The Stolen Karma Of Nathaniel Valentine (The Books Of Balance Book 1)

by Justin Bloch

  He froze, his head cocked to one side as he listened. Whoever was out there was trying to move with stealth, but with the ground covered in dry leaves, Nathaniel could hear every move. He struggled with his hoodie, shooting glances back into the darkness of the woods, the deep black shadows. Whatever it was seemed to realize that he knew of its presence and began to move faster. Nathaniel caught sight of two pale gray eyes reflecting light from the moon, gave up trying to free the hoodie without ripping it. He thrust his body forward, twisting to the right, and heard the branch snap behind him. He crashed to the ground, could hear the thing closing in, and then Sol was there.

  As soon as the karma policeman saw Nathaniel’s face, the straight razor was out and he whirled around, looking for whatever it was that had frightened his charge. The moonlight glimmered on the long blade, turning it bone white. There were no more footsteps in the forest. Whatever it was had seen the cop and fled, or was now simply waiting.

  “What is it?” whispered Sol, still peering around the shadowed woods.

  “Something was out there. I heard it,” Nathaniel wheezed, trying to catch his breath. His windpipe ached.

  “Why didn’t you get out of the tree right away?” the karma policeman hissed. “I wasn’t able to come through.”

  “My hoodie got caught on a branch, I couldn’t reach it. Then I heard something, and I panicked,” he answered. He put a hand on a nearby tree and hoisted himself to his feet. Bits of dirt and detritus clung to his clothes, and he did his best to brush them off.

  The karma policeman made the straight razor disappear into his jacket. “Whatever it was, it’s gone now.” He looked up to the road, where another car rushed by. “Come on, let’s go.”

  They climbed the small hill to the street, Nathaniel rubbing his back where the stick had snagged him. There were no streetlights on this curve of the road, but the moon was full and the sky clear, and Nathaniel led the way. They had come out on MacPhail just before it intersected Brierhill, the street on which Nathaniel’s apartment complex was. He set a swift pace, anxious to make it back to the safety of his home.

  They crossed Brierhill to the sidewalk on the other side. Tall fences blocked the yards from view and they ducked under several low-hanging branches from the trees growing in the small grassy strip between the sidewalk and road. A few cars shot by them and Nathaniel caught snatches of music from open windows as they passed. A couple walked by with a small dachshund. They strolled hand in hand, their auras almost identical shades of carmine red.

  As Nathaniel and the karma policeman cut across the lawn, Nathaniel dug in his pocket for his keys. He picked the building key out of the mix and unlocked the door, holding it for Sol. They walked down the hall and called the elevator, watching the numbers above the sliding doors blink on and off as the car descended.

  “It feels weird to be back here,” Nathaniel said, running a hand through his hair. “I can’t believe it was only three days ago that this all started.”

  “Stress can make time flexible.”

  The elevator pinged and opened. Once inside, Nathaniel pressed the button for the fifth floor. The doors hissed closed and they started to rise. Nathaniel was eager to be back inside his apartment, his body jittery with excitement. He had to fight to keep still and not fidget. The cop stood stoically beside him, staring at his watery reflection in the burnished metal of the doors.

  When the elevator came to a stop, they exited and made their way down the hall to 507. Nathaniel slipped his key into the knob, opened the door and stepped inside the dark apartment. He reached for the light switch and was struck from behind, sent sprawling onto the rug. He heard the door slam shut just as two cool hands closed around his throat.

  Chapter X

  Nathaniel tried to claw the hands away from his already bruised windpipe, but the grip, although not choking, was impenetrable. He was held fast, his feet knocked from under him, forced to his knees. The only light was the single streetlamp outside, a few meager stripes of cat’s eye yellow high up near the ceiling. The rest of the apartment was varying shades of black. He threw reckless punches over his shoulders, but his assailant dodged them easily, linked an arm around his throat and locked his hands behind his back. His legs were awkward beneath him and he could not leverage himself back to his feet. He realized belatedly that the hand holding his wrists was small, smooth: he was being overpowered by a woman. He was beginning to think he’d been better off when he was ignored by the opposite sex.

