Naughty Karma

The area where his heart should be constricted and his palms began to sweat.

Karma smiled, coolly professional again. “Tomorrow we find that box.”

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.”