Naughty Karma

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.”