Naughty Karma

Karmic Consultants 7

by

Vivi Andrews

Dedication

For everyone who fell in love with the Karmic Consultants and anticipated Karma’s turn at a happy ending. Thank you for taking these adventures with me.

Chapter One

Tempest in a Tea-Length Dress

The shop door crashed open and slammed against the far wall, shuddering on its hinges. Prometheus caught it with a mental hand when it would have ricocheted off the wall to retaliate against the woman who’d struck it. He froze the door in place before it could wreak vengeance on that pretty—livid—face. Cracks probably spidered through the frosted glass from the force of her entry, but he didn’t bother to take his eyes off the woman on his threshold long enough to check.

Karma Cox. Owner and benevolent dictator of Karmic Consultants, paranormal problem solvers. A magical Mussolini in heels.

She was here.

“You bastard.”

And she was pissed.

Fully aware it would only enrage her more, Prometheus smiled with undisguised anticipation. Do I have your attention now, sweetheart? “Yes?”

A few weeks ago, he’d been convinced he’d irreparably fucked up his chances—the drunken demon summoning might have been taking their little feud a smidge too far—but this morning he’d woken up with a feeling. An eerie, storm-brewing, category five hurricane about-to-hit feeling.

Prometheus didn’t run from storms. He was the crazy bastard standing in the middle of the tempest, daring the universe to do its worst. And Karma was one hell of a hurricane.

She was regal, statuesque for a woman with a healthy dose of Asian genes in her family tree, but it wasn’t her height that made her commanding. Delicious power pulsed off her, all the more forceful for her anger. Prometheus could taste her barely bridled strength on the air between them—the rich, seductive decadence of dark liquid chocolate with the spicy slap of a cayenne kick.

Every jet-black hair was in place, but there was still something wild and unhinged about her, despite the flawless manicure and the meticulous perfection of her makeup. A hunter-green sheath hugged her from collarbone to knees, exquisitely sexy in spite of the lack of plunging cleavage or thigh revealing slits. All dressed up…

“How was the wedding?”

That snapped her out of her rage-filled silence. Tawny skin flushed vivid scarlet. “How was the wedding?” she repeated, each word gaining intensity until he could physically feel them striking his skin. “You ass.” She stalked into the heart of his shop, the rap of her heels sharp on the hardwood floor. “I was willing to overlook the medallions you’d sold all over town, causing all manner of magical havoc.”

“Overlook? If no one was causing supernatural problems, you wouldn’t have any to solve. I’m the best thing that’s ever happened to your business. I should get a commission.”

She didn’t appear to hear him. Her smoky, sex-kitten voice rasped over his words, gaining volume. “I chose not to respond to the pranks around Samhain and Beltane, and I ignored what I suspect was a curse of some variety designed to prevent me from being able to keep a receptionist for longer than a week.”

“I lifted that curse weeks ago.” Immediately after he’d semi-accidentally summoned a demon to harass her. It seemed the least he could do.

She went on as if he hadn’t spoken, though her hands clenched, rewarding him for the comment. “I refused to sink to your level, decided not to engage, but this? Siccing a demon on my brother’s wedding. A demon.”

“You have an exorcist on staff.”

“You sent a demon to stop my brother’s wedding!” she shrieked in an admirable impression of a banshee.

“It was a minor demon. And it wasn’t tasked with stopping the wedding. Just disrupting it a little.”

“A little? You almost killed my wedding planner!”

“Are you always this concerned with things that almost happen? I almost rescue orphans from burning buildings on a regular basis. Then I remember I don’t particularly give a shit about orphans.”

“You want things that actually happened? He actually possessed the wedding planner’s car and crashed it. He stalked her for three weeks. He kidnapped her!”

“What’s a little kidnapping among friends?”

“We are not friends. You’re—” She broke off, reduced to sputtering her rage.

“Dashing? Magnetic? Unscrupulous?”

If she could have lit him on fire with her eyes, he would have been a smoldering pile of ash. “There are no words vile enough to describe you.”

“You realize all of this could have been avoided if you’d let me hire you in the first place.”

“My people don’t work for ethical black holes.”

“Ethics.” He flicked his fingers dismissively. “Rules we make for ourselves are easily changed, bent or broken. Survival of the fittest is the truest law. Unbreakable.”

“I’m not going to debate morality with you.”

“What are you going to do? Punish me?” He smiled wolfishly. “That could be fun. I have been a bad, bad boy.”

She glared at him, sparks all but shooting from her eyes, hands on hips, her anger radiating a fierce heat. She’d missed her calling as a dominatrix. Give that woman a whip.

“You’ve gone too far this time,” she hissed. “You wanted war? Well, you’d better brace your ass because war is exactly what you’re going to get.”

Bring it on. Prometheus barely stopped himself from issuing the challenge. It was hard to remember when looking into her fiery brown eyes that going toe-to-toe with Karma wasn’t his end game. Step One had been to make it so the ice queen couldn’t ignore him—mission accomplished there.

Step Two might be trickier. Cooperation had never been his strong suit, but he needed hers. “As it happens, I don’t want war. I want your help.”

“You’ve done an excellent job of making sure I couldn’t care less what you want.”

“Not even if it comes with a truce? No more pranks, no more curses. I’ll be on my best behavior.” For all that’s worth. “Helping me is a small price to pay for peace of mind.”

“No.” She pivoted toward the open door, revealing the plunge of the backless dress. He lost his smile. She was bare to the small of her back, the soft curve of her spine vulnerable, exposed, lickable, but Prometheus had more pressing concerns than the itch to tease every inch of her silky skin.

He reached out a mental hand and slammed the door shut. “We aren’t done here.” Power thrummed in his voice. Life or death had always sounded foolishly dramatic, but when it was his death, that changed things substantially. He didn’t bother playing nice—not that he ever did.

Karma spun back to him, eyes widening as the lights in the shop flickered in reaction to the energy surge coming off his body. “Excuse me?”

“I was willing to play by your rules, do things your way, but you turned me down. Now you’re on my turf and you will hear me out.”

“Do you really think threatening me will help your case?”

“This isn’t threatening. When I’m threatening you, you’ll know.” Though she had a point. He took a slow breath, trying to dial down the current of power coursing through him. It was always easier to let it out than it was to get it back in the box.

Her mouth fell open. “When? When you’re threatening me? My God, Prometheus. Is that supposed to make me want to help you?”

“You don’t need to call me a god. That’s a different Prometheus.”

“You really don’t get it, do you? You can’t bully me into helping you. Especially not after you’ve spent the last year doing everything you can to piss me off.”

“It wasn’t the last year. I’ve really only been focused on aggravating you for the last six months. Everything before that was just a coincidence.”

“Ah!” She shouted in frustration, spinning toward the exit. Her heels slammed the hardwood in counterpoint to her anger. She jerked hard on the handle, but Prometheus easily held the door glued shut.

The more she struggled, the more his fascination grew. Along with his smile as he watched her.

Karma Cox was a titan among magic-users. She’d been born with the kind of natural power many would—and did—sell their souls for. If she’d tapped into it, she could have kicked his ass into next week and opened the door with one hand tied behind her back. But instead of embracing the chaotic rush of her power, she repressed it. Her rigid control and unrelenting restraint bottled up her gifts until she was all but powerless, trapped by a net of her own making, yanking futilely at a door that should have been no obstacle at all.

He had to give her credit for stubbornness though. She kept hauling on the door long after a less obstinate woman would have admitted defeat, until finally her hands stilled and her head dropped forward, just an inch—all the surrender she would allow.

“Ready to listen?”

Her head came back up sharply, recovering the inch of surrender. She spoke, still facing the door. “What are my odds of ever getting out of here if I say no?”

“Slim. I’m a gambling man, but even I wouldn’t take that bet.”

She turned slowly, the ice queen back in control. Her dark brown eyes were cool and her ruby lips pursed. She leaned back against the door she’d battled. Her bare back must have touched the cool glass, but she didn’t flinch, folding her arms and pinning him with her imperial gaze. “Well?” One sleek, carefully plucked eyebrow rose. “If I’m not getting out of here until you’ve given your little speech, start talking.”

Prometheus reminded himself to breathe. It came down to this. He wasn’t going to get another chance to enlist her help. Tread carefully.

“I’ve lost something,” he said, keeping his words intentionally vague. Best to ease her into it.

Somehow he didn’t think Karma would react well to the knowledge that he’d sold his heart to the devil twenty years ago and now he needed her help to steal it back.

Chapter Two

Letting a Feral Warlock Down Easy

Karma eyed the bane of her existence across the width of his shop. He’d barely moved a muscle since she stormed in on him—which was even more annoying than if he’d been ranting and waving his arms or even manhandling her. His presence was an active force in the room, slamming doors, prowling and looming over her, but his lean, long-limbed form could have been carved from stone.

She would have admired his control if not for the fact that even his stillness seemed born of an inherent wildness. He was composed of extremes—wholly black eyes and tan skin paired with prematurely white hair, extreme height, but without the slumped shoulders of a man in the habit of bending down to address the world around him. When he did deign to move, his movements were graceful, almost artistically choreographed, but there was an intense masculinity to his grace.

She’d left her brother’s wedding reception—which had, thank God, gone perfectly as soon as Rodriguez banished the damn mischief demon—determined to settle things with Prometheus once and for all.

Her heart had been throbbing with rage the entire drive here. It still throbbed, but her anger had been replaced by an edgy awareness—like her body instinctively knew she was in the room with something that could maul her if roused. A bear. Despite his lanky build, Prometheus reminded her distinctly of a bear.

Or perhaps a lion with a thorn in his paw. A thorn he clearly expected Karma to remove, even though he’d been one in her side for months.

He’d lost something, had he? “Did the rightful owners steal it back?”

“No.” His lips twitched. “It is neither an object I stole nor one stolen from me.”

“Before I even ask what you’ve lost, let’s be clear on the ethics—since I know that’s a sticky area for you—you are one hundred percent certain this object belongs to you, aren’t you? And don’t lie to me. I have a lie detector on my staff and she will out your ass in a heartbeat.”

“Oh, it’s mine all right.”

A flicker of hope lit in Karma’s chest. It went against the grain to help Prometheus in any way, but if a quick find could get him off her back forever, she was willing to make an exception to her don’t-trust-a-wily-warlock rule if only to end this. She nodded once, sharply, coming to a decision. “Okay. I want it in writing that you will stay the hell away from me and my people if we do this, but I have several finders on staff. One of them will locate your item and after we’ve confirmed that it does, in fact, belong to you, I’ll have someone return it to you.”

“I’m afraid it’s going to be a little more complicated than that.”

“Meaning?”

“Meaning your staff isn’t the only reason I came to you. I need your assistance, Karma. Your abilities. Do you honestly think I wouldn’t have bribed one of your finders into working directly for me if it were that simple?”

Why would he need her? Her abilities were mostly useless—uncontrolled precognition, some channeling and the occasional snatch of telepathy. Nothing that would be any help in finding a lost item. Unless that wasn’t the real reason he wanted her.

At the reception, after the bouquet toss while the bride Lucy led the rest of Karma’s employees and a few wedding-crashing ghosts in the chicken dance, Rodriguez had pulled Karma aside to tell her the demon he’d banished had babbled something about Prometheus having a crush on her and harassing her in an attempt to get her attention. Could there actually be some truth in that ridiculousness? Was this whole thing about a crush?

A pack of wild butterflies invaded her abdomen—the sensation not nearly as unpleasant as she might have wished.

How exactly did a girl ask a sociopathic warlock if he harbored a secret passion for her? He was already a massive pain in the ass. She didn’t want to think about how much worse he would be if he added spurned suitor to his repertoire.

Maybe she was jumping to conclusions. Please let me be jumping to conclusions. “What exactly is it you think you need from me? What did you lose?”

He lifted one shoulder in a slow, deliberate shrug—the gesture failing to convey any sense of casualness. “It’s my heart actually. I need you to help me retrieve it.”

“You lost your heart.” Karma felt her face heating. Holy crap. He really was in love with her. An insanely powerful and completely immoral warlock was in love with her. Let him down easy. “Look, Prometheus. I’m sure there are lots of—” masochistic “—girls who would be flattered by your interest, but I really don’t have time for any sort of relationship-type thing right now.”

“What are you talking about?”

She flushed, inexplicably embarrassed by the conversation. Where was her legendary cool? Why did talking about this man’s feelings so rattle her? “Your demon. He told my exorcist about how you…feel. For me. This…crush, or whatever you want to call it.”

Prometheus blinked, the calm sweep of his lashes seeming to take a lifetime. “What exactly did my demon tell you?”

“He said you’d been trying to…woo me.”

“Woo you?” He released a sharp bark of laughter. “Don’t flatter yourself, sweetheart.”

Karma bristled. “You know as well as I do that demons can’t lie, Prometheus.”

“True, but the average mischief demon has the comprehension level of a first grader. Just because they can’t lie doesn’t mean they’re never wrong.”

“So you never told the demon you were in love with me.”

He sighed. “Honestly, Karma, I don’t remember what I told the demon. I was extremely drunk the night I summoned it, probably rambling incoherently—”

“About your love for me.” She arched a brow skeptically.

“I must have told it that I’d lost my heart and needed your help to get it back. Demons aren’t known for being brilliant. He must’ve gotten it muddled. For all I know I was slurring my speech and declaring my love for jelly donuts too.”

She blinked, her face heating as what he’d said sunk in. “You seriously summoned a corporeal demon while you were so drunk you don’t remember what you commanded it to do?” The irresponsibility that entailed was jaw-dropping, but the power required and the ability to wield it while hopelessly intoxicated—that was beyond impressive. The force of concentration, of will, needed to summon a demon was more than most people possessed sober and this man could do it drunk? Who was he?

“I’m not apologizing,” Prometheus warned, and Karma got the sense apologies were anathema for him. “But, for the record, summoning a demon to harass you is not something I would typically do sober.”

“So you don’t, you know, love me?”

He held up both hands in a whoa there gesture. “I don’t even know you. And, no offense, angel, but you aren’t exactly my type.”

She felt her face heating again. This time with mortification. Not that he was her type. Though he was…impressive. In a way she’d never encountered before. But she certainly wasn’t bothered by the fact that an asshole warlock wasn’t secretly pining for her.

“I just need your help. And I’m willing to go to whatever lengths necessary to secure it.”

“To retrieve your heart,” she asked skeptically. She glanced toward his chest, a strange hunch suddenly tightening hers. “Why do I have the feeling that isn’t a metaphor?”

Prometheus smiled, though the warmth of it never touched the serpentine cold of his black eyes. “Wanna check my pulse?”

She shook her head, unsure whether she was denying his offer or the very impossibility of what he was implying. “How is that possible? How could you not have your heart?” Karma thought of Brittany, her new receptionist-slash-wedding-planner-slash-all-around-good-luck-charm, who was herself a heart-transplant survivor. “Did you…” she waved toward his chest, “…did you have a transplant? Did they replace it?”

“Nothing quite so mundane,” Prometheus admitted. “I traded it, but not for another heart.”

“What pumps your blood? What keeps you alive?”

“My power, Ms. Cox.” He spread his palms and electricity arced between them, crackling through the air.

Not for the first time she found herself wishing her hunches weren’t so freakishly accurate. She dealt with ghosts and demons on a daily basis, but there was something deeply disturbing about realizing she was talking to a man who literally had no heart in his chest. Like being told zombies and vampires really did exist and one was standing three feet in front of her.

Karma would have stepped back, but her shoulders were already pressed to the glass behind her. “How…?” Her voice cracked and she wet her lips before trying again. “How is that possible?”

“It isn’t the good kind of magic, Ms. Cox. I’m not surprised you aren’t familiar with it.”

Realization slammed into her brain, the pieces falling into place with the shattering certainty that came with her own gifts activating. She knew how Prometheus had lost his heart. She didn’t want to know. She didn’t want to believe. She wanted, as she often did when the worst of the visions came to her without warning, to live in a world where dark magic didn’t exist and she never had to see what it wrought.

“You sold it, didn’t you? You sold your heart to the devil.”

Prometheus smiled, unrepentant. “A devil. A particularly lovely one named Deuma. Typically, they deal in souls, but I was able to negotiate an alternative. And technically speaking, I traded it.”

“For your power.”

He inclined his head in ascent. “For my power. Twenty years of immense power, to be precise.”

“Twenty years?”

“I was only nineteen at the time. It seemed like an eternity.” He shrugged, as careless as ever. “The stupidity of youth.”

Her breath caught. There were the beginnings of crow’s feet around his eyes, but with his white hair, if she judged from his appearance alone she could have placed his age anywhere between thirty and forty-five. “How long ago…?”

“Nineteen years, nine months and five days. So you see why the sense of urgency. I need you and your people to help me locate my missing heart and restore it to me.”

Karma’s extremities suddenly felt chilled, like ice was starting at her fingertips and spreading like a malicious frost toward her core. Visions flickered through her brain, but she needed to hear him say it. “And if we don’t? In three months…”

“My power dies out. And if I don’t have my heart back by then, so do I.”

Chapter Three

Sympathy for the Devil

Prometheus decided to take it as a good sign when Karma visibly paled at the prospect of his imminent death. He’d hoped to play on her sympathies and she was proving to be as softhearted as he’d pegged her. Page one out of the sinner’s bible: blessed are the saints, for they shall be easy to manipulate.

He didn’t bother trying to look innocent and worthy of saving. Whether or not she would help him depended more on her character than it did on his. “Will you do it?”

“What exactly do you need me to do?”

He smiled, triumph and a feeling that could have been hope filling up some of the void that lived in his chest where his heart should have been.

“Don’t get too excited,” she interrupted his internal celebration. “I haven’t agreed to anything yet. Just tell me what you need.”

Her sharp words didn’t discourage him in the slightest. She hadn’t agreed yet, but she would. He might see his fortieth birthday yet.

“From the research I’ve done,” he said casually, as if he hadn’t spent three complete years scouring every magical tome he could find for the merest hint of a clue as to how to steal back his heart, “it’s a three step process.” He held up a single finger. “We locate the heart—which I have reason to believe Deuma is moving or veiling in some way.” It was the only explanation for the fact that every time he did a finding spell on the damn thing, it vanished before he could get to it. Based on his finds, he’d searched from Venice to Ethiopia for the damn thing without luck. “I saw her place it in a wooden box with gold inlay, then the box vanished and I haven’t seen it since. I think the box may have been Bacchus’s vessel.”

Karma’s brows pulled into a V. “Ignoring the fact that Bacchus’s vessel is a mythological figment of warlock imaginations run wild, what’s the second step?”

“Summon Deuma. Because she is the source of my power, I am incapable of using it to summon her, but you have that lovely exorcist at your beck and call.”

“The third step?”

Prometheus met her eyes. If she’d known him, she would have known to doubt whatever he was about to say next, that he always looked ‘em in the eye right before he lied his ass off, but no one knew him that well. He was an island. “The third step is all you, Karma. As a channel, you are capable of redirecting energies. You will reverse the flow of energy from Deuma to myself and sever her hold on me. It will keep me alive.”

It wasn’t, technically speaking, a lie. If Karma did all those things, it would keep him alive. It would also piss off the devil by stripping her of her powers and giving them permanently to Prometheus. It would keep him alive, all right. It would make him immortal.

Prometheus wasn’t ready for his clock to run out, but he also wasn’t about to lose his powers while bargaining for his heart back. He hadn’t spent the last twenty years as a god only to go back to being a normal man. He was already reneging on his deal with the devil—a dangerous prospect in and of itself. He couldn’t afford to leave her with the power to smite him after he stole back her prize. But Karma wouldn’t go along with his plan if she knew there was a way to keep him alive any other way.

“I can’t.” Karma’s protest almost gave rise to a glimmer of doubt—did she suspect he was lying? But when she went on, he realized it was her doubt he had heard. “I don’t have that much power.”

Prometheus snorted. “You have plenty. You just have to learn how to let it out to play.” He straightened away from the sales counter, letting his presence fill the room. “I can teach you that.” The words were a seduction. A flush rose to her cheeks and he could see her pulse fluttering wildly at her throat—like the power he could feel beating velvet wings against the inside of her mind, struggling to get out. What he wouldn’t give to be the one to give her that release.

“If I help you…” She glared at him when he started to smile. “If. I’m not guaranteeing anything, but if I were to help you, I would need your word that none of my people would be harmed in any way.”

“Done.” For all his word was worth.

“All attempts to disrupt my business or invoke chaos would obviously have to stop.”

He smiled, flicking his fingers. “Of course.” This was going to be easier than he’d thought.

“And I would expect you to make amends for your actions over the last few months.”

“Amends,” he repeated, nausea stinging his throat as he forced out the word. He didn’t apologize. He didn’t regret. He didn’t ask for forgiveness. Prometheus didn’t do amends.

“As a show of good faith, you would have to work for me, using your powers only for good, to prove that your sorry ass is actually worth saving.”

This time Prometheus’s smile was genuine—though bile still left his throat raw. “We both know you’ve already decided to save me, angel. Whether I deserve it or not.”

“My terms are not negotiable.”

“Of course they are. You may want to have the position of power in this negotiation, but we both know power goes to whichever party can walk away.” Or, more importantly, which party could convince the other they could walk away. Prometheus may need her more than she needed him, but he never flinched in a game of chicken.

He crossed the room toward her, approaching her for the first time. Goose bumps rose up on her arms and her pupils dilated, but other than that she remained unmoved in the face of his prowling approach. Her scent—jasmine and something sweeter, not quite honey, but something with more bite…ginger, that was it—rose to his nostrils and he inhaled, deliberately drawing in the exotic aroma.

“I could walk away.” She spoke softly, the words a husky, dark promise they both knew she would never fulfill. “You’re the one who needs me.”

“I do.” He didn’t touch her. He was close enough to now, but Prometheus felt the strangest urge to save that first touch, hoard it until the perfect moment. “But you need to be the woman who saves the day more than I need to be saved. That do-gooder complex is your Achilles’ heel.”

“Or my greatest strength.”

“You couldn’t let even your worst enemy die if you knew you could help him.”

“Are we enemies? Here I thought you were a pest. Like a roach. I’m fond of killing pests. There’s such satisfaction in exterminating them.” God, her voice was intoxicating, sultry and rough.

He leaned in, just a hair more, and the air around them grew tight—talking about cockroaches had never been so intimate. “You would never forgive yourself if you could have saved me and stood by doing nothing.”

Her jaw tightened, lovely anger flaring at the way he’d boxed her in—physically and verbally. Prometheus raised a finger, but stopped himself a centimeter short of brushing the muscle clenching along the column of her throat, still saving the first touch, holding it in reserve.

“You don’t know me as well as you think you do if you believe there is anything I wouldn’t do to protect my people.”

“I’m not a threat to them. Demonic kidnapping aside.”

“Demons aside, you sold a medallion that nearly killed my favorite ghost exterminator.”

“Again with the nearlys and the almosts. Besides, I sold it. I didn’t activate it. Are you really going to hold me responsible for every little bauble I’ve ever touched that was eventually used for less than wholesome purposes?”

“Yes. You enchant charms then sell them to whoever wanders through your door. They’re unregistered weapons in the wrong hands, and you just scatter them wherever the hell you please.”

“I’m a businessman, not a cop.”

“Magic should be used for good. It needs to be monitored. Controlled.”

“On that we’ll have to disagree. Magic is a force, a freedom. It’s meant for the masses.”

“Is that why you stole a valuable heirloom from one of my clients? You steal magic from its rightful owners because you want the masses to have it?”

“Borrowed. And she hired one of your little pets to get it back, so are you really going to complain about profiting from my temporary possession?”

“You’re a thief, a liar, a demon-summoner and an unscrupulous bastard who sold a piece of himself to a devil. I could never trust you.”

“I’m not asking for trust. I’m asking for help.”

“You aren’t my problem. And I think the best way to protect my people is keep it that way.”

Was she actually going to say no? Prometheus cursed internally. This wasn’t going as planned.

Time to activate the home-field advantage.

“Say you’ll help me, Karma,” he urged, making his voice thick with power and a pulse of heat, leaning in to remind her of their physical proximity, pull her out of her mind and put her into her body. He could control her body. Her mind was another story. “Say you’ll do it.”

He put his palm flat on the frosted glass behind her, sending a low pulse of energy through it to activate his little insurance policy. Over the years, he’d woven a binding spell into the walls themselves. With a thought, the spell woke and any words spoken within these four walls took on the weight of an unbreakable vow. She wouldn’t be able to back out later. She’d be forced to follow through, provided he could get her to say the words that would seal the deal.

He stared into her eyes, tracing a phantom path behind her ear, still holding that first touch in reserve. “What will it take to get you to say yes?”

“I would have to believe you were reformed. That you would use your powers for good. I don’t see that happening, Prometheus.”

“How about a show of good faith?”

“Do you even know what good is?”

“I know freedom without the moralistic constraints of good and bad is a lot more fun.”

She was so restrained. So contained. Not a hair out of place. Not a smudge in her lipstick or a wrinkle in her dress. He wanted to muss her. Rake his fingers through her hair, smear her lipstick with his mouth, bunch her dress in rough, urgent hands. The urge to unleash the chaos she’d buried deep was a living thing inside him. Her power calling to his, a siren song of perfect destruction.

“Let me show you, Karma. Live a little.” He rested a finger against the nape of her neck, half-expecting her to sear his skin with the heat of that first touch. She was smooth, soft ivory, cool marble and hard diamond—all that promising heat buried beneath layers of icy reserve, but he could feel it. An echo, a tremor, a promise of wildness to come. He stroked his finger slowly up the arch of her neck. “Say yes…”

Chapter Four

The Great Escape

Karma’s entire existence revolved around a single, long finger slowly stroking her neck. Was Prometheus going to kiss her? Was this how he hoped to gain her cooperation? By seduction? Did he really think she was susceptible to that?

Maybe he’s right…

“Let me go.” The demand lacked the heat she’d wanted behind it. He wasn’t holding her really, the door at her back was doing that for him. “I listened to what you had to say. I heard you out. Now let me leave.”

“Why won’t you say you’ll help me, Karma?” he asked, his voice seeming to come at her from all sides at once. “Why this stubbornness?”

She struggled to reclaim her brain, tried to remember the logical reasons why any sort of interaction with Prometheus was dangerous, reckless. Karma was never reckless. She was calm. She was control. Restraint was power. Control was its own reward.

So why did Prometheus’s finger, just a single finger, stroking the nape of her neck in slow, deliberate lines, make all her careful control unravel? Why did her neatly organized thoughts scatter? It wasn’t chemistry; it was something else, something much more dangerous.

Temptation.

That was why she could never say yes.

Which was selfish. Was she really refusing to help him, refusing to save his life, just because she was afraid he was the one man who could corrupt her? Was she really such a coward?

“Please, Karma.”

Was she denying him because deep down she wanted nothing more than to be close to him, to bask in the seductive proximity of his power, and she was terrified of letting that part have its way?

“Okay.”

The word was barely audible. It invited him closer. Prometheus leaned in, his breath brushing against her face in ways that made her want to press against him and revel in his warmth like a cat. “What was that?”

“I’ll do it. I’ll help you reclaim your heart.”

The lights flashed and she felt that power surge zap through her shoulder blades where they touched the glass door. An invisible energy snapped shut around her, her own words the key that locked her prison as she felt the spell surge. A gasp ripped from her throat.

Prometheus stepped back, returning her space to her own care, a smile curling his lips that made what she felt a pathetic cousin to uneasiness.

“What. Did. You. Do?”

He shrugged, the graceful raise of his shoulders distinctly Gallic. “Just made sure you keep your promises.”

“I’m not the untrustworthy one,” she snarled at him. “I said I would help you and I will. For a price.”

“Ah, we’ve come to the mercenary portion of the evening. My favorite.”

“My earlier terms still apply. You will stop harassing my people and protect them from any harm, you will make amends and you will use your powers for good. By working for me.”

“Could be amusing. For how long?”

Karma considered for a moment. “Three weeks.”

“One.”

“Three. One of my best finders is backlogged—” and currently being harassed by the FBI. Which reminded Karma she needed to call the regional office on Monday and tell her Jewelry and Gemstone recovery liaison to rein in his new boy. A million little problems. She didn’t have time for Prometheus’s needy it’s-all-about-me bullshit. “—and the other is on his honeymoon. No one will be able to start looking for your heart for a few weeks anyway.”

“Ten days.”

“Three weeks,” she snapped, refusing to budge.

“You don’t seem to understand how to barter. I’ll give you two.”

“You don’t seem to understand that this isn’t a negotiation. Three. You’re a businessman. You must realize this is a good bargain for you. Three weeks in exchange for your life.”

“Three weeks of being good in exchange for anything sounds absolutely unreasonable.”

“Take the deal, Prometheus.”

“You already said you would help me.”

“I agreed to help. I didn’t say how hard I was going to try.”

He cursed softly. “Three weeks?”

“Three weeks of shining, angelic behavior and I will tear hell apart to reclaim your heart.” He would be one of hers, if he lasted the three weeks, and there was nothing she didn’t do for her people.

“Done.” The word held an eerie finality.

Satisfaction lurched against her, more forcefully than she’d anticipated. “Excellent. I’ll expect you at my offices first thing Monday morning. I trust you know where they are?”

He smiled. “You trust correctly.”

She nodded, trying to look professional, like his employer rather than a woman who had been undone by a single stroke of his index finger. “Good. Now unlock this door.”

One brow arched. “That door? Was it locked?”

The door swung open an inch, bumping against her shoulders and shoving her farther into the room. “Bastard.”

He bowed. “Until Monday, Karma. Sleep well, angel.”

He disappeared into a back room before she could make a satisfyingly dramatic exit. Skulking out with those words lingering behind him, taunting her. It was as if the bastard somehow knew she’d been plagued by insomnia her entire life.

She moved out of the door’s path and it swung open all the way. Deciding it was best to take advantage of the exit before Prometheus changed his mind, she stepped out onto the sidewalk, the night air closing around her. She didn’t bother trying to slam the door behind her. It closed on its own with a near-silent click.

The warm summer night should have been comforting after the over air-conditioned shop, but she felt a more distinct chill now than she had in the damn warlock’s presence. The man was a human furnace.

If he even counted as human without a beating heart.

Karma shuddered. What had she gotten herself into? Deals with the devil were dangerous to meddle in. Why had she said yes?

Because she was a good person and she helped people. Even those who didn’t particularly deserve it. Or because Prometheus had implanted the idea that she was a good person and helping him would somehow prove that?

She strode quickly toward her car, feeling more in control with each step away from the shop. That hadn’t gone exactly as planned, but she could handle it. She could handle anything. She was still in control.

No matter what Prometheus and his wandering fingers thought.

Chapter Five

Pandora’s Insomniac

Karma woke with a jerk, sucking in air with a hard gasp ripping her throat raw. She never came awake peacefully. The visions that chased her out of her dreams prevented that.

Gulping for oxygen, she rolled to study the illuminated face of her clock. Three-twenty in the morning. She’d managed to grab two whole hours of sleep this time. Not quite a personal best, but not far from it.

Karma untangled herself from the twisted covers and climbed out of bed, setting about the soothing routine of changing the sweaty sheets for fresh, crisp linens. She wouldn’t be getting back to sleep again tonight. Her heart rate gradually slowed as her hands went through the familiar motions, tugging and smoothing the cotton-and-silk blend.

She’d been Ciara this time. And she’d been drowning. Water had gushed into her nose and mouth, burning in her lungs, a searing pain radiating through her body as something held her under.

Since Ciara was one of her finders who spent the better part of her life floating in a pool to reduce the psychic dissonance caused by her gift, the dream was terrifyingly possible. Ciara was currently at odds with her new FBI handler, but surely he wouldn’t hurt her, or allow anyone else to. Though Karma had never met the man, so she didn’t have much to go on.

Instinct demanded she do something, but years of experience had taught Karma how to read the dreams, even if she couldn’t control them, and this one wouldn’t come true for several more days, if it came true at all. No need to call Ciara at three in the morning in a panic.

She’d learned the hard way when she was a teenager that people generally appreciated her “hunches” more when they weren’t accompanied by pre-dawn hysteria.

Karma looked down at the military precision of her made bed. Her hands had stopped shaking by the time she aligned the last pillow. Neat. Orderly. In control. So she could breathe again, master the fear that lingered.

The dreams always felt so real. Even if it never came true and Ciara escaped without a scratch, Karma couldn’t forget the feeling of water setting her lungs on fire.

If she told Prometheus about this, maybe he wouldn’t be so quick to dismiss her almosts. But she would never tell. Even her consultants didn’t know anything more specific than she had feelings and hunches. Her family knew because she’d started having the dreams when she was a child, but she’d never told another soul. She’d never even considered it. That telling Prometheus had even formed as a thought was…unsettling.

Which made sense in the way. Everything about the man unsettled her.

And now she was his boss. In a manner of speaking. Prometheus didn’t seem to be the kind of man who understood the concept of having a boss.

Prometheus. It couldn’t be his real name. Though as a woman named Karma, she couldn’t really cast stones. Her parents had each named one of their children—her sturdy, law-enforcement father picking Jake and her flower-child mother selecting something a bit more meaningful. Who had named Prometheus? He seemed like the kind of man who had sprung fully formed into the universe. Like Athena rather than the Titan for whom he was named.

Did he have a last name? What would he put on a W-2? Not that she could get him to fill one out, since he was working for her for good will rather than cash.

She needed to decide what she would have him do, something to show his soul wasn’t entirely tarred—which was a challenge not only because he was an ethical black hole, but also because she wasn’t even sure what he could do. What were the limits of Prometheus’s abilities?

And how could she ensure he really was cooperating? She’d have to assign someone to babysit him. Someone who wouldn’t be taken in or run into the ground by him. Her people were professionals, but Prometheus was a walking wrecking ball, chaos in human form. She needed someone to supervise him who would keep him in line.

It was only quarter past four when she finished her morning routine by sliding her feet into a new pair of Louboutins and pouring a second mug of oolong. She made her way up to the office. Living in the basement apartment beneath the Karmic Consultants offices was the ultimate convenience. Her commute each morning was a fifteen-second ride in the secure elevator that opened directly into her office. The efficiency was unparalleled. Do not pass go, do not take time to smell the roses. Her brother would have given her shit about her all work-no play mentality, but Jake was on his honeymoon with Lucy so he wasn’t here to be disappointed by her inability to goof off—even on a Sunday.

Because of the wedding the day before, she’d ignored all non-emergency messages and even in twenty-four hours they had stacked up. Karma settled into her Herman Miller Aeron chair and began putting her world in order, one email at a time, half her brain still considering the best strategy for handling the Prometheus problem.

She wished she could call Jake and talk it through with him. Her brother had done the original profile on Prometheus when she’d had him investigated after his name kept popping up in Karmic Consultants cases. But thanks to the matchmaking epidemic that had hit everyone she touched in the last year, Jake was temporarily out of commission as her primary confidant.

First Jake and Lucy. Then Jo and Wyatt. Mia and Chase. Ronna and Matt. Brittany and Rodriguez. Her consultants were pairing off at an alarming rate.

Next thing she knew Ciara would announce she’d fallen in love with her new FBI handler and—

A tickle at the back of her skull made Karma shiver as a new premonition seeped into her brain. Shit. Ciara is going to announce she’s in love with her new FBI handler. The question was, did that make her more or less likely to die by drowning later in the week?

Karma glanced at the clock that hung above her door, its graceful lines a perfect blend of art and function, like all the other objects in her work space. Quarter to six. Still too early to check up on Ciara.

At least this romantic hunch had been of the gentle reminder variety, as opposed to the bloody sledgehammer type that bludgeoned Karma in her sleep. When she was awake, she could batten down the hatches in her brain, keep the most vivid, gory pieces as bad feelings rather than a macabre play in which she was trapped as a doomed actor. Control. It all came down to control.

Karma pushed away from her laptop and went to her meditation corner, shielded from the rest of the room by a gorgeous Chinese screen. She slipped off her shoes and knelt, careful not to wrinkle her skirt. Incense made her sneeze, so she didn’t bother with it, her meditation space spartan and uncluttered.

Karma cleared her thoughts, working through the mental exercises and meditations that refreshed her balance and control. Lately she’d been forced to do them three or four times a day just to keep it together, but she refused to consider the possibility that the locks on the Pandora’s Box of power inside her were failing.

She finished her first cycle and decided to do a second round, just to be safe, when another scratch of foreboding teased the back of her skull. Prometheus.

Karma’s eyes snapped open. He was on his way here. Why was he on his way here? She’d told him Monday, damn it. She’d been counting on today to gather her thoughts and reinforce her mental defenses and now—

No sense bitching about it. He’d be arriving in ten minutes whether she was ready for him or not. Karma made it a point to always be ready for unexpected guests. Her internal early warning system made that possible; her unshakable desire to always be prepared and in control made it necessary.

She rose, smoothed the non-existent wrinkles from her skirt and slid her feet back into the Louboutins. Ignoring the sensation in her stomach that may have been mistaken for anticipation, she unlocked the doors to the outer office, flipped on the exterior lights, and put on a pot of coffee, since Prometheus didn’t seem to be the sort who would appreciate the reviving properties of a nice oolong.

She was back behind her desk, laptop tucked away in a drawer, hands folded on the dark marble surface when Prometheus let himself into her office without so much as a knock—just as she’d known he would.

He was dressed all in black today—black slacks, black shoes, black button-down shirt with the cuffs rolled to his elbows. All of it doubtless an intentional jab at her attempt to bring him over from the dark side.

He grinned, inky eyes twinkling as they locked on her seated behind her desk. “I see you were expecting me.”

Chapter Six

Home Field Advantage

“I was expecting you tomorrow.”

He grinned—another untamed, predatory flash of teeth that could almost pass for a smile. “I couldn’t wait another second.”

He seemed even taller than he had the day before—which was peculiar. He should have seemed smaller in the bright, expansive spaciousness of her office than he had in the cluttered, dingy surrounds of his shop. Perhaps it was seeing him in motion that made him seem larger than life. He’d been so still the previous night, but this morning he was a body in motion, testing every corner of her office, and her patience. He prowled the room, touching her things, trying to get a rise out of her.

“What are you doing here, Prometheus?”

“I’m so eager to be reformed I couldn’t wait a single day.” He flung his arms wide, throwing back his head. “I am your clay. Mold me into virtue.”

She arched a brow. “I’m not sure my skill as a sculptor is up to the task. The raw materials leave something to be desired.”

“I assure you I leave nothing to be desired. Thoroughness, that’s my motto.”

Karma did not blush. She was on her home turf. No amount of innuendo could fluster her. “I thought your motto was reckless endangerment in the name of freedom and fun.”

“Sounds wordy. Wouldn’t fit very well on a coat of arms.”

“Prometheus.” She made his name an epithet of impatience.

“Are you surprised I couldn’t wait until tomorrow? I only have two and a half months to live. I can’t waste days.”

So that was his new strategy. He was going to try to get her to budge on her terms by playing the my-life-is-about-to-be-cut-short card. He was on a clock. She could appreciate that. But her finders would be able to locate his heart in an instant and Rodriguez could doubtless summon the devil just as quickly. If Karma was indeed capable of impacting the link that connected him to the devil, curing him of his short lifespan shouldn’t take her and her people more than a single afternoon. It was hard to feel a sense of urgency.

And she might have had more sympathy for him if his predicament hadn’t been the result of his own terminal stupidity. Fatal recklessness.

“I suppose we can get started on your paperwork,” she conceded, feeling magnanimous—and hoping she could bore him into leaving. “Have a seat and I’ll get your packet.”

Karma rose, strode purposefully to the filing cabinets in the outer office—neatly organized thanks to Brittany’s boundless enthusiasm for menial office tasks—and collected one of the blank pre-hire packets. She returned to her office—half-expecting Prometheus to have commandeered the chair behind her desk—only to find he hadn’t obeyed her order to sit at all. Not surprising. What did alarm her was the fact that he’d managed to find the cabinet where she kept her personal family photos.

The interior of the carved cherry wood doors were lined with pictures of the people who meant the most to Karma. An intense feeling of exposure washed through her and she wanted to slam the cabinet shut on his fingers. Not that she hadn’t shown it to anyone else. Most of her consultants knew it was there. The only reason she kept it closed was because displaying personal photos on her desk diminished the professionalism of her space, but having Prometheus poking his nose in there was almost a violation.

“You don’t look anything like your father.”

He didn’t turn to face her as he said it, still staring into her personal life. Karma reapplied the starch to her spine and strode back to her desk. If she didn’t show him she was vexed by his invasion, he would move on to trying to annoy her another way, leaving her privacy private.

“Biologically, he isn’t my father,” she said with a matter-of-fact indifference she hoped would be the end of it. “We won’t bother with the tax forms since we’re merely trading services, but if you could fill out the first three pages—”

“That explains why your brother is so much darker than you are.”

“Jake is one-quarter African-American.” She tapped the packet on her desk, tidying the pages. “As you’ll see, everything is fairly straightforward—”

“Older or younger?”

Karma sighed. Apparently they were going to have a talk about her family. Lovely. “Older or younger what?”

“Is your brother older or younger than you?”

“Younger. Not quite three years. Any other trivia you can’t last another minute without knowing or can we get on with the paperwork?”

“I don’t do paperwork. So, did your mom get together with his dad after you were born?”

“Our parents met while she was pregnant with me and were married when I was four months old. The paperwork is necessary. Without it I won’t know how to best use your abilities.”

“‘Our parents’. So you consider him your father even though you share no genetic material. What about your real father?”

