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nodded wearily and let her head flop back down onto the floor. She closed her eyes, exhaustion sucking at her. God, I need a vacation . Then, so softly she wondered if she had heard anything at all, there came the unmistakable whimper of a child’s cry. Coming from Wyatt’s corner.
    She opened her eyes and there it was. The faintest of ghostly green glows, inside Haines’s body, directly beneath his sternum.
    Oh, that can’t be good.
     

Chapter Four: Good Karma
     
    Ungodly early the next morning, Jo breezed through the tasteful front office of Karmic Consultants, smiled cheerfully at the latest in a long line of confused secretarial temps who never lasted more than a week, and waltzed right into her boss’s office without so much as a courtesy knock.
    She marched up to the imposing black stone desk, full speed ahead, take no prisoners, boosting herself up to sit on the smooth, black marble and swinging her feet in a way that never failed to piss off her boss.
    Luckily, her boss wasn’t in yet.
    Karma, founder and executive dictator of Karmic Consultants, was still in the Bat Cave—as Jo had taken to thinking of the mysterious condo beneath the KC offices. As far as Jo knew, no one had ever seen inside it, save Karma herself. The only entrance was an elevator connected directly to her office and controlled by a biometric panel—which only increased Jo’s belief that Karma was leaping into black spandex and flying off to save Gotham. Seriously, who used biometric sensors besides the CIA?
    The elevator itself had been painted to resemble a Japanese screen, blending seamlessly with the subtly Asian-influenced luxury of the rest of the office.
    Jo smiled cheekily up at the most visible of the surveillance cameras that monitored Karma’s office twenty-four/seven. Somewhere, Karma was watching—if she wasn’t already on her way up to tell Jo to get the hell off her desk.
    The elevator doors opened with a barely audible shush , and Karma’s one-nine-hundred-operator voice slid sensuously into the room in front of her. “Get the hell off my desk, Jo.”
    Karma did not look like a stereotypical psychic, or a channel, or any other mumbo-jumbo magician. Her tailored grey power suit would not have looked out of place on a courtroom lawyer, and she wore it with confidence and ease. She was tall and slim, and her features possessed the same subtle Asian influence as her furnishings, but her skin was dark—more caramel than cream. Jo had never seen her black hair unconfined, but she always imagined it would be long and geisha-straight if Karma ever released it from its rigid chignon prison.
    It was a pointless fancy though—Karma did not let her hair down. Ever.
    Jo bounced off of the desk, an unrepentant grin ruining the effect of her instant obedience. “’Sup, boss?”
    “You are, apparently. Rather early for you, isn’t it, Jo?” Karma slid into the executive chair behind her desk, as elegant and collected as ever, despite the hour.
    Jo had visited Karma’s office at every possible hour of the day. If the boss wasn’t in the office when Jo arrived, she appeared within moments, always looking crisp and unflappable, whether it was two or ten, a.m. or p.m. Jo had no idea when, if ever, she slept.
    She would wonder if Karma was human, if not for the fact that the big boss’s little brother Jake had recently gotten engaged to Jo’s cousin Lucy. Jake’s existence proved that Karma had not actually sprung fully formed from the head of Zeus, but rather in the more traditional way from the loins of a retired FBI Agent and a hippie from New Mexico.
    Karma made a delicate throat-clearing sound, which immediately reminded Jo of Wyatt and his stick and the reason she was here at this dreadful hour.
    “We have a problem.” Jo flopped down onto one of the high-backed chairs facing the desk.
    “Do we?” Karma said without inflection, her voice pouring over the words like liquid.
    “My client—Wyatt Haines?—he’s