The Kat Dubois Chronicles: The Complete Series (Echo World Book 2) Read online

  The Kat Dubois Chronicles

  The Complete Series Books 1 - 6

  Lindsey Fairleigh

  Rubus Press

  Contents

  Also by Lindsey Fairleigh

  Ink Witch

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Chapter 30

  Outcast

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Underground

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Chapter 30

  Chapter 31

  Chapter 32

  Chapter 33

  Chapter 34

  Chapter 35

  Cassie

  Soul Eater

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Chapter 30

  Chapter 31

  Chapter 32

  Chapter 33

  Chapter 34

  Chapter 35

  Judgement

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Alison

  Lex

  Nik

  Kat

  Afterlife

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Chapter 30

  Chapter 31

  Chapter 32

  Chapter 33

  Chapter 34

  Chapter 35

  Chapter 36

  Chapter 37

  Chapter 38

  Can’t Get Enough?

  Love The Kat Dubois Chronicles?

  Also by Lindsey Fairleigh

  About the Author

  Copyright © 2016 by Lindsey Fairleigh

  All rights reserved.

  This book is a work of fiction. All characters, organizations, and events are products of the author’s imaginations or are used fictitiously. No reference to any real person, living or dead, is intended or should be inferred.

  Editing by Sarah Kolb-Williams

  www.kolbwilliams.com

  Cover by Molly Phipps

  www.wegotyoucoveredbookdesign.com

  Also by Lindsey Fairleigh

  ECHO TRILOGY

  Echo in Time

  Resonance

  Time Anomaly

  Dissonance

  Ricochet Through Time

  KAT DUBOIS CHRONICLES

  Ink Witch

  Outcast

  Underground

  Soul Eater

  Judgement

  Afterlife

  THE ENDING SERIES

  The Ending Series Origin Stories

  After The Ending

  Into The Fire

  Out Of The Ashes

  Before The Dawn

  World Before: A Collection of Stories

  ATLANTIS LEGACY

  Sacrifice of the Sinners

  Legacy of the Lost

  Fate of the Fallen

  For more information on Lindsey and her books:

  www.lindseyfairleigh.com

  Join Lindsey’s mailing list to stay up to date on releases

  AND to get a FREE copy of Sacrifice of the Sinners.

  www.lindseyfairleigh.com/sacrifice

  Ink Witch

  Book One

  For Greg and the rest of the guys in the shop.

  Thank you.

  Chapter One

  “Same question as last time?” I stared across a round table at my Friday night regular, Rita. She was pretty, trendy, and young enough that
hanging out in a fortune-teller’s studio having her cards read on what was most Seattleites’ go-wild night out struck me as a little odd. Especially considering that Rita always asked the same thing: will I fall in love this week? Maybe, but she wouldn’t find it in the back of my tattoo parlor, where I moonlighted with my tarot deck. I didn’t even need my cards to tell her that.

  If I had fifty bucks for every time somebody asked me a variation of the love question . . . well, actually, I did have a fifty for every time, and it more than paid the bills. Nine out of ten clients returned, because I’m that good. Because my cards are legit; made them myself. Because I’m a Nejeret, a god of time. Or a goddess—and I’m really more of a demigoddess, if we’re getting technical, descended from the ancient Egyptian god, Re—and my soul is jacked into the time stream. Sort of.

  Rita sighed, resting her chin on her palm and tapping the side of her jaw with nails polished a vibrant indigo. “I guess I’m pretty predictable,” she said, laughing dryly.

  “Only you and the rest of humanity . . .” A species I didn’t belong to anymore—hadn’t for nearly two decades. I shuffled my hand-drawn deck of tarot cards one more time, then slid it across the pentagram seared into the tabletop. The symbol was purely atmospheric, but clients appreciated the witchy vibe. “Cut,” I told Rita.

  She straightened and reached for the deck, picking up a little less than a third and setting it next to the larger stack of cards. “You know, Kat,” she said, flashing me a sly smile, crimson lipstick stark against her straight, white teeth, “I’ve got a good feeling about this reading.”

  She leaned forward as I retrieved the cards and stacked them to shuffle a few more times. All the shuffling was really for show; the only part of my routine that actually affected the reading was Rita touching the cards. So long as they contacted her skin—her DNA—the spread would fall the same way regardless of whether I shuffled the cards five times or fifty. It’s not magic, exactly. Magic doesn’t exist, not really. But what I can do—what my people, the Nejerets, can do, tapping into the primal universal energies—is as close of a thing to magic as exists in the real world.

