Cheat (Karma Inc. Book 1) Read Online Free PDF Page A

my eyes were immediately drawn to the wall of windows at the back of my front room. It was the best view in all of Paris. My windows looked down on the dark waters of the Seine, the Eiffel Tower sparkled in the background. It was a scene I had never witnessed when I was alive. Now, I had the pleasure of looking at it from afar. But only from the other side of a window. If I were to open my window, I would see nothing. It wasn’t real. But it felt real on this side of the glass.
    I glanced down at my watch. It would be right around sunset in California. I placed my palm on the glass of the window and thought San Francisco over and over again in my head. I closed my eyes so I wouldn’t get disoriented and when I opened them I was looking out onto the Bay as the sun was setting behind the iconic view of the bridge.
    I was getting better. It had taken me twice as long to get the view of Paris this morning. I watched as emergency vehicles sped across the bridge, heading to some unknown emergency. I had never been to San Francisco either. It had been on my bucket list. But, I hadn’t checked off one thing on my bucket list. The joys of dying at twenty-one.
    I had been lying to myself about being used to being dead.
    It still didn’t sit well with me. Especially when I caught sight of myself. My shimmering reflection in the glass gave me chills. I wasn’t Cassandra anymore. I didn’t look like myself, I didn’t feel like myself. I was something else, something new, something I wasn’t used to. It was odd.
    “You can’t be yourself anymore, Cassie,” Brandon had told me the first time I glanced in the mirror in his office. “You’re dead.”
    He was right. Cassandra Mercier was dead. I had to get over it.
    I walked into the spacious master bedroom, coming face to face with the new Cassie. The girls had insisted that I have a wall of floor to ceiling mirrors.
    “You’ll need to be aware of how you look before you leave, always check the mirror. Back and front, Cassie,” Fallon had told me.
    I didn’t like looking at the new me, even though I had to admit the new me was rather attractive. It just wasn’t me.
    The new Cassie was a few inches taller. The new Cassie had long brunette hair, which could be changed easily while in Afterlife. The new Cassie was slim and had a mouth that was turned down in a perpetual pout. My eyes were the only thing that I recognized. They had stayed the same. Same green color, same shape. It was true what they said about eyes being the window to the soul. They would never change.
    I dug through my closet and pulled out a pair of jeans and a dressy blouse. I smelled like sun and pool, so I jumped into the shower to wash off. It took me very little time to get ready, being on this side of Afterlife. You didn’t need much makeup if your skin was perfect and hairstyles were simply a matter of willing them into existence. It was boring, but time effective. Technically, I didn’t even have to shower since any smell or any imagined grime was all in my head. Manifesting because I expected it, not because it actually happened.
    I glanced at myself in the mirror again. Everything was in place on this stranger. I slipped on a pair of heels, which will never hurt my feet, and walked out of my bedroom that I didn’t need to sleep in.
    Brandon was waiting for me in my front room. He had pulled something up on my personal computer. This was my first time using the thing, since this was my first case. I referred to it as a computer lightly, it was a panel that took up a third of my front room wall and was controlled by our will. Another thing I hadn’t gotten the hang of quite yet. Brandon had told us that we could will anything into existence as long as it had been invented in the living world. The computer was one of those perks, some crazy NSA tech.
    “Case 101, Mercier,” Brandon said to my wall, the background color faded to a light gray and a folder appeared, pulsing slightly. He touched the