Naughty Karma

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.