Naughty Karma

“You’re doing it all wrong. You can’t go building barricades in your mind. It’s like trying to hold back the ocean with a wall of sand. You need to learn how to ride it, how to channel it, and to do that you need to relax and let the universe in.”

She twisted to get a better angle to glare up at him. “I tried that. The universe, as you put it, overwhelmed me until I couldn’t think anymore. I was totally lost. I need the control. The focus. It’s the only thing that gets me through the day.”

“There’s such a thing as being too controlled. You can’t control everything. Sometimes nature gets to have her say. You could be a force of nature, Karma. If you let yourself.”

“I’m trying.”

“Then stop trying so hard. Get up from there.”

She put her hand in his to let him lift her to her feet, a tiny static charge shooting from his fingertips into hers.

“C’mere.” He tugged her out from behind the screen and over to the couch tucked along the far wall. She waited for him to release her, refusing to show weakness by pulling away, even though she was excruciatingly aware of every second her hand lingered in his. When he did drop her hand, she refused to show a reaction, holding herself perfectly still. “Sit.” He pointed to the couch.

Since he clearly hoped to get a reaction out of her by treating her like a German Shepherd, she pointedly didn’t give him one, sinking onto the designated cushion without comment. He folded his long body onto the cushion next to hers, not touching but close enough to touch.

“Think of that psychic well you can tap into like a riptide. An ocean. If you fight it, it will drown you. If you block it, it will keep coming at you. But if you can learn to move with it, rather than against it, it can take you some pretty freaking incredible places.” His grin was an advertisement for all the wicked ways magic could be used. “Your problem is that instead of learning to swim, you’re trying to dictate to the ocean how it’s supposed to flow. It doesn’t work like that.”

“So how do I learn to ‘swim’, as you put it?”

He held out his hand again. “Shall I show you?”

Her instinct was to say no, so Karma forced herself to nod and place her hand in his. The static charge was stronger this time and kept tingling, a low current sizzle.

“Close your eyes,” he instructed. “And if you can, take down some of those walls you love so much.”

She obeyed the first request. The second was harder. Undoing a lifetime habit wasn’t as easy as closing her eyes. She didn’t even know how to begin. She didn’t see oceans or walls of sand. All she saw was her safe place. Her inviolate core. That quiet, hard-fought calm.

The first awareness she had of her own walls was when she felt Prometheus pressing on them from the outside. Once she was aware of them, releasing them was as simple as taking a breath—but as soon as she did, she couldn’t breathe. A thousand chaotic images crashed in on her, flashes of this future and that tripping over one another and slamming into her brain: deaths, lives, moments. She was Jo laughing, Lucy shouting, her parents hugging—each flicker faster than the last, overlapping and running her over, through her, jerking her farther and farther away from a sense of self, jumbling up inside her until she couldn’t tell what was real and what was chance. She felt Prometheus trying to guide her, urging her to what? Float? Swim? But no sooner had he tripped across her awareness than she was pulled into a cyclone of possible futures—she was Prometheus holding a gilded box like it contained a viper, and punching a dark-haired man, and waking up in a bed, Karma’s bed, but she wasn’t herself, she was him, her sheets tangling around his hips.

Karma recoiled, slamming walls, doors, fences, barricades, anything she could grasp between herself and the wild, plunging tide of futures. For a long, stretching moment, they continued to rush around her, a barrage of unfettered possibilities, then finally a quiet place emerged, that lovely center, that sense of self amid the chaos and the door of her internal safe slammed closed.

Her eyes flew open and she came up gasping for air. She heard a thud, but it took a moment for her eyes to focus enough to see Prometheus sprawled on the floor at her feet, the long fingers of one hand cradling his head.

“What happened?”

He groaned. “You cold cocked me.”

She looked down at her hands, surprised.

“Not like that.” He flashed his teeth, levering himself up off the floor. “My own fault. I didn’t expect you to blast me out hard enough to actually throw me. Serves me right for underestimating you.”

She pressed her palms to her cheeks, feeling them heat. “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to—”

“I know. And don’t apologize.” He stretched, rotating his torso like an athlete working out the kinks.

“I don’t like being out of control.”

“Aw, come on. It’s fun to take a flying leap every so often. What’s the fun in holding the reins so tight you never go anywhere?”

She glared at him. He made it sound so damn simple. Such unmitigated bullshit. “You don’t like giving up control either,” she snapped. “You don’t really believe in throwing yourself into chaos and letting it roll you. You always have to be in control—why else are you always fighting me for it? You want to be the one person pulling the strings, standing at the eye of the hurricane and watching all the mere mortals flail about, so don’t tell me you’re such an expert at letting go.”

Black eyes flashed. “Ah, but there’s a difference. I like being the puppet master, sure, but I only need to be in control of myself. You have to be in control of every little detail of your life. Everything that has happened or will happen to anyone who crosses your path. I can jump out of a plane, but as long as I’m at home in myself, I’m in control. You can’t jump because you’re too busy trying to fly the plane and dictate the weather and repack your parachute. So don’t go putting us in the same boat, sweetheart. I’m not the one who needs to learn to let go.”

She rubbed a hand over her eyes. “You don’t know what it’s like when I’m drowning in there. I can’t be reckless like you.”

“I understand better than you know. But I’m not saying you have to be like me. Just try to be a little less judgmental and controlling all the time.”

“Judgmental?”

He put his hands up for a truce. “You’re right. We agreed to let bygones go and all that crap.”

“You think I’m judgmental?”

“Do you have a better way to describe your moral there-is-no-gray-area stance?”

“Ethical, perhaps?”

“You do magic tricks for money. How is that any better than what I do? We both sell our services.”

“I don’t indiscriminately—”

“So you admit that you discriminate? What gives you the right?”

“Someone has to police it. Especially with people like you spreading magic willy- nilly.”

“Equal access is—”

“Irresponsible!”

“Democratic.”

“Capitalist, you mean.”

“You profit from it just as much as I do.”

“I’m doing good!”

It wasn’t until he reached for her that she realized she was on her feet, in his face, shouting at him, hands clenched.

“What are you doing?” She stumbled back to avoid his hands, bumping into the couch and sitting down hard. She was breathing too fast, heart pounding. She’d completely lost herself in the argument. How could he do that? He was the only one who’d ever made her lose her cool like that.

“Let’s try again.” He stepped toward her, reaching for her.

“No.” Karma ducked under his hands, scrambling away, all but running across the room, breathing again only when she’d gained a safe distance. “I can’t.”