Naughty Karma: Karmic Consultants, Book 7 (10 page)

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
.