  “I’ve got a good feeling, too,” I said, tapping the edge of the cards on the table to straighten out the deck and flashing Rita a quicker, slyer smile. Not that I could actually sense anything from the deck. That wasn’t my gift. But Rita didn’t know that, and it wouldn’t hurt her to have a little faith. My gift lies in the ink itself. Anything I draw has a tendency to take on a life of its own, revealing hidden truths about the past, present, and future, connecting dots that otherwise seemed unrelated.

  I set out five cards in a cross formation, then added a column of three cards on the right and one over the center of the cross. And frowned. I’d done this layout thousands of times, but this time it was different. Not because the pattern was strange, but because the designs on the cards were. They’d changed themselves. Again. It hadn’t happened in nearly a year, and with the way my life had been plodding along—the definition of predictable—I wasn’t expecting the change.

  “Is this a new deck?” Rita was craning her neck to look at the cards. She’d been coming to me for six months now, maybe a little longer, and she’d seen every card in the deck at least once. “They look . . .” She tilted her head to the side, eyes squinting. “I don’t know . . . darker?”

  I shook my head and glanced at her briefly before resuming my study of the cards. “It’s the same deck. I just tweaked them a bit.” It was a lie. They’d tweaked themselves.

  The designs on the cards were actually a reflection of me—of my past, present, and future. They’d gone through three major overhauls since I first created them a couple years ago, always when something major was causing upheaval in my life, but they’d been relatively static for the past year or so. Probably because I’d been relatively static during that time. It didn’t bode well for whatever was to come. I suddenly felt like a live wire, channeling so much sickening dread that my body practically hummed with it. Something would happen, and soon, and there was nothing I could do to stop it.

  And there wasn’t a single doubt in my mind that it wouldn’t be a happy something. The cards had taken on an edgier, almost ominous aesthetic. Only heightening the effect was the fact that all of the people depicted on the cards were real people. My family and friends. I hadn’t designed the cards that way, and the appearance of familiar faces disturbed me intensely, though I couldn’t put my finger on why.

  Lex, my half-sister, was depicted as the High Priestess, serene and wise and as unconcerned about the wisps of darkness reaching out for her from one edge of the card as she was about the wisps of light from the other. She also appeared on the Lovers card alongside her husband, Heru. The Hanged Man was my half-brother and mentor in all things lethal and dark, Dominic, all but his pale, haunting face shrouded in shadows. The only card in the spread that I appeared on was Justice—I was dressed in jeans and a leather jacket, wielding a glowing, crystalline sword in one hand and a golden set of scales in the other.

  Disturbed but determined to finish the reading, I focused on the task at hand. Even though the designs on the cards were linked to my soul, the spread—this spread—was all Rita. And there was zero question in my mind that it answered her question. For once, the cards addressed Rita’s love life in full.

  Sitting back in my chair, the violet, velvet armchair I’d inherited from my mom along with the rest of the shop, I rested my hand on the bulbous ends of the chair’s arms and studied Rita’s features, trying to gauge her mood. “This is the clearest reading I’ve done in a long time,” I told her. “The cards are split half and half—there’s good news, and there’s bad news. Which do you want first?”

  Rita pursed her lips, then twitched that perfect crimson pucker from left to right and back. “Bad news first.” She raised her hand, stopping me before I could start. “No, good news first.” She nodded to herself as she leaned forward, placing her elbows on the edge of the table, fingers tangling together. “Good news first,” she repeated.

  I returned her nod and touched my fingertips to the Two of Cups, then to the Ten of Cups and the Lovers. “These three cards indicate that love is very nearby, and that your partner will make you happier than you ever could’ve hoped for. This card,” I said, touching the Six of Cups, “tells us the person you’re destined to be with will be someone you already know, likely someone from your past, possibly even from as far back as your childhood.”

  “I’m in love with you,” Rita blurted before I could warn her that, according to the Three of Swords, Ten of Swords, Hanged Man, and Justice cards, this person would sweep in to mend her very recently broken heart. Which, apparently, I was about to break.

  Well, this is awkward. I shut my mouth, pressing my lips together, and stared at Rita. Her hopeful expression, her flushed cheeks, her bright eyes—this, right here, is why I don’t do love. Love is pain and disappointment. It’s a blip of joy with a massive hangover of misery. I choose not to feel any of those things, not anymore.

  I inhaled slowly, tapping the tips of my fingers in a restrained, steady rhythm on the arm’s cutting. “Rita . . . I think we should call it a night. I’ve got a big job in the morning.” A clean break was best. The last thing I wanted to do was give her mixed signals and prolong her agony.