Read Online Destiny's Song (The Fixers, book #1: A KarmaCorp Novel) by Audrey Faye - Free Book Online

tried to imagine a ruler of one of the inner planets dropping by for a bottle of homebrew—or Yesenia, for that matter. They’d likely give someone heart failure.
    “I don’t think this is Emelio, however.” Tameka was still watching the light trail approaching from the west. “He drives like a man with a lot of responsibility. This must be Evgenia.”
    The GooglePlex had known very little other than that she existed. “Got a quick download on her?”
    The retired Fixer chuckled. “I’ve been here going on twenty-five years now, and I don’t even begin to pretend I’ve got Evgenia figured out. She’s part farmer’s daughter, part voodoo priestess, part Scottish laird.”
    I wasn’t even sure what all those things were. “Sounds complicated.”
    “She is.” A big pause as we both watched the incoming vehicle. “She’s smart and fierce, and she loves her son dearly. And she’s happiest when she’s on a battlefront.”
    That was a whole heap more intel than I’d expected to get—and not at all reassuring. I took a cue from my host and stayed in my chair, watching as the b-pod landed with a flourish on a small circle of shorn grass and the lights flickered out.
    Moments later, a woman the size of a small mountain climbed out and called over to the patio. “Evening, Tameka. I hear you have company.”
    “You heard right.” Tameka fished again in the bucket beside her chair and made no move to get up. “Can I offer you a cider?”
    “Is this the local stuff, or your special supply?”
    My host chuckled. “You’ll have to drink to find out.”
    The woman had reached our little deck, and I decided that however informal Tameka might consider the visit, I didn’t want to meet this encounter lying down. I levered myself out of the lounging chair and held out a hand. “I’m Kish Drinkwater, Singer. Nice to meet you.”
    “Evgenia Lovatt, first and only wife of the Inheritor, if the man knows what’s good for him.”
    I suspected that if he didn’t, she’d make ship’s grease out of him. “I’ve heard he’s a smart man.”
    She snorted and took the bottle of cider Tameka held out. “I was hoping you’d be smart enough to ignore his request and stay home.”
    I hadn’t been aware he’d made one until I arrived, but I wasn’t about to say so. “Fixers go where we’re sent.”
    “Just a cog in a wheel, are you?” She eyed me with an air of vague disdain. “I told Emelio we could make this happen without interference from some wisp of a girl who doesn’t know a scythe from a winnower.”
    That was the kind of crap I couldn’t take lying down, even if I didn’t have the foggiest idea what a winnower was. “I’m a wisp of a girl who could spend the next ten seconds convincing you to strip naked and poop golden eggs.” Or I could if KarmaCorp’s ethics weren’t quite so pesky.
    Tameka nearly choked on her cider.
    Evgenia just raised an eyebrow. “Got some spunk in there, do you?”
    “My mother had some other names for it.”
    That almost got a smile. “I imagine.”
    I was exhausted, but not enough to miss the data she was sending me. She might not like my presence here, but it didn’t sound like she objected to my mission’s endpoint. Which might well mean she had caused its necessity—I imagined that her son was well-squished under his mother’s thumb, but maybe Janelle Brooker didn’t like getting pushed around.
    Smart women had dug in their feet with far less cause.
    My job might well be to get Evgenia out of the way. I took a sip of my cider and carefully bounced a subsonic pitch at the immense woman who was currently sizing me up. When the resonances returned, even my Talent had the sense to wince. The lowest base note I’d ever heard, and rock solid to boot.
    Evgenia would be about as easy to influence as an intergalactic battle cruiser. Doable, but painful as hell. I watched as she turned to make small talk with my host and hoped like heck it wouldn’t come to