Grower's Omen (The Fixers, book #2: A KarmaCorp Novel) (2 page)

I
eyed
the side buffet table and wondered if it would pick today to finally give up the ghost. It had been holding up the weight of Lightbody Sunday dinners for longer than I’d been alive, but that didn’t mean it wasn’t going to someday collapse under the insane number of dishes and plates and bowls piled on its sturdy surface.

Three of my smallest relations had taken up residence under the table—clearly they didn’t think it was falling down anytime soon. I laid my hand on one of the corners and pushed a small vibration of Talent from my lower chakras into the old wood of the table. A reminder of its DNA—strength, roots, shelter. Just in case Dad and the aunties had gone more overboard than usual.

“Are you expecting more people?”

I grinned up at Devan, who had just appeared at my left shoulder and stood eyeing the table avidly. He was impossible not to like, even if he’d created some very strong ripples in the life of my best friend—most of which hadn’t landed yet. “My dad always cooks enough to feed an army of strays, and then my aunties show up and double it.”

He hummed in appreciative happiness as he surveyed the platters. “I really like your family.”

Everyone did—and this was one of our best, most persuasive forms of community glue. “They’ll be happy to send you home with leftovers.”

“Even better.” He handed me a plate and balanced two on his arm.

I looked around, curious. “What did you do with Kish?” She hadn’t been more than three millimeters from Devan since he’d arrived.

He added fried fish to both plates and smiled wryly. “I think the aunties swallowed her.”

Uh, oh. He probably deserved fair warning. “They’re matchmakers. Fairly heavy-handed ones.”

He laughed. “They’re too late this time.”

No they weren’t. “They want to make sure you stick.” Anything else would shatter Kish’s not-so-tough digger-rock heart into a billion pieces, and they were already hard at work doing what our clan did almost instinctively—wrapping her, and him, in the protective arms of family.

The Lightbodies had adopted Kish long ago.

Devan gave me a quick, intent look and started scooping potato salad. “There’s only one thing she said we had to do this week, and that was show up for dinner tonight.”

Of course she had. The rules for adoptees were the same as for genetic Lightbodies. “That’s because she knew a posse would come hunt her down if the two of you didn’t show up.” Missing Sunday dinner was never an option, particularly when you had a hot new guy in your bed. The aunties were fearsome. I grinned—it was time to see what this guy was really made of. “They’re probably quizzing her on your skills as a lover.”

Devan’s choking laugh earned him a few more bonus points. And a small reprieve, from me at least. It probably wasn’t fair to harass him before he got to eat something. “Don’t worry, they already love you. I hear you sent over bacon.”

He grinned. “Bacon is pretty good currency around here.”

My father had practically cuddled the package when it had arrived. Devan Lovatt definitely wasn’t dumb. Then again, he was royalty, and even if Bromelain III was a minor fiefdom by galactic standards, he’d probably navigated tougher rooms than this one. I handed him my filled plate. “Go rescue her.” Fifteen years of Lightbody chatter still hadn’t cured Kish of her digger-rock shyness, especially when it came to talking about sex.

Which wouldn’t slow the aunties down one little bit.

I grabbed a new plate to load and smiled to myself as he walked away. I wasn’t the last one who would check him out this evening, but the guy seemed like he could handle a little friendly scrutiny. I snagged myself a piece of fried fish, and then, balancing my plate temporarily on top of the udon noodles, broke a second piece of fish into three.

I squatted down and peered under the table at the littles. Good, their numbers hadn’t grown. “You guys hungry?”

Three dirty faces nodded in unison and reached for the fish bits. “Come out later for more food, okay?” Someone would probably remember to feed them, even under the table, but in this family, even the youngest were taught to speak up for themselves.

They would be elders one day.

I grinned. And I’d be one of the aunties.

I stood up again, happy with the familiar rituals of food and generational gathering and the occasional rescue of the newbies in our midst.

“You’re smiling like the cat that swallowed all the potato salad.”

I looked at my cousin Injiri, one of my favorite people on the planet, and laughed. “Is that even a thing?”

She borrowed my fork and used it to steal a piece of my fried fish. “What, cats? Sure. They’re those furry four-legged things that live in Jacklin’s pod and hunt Aunt Mina’s fish.”

