A Karma Girl Christmas

By Jennifer Estep

It's Christmastime in Bigtime, New York, but society reporter Carmen Cole isn't in the mood to celebrate since her husband, Sam, has to go on a business trip and might not make it home for the holiday. But Carmen has plenty to keep her busy, since she moonlights as Karma Girl, a member of the Fearless Five superhero team.

On Christmas Eve, Carmen, as Karma Girl, is assigned to guard toys, clothes, food, and more that are intended for needy children and their families. But an ubervillain also has his eye on the toys and plans to steal and then sell them to the highest bidder. Carmen will have to use all her empathic powers just to stay alive, not to mention make sure Christmas is a happy one for all the kids who are counting on her. It's all in a night's work for a superhero....

Note: This is a 14,000-word story that takes place after the events of Jinx, the third book in the Bigtime series. It can also be read as a stand-alone holiday story.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Jennifer Estep
• Release date: Sep 29, 2011
• ISBN: 9781465989239

Jennifer Estep

Jennifer Estep is a New York Times, USA Today, and internationally bestselling author who prowls the streets of her imagination in search of her next fantasy idea.Jennifer is the author of the Section 47, Galactic Bonds, Elemental Assassin, Crown of Shards, Gargoyle Queen, and other fantasy series. She has written more than forty books, along with numerous novellas and stories.In her spare time, Jennifer enjoys hanging out with friends and family, doing yoga, and reading fantasy and romance books. She also watches way too much TV and loves all things related to superheroes.For more information on Jennifer and her books, visit her website at or follow her online on Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, Amazon, BookBub, and Goodreads. You can also sign up for her newsletter: https://www.jenniferestep.com/contact-jennifer/newsletter/Happy reading, everyone! ?

Book preview

Chapter One

You want me to babysit a bunch of toys?

It’s not just a bunch of toys, Carmen, Henry Harris said. They’re the toys for Oodles o’ Stuff’s annual Christmas charity drive—the biggest holiday event in Bigtime. Here, I’ll show you.

Henry leaned forward and started typing away on one of the computer keyboards surrounding his chair, along with three monitors and twice as many servers. He hit a final button on the keyboard, and a film screen dropped down from the ceiling at the opposite end of the room.

We sat at a round table in an enormous library containing every sort of book, magazine, and encyclopedia one could possibly imagine. Volume after volume filled the floor-to-ceiling shelves, while maps dangled from the walls and globes gleamed in the corners of the room. Thick rugs covered most of the floor, giving only a glimpse here and there of the beautiful hardwood that lay underneath. Just strolling through the library, you’d never realize it was located deep underground—and that it had another function besides being a place to relax with a good book.

A second later, images began to flicker on the film screen. I leaned back in my chair and watched the montage, which had been set to a medley of cheery holiday tunes.

The first image revealed a humongous pile of toys. Dolls, stuffed animals, trains, building blocks, basketballs, jump ropes, art supplies—every conceivable kind of toy flashed by on the screen. The next few showed volunteers putting the toys into boxes, wrapping them, and handing them out to kids. After that, there were shots of the kids tearing into the colorful paper, pulling out the toys, and playing with them. And finally, a little girl hugged a doll to her chest, a huge grin on her tiny face, before the screen went black and the music faded away.

See? Isn’t it heartwarming?

Henry beamed at me. The light from the monitors made his dark hair and mocha skin take on a faint silver tint, while his glasses gleamed on his face. The monitor’s glow also brought out the white polka dots in the red bow tie he wore over his green-plaid sweater vest. Just looking at him sitting amid all those keyboards, monitors, and wires, you’d probably peg Henry for the computer geek that he was—but you’d never guess that he was also Hermit, a technological whiz of a superhero.

You want me to babysit a bunch of toys? I asked again.

Maybe I was being dense, but usually, things were a little more life-and-death in the superhero business. And that’s what I was these days—a bona fide superhero. I even had a costume and everything.

By day, I was Carmen Cole, a society reporter for The Exposé, one of the biggest newspapers in Bigtime, New York. By night, I was Karma Girl, the newest member of the Fearless Five, the city’s most powerful and popular superhero team. The Fearless Five, along with the city’s other superheroes, spent their nights fighting crime and foiling the schemes of the many ubervillains that called Bigtime home.

My being a superhero was more than a little ironic, because not too long ago, I’d used my skills as an investigative reporter to expose the real identities of heroes and villains. But getting dropped into a vat of radioactive goo will change a girl’s perspective on a lot of things—and give her superpowers.

A delicate sniff interrupted my thoughts, and I looked at the woman sitting across the table from me. Fiona Fine was a tall, leggy blond with long, flowing hair and intense blue eyes, the perfectly gorgeous sort of woman that men tripped over themselves to talk to. The perfectly gorgeous sort of woman that made every other woman around her feel exceptionally dull and plain, including me.

Most folks knew Fiona as one of Bigtime’s premier fashion designers with a flair for bold colors, bright patterns, and dramatic styles. But to me, she was also Fiera, a member of the Fearless Five with incredible strength and the ability to shoot fire out of her fingertips.

Fiona had just returned from an evening patrol of the city, and her orange-red spandex Fiera outfit left little to the imagination, although she’d taken off her flame-shaped mask, because it was just us superheroes here in the library. Sexy fashion designer or sultry superhero—I never could decide