  The door exploded open and the karma policeman stood silhouetted within it, a dark shape with dark intentions. The straight razor was in his hand.

  The woman tensed, then released her grip on him and said happily, “Oh, hi, Sol.” Nathaniel fell unprepared onto the floor, rubbed his cheek painfully on the rough weave of the carpet. He lay there, breathing hard. Each inhalation burned its way down his throat.

  “What is going on?” Sol growled. “Why did you attack him?”

  “I didn’t attack him,” she said. She had a voice like a ripe Granny Smith apple, bright, crisp, and tart. “I subdued him. I don’t know who he is. He could be anyone.”

  “He is the Cipher.”

  “Well, it’s a good thing I didn’t attack him then.”

  The light came on overhead, and Nathaniel put a hand on the wall and pulled himself to his feet. He was staring at a framed photograph of himself and his parents at an amusement park, flanked by people in cartoon character costumes. The picture had been knocked askew, and he righted it with a still-shaking hand.

  “Nathaniel,” Sol said from behind him, “this is Nova.”

  He gave the photo a last look, then turned away and faced her.

  It was as if all the women in the world were Kansas, and she was Oz.

  He was struck dumb, couldn’t remember his name, why his cheek hurt, whose apartment this was. She was stunning, looking at him with large blue eyes the color of a child’s drawing of the sky, light twinkling in them like sunlight on a snow bank. The corners of her mouth ticked up in a playful smile, highlighting a delicate blush of rose along her cheekbones. Her white-blonde hair was so pale it seemed almost without color, falling across her shoulders in soft, tousled curves. She stood like a prism before him, beautiful herself and illuminating the intricate beauty of the unremarkable apartment around them, turning it into something special, something almost magical.

  “Hi,” she said, and he remembered to blink, to breathe. She reached for his hand and in the instant of contact, a spark of static leapt between them. They both jumped, grinned. “Nice to meet you. Sorry about that whole thing,” she said, and motioned toward the entrance hall.

  “Sure, yeah. Makes perfect sense.”

  She raised one eyebrow. “What does?”

  “That’s a good question,” he replied. He could feel heat in his cheeks. Why in the world did he turn into such a rambling idiot around girls? But this time something came to him, like an unexpected birthday check mailed by a rarely-seen relative. “I seem to have that effect on women I’ve just met.”

  She grinned, sat down and said, “Speaking of that, I cleaned up your bedroom.” Sol remained standing, but Nathaniel took a place in the corner chair. Robber jumped into his lap as soon as he was settled, purred loudly as Nathaniel ran one hand down his back. It struck him then, a floodlight illuminating a dark field: he was home.

  Nova pulled her feet up beneath her and Nathaniel took a moment to marvel over her, this gorgeous woman seated on his couch like it was the most logical place in the universe for a gorgeous woman to be. She was wearing a gray blouse, dark slacks and a long, dark jacket much like Sol’s, and it came to Nathaniel suddenly: she was a karma policewoman. There was a fine-linked silver chain around her neck, with a white gold ring dangling just within sight at the level of the first fastened button on her blouse. He wondered suddenly how Sol knew her, what their relationship was. Were they a couple? He examined the karma policeman with green-eyed suspicion.

  “Had
any luck?” Nova asked.

  Sol was silent for a moment, looking out the window. “Not much. We visited the sight of its latest kill last night, but didn’t find anything.”

  “You don’t have any leads at all?”

  “Son may have given us something, but…” He trailed off, shrugged at the window and turned away from it.

  “What did he say?” Nova asked, leaning forward. She had a certain gravity that drew Nathaniel’s eyes back to her over and over. She would catch him staring and he would blink and blush and look away, glance around his apartment, and inevitably find his gaze fixed on her once again.

  “He told me that it was the same as last time. He told me to ask the Divinors.”

  “The Divinors?” she said, her brow furrowing. “And what would the last Allamagoosalum have to do with any of this?”

  “I don’t know. Maybe nothing, and there’s no way to find out if they connect anyway. The information came from Son. Who knows what it could mean?”

