Read Fated: Karma Series, Book Three for Free Online

of declining.
    “Thanks.” I could see him visibly rethinking his opinion about Fate and I.
    I wanted to pat him on the back and say, “Good luck figuring us out, because I certainly can’t.”
    Fate’s eyes narrowed with annoyance and a promise of tracking me down later. I silently replied with a, so sue me. It was an expression that he liked to pull out often and it hadn’t gotten any less irritating with use.
    His eyes narrowed even further.
    I smirked, pulling out another weapon from his arsenal.
    He shook his head and grunted.
    I tallied a win for my column.
    Knox scooted in front of me to open the door and then his hand reached out in my direction, like it wanted to land on my back. It dropped before I could make out its true destination. I nodded at him to go into the hall first, since I didn’t like being corralled. For all I knew he thought because I was a transfer I needed help walking or something crazy.
    I shot a final look back at Fate as Knox exited first to see Fate’s eyes on the guy’s back. Wow, he really didn’t like this guy.
    I closed the door on Fate and Knox and I walked down the hallway. Then I started counting down the seconds, thirty, twenty-nine, twenty…
    “You two a thing?” he asked ahead of schedule.
    It wasn’t a question I was prepared to answer, even for someone naturally good on her feet. The fact that I knew it was coming didn’t seem to help much. Awkward didn’t become less so because you got prior warning.
    “What kind of thing would that be?” I said, shooting for ignorance.
    “Enough said.”
    Maybe Knox wasn’t so bad. He’d agreed to help and now here he was, taking the hint. Have to love a person who knows when to shut up. It was almost like he was human.
    It made giving him the most rudimentary tour of the building I could get away with not entirely horrible. I was positive he didn’t need it though. He’d known where Fate’s office was before I’d known he had one. He should’ve given me the tour.
    But that wasn’t why I was doing it and not why he was going along with it. We both sized up each other’s measure as he was pretending to size up the halls.
    With that in mind, I felt very little guilt when I gave him the bum’s rush at the lobby door. I shook his hand and went my own way.
     
     

Chapter Four
     
    “There are some people who would like an official introduction.”
    The apples fell out of my hands as Paddy’s voice came from beside me when there’d only been a pile of pears a split second before. I turned to look at the old man. His fedora hat sat low on his brow and the cane he carried was looped around his arm, useless as ever.
    I was grateful he’d decided to appear. Hearing bodiless voices, even if I was certain they existed, was still disconcerting. You never knew when that one last push of crazy, which was flying my way almost daily, might thrust your brain into a spiral of mental illness.
    As far as falling apart, I was hanging in there mentally but the body wasn’t holding up quite as well as it used to. I had a part of Paddy in me, whatever he was; it would sure be nice to know. The fact that if I didn’t gauze and tape up the tattoo on my hip every day, I’d glow like a bug zapper on a starless night, left some glaring questions. The pain that woke me in the middle of the night was a little easier to ignore, at least during the day.
    I sometimes wondered if going along with Paddy’s plan had been akin to eating a special brownie and not knowing it wasn’t made by Betty Crocker until after it was digested.
    “Who would these people be?” It would be nice to place blind trust in Paddy but there was no one I trusted that much, not anymore, and especially not the brownie baker.
    Well, maybe there was one.
    “You know who. My people.” He reached into my cart, grabbed a Granny Smith and crunched down on it.
    “People?” I raised a single dark eyebrow and nailed him with my, and now let’s hear the truth stare I’d