“He is my real father.” Karma grabbed a pen. If he wasn’t going to fill them out, she would fill them out for him. “Full name?”

“I don’t know your father’s full name.”

“Your full name.”

“I’ll give you my full name if you tell me about your real father.”

“That isn’t an even trade.”

“How about a more general swap? I will answer all your questions without evasions, if you do the same.”

Such an open-ended bargain sounded even more potentially hazardous, but Karma was secure in herself. She was private, but she had no secrets. Nothing she was ashamed of. As soon as he realized he wasn’t going to get to her with his questions, that knowing her history wasn’t going to give him an advantage against her, he would give up and by then she would have the answers she needed to place him. “Deal. You start. Full legal name.”

“Pro-me-the-us. Want me to spell that?”

“That’s really your legal name? Sounds like your mother and mine—”

“I had it changed. Legally.”

Curiosity sharpened to a knife’s edge, but Karma ignored it. She didn’t need to know why he didn’t want to talk about his mother or why he’d changed his name, what it had been before or when he’d done it. None of that was pertinent.

She wrote his name on the blank. “Contact number?”

“Trying to get my digits without paying your share, Karma? It’s your turn. Who was your real dad?”

“Darren Cox. I don’t know who got my mom pregnant with me and neither does she, but my father raised me.”

“Aren’t you curious?”

“Contact number.”

He rattled off the numbers. “You don’t want to know?”

“It doesn’t matter. I have a father.”

His mouth tightened and he turned back to the cabinet. “Your mom got around, huh?”

“She went through a phase in her twenties, trying to make up for the fact that she was still in middle school during Woodstock. What hours are you available to work?”

He shrugged. “Whenever. I don’t bother with a regular schedule at my store. It’s open when I want it to be. What do your parents do?” He closed the cabinet and began roaming again, hands in his pants pockets as his gaze flicked on every surface in her office, missing nothing.

“They’re retired. What exactly are your abilities?”

He snorted. “It would be quicker to tell you what I can’t do. I can’t see the future, I can’t change the past, I can’t read minds and I can’t force anyone to do anything against their will. Beyond that my limits are a question of stamina and finesse.”

His suggestively arched brow emphasized the double entendre, and again she refused to reward him with a blush. The massive slab of her desk between them reassured her, comforting her with a sense of unshakable control. She was in charge here.

“What did they do before they retired?”

“My mother worked at a greenhouse and my father was in law enforcement. Would you be able to exorcise a demon or transcend an unwanted ghost?”

“Easily. You get along well with your brother?”

“Very. Aura reading? Warding?”

“Of course. But curses are my real forte.”

She glowered. “We don’t do curses.”

He shrugged, still strolling, pausing long enough for his slim fingers to trace the lines of her green cloisonné dragon bowl. “Breaking them is as easy as making them, but if I get a choice, I’d prefer to use my good deed time to unlock your abilities.”

“That won’t be necessary.” The very idea was horrifying. She’d spent the better part of her life teaching herself how to effectively box in her unruly powers. The last thing she needed was Prometheus to assign himself the quest of unleashing them. “But your aptitude at breaking curses will be taken under advisement.”

“So you don’t resent your brother for being your father’s real child?”

“You’re trying to be an asshole, but if you want to piss me off, you’ll have to pick something I’m actually sensitive about.”

“That works for me.” His stroll around the room took him behind her and she refused to turn, focusing on the papers in front of her, no matter how the thought of him at her back made her instincts scream in alarm. “Where are you sensitive?”

A feather light touch brushed down the nape of her neck and Karma caught her breath, fighting to keep her eyelids from fluttering. Why did that have to feel so impossibly good? And why did he have to be the one to rev her up with just the brush of a finger?

She set her pen on top of Prometheus’s forms, concentrating on blocking the heated press of his power against her back. “If you were half as smart as you think you are, you’d try not to piss me off since you’re depending on me to save your ass.”

“Is that what I’m doing? Pissing you off?” The words were pure lazy seduction, a caress in their own right. His fingertip traced a pattern into her skin, sending delicious sensation shivering down her limbs. Knowing him, he was probably hexing her, but she’d never suspected a hex could feel like that.

“You don’t want to be on my bad side.” Damn that husky catch in her voice.

“Don’t I?”

His presence rolled over her from behind, a thousand teasing flickers of power assaulting her senses, though the only physical touch was that one fingertip, wreaking havoc on that spot at her nape. She wanted to smack that hand away almost as badly as she wanted to lean into him and give in.

Then the lingering stroke on her neck retreated, leaving in its wake a startling coolness—and the urge to curse.

Testing for weaknesses. That’s all he’d been doing. And he’d found one. The bastard.

“Your sense of honor won’t let you renege and neither will the binding I activated at my shop,” he said, unaffected, as he moved on and reverted to touching her things rather than her, “but if I annoy you enough, you’ll be in more of a hurry to get rid of me.”

Able to breathe again as distance grew between them—how did he do that to her?—Karma cleared her throat and realigned the already perfectly straight folder. “Whether I’m in a hurry or not, my best finder is backlogged—” and possibly drowning later this week “—and my other best finder is on his honeymoon in Bali.”

“Is that the one who married your brother?”

“No, the one on his honeymoon is not the one who married my brother. That was Lucy. She’s a medium.”

“Who’d the finder marry?”

“A scientist. She’d probably love to scan your brain to see how your powers work when she gets back. Not to mention document the fact that you’re still alive without a beating heart.” Mia was a science nerd to her core. She’d probably have a spontaneous orgasm at the thought of dissecting Prometheus—and not solely for scientific reasons. There was no love lost there. “You’ve met them actually. The watch you stole? It was hers.”

“Theft is such an ugly word.”

“Yes. It is. Maybe you shouldn’t steal things, if you don’t want to be called a thief. Put down that box.”

Prometheus raised a brow and the carved wooden box from the display case, rolling it between his hands. “It’s a puzzle box.”

“Yes. I know.”

“What does the famous Karma of Karmic Consultants keep in her puzzle box? The curiosity is killing me.”

“Then maybe I won’t have to wait two and a half months to be rid of you. Put it back.”

He shrugged and set it back on the side table, wandering on, his eyes and fingers touching everything in her space, marking it.

“The watch thing was a misunderstanding. I was told the watch had the power to find the ‘keeper of your heart’. I love a good shortcut, but turned out the watch was just about true love. Such a waste. You’re not really going to make me wait three weeks?”

No. His plan was working. She wanted him gone, and if that meant jumping into Ciara’s high-priority queue or picking Chase and Mia up at the airport after their honeymoon to drive them directly to Prometheus for a find, that’s what Karma would do. But in the meantime, there really was nothing she could do for him.

“Give me a detailed description of the box containing your heart. Anything that makes it unique.” Ciara’s gift was triggered by specifics. “I’ll see what I can do.”

“There is one slight complication.”

“Of course there is.”

“The box isn’t just your average organ-transplant cooler. It’s enchanted.”

“It would have to be to keep your heart functional for twenty years.”

“It’s Bacchus’s vessel.”

Karma folded her hands on her desk, keeping her calm as he continued to walk and touch and walk and touch. As long as he didn’t touch her again, she could handle anything. “So you said. And as I said, the vessel is a myth.”

“So are demons and ghosts and devils.”

“Keep your fingers off that silk,” she snapped. “The oils in your skin are bad for it.”

He stepped away from her hand-painted silk fan and bowed in her direction with mocking obedience. “I think Deuma was a maenad.”

“The handmaidens of Bacchus? How can a devil be a Greek demi-goddess?”

“There aren’t any rules against it that I know. Though I admit I’m not a hundred percent sure she was a devil. I was a kid when I summoned her and I wasn’t very savvy about the finer points of mythology and magic at the time.”

“Wait, so you want my exorcist to summon a devil and we’re not even sure it is a devil? Weren’t the maenads known for going mad when they were filled with Bacchus’s power and ripping the flesh from men with their bare teeth?”

“Beside the point. The point is Bacchus was the god of all sorts of drunken revels, but he was also the god of illusion. His vessel was enchanted to vanish whenever it was closed, hiding itself from sight.”

“I’m familiar with the story. Luckily, my finders don’t rely on their vision. The illusion won’t stop them.”

“But the additional enchantment Deuma placed on it might. When the box is closed, it will continue to hide itself, but as soon as it is opened, my heart will die. And me with it, of course. Even if we find it, we may not be able to hold it and we can’t open it until all the other pieces are in play.”

“I thought you were limited only by stamina and finesse. Can’t you put a binding on the box to stay until we are ready to open it?”

“I can’t perform magic on my own heart. One of your people would have to. If you have someone who can.”

“I do.” She had a coven of witches on retainer, but they were unpredictable and not her favorite recourse. Karma focused on her center, refusing to be annoyed by the fact that Prometheus’s task was coming to involve a cast of thousands.

By the time he was done, he would know the ins and outs of her entire organization.

Karma went still, not with premonition, with doubt. What if that was his real goal? What if everything he’d told her was a ruse to get close to her? Why had she let him into her office? What did she really know about him?

Keeping her breathing steady to avoid revealing her flash of panic, Karma angled her head to eye Prometheus casually. “You know, now that I think of it, there is something we can do today to start moving forward with your reformation.”

“Oh?” He smiled, clearly feeling like he was still in charge. Karma resisted the urge to gloat. He spread his hands in a patently false gesture of willingness. “I’m at your disposal.”

“Leave.” She held up a hand when he opened his mouth to protest. “Give me a couple hours to get things in order. Say, nine?”

“Why do I have the feeling you’re calling in an executioner?”

You aren’t far off. “No assassins. Scout’s honor. But you can hardly expect me to be prepared to utilize your unique skills at the crack of dawn on a Sunday.”

“Is that a smile? Now I know you’re setting me up.” He folded his arms, ropey muscles shifting under his tan. “Lucky for you, I’m dying to see who you call for air support. Nine o’clock?”

“On the dot.”

He caught her hand and swept her a bow over it that wouldn’t have looked out of place coming from an eighteenth century courtier, and yet somehow it worked for him. “I’ll count the seconds until I am once again in your presence.”

She refused to give him the satisfaction of jerking her hand out of his grip. “You can count whatever you want. Just try to stay out of trouble.”

“My lady.” One long finger stroked the inside of her wrist as he lifted her hand. She thought he would brush a kiss across her knuckles, was braced for it, but he turned her hand at the last moment and his lips caught her unprepared on the soft, exposed skin of her inner wrist. Tingling awareness shot up her arm, but she kept her gaze steady on him, fighting to appear unmoved—an exercise in futility when he could feel her pulse racing against his lips.

“Goodbye, Prometheus.”

He smiled as he released her, black eyes twinkling with pure devilry. “Karma.”

She listened for the sound of the outer door opening and closing. When she heard the click, she pulled out her laptop and brought up the building’s security feed, watching through the exterior cameras as Prometheus took his time putting on a black helmet and leather jacket, throwing one long, spidery leg over the seat of a black motorcycle and finally roaring out of the parking lot.

One eye still watching the cameras, not entirely trusting the man to stay gone, she plucked the handset from her desk phone and dialed from memory. It was still ungodly early on a Sunday morning, but she would beg for forgiveness later.

Her touch-reader, an infallible human lie-detector with a weakness for carnivals, answered on the fifth ring with a groggy, “‘lo?”

“Ronna. It’s Karma. I’m sorry to disturb you so early, but can you come into the office today?”

“Karma? Whassat? Come in? Yeah, I… What time is it?”

“It’s early. I’m sorry for the inconvenience. Could you make it in by nine?”

“Yeah. Yeah, sure. I’ll just…yeah. Nine.” A male voice rumbled in the background. “D’you want Matt too?”

“Please. And Ronna, if you would, have him bring his gun.”

Chapter Seven

Which Lie Did I Tell?

Prometheus wasn’t surprised Karma had caught on to his annoy-her-into-cooperation plan. He hadn’t exactly been subtle, arriving at the crack of dawn on a Sunday morning. Unfortunately, she’d been ready for him and seemed to have reservoirs of teeth-gritted tolerance beyond anyone he’d previously encountered.

Curiosity, always his Achilles’ heel, goaded him to play along and go quietly, if only so he could see what she would mount as a counterattack. He pointed his motorcycle up the coast and drove, considering the enigma that was Karma from every angle, biding his time until nine o’clock—or a vague approximation thereof; he’d never been a stickler for punctuality. When he returned and let himself into Karma’s inner sanctum for the second time that day—knocking was so overrated—he saw that her reinforcements had beaten him there.

The couple didn’t look like anything to strike fear into the heart of a fearless warlock. The girl, a fair-skinned African-American with reddish-brown curls, gave off a pleasant, low-level buzz of power, enough wattage to power a microwave, but hardly impressive when she was standing next to Karma, who could have single-handedly lit Manhattan if she let herself go. The man appeared to the naked eye to be more of a threat, a buzz-cut Caucasian with a bad attitude. Cop or criminal, he had to be one or the other—but he barely gave off enough energy for a static shock, so Prometheus dismissed him with a glance, turning his attention to Karma.

She looked smug. What advantage did she think these two gave her?

“Prometheus. So nice of you to join us.” Karma stood in front of her desk, propped against the edge. She unfolded her hands and gestured to the pair to her left. “I’d like to introduce Officer Matthew Holloway, one of my security consultants—”

Cop, then. No surprise there. Karma did like the white hats.

Holloway nodded to acknowledge the introduction and deliberately shoved his hands into his front pockets, pushing back the edges of his jacket to reveal the awkward bulge of a shoulder holster.

Prometheus almost smiled. If a guy with a gun was supposed to scare him into obedience, Karma was going to be disappointed. A man with less than three months left on the clock felt a certain reckless disregard for bullets—at least Prometheus did. He’d never really developed a healthy respect for his own mortality to begin with.

And pointing a gun at a telekinetic was just plain stupid. There were a thousand different ways to jam a firearm and Prometheus knew them all.

“—and Ronna Mitchell. My lie detector.”

Tension jerked the muscles in his shoulders up before he could control the reaction. A touch reader. He’d known Karma had one on staff, but he hadn’t seen this play coming. She’d warned him, but he’d thought he could sweet talk his way out of being put to this test.

Karma had the grace not to smile at his reaction, acknowledging his discomfort with an inquisitive tilt of her head. “You don’t mind if I ask you a few questions, do you, Prometheus?”

She wanted to test his intentions. That much was clear. She would have been stupid to trust him outright, but Prometheus found himself equal parts annoyed that she so obviously didn’t and uneasy at the idea of letting the touch reader put her hands on him. He wasn’t sure what she would see, how deep she would be able to go. Hell, the reader herself probably didn’t know. Everything he’d read indicated that particular gift was unpredictable, reacting to others with talents in unexpected ways.

Would he be shielded? Was it possible he could even lie to her? Or would his every secret be laid raw? He’d never been comfortable being vulnerable to anyone. Why else would he have given away his beating heart for power?

“You can say no,” Karma offered when he didn’t answer her question.

He could. He could refuse. But the subtext was clear. She wouldn’t trust him. She wouldn’t do beyond the bare minimum to help him. He would lose her as an ally. An ally he couldn’t afford to alienate. Karma was the key.

He forced his shoulders to relax and spread his hands in a magician’s nothing-to-hide gesture, drawing their attention to his hands so they wouldn’t see the nervous tightness in his face. “I’m yours to interrogate. Do your worst.”

Karma did smile then, a close-lipped curve. “Hopefully my worst won’t be necessary. Have a seat.”

She waved to one of the straight-backed chairs in front of her desk, but Prometheus crossed to the couch on the far wall and tossed himself onto it. If he was going to do this, he was going to be comfortable. Holloway dragged over one of the straight-backed chairs for the reader, Ronna, who perched on the edge and gave him a tentative smile.

“It doesn’t hurt,” she assured him.

He stopped himself before he snorted out, Yeah, maybe not physically. The reaction would have been too defensive. Revealed too much. So instead, he lolled back on the couch, draping his hand over the arm to put it within her reach. “Don’t be gentle, sweetheart. I’m into the rough stuff.”

Holloway, hovering over Ronna’s shoulder, folded his arms so one hand rested against the butt of his gun. His fingers stroked it slowly, like he was fantasizing about all the holes he would like to put in Prometheus.

Karma moved to stand a few feet away, feet braced in her high heels, arms folded tight. It was a power posture, but with her arms bound around her, she also looked like she was holding herself inside, the picture of intense restraint. “Don’t try anything or I’ll have Matt shoot you.”

Prometheus raised a lazy brow. “Noted.”

Karma nodded to Ronna. The touch reader licked her lips, returned the nod, seeming to psych herself up, then reached for his hand. Prometheus slammed up his mental shields, pouring every scrap of will-driven power he had into his defenses.

At the first touch, her power jacked into his and Ronna gave a startled yelp, jerking her hand back.

Holloway lunged forward, the gun clearing the holster, but Karma didn’t even blink.

“Ronna?” she asked, the low rasp of her voice giving nothing away.

“I’m fine.” The touch reader brushed a hand across her forehead, huffing out a breath. “He’s a doozie. I wasn’t quite prepared for it.” She put a hand on Holloway’s arm, giving a little shake until he lowered the gun he didn’t seem to realize he’d been pointing at Prometheus. “It’s okay. I’m good now.”

During the millisecond their skin touched, colors had flashed in Prometheus’s mind like a kaleidoscope on speed, images beyond his control. He didn’t want to think about what she might have seen.

“Are you all right to continue?” Karma asked.

Prometheus almost said no before he realized she was speaking to her reader.

“Yeah,” Ronna assured her. “Yeah, we’re good to go.”

He would have objected that no, they most certainly were not, but Ronna had already grabbed his hand again, gripping it between both of her small, soft ones. This time there was no crazy kaleidoscope crash through his brain. Just a hum beneath his thoughts, a tingle where her fingertips brushed his skin.

“Ask,” Ronna intoned in a voice devoid of emotion.

“Have you ever knowingly or directly harmed any of my people?” Karma’s voice cracked out, aggression in every syllable.

He wanted to lie—tempted to see if he could fool the reader—but he didn’t have the balls to test Karma on this one. “No. Never. I don’t intentionally harm anyone. That isn’t what I do.”

It was the bald truth—though not due to any virtue lying dormant in his soul. Magic was a vengeful mistress. If he abused her, used her to harm anyone, that harm would come back on him threefold. In spite of what he’d said to Ronna about liking it rough, he wasn’t that masochistic.

He didn’t cast curses. He created them, packaged and sold them, but he didn’t need the universe to bitch-slap his ass to know that actually casting bad juju was the mother of all dumb ideas.

“Truth.” Ronna’s single word seemed to hang in the room.

He felt Karma’s energy shift, the tension draining from her even though her posture didn’t change a single millimeter.

“Do you have any plan, intention or desire to harm any of my people?”

“None.”

“Truth.”

Another near invisible easing shifted the air around Karma. “Have you lied about any aspect of what you want me and my people to do for you?”

Time to test the reader. Prometheus pumped energy into his shields and projected honesty for all he was worth. “No.”

“Lie.”

Shit. Prometheus’s internal flinch stayed internal. All Karma and her gun-toting guard dog saw was a cocky smile and a can-you-blame-me shrug. “It’s what I do.”

Again Karma didn’t move a muscle, but he sensed…disappointment? He’d expected anger or even a smug self-satisfaction that she’d been right about him, not this feeling that she’d hoped for better from him, even as she expected the worst.

“What do you really want from me?”

“Your help reclaiming my heart. I didn’t lie about that.”

“Truth.”

“What kind of help specifically?”

“Locating my heart, summoning Deuma and breaking her ties to me so I live to see November.”

“Truth.”

Come on, Karma, he silently urged. Be satisfied. Don’t push it.

“Is that all you want from me?”

“Yes.”

“Lie.”

Damn it. He couldn’t get anything past the damn reader.

Karma gave him a long, exasperated look before asking, “What else are you trying to get from me?” with the air of a woman who wouldn’t stop asking until she had wrung every last drop of the truth from him.

He couldn’t let her get that far. There were pieces of the truth he didn’t want her to see. Like the fact that she could strip him of his powers without killing him, leaving him disgustingly normal for the rest of his all-too-natural life. Or the fact that in the last couple months he’d set in motion a few other get-her-attention disasters that could blow up in her face at any moment.

But how did you make the queen of the universe back the fuck off? What else did he want from her? Truthfully?

“Sex.”

Karma made a sharp, choked noise.

“Truth.”

Chapter Eight

Truth’s Consequences

Karma didn’t do flustered. Poised, controlled, that was her. The mere mention of sex didn’t send her into a tizzy like some Victorian virgin. So why the hell was all the blood in her body rushing toward her face, the blush spreading across her chest and down her arms until even her palms heated?

And Prometheus saw it all. Those eerie jet-black eyes saw far too much.

He wanted to have sex with her. The idea wasn’t nearly as repulsive as she would have liked it to be. In fact, something rebellious and needy was working its way through her veins, honing in on her core.

“I see. Ah.” The words came out weak and thready. She coughed, clearing her throat. “Moving on. Will you do everything in your power to ensure that none of my people are harmed in the process of assisting you?”

“As long as it doesn’t interfere with my own well-being.”

“Truth.”

Not an ideal answer, but it was all she could expect from him. “And will you, to the best of your abilities, assist me and my people as I see fit for the next three weeks, as you have agreed to do?”

He took longer than she would have liked to think that one over. Eventually, answering with a reluctant, “I will.”

Ronna hesitated. “Truth. I think.”

“You’re asking about intentions.” Prometheus shrugged. “The road to hell is paved with good ones, but if it helps, I’m feeling about ninety percent cooperative. You aren’t going to get a better offer than that.”

This time Ronna’s response was instantaneous. “Truth.”

Prometheus smiled, the curve of his lips a sinful invitation. His wicked eyes kept Karma in his sights—and made it impossible for her to think clearly. She wasn’t this woman, easily manipulated by her hormones. But no matter how many times she told herself that, it didn’t change the fact that a single mention of sex had thrown her thoughts into disarray.

Not just any sex. Sex with Prometheus, a small voice taunted in her head. What would it be like? What would he be like? His unruly power practically gave her a contact high. What if it were all focused on her, awakening nerves she hadn’t known she had? Heat twisted and coiled low in her abdomen.

No. She couldn’t think of that now. She needed to focus. What other questions did she have for him? What other lies had he fed her in the last twenty-four hours?

She’d had a dozen questions neatly organized in her mind, every avenue covered so he couldn’t wiggle through and leave out a chunk of the truth. Now all those questions blurred together into a flustered glob. God, why couldn’t she think straight?

She wished she could blame him for her distraction, but she was the one who’d pushed. She had asked. She’d practically forced him to confess his attraction. How unethical was that? Yes, it had been accidental, but the purpose of bringing Ronna in hadn’t been to invade his private thoughts. Karma had needed to make sure he didn’t have ulterior motives. That he wasn’t going to hurt her people. Beyond that, she had no right to abuse Ronna’s power to learn more.

“Do you intend to use the information you gather about me and my people to hurt or exploit us in any way?”

“I hadn’t planned on it, but now that you mention it, it’s not a bad idea.” He held up his free hand before Ronna could pass judgment on his statement. “Kidding. No, I won’t exploit you or your people, angel. There’s no profit for me in it. No longer term profit, anyway, since you’d probably come after me with a chainsaw if I harmed a single hair on a single pretty little consultant head.”

“Truth.”

That would have to do. If nothing else, she would hope his fear of her chainsaw-wielding skills would keep him in line. “All right. We’ll stop there for now.” Ronna released Prometheus’s hand and Karma gave her a grateful nod. “Thank you for your assistance, Ronna. If you wouldn’t mind staying for a moment longer…”

“Sure. Do you want us to…?” Ronna pointed toward the outer office.

Karma shook her head, hoping the gesture didn’t look as desperate as she felt. She did not want to be left alone with Prometheus. “This will only take a moment,” she assured Ronna and Matt before turning to face the man of the hour.

Prometheus stretched out on the couch, entirely too comfortable in her space for her liking. “I take it I’m being dismissed?”

“I’ll have work for you tomorrow. If you really mean what you said about assisting me for the next three weeks, you’ll help me now by leaving.”

“Guess I can’t argue with that.” He rolled to his feet, slowly straightening to his full height. His gaze met hers and held, magnetic, drawing her in and making her feel like they were the only two people in the world, let alone the office, even though Ronna and Matt waited next to her desk not ten feet away. “If you can think of any reason you might need me,” Prometheus said in silky invitation, “any reason at all, you know how to find me.”

Her heart was still hammering when the door closed behind him. Karma took a moment to collect herself, then raised her chin, shot her cuffs and strode around her desk, gathering more composure with each purposeful step. By the time she faced Ronna and Matt, she felt like herself again.

“I’ll be brief and then you can get back to your weekend. I apologize again for the necessity.”

“Don’t worry about it,” Ronna said, taking one of the chairs facing the desk, Matt settling down beside her. “You saved Matt from being nagged into retiling the bathroom, and a chance to get a hand on the infamous Prometheus? I wouldn’t miss it. The man was a fascinating read.”

Karma folded her hands on top of her desk, fighting the urge to lean forward that would betray her eagerness. “You didn’t hold anything back, did you? He was really truthful? And you didn’t…” She hesitated, feeling strangely like her next question was crossing a line even though it was standard debriefing protocol following one of Ronna’s reads. “You didn’t get anything else?”

“He was as truthful as he knows how to be.” Ronna shrugged. “He could easily have been hiding more. I didn’t pick up any surface thoughts or anything like that, though when I first touched him I did get a few images, but they went by too quickly for me to get a good look. Mostly I got an overwhelming sense of strength from him. Like if mental toughness were athletic ability, he’d be a decathlete.”

“Any other insights?”

Ronna frowned, her eyes going distant. “He’s not immoral, so much as amoral. When people are lying to themselves or rationalizing their behavior, sometimes I’ll hear echoes of that, but Prometheus doesn’t seem to know how to second guess himself. Just not wired that way, I guess. He’s very linear.” Her eyes focused sharply and her face lit with a smile. “Like you! He felt very similar to when I read you.”

Not sure that’s a good thing. “Thank you, Ronna. And Matt. I appreciate both of your assistance.”

Matt stood, taking Ronna’s hand. “Glad you called us. Can’t be too careful with something like that.”

No, you can’t. But Prometheus had agreed to cooperate and he didn’t have ulterior motives where her people were concerned.

Now all she had to do was figure out what she was going to do with him for the next three weeks.

“No. Absolutely not. No fucking way.”

Karma stared down her favorite exorcist, waiting for him to complete his tantrum. She reminded herself that she liked Rodriguez, even when he was being a pain in the ass. The tattooed bad boy with a heart of gold had always reminded her a little of Jake. She tried to focus on that now—rather than the fact that he was making her life difficult. Or the throbbing pressure that had been building inside her skull all morning. Her patience was shot, but it wasn’t Rodriguez’s fault she hadn’t been able to get more than twenty consecutive minutes of sleep the night before, plagued by a series of nasty premonitions, including several of the drowning variety.

She’d called Ciara as soon as Ronna and Matt departed yesterday, determined to warn her to be especially careful in her pool for the next week, but the finder hadn’t answered her phone. That in itself wasn’t unusual—Ciara always ignored her phone when she was working and she kept odd hours. Karma had left a message, telling herself she was overreacting, that she had days before the dream crossed into reality. But the hunch that something was seriously wrong refused to leave her. When Ciara still hadn’t called back by the evening, Karma had swung by her house.

Ciara was a shut-in. Because of the painful psychic dissonance she felt at the slightest physical touch, she never left her home. But she hadn’t answered the door. The lights were off and no sound came from the massive television Karma knew sat on the other side of the door.

Ciara was missing.

She’d called the FBI department Ciara worked with recovering stolen gems and jewelry, but they’d claimed Ciara wasn’t working a case for them now and had refused to put Karma through to her missing finder’s new handler. She’d called Ciara’s house every hour on the hour just in case she’d made it back home. Under normal circumstances, she would have called in her personal cavalry—nothing like having a private investigator for a brother—but Jake was on his honeymoon. As was her other most reliable finder, Chase.

Which left Karma helpless—a feeling that never sat well with her.

And now she had a pissy exorcist to deal with.

Rodriguez switched to Spanish and continued to vent his spleen. Karma waited, thinking longingly of the meditation she would do as soon as she had fifteen minutes to recenter. Rodriguez wasn’t being unreasonable. She was asking him to babysit a man he had good reason to hate.

But understanding where he was coming from didn’t mean she was going to take no for an answer.

“Rodriguez,” she said sharply, cutting into his tirade, which had diminished to Spanish mutterings.

“I won’t do it.”

“He’s agreed to cooperate.”

Rodriguez snorted. “And you believe him?”

“I had Ronna read him. He’s no angel, but he’ll be using his powers for good. For the time being.”

Her exorcist folded his arms, black tribal tattoos rippling across his forearms. “I won’t trust him. Nothing you can say would make me.”

“Good. I picked you because I knew you wouldn’t let him get away with anything.”

“Lucky me.”

Rodriguez might hate it, but he was the perfect choice. She needed someone to wrangle the slippery warlock and she could be certain Rodriguez wouldn’t take any shit from him. She couldn’t do it herself—not only because she had a finder to track down and a business to run, but because after yesterday she felt the definite need for some distance. Prometheus disturbed her. She needed her calm.

Her head throbbed, more evidence that she didn’t need this stress, but she ignored the pain. “He has demonstrated a definite knack for handling demons.”

“Summoning them,” Rodriguez snapped. “Summoning them to harass my girlfriend. And teaching bored housewives to summon them so they can make my life hell.”

“The control necessary to summon is the same skill needed to exorcise.”

“I won’t be nice to him.”

Karma felt a smile quirk her lips. “That’s the other reason I picked you. He’s supposed to make amends. That doesn’t mean we have to make it easy for him.” She reached for a file on her desk. “Apparently there’s a possible nest of mischief demons upstate. Take him with you.” Rising, she handed Rodriguez the folder.

He took the folder, shaking his head ruefully, but she knew she had him. “You’re lucky I’m in a good mood.”

She smiled. It wasn’t luck. Rodriguez was reliable. She’d known she could count on him. He started toward the door, but Karma stopped him at the threshold with a last minute instruction. “Rodriguez? Give him hell.”

Chapter Nine

The Amateur Boy Scout

Prometheus arrived for his summons at Karmic Consultants on Monday morning prepared to suck up like there was no tomorrow.

No ass left unkissed, that was his new strategy. Especially if that ass is Karma’s. This was his chance to play the Boy Scout—since it had become apparent he wasn’t going to get the upper hand unless he earned Karma’s trust, something that sure as hell wasn’t going to happen if he acted naturally. His new plan consisted of bombarding them with so much sweetness and light these Karmic goodie-goodies wouldn’t know what hit them.

He shoved open the front door with an absent pulse of magic, both hands filled with lattes and muffins that should damn well taste better than ambrosia after he’d paid the GDP of a small country for them at the Starbucks around the corner. You’d think a caramel macchiato was liquid gold for what they were charging for the things.

On any other day he might have taken the time to drop a hex charm or two on the corporate bastards as a punishment for price gouging, but today he was being a good boy. No matter how much that halo might chafe.

The ray of sunshine seated at the receptionist desk looked up as the door shut behind him, her brown curls bobbing as she beamed at him with enough cheer it was a miracle rainbows didn’t shoot out of his ass. “Welcome to Karmic Consultants! How can we help you?”

“I’m Prometheus. I believe Karma’s expecting me.” He flashed his most charming smile and extended a Styrofoam cup of caffeinated temptation. “Nectar of the gods?”

She ignored the proffered Starbucks manna as her eyes lit up with a blinding enthusiasm rather than any sort of cognitive awareness. Nobody home at Casa Receptionist.

“You’re Prometheus!” she parroted with a disconcerting delight he’d never before heard associated with his name. “I’m Brittany. I’m the one you summoned a demon to stalk. Not that I hold that against you. The things we do for love, right? Karma’s with a consultant at the moment. If you’ll have a seat, I’ll let her know you’ve arrived.” She bounded out of her chair, waving him toward the seating area off to one side of the lobby.

Wary of her enthusiasm, Prometheus obediently took a seat and barely eavesdropped at all when she plucked up the desk phone and murmured into it, alerting Karma to his arrival. When the bubbly brunette hung up the phone, she looked up to find him watching her and beamed.

“You don’t look at all like I expected,” she enthused, rounding the receptionist desk to perch on one of the waiting area chairs opposite him. “Like Spock.”

Prometheus couldn’t tell whether she was saying he looked like Spock, she’d expected him to look like Spock, or that Spock didn’t look like she expected him to either. None of which gave him any clue how she expected him to respond anyway, so he tried the peace offering route again, thrusting out the Styrofoam tray. “Starbucks?”

She blinked, returning from whatever planet she visited in her off moments. “Hmm? Oh, no, thank you. Luis is still holding a grudge about that whole kidnapping, demon-summoning thing and made me promise not to accept anything you’ve touched.”

He jolted, sloshing the coffee onto the lids, startled more by her honesty than the blatant distrust. “Smart man. Who’s Luis?”

She bounced on her chair like a five-year-old with a secret. “My boyfriend.” Her eyes flicked to the door to Karma’s office then back to his face. “How long have you been in love with Karma?”

If he’d been drinking, he would have sprayed the lobby with coffee. As it was, he jerked like she’d Tased him and the four brimming cups of liquid gold macchiato tumbled toward the floor in a hot caramel tidal wave. Prometheus caught them before the first drop of liquid could touch the carpet, reversing the flow and wrangling the coffee back into cups that were suddenly neatly vertical again.

“Whoops.”

Bubbles the Receptionist gaped at him, mouth open, eyes saucer-wide. “You… Oh my. You just…gosh.”

Only a woman like Sunshine here could make the word gosh work for her. Prometheus set the coffee beside the artfully splayed magazines on the table and gave a shrug. “Figured you didn’t want the rug to stain.”

That seemed to snap her out of her shock. She blinked, beamed and bounced. “Yep. I don’t have the first idea how to get a coffee stain out of a rug, but I’m getting really good at laundry!”

There was something very wrong with Karma’s receptionist. No one should be that excited about laundry. One of Prometheus’s favorite magical perks was that he hadn’t had to do a load of colors in twenty years. “Uh-huh,” he said, in what he hoped was an encouraging tone, not an I’m-mentally-fitting-you-for-a-strait-jacket one.

Before Brittany could wax rhapsodic on the joys of laundry, the door to Karma’s office opened. Prometheus came to attention in his chair, but the figure exiting the office and sealing it after himself could not have been more opposite from the elegant, contained proprietress of Karmic Consultants.

He was Latino, slightly above average height—which meant Prometheus towered over him—and thick, black tribal tattoos marked his arms from his wrists to where they disappeared into the short sleeves of his black T-shirt. He might as well have tattooed “Badass” on his forehead.

Sprinkles the Wonder Secretary sprang out of her chair. “Luis!”

Ah, the infamous boyfriend. Not a pairing he would have predicted. The gang banger and the cheerleader. It was like an after school special gone wrong. Prometheus came to his feet as well, as Luis stalked to the brunette’s side.

The boyfriend raked him with a distinctly unfriendly gaze. “So you’re the asshole.”

“Luis,” Brittany scolded.

Prometheus grinned. It wasn’t the worst thing he’d ever been called. “That’s me. And you are?”

“I’m the poor bastard who’s stuck with you. Rodriguez. Exorcist.” He instinctively shoved his hand out to shake Prometheus’s, then seemed to think better of it and used the hand to urge Sunshine behind him. “Karma wants you to shadow me.”

Prometheus’s grin dropped from his face. Shit.

He’d been counting on his ability to worm his way into Karma’s good graces, but it looked like her graces weren’t even going to be present to be penetrated. Bad enough he had to play at being a white hat. There was no way he was going to trail along behind an exorcist, watching without doing a damn thing as the fool bungled his way through Demons 101. He should be teaching a master course on demons to Karma’s staff, not playing at being some tattooed punk’s sidekick.

“I don’t shadow.”

“Nullifying our agreement already?”

Prometheus whipped around at the sultry sound of Karma’s phone-sex-operator voice. He hadn’t even heard the door to her office open again, but there she stood, framed by the doorway. Composed, controlled. Queen of all she surveyed.

Damn if that didn’t make him want to muss her up. But he was being a good boy. If it killed him.

“Of course not.” Prometheus smiled his most earnest smile—which, admittedly, wasn’t very earnest. “I simply thought you would want to take advantage of the full range of my significant abilities.”

The exorcist snorted. Karma didn’t even blink.

“I don’t trust you,” she said flatly. “I trust Rodriguez. You will do as he says, when he says it, and if he has a positive report I will consider allowing you more leeway. You’re on probation, Prometheus. Don’t push it.” She gave him an icy smile. “Besides, Rodriguez and Brittany are two of my employees you’ve wronged. You want to show me how reformed you are? Start by making amends with them.”

Prometheus eyed the pair. Brittany didn’t look like she needed amends—if she even had the brainpower necessary to understand what amends were. She beamed at him encouragingly. Rodriguez, on the other hand, looked like he would cheerfully cut open Prometheus’s mid-section to jump rope with his intestines. Prometheus returned his gaze to Karma’s. “I’d rather make amends with you,” he said, giving amends the dirtiest, most suggestive inflection and taking a step toward her, crowding into her space until jasmine and ginger teased his nostrils.

She didn’t even give him a twitch of reaction, but her energy flared and he thought he saw the slightest hint of color touch her high cheekbones. Damn, he loved her feigned indifference, that near-constant resistance to the attraction that crackled between them whenever he got too close. Karma wasn’t the type to fall easily into his arms, but the push and pull of simmering heat and cool disdain were aphrodisiacs in their own way.

She dismissed him with a slow, disdainful lift of one eyebrow, looking past him to the Starbucks on the table. “I don’t drink coffee.”

With that, she disappeared back into her office, the door snicking shut behind her. Prometheus stared at the wood panel for a long moment, tempted to use a bit of telekinesis to throw it open, to see if she was hovering on the other side, as intently aware of him as he was of her.

“Come on, cabron,” the exorcist grumbled. “I don’t have all day.”

Prometheus didn’t have the time to waste staring at doors either, but something told him this doorway was worth laying siege to. He wondered if Karma realized her defenses were already under attack.

“Hey. Pendejo,” the exorcist snapped.

Prometheus pulled his attention away from the door. “I’m coming.” Like a good boy.

Karma leaned back against the solid wood of the door, trying to reclaim her center.

She should have resisted the temptation to see how Prometheus would react to learning Rodriguez was going to be his keeper. Temptation had never done her any favors. Always better to walk in the opposite direction—quickly and calmly, like an evacuation drill.

She pressed her hands to her face, feeling the heat pouring off her cheeks. Why did that man unsettle her so? It wasn’t attraction, necessarily. It was more a vulnerability—like he had found a crack in her façade and she couldn’t maintain her perfect autonomy around him. He made her feel human—when that was the last thing she wanted.

Why him of all people?

She didn’t like it and she couldn’t afford it. A woman couldn’t juggle all the balls Karma had to keep in the air to run Karmic Consultants smoothly if she was moony-eyed over a tall warlock with unnaturally white hair.

Ciara needed her. Her clients needed her. Karma couldn’t afford distraction.

But still she listened to the voices in the outer office until she heard the street door slam behind Rodriguez and Prometheus. Only then did she push away from the door and cross to her desk, her heart rate returning to a normal speed as the distance between herself and the warlock stretched farther.

Keeping temptation at arm’s length was good. A few counties away would be even better. For her own selfish sake, Karma hoped those demons had nested far out in the country, taking Prometheus miles and miles away from the refuge of her office.

Chapter Ten

Demons and Bumpers and Sprinkles, Oh My!

On Tuesday morning, Prometheus flipped over his new Gone Demon Hunting sign and locked the front door on his shop before turning to face Rodriguez and the piece of crap car besmirching his parking lot. Apparently, their days of rolling through the country side-by-side on their motorcycles were over—and even if it meant he didn’t get to drive, Prometheus was relieved to see that. Yesterday had been boring as hell.

Or rather, more boring than hell. Hell had to be more exciting than trailing along after Rodriguez.

The exorcist had led the way upstate to a small town being afflicted by what appeared to be a rash of demon-related pranks. After chatting with the locals and repeatedly telling Prometheus to “shut the fuck up and stay out of the way,” Rodriguez had begun tracking the energy signatures of the demons involved—which would have been impressive—Prometheus had only ever heard of a handful of exorcists who had that particular ability, if not for the fact that Prometheus himself had a much more kickass ability. His spidey-sense could pinpoint every demon in a hundred-mile radius—including the enclave of seven Rodriquez was tracking. Tracking without a prayer of success, since Prometheus could sense that the nest’s summoners had already released the demons back to the demonic plane because they couldn’t provide the energy to sustain seven corporeal demons. Though there was some very suspicious activity nearby…

Of course, Rodriguez hadn’t been interested in anything Prometheus had to say on the subject of demon hunting, so they hadn’t located a single demon.

Boring. And pointless.

He hadn’t even been able to talk Rodriguez over to his side because roaring along on bikes without linked helmet-mikes made talking impossible and Rodriguez had told him to shut up every time they stopped to investigate a new trace of demonic energy. Prometheus had been a good boy—doing what Rodriguez said, when he said it, precisely as Karma had commanded—and he got jack shit out of it.

Today he’d woken up feeling distinctly less Boy Scoutish.

