Naughty Karma: Karmic Consultants, Book 7 (14 page)

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.