Then, it hit me. My powers called to me, asking me what to do. The air whispered with it. It would be so easy to relinquish my powers, to make all of this stop. Alma was right there, waiting, ready. It would take nothing at all to let her become Karma and to know that my loved ones would be safe.
My inner voice screamed at me to guard my vulnerability, but my veins itched with an impulse to take the easy way out and surrender. The power flowing within me seemed almost tangible as it begged me to show mercy. With one simple word, all this pain and worry would be gone. Things could go back to how they were before Alma arrived with her plans of taking away our peace. Giving up meant so much more than freeing my people from harm. It also meant sacrificing what made me special. Not my powers. My powers didn't make me special. At this moment, that had never been so clear. It was my love for my friends, and my willingness to face the darkness to save them. That was what made me special. Love. Devotion. Loyalty.
If people like me relinquished our powers completely, leaving me mundane and vulnerable, humans who'd no longer have any protection against supernatural forces like Alma's.
This thought was quickly followed by another: What if letting her win wasn't a bad idea? If I allowed myself to enter into this bargain that she proposed where I gave up my magical essence life wouldn’t become miraculously easier or boring
Come on, do it.
Protect the people you love.
Make the safe choice.
Do what’s right.
It’ll take nothing at all.
My teeth ground together, and I shook my head. Surrendering my powers would be easier at this moment, but it would never be right. Maybe there had been a part of me that didn’t want to give up my powers because I wanted them for myself. I wanted my life to remain the same. My powers were linked in my mind to my happiness. I didn’t feel that way any longer. My powers weren't the reason I was happy, yet I still couldn’t let go of my powers. The Karma who gave them to me chose me for a reason. When it was my time to pass my powers on, I’d choose a worthy person to take my powers. A person who'd never be Alma.
She frowned. “It’s time.”
“No,” I said, and the word came out surprisingly easily.
“No?” She cocked a brow, staring at me as if I’d lost my mind. “Do you have any idea the horrors you’ll bring down on yourself if you ignore the sacred covenant that is Karma’s magic?”
I stared. Hard. This was nothing more than a crotchety old woman.
Her lips curled. “Do you know about Karma’s Source?”
I didn’t answer, because I thought I knew, but I didn’t want to give her any information or let her know if I was wrong. More than that, she was looking for a reaction. I wasn’t about to give her one, so I gritted my teeth together.
“Karma was the creation of a group of witches desperate to help a mother who'd lost her child. That wasn't the only way Karma the person was created. The karma that exists in the world all around us is a magical force. It’s a creation that knows good and evil in absolutes. It is everywhere, but it’s smart, smarter than anyone could imagine. In this life, there are awful people. Others see those awful people sometimes having wealth, love, family, and good health, and they ask themselves why? Why do bad people have good things? Well, that’s because the Karma that exists all around us is smarter than we are. It knows the perfect moment to hurt a bad person.”
She looked sad for the briefest moment. “Karma, the person, has but a drop of that power. She has the ability to give good or bad karma in an instant. That power also has rules, important rules that can't be broken. One of those rules involves how you lose your powers and how you give them. If you break those rules, the karma that's all around us comes for you. A million times crueler than it is in its natural state. A million times faster and more ruthless. If you don’t give me your powers, you will never be happy again. Everyone and everything you love will be punished.”
Bits and pieces of what she said was true. Not about me having to give my powers to her though, even though the magic tightened around me, trying to convince me to do as she said had grown painful. A prickling and burning that had grown throughout her story, and now was impossible to ignore. She'd told enough truth to make it sound right, but there were a whopping amount of lies as well.
“How did you lose your powers then?” I asked.
Surprise flashed in her eyes. “As you’ve seen, I haven’t.”
It was my time to smile, despite the pain of this spell. “Not these powers. When you were Karma.”
She narrowed her eyes and pressed her lips together before saying, “Just give me the powers.”
“Never.”
Desperation twisted her expression. “You don’t understand. Yes, I was Karma once, and I lost my powers, but I’ve learned. I’ll never make that mistake again. Once I get them back, I’ll be different. I’ll be better.”
I shook my head. “You don’t deserve Karma’s powers. Maybe you did once, but you don’t now.”
“Sense me,” she demanded. “Sense how much I deserve this.”
I didn’t because I knew what I’d find and that it wasn’t true. She'd figured out a way to fool the karmic sensing part of my powers. The judgment part. She spread her arms out as if waiting for what I'd do, but I just waited as the crackling and burning intensified around me. A sob escaped my lips, and I pressed my hands to my ears for a moment, because they had to be bleeding.
Alma grabbed me by the shoulders and shook me hard, screaming over the crackling. "Do it now!" Her voice cracked from the force of her yell. "Now, before it's too late. Are you a fool? Don't you understand? Now, now. Before it's too late." Desperation tinted her expression, and as lightning flashed above us, the bones stood out in her face, showing the evil inside in stark relief.
Despite all that, I could barely hear her screaming over the roaring in my ears. The pain was never-ending. I sobbed as she shook my shoulders, but the spell was coming to an end around me, that much I knew. If I didn’t do as I was told, it would unleash, and I'd have to live with the consequences. If anything, bad happened to the people I loved, I might hate myself a little forever, but I couldn’t give in. Riding out this storm was the right thing to do.