Maybe it was time Karma learned that breaking the rules could get the job done. Prometheus had decided to start that lesson today. With Rodriguez.

Prometheus crossed the parking lot, eyeing the ancient Honda. “I figured you more for a sports car kind of guy,” he told the exorcist leaning against the trunk. “That might be the ugliest car I’ve ever seen.”

“I’m more of a minivan guy, actually,” Rodriguez mouthed off. “This is my sister’s car.” He pointed to a microscopic scratch in the back bumper. “And this is where a car possessed by a demon you summoned rear-ended it.”

Ah. Apparently they’d come to the reparations portion of the program. That tiny scratch was the result of the demon-induced car crash Karma’d been so peeved about? Prometheus waved a hand toward the bumper—an unnecessary gesture, but he’d always felt showmanship added a certain flair to magic use. The scratch vanished. “Better?”

Rodriguez glared at the pristine bumper. “No.”

“You’re right.” Prometheus waved his hand again in a slightly more elaborate gesture and the drab, faded tan paint job was instantly replaced by a rich, gleaming dark blue.

Rodriguez’s frown intensified.

“No? You prefer green? Or perhaps black?” One glistening paint job replaced the next in a cycle of rich colors before Prometheus settled on a nice deep red, throwing in a pair of fuzzy dice dangling from the rearview mirror.

Rodriguez growled. “You can’t just wave a hand and make everything better by magic. You’re still the dickhead who almost got Brittany killed by sending a demon to possess her car.”

“Ah, so this is about Bubbles the Wonder Secretary.”

Rodriguez shot him an I-know-exactly-where-I’m-going-to-hide-your-body look. “Just get in the goddamn car.”

Prometheus smiled. The joys of male bonding. He slid the passenger seat back as far as it would go and folded himself into the car, relieved that at least he didn’t brain himself on the doorframe. His height could be a distinct disadvantage. One of the many reasons he preferred his VTX1800. The bike was a big sumbitch and never made him feel cramped. Rodriguez’s Harley was a little fella by comparison, but Prometheus had swallowed all the tempting mine’s bigger comments he could have made yesterday. Good behavior really did suck all the fun out of life.

Rodriguez buckled himself into the driver’s seat and cranked the key. The engine coughed before it caught and Prometheus sent a flicker of magic through the fuel-injection system to clean it up.

“Am I going to get to play today?” he asked. “Or are we going to run around all day chasing our own asses?”

“Chasing demons. Is your ass demonic?”

“What if we didn’t have to chase them? I can tell you exactly where they’re hiding.”

“Let me guess. You know where they are because you summoned them.”

“No.” Though he did have a good idea who had. “I know where they are because I have demon radar.” At Rodriguez’s skeptical look, Prometheus added, “Trust me.”

“No.”

“Fine, don’t trust me. Regardless of how I know where they are, I know. And if you let me tell you where to go, we find them faster, banish them faster, and that’s less time you have to spend with me. Sound good?”

“Sounds fucking fantastic. Provided this isn’t a trap.”

“If I harm you in any way, Karma spends the rest of my rather short life making me wish I was already dead. Doesn’t sound like a good strategy for me.”

“Fine. Where are they?”

Prometheus didn’t feel any great surge of victory—he’d known all along he would win, but it was pleasant to be proved right. “Get on Route 7 headed north. I’ll tell you which exit when we get closer.”

“If this is a wild goose chase…”

“You’ll jump rope with my intestines. I get it.”

Rodriguez shot him a startled look. “I’ll probably just tell Karma. I’m not really into doing the Rocky thing with intestines. Sounds messy.”

Prometheus smiled. “You have no idea.”

The exorcist shifted, subtly tilting his body away from Prometheus.

Prometheus sprawled back in his seat. “So, you and Sprinkles, huh?”

Rodriguez frowned. “Sprinkles?”

“You know. Bubbles, Skittles, Buttons, Candy, Sugarplum, Sunshine. The receptionist.”

“Brittany?” Rodriguez glared at him—uncomfortable bowel-jump-rope comments apparently forgotten. “Don’t fucking talk to me about Brittany, all right, cabron? You’re the reason she was stalked by a fucking demon for almost a month, so whatever the hell you wanna say, you just keep it to yourself.”

Prometheus contorted his face into a mask of contrition—or what he imagined contrition might look like. “I’m here to make amends.”

“Because Karma fucking forced you to. If you’re so intent on making amends, how come you haven’t said you’re sorry yet, huh?”

If that was all he wanted, that was easy enough. He didn’t believe in apologies, but words were even easier to throw around than magic paint jobs. “I’m sorry.” When Rodriguez glared, he repeated the words, trying for sincerity. “I’m very sorry. Truly. Deeply. Devoutly sorry.”

“Yeah, well, tell it to Brittany. She’s the one you should be apologizing to.”

“Right. Of course. Shall we swing by the office right now? Take care of that?”

Rodriguez didn’t change lanes, continuing northbound with an irritable glower. “You’re an ass. Anyone ever tell you that?”

“I believe that was one of the names Karma shouted at me, but most people are too afraid of me to dare insult me.”

“Karma shouted at you? Like actually raised her voice?”

“Oh yeah.” Prometheus smiled at the memory. “That woman is a helluva sight when she’s in a temper.” When she wasn’t in a temper too.

Rodriguez was silent for a long moment, then he flicked Prometheus an appraising glance. “So, where’s this demon GPS of yours telling you to go?”

Prometheus bared his teeth in a feral grin, more than ready to show off his exorcising muscle. “Head to the campus we were near yesterday. I’ll tell you when to turn.”

They rode the rest of the way in silence, save his periodic navigational instructions, Rodriguez stewing over whatever the hell tattooed exorcists with crappy attitudes thought about while Prometheus’s thoughts honed back in on Karma. She did fury well, with her eyes flashing fire, an enraged goddess, power pulsing out of every pore. Damn, did he ever want to get her back there. Touch that rage, breath it in. Pull all her passion and fire into his body and hold it inside him, filling up all the hollow spaces left by a deal he’d made almost two decades ago. She filled his thoughts, expanding to touch every cell in his body as the miles ticked by beneath the car. Heading north toward his redemption. Such as it was.

“Dude, it’s the fuzz! Hide the weed!”

Prometheus snorted a laugh and even Rodriguez the Hardass’s lips twitched. Sutherland College’s motto was Making the Future Bright, but if the odor coming from the cracked windows of Phi Gamma Gamma was any indication, it should have been Making the Future High. It was probably a less than promising sign for that future that the residents of Phi-G couldn’t tell the difference between Prometheus and Rodriguez—with his tats on every visible skin surface—and cops. And a worse sign that their reaction to a sting, such as it was, was to shout, “Hide the weed!” next to an open window.

After many thuds, a few feminine squeals and the sound of something crashing, the front door of the frat swung inward to reveal a walking PSA. Don’t do drugs, kids, or this could happen to you.

The kid looked like he hadn’t showered in a few days. He was wearing a pizza-stained T-shirt and jeans with his feet bare on the grimy floorboards. And he was sweating like he was facing the devil himself on soul-collection day.

But the really interesting part—in the fuck-me Chinese prophecy sense of the word—was the energy pulsing behind the not quite closed sliding doors of what looked to be the common room. This was the address where Prometheus had expected to find the shitstorm, but that was not the kind of demonic energy he’d expected to feel—those weren’t corporeal mischief demons they’d been summoning. Something was off. The boys of Phi-G had been very naughty indeed.

“Can I help you, officers?”

Rodriguez frowned past the kid, his attention snagged by the gap in the common room doors. “We aren’t—”

“Sure you can,” Prometheus cut in before Rodriguez could ruin their advantage by admitting they weren’t cops. “What’s your name, son?”

“Uh, Darren?”

“I’m Detective Murtaugh and this is my partner Officer Riggs. We’re investigating a series of incidents nearby—vandalism, theft, public menace, that kind of thing. Mind if we come in for a moment?” He started to move forward as if the invitation were a foregone conclusion.

Darren visibly paled and feinted half-heartedly to block his way. “We don’t know anything about that.”

“No?” Prometheus arched a brow. “Are you baking?”

“Baking?” the kid yelped.

“I can’t quite place that scent. Cookies, perhaps? Something smells delicious.”

“Brownies,” he blurted, his Adam’s apple bouncing up and down as he swallowed convulsively. “We, uh, we really love our brownies at Phi-G. Always have some in the oven, you know.”

“You do seem to be expert bakers. Why don’t we move this conversation into the common room?”

“I… uh…”

“Surely you don’t have anything to hide?”

Darren couldn’t seem to decide whether Prometheus was screwing with him or not. Which just went to show that pot had corroded his most basic instincts. Very few people looked at Prometheus and didn’t see a predator. Their survival instincts usually went off like sirens in his presence, but this kid was too busy trying to figure out if he was going to be expelled to worry about the bigger problem of the big bad wolf at his door.

Prometheus smiled, showing all his teeth. “Let us into the common room, Darren.” He put a little extra push behind the words, going Jedi-mind trick on Darren’s pot-fried ass. The stoner’s will crumpled like a soggy paper cup and he rushed over to jimmy the sliding doors open. They resisted every inch of the way, the tracks broken and warped. Every inch of the room beyond that was revealed made Prometheus’s grin stretch broader.

“I should have gone to college,” he muttered under his breath to Rodriguez.

Couches and foosball tables had been shoved against the walls to clear the center of the room, which had been covered with plastic and four inflatable kiddie pools. Each of the kiddie pools was filled with a different neon colored Jell-o. And huddled against the side wall, where Prometheus and Rodriguez hadn’t been able to see them from the front entry, about ten frat boys were clustered…with a dozen sorority girls in colorful bikinis, half of them already dripping sticky, gelatinous goo.

And every single one of those girls radiated a fierce red energy, distinctive of those possessed by demons and devils.

“I think we found our infestation,” Rodriguez mumbled.

They certainly had. But these weren’t demons. The energy was off. Too sexual. Demons tended toward the androgynous. The girls were definitely possessed, but Prometheus knew better than most that demons weren’t the only things that could possess a human. This group of supernatural visitors hadn’t come from the spell he’d sold the frat kid who’d come to him. Prometheus was careful—or as careful as a man who believed in chaos could be—never to sell spells that could be used to summon sex devils. That was his teenage fuckup, thank you very much, and he generally liked to avoid inflicting his mistakes on others.

“We were just—”

Prometheus didn’t wait to hear what they were just. This many sex devils—even if they were of the playful nymph variety—were dangerous. Far too dangerous to be allowed to remain.

He focused his energy, raised a hand and banished them with a flick of his fingers. Easy.

Or that’s what should have happened. The dozen nymphs released their hosts, the fiery red of their energy flaring bright for a moment before it was sucked in on itself, but a fraction of a second before it vanished, something jerked back, pulling against him. A dark, sinuous energy rolled down his spine, a sultry hello that felt all too familiar. And distinctly unwelcome. Shit. It couldn’t be her, could it? She’d been ignoring him for years, why would she start screwing with him now?

But then, right when the tug grew stronger and he felt his own magic start to seep down the line that connected him to whatever was pulling back on the nymphs, the ward he’d had tattooed on his lower abdomen to protect against the Big Bad Bitch began to burn, and the pull released, the nymphs vanishing with a snap.

Fuck. It was definitely her. And if she was watching him, playing with him, things were worse than he’d thought. For the first time, his cockiness wavered.

Rodriguez swore in Spanish. “Did you just exorcise the whole room? How is that even possible?” Then his awe melted into irritation and he growled, “How the hell are we supposed to question them now?”

“Don’t worry about that.”

“Don’t worry? We need to know who summoned them.”

“I know.”

“How can you—?” Rodriguez growled and shook his head. “Never mind. I don’t think I want to know.”

Across the room, the newly awakened sorority girls began to shriek and smack the nearest frat boys upon discovering themselves bikini-clad and covered with Jell-o. Since they seemed to be more than holding their own against the cowering frat brothers, Prometheus left them to defend their own honor, collaring Darren as he tried to sneak out of the room. The little stoner squirmed in his grasp, squeaking protests.

“C’mon, man, none of this is illegal!”

“Jell-o may not be, but we both know your famous Phi-G brownies have a few special ingredients on the not-so-legal side of the spectrum. Now, I could book you and bring you in and have you expelled and put in jail for three to five years, but that just sounds like a shitload of paperwork and I’m not here to bust your ass on drug charges. Unless you make me do it. I’m here because some of your recent pledges have been crossing the line on some of their pranks. So just point me in the direction of the brother in charge of pledge initiation and nobody has to go downtown or do any bullshit paperwork. Unless you want to go to prison…”

“Tyson!” Darren all but shouted, breaking the land-speed record for ratting out a frat brother. “Tyson’s in charge of all that stuff. Nobody needs to do paperwork, dude. I swear.”

“Where can we find this Tyson?”

“Philosophy 101 in Kent Hall.”

“He’s at a class?” Prometheus didn’t bother to disguise his surprise.

Darren shrugged. “All the hot freshmen chicks take Intro to Philosophy. Prime hunting ground.”

The future of America, ladies and gentlemen. “Which way is Kent Hall?”

Armed with directions and a description of Tyson as a “tallish dude with an Orioles cap”, Rodriguez and Prometheus set off across the quad.

“Murtaugh and Riggs?” Rodriguez grunted as they dodged a Frisbee. “You didn’t worry he would catch the reference?”

“Nah. Kids these days have no respect for the classics. Besides, I don’t believe in worry. If his smoked-up brain could function well enough to put it together, he deserved to catch us. We aren’t cops.”

“Cops can’t handle demons. But you didn’t have any trouble, did you? I’ve never seen anyone clear a room like that and you didn’t even look like you were trying. Though it would have been nice to question a few of them first. Confirm we have the right summoner.”

“We have the right summoner.”

“How can you be so sure it’s this Tyson guy—aw, shit. You taught the little prick how to do it, didn’t you? He’s summoning sex devils and putting them into the sorority girls, and you knew about it because you orchestrated the whole damn thing.”

“Rodriguez, your lack of faith in me hurts. It really does.”

“Does that mean you didn’t do it?”

“I didn’t orchestrate anything. I’m more of an enabler than a planner.” Though he hadn’t enabled this. He’d enabled the little prick, as Rodriguez so aptly called him, to summon lesser demons to inhabit the freshman frat pledges for two-hour stretches and told him how he might be able to summon corporeal mischief demons if he could get enough focused energy. Fairly harmless in the scheme of college hijinks. This was something else. Someone else had a hand in here. Prometheus just hoped he was wrong about who. The last thing he needed now was the Big Bad Bitch taking an interest in his activities again.

Rodriguez didn’t notice his introspection. He was too busy being disgusted. “Madre de Dios. You have no shame, do you?”

“Shame is for the weak.”

“And the remorseful. Aren’t you supposed to be atoning for your sins?”

“I’m leading you to the kid who summoned all the demons we’ve been chasing, aren’t I? And there he is now.” A kid in a backwards Orioles cap stepped out of the brick hall, oozing earnestness as he walked between two hot young coeds. Prometheus held back, letting the cocky little slimeball work his game until Tyson whipped out his phone and punched in their numbers—no need to add cockblocking to his list of sins. When the pair of blondes had bounced off, he and Rodriguez closed in on the little bastard.

“Tyson. Buddy. Remember me?”

Tyson froze in place—clearly having better predator-sensing instincts than Darren, though the rabbit-like if-I-don’t-move-it-won’t-eat-me response wasn’t the best survival tactic in this case.

“You’ve been busy, buddy.” Prometheus tucked his hands casually into his pockets as Rodriguez folded his arms and glared menacingly from Tyson’s opposite shoulder. Who’d have thought Prometheus would get to be the good cop? Life was full of surprises.

“I didn’t break any of the rules you gave me. I swear.”

“No, strictly speaking, you didn’t. But when did you start summoning nymphs, Tyson? I didn’t give you any instructions on how to do that.” Sex devils were way too close to her territory. Prometheus didn’t touch that shit. “How did you do it?”

“I dunno, it was kind of an accident. What’s the harm, man? We were just having fun. That’s what college is for, right?”

Technically for learning, but why split hairs? “Summoning a nymph to possess a girl so you can have sex with her is rape, douchebag.”

Tyson went white. “Nothing like that happened, dude! I swear. It was just the Jell-o wrestling and the mud wrestling and the wet T-shirt contest.”

“Good.” Prometheus caught his hand like he would shake it, but instead gripped it hard, staring straight into Tyson’s eyes. “And if you’re lying to me and even one girl was touched by one of your frat brothers without her consent, you won’t be able to get it up for a year. And if two girls were harmed, you’ll have a raging case of herpes for the next six months to remind you that this was a bad idea.” He smiled as he flexed his magic, shoving the curse home inside Tyson’s manly parts. He dropped Tyson’s hand and the kid put his hands protectively over his junk—for all the good it would do him now.

Prometheus turned to Rodriguez. “What’s the punishment for summoning without a license?”

“No one said anything about a license!” Tyson yelped.

Rodriguez was silent for a long minute before admitting, “There’s no license. And there’s no punishment. Just don’t do it again, dipshit.”

Prometheus arched his brow. “Don’t do it again? Really? I can do better than that.”

Tyson, who’d looked ready to faint in relief, blanched again. “Please,” he blubbered. “Please, I’m sorry. I swear. I won’t do it again. Like ever.”

“I believe you, Tyson. Now. But memory fades and without concrete consequences for our actions, it’s easy to forget why we shouldn’t do things.”

“I won’t forget, man. Never.”

“Good. But to help you remember…” Prometheus caught Tyson by the back of the neck and stared into his eyes again. “For every summoning you perform, you’ll lose a tooth. Starting with the ones in front. And every time you tell someone else how to perform a summoning, your fingernails will fall off and your skin will break out.” When the curse had set, Prometheus released him and stepped back with an easy smile.

“My teeth?”

“You aren’t vain about your pretty-boy smile, are you, Tyson?”

The kid slapped a hand over his mouth, his eyes wide.

“Hey, just don’t summon anything else and you’ve got nothing to worry about.” Prometheus glanced over at Rodriguez. “We about done here?”

Rodriguez was studying him, visibly puzzled. “I’d say so.”

“Good. I’m starved.” Nothing worked up the appetite like a good curse.

Rodriguez jerked his head at Tyson. “I’d leave now, kid, before he can think of anything else to punish you for.”

Tyson yelped and took off at a run toward the frat quad. They watched him go, Rodriguez frowning, Prometheus grinning. He could get used to this white hat crap. Justice was fun.

“I thought you were supposed to be following my instructions,” Rodriguez commented mildly.

“I didn’t see you jumping in to take over. Figured you approved.”

“Did you really curse him? Or just scare him by making him think you did?”

“Oh, I cursed the hell out of him. He better pray none of those girls were taken advantage of.”

Rodriguez nodded, still looking after Tyson. “That isn’t how we do things at Karmic.”

“Maybe sometimes it should be. If you could’ve, you’d have cursed me when you found out I summoned the demon that went after Bubbles the Wonder Secretary, wouldn’t you?”

“It’s a job. We don’t do revenge.” He said that, but his locked jaw and death glare said Hell, yes.

“Revenge, justice. Who can tell the difference?”

"You gonna take revenge on whoever taught the little prick how to summon sex nymphs?”

If she doesn’t kill me first. But Rodriguez didn’t need to know exactly how deep the shit Prometheus found himself in was. He flashed a smile and looked the exorcist straight in the eyes. “Why would I do that?”

Rodriguez frowned, studying him. Prometheus must be losing his touch—either that or Rodriguez was almost as good a lie detector as Ronna.

A trio of co-eds slowed as they walked past, batting their eyes at Rodriguez. He glowered, letting the question of revenge drop. “Let’s get out of here.”

Prometheus waved him back to where they’d parked. “You’re the boss.” For now. Tonight Rodriguez would report back on what an upright citizen Prometheus had been and tomorrow he could begin Project Karma, buttering up the boss lady herself.

Chapter Eleven

Getting Sparky

Water rushed into her nose and mouth, burning, pressing in her lungs. The touch that held her under seared across her nerve endings in a constant loop of agony. The world around her started to dim, blurring and fading at the edges. She fought—fought to breathe, fought to live, but all she got for her struggles was more water, more pain, that white hot burn, the pressure—

Karma convulsed, her neck aching with the force of the spasm as she jerked out of the vision. She hadn’t even been asleep that time.

“Shit. Shitshitshitshitshit.” She reached for the phone, dialing the numbers she knew by heart, but Ciara didn’t answer. The Fed didn’t answer. Even his goddamn superiors had stopped taking her calls.

She was freaking out. There was no other way to describe her current level of panic. And she was discovering that freaking out was not, in fact, something she was good at. She sucked at it. If she was going to totally lose her cool, she should at least do it with poise and grace. But poise and grace were beyond her.

She couldn’t get in touch with Ciara. She needed to find her finder—which would have been an amusing dilemma if she weren’t still having the dreams. They were coming faster and harder now. More often. And because she couldn’t keep her mind clear and calm, they were hitting her when she was awake too, sneaking into her conscious mind and yanking her into that dark place with the water and the pain. God, so much pain.

It was Wednesday afternoon. And if her internal alarm system was right, she had about twenty-five minutes before her finder, her friend, died. And where was she? Trapped in the Groundhog Day from hell, but instead of reliving a day over and over again, she was reliving a death. One she was apparently powerless to stop.

The intercom on her desk bleeped cheerfully, cutting into her panic. “Brittany?” Maybe it was Ciara calling. Or the Feds returning her call. Though why they wouldn’t call her direct line she didn’t know, but it had to be one of them, didn’t it?

“Prometheus is here to see you.”

“No.” He couldn’t see her like this. She couldn’t deal with him today. She needed her wits about her to handle him and she’d never felt more witless than she did in this moment. “Tell him to come back later. I can’t see him now.”

“Why not? You don’t look busy.”

Her head snapped up at the sound of his voice. She hadn’t heard the door open, but of course, the bastard let himself in. Again. Why should he bother with courtesy? She shouldn’t have been surprised.

Karma frowned. He’d surprised her. Why hadn’t her internal warning system let her know that he was coming? Was she really so out of it that even her most basic instincts were on the fritz? She’d forget how to breathe next.

Prometheus frowned, coming deeper into the room. “Are you all right? You look…disheveled.”

That was a nice way of putting it. She felt unhinged. She couldn’t make herself care about the sloppy way her hair was sliding loose of its knot or the wrinkles in her skirt. Or him. “I don’t have time for you right now. You’ll have to come back later.”

“Some big Karmic Consultants crisis?” He strolled over and leaned his lanky frame against the edge of her desk. “Maybe I can help.”

“I sincerely doubt it. If you really want to help, go away.”

He tipped his upper body closer to her. “At least tell me what’s wrong.”

“We both know you don’t care what’s wrong.”

“Sure I do. I get into your good graces, you let me stop playing consultant, find my heart, and we both go our merry way. Right now, I care deeply about whatever you want me to care about—though I would like the record to show that I kick ass at this consultant thing. I banished a dozen sex devils yesterday and cursed the dipshit who was summoning them.”

“I don’t have time right now to explain everything that was wrong with what you just said.”

“So just tell me what’s wrong with you.”

God, the man didn’t give up, did he? “One of my finders is in trouble and I can’t get to her.”

“What kind of trouble?”

“She’s going to drown,” Karma snapped.

Prometheus arched a brow. “And you want to tell her to stay out of the water?”

“No, she’s always in the water. It amplifies her gifts. I need to warn her that her new handler is going to touch her while she’s underwater and—look, it’s complicated, all right?”

“I can handle complicated. Why can’t her handler touch her underwater?”

“She experiences excruciating psychic feedback anytime someone touches her skin and being in water amplifies it.”

“That sounds like her gift is blocked. You’re a channel. Why don’t you link to her and unblock it?”

“I can’t.”

“Of course you can. You’re insanely powerful. Just link up and fix her.”

He made it sound so easy. So simple. If only it could be. “I don’t do that. I don’t know how to do that.”

“Link with me and I’ll show you.”

“I don’t—”

“Don’t tell me you’ve never linked with anyone before. You’re a channel.” He shook his head sharply, as if wondering how she could dress herself. “Come here.”

He grabbed her hands, pulling her out of her chair. She hadn’t been aware of sitting. Hadn’t been aware of her body at all. She felt like her real body, her true self, was still locked in a dream, underwater, sucking down liquid instead of air. It wasn’t until he touched her that she became really aware of her physical reality. He was her tether. His hands were warm and firm. His eyes eerie and dark. Obsidian. They shouldn’t have been comforting, but she felt her panic ease the tiniest bit when she stared into their bottomless black depths. The infinity of his gaze gave her the first hint of hope that maybe he could do the impossible and make it all better.

God, what was she thinking? She didn’t rely on anyone else to fix her problems for her and even if she had, Prometheus was about as far as she could get from a knight in shining armor. She needed to solve this like she solved everything else. With calm, clear thinking and control. Taking a slow breath, she went through her centering exercises.

Prometheus cursed, his hands flexing on her arms. “Why’d you block me out?”

“I didn’t. I was just focusing—”

“Whatever you call it. One second you’re—well, not exactly open, but at least accessible, and then bam. Fort Knox.”

“I didn’t do anything.” At least not consciously. If her subconscious had booted him out, she could only imagine it was because her subconscious had excellent judgment and recognized him as the unscrupulous bastard he was. But Ciara was in trouble; she didn’t have time for scruples. Hang in there, Ciara. “Tell me what to do.”

“Relax. And unlock that vault you call a mind.”

“I—” How did she explain that she didn’t know how to relax? She knew how to add another layer of security to the vault of her mind, as he’d put it, but she didn’t have the first idea how to go about taking down the walls. She’d never tried. Giving up control, even a single layer of control, went against every instinct and every habit she’d built for the last thirty years.

“Come on, Karma. Get out of your head and let me in there.”

She closed her eyes, turning her focus inward, but if Prometheus’s muttered curse was anything to go by that only made things worse. For a moment she thought she felt him, a soft tremor shaking the walls she’d built, but she was helpless to take them down and let him in.

Then her awareness shivered, fractured, and she was Ciara. Darting across the pier, dropping her shawl as she ran toward the water. Karma jerked in Prometheus’s grasp, sucking in a horrified gasp. It was happening. That was real time. Now. The nightmare was coming to life now. Her eyes snapped open. She fisted his shirt in her hands. “Do something.” Her voice fractured on the raw words, half command, half plea. “Anything.”

“You can’t do anything the easy way, can you?” he grumbled as he shifted his grip on her, one hand coming to rest at the small of her back, the other palming the back of her neck. Then his head swooped toward her, quick and lethal as a bird of prey striking, and he was kissing her. The first shock of the kiss shattered her concentration, loosening her control, and as quickly as his lips met hers, he was in her mind, and something latched, some internal hook catching, stretching taut and perfect, and they were linked. It felt right, far too right, he was flowing into her, through her, until she was just a conduit, a puppet, and Karma felt herself start to resist, to push him out. But he wouldn’t be evicted. He pushed in—his tongue in her mouth, his hands hard and sure, pressing her body tight to his, and her thoughts flitted away as she fell from her mind into the sensations of her body. This felt right too. He drew her like a bow, the arch tightening nerves she hadn’t known she had as his mouth worked over hers, commanding and unrelenting. She was a thousand sparks igniting for the first time and he was kerosene on the flame.

She sensed him again, flowing through her, using her as a conduit, a channel, and she couldn’t remember why she would possibly want to resist. Lights flickered and a static charge shot off them, tiny lightning strikes flying in all directions. The man kissed her and sparks literally flew. Another link latched, this one jerking her hard, yanking her back, the hook of it digging deep into the muscle of her heart, and she couldn’t breathe. Karma struggled in his arms, trying to fight him off. He was suffocating her, smothering her. No, not him, it was water. She was Ciara. With the awareness came pain, a rush of it more suffocating than the lack of oxygen. Drowning in liquid agony. She wanted to scream, to fight, but more than that she just wanted it to stop. Make it stop.

With a dim, dual awareness, she felt Prometheus again. Inside her, linked to her, holding her, kissing her, she couldn’t tell the difference anymore. He was and his existence was hope. She tried to cling to it, to cling to him, but she couldn’t find her center amid all the chaos. She was rolling on the tide of something. Something far bigger than she. Was it him? Death? Coming for Ciara? Would she die too if they were linked? Held under the weight of the pain, it was hard to care. Death would release her from that, release them both.

Not today, it won’t. The deep voice in her mind was layered over itself, rich with power, but she heard Prometheus in it. His ferocity. His determination. A girl could do worse in a knight in shining armor. A dark laugh rumbled in her mind. Don’t go mistaking me for a white knight, sweetheart.

Then something clicked, a deep chord finding perfect harmony, a long dislocated bone popping into place. The pain vanished. Karma gasped at the release, slingshotted out of Ciara’s awareness, the link flying loose with a brutal jerk that left an ache in her chest where it had hooked in deep. She saw Ciara tumble out of the water and into her handler’s arms, saw her finder reach for him, like an echo or the afterimage that lingers after staring too long into the sun, but she was firmly herself again, collapsed against Prometheus’s chest, clinging to him to keep herself upright.

“She’s alive,” she whispered, melting even more against him with the force of her relief—and residual lust.

“I saw.” She felt as much as heard his voice, rumbling through his chest.

He’d seen. Of course he’d seen. He’d been right there with her. He’d done it all. He may not be a white knight—had she imagined his voice in her mind?—but he’d saved the day today. Saved Ciara. Saved Karma’s sanity.

“Thank you.”

Those words had never seemed more inadequate. She looked up, into those bottomless black eyes, trying to convey with her own everything she couldn’t put into words. He was strength. Stability in a chaotic world. He taken her trust and earned it back. He—

“Karma? Your three o’clock is—oh.”

Brittany broke off as Karma launched herself away from Prometheus. She patted her hair, her clothes, more than a little surprised to find herself unmussed—or at least no more mussed than she had been before Prometheus had gotten his hands on her. Her world had just been rocked. She shouldn’t look the same. But she did. Normal, straight-laced Karma. “Yes, Brittany?”

Brittany smiled, a naughty twinkle in her wide eyes. “Sorry to interrupt. I think your intercom thingy is busted. Your three o’clock is waiting.”

Apparently, the sparks hadn’t been merely metaphorical. A quick glance confirmed they’d fried all the electronics on her desk. Karma cleared her throat, hoping it would clear the cobwebs out of her brain. “Certainly. Please thank him for his patience. I’ll just be another two minutes.”

“What, no afterglow?”

Karma shot Prometheus a quelling glare, even knowing it would do nothing to shut him up. “Thank you, Brittany.”

The receptionist beamed and ducked back into the front office, leaving Karma alone with the bane of her existence—who could apparently kiss in a way that made her lose her mind. That is not a good thing.

She rounded the desk, striding purposefully toward the door. To show him out, not because I need the distance. “Thank you very much for your assistance, Prometheus.”

“My pleasure.” His voice was far too suggestive for her comfort as he prowled behind her across the room. “You know, some people might think I’ve repaid my debt to Karmic Consultants now.”

“I’ll take your actions today under consideration, but as you heard, I have a prior engagement and don’t have time to discuss any changes in our arrangement at present. I’ll speak with Rodriguez and we can talk about your progress tomorrow. Brittany will find a time for you in my schedule.”

The words were comforting, making her feel more and more in control, but one look at Prometheus proved what an illusion that was. No one could control him. He was a force of nature. A human tidal wave. If he even qualified as human.

“I’ll see you tomorrow then,” Prometheus murmured as he brushed past her, closer than he needed to be, close enough for his power to prick her skin in a stealth caress like he was attuning her body to his touch. But he didn’t touch. “Just look on your schedule under Knight in Shining Armor.” He winked and was gone before Karma had time to blush.

Damn. She hadn’t imagined it. He really had been inside her thoughts—if they even counted as her thoughts. She hadn’t been herself. Certainly she would never have thought of him that way. His magic was dark. It had probably tainted her. Corrupted her. But it hadn’t felt corrupting. Tempting, yes. Seductive, absolutely. But she wanted to roll in his power, not rid herself of it. Dangerous.

Karma strode to her meditation corner, taking a few seconds to tidy herself up and clear her head. She went through her mental exercises quickly, easily finding that familiar center, that firm, unyielding sense of control. Once again ready to face the world as cool, competent Karma, she strode to her door and opened it with a professional smile already in place.

“Dr. Williams, thank you for your patience.” She extended a hand to the slim man with elbow patches on his tweed jacket, making a point not to look at the tall figure leaning against Brittany’s desk. Her heart rate did not speed up because he was in the room. Her reaction to him today had been an aberration. It would not be repeated.

Even if a tiny part of her she usually kept buried had liked it.

Chapter Twelve

Color Me Bad

Prometheus watched Karma escape back into her office with her three o’clock. That was the only word for it, escape. A smile curved his lips. He’d rattled the unshakeable Karma today—and enjoyed every second of it.

The kiss had been pure impulse, designed to shake her perfect self-control, and it had succeeded brilliantly. Though he would have preferred the first time he had Karma in a liplock that he not be preoccupied with making sure the finder who was going to find his heart didn’t die. That couldn’t count as their first kiss. He wanted a do-over so he could devote his entire attention to enjoying her loss of control.

It was almost comic that Karma thought of him as a knight in shining armor, riding in to selflessly save the day. He didn’t know the definition of selfless. But he was good at self-interest and keeping Karma’s finders all alive and working, as well as keeping Karma from having a complete breakdown and descending into grief, were both firmly in his self-interest. It was all about the long view. He couldn’t have dead finders if he wanted everyone at the top of their game.

But if Karma thought he was a saint, so much the better. A little delusion could take him a long way.

“Is ten o’clock okay?” Sprinkles the Wonder Secretary chirped at him.

“Perfect.” He flashed her a smile. “Just schedule me under the White Knight.”

“White?” Brittany’s head cocked to the side and she blinked vacantly.

“It’s a joke, sweetheart.”

“Oh, no, I get it,” she assured him. “I just never saw you as the white type. But I guess you can’t be the black knight because that makes you sound African-American and the Dark Knight is already taken, unless you’re secretly Bruce Wayne, which is really more how I think of Wyatt—you’ve met Wyatt Haines, haven’t you? He’s dating Jo. Lucy’s cousin? Lucy, whose wedding you tried to sabotage? And Green Knight makes you sound like you’re either really eco-conscious or only care about money. Blue Knight would be depressing, because you’d be blue, right? And no one likes a brown knight. Maybe yellow? Do you like yellow? Or gray! Definitely gray. But not 50 Shades of Grey or anything, just like, gray gray. Shall I put you down as the Gray Knight?”

“Has anyone ever told you that you are a very unusual person, Bubbl—um, Brittany?”

She beamed. “All the time. So ten o’clock?”

“Perfect. And Brittany? I’ve been meaning to tell you how sorry I am that the demon I summoned harassed you.” Amends, check.

“Oh, that’s okay. It was kind of fun. I’d never been kidnapped by a demon before.”

Prometheus blinked, momentarily thrown. “Right.”

“And besides, if you hadn’t sicced that demon on me, I never would’ve spent time with Luis and gone salsa dancing and learned how to do laundry. So in the end, it was a good thing. I should be thanking you.”

“I don’t think Rodriguez thinks I’m quite so worthy of thanks.”

Brittany shrugged. “He worries about me. But he’ll come around. He’s a big ol’ romantic and once he realizes that it’s all part of your master plan to woo Karma, he’ll melt like a popsicle.”

Prometheus tried to picture the tattooed tough guy melting and couldn’t quite make it stick. “I’m not wooing Karma.”

“Well, of course you don’t call it that, but I’ve got eyes, don’t I?” She cocked her head toward the office and Prometheus was reminded that he’d had an armful of Karma when Brittany had burst in on them. “You may have some pretty unorthodox methods, but the way I see it, Karma could use some unorthodox in her love life. For someone who deals in the weird for a living, she sticks way too tight to the straight and narrow, if you ask me.”

“Are you giving me your blessing to date your boss?”

“Sure! But if you break her heart, there are a couple dozen consultants with some really nasty tricks up their sleeves who won’t hesitate to kick your kiester into next week. Just so you know.” Even her threats were delivered with a glowing smile. They’d broken the mold with Brittany.

“Thanks.”

She beamed. “Any time.”

The next vision caught her as soon as she relaxed her vigilance. It was after eight, the office quiet and empty. She glanced up from the back-up computer she’d just finished bringing up to date since the one on her desk had been fried by activities she would not think about and allowed herself the weakness of rubbing at her dry, exhausted eyes. That’s when the image slammed into the back of them, pulling her under with startling force.

She was Ciara again, but this time there was no water—only gunfire. The visuals were a jumble—people moving and not moving, shooting and not shooting—three possible futures in an Atlantic City hotel room overlaid over one another in a flickering mess. But whichever future won, it happened soon. Ten, maybe fifteen minutes.

Karma cursed and lunged for her phone. She called the Feds, the Atlantic City PD, and would have called the National Guard if she’d had their number, and then she could do nothing but wait, pace and try to throw her brain open to another vision, one that would hopefully tell her what the hell was happening in that hotel room two hundred miles away.

She’d been blocking the visions all day. After the drag-you-under-and-pummel-you drowning visions that had plagued her the last few days and stalked her consciousness all morning, all she’d wanted was a few hours of clear, calm thinking with no interruptions. She’d felt a few little nuisance nudges, but nothing to indicate mortal peril. Not that she always had warning. The trouble with free will was that it spawned a thousand possible futures and some of them never let her know they were coming.

But this one had. This one had been raising its hand and waiting to be called on all afternoon. She’d selfishly ignored it—she’d just needed a break—and it might have hurt Ciara, might have cost her finder her life after all. Four years of never getting a single worrisome twinge about Ciara and now every vision was of the petite finder in peril. Karma did not approve of this new handler’s influence.

When the phone call came, Karma’s double awareness shivered through her and she knew. Knew the police and feds had been too late, but that Ciara and her handler—Nate, need to know his name, they’re in love now—had saved the day themselves. And recovered the priceless necklace they’d been sent to find. With no help from Karma or anyone else.

Karma thanked the officer on the line and set the phone carefully back in the cradle, as if gentleness there could keep her own fragile parts from shattering.

Selfish. There was no other word for it. She’d been blocking her abilities, hiding from them, because she was scared of them, scared they would take her over, but in doing so, how many of her people had she hurt? Could she have unblocked Ciara years ago? Could she have saved Ronna from having to defend herself against a knife-wielding contract killer? If she had been open to her abilities, if she had actually known how to use them, how much good could she have done?

Karma hated the visions, had always hated them, from the moment they first crashed into her brain as a child, but was that hatred selfish? How could she claim to be fighting on the side of the angels if she wasn’t willing to take a little personal hardship for the greater good?

She pulled up her schedule for tomorrow. The Gray Knight at ten o’clock. Prometheus.

He’d offered to teach her. Had he been serious? She could never tell. But if he could help her, like he had today—no, not like he did today. No kissing.

She would need ground rules. If she let him teach her how to use her powers. Absolutely no touching. No kisses. No feather-light brushes along her neck. No crowding into her space with that you-know-how-good-I’ll-be temptation in his black eyes. Her knees would not go weak. They would remain on professional footing and once he’d taught her how to control her psychic impulses, rather than repress them, her people would find his heart and he would be on his merry way. He didn’t want her; he wanted what she could do for him. No risk of attachment there.

Karma nodded, decision made. She would speak to Rodriguez in the morning, confirm that the exorcist didn’t have any misgivings after dealing with Prometheus, then make a new business arrangement with the Gray Knight at ten o’clock.

And perhaps tomorrow she would get a full night’s sleep, uninterrupted by unwanted visions.

Her eyes and body aching with exhaustion, Karma made her way to her meditation corner, knelt and went through the ritual to clear her head, establish control and block the visions for as long as the barriers held. There had to be a better way. Hopefully tomorrow she would learn it.

“He apologized to Brittany and fixed my sister’s car—it’s never run so well. Not even when it was new. Adela thinks he may have replaced the fuel injection system and she loves the new color.”

“He changed the color?”

“Snapped his fingers and there was a shiny new paint job. Never seen anything like it. Then we go up to Sutherland and he put a curse on the frat boy who’d been summoning nymphs into coeds and banished a roomful of nymphs with a wave of his hand. He’s fucking powerful, Karma.”

“I know. But do you trust him?”

Rodriguez hesitated a long time, longer than she would have expected, given his history with Prometheus. “No. Probably not,” he finally admitted.

And there was the catch. Neither did she. But he was still the best option. There weren’t a lot of genuine magic users out there who were capable of training her—let alone who needed her goodwill for their own survival. As long as he needed her, she might be able to trust him. Within limits. “Thanks, Rodriguez.”

“No problema, boss.”

Karma hung up the phone. It was an older model, pulled out of storage to replace the one they’d short circuited yesterday with the pyrotechnics to save Ciara. Karma had spoken to her finder this morning. She was fine, better than fine. She sounded happier than Karma had ever heard her. Alive—and not only in the thank-God-she’s-not-dead sense, but with a vibrancy that had always been missing. Joy.

A tiny jab of jealousy spiked down into Karma’s heart. She couldn’t remember the last time she’d felt joy. Happiness, sure. She was happy all the time. Happy for her brother at his wedding. Happy for all her consultants who were jumping on the love train. Happy for the continued success of the business. But joy? She lined a pen up at a perfect parallel to the edge of the desk. Was joy really necessary? The extremes were dangerous. The extremes were where control was forfeit and Karma needed control. That was the entire point behind the possible sessions with Prometheus—to refine her control. Teach her better control. To improve her grip on her abilities. Not to set them free, no matter what the chaos master thought. She would be very clear about their objectives.