I snorted—the cats were already in the Lightbody family dungeon this week for rolling in the oregano patch and leaving black and orange hairs everywhere. At least oregano grew back faster than fish. “Just keep them away from my potato salad.”

She swiped a forkful of that too. “Gladly.”

“Why is it you two always get to the food first?” Davie, another one of my cousins, materialized out of thin air, which is hard to do when you’re massively pregnant.

I shook my head as she aimed a fork at my food too. “Don’t you guys believe in plates of your own anymore?”

“I do, and I’m on my way to load up. I just came over to ask you a favor.” Davie put away food faster than anyone I knew, especially when she was growing new Lightbodies.

I gave in and handed her my plate. “How’s the belly bean?”

“Ready to come out.”

I assumed that was wishful thinking on her part. I wasn’t one of the aunties, but even I knew babies took their own sweet time. “Still planning a low-grav water birth?”

“Yes.” She nodded and started in on my fried fish. “It’s giving the paper pushers fits.”

That would be the administrative arm of the company I worked for, which had to approve all particularly weird requests on Stardust Prime. “They usually approve things, it just takes time.”

“Either they’ll approve it or they won’t.” Davie didn’t look particularly concerned. “This baby’s coming out one way or the other.”

Injiri grinned, eyes full of mischief. “We’ll just take the equipment we need and beg for forgiveness later.”

Great, my cousins were plotting minor treason over fried fish. “I’m not hearing this.” As a KarmaCorp employee, I tried not to know beforehand when my family was planning to break the rules. There was less paperwork that way—and less yelling in Yesenia’s office.

That woman forgave nothing, and she thought rules were holy.

Davie shrugged. “That’s two things they’ll have to dislike this month, then.”

I knew what the other one was. Gilly, Injiri’s littlest, was due for her dirtwalker ceremony, something KarmaCorp had officially frowned on since the organization had been founded and the first Lightbodies had gone to work in their gardens. The ceremony impacted the energy flows and made the StarReaders uncomfortable, or something like that. We’d never paid a lot of attention to the official gobbledygook. Dirtwalker ceremonies had been happening a lot longer than a certain upstart company had been working on the side of good in the universe. I had made more than one set of really important promises in my lifetime. And I would reaffirm my commitment to some of them at Gilly’s ceremony, along with every other Lightbody who could talk.

I lifted another piece of fried fish onto Injiri’s plate. “They’ll approve that one—they don’t usually raise much fuss about those.” Three hundred years of being ignored probably influenced that some.

Davie shrugged and gave the standard family answer. “We serve KarmaCorp, but we aren’t them.”

Quite a few of us actually were, but I knew facts rarely changed standard family arguments. Lightbodies were the keepers of promises much older than the honorable organization we’d chosen to serve, even if a goodly number of us became Fixers and Anthros and Peacekeepers. Lightbody genes had never produced a Traveler, but we’d contributed at least one of pretty much everything else to KarmaCorp’s ranks.

Mostly Growers, though—the consequences of having hands in the dirt all day. I borrowed Davie’s fork to eat some of my potato salad, knowing that the main ingredient had been living in the dirt not much more than an hour ago. I’d been the one to dig them up—or the one rescuing them from six-year-olds with shovels, anyhow. In the Lightbody clan, that was more or less the same thing. No child was ever kept out of the dirt.

I swallowed the potato salad and realized the silence had gone on too long. “What?”

Davie shook her head and laughed. “Thinking about a man or your stomach?”

Both of those were worthy causes. “Neither. What’d I miss?”

Injiri smiled. “Andy and me, we were wondering if you would do the honors and present Gilly’s feet to the dirt.”

I swallowed hard. That was a high honor, and one usually offered to the elders. “Wait, we’re not that old, are we?”

They both laughed. “Old enough,” said Davie dryly.

I waited—something deeper was on the move here, and I knew better than to rush it.

“It was Mundi’s suggestion.” Injiri’s face betrayed nothing but detached interest. “And Gilly really likes you, so Andy and I think it’s a good one.”

Mundi made the aunties look like innocent primary schoolers. She was old, wise, and sneaky as all get out. “What’s she up to?”

