away to the boardwalk. It’s almost vacant now that the carnival has moved on.

“Tessa?” she growls. “Is that you, you little bitch?”

Little bitch?

I don’t think I can reply to her even if I wanted to. Which I don’t.

She’s watching people, searching for a victim so she can consume their energy—their souls. No, I can’t allow her to do that, for several reasons.

I need to grab onto her essence and capture it. No need for a discussion. I must act now.

Hypnos will have to handle the rest. I just hope I can trust him to accomplish what he claims he can do.

Being back in my body, even though it isn’t under my control, still gives me access to my powers. I gather the magic that I naturally have, then I pull from Death’s gift.

Next, I focus on the energy that is the goddess invader.

I expected her essence to be bright with golden, blinding light, as I had seen her before when she recruited me. But she’s a pale imitation of herself.

This is good news. Perhaps I have a chance to subdue her.

I reach out with my astral arms to rip her from my body.

“Bitch!” she screams, and the few pedestrians in the area turn to see what the commotion is.

She doesn’t waste her godly magic on transportation when she needs every drop to fight me.

And the battle begins…

29

FAITH AND LIES

EVAN

“Do you think Tessa made her run?” Kurtis asks, excitedly.

“What else could have made her drop everything and leave like that?” Dante holds out his hand, toward the now empty seat.

I worry we shouldn’t speak so freely when Instant might be spying on us, but I chime in anyway. “Maybe Instant didn’t want to deal with pretending to care about our relationships,” I offer, feeling pessimistic and disheartened. Iwantto believe Tessa can win, but Death warned us this might be a losing battle.

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