He’d already seen her without control yesterday—which still mortified her to recall. No one had seen her so unhinged, except perhaps her brother. Karma didn’t lose her cool. And it wouldn’t be happening again.

She ran her hands over the smooth, dark expanse of her desk. She was in control here. She was the boss.

So why these butterflies deep in her stomach? Why this breathless little hitch of anticipation?

The intercom buzzed. “Prometheus to see you, Karma.”

Karma wet her lips, one hand going automatically to her hair before she forced it down. “Send him in.”

Chapter Thirteen

Negotiations and Other Foreplay

“I need your help.”

A tactful man would nod graciously, acknowledging how difficult it was for Karma to say those words to him. A wise man would keep his mouth shut, being smart enough to quit while he was ahead. But fuck it, wisdom and tact had never been part of his playbook. Prometheus flashed his teeth. “I’m sorry, I didn’t quite catch that. Give it to me one more time. Nice and slow.”

Finely drawn brows lowered sharply. “May I remind you that you still need my goodwill, Prometheus?”

“You may, but you can’t blame me for enjoying the fact that now you need something from me too.”

“Need might be putting it a little strongly. Let’s just say I would appreciate your assistance.”

He rocked back in his chair, tipping it onto two legs. “Far be it from me to interfere with your appreciation of me.”

“Can we have a serious conversation about this or are you going to be picking apart every word I say?”

“Can’t we do both?” When she glowered, he held up his hands in defense. “Fine. Have it your way. We’ll be serious. So what is it you seriously need my help with?”

Karma took a breath and a moment to collect her thoughts. She sat regally behind her desk, perfectly manicured hands laced on its surface, every hair in place. She was Ms. Poise again, a far cry from the frantic desperation of yesterday. He liked her like this. She was so much more fun to push when she had the presence of mind to push back.

“Yesterday,” she said, as if the word left a questionable aftertaste on her tongue, “you helped me access my abilities and unblock one of my consultants, possibly saving her life.”

“And I enjoyed every second of it. Let me know if I can help you unblock any other inhibitions you might be harboring.”

“That’s what I’d like to talk to you about, actually. I’ve come to the conclusion that my unwillingness to use my abilities to their fullest potential might be negatively impacting my employees. Therefore I would like to take you up on your offer to assist me in accessing them.”

Prometheus felt himself smiling and had to stop himself from rubbing his hands together like Dr. Evil. He was finally going to get his hands on Karma—metaphorically speaking—and all that delicious, repressed power. Not only was the idea beyond tantalizing, it also meant she would be able to control her abilities when the time came to free him from Deuma. And if he could ingratiate himself to her in the process… “When do we start?”

“As soon as we’ve established a few ground rules.”

He should’ve known she’d try to suck the fun out of it with rules and regulations. “That isn’t how this is going to work. If I’m the teacher, that means I get to set the rules and I say no rules.”

“Then we won’t call them rules.”

“This isn’t a semantic issue. Magic doesn’t fall into neat little categories. If you want to learn how to play with this toy of yours, we need some room to maneuver. I can’t constantly be worrying about not stepping over some invisible line. It’s more an art than a science.”

“Even artists obey the laws of physics.”

“To Dali, gravity was nothing more than an idea to play with. We don’t do laws.”

“Then how about boundaries? Such as I won’t be asked to do anything illegal or unethical.”

“Ethics are so subjective. One woman’s unethical is another man’s entertainment.”

She ignored his editorializing, pressing on as if he hadn’t spoken. “And I think we should establish up front that there won’t be any more physical contact.”

“Not even a high five?”

“Prometheus.”

“Oh. You mean no sex. What if it was just casual sex?”

Her lips pursed repressively. “I only do serious sex.”

“Where’s the fun in that?” He swept a look from her tidy bun to the polish on her shoes. She probably had very dignified orgasms. “No wonder you’re so tense.”

“Trust a man to think all a woman’s problems can be solved with his penis.”

“Not all your problems, maybe, but I’m willing to give it a try if you are.”

“No. Thank you.”

She didn’t move a muscle. There was no hint of a blush. If he hadn’t been able to see the agitation of her aura, the tinges of lustful reds, he never would have known that he got under Karma’s skin. But luckily aura reading was one of his many skills and Karma was much more interested than she cared to let on. He wanted to touch that aura, to wrap it around him until they bled into each other. There was such power in her and she didn’t even know it. Or if she knew it, she wished she didn’t. This was a woman with incredible powers of self-denial. But she was polite. No, thank you.

Prometheus had never seen the point of politeness.

“I won’t agree to no sex or no unethical behavior, but I’ll try to keep things legal. Good enough?”

She tapped one blood-red nail, ignoring his question. “How long will this training take?”

“Don’t rush a miracle man. You get lousy miracles.”

“I need to know how much time to allot to this in my schedule.”

“Why don’t we do it after hours? I can get back to my shop; you can do your consultant thing.” And he got her alone at night. “Everybody wins.”

“I still need to know how much time.”

“Please tell me you don’t schedule every waking minute of your day.”

She simply looked at him. Of course she did.

“Fine, you want an answer? Honestly, I have no idea how long it’s going to take. It’s not like I make a habit of un-repressing people with stopped-up psychic gifts. And even if I did, for all I know you might be the most repressed case yet, or some kind of psychic prodigy who gets it on the first try. You’re just going to have to go with it and see what happens.”

“I don’t like playing things by ear.”

“That doesn’t surprise me, but I don’t see any other way to play it. If you want to play with me.”

“I’ll work with you. Can you start tonight? Seven?”

“It’s a date.”

She nodded and picked up a pen, making a note—probably writing him into her agenda. “I’ll see you tonight.”

He let her dismiss him, straightening out of his chair and offering her a bow, before turning and strolling toward the door, tossing one last dig over his shoulder as he went. “By the way, sweetheart, I can see your energy change every time we talk about sex. We both know you wouldn’t be so reluctant to talk about it if you weren’t so interested.”

He didn’t wait to see her blush.

Chapter Fourteen

Relaxation for Beginners

He was late.

Karma glared at the clock, mentally cursing Prometheus for every second of the six minutes he’d made her wait so far. It was such an obvious power play. Such a cheap ploy to prove he was the one setting the rules, establishing the schedule.

She went through her mental exercises one more time, clearing her head even though she couldn’t clear her emotions. She wasn’t used to walking into situations blind, but she hadn’t known how to prepare for her first lesson in being psychic.

Why had she thought this was a good idea? She didn’t trust him, didn’t like his methods and didn’t particularly want to spend any more time with the man who made her feel…unhinged. He challenged her in a way no one else ever had, but that wasn’t necessarily a good thing. How could he be a good choice to teach her to use her abilities? He had no moral compass. And he was late. Eight minutes and counting.

Clearly, she needed to learn to access her abilities rather than repressing them, but there had to be someone better suited to training her. Unfortunately, alternatives weren’t thick on the ground. Most of her consultants were self-trained, having figured out how to use their abilities in self-defense when they first developed. Those who had received outside training had come from religions—both eastern and western—but though the Catholic church could train a good exorcist, they weren’t much help with channels who happened to dream the future. In her experience, those who said they could help her—the “specialists” her brother had found for her over the years—were all charlatans and frauds. She’d even gone to a few shrinks, but after the third time she was asked to explain how her dreams made her feel, she’d lost interest in that particular line of focusing her energy.

In all the years she’d been dealing with her affliction, she’d never had a breakthrough like she’d had with Prometheus. And he’d made it seem easy. He was a cocky, unethical bastard who thought he knew everything about everyone, but he’d helped. Which was more than anyone else had ever been able to do.

But the bald truth was the man unsettled her. That was the heart of her problem with him. Was that it? Was it her problem? Had she been inventing a problem with his methods, his attitudes, because she was too unnerved by him to accept what he was offering? Not that she was attracted to him, per se, but there was no denying he was magnetic. And when he’d kissed her…

The door flew open and Karma spun toward it guiltily. Not that she had any reason to be guilty. He was the one who was late. It wasn’t like he could read her thoughts—thank God. That she knew of. Unless he’d been lying when he said he couldn’t read minds… No. She would not make herself crazy.

His presence consumed the room again, but this time instead of strolling around marking every inch as his, he walked straight for her. “You ready?”

Karma centered herself, drawing up her chin to face him. “You’re late.”

A dark brow lifted. “Didn’t you know when I’d be here? Isn’t that one of your little tricks?”

She hadn’t. Was he exempt? No, she’d sensed him before. Had she short-circuited her early warning system? “How do you know about that?”

“Your secretary is a chatty little thing. I think I only understand about a third of what she says, but what I do understand is very enlightening. She adores you, by the way. And she thinks I’m fascinating. Smart girl.”

“Now, aren’t you glad the demon you summoned didn’t succeed in killing her?”

He groaned. “Are we ever going to get beyond that? I’ve sworn in the presence of your lie detector that I never intended to hurt any of your people. What more do you want me to say? Don’t I get any bonus points for saving that girl yesterday?”

He was right. She was holding his past crimes against him like a shield, to keep him at a distance. Which, considering how he’d been doing everything she asked—albeit amid smartass remarks and unsanctioned cursing of frat boys—was unfair of her. Time to be the better woman and let bygones be gone. “You’re right. I’m sorry. You have my word that I won’t mention it again. I’m grateful for your assistance. Shall we get started?”

“You going soft on me, Karma?”

Of course he had to pick a fight, even over the fact that they weren’t going to fight anymore. “We’ve already lost,” she glanced at her watch, “fifteen minutes. Why waste any more time?”

“Always skipping the foreplay, eh, angel? You’ve got it.” He rolled up his sleeves. “For starters, why don’t you show me what you’ve been doing?”

Karma nodded crisply and marched over to the screen that hid her meditation area, focusing on keeping things businesslike and professional so she didn’t have to acknowledge how much of herself she was exposing to him. There was a reason this area was screened off. She didn’t let people see her like this, see inside her, see her coping mechanisms.

She slipped out of her heels and knelt, carefully smoothing her skirt. She closed her eyes, but could still feel him looming behind her. It wasn’t his towering height that made his presence so overwhelming, it was something about him, something about the way he seemed to own every space he entered. His power rippled out around him; whether he was still or in motion, it was always flexing, brushing against her spine, curving a teasing finger up the nape of her neck until goose bumps rose on her arms.

Karma took a breath and started her exercises again, clearing, concentrating, taking command of her wayward senses, finding that central point where everything was calm and controlled.

“Wrong.”

She jerked at the sound of his voice, her eyes snapping open. “Excuse me?”

“You’re doing it all wrong. You can’t go building barricades in your mind. It’s like trying to hold back the ocean with a wall of sand. You need to learn how to ride it, how to channel it, and to do that you need to relax and let the universe in.”

She twisted to get a better angle to glare up at him. “I tried that. The universe, as you put it, overwhelmed me until I couldn’t think anymore. I was totally lost. I need the control. The focus. It’s the only thing that gets me through the day.”

“There’s such a thing as being too controlled. You can’t control everything. Sometimes nature gets to have her say. You could be a force of nature, Karma. If you let yourself.”

“I’m trying.”

“Then stop trying so hard. Get up from there.”

She put her hand in his to let him lift her to her feet, a tiny static charge shooting from his fingertips into hers.

“C’mere.” He tugged her out from behind the screen and over to the couch tucked along the far wall. She waited for him to release her, refusing to show weakness by pulling away, even though she was excruciatingly aware of every second her hand lingered in his. When he did drop her hand, she refused to show a reaction, holding herself perfectly still. “Sit.” He pointed to the couch.

Since he clearly hoped to get a reaction out of her by treating her like a German Shepherd, she pointedly didn’t give him one, sinking onto the designated cushion without comment. He folded his long body onto the cushion next to hers, not touching but close enough to touch.

“Think of that psychic well you can tap into like a riptide. An ocean. If you fight it, it will drown you. If you block it, it will keep coming at you. But if you can learn to move with it, rather than against it, it can take you some pretty freaking incredible places.” His grin was an advertisement for all the wicked ways magic could be used. “Your problem is that instead of learning to swim, you’re trying to dictate to the ocean how it’s supposed to flow. It doesn’t work like that.”

“So how do I learn to ‘swim’, as you put it?”

He held out his hand again. “Shall I show you?”

Her instinct was to say no, so Karma forced herself to nod and place her hand in his. The static charge was stronger this time and kept tingling, a low current sizzle.

“Close your eyes,” he instructed. “And if you can, take down some of those walls you love so much.”

She obeyed the first request. The second was harder. Undoing a lifetime habit wasn’t as easy as closing her eyes. She didn’t even know how to begin. She didn’t see oceans or walls of sand. All she saw was her safe place. Her inviolate core. That quiet, hard-fought calm.

The first awareness she had of her own walls was when she felt Prometheus pressing on them from the outside. Once she was aware of them, releasing them was as simple as taking a breath—but as soon as she did, she couldn’t breathe. A thousand chaotic images crashed in on her, flashes of this future and that tripping over one another and slamming into her brain: deaths, lives, moments. She was Jo laughing, Lucy shouting, her parents hugging—each flicker faster than the last, overlapping and running her over, through her, jerking her farther and farther away from a sense of self, jumbling up inside her until she couldn’t tell what was real and what was chance. She felt Prometheus trying to guide her, urging her to what? Float? Swim? But no sooner had he tripped across her awareness than she was pulled into a cyclone of possible futures—she was Prometheus holding a gilded box like it contained a viper, and punching a dark-haired man, and waking up in a bed, Karma’s bed, but she wasn’t herself, she was him, her sheets tangling around his hips.

Karma recoiled, slamming walls, doors, fences, barricades, anything she could grasp between herself and the wild, plunging tide of futures. For a long, stretching moment, they continued to rush around her, a barrage of unfettered possibilities, then finally a quiet place emerged, that lovely center, that sense of self amid the chaos and the door of her internal safe slammed closed.

Her eyes flew open and she came up gasping for air. She heard a thud, but it took a moment for her eyes to focus enough to see Prometheus sprawled on the floor at her feet, the long fingers of one hand cradling his head.

“What happened?”

He groaned. “You cold cocked me.”

She looked down at her hands, surprised.

“Not like that.” He flashed his teeth, levering himself up off the floor. “My own fault. I didn’t expect you to blast me out hard enough to actually throw me. Serves me right for underestimating you.”

She pressed her palms to her cheeks, feeling them heat. “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to—”

“I know. And don’t apologize.” He stretched, rotating his torso like an athlete working out the kinks.

“I don’t like being out of control.”

“Aw, come on. It’s fun to take a flying leap every so often. What’s the fun in holding the reins so tight you never go anywhere?”

She glared at him. He made it sound so damn simple. Such unmitigated bullshit. “You don’t like giving up control either,” she snapped. “You don’t really believe in throwing yourself into chaos and letting it roll you. You always have to be in control—why else are you always fighting me for it? You want to be the one person pulling the strings, standing at the eye of the hurricane and watching all the mere mortals flail about, so don’t tell me you’re such an expert at letting go.”

Black eyes flashed. “Ah, but there’s a difference. I like being the puppet master, sure, but I only need to be in control of myself. You have to be in control of every little detail of your life. Everything that has happened or will happen to anyone who crosses your path. I can jump out of a plane, but as long as I’m at home in myself, I’m in control. You can’t jump because you’re too busy trying to fly the plane and dictate the weather and repack your parachute. So don’t go putting us in the same boat, sweetheart. I’m not the one who needs to learn to let go.”

She rubbed a hand over her eyes. “You don’t know what it’s like when I’m drowning in there. I can’t be reckless like you.”

“I understand better than you know. But I’m not saying you have to be like me. Just try to be a little less judgmental and controlling all the time.”

“Judgmental?”

He put his hands up for a truce. “You’re right. We agreed to let bygones go and all that crap.”

“You think I’m judgmental?”

“Do you have a better way to describe your moral there-is-no-gray-area stance?”

“Ethical, perhaps?”

“You do magic tricks for money. How is that any better than what I do? We both sell our services.”

“I don’t indiscriminately—”

“So you admit that you discriminate? What gives you the right?”

“Someone has to police it. Especially with people like you spreading magic willy-nilly.”

“Equal access is—”

“Irresponsible!”

“Democratic.”

“Capitalist, you mean.”

“You profit from it just as much as I do.”

“I’m doing good!”

It wasn’t until he reached for her that she realized she was on her feet, in his face, shouting at him, hands clenched.

“What are you doing?” She stumbled back to avoid his hands, bumping into the couch and sitting down hard. She was breathing too fast, heart pounding. She’d completely lost herself in the argument. How could he do that? He was the only one who’d ever made her lose her cool like that.

“Let’s try again.” He stepped toward her, reaching for her.

“No.” Karma ducked under his hands, scrambling away, all but running across the room, breathing again only when she’d gained a safe distance. “I can’t.”

“The whole idea is to get you out of your head and letting loose. How much looser can you get than screaming at me?”

“So that was all to get a reaction out of me?”

“Honey, I believe every word I said, but if I can argue you out of your hang-ups, I’m not going to let an opportunity pass me by. Come on.”

She shook her head, shying away from his extended hand like it was a live snake. “I can’t. I just need a break. A chance to get myself centered—”

“The last thing you need is a chance to get back in your head.”

“Tomorrow.” When he started to argue, she snapped. “It’s been a hard week, okay? Just give me tonight.”

“It’s going to take twice as long to break you down if you keep taking time off to build yourself back up again.”

“Can’t we do this without breaking me?” She didn’t realize until the words were out of her mouth the raw vulnerability they exposed.

But for once, thank God, he didn’t mock. And twice the thanks that he didn’t show sympathy. His face was blank, his dark eyes expressionless as he nodded. “Tomorrow, I’ll bring a tool that might help, but until then, do me a favor, okay? Try to relax. Let your hair down. See how you like life without a stick up your ass for a change.”

She gave a hoarse laugh. “Asshole.”

He smiled, smug, cocky and unrepentant. “G’night, Karma.”

He turned away, but the intangible weight of his power flared out until it brushed her skin in a sort of farewell, like he needed to touch her one more time before he could go.

“Good night, Prometheus.”

She rested her bottom against her desk, gripping the edge with both hands as she watched him leave, making a point not to think. Not thinking about how she felt about him or how she felt when she was with him or who this person he believed she could be was. She retreated to her cool, calm place and held the quiet around her, hoping it would last, hoping tonight the visions would let her sleep.

Chapter Fifteen

Charm and Punishment

The bell over his shop door had never sounded so clear, reminding him he was back where he was supposed to be, watching another satisfied customer walk into the world with magic in her pocket. He’d been spending too much time with Karma, starting to wonder—not enough for the thought but enough for an uneasy feeling—if she was right about him. If he really was doing more harm than good by putting magic out into the world. And after last night, when he’d felt…what was that? Close to her? Comfortable with her? That wasn’t him. Prometheus didn’t have confidants. He didn’t rely on people or build relationships with them. Relationships were vulnerabilities and he was invulnerable. Immortal.

Or he would be as soon as he got his heart back.

He needed today to get his center, as Karma would say. And his center was this shop. He wasn’t selling bad juju. He was selling catharsis. The ability to get back at that cheating ex or vindictive boss so his clients could move on. Nothing felt so pure as vengeance. Sure, he wasn’t putting strictly white light into the universe, but sometimes a person needed to scream and lash out before he could be whole again. Prometheus understood that better than most and he made sure his clients lashed out in ways that wouldn’t leave them heartless for twenty years.

Taking stock of the store, he noticed they were running low on love charms—always a big money maker—and debated flipping the Back in Five sign over to run into the back and whip up a few more, but he wasn’t feeling particularly loverly. With the mood he was in, his love charms would probably summon stalkers rather than reciprocated love. It was a delicate thing, magic, and it listened to the caster, sometimes more than he might want it to.

Maybe he could make a charm for Karma. Not a love charm—gods, not that—but something to help her work her abilities. And if it happened to help her trust him and want to help him…so much the better.

He’d have to be careful, subtle about it. She’d examine any gift he gave her and if she suspected for a second that he was trying to manipulate her, she’d flip her shit. And that right there was a challenge he couldn’t resist.

If he failed, at least he’d get to watch her in full meltdown mode. She was something else when she lost it.

He sent out a little flick of telekinetic energy to click the lock and flip the Back in Five sign, turning toward his workroom. He’d recently received a shipment of Celtic knot pendants. His customers loved those things—even though it was just as easy to work a charm into an ugly lump of rock as it was a pretty worked knot. Karma wouldn’t be impressed by them, but there was one that was a modified yin-yang design. He was already picturing how he would layer the charm into it—no compulsion, just persuasion. Subtle.

The bell over the door chimed.

Prometheus froze, half in, half out of his workroom. The door hadn’t opened. The shop was empty. But an icy hot chill slithered down his spine and he knew before he turned that he wasn’t alone.

“Prometheus,” she purred, her voice liquid sin and velvet kisses wrapped in pure feminine sweetness. “It’s been too long.”

He hoped he was hallucinating, but when he turned, there she was. Petite, curvy, purely female, with large, dark eyes and thick, dark hair curling loose and wild over her shoulders. There was a Mediterranean cast to her features, reinforcing his instinct that she’d once been worshipped in Greece and Italy. Deuma. Handmaiden of Bacchus. Sex devil of the highest, most dangerous order. Owner of his heart. The Big Bad Bitch herself.

She studied him—white hair, broad shoulders—and smiled, dark eyes twinkling with sweet invitation. “You’ve changed, my pet.”

“You haven’t.”

“Haven’t I?” she pouted. “Doesn’t it show?”

Her body, her face, she was exactly as she’d been engraved in his memory. But when he looked at her through the filter of his power—her power—he saw it, the way she was gleaming, swelling, pulsing with dark strength. Before she’d been enthralling, but now he could barely look at her for the power blinding him. She’d been a devil—or at least a creature constrained by devilish handicaps—but now she was verging on something else. She’d appeared here without being summoned—the power differential that involved… No. It couldn’t be. He would be so screwed if Deuma was on her way to becoming a god.

Prometheus struggled to keep his face and his mind blank. It was risky enough to double cross a devil. To renege on a deal with a god… Suicide.

“I have two more months.”

“What if I’m in the mood to round to the nearest year?” She strolled through his shop, trailing her fingers through the charms, every movement of her hips oiled and designed to draw the eye.

“That isn’t how it works.” It couldn’t be. He needed more time. He was so close to getting free of her. He’d been so sure he had more time.

“No, you’re right,” she admitted. “A contract is a contract. But there’s nothing in it saying I can’t come play.”

If he’d had a heart, it would have been pounding. The blood rushed loud in his ears. “Why would you want to do that?”

“You’ve become very interesting lately. Aren’t you glad to see me, love?” She sent him a half-lidded look that made Marilyn Monroe look frigid by comparison.

Prometheus felt his body responding, even as his mind screamed in silent protest. She could make a dead man pant, but no living man was safe in her bed. She was a scorpion. The most dangerous thing he could imagine was for her to decide she wanted him again. “I’m surprised is all. Your time is valuable.”

“You’re valuable to me, Prometheus. Especially with the interesting company you’ve been keeping lately. Whatever are you up to, dear boy?”

“Can’t a man enjoy his last months on earth?”

“Is that was this is?” She smiled. “A last, tragic leap into love? How like a man to want love when he knows he won’t have to keep working at it after the initial infatuation fades.” She lifted a love charm off the rack, twirling it between her fingers. “I can’t fault your taste. She is delicious, isn’t she? All that lovely power. She’s worth three of you.”

“Stay away from her,” he growled, feinting like a man in love to sell the facade. “Or try to tempt her if you want. She’s too good for you. She’d never deal with devils.”

“No? Maybe not. But she’s dealing with you, isn’t she?”

“What do you want, Deuma?”

“What does any eight-thousand-year-old handmaiden want?” She laughed, sweet and girlish. “Don’t be thinking you can weasel out of our arrangement, Prometheus. I don’t take well to those who try to cross me. I’ll be watching you.” With that last, comforting thought, she tossed the love charm into the air, vanishing before it landed on the counter, the soft pewter of the charm somehow leaving a dent in the Formica.

Prometheus grabbed it and moved quickly through the shop, gathering up everything else she’d touched—he didn’t trust her not to have contaminated half his wares. He dropped them all into a bag, bringing them back to his workroom with him. He’d go through each one later to cleanse them, but in the meantime, he had a charm to work for Karma.

She’s worth three of you. Deuma’s words echoed in his mind as he took out the yin-yang charm. It could have been just words. She was too good for him. But Deuma didn’t say anything without purpose. Worth three of me. So would Deuma accept a trade? He really would be the bad guy then. But he’d be alive. And perhaps he could work it so Karma was too. She didn’t even want her power. Surely she could spare some of it. Best for all of them.

He felt a little twinge that might have been guilt, but shoved it aside and reached for the charm. To make her trust him, want to help him, sacrifice for him…and let her hair down.

But how to get it past her? She’d never let loose intentionally. Maybe two charms. One to help her focus her gift and another to get him into her good graces. Prometheus smiled and began to work his magic. You could learn a lot from con artists and stage magicians—it was all about misdirection. He was going to misdirect Karma until her head spun.

Chapter Sixteen

Second String Hero

“There’s a guy in reception. He doesn’t have an appointment. And he has flowers.”

Karma looked up to find Brittany standing inside her office, frowning. The frown was her first hint that her unexpected visitor wasn’t Prometheus. Brittany seemed to adore the bastard, for reasons Karma didn’t try to comprehend.

“Does this guy have a name?”

“Carlton something. I don’t trust him.”

Brittany generally had good instincts, so Karma sat forward and inquired, “Why don’t you trust him?”

“Calla lilies. He’s trying too hard to be unique. And he looks like a movie star.”

“Which one?”

“All of them. Like he’s only convincing when he’s playing someone else. That sort of Madame Tussaud’s wax museum look. I don’t think he’s a real person. He doesn’t exfoliate, he polishes. Much too shiny.”

“Okay then. Well, real boy or not, you’d better show him in.” Karma closed her laptop and slid it back into its drawer, tidying her desk for the meeting. Not that she was anal about being tidy. She just liked things to be orderly. It didn’t mean anything. “Brittany?” She stopped the secretary before she could open the door. “Do you think I have a stick up my ass?” If anyone would be honest with her, Brittany would.

Brittany cocked her head to the side, thinking about it. And thinking. And thinking some more.

Damn it. I’ve got a stick up my ass. A “no” would not have taken so much rumination. “Never mind. Please send my visitor in.”

Brittany bobbed a nod and vanished through the door, leaving Karma to mope in private.

Of all the things Prometheus had said to her last night that was the one that had stuck with her when she woke up this morning. Had she really forgotten how to unwind? When had she become so rigid? When was the last time she’d let herself have fun? She couldn’t remember. That couldn’t be a good sign.

“Ms. Cox?”

“Karma, please.” Karma rose, smiling professionally at the walking Ken doll who’d entered her office with a fistful of Calla lilies. She suddenly understood what Brittany had meant. If anyone was ever too perfect, with every hair too perfectly in place and every plane of his face too perfectly sculpted, it was this man. She almost expected his teeth to sparkle when he smiled. “What can I do for you, Mister…?”

“Norris. Carlton Norris. You may remember my Aunt Regina.” He lifted the lilies. “These are from her. She’s very grateful for your help with her ghost problem. She’d been saying that house was haunted for years but I’m afraid none of my cousins took her very seriously.”

“I remember Regina. She was very passionate.” Karma came around her desk to accept the proffered flowers. “I suppose you were her one supporter?”

“Actually I was as bad as any of them.” He gave a self-deprecating shrug. “Until I saw a ghost for myself. Suffice it to say, it opened my eyes to a number of things.”

“Such as?”

“Such as life is too short to spend in a boardroom and if my aunt is right about her house being haunted, what else might she be right about? Like the fact that I should ask out the pretty proprietress of the company that saved her house.”

Karma gave him her most professional smile. It wasn’t the first time a former client had come by to say thank you, though it was the first time she’d had one try to pimp out her nephew in the process. “Mr. Norris, I’m flattered—”

“Before you blow me off, give me a chance to plead my case.”

It was on the tip of her tongue to tell him she didn’t date and usher him out the door when she drew up short. What kind of person had a unilateral policy against dating? A person with a stick up her ass. Damn it. She looked at the flowers in her hands. She couldn’t get back to work until she put them in water anyway. “You have five minutes to convince me.”

“I would have settled for three.” Carlton Norris smiled, all matinee idol teeth, exactly like she’d imagined. Then, as she found a vase and ducked into her washroom to fill it with water, he began itemizing all the ways he was the perfect catch—financially solvent, always opened doors for ladies and sent his mother flowers on Mother’s Day, and preferred classical music though he’d taken his little sister to her first boy band concert—which he argued should have qualified him for imminent sainthood, but all he was asking for was a date. He was charming, singing his own praises with a wry self-deprecation that struck precisely the right balance of pride and humility, and he even came bearing a letter of reference from his Aunt Regina, should she doubt his sincerity.

There was no good reason for her to say anything but yes—and still Karma wanted to say no. She could come up with excuses all day long—he was too perfect, too slick, too smooth—but the truth was, she simply didn’t want to go out with him. She felt nothing when she looked at him. But was that his fault? Or something defective in her? Had she buried her own libido under so many layers of inhibition that she didn’t even feel it anymore? Her reactions to Prometheus called bullshit on that last supposition. She just wasn’t attracted to Carlton Norris—though he was exactly the kind of man she should be dating. Stable. Steady. Reliable. Good.

“Come on, Karma. My aunt’s psychic says I’m exactly what you need.”

Since his aunt’s psychic was on her payroll, Karma couldn’t fault the information, but… “What about what you need?” And why did Mr. Perfect here need his aunt’s psychic to get him a date? There had to be a catch. But what if there wasn’t? What if he really was her perfect and psychically ordained match and Prometheus had her so primed to question every motive that she ruined her best chance at happiness?

“All I need is a chance. So what do you say? Give a guy a shot? It’s only dinner.” Carlton smiled winningly.

And Karma felt nothing. But she forced herself to smile back—even though she had no particular desire to spend an evening with him. “I’d love to,” she lied, to drown out the sound of Prometheus’s voice telling her to let her hair down. “How’s tomorrow evening?”

Carlton Norris left her office with plans to pick her up at seven and Karma tried to feel a giddy swoop of anticipation, but all she felt was a fierce determination to prove there were no sticks anywhere in the vicinity of her ass. She was going to let her hair down, damn it. If it was the last thing she did.

“I have presents for you.”

Prometheus burst into her office, five minutes early this time, and Karma frowned. She knew better than to trust a warlock bearing gifts, especially a punctual one. When he reached her desk, he pulled one hand from behind his back with a magician’s flourish. An odd silver charm that couldn’t seem to decide if it was a Celtic knot or a yin-yang sign dangled from the leather thong in his fist.

“This is to give you a focal point, something external to center your magic through so you don’t have to break down your fortress of solitude to work your magic, and this is to help you relax.” The other hand appeared, holding a giant, economy-sized bottle of Stolichnaya.

Karma glowered. “That’s your master plan to train me? Vodka?”

“It’s a time honored technique for helping people relax. Why fight history?”

“History has taught us that people are idiotic when drunk.”

“And? You could use some idiocy in your life.”

“I’m getting tired of you telling me what I need in my life.”

“Do you want my help?”

She ground out, “I do.”

“Then you need me in your life. And tonight, vodka.” He smiled, a curve of the lips that was almost feral, in no way resembling the perfectly civil curve of Carlton Norris’s perfectly civil lips. Karma felt something low in her belly stir. “Aren’t you going to look at your present?” He swung the charm, rocking it like a hypnosis aid from his long fingers.

“Set it there.” She wouldn’t touch it until she’d had a chance to test it for traps. Not that she thought Prometheus would actually hurt her—they’d gone beyond that—but manipulate her? That he’d do without blinking.

He spread it before her on the desk with a flourish and stepped back. Another man might have been insulted by her obvious mistrust, but Prometheus seemed to take it as a compliment. “Do you have ice?” he asked as he backed away.

“The freezer in the break room. Down the hall to the left.”

Then he was gone, taking his massive presence—and massive bottle of vodka—with him and leaving her alone with the charm.

It was an elegant piece of work, both physically and magically, layers of pressed metal and subtle tendrils of spells. Confidence and strength folded over focus and something else she couldn’t quite describe, though if she’d had to put it into words, she would have called it one-with-the-universeness, a sort of cosmic acceptance. She looked for booby traps, probing into the soft layers of spell, but found nothing suspect. Just clean, white magic. Not the slightest oily slick of dark. Even the leather thong was harmless. She brushed a finger over it tentatively, alert for any spells that activated at her touch, but nothing changed, no spell trap snapped closed around her. Had he really given her a gift to help her with no strings attached?

“Did I pass?”

She looked up to see him cupping a tumbler filled with ice in one palm while the other hand gripped the neck of the massive bottle.

“Shockingly, yes. Thank you for the charm.”

“You should wear it constantly. The more you use it, the better it will be. It tunes to you.” He set the tumbler on the desk and unscrewed the cap on the vodka with a twist of his wrist. The seals crackled as they broke and clear liquid draped itself across the ice like a lover as he poured. He set the bottle on the desk and grabbed a chair. She knew that chair, knew it was heavy, but he spun it around to the side of her desk without even a grimace of effort and sprawled his long, lean body into it.

He waved for her to proceed and Karma arched a brow at the single glass. “If you think I’m getting trashed while you stay sober, you’re crazier than I thought.” If she hadn’t been watching him, she wouldn’t have noticed the minute hesitation, the way his eyes flicked to the side. He didn’t want to drink it. Of course. “I should’ve known. What’s in it? What did you spike it with?”

His hand shot out like a snake striking, snatching up the glass. He’d thrown back the contents and slammed the glass back onto her desk with a clink before she could do more than blink. “There? See? Harmless. But you’re right. It’s bad form to drink alone.” He flicked his fingers and a second glass appeared beside her right hand where it rested on the desk.

He filled her glass, then refilled his own, but she was getting better at seeing beneath his bluster and Prometheus looked uneasy. He lifted his refilled glass, arching a brow when she didn’t raise hers to meet his toast. “Watching for signs of cyanide poisoning?”

“I’d pegged you as more of an arsenic guy.”

He snorted. “My God, did Karma just make a joke?”

“Why are you so nervous, Prometheus? What’s in the vodka?”

“Distilled grains, if you believe the Russians.” When she made no move to lift her own glass, he lowered his own. “I don’t generally imbibe, okay? Alcohol tends to affect me rather strongly. The last time I drank, I accidentally summoned a demon because at the time it seemed like a good way of getting your attention.” He raised his glass again. “But I’m willing to take one for the team. To prove my good intentions.”

She looked at the bottle, still dubious, but starting to feel like a fool and prude for resisting. “How does this work?”

“You drink it.”

“Cute.”

“That’s all there is to this plan, Karma. You drink, you relax, and I help you figure out how to go with the flow rather than fighting the tide of your own power all the time. Simple. Which is good because if I’m gonna be hammered too, we probably should avoid plans with a lot of moving parts. Just think of me as the tour guide for your powers. I’ll drive the bus. You sit back and take in the sights.”

Simple. Simple sounded good. So did letting someone else be responsible for keeping her afloat for a while.

Karma lifted the vodka, pressing down the shiver of misgiving that seemed to tingle through her fingers and up her arm. The first mouthful of vodka kissed her tongue and then punched her in the back of the throat. She shook her head sharply, fighting down a cough as her eyes started to water.

Prometheus chuckled. “You get used to it.”

She glared at him and defiantly took another swallow. This one went down easier, just a twitch of her chin betraying the way it kicked as it slid down her throat. Prometheus silently toasted her and took a sip from his own glass.

“Why does alcohol affect you so much? Is it because of your heart?” She frowned, studying him. He looked normal. You would never know it was only magic keeping him alive. Like a vampire. How alive was he? “Do you eat? I mean, I know your heart doesn’t pump your blood, but is everything else about your physiology normal?”

“I can get it up, if that’s what you’re asking.”

Her face flamed. “That is not what I asked.”

He gave a low, dark laugh and took a long drink. “I eat. I drink. I even sleep on occasion. My hair grows and when I try to grow a beard, it itches like a bitch, same as any other guy. The difference is the more magic I use, the more it sort of speeds up my body. I need to eat more often, shave two or three times a day, and I might as well be narcoleptic if I’m really burning hot, cuz I’ll pass out and wake up fifteen minutes later ready to do it all over again. So while I get drunk fast—one more of these and I’m gonna be singing show tunes—I also sober up fast.”

“What happens when you don’t use magic?”

He smiled. “I always use magic.” Their glasses refilled with a wave of his hand, the level in the bottle dropping in concert.

“I bet you couldn’t go one day without casting a spell.”

“And you would win that bet.” He shrugged, unapologetic.

She’d expected him to puff up at the challenge, but he tipped back in his chair, rocking it onto the hind legs as he swirled the vodka in his glass, calm and utterly unoffended. She really didn’t know this man. He’d been her greatest frustration for months, but what did she really know about him?

“What kind of name is Prometheus?” The vodka made her tongue feel loose and easy, words spilling right off it.

“Titanic.”

“But why call yourself that?”

“The man who stole fire from the gods and gave it to the masses, then was doomed to lose internal organs as a punishment? Somehow it seemed fitting.”

“But Prometheus. Don’t you ever wish your name was Steve or something?”

“You probably fantasize about being called Beth, don’t you?”

“Katharine, actually.” She blinked and frowned at her glass—she’d never told anyone that.

He laughed. “Sweetheart, you’re no Kate. People like us need names that could never belong to anyone else.”

“People like us. What does that even mean?”

“Demigods.”

“You’re saying one of your parents was a god?”

“Fine, I’m not a demigod by the strictest definition. Maybe just a minor deity. But demigod has such a nice ring to it, don’t you think?”

“You aren’t a god, Prometheus,” she said dryly. “Demi or otherwise.”

“I guess that depends on your definition. What is a god anyway? I have the power to bend the world to my whim. Isn’t that godlike?”

She ignored the question, realizing he was trying to pivot the conversation away from his past. There was so much more she wanted to know. “You changed your name after you traded your heart?”

“About that time, yeah.”

“What was your name before that?”

“That’s a useless question.”

“Why?” She noticed she was holding the charm he’d made for her and dropped it over her neck. It settled against her breastbone, warm and right, expanding her sense of calm.

“I’ve been Prometheus for longer now than I was ever known as anything else, and it’s more who I am than any other identity ever was. You won’t know me by looking back there. In all ways that matter, I was born a little over nineteen years ago.”

He rocked his chair and drained his glass. Karma sipped her drink. The vodka wasn’t kicking anymore. It slid down smooth and easy, warm and welcome. The glasses kept refilling on their own and now that she thought about it, the glass felt different in her hand, bigger. Or maybe it was her hand that felt different. Tingly and sort of swollen—like there was a delay between her skin and the nerves, a padding that filtered everything she touched.

And her lips, they tingled too. She ran her tongue over them, fascinated by the feel. She might be drunk. Was Prometheus drunk too? She looked at him, wondering if his lips felt tingly and flushed like hers. He looked relaxed, tipped back in his chair, his lead lolling back loosely as he rested his drink against his stomach. He nagged at her about relaxing, but he didn’t let his guard down around anyone else either. It was ingrained, that distance he kept between himself and the rest of the world.

“Did you like growing up in foster care?”

The chair legs thumped as they slammed back to the floor. Prometheus wasn’t relaxed anymore. His black eyes bored into her. She hadn’t meant to say it. Her filters were down and that knowledge that sometimes hit her had popped out of her mouth before it had even really had a chance to register on her brain.

“No one likes growing up in foster care.” He reached for the bottle, refilling their glasses by hand.

“I didn’t mean to—”

“You pulled that out of thin air, didn’t you? Post-cognition too, huh? Some fucking gift you’ve got there.” His face was tight. She’d never seen him angry before. She’d been furious in his presence, but he’d never gone past I-don’t-give-a-damn on the emotional spectrum. It was a little scary, seeing him like this. She felt the most animalistic part of her brain screaming at her to run like hell, there was a pissed off predator a few feet away from her, but she stayed perfectly still, watching him.

“Does it all make sense now?” he snapped. “Why I don’t give a shit about my birth name? Why I can’t understand why you wouldn’t have any curiosity about your birth father? What is with that? I’ll never know who my biological parents were and that shit makes me nuts. How does it not make you crazy?” He lurched up out of the chair, his long legs covering the ground to the couch in three strides.

Karma rose, the room swooping dizzily for a moment, and followed, drawn toward him like a tether connected them. She knew the answer to his question, but she didn’t say it. She had a family. Her parents. Jake. Sure, she’d been different. The ocean of power inside her had set her apart from them, made it so they could never wholly understand her, but they had always loved her. That’s why she didn’t need to know who had supplied the sperm to create her. Prometheus hadn’t had that. He’d been alone, trying to figure out who he was in a vacuum.

It was easy to picture him—she wasn’t sure whether it was imagination or some facet of her abilities supplying the images, but she saw them all the same. Smart, independent, resourceful, often in trouble. The system would not have rewarded his defiant brand of ingenuity.

