Naughty Karma

“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?”