Destiny's Song (The Fixers, book #1: A KarmaCorp Novel) Read Online Free PDF Page A

bounced up after it.
    She looked enough like my friend Iggy that I capitulated. “Yes?”
    She flashed the smile of a breezy sprite who never sat still for long. “Can you show us how a Singer works? Please?”
    It was the “please” that did me in. And the crystal-clear memory that I’d been the kid asking that exact same question once.
    I hadn’t known how to sit still for long back then either.
    Something quick, and then I’d get the hell out. I looked around the lecture pod again, seeking an appropriately innocuous experiment. By third year, these girls would be old hands at controlling their Talents. They’d be learning the subtler and more important powers of observation.
    The red-headed sprite’s hand flew up again. “What are you doing?”
    I wasn’t used to working out loud, but that was the whole point of being here. “I’m assessing crowd factors. Singers don’t just have voices—we have eyes, too, and smart Fixers don’t use their Talent until they have to.” Less paperwork that way.
    The girl studied her classmates with sharp interest. “What do you see when you look at us?”
    More than I’d ever let her know, but I could run through the basics. “You’re far less restless than the last trainee class I visited.”
    She wrinkled her nose. “They were probably just tadpoles.”
    Apparently, the youngest trainee cohort was never going to escape that nickname. “Perhaps. Youth is one reason for people to squirm, but there are others. They might lack discipline, or they might not feel a part of the group, or they might not like what they’re hearing from whoever is speaking. Those are all useful things for a Fixer to know.”
    There were a couple in the class who were getting restless right now. I glanced at the teacher, knowing I’d have been one of them. Her eyes were quietly traveling her students, collecting data, just like I’d been doing. Good—she wasn’t one of the ones marking time until retirement, then.
    Probably not a surprise with Yesenia’s daughter in the room.
    Which was a good reminder to tread very carefully with my little demonstration. I let my eyes flow over the trainees one more time, noting the seating pattern. The girls had organized themselves in small clumps, but I didn’t know if that was teacher or trainee choice.
    Mapping the basic social dynamics seemed like an innocuous enough experiment. I sought out a couple of the brighter pairs of eyes. “I see that you’ve seated yourselves into some interesting groupings.” I held up a palm to forestall anyone answering the question I hadn’t actually asked. “That’s something you’ll see in many social settings, and it can give you important clues to work with.”
    A girl in the back with temp face tats much like Tee’s spoke up for the first time. “So it can tell you who’s important in the group, stuff like that?”
    I raised an eyebrow. If I read her right, she was trying to dig me into a hole—or at the very least, daring me to call Yesenia’s progeny important. “It can. But you sit on your own, for example, and that’s something that’s hard for just my eyes to interpret. Maybe the group excludes you, or maybe you control the underground lines of power in the group and you don’t want me to know.”
    I could see the surprised flickers of respect hit her eyes. “Or maybe I’m just a loner.”
    I grinned, liking her attitude. “Or maybe that.”
    A girl at the front turned around, voice flat. “Or maybe you just got here late, like usual.”
    That hadn’t changed since my trainee days either. I resisted the urge to punch the by-the-rules bully in the nose—it was ten years too late to be pulling dumb stunts like that. I could, however, possibly make the same point with a little more finesse. Talents never lied, especially if you knew what to ask them.
    I walked out from behind the lectern, taking a few deep, cleansing breaths as I did so. “What I’m going to do now is a simple harmonics