She toed off her heels and sank onto the soft, ivory leather of the couch beside him, careful to keep all traces of sympathy from her expression. He wouldn’t want it. The topic was a minefield and she was too fuzzy to navigate it well, so she hid the way the thought of him as a kid made her ache, letting him see only the respect she had for what he’d become.

She raised her glass to him. “To hacking out a place for yourself in the world.”

That obsidian gaze landed hard on her. He went preternaturally still and for a moment, she saw the predator, pure and unvarnished, looking back at her. Her stomach clenched. Then he blinked, something unlocked and suddenly his mouth was twisted in a wry smile, his glass clinking against hers. “To hacking it out.”

Karma took a breath, belatedly realizing she’d been holding it, and they both drank. After the tension of the moment, relief made her head spin. Or maybe that was the alcohol. The vodka slid over her tongue like silk now and pooled pleasantly with the warmth in her stomach. She could focus on him, but the rest of the room had taken on a distant, fuzzy quality. Houston, we’ve achieved orbit. She frowned, squinting blurrily at the ice clinking merrily in her glass. “Why isn’t the ice melting?”

“Magic,” he rumbled. And just like that, he was relaxed again. How did he do that? He stretched an arm along the back of the sofa, his fingertips grazing the back of her neck as he lazed there, like a lion sunning in the afternoon. Even when he relaxed, he brought to mind predators. There was probably something seriously wrong with her psyche that she got a charge out of the little shivers when he made her feel like prey. It certainly said something about her defective survival instincts, but everything was loose and liquid right now, her entire body warm and mushy, and she couldn’t make herself care. Or move. Especially as his finger began to repeat a slow, deliberate stroke down the nape of her neck.

She’d always been sensitive there, but it had never felt quite like this, like every single individual cell was humming. His fingertip was an electric charge, sizzle sizzle sizzling down her spine and out to her extremities in warm, heavy waves. She was tuned to his touch, each new stroke awakening another inch of her body she’d never known could be erogenous. And that was just from brushing the back of her neck. What would happen if she gave him carte blanche with her body? The thought worked a delicious shudder through her.

Why was she resisting this? Why was she resisting him? He was this wild, sexy, utterly unpredictable, insanely masculine specimen of a man. She was never going to meet anyone else like him and she was wasting it because she was too much of a prude to listen to her own body, which was currently screaming at her to pounce on him.

“I’ve been thinking about what you said.”

“Mm?” His eyes were closed, head lolled against the back of the sofa.

“About casual sex.”

His finger stilled on the back of her neck, then resumed its lazy stroke. “Oh?”

“And fun.”

“Sex should be fun,” he rumbled agreeably, still without opening his eyes or moving a muscle. “Otherwise you’re doing it wrong.”

“I’ve definitely been doing it wrong.” The profoundness of this statement seemed to echo in her thoughts, distracting her.

His lashes lifted, the ebony depths they veiled watching her with careful neutrality. “Now that is a shame.”

“I agree.” His hand fell away from her neck and she resisted the urge to pout and demand it back. She tucked her legs up underneath her so she was kneeling, facing him. “I need more fun in my life. And more sex.”

He plucked her glass from her hand and set both tumblers on the floor. “That’s enough of that,” he muttered under his breath. Then, louder, “Why don’t we see about accessing that gift of yours?”

“Okay.” She swung a leg over his so she was seated, straddling his lap.

Chapter Seventeen

Save a Horse, Ride a Warlock

“Whoa. Ah, hi there.” If Prometheus had made a list of likely things to happen tonight, having Karma mount him like a cowgirl wouldn’t have made the top five hundred possibilities. Her skirt, which he’d never seen so much as wrinkled, bunched high, exposing the smooth lean stretch of her thighs.

“Hi.” She looped her arms around his neck, smiling dopily. “It worked last time when you kissed me.”

“I remember.” He didn’t know what to do with his hands—a gentleman would keep them to his goddamn self, but Prometheus was no gentleman, so he gripped her hips, squeezing gently, testing out the feel of her and discovering he liked the hell out of it. “I also remember that you wanted no physical contact to be one of our ground rules.”

“I have too many rules.”

“I’m inclined to agree with you, but I’m pretty sure I’m only agreeing with the Stolichnaya. The Karma I know lives for her rules.”

“Do you know me? Do I know me? Does anyone?”

“I know that you’re a flirty, weirdly philosophical drunk. Wasn’t expecting that one.”

“I’m not flirting. I’m making a pass.” She frowned, peering close into his eyes. “Am I doing it wrong?”

“You’re doing great.” If the erection he was sporting was anything to go by, she was world class. “But we’re here to practice working your gift, remember? Now that you’re loose—”

“I hate it.”

“What?” He was having trouble keeping up now that drunkenness seemed to have kicked Karma into overdrive.

Her eyes were wide, startled. “I’ve never said that to anyone.”

“Yeah, we’re both full of confessions tonight.” Next time he bespelled a bottle of vodka, he was going to be a damn sight more careful about what kind of juju he put into it.

It had seemed like a brilliant plan when he thought of it. Keep the charm wholesome and pure and put all the naughty, manipulative trust me, rely on me, confide in me crap into the vodka. It hadn’t occurred to him that he’d be drinking it himself—and when she’d told him to drink, he’d been reasonably certain that the magic was specific enough, designed to make her trust him, that he would be immune. Then the next thing he knew they were talking about fucking foster care. Jesus.

As soon as he’d realized what was happening, he’d switched the clear liquid in his glass to water. Luckily, with his faster metabolism, he was already starting to sober up and the trust me juju was fading as the alcohol worked through his system, but it looked like Karma was coming into the confessional sweet spot. He was sure she’d never be confiding in him otherwise—he hadn’t missed that it had taken her two shots of the spelled vodka before she’d trusted him enough to put on the perfectly harmless charm he’d made for her. Now it dangled between them, swinging against her breasts as she rocked forward in his lap.

“I hate my gift,” she said again with relish, like a child confessing long-held feelings for a despised stepparent. “The dreams are the worst. They come at you when you’re vulnerable and drag you under. They say you can’t die in your dreams, but you’d be amazed how close you can come. Stabbed, shot, burned, drowned, smothered, bones breaking like twigs left and right. The pain is bad, but the fear is the worst. The helplessness. I can’t change anything in the dreams. It isn’t me, you see. I’m not there. I’m just a passenger, living through the fear and the pain of someone else’s choice. All the consequences, none of the control.”

“Holy shit. No wonder you’re a control freak.”

He’d seen it happen with Ciara, but he’d thought that must be an aberration, a fluke brought on by Karma's panic. If it was like that every single time her gift engaged, how did she stay sane?

She gave a high, slightly hysterical laugh, and the words kept coming, tumbling out of her mouth, each one hollowing him out and making his empty chest ache. “I don’t think I’ve slept a full eight hours since I was ten years old. I used to wake up screaming every night, but it was killing my parents to hear it and it wasn’t helping me so I taught myself not to. I’d still be screaming in my head, I’d still hear it, but no one else would. So my parents stopped talking about sending me away to get me help. I hate the dreams, Prometheus. I hate them.”

She listed abruptly on his lap and only his grip on her hips saved her from toppling to the floor. “Easy now.” When she was relatively stable again, he squeezed her waist to get her attention. “Hey. You’re going to master those dreams. They won’t be able to touch you anymore if you don’t want them to. You’ve been holding yourself back, but you’re a force of nature like I’ve never seen. I’m the biggest badass on the block and I know my shit. While you’re keeping yourself in check, I can run circles around you, but when you let yourself free you’re going to be able to Hulk-smash my puny ass into next week. You just have to start working with your power rather than against it. You’ve got this, Karma.”

Her jaw dropped and she gawked at him, gaping in shock—whether at his words or his ferocity, he didn’t know. Then she closed her mouth with a click, blinked once and announced, “I’m going to kiss you now.”

And she did.

Her lips were as smooth and soft as he remembered and she tasted of vodka and something spicier. Cinnamon. Then her tongue teased past his lips, her hands fisted in his hair jerking him closer, and coherent thought waved goodbye as the kiss went from exploratory to incendiary in a heartbeat.

The couch was right there, so perfectly inviting. It was the most natural thing in the world to roll her underneath him as he ate into her mouth. His hips found the perfect cradle between her legs and he rocked up into her. Her breath hitched and he caught the gasp in his mouth, devouring it then nipping at the plush pad of her lower lip as he rocked again, the hard length of him catching her sweet spot again, but still begging for a firmer, harder stroke. Her legs twined around his hips, her hands slipping beneath his shirt to splay across the bare skin of his lower back. Prometheus hissed as her nails teased lightly up his spine.

There was something he was supposed to remember. Something he needed to do…

Karma sucked his tongue into her mouth and pulsed her hips up into his and his brain short circuited. The buttons of her blouse were slippery, as eager as he was to see them freed. The silk parted beneath his hands and he levered himself up for a better look, the angle pressing his hips deeper into hers so Karma’s head fell back on a moan. His mouth watered. God, she looked decadent. Sultry. Her hair had come loose—he vaguely remembered plunging his hands into it—and writhed like black silk over her shoulders. Her eyes were slitted, half-closed with abandon. Cheeks flushed, chest flushed, back arched to display the surprisingly lush curves she’d kept hidden beneath those beautifully tailored suits, the soft swell of her breasts rising out of the black lace bra. She was a fucking fantasy and the sight of her hit him like a punch to the gut. How did he get so lucky?

Something he ought to remember…

Training. They were supposed to be training. He was teaching her. He’d stolen her trust with bespelled vodka…taking advantage…

Aw, fuck. What a shitty time to develop a conscience.

Prometheus closed his eyes to block out the vision tempting him to forget again. He grabbed her hands, lacing their fingers together and plunging them both headlong into the wild ocean of her power.

He expected her to fight, to resist. He expected the panic and chaos of their last attempt.

He was wrong. It was easy.

A thousand possible futures wrapped around them, but they weren’t violent. Together they floated on the tide of her power, sampling a vision here, a premonition there, letting the current of possibilities take them where it would. They weren’t directing it or controlling it, he wasn’t sure they could call this swimming, but she wasn’t drowning. It was amazing how easy it was. The vodka? The charm? Him? Who knew what had changed? All he knew was that Karma was one step closer to being the channel she had been born to be. The power was no longer running roughshod over her. Now all she needed to do was learn how to direct it. Preferably sober.

She dipped her fingers into one future and they slid into it. She stared at the stick—longest three minutes of my life—then squealed and bolted out of the bathroom, waving it frantically. “Matt! Matt, it’s two lines! I’ve got a bun in the oven!” Her green-eyed lover turned, his face going white then breaking out in a wide smile as she flung herself into his arms.

Prometheus sucked in a breath as Karma pulled them both out of the vision, blinking to bring her office back into focus. He was still sprawled on top of her on the couch, but he couldn’t quite get the feel of his own body, still stuck in the weird double vision of looking through Karma’s eyes as she looked through Ronna’s eyes at Matt. Prometheus wasn’t sure he was going to be able to look the hardass cop in the eye next time he saw him. It was too strange.

“Ronna’s seen that future. She told me. I could pick to see it too. I’ve never been able to pick.” Karma was breathing quickly herself—though the shortness of breath may have had something to do with the fact that he was crushing her.

Prometheus sat up, pulling her up beside him. “That was…”

There were no words to describe it. She’d been Ronna. That was her husband. Her baby. Her joy.

Which meant every other time it had been her pain. Her fear. Talk about nightmares.

Karma released a little hiccupping laugh. “It worked. I can’t believe it worked. It felt so different.” She blinked at him. “You actually did it.”

“That wasn’t me.” He rubbed a thumb along her cheekbone. Maybe he was still off balance from their dunk into her power, but all he could think was what a marvel she was. “You…” Amaze me. Awe me. Make me want—No. Best to cut that thought off right now. He wanted her help. Nothing else mattered. Life or death. No distractions.

She levered herself straighter with a hand pressed to his chest then frowned at her hand. “You really don’t have a heartbeat.”

“I know.”

“Heartless bastard,” she muttered, but the words were bemused rather than condemnatory. She flexed her fingers and he felt her power flex, little tendrils of it snaking into his chest, seeking the origin of his power. He knew the moment she found the tether that tied him to Deuma. And if he felt it, Deuma did too. This was exactly what he wanted Karma to be able to do, but if she did it when Deuma wasn’t contained by a summoning—Fuck.

He grabbed Karma’s wrist and yanked her hand off him. “Enough.”

She could have resisted, kept probing—he hadn’t been kidding when he said she could Hulk-smash him if she let herself—but her head wobbled on her neck and her face fell into an exaggerated pout. “What?”

Karma Cox was drunk off her ass and about five minutes from passing out cold.

“Come on,” he growled. “Let’s get you home.” He was rapidly approaching sober, but she was in no shape to drive and if he put her on the back of his motorcycle, she’d probably slide right off. “I’ll call you a taxi.”

She snickered, apparently finding this hysterical. “I think I can walk it.” Using him as balance, she shoved herself to her feet and staggered a zigzagging path across the room to where a black Chinese screen painted with a red and gold dragon hung on the wall. She opened a panel on the wall, swiped her thumb across it, and the screen parted to reveal an elevator. “Ta-da!” She twirled, going for some kind of Vanna White flourish, but the movement was too much for her and she tumbled into the elevator to land flat on her ass, giggling “Whee!” the whole way.

Apparently, they had reached the happy drunk portion of the evening. He should be recording this. No one would ever believe Karma had said, “Whee!”

Prometheus crossed to the elevator. She’d managed to get herself into a semi-seated position, wedged into the corner. After her somewhat half-hearted attempt to restore her clothing to order, her blouse was held closed by only two buttons and her skirt was back down around her legs rather than hitched at her hips. All of her attention was fixed on wiggling her stockinged toes when his shadow fell across her and her head weaved and wobbled to the side so she could look up at him.

“You’re tall, you know that?”

He crouched down in front of her so she didn’t injure herself trying to look him in the eye. “You live in the basement?”

“Mm-hm. Jo calls it the Bat Cave. Thinks I don’t know. But I know. I know all.” She waggled her fingers in front of her face, frowning at them. “I can’t feel my hands. The vodka stole my hands, Prometheus.” But the vodka had also stolen her enunciation and Prometheus came out Promshuss. “Your name is hard. Ima call you Steve. Okay, Steve?”

“No.”

She pouted. It was disturbingly adorable. He found himself regretting his why-the-fuck-do-I-need-a-camera-on-my-phone stance. The blackmail would be priceless.

“C’mon, Steve. Please?”

“Fine, whatever, call me Steve.”

“Or I could call you Betty and you could call me Al.” She giggled, then closed her eyes and began to hum. Very off tune. Music was most definitely not one of her gifts.

“I think in that scenario, I’d rather be Al than Betty. Can you stand?”

“Nope.”

“Okay then.” Prometheus straightened and pushed the down button. The elevator eased into motion so smoothly he barely felt it, but Karma moaned.

“Oooh, that isn’t good.” She flopped onto the floor, pressing her cheek to the carpet and groaning. “That’s bad. I don’t like bad.”

The elevator stopped moving and the door slid open without a sound. Prometheus crouched next to Karma as she huddled in the fetal position on the floor. “Karma?”

“The room is moving, Steve. Make it stop.”

“It has stopped. Come on. Up and at ‘em.” Prometheus frowned, not sure where the hell that had come from. He’d never said up and at ‘em in his life.

“I’m gonna sleep here,” Karma announced. “The floor is my friend.”

“Better than being your enemy, I guess, but you can’t sleep there. Come on.” He gave her shoulder a little shake and she moaned, swatting at him. “Wouldn’t you rather sleep in your nice, comfy bed?”

She mumbled something that sounded a lot like, “Fuck off, Steve,” but he figured he must be mistaken.

“Karma.” He bent to singsong in her ear. “Karma, I’m looking through your things. Violating your inner sanctum. You’d better wake up and stop me.”

She smiled sleepily. “Mm-hm. Thas nice.”

Prometheus cursed under his breath. This was why he wasn’t the good guy. He had no freaking idea how to do it. But he’d gotten her wasted in the name of training. The least he could do was get her into her own bed before he ran like hell in the opposite direction.

He pulled her up into a sitting position, propping her back in the corner. She sagged there bonelessly, a soft snore escaping her lips. He got an arm under her legs and another behind her back, but when he tried to stand she slithered out of his arms to puddle on the floor again. Prometheus cursed and hitched her up again. Her body was sleek, but she was no lightweight and she wasn’t exactly helping, flopping in his arms like a rag doll. Even with his telekinesis stabilizing her, he barely got them both out of the elevator without braining her on the wall. Once in the apartment, he flipped her over his shoulder in a fireman’s carry to keep from dropping her. And through it all, Karma snored softly, oblivious.

He looked around him, taking stock of Karma’s Bat Cave. It was one giant open room—loft style, the support beams exposed, each room flowing into the next. In style it was similar to the office above. Tidy, elegant and so perfectly feng shuied it could have been the showroom at a Chinese museum. It was beautiful, but somehow sterile, her taste for quality and need for control visible on every surface.

Karma stirred, making a low, puzzled noise from her position slung over his shoulder. He braced an arm around the back of her thighs to keep her in place and made his way to the far side of the apartment where the space was dominated by a California king bed, the bed frame set low to the ground. Matching bedside tables flanked the bed, and a giant armoire dominated a nearby wall, carved in the same style as the headboard. The only thing that didn’t fit—in fact the only thing in the entire apartment that didn’t seem a part of the whole—was the chair. Positioned facing the bed, the massive wingback chair looked like the kind of thing stodgy guys in smoking jackets would read Dickens in while thanking viewers like you on PBS—provided the stodgy guys in smoking jackets were built on the scale of WWF wrestlers. He couldn’t picture Karma there. Imagining her in the bed was much easier, but that way lay madness.

Prometheus flipped back the covers and rolled her onto the bed. She’d probably be more comfortable out of her clothes, but she’d probably also kill him when she woke up if he laid a finger on her while she was out cold, so she’d just have to be uncomfortable. He tugged the covers back up over her, patting them awkwardly. Was that all there was to tucking someone in?

She’d probably be hung over in the morning. Since it was his fault, he fetched a glass of water from the kitchen and a bottle of aspirin from the cupboard in the bathroom. When he returned, she was twisting restlessly beneath the sheets, her aura agitated. I hate the dreams. He remembered the fierce way she’d said it, the feeling of being locked inside someone else’s future. He set the water and the aspirin on the bedside and brushed her hair away from her brow, reaching out with a tendril of energy to soothe her.

Her eyes popped open. He jerked his hand back but she caught it between both of hers, clutching it tight. “Don’t go,” she murmured. “Promise you’ll stay.”

She couldn’t know what she was saying. The Karma he knew couldn’t get rid of him fast enough. But she was clinging to his hand with such desperation, he heard himself saying, “Of course I’ll stay. Sleep. I’m not going anywhere.”

She sighed, nodding sleepily. “Good. You stay.” Her eyes fell closed again as her hands went lax around his.

He stepped back, frowning down at her as she slept, peaceful again. She couldn’t really want him to stay. That was the alcohol talking. She’d probably thank him if he let himself out. Sure, he’d promised to stay, but they were only words. He’d never worried about keeping his word before.

The chair caught his eye. It would fit him perfectly. As out of place in the room as he was. Still he had no good reason for folding his limbs into the chair to keep vigil over her dreams. He wasn’t that guy.

He didn’t know why he stayed.

Chapter Eighteen

What Dreams May Come

”Max? Max, where are you?” Frustration warped into uncertainty and fear as she shoved through the racks, bending frantically to look beneath them for a small head with dark curls. He was always so curious, chasing energy trails and wandering ghosts. Why had she let him out of her sight? He could be lost, scared, anyone could have him—

The dream melted, blurring and fading. Karma swam up toward consciousness. A lost kid, wandered off in a department store. Lucy and Jake’s kid. Not even born yet. No sense sounding a warning. It might never even happen. Years away, buried in a thousand possible futures, and for some reason this time the fear hadn’t felt quite so personal. Like it really was Lucy’s fear, rather than hers. An echo.

Still, in the residual fog of sleep, it was hard to shake the thought that Max needed her. Max, who didn’t even exist yet. Half-remembered agitation tried to linger in the wake of the dream, but then it too faded. She felt heavy. Tired. So tired. Instinctively, she resisted the urge to sink back into sleep, forcing her eyes open. There was a man, long limbs overflowing the chair, sleeping. Her resistance evaporated and she closed her eyes, falling back into the cotton softness of sleep.

Karma stretched, blinking blearily up at her ceiling. Her mouth was dry as the Sahara and her stomach was on the spin cycle, but other than that, she felt good. Rested. She hadn’t been catapulted out of sleep. She’d actually slept well. It was almost enough to turn her into an alcoholic. She could handle the hangovers if she slept that soundly every night. She wasn’t even that hung over and she still remembered her dreams, but with a safe distance. As dreams, not as prisons.

Snatches of the night came back to her, little fragments of memory. They’d succeeded, she remembered that, the feel of it, the victory, the kiss, but everything after that was a blur. Had Prometheus really thrown her over his shoulder? Had she sung to him? She never sang. But it seemed her time with Prometheus was an exercise in deleting the phrase I never from her vocabulary.

Had she really seen him sitting in that chair, that godawful chair she’d bought on impulse because she’d felt that strange, eerie compulsion that she needed it, even though it didn’t match a damn thing in her apartment? She turned her head to look at the chair—

And saw a long, lean body sprawled out in it.

Apparently, she hadn’t imagined Prometheus’s presence in the night. Karma’s stomach took another discomfiting roll. He looked good in the chair. Like it had been made for him. Maybe it was.

Ridiculous. Karma shook away the thought and sat up, noticing for the first time her attire—or lack thereof. Her blouse was half-buttoned, her skirt rucked up around her hips. She looked half-debauched. Another memory popped up—like the jack-in-the-box from hell—of her swinging her leg across Prometheus’s lap, telling him she was going to kiss him. She groaned, covering her face with her hands.

“Good morning.” His voice still held the rasp of sleep. “Sleep well?”

Too well. And it was too intimate, hearing him like that. She didn’t want to lower her hands and face him. He didn’t belong here.

“Or good afternoon, I guess.”

That brought her hands down. “Afternoon?” She whipped around to gape at the clock. Twelve-fifteen. Twelve-fifteen. She’d slept the entire morning away. “How is that even possible? I never sleep in.”

Prometheus shrugged, casually evicting another I never from her lexicon. He stood, stretching the kinks from his back. “It’s not like it’s a crime. It’s Saturday. Everyone sleeps in on Saturday.”

“I don’t.”

“Relax, Karma. Even you are allowed to sleep in once in your life.” He shot her a look and she was suddenly aware that she was in her bed, half-clothed and rumpled.

She tugged up the covers, but that didn’t make her feel any less vulnerable so she flipped them aside, wrapping herself instead in her most businesslike manner as she crossed to her closet. “I only meant that I have a very busy day.”

His voice followed her into the closet though he, thankfully, did not. “Is that your way of telling me to get the hell out?”

“Of course not, but I’m sure you have places to be,” she called as she quickly stripped out of her slept-in clothes and pulled on a pair of crisp slacks and a bulky sweater.

When she emerged from the closet he was leaning against his chair—no, not his chair. Her chair. Nothing in her apartment belonged to him.

“The beauty of my life,” he said, “is that I get to be wherever I want to be whenever I want to be there. So no, I don’t have places to be. I can spend all day teaching you how to relax.”

“Well, I can’t. I have a date.”

She didn’t know why she told him that, but as soon as she said it she felt calmer, like she was back on even footing with him.

Prometheus’s eyebrows flew up, calculation rolled across his face and his expression sharpened. “Since when do you date?”

“Since now.”

“I’m serious, Karma. When exactly did this guy show up for the first time?”

“Yesterday, not that it’s any of your business.”

“A little after three o’clock? What does he look like?”

“Tall, dark and handsome,” she snapped. Then dread added to the already unstable mix in her stomach. “Oh God, what did you do? Summon a demon to ask me out?”

“No, of course not.” But he wouldn’t meet her eyes even as he waved a hand to brush away her concerns. “Never mind. It’s probably nothing. Just do me a favor and don’t make any deals with him, okay?”

“What? I can date other men but I can only negotiate with you?”

He smiled, a quick, merciless, predatory smile. He stalked toward her and she held her ground, refusing to retreat. He loomed over her, brushed a thumb over her lower lip and her breathing quickened. “Sweetheart, you go on your date. Have a good time. But we both know you’ll only be thinking of me.”

She expected a quick, forceful, claiming of a kiss. She was braced for it, ready to defend herself against his domination, but she was completely unprepared for the soft, sweet brush of his mouth over hers. The gentle, coaxing invitation of his lips. She felt her knees loosen and just when she was certain he would press his advantage, overpowering her, branding her, he pulled away.

And winked. “Just something to think about on your date.” He pressed a finger to her lips like he was marking his place and then he was gone.

Leaving her with a lot to think about and defective knees.

Chapter Nineteen

Facebook Frenzy

The bell had been ringing nonstop all afternoon, so when it jangled again, Prometheus didn’t even glance up from the horde of teenage girls crowded around the register. Word had apparently gotten around at the speed of Facebook that Micah Hot-Jock had only asked Carly Theater-Geek to the prom and elevated her to such social status that she was named Prom Queen after Carly Theater-Geek had purchased an irresistibility charm at the Prometheus Unbound Bookshop and Spell Emporium.

He hadn’t even been sure he wanted to open the shop today, but when he saw the crowd of squealing girls waiting outside like he was auctioning off Taylor Lautner’s abs, he’d realized commerce therapy was exactly the cure for his current baseless irritation.

Now, three hours later, with his stock of irresistibility charms sold out and the more expensive true love charms going fast, his irritation was no longer baseless. He was losing patience with the seemingly endless supply of teenage girls looking for the summer fling that would define their very existences—especially because so few of them paid any attention to his warnings about side effects and reading the instructions carefully. He’d had to flat out refuse to sell to one girl who’d proclaimed she was going to wear her irresistibility charm night and day until Aidan Something-or-other noticed her and refused to listen when Prometheus explained that irresistibility charms could easily turn into obsession and stalker-bait charms if they were worn too often. The brat would have deserved what she got, but damn Karma had him thinking about what would happen after the charm left his store—as if any of that was his fault. He’d had to give the brat a discount on an allure potion just to get her to stop screeching threats about what her father would do to his business license if he didn’t sell to her. No one screeched at him before he developed a conscience. Except Karma. Life was easier when you let everyone dig their own grave, but these were kids. Obnoxious kids with too many hormones, but just kids.

The latest cluster—why did they always travel in packs?—finally gathered up their purchases and giggled and squealed their way out of the shop, leaving behind a heavenly silence. Prometheus surveyed the shop. It looked like a tornado had hit it, but his mortgage for the next two months was bulging in the register so he couldn’t complain. There were only two customers left—a mousy girl clutching a well-worn copy of Pride and Prejudice as she surveyed what remained of the romance charms, and a woman with curly brown hair and a designer handbag, who turned and beamed at him.

“Hi, Prometheus!”

“Brittany. Did Karma send you?”

The Karmic receptionist shook her head, curls bouncing. “She doesn’t know I’m here, but I had to warn you.”

“Warn me about what?”

Brittany sobered. “I’m sorry to be the one to tell you this, but Karma is seeing another man.”

“Yeah, she told me.”

“She did? Like in a make-you-jealous way? Or a warn-you-off way? Or an if-I-tell-you-about-my-date-I-can-pretend-we’re-just-buddies-and-I-don’t-really-want-to-jump-your bones-even-though-I-totally-do way?”

“If I had to guess, I’d say probably the second one.” But something still didn’t sit right with him about the timing. For some guy to pursue Karma immediately after Deuma had said she was worth tempting… “Brittany, did you see the guy? What’s he like?”

“Oh! I am full of reconnaissance about the enemy! He’s plastic.”

“Plastic. You mean she was lying and she doesn’t really have a date?”

“No, no, he’s a real date. But he looks stiff. Like a mannequin. Attractive though. If you like that sort of thing.”

Prometheus nodded. He still didn’t like the way his gut clenched at the thought of her out with another guy, but at least he knew it wasn’t Deuma or one of her minions in disguise. No one would ever call a maenad plastic. They were all heat—they’d melt a mannequin in seconds flat.

“Don’t worry,” Brittany soothed. “I don’t think Karma really likes him. She’s only using him to perpetuate her denial about her feelings for you.”

Prometheus frowned down at the perky little pixie he’d accidentally had a hand in kidnapping. “Brittany, why are you on my side? Shouldn’t you be the first one in line telling Karma to stay the hell away from me?”

Brittany cocked her head, visibly confused by the question, and a hesitant voice interrupted.

“Um, excuse me? How much is this one?” The girl with the book stood off to one side, holding up a true love charm. “The racks got all jumbled up and I can’t tell which ones go where.”

Prometheus frowned at the charm. “You don’t want that one.”

Jane Austen Girl’s expression turned instantly militant. “Yes, I do.”

“What do you want?”

“What do you mean?”

“What do you want the charm to accomplish? What do you want to achieve?”

Jane Austen Girl blushed. “Never mind.” She started to turn away.

“There’s a guy, right?”

He half-expected her to ignore him, but she hesitated, drawing a circle on the floor with the toe of one Ked. “Aaron Walsh,” she mumbled.

Prometheus frowned. He’d heard that name several times today. Apparently, the kid was something of a heartthrob at the local high school. “That’ll make him love you.”

Jane Austen Girl spun back to face him, brown eyes fierce behind her glasses. “Then it’s the one I want.”

“You sure? It won’t make him be faithful to you or treat you well. Love isn’t always fun. Sometimes it stings like a bitch—and it isn’t always romance. It might make him love you as a friend, or a little sister. But go ahead and buy that one. If you just want him to love you.”

Jane Austen Girl was studying him speculatively now, all traces of defensiveness gone. “Which one will make him do all that other stuff? Treat me well and love me like I love him?”

“None of them. Magic doesn’t do that. It works with free will, not against it. It won’t change your nature to make you want something you normally wouldn’t. All it can do is let you see things you wouldn’t normally. For all I know, your Aaron Walsh is gay or so religious he thinks dating is a sin—or he is a dickhead who refuses to date anyone who isn’t a cheerleader. Magic won’t change that.”

“Then what good is magic?”

“It’s amazing. If you know how to ask for what you want.”

“But you said it can’t—”

“It can’t make Aaron Walsh love you, but do you really want someone who would have to be forced by magic to love you? Wouldn’t you start to resent the way you won him? Start to wonder if it was really love or just the spell tricking him into wanting you?”

“At least someone would want me.”

“Ah, see, now we’re getting somewhere. You want someone to want you. You want to be loved. You want the happily ever after, right?”

She squeezed the book tighter against her chest. “Sure.”

Prometheus reached behind the counter, unlocking the cabinet with a frisson of magic, and pulled out a tiny, stoppered vial. “Then what you want is this.”

Jane Austen Girl’s eyes narrowed. “Looks expensive.”

He shrugged. “For the right person, the right price.”

“What does it do?”

“This, my dear, is luck. And if you want to know a secret, this is what I sold to Carly. A little potion of my own invention I like to call lucky in love. Now, it won’t last forever—it wears off after a few weeks—and it won’t guarantee happiness, but it gives you a head start. It’ll draw opportunities toward you, and if you’re open to them, there’s no telling how far a little dose of luck can take you.”

“So it won’t be Aaron, but it’ll be someone?”

“It’ll be better than Aaron. It’ll be the chance, just the chance, for the right someone. But you have to choose it.” Prometheus swept up the charm she’d let drop onto the counter. “Which will it be?” He held up the love charm. “Aaron Walsh loving you, even if there’s no guarantee it will be the way you want?” Then he lifted the vial of luck. “Or the possibility of someone else?”

Jane Austen Girl clutched her book, bit her lip and smiled. “I’ll take the chance.”

He grinned. “Good girl.”

“How much?”

Prometheus eyed her worn out sneakers and ratty book bag. He’d once sold luck for over a thousand dollars a vial, but today… Right customer, right price. “Ten bucks.”

The girl pulled out her wallet, counted out ten singles and took her luck, the door chiming behind her.

“That’s why.”

Prometheus jerked, belatedly remembering Brittany’s presence. “Why what?”

“That’s why I like you. That’s why I’m on your side in the battle for Karma’s heart. You’re a good egg, Prometheus. The Willie Wonka egg-meter thing would love you. Give Karma time and she’ll see it too. You’re gold. And you’re like us. A misfit. That Carlton guy is way too normal for Karma. He could never get her. You get my vote because you’re weird and gold and part of the Karmic family already.”

His chest tightened. He didn’t want to be part of the Karmic family. Family was never really a good word for him. “I think you have me mixed up with someone else.” Someone with a soul. “I’m not part of your little club.”

“You are.” She said it simply, with absolute confidence. Not arguing with him, just utterly certain that she was right. “It’s okay if you don’t see it yet. You will. But don’t go retreating now. Karma may be out with that other guy, but I’m in your corner and I’m good luck. Those potions of yours have nothing on me. She’ll be singing your praises in no time.”

Karma wanted to kill Prometheus. Or maybe just maim him a little. The bastard was ruining the first date she’d had in years and he wasn’t even here.

Carlton held her door and held her chair. He asked her questions about her work, her family and her hobbies, and seemed genuinely interested in her answers. He was polite and attentive. And dull.

There it was. The truth of the matter. She was bored.

Crap. She missed Prometheus. Actually missed the bastard. Not only was she constantly distracted—like the ass had planned—by trying to figure out what the hell that last kiss had meant, she was boring herself with her usual spiel on Karmic Consultants without him there to argue with her about the ethics or lack thereof of what they did. He was a challenge and she felt sharper when he was there pushing all her buttons.

Not to mention the physical attraction.

What the hell was the deal with that kiss? Was it only to torment her during her date? Had it been restrained because they’d both had nightmarish morning breath or soft and gentle because the man really did have a soft side?

“And you’re not listening to a word I’m saying.”

Karma snapped to attention, kicking herself as she realized she’d drifted into her own thoughts again. Carlton was going to think she had brain damage. She blushed. “I’m so sorry. I’m a little distracted tonight. What were you saying?”

“What’s his name?”

“Whose name?”

Carlton flashed his pearly whites, his perfect smile failing to move her. “I’ve brilliantly deduced that you’re either just getting over someone or just getting into him. But whichever it is, you aren’t here with me.”

Karma flushed, embarrassed by the truth in his words. “It’s nothing like that. I’m preoccupied with some work stuff.”

“No one gets that dewy look in their eye for work stuff.”

Irritation flashed. “I am not dewy.” Then she immediately felt guilty for the sharpness. It wasn’t Carlton Norris’s fault she was twisted into knots by an amoral warlock. “Sorry.”

“Don’t be. I’m not offended. It serves me right, since I asked you out in an attempt to forget someone myself.”

Learning that her date was hung up on another woman should not have flooded her with a cloying sense of relief. “You did?”

Carlton grimaced, blue eyes twinkling ruefully. “Quinn. My brother’s fiancé, unfortunately.”

“Ouch.”

“Yeah. We always want the wrong people, don’t we?”

“I don’t want him,” she blurted. It wasn’t until she said the words that she realized he was probably talking about his Quinn, not Prometheus.

“You sure about that?” Carlton smiled that matinee idol smile. He really was perfect—smart, kind, attentive—but perfect wasn’t what she wanted. Wicked temptation had become her addiction.

But that didn’t mean she had to give in to it. “I’m sorry I’ve been distracted. I promise I’ll be a better dinner companion from this point on. You have my undivided attention.”

“I appreciate that. But should you really have to try so hard to be intrigued by me? All night we’ve both been trying so hard to make this fun, to make a connection. My aunt’s psychic told her the only way I was going to get over Quinn was to go out with you, but it isn’t supposed to be this much work to fall for someone, is it?”

She hated that he was right. He was exactly the sort of person she should want. But there was no zing. No spark. No electric tingle of power and seduction. Just nice. Pleasant. Boring. Her mind kept wandering back to black eyes and wicked smiles. “So what do we do?”

Carlton smiled, perfect. And perfectly wrong. “Enjoy the rest of the evening. Have a nice dinner. You could tell me about this man who’s stolen your attention from me tonight.”

No, she couldn’t. She refused to talk about the heartless bastard confusing her heart. “Tell me about Quinn.”

After Carlton dropped her off, she stood in the Karmic parking lot, wondering why she couldn’t just want Mr. Perfect.

She couldn’t seem to stop comparing him to Prometheus. The warlock should not have been the winner in that comparison. He’d tried to manipulate her from the first. Though at least he’d been upfront about it. It was a game with him, a test of wits more than a deception. He had never pretended to be anything other than what he was, never feigned virtue. From the word go, he’d told her he was willing to go to whatever lengths necessary to achieve his ends. There was a perverse sort of honor in that.

In everything he did, Prometheus was always wholly himself. Maybe that was why she wanted him.

There. She’d let herself think it. She wanted Prometheus. She admired his doggedness and his twisted strength of character. She sort of liked him. Casual sex had always seemed like a recipe for regret in the past, but maybe she’d been looking at it wrong. They would never work in the long term—there was probably a picture of them next to irreconcilable differences in the dictionary—but for now, maybe it was time she made a few romantic mistakes. Starting with Prometheus.

Chapter Twenty

Fastballs, Physics and Other Genetic Gifts

Part of the Karmic family. Prometheus ground his molars as he shoved open the door to Karmic Consultants on Sunday morning. It was brutally early, but he hadn’t been able to sleep and figured he might as well wake Karma—not that she was likely to be asleep, though he almost wished she was just so he could get her up. His entire night had been spent making love charms to replenish his stock—half of which he’d had to throw out when he realized his pissy mood was corrupting the magic.

He needed to get his head back in the fucking game and lose the moony-eyed shit. This was life or death. His death. And it was about time he remembered that. No more sleepovers. No more intimate little share-our-deepest-darkest-secrets sessions. Just a straight line between him and his fortieth birthday. No matter who he had to pave over to get there.

Family fucked you over and abandoned you. Prometheus didn’t need or want to be part of Karma’s. All he needed was her assistance. Eye on the prize.

He shoved open the door to Karma’s office, his ornery side hoping to find it empty so he could rattle her out of her Bat Cave, but there she was, sitting behind that big ass I’m-the-boss-here desk of hers. And smiling at him.

“Good morning, Prometheus. I had a feeling you might be in early.”

Of course she did. No surprising psychics. He should have negotiated for precognition when he bartered for his powers.

She rose and rounded her desk toward him, still smiling. Damn if she didn’t look happy to see him.

“I figured we should get an early start. I only have so many days left to live. No time to waste.”

Her smile faded at his brusque tone. “No, I suppose there isn’t.”

She wandered over to the couch—the one where she’d mounted him on Friday night—and sank down onto the edge of it. He prowled over to throw himself into a nearby chair.

“You needn’t worry I’ll be wasting time on another date with that guy,” she said dryly. “Even if you hadn’t given me something to think about, the date still would have been a bust.”

She thought he was jealous, that that was why he wasn’t picking up right where they’d left off. Prometheus ignored the comment she likely thought of as an olive branch. “Shall we get started?”

She folded her hands neatly in her lap, her posture shifting slightly, back straight, ankles crossed, the picture of the perfect lady—Karma’s armor falling into place. “Of course. I have the leftover vodka if—”

“No vodka. Now that you’ve done it once, let’s see if you can do it on your own.”

She nodded and matched his all business tone. “Certainly.”

She closed her eyes, pulled the charm he’d given her out from beneath her shirt and tried—he had to admit she really did try. Without being in physical contact with her, he couldn’t guide her, so she was on her own and without the vodka to relax her she was so tense she was immediately rolled under by her power.

Prometheus cursed and came out of his chair. He crossed to the couch in one, long stride and wrapped his hand over hers on the charm, dragging her back to her center and pulling her out of the vision, catching only echoes of an explosion himself before her connection to it cut. Karma shuddered and he felt the idiotic impulse to pull her into his arms and comfort her. Instead, he dropped her hand as if she’d burned him and backed away.

So much for sober.

“I’ll get the vodka.”

“Good. You’re getting it. That time was much better.”

Karma felt no sense of satisfaction at the praise. She was too exhausted to be victorious. She slumped down on the couch and squinted blearily at the clock. The effects of the single glass of vodka they’d used to get her to relax enough for the first successful attempt had long since worn off. No more pleasant buzz, just bone deep weariness making her eyesight blur.

Eight p.m. An entire day of slamming herself into the visions on purpose, so she could learn how to control abilities that all the books she’d read on the subject seemed to think should be intuitive. Intuitive, my ass.

Prometheus thought she was doing better, but Karma was too tired to care. She wanted to curl into the fetal position and sleep for three years.

“Can we be done now?”

Prometheus looked at her, as if assessing whether he could push her through one more round before she had a nervous breakdown. They were stretched out on opposite corners of her bed—having moved down here around two o’clock, when Prometheus insisted that she needed more comfortable surroundings and then bullied her into changing into yoga clothes because no one can relax in a suit.

In spite of her intentions to take him up on his casual sex offer, their hours on the bed had been strictly platonic. He’d been running hot and cold ever since he arrived this morning—hot eyes tracking her every move while a cold demeanor shoved her back whenever she got too close. Whatever new form of manipulation this was, she didn’t like it.

“One more time. Then we’ll call it a night.”

She closed her eyes, looking inside herself to see if she had one more in her. “Nope.” She draped her arms over her face, blocking out the bully. “I’m done. Sorry. Tapped out.”

“Rest for a few minutes, then we’ll give it one last go.”