“You think I asked?” Injiri shrugged and made a wry face.

She might not have, but clearly I needed to. Something was up. I took my leave of the potato-salad stealers and circled the yard of my family compound, looking for the little old lady who was apparently stirring up dirt.

And promptly got tackled at the knees by two small-but-mighty human tanks. I managed to stop without dumping my new plate of food on either of them. Gilly grinned up from my right leg. Her older brother, Blue, had wrapped himself around my left.

Littles who knew how to get the attention they wanted.

I crouched down, letting them both snack from my plate.

“I getta dirrrr lerk up!” Gilly seemed very excited, but the cherry tomatoes in her cheeks were making her about as intelligible as your average squirrel.

“She’s excited to walk the dirt,” said Blue, around his own mouthful of food.

Gilly’s eyes lit as she looked first at her adored big brother, and then at me.

It touched something deep inside me that this felt so important to her. It was our most venerated Lightbody tradition—as soon as a child could walk, they would be presented to the earth, to the dirt. To toddle in wobbly steps, or in my case, to promptly sit down and eat handfuls of the stuff. Twenty-four years and I still hadn’t lived that one down.

But funny or solemn, the purpose of the ceremony never changed. Our solemn promise to raise the newest Lightbody in deep connection with the soil and to teach her to honor the green, growing things as our equals in the universe. My clan’s highest commitment, and one we would each renew as we said the sacred words.

I touched a shiny cheek. “You’re growing into such a big girl.” One who apparently had a thing for cherry tomatoes. I made a note to remind my dad to plant another row in the spring—a lot of the current crop of littles really liked them.

I reached a hand to Blue’s cheek too. “You were the last one to walk the dirt, so you’ll have to show Gilly how to do it.” There weren’t any wrong ways, but it was another of those Lightbody life lessons. Each one, teach one.

Blue’s grin was bright enough to be seen on distant stars. He loved being special, even if it was mostly by association—and he adored his baby sister.

I smiled and repeated the words that had come down from generations past remembering. “For a thousand years, ten thousand, we have walked in the dirt, rooted in the soil, honored the things that grow beside us.”

They nodded at me like I was a cute, but incomprehensible adult, and helped themselves to more of my food.

I climbed to my feet. “Gotta go, cuties. I need to go find Mundi.”

Blue eyed my plate. “You didn’t save her very much food.”

I laughed—getting a plate of food across the compound intact required more skill than I’d ever possessed. Hopefully someone else had brought the clan matriarch something to eat.

Taking my time, I wandered slowly through the people dotting the landscape like colorful flowers, absorbing the sounds, the feel, the smells—the rich sensory experience of home. By next Sunday, I’d probably be on a tin can headed off to somewhere that didn’t run to any of this.

Mundi wasn’t hard to find. I joined the chatting family members acting as her unofficial satellites. She had two littles on her lap, listening to some story or another. I smiled at the rapt attention on their faces—she was probably telling one of her whoppers. There was nothing Mundi loved better than making the impossible sound like absolute truth.

Occasionally, it even was.

When she finished, they scampered off, likely in search of food or playmates. She held up her hand, conversation going quiet as she looked straight at me. “I need to speak with Tyra for a moment.” Mundi waved her hand in an imperious gesture, and everyone promptly made scarce.

I squatted at her knees and smiled. “Am I in big trouble or little trouble?” I’d asked her that for the first time when I was barely two years old, caught picking garlic chives to use for dolly hair.

Mundi smiled. “I’m not certain. I had one of my premonitions.”

I raised a skeptical eyebrow. Her premonitions were the stuff of legend—and widely regarded as convenient excuses for bending people to her iron will.

“A real one.” Her lips twitched. “Still sassy, I see.”

Contrary to how that sounded, I’d had lunch with her two days ago. “Always.”

She offered me a delicate stalk of stuffed celery from her laden plate. “Here, eat while you ask me why I’ve called on you to be Gilly’s presenter.”

Mundi had never been one for beating around the bush, which was good, because I’d forgotten why I’d been seeking her out. I took the celery and sniffed. Someone had been raiding the oregano patch besides Jacklin’s cats. “I assume you have a reason. Mind telling me what it is?”