  The three of them sat in silence for a few moments. Nathaniel scratched Robber behind the ears and felt weariness creeping over him. He’d been up for only a handful of hours at this point, but they’d been a rough handful, and he was still recovering from the previous day.

  “You saw Pestilence.”

  “Yes. At the Cathedral of the Spire. How did you hear?”

  “He’s made some noise since you saw him. But you know what this could mean,” she said. She reached inside her jacket and withdrew a skein of blue yarn and two long needles, then began to knit. Robber sat up, interested, tracking the dangling end of the yarn. “All four of them may have reappeared. There are rumors that War has been sighted in Nod.”

  “Only rumors,” replied the policeman.

  “Nod, Sol. And you saw one of them yourself. They’re back.”

  “We don’t know that for certain,” Sol scoffed. “Pestilence and War may have returned alone. Perhaps they discovered a way to escape the Darking.”

  Nova gave the karma policeman a hard look. “It doesn’t matter whether it’s two or four of them. Even one is enough to warrant concern.” She turned her attention back to her knitting.

  Sol glared at her, then disappeared into the kitchen and returned with a tall glass of water. Nathaniel watched him, amused: he had never seen someone drink so angrily before.

  He could feel the tension between them, could feel himself fading into the background of their thoughts. “Um, yeah, so I’m going to bed,” he said. He got to his feet, holding Robber Baron with one hand. “It was nice to meet you, Nova. Goodnight.”

  She looked up from her needles and smiled at him. “Goodnight.”

  Sol said nothing, only drank the hell out of his glass of water, and Nathaniel rolled his eyes at the karma policeman’s back, then padded into his room and laid his cat on the pillow. Robber yawned and peered at Nathaniel with sleepy eyes. Nathaniel stripped off his clothes, letting them lay where they fell, and shut the door all but a crack so that Robber could get out during the night if he wanted. He turned off the light and crawled into bed.

  The sheets were cool against his skin and he nestled deeper beneath them. In the other room, Nova’s needles clicked softly together, and Nathaniel smiled and drifted off to sleep.

  Chapter XI

  On the second day after his dream of fives, Nathaniel woke to the sound of a steady rain against the window and a bedroom cloaked in miserable gray. He could hear the murmur of quiet conversation coming from the living room. His head felt addled, like a top that was wobbling near the end of its spin, and he sat up slowly, grabbed a glass from his nightstand. He took a drink, then realized the water must have been there since before he’d traveled to the world beside this one, and spit it back into the glass. He leaned against his headboard and watched the storm for several minutes. His throat ached.

  He let his mind wander. There were things to think about, heavy things, but focusing on his problems and trying to force a solution out of them would get nothing done. They were like a jigsaw puzzle, and he needed to work toward the center by starting at the corners. After awhile, he slid out of bed and padded across the carpet to the bathroom. He caught a brief glimpse of himself in the mirror, tangled, dirty hair, a ghostly purple bruise blooming around his throat, winced and turned away. He turned on the shower, twisting the temperature control all the way to the left, shed his boxers, waited a moment, and stepped into the steaming water. He hissed as the jets struck his back but resisted the urge to jump out. There was a frosted glass window in the shower and he opened it all the way, put his arms against the chilly tile and rested his chin on them, staring out at the downpour. Wisps of fog swirled over the sill as the cool air from outside met the heated air in the bathroom.

  He shut the shower off after half an hour and stood dripping in the tub. His skin glowed pink from the scalding water and the kiss of the breeze coming in the window raised goose bumps across his back. He grabbed his towel from the rack and dried off.

  He left the bathroom and went to his closet, picked out a clean shirt and a pair of jeans. He gave himself a brief once-over in the mirror and opened the door to the living room.

  Nova was still in her place on the couch. Her knitting needles continued to fly, her work coiled in her lap. She smiled up at him, and the simple beauty of it made him feel like someone had punched him in the center of his chest.

  Sol sat in the corner chair, watching television. He had the news on, a story about Carli Barker, but when he saw Nathaniel, he tapped a button on the remote control and the television’s face went blank. “Good morning,” Sol said. “How did you sleep?”