“There will be no one last go.” She let her arms fall away from her face, spread-eagle on the bed. “I’ve hit my limit.”

“I wasn’t aware the great Karma Cox had limits.”

She snorted. There were days she felt like all she had were limits. The great Karma Cox indeed. “Do you ever wonder why? Why some people—like my brother—are totally normal and then there are people like us.” She rubbed at a pinched nerve in her neck.

“Why can some people throw a fastball a hundred miles an hour or understand particle physics? Random genetic anomalies.” Prometheus climbed up to the head of the bed next to her, stacking up the pillows. “Come here.”

“Random is a shitty reason.” She let him tug her in front of him, his hands going to work on the ache in her neck.

“Maybe the universe knew you were going to be a goodie-goodie who rode to the rescue like Wonder Woman every time there was a wrong that needed righting.”

“I hate having all that knowledge and only having the power to do anything about it ten percent of the time. If I’m such a good person, why torture me like that?”

“Maybe seeing all the wrong you couldn’t fix is what made you a good person, made you the kind of person who wanted to fix what you could.”

“Like a chicken-egg thing? I don’t see your power turning you into a good person.”

“Well, I’m me. The raw materials didn’t give much room to maneuver.”

Her lips curved into a smile. She kind of liked his raw materials. She leaned into his hands. God, the man was magic. Hell, for all she knew he was soothing her aches with actual magic, but that was fine by her as a delicious ease seeped into her muscles. “I want to know why our abilities manifest the way they do. Why is sweet, innocent Lucy a magnet for sex-starved ghosts? Ciara was adopted; does that have something to do with why her abilities are about finding things that were lost? Chase can only find the thing you want the most, but he never let himself want anything until Mia. Why does it happen the way it does? And why do I have this massive burden of knowing every crappy thing that might be going to happen?”

“You’ve put a lot of thought into this, haven’t you?”

“Yes.” She closed her eyes, letting her head fall forward as he found a spot at the base of her neck. “Haven’t you?”

“Nope. I always knew why I had my powers—because I wanted them more than anyone else and was ruthless enough to do whatever was necessary to get them.”

“You always get what you want, don’t you, Prometheus? You batter away at the universe until it bends to suit your whim.”

“Pretty much.”

“No playing by the rules. Take what you need.” If Karma was honest, she didn’t always play by the rules either, but she’d figured that was moral as long as she was doing it for the greater good, for her people, as long as it wasn’t selfish. But maybe there was a certain virtue, or at least purity, in claiming something for yourself.

Maybe it was time Karma Cox learned how to take what she wanted. And right now, what she wanted was running a finger down the nape of her neck. That spot. That spot that was his now. He owned her with it. Maybe it was time she owned him too.

She twisted so she could face him. His hands fell away, but they were still all but draped over one another in her bed. It would be an easy slide into intimacy from here. The black T-shirt stretched across the lean lines of his torso and she ached to strip it off.

She smiled, putting every ounce of invitation she could muster into her eyes. “What exactly is it you want, Prometheus?”

You always get what you want, don’t you, Prometheus?

He did. That was his policy. Do what it takes, get what you want. But if he always got what he wanted, his life should be perfect, shouldn’t it? For years he’d had the shop, power and independence—and he’d been bored. Not on a grand scale like some pampered rich girl wallowing in boredom, but as a sort of low-level mechanical hum that had become the background noise of his life, slowly droning him to sleep. The need to get his heart back had woken him up, but it wasn’t until he was pitting himself against Karma that he’d started to really feel alive.

He got what he wanted. But had he been wanting the wrong things? Independence was strength and vulnerability the last thing he wanted, so he never let anyone in. He didn’t have family or friends to speak of. Women were easy to come by, but they always stayed casual. They never knew him.

And they never looked at him the way Karma was looking at him now. It was always I-need-a-man-and-you’ve-made-me-feel-good. Never I need you. He could be the good guy or the bad guy or whatever guy they needed for a night, but they never knew what they were really getting into bed with. Not like Karma. She knew exactly what she was getting into with him. And she still wanted him.

What should a man want? Security? Love?

Fuck it. Who the hell cared? He just wanted her.

“What do you think I want?” he growled and yanked her into his arms. She landed against him, lips open and eager and he wasted no time covering them with his. Her hands plunged into his hair, gripping the thick strands as he made quick work of unraveling her bun and wrapping the length of her hair around his fist. She straddled him, rubbing close, but he needed her closer. He grabbed her ass, angling her in for a tighter fit, thrusting his tongue into her mouth in rhythm with the grinding of her hips. Jesus, she was electric. Insatiable. The hungry little noises she made in the back of her throat as she sucked his tongue out of his head made all the blood rush down to his cock in eager sympathy. He wanted to flip her, strip her and pound into her until they were both sweaty and screaming. The urge to do just that pressed against the back of his mind—animalistic and so damn right.

Do it. Take her. You know you want to.

Prometheus jerked and his ward tattoo burned. The voice was feminine. Light and sweet. Fuck. That wasn’t him. The fucking sex demon was screwing with him.

He broke the kiss, shoving Karma away from him. She released a startled gasp, sliding across the slick sheets until the bed once again separated them. “What is it?” Her already raspy voice was even more sex-charged than usual, the sound of it going straight to his cock. The hair he’d pulled loose tumbled around her shoulders and the gorgeous arch of her dark brown eyes was accentuated by the heavy-lidded look she shot him.

He wanted nothing more than to drag her back into his arms and pick up right where they left off, but he hadn’t imagined that push. Deuma was paying attention to him now and the idea of her watching him with Karma made his stomach churn. Though she couldn’t actually watch. That he knew of.

Distance. He needed some distance. And focus. Eye on the prize, Prometheus.

“Are you ready to try again?”

“What?” The rosy flush drained from her cheeks, the sparkle in her eyes dying.

“I need you in top shape if I’ve got a shot in hell of living through this. You know me. Pure self interest.”

Her look was probing—and he had a feeling he wasn’t fooling anyone. “I do know you,” she said, each word dragging out slowly.

“So one more go?”

“Sure.” She raked her hair back into a new knot, sitting up straighter. “Then you should leave. Big day tomorrow. Chase and Mia are back.”

The area where his heart should be constricted and his palms began to sweat.

Karma smiled, coolly professional again. “Tomorrow we find that box.”

Chapter Twenty-One

Shrodinger’s Safe

The parking lot was more crowded than he’d ever seen it when he pulled into Karmic Consultants the next afternoon for the finding. He found a space for his bike next to a classic Harley and cut the engine. The sky was blue and cloudless, but he swore he heard thunder rumbling in the distance as he crossed the lot to the entrance.

Inside, the lobby was pure chaos. Normally chaos was his happy place, but today it set his nerves on edge. Karmic Consultants was overrun with more than a dozen women shouting over one another, a wash of restless power and the overwhelming scent of patchouli. The noise level was insane—it was like being back in his shop when it was packed with teenage girls. With the advantage of his height, he saw Brittany across the room and tried to catch her eye, but she was in full hostess mode and darted into Karma’s office on some mission before he could stop her. This couldn’t be for his heart. He was sure Karma had said the finder was a guy and there had been no mention of what looked, on closer inspection, like two dozen witches.

“What the hell is going on here?”

The question wasn’t directed at anyone, so he was a little surprised when someone spoke up at his side. “Congratulations, sport. You’re a sideshow.”

He frowned down at the blonde. There was something vaguely familiar about her punk-rock hairdo and shredded jeans, but he couldn’t place her until she thrust her hand at him and continued, “Jo. I’m Karma’s ghost exterminator. Been into your shop a few times.”

“Personal protection wards.” He nodded as the memory snapped into place. “Is there a ghost problem here?”

Jo snorted. “Not unless the witches start killing each other. Nah. I’m just here to watch the show.”

“I take it I’m the show.”

“Best one in town. Never seen a heart outside of a body before.”

So much for discretion. Half the town probably knew he was trying to double cross Deuma. “I hope you don’t see this one, because if you do it means someone opened the box and I’m dead.” Hell, he was probably dead anyway. “What’s with the witches?”

“Apparently we need the whole coven for whatever they’ve got going to fetch your heart box thingy, but there’s some kind of power struggle going on and one chick stole some other chick’s boyfriend—or girlfriend, I didn’t quite catch that—and they have to be cohesive and all kumbaya or the magic won’t work, so that one in the purple is trying to make them all work through their differences. But I think that chick with the scarf just bit the one with the dreads, so we might be here a while before we hit kumbaya.”

“Is the finder here?”

“Chase? In Karma’s office. You should probably go on back. Tell Karma Brittany’s needed out here. If we don’t have her luck, I don’t think reconciliation is happening anytime this century.”

He nodded his thanks and made his way around the perimeter of the lobby, giving the witches a wide berth. He wasn’t the best-loved member of the magical community and he didn’t want to give any of them an excuse to remember he’d pissed them off in years past. He wasn’t usually one for caution, but today was one gamble after another and he didn’t need anything else fucking up his odds.

Inside Karma’s office, it was blissfully quiet—giving him a new respect for her soundproofing. Karma stood in front of her desk, leaning back against it, facing a young couple while Brittany hovered nearby. As Prometheus walked in, the couple—who had to be the finder and his wife—were speaking. The pair had come to his store once, to confront him about his less-than-legal possession of Mia’s heirloom watch, but the three of them hadn’t exactly been properly introduced. At the time, Prometheus hadn’t given them much thought as anything other than a way of getting at Karma, but now that his life depended on them, he took a moment to linger in the back of the room and study the couple.

Chase looked like he’d just walked off the cover of a Surfer Studs calendar and Mia was a bookish little thing with glasses but even though they weren’t touching, there was an invisible bubble that seemed to enclose the two of them in their own world, an intimacy that marked them as a matched set.

“—didn’t expect to like Bali, but the local customs with regard to copulation and familial structure were fascinating—”

“And you liked surfing.”

The woman shot her husband a glare and replied, “I liked surfing with you. But when you tried to put me on my own board—you have to admit, that was a disaster.”

Chase turned to Karma. “Unfortunately, Mia was born without balance or coordination. We’re hoping it’s not genetically dominant.”

Prometheus cleared his throat and four pairs of eyes turned toward him.

Karma’s affectionate smile faded into brisk professionalism as she straightened away from her desk. “And our guest of honor has arrived. Prometheus, you’ve met Chase and Mia, I believe?”

He nodded to them as he approached. “Nice to see you again.” Chase smiled and Mia glowered—which seemed to be her natural state, so he didn’t take it personally. He turned his attention to Karma—looking nothing like the woman in yoga pants with her hair tumbling around her shoulders that he’d left last night. “Jo says they need Brittany’s luck out there to achieve kumbaya.”

Karma’s lips twitched and Prometheus realized he’d never heard her laugh. What a victory that would be.

“Brittany, would you mind playing mediator for the witches? See if you can work your magic on them?”

Brittany blinked, coming back from whatever solar system she visited in her off hours, and nodded, her curls bouncing. “My pleasure.” She flashed Prometheus an encouraging smile as she scurried past. “Rodriguez says good luck!”

“Thanks. Where is the surly exorcist? Doesn’t he want to watch the spectacle too?”

“He’s doing a project for me,” Karma answered as Brittany disappeared into the lobby.

Prometheus arched a brow, feigning a calm he was nowhere close to feeling. This was all getting far too real. “Won’t we need him here to summon my old friend?”

“We aren’t summoning anyone today. The witches have a way to trap the box containing your heart so we’ll be able to hold it until we have more information about how to go about reversing the process and putting it back in your body without killing you or harming any of my people. We’ll locate the box and fetch it, but that’s as far as we go today. As soon as the witches are ready.”

“I should probably inform you that not all of the witches are overly fond of me.”

“Which is why I’m paying them double. I’ll add it to your bill. Be grateful they share your mercenary sensibilities.”

Be grateful. It wasn’t a sentiment he was familiar with. Maybe that was why he felt so uneasy. He’d more or less blackmailed Karma to gain her assistance, but now he wasn’t sure why she was helping him—calling in the witches, pulling in her finder on his first day back from his honeymoon. Things had changed. The consultants were treating him like he was one of them. The Karmic family.

“Since we have to wait for the witches…” Mia stood, knocking her glasses back up her nose. “Would you mind if I ran a few tests on you?”

“Tests?”

“Mia’s a scientist,” Chase explained. “She wants to figure out why you aren’t dead.”

“At first I thought Karma must have been being metaphoric when she said we needed to relocate your heart, but she assures me it is your physical heart that is missing, which is, you’ll have to admit, something of an extreme medical irregularity. I’d love to run a few tests, see if I can’t figure out why you aren’t a rotting corpse. Basic stuff. The sort of thing you’d get at your yearly physical for starters.”

“I haven’t had a physical in twenty years.”

Mia looked at him like he’d announced puppy drowning was his favorite hobby. “Sit down and take off your shirt.”

Chase lolled back in his chair. “A less secure man might be insulted that his wife’s first priority on getting back from her honeymoon is to get another man’s clothes off. Aren’t you glad you married me, cupcake?”

Mia ignored her spouse, her frown locked on Prometheus. “Why aren’t you stripping?”

He looked to Karma for assistance but she arched her brows with studied innocence. “I’d do what she asks. Consider it payment for the find.”

He wasn’t used to feeling indebted to anyone, so he immediately reached for the hem of his shirt, to even the scales. But he kept his eyes on Karma as he did, grinning wickedly when he saw her gaze snag at the ward tattooed just above his waistband. “Anything to get my shirt off, eh, angel?”

She rolled her eyes. “Be good and do what Mia tells you. I’m going to check on the witches.”

Karma strode out of the room without a backward glance, leaving him alone with a surfer chaperone and the mad scientist who was pulling all manner of strange devices out of the bag at her feet, cooing over each one like a favorite child. “I’m so glad I brought the portable EEG.”

“The witches are ready.” Jo opened the door to Karma’s office and her eyebrows flew up. “Nice six-pack.”

“Damn.” Mia pulled off the last of her sensors and stepped back, glowering at him.

“Thanks,” Prometheus said to Jo before returning his attention to the mad scientist. “Was that damn, we’re out of time or damn, you’re on the verge of death?”

“Damn, you’re normal.” Mia pouted as she began to pack up her things. “Your pulse is wrong, but everything else is entirely within natural ranges—with the exception of neural activity which is highly elevated in the region which may or may not relate to psychic ability. I’ll know more once I’ve examined your blood work, but so far everything is standard.” She spat the word like a curse.

Prometheus reached for his shirt. “I’ll take standard.”

“You won’t be putting your heart back in for a few days, will you? Would you be willing to come by my lab for a few more tests before your anomaly goes away?”

Before your anomaly goes away. Prometheus was jolted again by how close he was to having his heart back. He hadn’t missed it, these last twenty years, until he’d realized his time was running out. He’d kind of liked being the only man in the world—that he knew of—walking around without a heart in his chest. Now everything was going to change. One way or the other, things would be different. If everything went according to his plan, he would be whole—and with enough power that he’d be virtually immortal. With a little less luck, he might be limited to mere survival, no more power. And if they failed, if Deuma had her way, he might succeed in getting himself killed a couple months early. Either way, he wouldn’t be an anomaly anymore.

“Sure, Mia. I’ll come by in a few days.”

“If you’re done being dissected,” Jo said from the threshold, “Karma wants to do this in the lobby. She says it’s the only place there’s enough space for all the witches, but I think we’d all fit in here—she just doesn’t want to let the double-double-toil-and-trouble lot into the inner sanctum.”

“Can you blame her?” Chase said.

He and Mia headed for the door and Prometheus trailed behind, suddenly overcome by the need to drag his feet. He’d never been the uncertain type before—never really had anything to lose—but today was different. Today mattered.

He stepped out of Karma’s office and into a scene that couldn’t have been more different than the last one he’d seen. The witches were hugging, weeping and swaying—as if they might actually burst into a chorus of kumba-freaking-ya at any moment. Brittany stood in their midst, beaming at them like a proud parent. Karma looked like she was trying not to let anyone see how much she wanted to smack them all upside the head as she wrangled them into place. Prometheus caught her eye over the heads of the witches in front of her and she shot him a quick eye roll. He winked. Her lips twitched and she shook her head; he could almost hear her mentally calling him incorrigible. He’d been called worse.

Then the witches all settled into a circle with a plain plywood crate at the center and Karma was waving him and Chase over. Time for the moment of truth.

A full coven of witches was always a pain in the ass and today was no exception. She kept them on retainer because they could do things no one else on her staff had a prayer of accomplishing, but they weren’t hers the way the other consultants were—and they had an amazing capacity for generating useless, migraine-inducing drama.

The first warning throbs of a headache were building when Prometheus caught her eye and winked. And just like that she felt her headache ease, even as another tension replaced it.

What if this didn’t work? That was why it was so important they to do this today, rather than wait until closer to the deadline, so they had time for a backup plan, but having time for a backup plan didn’t mean she actually had the first idea what that backup plan would be.

Chase was confident—but he was always cocky. The witches seemed sure their part would work—but Karma had seen them equally assured five minutes before the Samhain ritual had exploded in their faces. Literally.

If she could will it to happen, today’s find and fetch would go off without a hitch—but even if her powers had been at full utility, that wasn’t within Karma’s powers. She didn’t know when this had become personal, but Prometheus had indeed become hers to save, though what she felt for him was still unclear and certainly in a different category than the way she cared for her consultants.

“How do you want me?”

His voice snapped her out of her pointless musings. She could worry about what she felt about him later; right now it was time to start the process of saving his ass. “You and Chase will stand here. As soon as he completes the find, the witches will pull the location from him and do the ritual to fetch the box containing your heart into this box.” She waved at the crate at her feet.

Prometheus frowned, squinting at the plywood box. She felt his power ripple out and over it. “What is it? Beyond some kind of cloaked grounding net?”

“It’s ingenious,” the witch spokeswoman Andrea bragged from her place in the circle. “The cloaking layer you noticed will simultaneously conceal it from the devil you’re stealing from and convince her it hasn’t been moved by projecting a false location. The grounding net will keep it from vanishing on us and keep the contents of the box intact—as long as you don’t open it.”

It had better do all that, for what they were paying for it.

“What happens if I open it?” asked Prometheus, who had probably never met a Pandora ’s Box he didn’t open.

“We aren’t entirely sure,” Andrea admitted. “The magic works along the same principles as Shrodinger’s Cat. As long as you don’t look inside, it’s both in there and not in there, but as soon as you open it, it’s only one or the other and we don’t know which way it will go. Cursed vessels aren’t exactly predictable. This was the only way we could think of to trick its natural magic.”

“Sounds foolproof to me,” Chase said, slapping Prometheus on the back. “Shall we do this?”

“I’ll get out of the way.” Karma retreated to stand next to Brittany, who was there for good luck, Mia, who was there for research, and Jo, who was there for the hell of it. The witches clasped hands and began to chant. The hair on Karma’s arms stood up as the power in the room shifted and coalesced. She could almost see it sparking in the air—electricity made visible and given a will of its own like miniature fireflies.

“Try to think about why you want your heart back.” Chase clasped Prometheus’s bare arm.

The warlock nodded. He met her eyes across the expanse of the circle and arched a cocky brow, but she could feel the tension radiating off him as distinctly as the magic in the air. He didn’t want anyone to know it, but he wanted this badly. That was good, because Chase’s ability would only zero in on the one thing the subject wanted most in the moment of the find.

“Here we go,” Chase said.

The witches’ chanting upped in volume. Karma held her breath.

And nothing happened.

Chase coughed and released Prometheus, shaking his hand like it stung. His lips twitched and he flicked a glance over to where Karma was standing with Mia. “Remember you need to focus on wanting the box.” He flexed his fingers and reached for Prometheus again. “Really focus.”

The witches’ chanting didn’t even have time to get louder this time. As soon as Chase’s skin brushed Prometheus’s, he said, “Got it.”

The energy that had been building snapped in, contracting on Chase and then flinging out through the ceiling like an arrow shot from a bow. The chanting reached a frantic pitch, the witches swaying under the force of the power, their circle closed by white-knuckled grips. The magic rocketed back, slamming into the box with enough force to make it shudder. The witches’ circle broke, the coven falling to sprawl on the floor, and Prometheus staggered back under the power blast, one hand gripping his chest. Karma swayed, her vision going momentarily black, while the others in the room remained unmoved—their power operating on such a different spectrum that they were unaffected.

In the sudden silence left when the chanting cut off abruptly, Jo’s voice sounded unnaturally loud. “Well? Did it work?”

They all looked to the crate. Prometheus’s black gaze locked on Karma, his face unnaturally pale, his usual laughing expression blank and sober.

Then she heard it, more a hum along her magical senses than in any audible way, but there, distinctly, subtly there.

The distant, echoing beating of a heart.

Chapter Twenty-Two

The Lovechild of Xena and Thor

“How long have you been hooking up with Prometheus?”

“You’re banging Prometheus?” Jo gasped. “And you didn’t tell me? Naughty, naughty Karma.”

Karma shushed Chase and Jo, shutting the door of her office and glowering at the pair of them. Many of the witches—notorious gossips, every last one—were still in the lobby, gathering their things and migrating slowly out to the parking lot under Brittany’s direction. Mia had already left to return to her lab and process Prometheus’s blood work. The warlock himself was sprawled on the waiting area couch, staring at the box like it might spring open and melt his face off at any second.

None of them needed to hear Chase and Jo’s speculations on the state of her love life.

“Would you be quiet? I am not hooking up with Prometheus.”

Chase’s eyebrows shot up. “Does he know that?”

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

“I only picked up a few flashes, but when people fantasize about stuff they want in a vague haven’t-had-it-yet way, the images don’t tend to be quite that sharp and, uh, graphic.”

Karma’s face heated. “I’m sure he just has a very precise imagination.”

Jo sighed. “You really aren’t hooking up?”

“No.” Her blush intensified at the lie and she added, “I don’t know.”

“You are!” Jo crowed. “I love it. He’s so…scary. And you’re scary. Dude, it’s like if Xena hooked up with Thor. Your kids are gonna be leaping tall buildings from the cradle.”

“We aren’t having kids. We aren’t even dating. It’s nothing, okay? It’s…casual.”

Chase and Jo turned identical expressions of disbelief on her.

“What? I can do casual.” Which was a complete lie. She didn’t know the first thing about casual. Or serious, for that matter. She didn’t really do relationships—and she didn’t have the first idea what she was doing with Prometheus. She hated not knowing where she stood with him. She wasn’t even sure where she wanted to stand. She hadn’t expected to like him on any level, much less find herself attracted to him and respecting him. Karma closed her eyes and took a deep breath, but it didn’t help. She still felt unresolved. “I don’t know what I’m doing,” she admitted.

Jo nodded sagely. “Admitting you have a problem is the first step.”

Karma glared at her. “What is this, the twelve-step program for dating?”

“I thought you weren’t dating.”

“We aren’t. We’re just… Hell, I don’t know.”

Chase grinned. “Just remember to pace yourself. It’s a marathon, not a sprint.”

“But a faint heart never a true love knows,” Jo intoned with mock solemnity. “Go for it. Tis better to have loved and lost than never to have loved at all.”

“All’s fair in love and war,” Chase added.

“The course of true love gathers no moss,” Jo chirped helpfully.

Karma glared at the pair of them. “You two are enjoying this far too much.”

“Can you blame us?”

“It isn’t every day the mighty Karma allows us puny mortals to see her human side.”

“You’re pains in my very human ass. Get out, both of you.”

They were laughing, completely unrepentant, as they filed obediently toward the door. It was habit for Karma to stay behind, to take a few minutes to herself to meditate and clear her head, but she realized belatedly that she didn’t need it. She didn’t feel the visions battering at her control. She actually felt fine.

“Karma?” Jo hovered with a hand on the door, Chase already gone.

“Yes, Jo?”

“I know we were giving you a hard time, but I meant what I said. I think you should go for it. You need someone to remind you that you are more than just Superwoman for all of us. If he can do that, jump on him and don’t let him up until he agrees with you. If anyone can reform that bad boy, it’s you.”

“Thanks for the thought, Jo, but I think I’ll leave reformation to some other lucky girl.”

The ghost exterminator grinned. “In that case, enjoy the hell out of the bad for as long as you can.”

The door snicked shut behind her.

Enjoy the hell out of the bad. She’d heard worse plans.

Prometheus couldn’t stop staring at the box. It was freaking him the fuck out. His heart was in there. Inside two layers of impenetrable magic, but in there. That just wasn’t natural. Strangely he’d never felt that not having a heart was unnatural, but looking at the box holding the box that held his heart—that was unnatural as hell.

He could feel it in there. Hear it beating. And that most definitely wasn’t natural.

The witches were gone. Jo and Chase had left the building. Brittany was at her desk, answering phones with an excited little chirrup. Karma was hiding in her office. Everything at Karmic was back to normal—except for the fact that there was a giant plywood crate in the middle of the lobby which happened to contain a beating heart. His beating heart. There was no normal there.

He wasn’t sure how long he sat there, staring at the box. He was vaguely aware of Brittany saying goodbye to him and the rest of the office staff heading home for the day. Then an icy glass was pressed into his hand.

“Drink,” Karma commanded as she sank down on the lobby sofa beside him.

The vodka went down smooth. She refilled his glass without comment, pouring the last of the bespelled Stoli into it, but Prometheus couldn’t be bothered to care that he was drinking trust me juice. Karma clinked her glass against his and they sat in silence, contemplating the box and sipping vodka.

Some time later, when the glasses were empty, Karma murmured without taking her eyes off the box, “You okay?”

“I’m always okay.”

She nodded and the silence wrapped around them again. He didn’t know if it was the vodka or Karma, but his panic—if that’s what it had been—was abating. She was easy to be with—and the Stoli didn’t hurt either.

“Ugly thing, isn’t it?” he said at length, indicating the crate with his glass.

Karma’s lips twitched. “Not exactly the piece I would have selected as a stylistic center of the room,” she agreed dryly.

“Can we move it?”

“The witches say as long as we don’t open it, we can do whatever we want with it.”

Prometheus nudged it with his foot. It slid easily across the carpet. Not heavy then. It would be awkward but he could lift it. “Where do you want to put it?”

“There’s space in the Bat Cave. It would be safe there.”

“Good idea.” His heart would be safe with Karma. Something about the thought struck him as funny, but he couldn’t dredge up the enthusiasm for more than a weak smile. Not with the box staring back at him.

“You know what I’ve been wondering? Why your heart? I’ve never heard of that being something devils like to bargain for.”

“I’d just had my heart broken when I made the deal. Couldn’t imagine that I would ever miss the damn thing.” He’d never admitted that to anyone, but the words just flowed out. If she’d been looking at him, he didn’t think he would have been able to answer, even with the vodka.

Karma was quiet for a long moment beside him, then, “What was she like?”

He shrugged. “Just a girl. Honestly I barely remember her.” That was true enough. But he remembered how he’d felt. How, for the first time in his life, he’d let himself want a home. How badly he’d wanted it to be her. He remembered her laugh. How she’d laughed when he’d proposed. Don’t be ridiculous, Prometheus. We’re kids. You didn’t think this was serious, did you?

So he’d stopped taking love seriously. And he’d found a way to get rid of his heart and ensure he never felt that awful, wrenching powerlessness again.

“Was it worth it?” Karma turned her head, looking at him, and Prometheus lurched to his feet.

“Sure. Who wouldn’t want to be all-powerful? I’m living proof you don’t really need a heart.” He rounded the crate, looking for likely handholds. “Besides, the she-devil was hot. Perfect tonic for a broken heart.”

Karma’s gaze flicked downward. “Ah. I hadn’t realized your relationship went further than a business transaction.”

He shrugged. “I was nineteen and she was made for sex. What was I supposed to do?” When Karma didn’t answer, he bent and hefted the crate into his arms. “You wanna get the door?”

For a second he thought she might say something biting, but whatever it was that rose to the tip of her tongue, she swallowed it back and rose, poised as always. “Certainly. I can’t have you chipping the doorframe as you try to wrangle that thing.”

There was no doorframe chipping, though it was a tight fit on the elevator. Prometheus set the crate in her living room space, where it looked strangely appropriate amid the spare elegance of the room’s style. They both stared at it, listening to the eerily audible thumping of his heart, then Karma shifted away from him. “I’ll walk you out.”

The elevator ride back up was as silent as the ride down had been. When the doors opened, Karma exited first, making a beeline for the doors. He’d clearly said something to upset her, but she was tucking it up behind her layers of restraint. He liked it better when she was screaming at him.

He caught up to her halfway across the lobby. “Karma.” He grabbed her upper arm and she stopped, turning slowly. When she was facing him, she pressed a palm flat to his chest, right over where his heart ought to beat. He’d never been more aware of the silence of his own pulse.

“You’ll have it back soon. Who knows, maybe you’ll like it.”

Soon had to be one of the scariest damn words on the planet. Either he’d have his heart back, or he’d be dead. Not exactly an ultimatum he was eager to see finalized.

“Deuma knows we’re up to something,” he heard himself confess, before the intent to tell her had even finalized in his brain. Damn vodka.

“How do you—”

“She came to see me. At my shop. She mentioned you.” Worth three of you… “I think she’d like to work out a renegotiation.”

“Is that what you want?”

“Original deals with devils are dangerous enough. Renegotiations are usually fatal.”

“So we stick to our original plan. The witches assure us the box is unchanged in any way that Deuma would be able to pick up on. She shouldn’t be able to sense that we’ve done anything and Rodriguez is digging into her history, so we’ll have every advantage we can muster when we summon her. We’ll be prepared for whatever she throws at us.”

Her reassurance made the uneasiness churn even more violently in his gut. “There’s no hurry. I promised Mia she could examine me some more. Tell Rodriguez to take all the time he needs. I wanna make sure we do this right.”

Karma pressed her hand harder against his chest. “It’s gonna be okay. We’re not going to let it fail.”

But it wasn’t only failure he was afraid of now. Now Karma was a part of things and he didn’t want to think about her getting hurt because of him.

Or her people. They’d gone above and beyond today, and they would go further. For him. As they would for anyone they’d claimed as part of their piecemeal family. They were what family should be but had never been for him. He wasn’t a part of their family, not really one of them, but they’d absorbed him in a way—like a step-sibling, an awkward uncle…or a foster kid. It was unnerving. More so because part of him liked it.

He’d never been confused before Karma, but she’d spun his world around so he wasn’t sure which direction was up anymore. He’d never cared about good or bad, but he’d always known what he wanted. Now the lines of his own desires were blurred by distinctions that weren’t in his vocabulary. The only clear thing was the woman in front of him—and the fact that she was coming to mean far too much to a man who made a point never to need anyone.

He studied her face, close enough to kiss, obviously willing—an open invitation in her eyes. Her lips were full—each of her features so perfectly refined. She was so striking, so beautiful her tawny skin seemed to glow with it. It would be easy to claim her as his own, and he was a greedy man by nature. Covetous. And she so clearly wanted to be claimed.

“I should go.”

Karma dropped her gaze. “Right.” Her hand fell away.

His hand didn’t seem to be getting the message from his brain that he was supposed to let her go. Slippery silk covered smooth skin beneath his fingers. It would be so easy to tip their relationship—whatever the hell it was—into something more. Something hot and sweet and maybe a little rough. Just for tonight. It didn’t have to mean anything.

She’s worth three of you. The memory of the words echoed in his brain. Their meaning shifted, taunting. He dropped his hold on her arm. Karma deserved better than what a man like him could offer. She deserved all the bullshit he’d always disdained. The honor and poetry. And for once he was feeling noble enough to want to protect her—from himself.

“Good night, Karma.”

The asphalt gleamed wetly in the parking lot as he approached his bike. The sky roiled with layers of ominous clouds, so dark it could have been midnight rather than six. Wind made the flags on the building across the street twist and snap as erratic spits of rain sprayed the roads. It was gearing up to be a helluva tempest. Maybe my last.

He grimaced as the macabre thought hit him. He’d always loved storms. Even as a kid, he’d never been afraid of thunder and lightning—giving his foster moms (the ones who actually gave a damn) fits as he climbed up into trees or onto the roof to stare up into teeth of the angry sky, coming in dripping wet and exhilarated.

He was far from that exhilaration now. His chest felt hollow, empty for the first time, and as close as they were to success, all he felt was death sliding an icy hand up his spine. He’d known he would drop dead when his contract with Deuma was complete, but he’d never felt his mortality the way he did now.

Great time for a midlife crisis. Just as the clock was ticking down. So what was he supposed to do now? Go skydiving? Buy a fucking Porsche? Screw women a decade younger? Been there, done that. How did a man who lived like a rock star, letting only whim guide him, have a midlife crisis? Get a minivan and a dog and a house in the suburbs? No fucking thank you.

Thunder growled overhead, seeming to ask, What do you want to do with your last month on earth, Prometheus? Hell, he knew exactly what he wanted to do. He wanted to do Karma. He wanted to bend her over and take her hard and fast, his hand fisted in that thick, black hair. He wanted slow and hot and wet, with every move amplified as he took her inch by inch. He wanted to trace every millimeter of that silken skin with his fingertips and then start all over again with his lips, tongue and teeth. She was the storm he wanted tonight.

So what the fuck was he doing out here? Getting rained on in a fucking parking lot?

She was too good for him. So fucking what? When had that ever mattered? Who the fuck was he kidding? He’d never had a noble day in his life. His thoughts sharpened and the shadows of his mortality cleared. So he was going to die? Fine. Tonight was do or die. And he was doing Karma.

Prometheus spun on his heel and stalked, head down, back toward his new favorite kind of storm.

Chapter Twenty-Three

Animal Urges

Karma got as far as the elevator door before she stopped, cursed and ran after him. She didn’t know how she felt about him—and the fact that he’d clearly slept with the maenad and saw no other use for his heart than in a business transaction—but she knew she didn’t want him to leave. It wasn’t logical, this desperation for him to stay, this bizarre certainty that if she could just get her arms around him, cling to him for a while, it would soothe the restless fears churning in her heart.

Logic had its day, but instinct was ruling the show now and instinct knew exactly what it needed. A tall, fierce warlock who took no prisoners and asked for nothing from anyone—until he came to her.

She slammed out of the front doors, straight into a storm. Inside the building, she’d barely been aware of the thunderheads gathering, but now wind and rain slapped her in the face, soaking the delicate silk of her blouse and plastering it to her skin in seconds.

She shivered, even though the rain was warm; Prometheus hadn’t left.

He strode toward her like a warrior intent on pillaging, head down, body tense. The rain began to pound, needles of it smacking into her skin, but Karma stood immobile, making no move to shield herself as she watched the freight train of sexual intent driving toward her. Lightning flashed and Prometheus lifted his head. He jerked to a stop when he saw her standing five feet in front of him, breathlessly watching him come.

His inky black gaze started at her sleek Louboutins—getting ruined in the deluge—and worked over her calves and the snug pencil skirt, pausing to study her soaked blouse as it outlined every curve, then rising to the length of her neck, her lips. When his eyes locked on hers, there was a stretching moment, a raw fraction of a second, when time seemed to shudder to a stop. The rain hung suspended in the air, flags froze on the breeze, and all that existed, all that was real, was the fierce hunger etched into every line of his face.

Then something snapped in him, some measure of control, some veneer of humanity, and he was on her. There was no time to prepare for the onslaught. The kiss was open-mouthed and already three steps down the road to mindlessness. His arms bound her to him, lifting her off her feet and up for a better angle. His tongue plunged between her lips, thrusting and tangling, and she met his frenzy with her own, clinging and pressing herself tight into his body. He growled into her mouth, the predator in him she’d always sensed no longer lurking beneath the surface but on full display. And she couldn’t get enough.

He broke the kiss, pulling back until they were eye to eye. Savage satisfaction pulsed through her at the look of raw lust on his face. She’d put it there. She’d done that. He lowered her until her feet touched the ground, his eyes shuttering. A little shiver of uncertainty spiked. He wasn’t ending things here, was he? Not now, God please not now.

Thunder rolled, reminding her of the storm that soaked them both. He set her away from him and rumbled darkly, “If you don’t want to do this right here in the parking lot, run.”

Karma gasped. The eroticism of the image—him driving into her against the side of the building, the storm providing all the cover either of them cared about, drenching them—was nearly enough to buckle her knees. She couldn’t think of a coherent response. Couldn’t think. Logic was gone. Thought was gone. It was all instinct. And when he growled low in his throat and took a step toward her, instinct surged in a flood of adrenaline and she ran.

She didn’t look back, but she could feel him behind her, the push of his magic raising the hair on the back of her neck. Through the lobby, into her office, she opened the panel, swiped her thumb to call the elevator and didn’t even have a chance to pull her hand back before he was spinning her, pinning her to the doors as the silk screen parted, his mouth back on hers. His hands locked around her wrists, pressing them to the door above her head and she pushed back, resisting so she could feel his strength trapping her exactly where he wanted her. She arched against him and he ground his hips into her, the hardness of him a luscious length against her abdomen.

The doors opened and she fell back, only his grip on her keeping them both from tumbling to the floor. He lifted her, spinning them both, and she felt a pulse of magic push against her skin as he carried her into the elevator like she weighed nothing more than a feather. Karma broke away, twisting to reach for the down button, but Prometheus caught her hands and dragged her mouth back to his, the down button lighting without either of them coming within a foot of it. Her lips curved against his—you had to appreciate a man with such varied talents.

The doors opened on her apartment and he lifted her again with one arm and a cushion of magic. She trembled against him, the tingle of his power leaving her highly sensitized wherever it touched. He strode quickly through her apartment, past the box with his rapidly beating heart trapped inside. In her bedroom, he dropped her onto the California king and stood over her, feet braced apart, looking down at her with a feral light burning in his eyes. He was pure, erotic temptation, but the time for tempting was done. They’d already fallen headlong into sin territory.

He shrugged off his jacket and it vanished with a flick of his fingers. As he stripped off his black T-shirt over his head, Karma reached for the buttons on her blouse.

“No,” he growled, stopping her with a look. “I’m going to do that.” His fierce frown didn’t ease until she took her hands away from the buttons, lifting them over her head. He nodded and went back to stripping off his own clothes, leaving her nothing to do but watch the show. And what a show it was. He wasn’t bulked up with muscle, but there was poetry in the composition of his limbs, each smooth, lean muscle curving into the next in a graceful, lithe strength. His boots and socks went the way of the jacket and T-shirt—disappearing before they could leave a drop of water on her floors. He reached for the button of his jeans and Karma came up on her knees.

“No.” She stopped him with a hand over his, feeling deliciously wicked as she echoed him. “I’m going to do that.”

He kept his hands on his zipper, looking for a moment like he would protest, before that devil’s smile that could make her wet just from a look curved his lips. He lifted his hands and stacked them behind his neck. “Be my guest.”

The denim was stiff and she took her time peeling it back, easing the zipper down slowly. He was commando beneath and Karma leaned forward to press a kiss against the tattoo on his abdomen, teasingly close to his cock as she eased it free. She looked up at him and tugged his jeans a bit lower as she wet her lips. Heat flared in his eyes. “Enough.” Instantly, his jeans were gone and he stood before her, naked, willing and oh so able. She still had all her clothes on, right down to her Louboutins, and the contrast gave her a momentary illusion of control. Only the illusion though. They were doing things Prometheus’s way—a fact put to proof when he pressed her back to the bed and unbuttoned her blouse. With his teeth.

Her clothing peeled away, piece by piece, and he traced each inch of exposed flesh as he revealed it, his hand searing her with the warmth of his magic, leaving her skin dry and tingling in his wake. He removed her shoes and stockings last, taking his time over the length of her legs, before he came onto his hands and knees above her on the bed. His earlier frenzy seemed to have eased, soothed by the meticulous way he’d familiarized himself with every inch of her bare skin. There was still something of the animal in his eyes when he looked down at her, but now he looked puzzled by her, like she was prey who’d suddenly stopped running from the hunter and the hunter wanted to know why.

She reached up, threading her fingers into the hair at the base of his skull and dragging his mouth down to hers. “Stop thinking. Just kiss me.”

And he did. But it wasn’t the kiss she was expecting. It wasn’t the feral, animalistic ride. Not at first. No, this kiss started out sweet. A closed-mouth press of lips, teasing and sliding, coaxing and luring. He waited until her lips opened on a gasp before he snuck inside, a flick of his tongue, a suck on her lower lip, a nibble on the upper. The kiss was seduction. She’d thought she was already seduced, but as he lowered his body down to press against her, she realized she hadn’t begun to comprehend the word. Especially as the first spear of magic rolled off his tongue into her mouth.

His power spread through her body, leaving a liquid warmth and sparkling eagerness in its wake. It left her aware, almost on a cellular level. Not only of him, but of everything. The air, the light, the sounds—they were all simultaneously broken down to their most base parts and elevated to their most divine level. It was exquisite, that profound awareness, and it made every touch an exercise in intensity.

She was caught up in the symphony of a dust mote sparkling in the air when Prometheus shifted, sliding down her body, and with a brush of his tongue, the first lick of magic drove high inside her, yanking her from deliciously buzzed to orgasmic in the space of a heartbeat. Karma keened and fisted her hands on the duvet, grabbing for any fixed point as the world dipped and spun. More magic rolled on a condom as his hands were occupied elsewhere. He pressed a finger into her, then a second, curving them until she moaned, taking up a rhythm that had a scream building at the back of her throat, everything tight and wet and clenching down as she reached for another orgasm, fighting for that release, until he levered himself up over her, growled, “Stop trying to control everything, damn it,” jerked out his fingers, flicked her clit with a blast of magic and drove his cock up into her as she came and came.

She lost time—a second, a minute, a lifetime—who could tell? She came back to herself moaning. He had her wrists pinned over her head with one hand, her legs drawn up and wide apart as he plunged in to the hilt. There was nothing sane or human in his eyes and she shivered, the sight of that raw animalism almost enough to send her over again.

He jerked out of her all the way and she gave a little whimper of protest, causing him to grunt, “Not hard enough.” He flipped her onto her stomach, grabbing pillows and shoving them beneath her hips until she was elevated to his liking. He slapped her hands on the headboard, holding them there for a moment as the warmth of his chest pressed along the length of her spine. He spoke against her ear. “Hold on.” Then he was sliding in, high and hard and fast, over and over, and all she could do was press back and try not to cry from the bursting intensity that exploded along every nerve ending in a series of lightning strikes as he poured himself—his magic, his body, his tattered soul—into her.

Chapter Twenty-Four

Prisms, Rainbows and Kaleidoscopes

Casual sex was supposed to be fun. Fun. Karma could think of a few words that would apply, but fun was cotton candy. This was Russian roulette. This was wild, primal and animalistic. This was instinct and heat and…fucking. No. No fun here. Just bone-melting, mind-wiping, raw, hot sex.

She lay utterly spent on top of her duvet, beside a pile of pillows, and avoided looking at Prometheus. Not because she was embarrassed, but because she had a feeling it would be like looking straight into the sun. She wasn’t ready to ignite her retinas yet.

“You were right,” she said, directing the comment at the ceiling, rather than the man who had collapsed face down beside her, one arm wrapped possessively around her stomach.

“I usually am,” he mumbled into the sheet. “What am I right about now?”

“I was doing it wrong. Sex.”

He grunted. “Most people are.”

Most people aren’t doing it with you. Karma frowned, burying that thought. It was great sex. Great sex could happen with anyone. It wasn’t him. Though the magic sure hadn’t hurt. She’d never known power could do that.

Karma closed her eyes and assessed her body. Replete. That was a good word. She felt exquisitely replete. Languid and lovely…

And sticky.

As soon as she was aware of it, it began to bother her. Prometheus could probably feel fresh and clean with the same magic he’d used to get rid of the condom, and maybe other women could lie around smelling of sweat and sex, but Karma was not that woman and no amount of wild, no-holds-barred sex was going to transform her into that one. She opened her eyes and rolled out of bed, keeping her back to Prometheus as she padded to the bathroom, still not ready to look into the sun.

A warm washcloth went a long way toward making her feel human again and the bright light of the bathroom brought a welcome dose of reality. Still no regrets, but no hearts-and-flowers swoony intimacy either. It was what it was—two people coming together for one thing, and only one thing.

The woman in the mirror didn’t look any different—except for the suck mark darkening on the pink pad of her lower lip with an intimate bruise. She’d probably left marks on him too. Only on the surface though. Yes, it had felt like her very soul was splitting apart and remaking itself around a chunk of his, but that was just good sex. It wasn’t personal.

A tap on the door and at her invitation his image appeared behind hers in the mirror. Her heart rolled over with a jarring thud.

She watched him in the mirror as he pressed a kiss to the side of her neck. “Thinking too much again?” His lashes lifted and his onyx gaze met hers in the reflection.

Not the sun. She’d been so very wrong to even think to compare him to the sun. He was a black hole, filled with intense, frightening gravity, sucking her in. And just sex? Please. That was wishful thinking. The man who made her heart thunder in her chest like this was not just anything.

Her life had been as orderly as controlled chaos could be before she met him, but it had also been stagnant. Prometheus had certainly changed that. All work and no play really had been her motto until he showed up and started making her crazy. She’d hated his interference with her perfectly contained world, but on some level she’d looked forward to the challenge her run-ins with him always represented, to knowing that her heart would race—even if it was from vexation—and she would feel that thrill again.

He’d shaken up her black-and-white world and what had been revealed wasn’t a world of muddy gray. It was color. Prisms and rainbows and kaleidoscopes.

But she couldn’t say any of that. Wouldn’t have wanted to, even if it wouldn’t have sent him running for the hills. She didn’t want to think about how she felt about him or what the future might hold for them—it was too impossible to imagine they might actually have a future, so she closed that box in her mind and focused on the now. It was all anyone could ever be sure of anyway.

Karma turned in his embrace, hooked her arms over his shoulders and said, “Why don’t you make me forget how to think?”

Prometheus smiled, that wicked, devil’s smile, and he did.

Chapter Twenty-Five

The On Switch

“Karma-cita!”

Karma looked up from the follow-up email she was sending to a former client, a smile curving her lips as her new sister-in-law and horny-ghost-transcender-extraordinaire struck a pose on the threshold of her office, Shirley Temple dimples flashing.

“Did you miss me?” Lucy asked as she continued into the office, followed by Jo, Brittany and Mia, the pack of them carting an assortment of takeout boxes.

“Immensely,” Karma replied, a little surprised to find it was true. Jake’s absence had been a hole in her life. As much as she liked Lucy, she hadn’t expected to miss her, but she had. Now that they were back from their honeymoon, it felt like a puzzle finally coming together after a bizarre scavenger hunt to track down all the pieces.

She’d never really thought of her consultants as her friends—more as her errant children, and the strict and distant mother didn’t get to partake of the girl talk—but as Mia, Jo, Brittany and Lucy pulled over chairs and made themselves at home around her desk, she was beginning to realize she had a place in this circle.

“We come bearing Chinese and Thai, since we couldn’t agree on what to bring,” Jo said as she popped open a carton of kung pao shrimp.

“Not that I don’t appreciate lunch, and the company, but to what do I owe this feast?”

The others looked to Mia who made a face. “I lost a bet with Chase and my payment is that I have to spend lunch away from my lab being social with nonscientists. He suggested I harass you.”

Karma couldn’t help but grin. Mia would happily live in her lab twenty-four seven, and lately she’d been spending a lot of those hours running tests on Prometheus. Trust Chase to find ways to break her out of her scientific rut.

“And when Brittany said Mia had called to check your schedule because she was going to surprise you with lunch, Jo and I invited ourselves along because I am way behind on all the good gossip. Like a certain Karmic Consultants puppet master who appears to be getting rather cozy with a certain warlock?” Lucy scooted forward to the edge of her chair to pluck an eggroll from a box. “I need details.”

Karma felt a flush climbing her cheeks. She couldn’t exactly deny they’d been getting cozy. It had been a week since they’d found his heart and Prometheus had spent every night driving her capacity for thought right out of her head. She’d been sleeping soundly—even sleeping in, which had led to Brittany opening the office a couple times when Karma was late to rise. Her receptionist had seen Prometheus sneaking out several mornings. If their affair had ever been secret, the secret was out in the open now.

She’d been surprised when she’d woken up that first morning and he’d still been there, but he’d been so casual about it, as if it was the most natural thing in the world—and as long as he acted that way, it had been. They’d said goodbye with easy distance—nothing so intimate as a good morning kiss—and he’d gone to be prodded by Mia and look after his shop, only to return that night and back her against her desk, whispering about how he’d been fantasizing about spreading her out on it ever since he’d first seen her lording over the world behind it.

She still couldn’t quite look at her desk without flashing back to that night.

They’d fallen into something of a routine. Fierce coupling, lazy intimacy in the midnight hours, long, blissfully uninterrupted hours of sleep, and then cool, professional morning partings. It was comfortable, in its own way. But comfortable in the way a house of cards is comfortable. She was always watching for it to come tumbling down.

Luis had reported in that morning with his findings on the maenad who’d contracted with Prometheus for his heart. They knew as much as they could about her and were as ready as they would ever be to summon her and get Prometheus’s heart back in his body where it belonged. They’d scheduled it for two days from now. At dawn, since the handmaidens of Bacchus were said to be most potent at night and weakest in the breaking day. Not long now and Prometheus would be free.

And then what?

Karma accepted the pad thai as Brittany passed it to her. “I have been seeing Prometheus socially, but it’s casual, nothing more.”

Lucy’s jaw dropped. “My God, it’s true. She admitted it.”

“See? I told you she was doing him!”

“She is right here.”

Jo grinned, unabashed.

Lucy had the grace to blush. “Sorry. I was just so sure Jo was pulling my leg when she told me. I mean Prometheus. How did that even happen? Don’t you hate each other?”

Karma chose to ignore the don’t you hate each other part of the interrogation because she wasn’t exactly sure when she had stopped hating Prometheus. “He’s wanted to hire Karmic Consultants for some time now. When he sicced the demon on your wedding, I went to confront him and we ended up agreeing that Karmic would assist him with his issue if he worked for me for a while to make amends for the trouble he’d caused.” Though in retrospect, she’d been kidding herself to think a man like that ever worked for anyone. Never an employee, Prometheus. Always the master of his own domain, even if that domain was hers. “After that, one thing sort of led to another.”

Lucy shook her head. “Prometheus. Jake is gonna flip.”

Karma’s stomach clenched. “Lucy, about telling Jake…” Karma told her brother everything, but the thought of him knowing this made her feel lightheaded. Which was part of why she’d been dodging his calls all morning. Was she ashamed of what she was doing with Prometheus? No. Then why was she so scared Jake would think less of her for the way they were using one another? They were two consenting adults. Jake was a big boy. But introducing Prometheus to her parents, to her brother—God, she couldn’t picture it without shuddering. Worlds colliding like that wouldn’t be pretty.

“You don’t want me to tell him?” Lucy’s brow pulled into a frown. “I don’t want to lie to him. And you know he only wants you to be happy. If Prometheus is good for you—”

“I don’t know what Prometheus is for me right now.”

“Oh.” Lucy’s frown darkened—Shirley Temple in protective mode.

“I like him.”

All heads swiveled toward Brittany at her declaration, then Jo admitted, “I do too. I mean, he’s an ass, but I appreciate a good asshole.”

“He’s scary,” Mia added. “Not that that’s a bad thing. There’s something sort of magnetic about his scariness. Like looking at a great white shark. Not quite human. But then, he isn’t, not really.”

Lucy turned to Karma. “Is that why you like him? Because he’s a shark? For the adventure of it?”

She couldn’t deny there was something to that—the fear and fascination of being with someone so overwhelmingly primal, both in attraction and in his power. There was a certain allure, a spike of adrenaline that came with being with someone who could turn on you like a tiger, never entirely tame. It affected her, but it wasn’t why. Why was too complicated for gossip over kung pao shrimp. Why was conflicted and tangled up. There was no pretty, happy, fairy tale why. All she had was instinct, emotion and no guarantees it would ever be anything more.

Karma looked at the faces around her. Her friends. Would she ever have let them in this much, let them see this much of her vulnerability before Prometheus? “I don’t know why,” she admitted. “I only know when he runs his finger down the back of my neck, my mind shuts off and all I can do is feel. And everything feels good.”

Jo nodded sagely. “The On Switch.”

“What?”

“That spot where he touches you and it’s zero-to-sixty, hello sailor, all revved up and ready to go. Girls are supposed to be all sexually complicated and shit, but I swear every one of us has a spot that is like flicking a switch. Touch us there and we’re good for it on the spot.”

Mia pursed her lips. “I wonder if that’s physiological or psychological. With the correct experiment I’m sure we could deduce—”

“No science talk during lunch or I’m telling Chase,” Jo interrupted.

“So that’s it?” Lucy pressed. “He just flips your physical switches? It’s not, you know, love?”

“Love? No. Definitely not.” Karma stuffed pad thai into her mouth, stopping herself before she became the lady who protested too much.

In love with Prometheus? Not remotely. But she didn’t like to think about what would happen after they got his heart back. And whenever she thought about the possibility that they might fail, that he might die, she felt a spike of panic pierce deep. She flinched at the thought of him being hurt, but in love? In order to fall in love, you had to believe a future was possible, didn’t you? She and Prometheus, they weren’t the happily ever after types. This interlude was an illusion of romance with an expiration date. She couldn’t let herself think it was any more real than that.

But there were moments, late at night, when it felt disturbingly real. Moments that made her wonder if there was a chance for them, after his powers were gone and he was just Prometheus again, with a regular beating heart. She would wake up, groggy and disoriented from a dream vision, and he would be there, his rumbly voice soothing her back to sleep, or asking her about what she’d seen. She’d gotten better—even in the dreams—at distancing herself from the subject, gaining perspective and learning how to choose the visions she saw. Last night she’d fallen asleep thinking of Jake and Lucy returning from their honeymoon and slid into a muddy could-be-future of a very pregnant Lucy asking Prometheus for charms to keep ghosts out of the baby’s room. She’d woken with a jolt, startled to see Prometheus in an even remotely possible future that related to her, and he’d been beside her in the bed, asking her what the vision was about and so she’d blurted out the first thing that came to her mind—the truth.

He’d flinched, as taken aback as she was, then slowly nodded. “Good dream,” he said cautiously. “Do they want kids?”

“Yeah.”

“Do you?”

The question had startled her. She hadn’t expected it of him. It always seemed so loaded—especially when you were talking to someone who’d seen you naked. She’d hedged with, “I don’t know. Do you?”

And he’d said the words that gave her permission to be brutally honest about her own thoughts on the subject. “Hell no.”

If he’d wanted to turn her off, he couldn’t have done worse. She didn’t want kids. Never had. Her mother always told her that she’d feel that biological urge someday—with the right person, at the right time, when she saw her friends and family members having babies—but Karma had never even felt the first inkling of a maternal twinge. And she’d always felt a little guilty admitting it aloud. Until she and Prometheus shared their horror at the idea. His vasectomy, her IUD—they were a matched set of non-propagators, saluting one another for keeping the population down. He’d made her laugh with his Pledge of Anti-Procreation, and she’d fallen asleep with a smile on her lips, tucked against his side.

That had felt real.

But reality was a ritual to reclaim his heart in a day and a half. After that, it was anyone’s guess. Neither of them had ever mentioned a relationship, emotions or permanence. The casual could only go on so long. Karma couldn’t let it go on forever. Uncertainty only worked in her world if there was an expiration date. And her expiration date with Prometheus was rapidly approaching, hour by hour.

So she scoffed at the idea of love, pressed Lucy to talk about her honeymoon in Italy, laughing when she described the enthusiastic Italian ghosts who had stalked them from town to town, and forgot about uncertainty for a while. For now, things were good. It couldn’t last because it never did, but she was learning to worry less about the press of possible catastrophes and see the present more.

Or at least she was trying.

Chapter Twenty-Six

Survival of the Most Ruthless

Prometheus wasn’t accustomed to anxiety. He’d trained himself not to give a shit about the things he couldn’t change, which had led to a remarkably worry-free existence. But tonight, only a matter of hours before the ritual that would either grant him near-immortality or kill him outright, he was finding it impossible not to care.

He arrived at Karmic Consultants, drawn there as he always seemed to be, after the building had gone dark. She was in there. He could feel her. Who knew how long that would last? If he survived the double-cross, but ended up without his power—he shook away the thought as he closed the front door behind him, flicking the lock closed. It would be a kind of death, losing his power. He didn’t know who he would be. His entire life was built around the power he had bartered for himself. Would he be able to keep the shop if he couldn’t create the charms and potions himself? Would he feel that same inviolate sense of strength and confidence without his power to back it up? Would Karma want him if he wasn’t a walking demigod like her?

No. His life would go up in smoke, just when it was starting to get really interesting. Part of him resolved to take death if it was a choice between powerlessness and that, but a deeper, truer part screamed for survival. You didn’t grow up the way he had without an angry need to keep living just to give the world who tried to destroy you a big fuck you. So the decision was simple: survival first, power by any means necessary.

And she was the means. He had to make sure she reversed the power flow and diverted Deuma’s power into him.

Karma wasn’t in her office. He followed the trail of her energy down, hacking into elevator’s security system with a pulse of magic. The elevator doors opened and he found her sitting in her living room, staring at the crate that held his heart, a glass of wine in one hand, a second on the end table beside the opposite end of the couch.

Prometheus took the empty space and the waiting glass, settling beside her without touching or speaking. The red tasted expensive, layers of flavors rolling smoothly over his taste buds as he sipped.

“Nice wine,” he commented.

“I’ve been saving it. Wyatt gave it to me.”

Wyatt Haines, the bajillionaire. No wonder it tasted like money. “Shouldn’t we save the celebrating for tomorrow?”

She didn’t reply, but then she didn’t need to. They both knew this wasn’t a celebration. It was a last supper.

At least her morose mood matched his own. He didn’t think he could have borne it if she was cheerful and excited about the dawn.

Rodriguez would arrive at four to begin prepping the summoning. Prometheus would carry the heart crate upstairs and they would begin at dawn. Summon Deuma. Negotiate with her for a new deal—Karma had done her research and paid the witches to track down an artifact she was confident Deuma would sell her soul for. Or better yet, trade Prometheus’s heart for.

But that was where things got tricky. Karma thought they were only bartering for his life. He wanted his power too. Which meant Karma had to go head to head for him with a maenad who was on her way to goddess status. Did she care for him enough to do that? Plan A didn’t look too secure.

If that didn’t work he had a few bargaining chips of his own. Relics he’d tracked down over the years that could vastly increase Deuma’s powers—provided she let him keep his own. It would make the devil a thousand times more dangerous, but that wasn’t his problem. His problem was survival.

Karma would be angry, that much he was sure of. She might never forgive him for keeping that part of his plan from her. This could break their relationship—such as it was—but the end had always been inevitable between them anyway. He wasn’t the guy you took home to meet the parents. He didn’t do love and romance. What they had now was all he was capable of giving her and she deserved better than that.

They’d never really had a shot at a future. So why did the thought of her walking out of his life make the hollow cavern of his chest ache? Men like him didn’t get happy endings, because men like him were the ruthless bastards who made sure the game never ended. When had that started feeling like a punishment rather than a reward?

“How are you doing?”

He looked over at the object of his obsession, sipping her wine, listening to the rhythm of his heart. She was dressed for yoga and he knew from experience how easily those stretchy fabrics peeled away from her skin. “I’m good.” He stretched his arm along the back of the couch and brushed a fingertip down her nape, just to touch her.

She trembled and took another slow, deliberate sip of the rich red. “Liar,” she murmured.

He smiled. “Always.”

For long minutes they simply drank the wine and sat, his finger stroking her neck the only communication between them. Then Karma lurched forward and set her wine glass on top of the crate, turning to face him. “We won’t let anything happen to you.”

His ribcage contracted hard around the empty space where his heart should be. That was about as close to a declaration as either one of them were likely to get. “None of your people will be hurt either,” he answered.

“I know.”

He heard I trust you lurking beneath the words and wanted to tell her not to, wanted to warn her off, but she was crawling toward him, throwing a leg over his to straddle his lap, and he forgot why it even mattered as Karma sucked his lower lip into her mouth. She rocked forward until her pelvis connected with the swelling length of his cock. He bracketed her hips, taking control of the rhythm there, even as he let her lead in the kiss. Her taste was potent with urgency and the lingering flavors of the red. He heard his heart thudding faster, louder. The wrongness of it—outside his body as magic pushed the blood in a steady flow through his veins—made him stand abruptly, lifting Karma with him. She wrapped her legs around his waist, breaking the kiss to lean back to meet his eyes.

Damn he was going to miss that look. The slumberous decadence. Dazed and heated. Knowing that it was only for him. He carried her through to the bedroom, away from the telltale heart. He laid her on the bed, quickly divesting her of her clothes and shedding his own, until they were both naked save the charm between her breasts. His charm. Then he lowered himself over her and there was nothing but skin and heat between them. He called up the magic that was so much a part of him and lay it over both of them like a blanket.

Karma hissed out a ragged breath and he moved to catch the sound in his mouth, feeding on every gasp and moan. He slipped his fingers between their bodies, finding her slick and hot and ready for him. Her warm hands were there, guiding his cock to her entrance, and then he was thrusting into a tight fist of heat, his entire being focused on the clasp of her body. He feathered his magic over her skin, pulsed his power into her body, watching her aura for the erratic flickers when he hit a sweet spot then bending his will to hitting it again and again until she was teetering on the edge of orgasm. He laced their fingers together, pinning her hands on either side of her head, and drove up high into her, flooding her with his power. She screamed her pleasure, arching beneath him, and something unlocked. Suddenly her power was there, meeting his, jetting through him in a blinding blast. He roared, pounding into her as he came, her essence surrounding him, consuming him, saturating every cell with a thousand tiny starbursts. Then the second wave hit and he was coming again, blind to everything but the supernova of her.

He collapsed on top of her, wrung out, and listened to the rapid, uneven rhythm of her breath.

“Prometheus,” she whispered. “I—”

He didn’t want to hear what she was going to say next. He couldn’t. He cut her off with a kiss, quick and light, then murmured, “Shh. Get some sleep.”

She was exhausted. It was a small thing to smooth the edges of her energy until she fell into a dream.

He hoped it was a good one. A future where everything was bright and shiny and worked out perfectly. A future he didn’t have much hope of seeing.

Chapter Twenty-Seven

The Perils of Lying to an Oracle

“Now, about my power...”

The maenad laughed, a girlish ripple of flirtation and heat. “Aren’t we greedy, my pet?” The devil stopped laughing abruptly when he conjured a medallion into his hand. Her eyes gleamed with avarice. “Now, where did you get that?”

“Does it matter?”

“Not really.” She shook her head, laughing again. “Clever Prometheus. He always knows how to get what he wants, doesn’t he? But what if I don’t want your pretty medallion? What would you give me in order to keep your power then?”

“I have other relics. What is it you want? Name it.”

“I told you already.” The devil turned her head and he followed her gaze.

Karma stood frozen, mouth open as if in mid-shout as Prometheus and Deuma bartered in a moment stolen out of time. Rodriguez lay on the ground nearby, unconscious and bleeding from the head. Across the room, Brittany sprawled in an unnatural position at the base of a wall. But it was Karma he saw.

“She’s worth three of you,” Deuma purred. “Give her to me and you can keep your powers.”

He hesitated for only a moment. “It would have to be all of them. Forever. No more deadlines and renegotiations.”

“Oh, I love a man who barters.” Deuma giggled. “Are you sure you don’t want to come work for me? No? Fine, then. For that I’ll take the medallion too.”

“Done.” The word echoed like a gong, harsh with the finality of a deal struck.

Karma lurched upright in bed, a hard gasp shredding her throat. He’d sold her. He’d sold her just so he could keep his power. She flicked on the lamp, needing the comfort of light, the protection of it.

“Karma?” a dark voice asked groggily. “What did you see?”

Prometheus reached for her and she shied away from his hand, dragging the sheet with her to cover her nakedness. “You bastard.”

His sleepy gaze sharpened and shuttered. “I take it you saw me.”

“You gave me to her. You sold me to Deuma in exchange for your power.”

Eyes narrowed, he sat up in the bed. “And Ciara drowned and Brittany was killed in a car accident. None of it happened. Not all of your visions come true.” But his voice was too harsh, too defensive. God, he would really do it.

“The intent was there.” Clothes. She needed clothes. She struggled out of the bed, dragging the sheet with her and backing toward the closet. “Ciara didn’t want to drown, Brittany didn’t want to crash her car, but you wanted to trade me for your power. Not your life. Your precious, fucking power.”

“This is ridiculous.” He flung back the covers and stalked after her, naked and not giving a shit about it. “I couldn’t trade you to Deuma if I wanted to. I don’t own you.”

“That didn’t seem to make a difference.” She slammed the door to the closet, tugging on underwear, slacks and a stretchy knit top in record time. She’d wanted distance, but as soon as the door shut between them she wanted to yank it open again, the better to scream at him. He did not get to slink off without talking to her about this.

Dressed, she flung open the door and he was standing there, his arms braced on either side of the jamb, waiting for her. He’d pulled on his jeans, but hadn’t bothered with a shirt. “It was a dream.”

Karma shoved past him, ducking under his arm. “She said you already knew what you could give her to keep your power.” She spun to face him, arms akimbo. “Was that a dream too?”

He groaned and rubbed a hand down his face. “She said something about you that made me think she would be interested in a trade, but I haven’t done anything about it.”

“No? You haven’t told me about it either. Don’t you think I have the right to know if a demonspawn bitch wants my soul?”

“I’m not sure it was your soul she was after. She seemed mostly concerned with your natural power. Whoever your father was, he left quite a calling card.”

“Don’t you dare try to change the subject.”

“I’m not changing shit. You’re the one who is so fucking scared to look at who you really are that you’d rather bottle up your God-given talents and make yourself crazy than learn how to put them to some use.”

“So that makes it okay to sell me to the highest bidder?”

“You don’t want your power anyway!”

“That doesn’t give you the right to give it away!”

“I didn’t! Goddamn it, Karma, I may have done a lot of shady shit in my life, but I refuse to be tried and hanged for something I didn’t even do. It was a fucking dream.”

“They aren’t just dreams and you know it.”

“Yeah, well, they aren’t fucking infallible either. Maybe you didn’t hear what you thought you heard.”

“I heard plenty.” And it had rocked her to her foundation. She’d trusted him. She hadn’t realized exactly how much until that word, that deal, had shattered it all, leaving shards of broken trust lodged in her veins. What more had he been keeping from her? Who was he, really?

“I think you heard what you wanted to hear.”

“Oh, so it’s my fault? Can you honestly tell me that you would never make that deal? That you wouldn’t even consider it?”

He hesitated. The bastard actually hesitated.

“Oh fuck you.” Suddenly the charm he’d made her seemed to burn against her skin. She couldn’t get it off fast enough. The thong tangled in her hair.

“Karma…I wouldn’t leave you with her. If I was powerless, I wouldn’t be able to come for you—”

“Shut up.” She threw the charm and it hit him in the chest—which was a shame since she’d been aiming for his face. How could she have been so stupid? “What was on that? Some kind of gullibility mojo?”

“No. The charm is clean—just a few extra focus and protection wards.”

There was enough hesitation in the denial to make her snarl, “Oh God, what?”

He grimaced. “The vodka.”

“You spiked the vodka. Of course you did. Because getting me drunk wasn’t good enough.”

“I only added a few little spells to make you relax and trust me. And I drank it too. I made myself just as vulnerable as you were.”

She really had been a prize idiot. He’d been playing her from the word go and she’d known that, but she’d let herself forget it. She’d been totally sucked in. She’d started to actually care for him and the entire time he’d been conning her, stringing her along in an attempt to keep his superhuman powers. She’d been so sure they were more than that, but he hadn’t changed at all.

She’d actually started to think she was falling in love with him. Last night she’d almost said the words without even meaning to. But all along she’d been falling for a man who’d only ever cared about himself. And she’d known that. She’d been so acutely conscious of his faults. But he’d been so honest about who he was; somehow his sincerity about being a liar had allowed him to slip right past her defenses and into her heart—where the bastard had no business being.

“Karma.”

His voice was soft, but she clung to her anger, because if she let it go, she knew the tears would come and Karma Cox didn’t cry. “Take your heart,” she snapped.

“Karma, we can talk about this. Don’t be rash—”

“I thought you liked rash.” He opened his mouth and she held up a hand to stop him. “Never mind. I don’t want to hear another word from you. I’m not reneging on our deal. Though it would serve you right if I did.” Still, she found she couldn’t—and not because of the binding he’d placed on her that first night at his shop. She didn’t want him dead. Even though she probably ought to be ready to dance on his grave, her stomach still roiled at the thought of anything happening to the asshole. “Rodriguez will summon this devil bitch and I will be on hand to make sure you don’t try to hijack my exorcist’s soul, but beyond that, we’re done. Carry your heart upstairs and wait up there. I can’t look at you right now.”

She half-expected pleading, but his expression closed down tight, anger and something darker and much more sinister taking up residence in his eyes. “Fine. We were about done anyway, weren’t we?”

Her heart stuttered. He wasn’t talking about the argument or their deal. It was them, the idea of any sort of a relationship between them. We were about done anyway…

He grabbed the crate without another word and disappeared up the elevator, taking his heart and leaving her alone in the suddenly echoingly empty expanse of her apartment.

She slumped against the couch, pressing a fist to her abdomen. Why did it burn like this? Why was it so hard to think past the massive sense of betrayal hazing her thoughts? What had changed really? She’d known they wouldn’t last. So why did hearing him say it feel like swallowing acid?

Karma closed her eyes and went through her mental exercises, needing them for the first time in a week. When she had her center again, she straightened and smoothed her clothing. It would all be over in a few hours. If she could get through this, she wouldn’t look back.

Her early-warning instincts twitched—Rodriguez would be here in a few minutes. Not long now.

She was Unshakable Karma. It would take more than one unethical warlock to break her. Head held high, she strode to the elevator. Business as usual. Nothing more. And when business was over, she could let that hollow ache in her gut expand to consume her if she wanted, but not now. Now she was the ice queen again and nothing could touch her. Not even him.

Chapter Twenty-Eight

Ice Melt

Prometheus was no stranger to fucking up, but usually when he fucked up this royally he’d actually done something.

Though he wasn’t entirely blameless. He hadn’t exactly been forthcoming with Karma and he had entertained the thought, more than once, of trading her unwanted abilities for his own—though never quite so coarsely as simply selling her to Deuma and never without her consent. Had she really seen a likely future? Or were her subconscious doubts about him directing her toward highly unlikely variants that painted him in an ugly light?

Either way he probably hadn’t helped the situation by keeping her ignorant of his own plans. He wasn’t even sure why he’d lied—if they were classifying omissions as lies, which Karma certainly did. He’d kept waiting for the right moment to tell her about his master plan to have it all, waiting for her to be invested enough, to care enough. Waiting for some sign that she would never turn on him as she had this morning.

So much for that.

Neither of them seemed inclined to succumb to trusting the other—which worked just fucking fine since trust wasn’t required in today’s summoning. And after the summoning… Well, he’d known they were done. He just hadn’t expected it to end quite like that. He’d never really given any thought to how it would end, actually. He wasn’t much for looking into the future. That was more Karma’s terrain, and if knowing the future was going to make him as miserable as she was, he’d pass, thank you very much.

The elevator doors shushed open and the Karma who stepped out of the lift was every inch the rigid ice queen he’d first met. Every hair in place. The stick up her ass firmly in position. Ms. Holier-Than-Thou Professionalism was back.

“Rodriguez will be here any minute.” She looked at him, her eyes cool and expressionless. No more passionate, dazed Karma for him.

Prometheus waved at the box containing his fucked-up heart. “We’re all set.”

She nodded briskly. “Good.” Then she slipped into the outer office, likely to unlock the door even though he could have done it with a thought. She probably wanted to get away from him. Cool and collected she may be on the surface, but her energy was all over the place, flaring out then pulling back behind those fucking walls she’d erected again.

He half-expected her to wait out front for reinforcements, but she returned to her office and strode to take the seat behind her massive desk. He’d always have fond memories of that desk. Even if he wasn’t feeling particularly charitable toward the woman sitting behind it at the moment.

He folded his arms. “I wouldn’t have done it. Traded you to her.”

“I don’t want to discuss it.”

“You see what you want to see Karma. When there is a chance your people might be in trouble, you see the worst-case scenario. When you need a happy moment, you see cuddly babies and everything beautiful. When you’re doubting me, what the fuck did you expect to see?”

“I wasn’t doubting you.”

“Weren’t you?”

They both heard the front door open.

“They’re here,” Karma said unnecessarily, rising.

Brittany and Rodriguez entered, Brittany bouncing like Christmas morning and Rodriguez with a wry smile as he watched her enthusiasm. “Who’s ready for a summoning?” she chirped.

Karma didn’t chirp. “Brittany, I’d like you to go.”

The secretary visibly deflated. “But I’m good luck.”

“We’ll have to make our own luck today. I don’t want to risk you. Rodriguez needs to be here, but I don’t want anyone else in range who can be used by this devil.” The way she hit the last two words made Prometheus wonder if she was referring to Deuma or himself. As if he would ever let anything happen to Brittany. She was the only one here who actually gave him credit for being a semi-decent human being.

Rodriguez’s gaze flicked back and forth between them, reading the currents in the air, but Brittany looked confused. “I guess…” she mumbled.

“Come on,” Rodriguez urged. “I’ll walk you to the car. Let’s let Mom and Dad fight in peace.”

Brittany frowned, talking over her shoulder as Rodriguez guided her through the door. “Are you guys fighting? You shouldn’t be fighting. You need only good energy going into the universe right now. Kiss and make up, okay?”

Prometheus looked to Karma, wondering if Brittany’s words were having any effect, but even the receptionist wasn’t that lucky. She was still the ice queen and he was still frozen out.

Rodriguez returned and set about getting ready without a word. They had maybe thirty minutes until sunrise.

Thirty minutes. Twenty years of power, nearly forty of life, and it all came down to thirty minutes. Of all the mistakes he’d made in a long life of pissing people off, the only one he wanted to fix, the only thing that felt wrong was the way things were ending with Karma.

Fuck that. He wasn’t going to sit on his hands like a good boy and let her cut him off. That wasn’t him.

Prometheus stalked silently across the room. This wasn’t how they were going to end. He wouldn’t let it be. Karma looked at him with a flash of panic and scrambled to put the width of her desk between them.

“What are you doing?”

She would have kept them circling that damn desk all day, but he was faster, more determined, and he didn’t play fair. He slapped up a telekinetic roadblock—just enough to slow her down so he could get his hands on her. “Come here.” He caught her upper arm and pulled her toward the privacy of the outer office, but Karma wasn’t coming easily.

“Let me go.” She squirmed and dug in her heels, twisting enough to make him seriously consider throwing her over his shoulder—or maybe pulling her across his lap and paddling her ass. She always had to make everything so fucking difficult.

“Damn it, Karma. I just want to talk to you,” he growled.

“I have no interest in listening to anything you have to say.”

Rodriguez muttered something about leaving his favorite crucifix in the lobby and all but ran out of the office, the door snapping shut behind them.

Her struggles lessened when their audience was gone, but Prometheus didn’t loosen his hold. He didn’t trust Karma not to bolt if he did. Instead, he shifted his grip, grabbing her by both shoulders and walking her backward until she bumped up against the wall.

She glared up at him, fire beginning to burn through the ice goddess stare. “You’re a bully and a liar and nothing you can say will change any of that, so you might as well save your breath.”

“I am a bully and a liar and a thousand other things, but I love you.”

Fuck. Where had that come from? Prometheus gulped, as startled as Karma looked by the words that had popped out of his mouth. No turning back now.

“I may not be Prince Charming, but I’m it for you and you know it. No one is ever going to get you like I do. I’m going to push you and challenge you and make you crazy and it will be worth it because we’re better together than we could ever be apart. Fuck.” He swore and dropped his forehead onto hers. She hadn’t said a word. Didn’t look capable of speech, actually. “Love sucks, okay? It’s giving the other person a knife and spending every hour of your life waiting for them to stab you in the heart with it. I never wanted that. I never wanted you, but there you were and when you find the person you can’t live without, you don’t let them go. It’s inconvenient and a pain in the ass and we’ll fight—you know we’ll fight—but I’ll also fight for you. I would never let anyone hurt you—not for any price—so don’t you dare think that. Whatever the fuck you saw, that isn’t our future. You’re mine, Karma. And I fucking protect what’s mine.” He conjured the charm he’d made for her, that modified yin-yang, to fall around her neck. “I will always protect you. Is that clear enough for you?”

Karma blinked up at him, shock and something like panic in her wide eyes. Her fingers rose to brush the soft metal of the charm. She opened her mouth and he held his breath. This was it, the moment when she either saved him or sent him crashing down to hell. “I…”

“My, my.” The silky feminine purr sounded behind him. “Prometheus in love. I never thought I’d see the day. How sweet.”

He stiffened and turned, using his body to shield Karma as much as possible as he faced the she-devil across the room. She perched on the crate containing his heart, a snug red dress leaving little to the imagination and showing off the expanse of her crossed legs. She swung one stiletto-clad foot and tapped the top of the box with a long black nail—in perfect time with the accelerating thump of the heart within.

“It’s nice to see you again, pet. Though from the sound of things, you’ve been a very naughty boy indeed.”

She was early. Which meant they hadn’t summoned her. Which meant she was under no compulsion to deal with them. She knew he’d been trying to double cross her and she’d come before the dawn just to fuck with him. They’d just lost home field advantage. They would be playing by Deuma’s rules now.

Inside the box, Prometheus’s heart began to race.

Chapter Twenty-Nine

Nightmares in Wonderland

Karma had fallen down the rabbit hole. Only instead of Cheshire Cats she had a she-devil who was not supposed to be able to appear and disappear at will on this plane, and instead of the White Rabbit she had a six-and-a-half foot warlock professing his love. Something was very wrong in Wonderland.

Karma decided to focus on the less alarming of those two developments. She edged around Prometheus until she had a clear view of the maenad.

“How can you be here without being summoned?”

Deuma giggled and wagged her head flirtatiously. “Now that would be telling and a lady never reveals her secrets.”

Prometheus watched Deuma like a man studying a rattlesnake. “She’s ascending to a new level of power.”

Deuma giggled. “Does it show? I think it flatters me.”

The devil rose from the crate and preened, rubbing her hands over her hips. There was a faint glow rising from Deuma’s skin, like paintings of saints and gods. She was hypnotic, seductive and projecting harmlessness so hard the hair on Karma’s arms lifted from the underlying danger.

“I’m so close to perfection.” Deuma sighed, her face falling into an exaggerated pout. “And then my favorite pet warlock decided to try to cheat me out of our bargain. That wasn’t very nice, Prometheus.”

“Forgive me for wanting to live,” he said dryly.

“I don’t forgive.” Deuma’s face flashed to deadly seriousness—a flicker of vicious reality beneath her constant cotton candy veneer, the sight of it all the more brutally chilling for being so quickly masked by another gooey smile. “But I do renegotiate. If you can make it worth my while. And you have been one of my favorite pets.”

Karma’s heart stuttered, doubt surging with the sense that this was it, the moment when her vision would come true. Then reality intruded and she realized how completely different her dream had been from what she was seeing now. Brittany and Rodriguez weren’t even here. There was no summoning circle binding Deuma and time wasn’t frozen. Her dream hadn’t been the truth. From the power radiating off Deuma, she wasn’t likely to have allowed herself to be summoned and bound, so it seemed highly improbable that any part of that vision might have come true. Karma’s doubts had conjured up the unlikely future that most closely matched her fears. She really had seen what she wanted to see. Prometheus loves me. He would never do that to me.

Karma evicted that thought. No time for dwelling on it at the moment. Right now they had to find a way to tempt the semi-deified devil. “We have Bacchus’s Cloak.”

The sinuously moving devil went very, very still. “Do you? My, my, that is a precious find. However did you come by it?”

Karma borrowed a line from her dream. “Does it matter?”

“Not particularly.” She smiled. “Do you know what it does? Never mind, never mind, you’re right, unimportant.” She closed her eyes and shook her head sharply, giving a delicate little shiver. “Tempting, but as it happens, I’m not interested in Bacchus’s Cloak.”

Prometheus conjured a charm to his hand, the gesture eerily identical to Karma’s dream. “Are you interested in this?”

Karma didn’t know what it was. She only knew it gave off a silky gleam of magic and made Deuma’s eyes almost feral with greed.

“Oh, Prometheus, you do have the best toys. But no…sadly, I’ll have to decline.” She smiled, wagging a finger. “You’re trying to tempt me with objects, but they’re just things. Powerful, beautiful things, but they don’t have will. Do you know how a devil gets her power, dear boy? The power to appear unsummoned…the power to keep a man alive after you’ve taken his beating heart…the power to grant unimaginable wishes…where does it all come from?”

“I’d never given it much thought,” Prometheus said expressionlessly.

“Oh, now that’s a lie. You are all curiosity. It’s one of the things I love about you.” She danced closer, graceful and lithe. “It’s obvious, isn’t it? From the will. From my darling little contract signers ceding their free will up to me. Do you think we collect souls for the fun of it? What good is a soul, really? Bothersome things. But the signing, the completion of the contract, that moment when he places his very being into my possession—voluntarily.” She gasped. “What a rush. Contracts are power—not like your silly little magic, but real power. Freedom to move between the planes, coming and going as I please. Not a puppet to be summoned, called up whenever someone wants a she-devil to eat the flesh of their enemies. I’m almost a god now.” Her expression darkened abruptly, thunder gathering. “But that will all go away if one of my contracts breaks. So you see, Prometheus, I can’t let you out of our little deal. Not unless you’re willing to sign an addendum…”

“If you don’t want objects, what do you want?”

“Haven’t you figured it out yet?”

Karma held her breath. She knew what was coming. Deuma would ask for her. It had all been leading up to this…

“I want you, Prometheus.”

Prometheus frowned at Deuma as she pranced and danced flirtatiously around Karma’s office. He couldn’t have heard her right. “What do you mean, you want me?”

“I knew there was something special about you from the first moment you summoned me—drunk off your ass, but so incredibly focused. So driven. So angry. You’re a natural, Prometheus. I’ve been watching you and I think you’d make an excellent devil yourself. Think of the last twenty years as an audition.”

“A devil.”

“You would be my right hand. Making dreams come true—while collecting contracts and bolstering my power. And your own, of course. Your power would never go away, Prometheus, as long as you kept reaping for me. And then, with time, you would develop power in your own right. You yourself could ascend as I have—take on assistants, be a god. Though you did try to betray me.” She kicked the crate containing his drumming heart. “So I think a few years penance is in order. All the power you reap will go to me for the first, oh let’s say, thousand years. That seems fair, don’t you think?”