  “Like the dead. Do I smell pancakes?”

  “Yes. Nova made them a little while ago.”

  “They should still be hot, if you’re interested,” she chimed.

  Nathaniel walked into the kitchen and grabbed a plate from the cupboard, heaped a stack of four pancakes on top. He added butter and syrup, then sat down at the small table and ate, watching as the trees whipped back and forth in the wind outside. He finished in just a few minutes, and, with his stomach full and warm, washed off the dish and left it to dry in the rack. He went back into the living room and sat down beside Nova, feeling like an awkward teenager on a first date. Robber leapt into his lap, stretching his neck forward to be petted.

  Sol straightened in his chair and ran a hand over his hair. “Do you have a car, Nathaniel?”

  “Yeah,” he answered. “Why, are we going somewhere?”

  “Aberdeen. Do you know where it is?”

  “Sure, about twenty minutes away.” He curled Robber’s tail around one finger and scratched the cat behind his ears with another. “What’s in Aberdeen?”

  “The Shine. Do you remember History mentioning them in his story?” The karma policeman stood up and walked to the window, raising the blind so he could watch the weather better. He seemed anxious, although about what Nathaniel couldn’t tell.

  “Sort of. Trouble makers or something?”

  “Yes. They are a hive demon, very much like bees or ants. Stories about poltergeists and the like can usually be attributed to the Shine. They have nests all over this world and the one beside it.” He paused and went on with some measure of disdain, “They are the only Inhabitant permitted to regularly influence karma.” He hesitated again, eyed Nathaniel. “You don’t seem surprised.”

  “If I’ve learned anything from my time with you,” he answered, “it’s that the Source doesn’t have a single rule that hasn’t already been broken about a million times.”

  Sol nodded. “Because the Shine are part of a hive that doesn’t recognize individuality, it isn’t possible to punish a single being. And in the end, they cause only mischief, nothing of serious note. The karma police allow them to get away with their silly games, and in return, we control them.”

  “They prove useful sometimes,” interjected Nova, staying her needles to look up at Nathaniel. “And they have inspired a great many stories.”<
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  “We may be able to get more information out of them about the Allamagoosalum,” explained Sol. “The Shine are as omnipresent as any Inhabitant can be. What one sees, they all see. And they see a great deal.”

  “So we’re going to interrogate them.”

  “Essentially, yes.” The karma policeman watched as Nova took up her knitting once more. “We can leave whenever you’re ready. I know the way.”

  “Are we coming back here before we go anywhere else?”

  Sol considered. “Yes. Yes, I think so. If for no other reason than to tell Nova what we learned.”

  Nathaniel’s eyes opened wide. “You’re not coming with us?” he asked. It was like being told that an explosion at the Oreo factory had taken out his favorite bookstore as well.

  She smiled and shook her head. “No, not to visit the Shine. Those guys are the worst. I’d be more a distraction to them than a help to you.”

  Nathaniel nodded, stood regretfully and shrugged his way into his coat. Sol fastened the catches of his own long jacket.

  “Here,” Nova breathed. She rose in one graceful motion and wrapped the long, blue length of her knitting around Nathaniel’s neck, standing on tiptoe to make it all the way around. “It’s a scarf. We can’t have you catching cold.” She smiled and kissed him quickly on the cheek. The place where her lips pressed against his skin went numb.

  He ran the thick, soft weight of the scarf through his fingers. He wanted to say something debonair, something to sweep her off her feet, something like…But no, he had nothing, and she was staring at him, grinning at the way he kept shifting back and forth on his feet. “Gosh, thanks,” he exclaimed suddenly. He realized he sounded like a twelve-year-old who has just been given a dirt bike for Christmas. He wanted to die.

  Nova smiled at him again, but her eyes betrayed her, could not lie to him like her lips: there was sadness beneath. And whatever that sadness hinted at worried Nathaniel more than what he had learned in the days before. Because Nova wasn’t like Sol. She cared, she was more connected to things than he was. It made Nathaniel wonder how they could both be angels, when they were both so incredibly different from each other.