Beside him, Karma gasped.

“A thousand years of servitude?”

“I wouldn’t be a demanding boss. Think of it as a thousand years of the kind of power you’ve enjoyed for the last twenty. You could even keep your shop—it’s the perfect set up for a devil. Why, the marks would come to you! No summoning necessary.”

He knew from experience that deals with devils were designed to look appealing at the first blush. He’d prepared himself for her to try to tempt him. He just hadn’t expected to actually be tempted. He could go on as he had, indefinitely, with unlimited power. With Karma. It sounded too good to be true. “What’s the catch?”

“No catch. No hidden clauses. I give you back your heart as soon as you sign on the dotted line, saying you’ll come work for me. I like you, Prometheus. I think we’d rub along well together, don’t you?” She batted her eyes, reminding him of how irresistible he’d once found her. But now she seemed obvious and overblown, a caricature of sex appeal.

The woman who had come to define lust stood to the side and slightly behind him, her spine as rigid and unyielding as her morals.

“Don’t,” Karma said softly. “A thousand years, Prometheus. We’ll find another way. You don’t have to do this.” She would never love a devil, but what shot did he really have of her returning his affections anyway?

He could protect her if he was all-powerful. Yes, he’d have to put people into the same situation he’d been in, but he could bite down the taste that left in his mouth. The greater good, right? He’d be screwing strangers over to protect his own—he could live with that.

Deuma conjured a sheaf of papers with a flourish, waving a pink pen with a feather on the end. “Sign on the dotted line and all is forgotten.”

Prometheus thrust out a hand. “Let me read that.”

“Don’t you trust me? You weren’t such a stickler for reading last time.”

“I was drunk last time.”

“I like you drunk. You want a drink?”

A wine bottle appeared in his hand so abruptly he almost dropped it. “No more games,” he snapped. “The contract.”

“Fine, fine, read.” Suddenly the wine was a stack of papers.

“Prometheus, don’t.”

He ignored Karma’s low plea and began to read through the contract. A thousand years was a long time. He didn’t want any surprises. “There are a lot of clauses here.”

“Are there?” Deuma cooed.

The devil’s legalese made lawyer-speak look coherent, but the first few pages looked aboveboard. It wasn’t until he was seven pages in that the other shoe dropped. “What’s this?”

“What’s what?” Deuma asked innocently.

“Clause twenty-seven B.”

“Is that the part about contracts with non-humans?”

“What the hell is Karma’s name doing in here?”

Karma had been leaning against the wall, but now she snapped to attention. “What?”

“Oh that clause twenty-seven B,” Deuma purred. “No need to get yourself all het up. It’s nothing really. I thought after your little declaration earlier, that she would be a good way to seal the deal. Sort of a handshake. Your first task as my employee is to make a deal with your little Karma.”

Karma asked, “What kind of a deal?”

“A loyalty test,” Prometheus growled. “I should have known.”

“Oh, don’t make it out to be a national disaster. Everyone wants something. You get her to voluntarily give up something in exchange for something she wants. But it has to be a good bargain—the juicier the terms, the better the hit when the subject signs. You know the rules. Make it good.”

He should have known. If it seemed too good to be true, it always was. There was no such thing as a win-win deal with the devil. There would be no using his power to protect those he cared about if he signed this deal. He would be a puppet—like Deuma had been for thousands of years. The kind of power he had would only make people think they had been helped—and then come back to bite them on the ass.

Maybe a month or two ago, it would have seemed like an easy choice. A great deal. But things were different now. He was different now. He didn’t want to be a manipulative devil, putting others in the bind he’d stupidly gotten himself into when he was a heartbroken kid of nineteen who knew fuck all about the world. He would feel too bad for the people he was hurting. He’d know he was hurting them.

He wasn’t sure when it had started, but that was who he was now and he couldn’t go back. Sometimes even selfish bastards learned how to feel. Like the fucking Grinch. If he’d had a heart in his body, the damn thing would probably be growing three sizes.

It was almost a shame he’d had his big, love-thy-fucking-neighbor epiphany today. When it was too late to do him any good.

He shook his head. “I’m afraid I’ll have to pass.” Prometheus dropped the contract and it vanished before it hit the ground.

Deuma’s lazy prowl around the room halted abruptly, her flirtation evaporating. “I hope you aren’t actually trying to say no,” she said, the words carrying the icy chill of a threat. “I realize you may want to negotiate different terms, but the fact that you are even in the same room with your heart means I have grounds to execute our previous contract. You don’t really have much room to maneuver. You really should have read the fine print more carefully the first time.”

“One mistake isn’t grounds for another. Maybe it’s about time I got what was coming to me.”

“You surprise me, Prometheus. Where is that survival instinct I love so much? Just because I like you doesn’t mean I won’t kill you.”

A soft pressure on his arm reminded him that he and Deuma weren’t alone. Karma’s voice was low and firm near his ear. “Maybe you should take the deal. I’d give up my magic, voluntarily. At least you’d be alive—”

“It wouldn’t end there. And even if it did, the price is always steeper than you think.” He risked taking his eyes off Deuma long enough to look down into Karma’s eyes. “How would you protect your people if you couldn’t see the risks coming at them? You’d hate not being omniscient, Karma. I can’t do that to you. I told you I would protect you and I will. Even if this is what it takes.”

“I don’t want it if this is what it takes.”

“Listen to her, Prometheus. Listen to the woman you say you love. Would you really be so selfish as to leave her? Just so you can spite me?”

“Not for spite.” For the first time in his life, he was about to do the right thing. He felt an eerie calm. A certainty. Or maybe that was his denial talking.

“This isn’t noble,” Deuma snapped. “This is a child’s nobility. A man does whatever he must to be there for those who need him. This woman you say you love, she needs you.”

“And binding her to you through me is noble?” Prometheus snapped, losing patience with the she-devil’s wheedling.

Deuma’s patience, such as it was, evaporated just as quickly. “Think very carefully about what you say next. I won’t be asking you again. Will you sign the contract or not?”

Prometheus caught Karma’s hand, squeezed it. “No.”

“Fine.” Pure, incandescent anger blazed in Deuma’s eyes and Prometheus had a fraction of a second to realize he’d misjudged. He hadn’t really thought Deuma would kill him. He was no good to her dead. She wouldn’t waste him as a resource.

He’d been wrong. He tried to turn to Karma, wanted her to be the last thing he saw, but he was too late.

The world went white in a blinding blaze of light.

Chapter Thirty

Resurrection for Beginners

“Prometheus!”

One second she was holding his hand, feeling the ever-present charge of his power thrumming against her skin, and the next, that energy collapsed in on itself and Prometheus crashed to the ground, the speed of his fall jerking his hand from hers.

For a long, blank moment, the sight that met her eyes refused to process. He lay on his back, one leg folded awkwardly, eyes open and staring, fixed. Dead. A scream built in the back of her throat, but she couldn’t get it out. It lodged there, choking her, suffocating her.

“He really should have taken the deal. Pity.”

Karma whirled toward the maenad, the scream trapped in her throat louder now, angry and wild and clawing its way out, but before she could make a sound Deuma put her hand on the crate—the suddenly silent crate—and vanished, along with the box that held Prometheus’s heart.

She didn’t want to look down, didn’t want to see again, but she couldn’t help herself. Her gaze went there on its own and then she couldn’t look away. Dead. Prometheus is dead. She should touch him. Check for a pulse. He doesn’t have a heart! Perform CPR. Mouth to mouth. Savage panic shredded her from the inside out with vicious claws. She was bloody with grief and she didn’t care. Do something, you idiot. There had to be something she could do.

He’d died. He’d actually died for her. While she was holding his hand. And she hadn’t seen it coming. Hadn’t even had an inkling. What good were her goddamn instincts if they couldn’t predict this? She might as well have signed away her powers to him for all the use they were. God, why hadn’t he let her? Why hadn’t she tried harder to get him to agree? It had happened so fast. One second they were negotiating and he seemed so confident it hadn’t occurred to her that anything irrevocable could happen. She’d thought he was reliably selfish, that he would never martyr himself for any cause—not even for her—and there had been a comfort in that. And then this. Death.

No. This hadn’t happened. She wouldn’t let it. It was a dream. Only a dream. She would wake up and tell him not to be an idiot. Beg him to take the deal. Beg, plead, bully, manipulate, anything to keep this from happening.

She heard someone screaming, ungodly raw sounds of agony, and realized the scream locked in her throat had escaped. She wasn’t aware of falling to the floor, but she was on her knees, shaking him. Wake up, wake up, all a bad dream. Distantly she registered the door slamming open and Rodriguez grabbing her by the shoulders, trying to pull her away, but she wouldn’t be budged. She was staying until he woke up. Cocky, laughing. I got you, didn’t I? The asshole. Just the kind of thing he would do. Die on her to prove how impossible the idea of living even a single day without him was.

He wasn’t gone. He couldn’t be gone. She threw open her power, ripping down every wall, every defense, blasting them all to pieces until she was wide open and the slam of her own power hitting her nearly made her vision go black. But she didn’t let it roll her under. She threw herself into the chaos of it willingly. In this moment she was bigger and badder than it could ever be. She shaped it, wielded it and flung it into Prometheus, willing his blood to flow, his lungs to breathe.

Nothing.

There was a vacuum where his power had been, sucking down all she poured into him and giving back no flicker of life in return. Damn it, Prometheus. You get back here, you bastard. I’m not done with you. She felt it then—not in him, but in her. Deep inside her soul some piece of him was still attached to her. She saw it with the eyes he had opened, the power he’d taught her to see, that string of power connecting them. It stretched out from her into his chest, vanishing into the wormhole that had consumed his power and left him for dead. But it was attached to something on the other end, inside that empty, incomprehensible space. He still existed. Somewhere in the planes of energy and time, he was still there. She would open a channel, blast open that wormhole and do whatever it took to haul him back through it by the string that connected them. They were fighters. They fought for what they loved. She would fight for him.

Rodriguez shouted, dragging at her shoulders, but Karma wasn’t in the physical world anymore. She unleashed the power she’d denied her whole life and crashed through the wormhole into the netherplane, chasing the nebulous thread that was her internal tether to Prometheus.

Her first impression was of a vast sense of space, but it was layered on top of itself—no laws of physics applied here. A thousand objects could occupy the same space at the same time. It was like being inside a universe on the head of a pin. Her regular senses were useless. She was blind and dumb, relying entirely on the sixth sense she’d always tried to cage. She clung to the tether, as much as she could cling without hands or eyes.

Even her sense of self was distorted, emotions blurred and dulled until the sharpness of her desperate grief and need for Prometheus was hazy and soft. Was there really any hurry? She could float here, drifting along, and things would right themselves eventually.

A burn started against her sternum—but she didn’t have a sternum, no body here—intensifying until the pain penetrated her pleasant, floaty inertia. The protection charm. Prometheus’s yin-yang. It was still around her neck, rubbing against her sternum. Warning her.

The lethargy wasn’t natural. Someone or something was slipping her a metaphysical mickey, trying to slow her down and keep her from Prometheus. She pulsed her power around her, the angry surge burning away the fog until her real emotions flared back full force. Pain. Desperation. Fear. Prometheus. She reached for that internal tether, tracking him through the layers of nothing and everything.

What she found at the other end of their link was barely identifiable as a person. It was barely a spark, more an idea of existence than an actual life, but it was him. At the most basic level, the inviolate core that had been at the center of all that wild energy. His soul. And it wasn’t free.

Someone or something had bound him there, trapped in a net of power that gleamed silver against her inner eye, and Karma had a pretty good idea who was responsible. Hang on, Prometheus. I’m gonna get you out of here. She began to tease at the moorings of the net holding his spark in place, operating on instinct and hope. This had to work. She’d free him, bring him back and he’d be fine. Alive. She hadn’t been able to resuscitate him with her power because his soul was missing, but if she brought it back, it would work. Please let this work.

The first of the slick silver moorings came loose and his spark stirred, thrashing itself against the net—that’s it, fight for me—even as the edges tried to reseal themselves. His cage had a consciousness and it wanted to stay closed. By the time she released a second and third mooring, the first had reattached. It became a race to stay ahead of them—a race she was steadily losing. Prometheus’s spark stopped shifting and twisting inside the silver net, falling dormant again.

No no no. She would get him out. She tried pouring energy through the tendril that connected them so he could fight his way out from the inside, but to no avail. She could try slicing her way through the net, but she wasn’t exactly a precision machine with her powers. What if she sliced right through and hurt him? Too risky.

If only she was inside, with him, she could burst them both out. She was sure of it.

As soon as the idea took root, she set it into motion, pouring herself down the thread connecting her to Prometheus, she slipped beneath the net and the edge of her soul brushed against his, causing latent instincts to screech out a warning. No going back from this. If you link to him fully and he stays here, you stay here. But Karma was already wrapping her amorphous self around his spark. They should have fit together like two puzzle pieces, but his piece had shrunk and she had to puff up her power to fill in his blanks. The link locked into place with an ominous finality.

Karma turned her attention to the net, slicing without mercy, and it fell away. They floated free—too easy, that devil bitch would never let it be so easy—and Karma began dragging him toward the surface of their reality, like swimming through pudding. Prometheus’s spark still lay dormant. Come on, you bastard. I know you’re in there.

Another presence erupted into the netherplane, yanking on Prometheus’s soul so hard it ripped half-free of Karma. She hissed with pain and clung. A thunderous message crashed into her consciousness on a tide of heat. “He belongs to me.”

Deuma. Only then did Karma notice the other tether attached to Prometheus. If the one linking Karma to him was a delicate silken thread, Deuma’s was a steel-core cable.

“I won’t let you take him,” Karma replied, hanging tight to her silken thread.

“Oh? Try to stop me.” Deuma jerked his spark again and Karma could only fly along with him, holding on for dear life, as the devil hauled them back to the glittering silver net. The cage was alive again, rebuilding itself, wrapping around them with liquid, tensile strength.

Karma tried to keep it from reaffixing, but it was stronger now and the more she fought, the stronger the cage seemed to get, feeding off her struggles. The futility of it seeped to her core. They’d lost. She’d come here to save him and only wound up damning herself.

“No.” It was so soft she almost didn’t hear it, a whisper, not even words really, but a faint scratch at the back of her mind, so deep it couldn’t possibly be real. Then she heard it again. “No. My Karma doesn’t give up. She’s invincible, if she would let herself be. She can Hulk-smash the hell out of that puny demon bitch one handed.”

“Prometheus?”

But there was no reply. Only Deuma’s taunt as the last of the net’s moorings slid into place. “Two-for-one special. I hadn’t pegged you for such a fool.”

Had she imagined him? Hulk-smash the hell… Was there really still a part of him alive enough to believe in her? Invincible, if she would let herself… Karma stopped struggling, falling down into herself to that deep, dark place, the wellspring of her powers that had always scared the everloving shit out of her. She’d pulled down her walls, but she’d left this dam in place, too terrified to contemplate letting the power truly have free rein. But fear had no place here. Prometheus believed in her—even if it was a hallucination of him. It was time she started believing in herself. She looked with her inner eye to the angry red energy of Deuma. “You can’t have him. This soul is mine.”

The dam exploded.

She was power. She was light. She was particles and chain reactions. The net evaporated. No bounds could contain her. She launched herself upward, cradling Prometheus’s spark protectively, but the steel-core cable was still there, dragging him back. Oh no you don’t. She reached through the two tethers, through Prometheus and down the cable until she felt Deuma’s power, the wild, foreign pulse of it, slippery and dark. It was insidious and corrupting, but she didn’t fear power. She was power. Deuma shrieked and thrashed, but Karma dug her hooks in deep and she pulled. All that power, stolen from thousands of vulnerable souls over a millennia of double-edged contracts, it poured along the cable, into Prometheus’s spark. That sliver of him swelled, gorging on the feast of energy, growing until it was the perfect puzzle piece again, then continuing to grow, feeding. The devil tried to cut the cable, struggling to be free, but Karma wasn’t feeling merciful. She left the she-devil with as much energy as the bitch had left Prometheus. Just a spark. And she buried that spark beneath layers of silver nets, blankets of them. Then she, Karma, snapped the cable with a final promise. “You will never touch him again.”

There was no response. There wasn’t enough of Deuma left to respond. Karma didn’t care. She was power—and so was her lover. With the wellspring free and the riot of energy flowing through her, returning them to their bodies was the work of a thought.

Karma gasped in a breath, feeling like she’d been underwater a hundred years. Sprawled on the floor beside her, she heard Prometheus do the same. He’s alive.

“Madre de Dios, ellos viven. They’re alive. They woke up. I’ll call you back.” Rodriguez came into her field of vision, swearing in Spanish. “You were dead,” he said when he was capable of English again. “First him, then you. You stopped breathing. You fell over dead. What the fuck?” His accent thickened the words and then he fell into Spanish again.

Her body felt thick and slow after the faster-than-thought lightness of the netherplane and she was so exhausted she could barely form a thought. Then a hand brushed hers, long fingers seeking, and a swell of relief broke over her. Prometheus. Karma turned her head to find those black hole eyes looking back at her—but they weren’t pure black anymore. It was small, and if she’d been farther than a few inches away she might not have seen it, but now there was another aspect to the darkness of his gaze. A star. A small, white, spark of a star.

He blurred as tears flooded her eyes. He looked pretty damn amazing for a dead man. “Hi,” she whispered.

His brow furrowed. “What happened? Are you all right?”

Karma swallowed thickly and smiled. “I’m amazing. You’re alive.”

“You were dead,” Rodriguez snapped, reminding them that they weren’t alone. “You both were.”

Prometheus sat up, groaning, and the two men helped Karma do the same. “How long?” she asked her exorcist.

“A minute, maybe two. I couldn’t remember the CPR so I called Brittany. Longest goddamn minute of my life.”

Karma smiled wryly. “Mine too.”

Prometheus put an arm around her shoulders and she sagged against him.

Rodriguez’s next words were cautious. “Ah, Karma? Did you know you guys are glowing?”

She looked down at her hands. So they were. She could feel her magic shining through her veins. She’d have to learn how to rein that in or she’d freak people out in the supermarket. Prometheus could probably teach her. He was already dialing down his own glow, now that Rodriguez had mentioned it. She felt the wild, extravagant tangle of his power pulling in and dialing down until it was just a lingering hum beneath his skin. She still had a lot to learn about being a demigod—if that was what they were now.

But all that could wait for later. She laid her head on Prometheus’s chest and closed her eyes, hearing the slow steady beat of a heart. Strong and constant. Mine.

Chapter Thirty-One

Drugging the In-Laws

“Relax. They’re going to love you.”

“You should have let me bespell the wine with adore-me-approve-of-me charms.”

“Under no circumstances are we bespelling my parents to trick them into liking you.”

“We would drink it too. Think of it as an icebreaker.”

“Prometheus.”

He let it drop, returning to hover over the vegetarian chili he’d whipped up since Karma’s mother didn’t eat meat. Maybe he could sneak a little acceptance magic into the pot while Karma wasn’t looking. He’d never met parents before, but he was certain he wasn’t what anyone wanted near their darling daughters. Especially fathers with law enforcement backgrounds. There was a reasonable chance he was bulletproof after all Deuma’s magic had been pumped into his system, but Prometheus would rather not put it to the test tonight.

He didn’t remember anything after the world went white. No afterlife memories for him. One minute he was staring death in the face and the next his heart was beating in his chest for the first time in nearly twenty years. Karma said she wasn’t sure herself how he’d gotten his heart back, that she’d been wholly focused on stripping Deuma of her powers and funneling them back into him, but somehow she’d done it. Fitting, he supposed, that she’d saved his heart, since it was hers anyway.

It was still a little disorienting, being in love, but he figured he would apply the same ruthless determination to making her happy that he’d brought to everything else in his life and it would work out.

She came up behind him, looping her arms around his waist and resting her cheek on his shoulder. “They really are going to love you. I love you.”

Just words. He’d never put much stock in words, but those three words held a weight and magic all their own. They made him hers. They coated his fragile, newly restored heart in the protective steel of her love. She made him safe and he made her free. Magic.

Karma squeezed his waist. “If conversation lags, I can always ask my mom about my biological father. That should liven things up.”

He turned, tucking her against his chest and inhaling ginger and jasmine. She put her ear over his heart—it had been two weeks, but neither of them could seem to get used to the sound of it. “Are you sure you want to know?”

“I’m sure. I’m not afraid of knowing who I am anymore.”

“You’re the same Karma you’ve always been. A demigod among mortals.”

“Why do I get the feeling you don’t mean that as a metaphor?”

“Maybe I don’t. What are gods anyway except those who create life and isn’t that what you did to me? Brought me back to life? Made my heart beat? For all we know you made me immortal.”

“Don’t go testing your immortality anytime soon, okay? I don’t think I can take it.”

“I won’t.” He had too much to live for.

He traced a path down his favorite spot at the back of her neck, savoring the silken softness of her skin and the barely audible catch in her breath. Tipping her chin up, he laid a kiss on the mouth of the woman who made his heart beat, who had flown in the teeth of her fears and thrown herself into the chaos of her powers to save him. He pressed his magic against her skin, the answering flare of her own heating his blood. He fed his reaction along the tether that had connected them ever since he woke up on the floor of her office, and she moaned.

She pulled away. “You only want me for my magic.”

He caught her wrist, tugged her back. “Maybe,” he teased, pulling her in for another kiss that left them both breathless when she finally broke away.

“My parents are in the parking lot.”

“Then I guess I’d better be good.” He forced himself to release her and turned to check the chili for the millionth time.

“Don’t bother being good. Just be you. They will love you.”

“The more you say it, the less I think you believe it, sweetheart.”

“I don’t have to believe it. I’ve seen it.”

He looked over his shoulder at her, frowning. “You had a vision about tonight?”

She flashed him a smile. “Trust me. They love you.”

“Are you lying to me?”

“Would I lie?”

He grimaced, turning back to the chili. “I’ve been a bad influence on you. Poor Karma. She used to be so virtuous.”

“Not too virtuous.”

“You’d tell me if your father was going to shoot first and ask questions later, wouldn’t you?”

“I thought you believed you were immortal?”

“Everyone’s immortal until they find the thing that kills them. That’s the adventure in life.”

She grinned. “You’re all the adventure I can handle.”

The elevator doors opened and his heart sped up as he turned to greet Karma’s family. Maybe they would love him. Maybe she was lying and they would hate him on sight. He didn’t know what the future held. All he knew was that he had a future for a change, and one way or the other, Karma was going to be in it. He was a ruthless, unscrupulous bastard and he was keeping the girl. The rest of the world would just have to adjust.

Karma called out a greeting and, as soon as her back was turned, Prometheus sent a jolt of adore-me-approve-of-me into the chili. Maybe they would have loved him without it, but when it came to Karma, he wasn’t taking any chances. He came forward as she hugged her mother and she caught his eye, rolling hers. He hadn’t expected to get the spell past her, her powers were too tapped in now, but she just smiled and shook her head as she introduced him to her parents.

She knew exactly what she was getting with him and she loved him anyway. Unconditional.

That was some strong ass magic.

About the Author

An Alaskan born and raised, award-winning author Vivi Andrews still lives in the frozen north when she isn’t indulging her travel addiction by bouncing around the globe. Whether at home or on the road, she’s always at work on her next happily-ever-after. For more about her books or the exploits of a nomadic author, please visit her website at www.viviandrews.com, stop by her blog viviandrews.blogspot.com, or email vivi@viviandrews.com.

Look for these titles by Vivi Andrews

Now Available:

Karmic Consultants

The Ghost Shrink, the Accidental Gigolo & the Poltergeist Accountant

The Ghost Exterminator: A Love Story

The Sexorcist

The Naked Detective

A Cop & A Feel

Finder’s Keeper

Naughty Karma

Serengeti Shifters

Serengeti Heat

Serengeti Storm

Serengeti Lightning

Serengeti Sunrise

Reawakening Eden

Ghosts of Boyfriends Past

Superlovin’

A Karmic Consultants Story

True love? For neuroscientist Dr. Mia Corregianni, it’s just an unproven hypothesis. But when she loses the heirloom watch her family believes is enchanted with a potent love spell, she fights superstition with superstition by hiring a psychic finder to track it down.

Chase Hunter is a human compass, homing in on whatever the seeker wants most—that is, when he isn’t surfing or actively avoiding anything resembling a real human attachment. Such has been his life since an accident took his family.

Unfortunately, Mia’s case isn’t a simple insta-Find. The catch? To disguise his real mission from her romance-crazy family, he has to pretend to be her boyfriend. He could deal with that if her complicated emotions weren’t blocking his abilities—or if her innermost desires weren’t walloping him upside the head every time he opens himself to his gift.

As the case wears on, their fake romance begins to feel all too real. Scary stuff for a man who’s reluctant to let himself live again. And a woman who doesn’t believe in magic…or love.

Warning: This book contains meddling grandmothers, magic watches, and a surfer with a body so hot it can teach any scientist the true meaning of chemistry.

Enjoy the following excerpt for Finder’s Keeper:

His chuckle was low and far too delicious in the dark. An invitation to things she had no place hungering for. “So, now that you have me in the pantry, what are you going to do with me?”

What indeed? Mia’s heart had been doing double time ever since Nonna shoved her in here. The inky blackness inside the pantry seemed to amplify all her other senses—and give her permission to indulge them. She could hear the rustle of his shirt, the slightest shift in his breathing. And, Lord almighty, he smelled amazing. Like summers at the beach with lowered inhibitions—not that she’d had any of those.

“I say we go with it,” Chase said, his body suddenly so close she could feel the warmth of him.

“Go with it,” she repeated, defensively trying to sound quelling and disdainful rather than like a trembling pile of hormonal mush.

She must have succeeded, because Chase made a low scoffing noise, the puff of breath stirring against her skin in the darkness. “Stop trying to plan everything, Mia. Sometimes you’ve gotta go with the moment. Have you ever done that? I bet you have a boyfriend checklist. Itemized and ranked.”

And color coded. Mia cringed, glad he couldn’t read on her face how right he was. So she liked to plan. And, yes, she knew what she required in a mate. Was that a crime?

Outside Marvin Gaye’s crooning segued from “Let’s Get It On” into “Sexual Healing”. Nonna was nothing if not subtle.

“This isn’t a moment. It’s a hostage situation,” she protested, but the words wavered as a calloused hand brushed across her throat and around to cup her nape.

“I say we pay the ransom,” he murmured, his voice so throaty and low…and close. The words practically touched her lips. And then his lips did.

The kiss was a jolt to her system. She’d heard of toes curling and always thought it was a metaphor, more for poets than scientists, but with the warm, gentle press of his mouth against hers, synapses she’d never known she had started firing and, sure enough, her toes curled in her impractical shoes.

Mia held herself still, observing the kiss more than participating in it. Until his tongue traced the seam of her lips and then slipped between them, and Mia remembered she was supposed to be kissing him back.

She flicked her tongue against his and leaned into his chest, fisting her hands on the lapels of his blazer and hanging on for dear life. As soon as she relaxed against him, Chase’s arms came around her and suddenly he was all she could feel, swamping her senses. He was warm and hot and smelled deliciously of sunblock and citrus. Damn if the man couldn’t kiss. She was swooning—actually swooning!—in his arms, clinging to his lapels to keep from careening into the dry goods.

He murmured something indistinct and utterly intoxicating against her lips, some mumbled exclamation of surprise or pleasure, and angled his head to take the kiss deeper, sucking her under until all she felt was his mouth and all she heard the rushing of her blood, the pounding of her heart…

And the creak of the pantry door opening.

Light splashed across the tangle of their embrace and a high, young voice sing-songed, “I fooound them!” The words echoed throughout the house as Mia jerked away from Chase, knocking several cans of soup off a nearby shelf.

Mia ignored the fallen cans and Chase and everything except her cousin’s six-year-old daughter Imogen, standing in the doorway, staring at them without blinking, her arms folded disapprovingly. “Nonna says you hafta come to dinner ’fore we can eat.”

“Of course! We were just on our way,” Mia yelped, grabbing Imogen’s shoulders and spinning her to face the dining room where half the family would be gathered, the rest spilling out onto tables in the side yard.

Imogen took off toward the dining room as Chase stepped out of the pantry behind her. “They were kissing, Nonna!” she shouted, her high, clear voice carrying back to them and echoing throughout the house as she ran. Chase covered his mouth—either to conceal the evidence or his laughter, she couldn’t tell which. A cheer rang out from the dining room. Mia flinched.

So much for just friends.

Biting Love, Book 6

When top Minneapolis ad man Ric Holiday is asked to design a campaign for a quaint little town, his first reaction is absolutely not. Meiers Corners is too near Chicago, home of the vampire who turned him as an orphaned boy.

Then the city sends an angel-faced med student with a body made for sin to plead their case. Synnove Byornsson is the ray of sunshine Ric hasn’t felt since he was human.

Armed with determination and a micro miniskirt, Synnove is prepared to crash Holiday’s penthouse cocktail party—and to dislike him on sight. But Mr. All-Style-No-Substance turns out to have a deadly smile, a barely restrained, feral strength, and piercing blue eyes that look at her—not at her cleavage.

Unfortunately Synnove has competition in the form of a sly temptress with a counterproposal. For the first time in her life, Synnove must cash in her genetic lottery ticket and fire back with some sizzle of her own—or her beloved Meiers Corners could become the new Sin City.

Warning: Contains a doctor with a bod for sin, an ad exec with a chip on his shoulder, sarcasm, sex, and a cabin full of annoying friends. Secrets are revealed. One heart-stopping, horrific moment leads to the ultimate of happily-ever-afters.

Enjoy the following excerpt for Beauty Bites:

A shiver hit me at Ric Holiday’s hot, promising smile. Testosterone plays a starring role in sexual arousal in males, but in women its purpose is less clear…

Argh. What was wrong with me? No lusting, especially after the opposition. My cousin had charged me with a job, and while I wasn’t against sex overlapping with work per se, I’d seen it cause aggravated stupidity too often. Extended bathroom breaks and three-hour lunches, sneaking around like nobody knows when in fact everybody does and resents the extra work.

Holiday’s smile sharpened, a wicked glint of teeth edging it like a knife. Pure lust shimmered through me. Oh yeah. Lubrication is followed by vasocongestion of the vaginal walls…crap.

I had to escape that promising smile, stat.

But the path to the study was clogged with people. I was screwed, and not in the good way.

Then Ric “Moses” Holiday extended one elegant hand toward his study. The sea of black, gold and silver miraculously parted. “Off you go now.”

All that, with just the force of his personality. Ooh.

Before I got too girly over it, I paused to wonder if he had any real character to back it up. I heard sizzle. Didn’t mean he had the steak.

His smile broadened. His eyes twinkled with an I have all the steak you need.

I gasped and escaped into Holiday’s study.

It was an upscale man cave—walnut wainscoting, leather couches and recliners, a leather-and-oak wet bar, and a seventy-inch smart TV, the ultimate in flickering fires. Its impressiveness was kicked stratospheric by the 7.1 surround sound, eight speakers’ worth of movie-quality goodness.

But an upscale man cave is still a man cave, and I’m not much into sitting on skinned cow. I crossed the room to a set of French doors cracked open to an evening breeze.

My breasts tightened. Not arousal but simple chill; I’d let go of the suit coat. I pulled it closed. Maybe Holiday made a habit of loaning articles of clothing to women. None of my business, but strangely, the thought bothered me. As if, for some reason, I wanted to be special to him. Had to be hormones making my brain mushier than normal. Stupid norepinephrine. I shook it off.

Nudging the French doors wider, I inhaled. The air, lightly scented with petunias, reminded me of home, back before my mother and father sold the house to travel the world, currently in Turkey or Abu Dhabi or something. Under the floral odor was a darker scent, mellow wood smoke with the tang of something spicy, elusive but mouthwatering. Unconsciously I turned my head to take the scent deeper—and buried my nose in the shoulder of Holiday’s suit jacket.

My cheeks burned. The cooler outside air seemed less a treat and more a necessity now—nothing to do with Mr. Flamingly Handsome Holiday. But of course I was lying to myself.

Didn’t matter. Uncomfortable was uncomfortable. I slipped outside. And stopped when my mandible hit the floor.

The terrace—it was too large and elegant to be a simple porch—was the size of my whole student apartment. Its black basalt surface was swept clean. An artful scattering of potted trees and graceful, discreet statuary merely enhanced the terrace’s stark elegance.

I crossed to the far side.

The edge was safeguarded by a heavily lacquered oak railing supported by worked iron spindles. I ran one hand along the rail’s silky smooth surface. This wasn’t conspicuous consumption supported by a maxed-out credit card. This was a sign of solid wealth. Advertising sizzle apparently paid better than I knew.

The cooler air, combined with the railing’s smooth feel, soothed me. Tensions I’d carried since even before the elevator incident drained out of my muscles. What a mess my life had become, that even that obnoxious incident seemed mostly an annoyance.

Leaning elbows on the railing, I looked out onto the Minneapolis-St. Paul night. Holiday’s penthouse was high enough that the view was rooftops and stars instead of the sides of buildings. Random fireworks burst in the air. Below me, streetlights blazed. The lamps were so distant they might have been stars.

What the heck was I doing here in Rich Man’s Canyon? Despite my runway looks, I was a hometown girl, raised in the small German-immigrant-settled city of Meiers Corners, Illinois. Ric Holiday’s rich penthouse and vast terrace made my tummy shimmy. If I hadn’t heard the desperation in Twyla’s voice, I’d have thought she’d reverted to another of her endless childhood pranks on me.

But she had been desperate, and I loved her like a sister. Besides, she invoked You Owe Me A Favor, calling due everything from when I’d borrowed her best suit for my med school interviews to covering for me the time I’d broken her Grandma Tafel’s reading glasses using them to magnify bugs. Although I put my foot down when Twyla added twenty years of interest. Favor interest, really. Everyone knows you have to call “Bank” or it doesn’t count.

Twyla was actually my second cousin, our grandmothers being sisters, although Meiers Corners was so insular I was related to half the population. If my father had been a native too, that percentage would have been higher.

But Twyla had a problem. Meiers Corners’s local economy was too local; the city was in danger of going bankrupt. The solution? Tourism. The single benefit of straitjacket insularity is that we’re steeped in local flavor. We have Quaint Local Shoppes coming out Ye Olde Sphincter.

So tourism seemed a natural fit, and was indeed working great, except for getting the word out. After all, tourism without tourists was, um…M.

Which was where Ric Holiday came in. Holiday Buzz International was the Número Uno ad shop for innovative campaigns. Holiday thought so outside the box that even circles were too square. Meiers Corners needed that desperately. We’re hard workers but tend to think right angles are the epitome of chic.

So Twyla, wearing her city admin hat, called Holiday. But he said no.

So the mayor called him. Holiday said no. Our chief of police called him. Holiday said no. The mayor’s secretary Heidi called, cracking her whip. Holiday said something unprintable that translated to no. Then our top lawyer and prime negotiator Julian Emerson called.

Holiday wouldn’t even speak to him.

Twyla said enough. Time to meet Holiday face to face, to find out what the sticking point was. Then she could apply either carrot (the mayor) or stick (Heidi) as necessary.

Time, Twyla said, to confront the lion in his den.

If she’d met lithe, tawny, forceful Ric Holiday in person, she couldn’t have gotten that any more right.

I fingered the expensive material of his suit coat. There was something untamed about him, sinewy strength barely civilized by suit and tie.

A bolt of lust sheared through me, so long and hard that I shuddered.

Which was of course when the French doors behind me opened.

“Here you are. Escaping the heat? I knew you were beautiful, but now I see you’re smart too.”

I spun to behold the owner of that deep voice. He’d changed into another suit, this one a charcoal gray that contrasted sharply with his azure eyes. In even those few moments I’d forgotten how handsome he was—so gorgeous he made my eyes hurt, my only excuse for blurting, “Did you know that seeing a good-looking person of the opposite sex makes the brain release dopamine which triggers pupil dilation?”

I slammed my stupid dopamine-dilated eyes shut. This was my opponent. I tugged his coat tighter, thought constricting thoughts, opened my eyes and tried again. “If I were smart, I wouldn’t have gotten my blouse torn.”

He glided closer. “The smartest move of all. Not your fault and yet effective, since you’re here to ask a favor. Visual aids are always useful in negotiations.” His eyes, sparkling with sensual intent, dipped to where his coat covered my cleavage. A smile, full of promise, curved his lips.

That wicked smile was a pilot light to the broiler of my body, igniting every cell, whoosh. I flushed hot, shivered with it.

But my brain wasn’t all that charmed. “Visual aids? Implying I should use sex to negotiate? That was beneath you.”

His smile pursed. “The bra isn’t a Temptress Siren Special? Retail $199. A thirty-six D unless I miss my guess, but a bit too small for you.” His eyebrows rose. “It’s not yours, is it?”

“I find it disturbing that you observed all that in a glance.” I’d thought his gaze had been on my face in the lobby.

“Good peripheral vision.” He quirked a grin. Devastatingly handsome morphed to boyishly attractive, actually even more devastating.

I squashed a groan. “Then what were you suggesting with the ‘visual aids’ crack?”

“My dear Synnove, I wasn’t suggesting anything. Merely observing.” He handed me a champagne flute. “Housekeeping is bringing you another blouse.”

I clamped the coat with one hand to accept the cut crystal with the other.

“And in observing, I find myself curious.” He sipped his champagne. “A beautiful woman from out of state attends my third annual Christmas-in-July house party, bearing a gift no less, but not because she wants something? I’m not sure I quite believe that.”

I sipped champagne too, ended up with my lips in my esophagus. The stuff was dry. “You invited me.” The words rasped like sandpaper. I coughed and tried again. “Do you always invite strangers to your house party?” Better.

“I’m in advertising. Even the people I know are strangers. But in this case, my admin handled the invites.”

Which reminded me that, though we were strangers, he’d named me on sight. I again opened my mouth to ask how the hell he knew, when he hit me with those startlingly blue eyes and drilled both question and oxygen from me.

He wedged his own question into the gap. “Why go to so much trouble to see me?”

It took a few quick breaths to pump up air for an incautious answer. “You’re a hard man to see.” Hard. I clutched my champagne and dredged my brain up from the gutter of my hormones. “You’re something of an enigma, Mr. Holiday. We want to negotiate, so we want to get to know you better.”

“We? I’m disappointed. I was so hoping this was about you.” Lean fingers slid under my chin, raising my face.

Our eyes collided. His sparkled with intelligence and confidence and a sexuality so blistering I couldn’t breathe. My body flooded with begging-for-sex estrogen. “M…me?”

“Yes. Your partners have sent the perfect leverage. The perfect female.” His voice deepened, husky. “You.”

“I’m…I’m not…” I cleared my throat.

He bent closer until his mouth hovered over mine. “You’re not perfect?” His breath heated my lips.

Desire arrowed straight through me, sudden and splashing and hot.

Karmic Consultants, Book 7

Nearly two decades ago, Prometheus sold his beating heart to a devil in exchange for epic power. That contract is about to expire—and so is he. There’s only one woman with the power to help him see his next birthday. And he’s willing to use every manipulation in his arsenal to pry that power from the ice queen’s grip.

Karma, who values order above all else, has had enough of the unscrupulous warlock’s pranks endangering her people. But when she confronts the wily trickster to demand a cease-fire, his terms throw her for a loop. The bastard wants her to save his life—and he wants her in his bed.

Clinging to her hard-won control is the only way Karma knows to keep her abilities from overwhelming her. If anyone can tempt her to embrace the chaos of her magic, it’s Prometheus.

One kiss brings her defenses crashing down. But can she trust Prometheus…or has she lost her own heart to a warlock with a hidden agenda?

Warning:  This book contains scheming, manipulation, bargains-with-the-devil, and meddling consultants. All’s fair in love and magic.

Content

Naughty Karma
Karmic Consultants 7
by
Vivi Andrews

Chapter One Tempest in a Tea-Length Dress

Chapter Two Letting a Feral Warlock Down Easy

Chapter Three Sympathy for the Devil

Chapter Four The Great Escape

Chapter Five Pandora’s Insomniac

Chapter Six Home Field Advantage

Chapter Seven Which Lie Did I Tell?

Chapter Eight Truth’s Consequences

Chapter Nine The Amateur Boy Scout

Chapter Ten Demons and Bumpers and Sprinkles, Oh My!

Chapter Eleven Getting Sparky

Chapter Twelve Color Me Bad

Chapter Thirteen Negotiations and Other Foreplay

Chapter Fourteen Relaxation for Beginners

Chapter Fifteen Charm and Punishment

Chapter Sixteen Second String Hero

Chapter Seventeen Save a Horse, Ride a Warlock

Chapter Eighteen What Dreams May Come

Chapter Nineteen Facebook Frenzy

Chapter Twenty Fastballs, Physics and Other Genetic Gifts

Chapter Twenty-One Shrodinger’s Safe

Chapter Twenty-Two The Lovechild of Xena and Thor

Chapter Twenty-Three Animal Urges

Chapter Twenty-Four Prisms, Rainbows and Kaleidoscopes

Chapter Twenty-Five The On Switch

Chapter Twenty-Six Survival of the Most Ruthless

Chapter Twenty-Seven The Perils of Lying to an Oracle

Chapter Twenty-Eight Ice Melt

Chapter Twenty-Nine Nightmares in Wonderland

Chapter Thirty Resurrection for Beginners

Chapter Thirty-One Drugging the In-Laws

About the Author

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