Naughty Karma

power.”

Deuma giggled. “Does it show? I think it flatters me.”

The devil rose from the crate and preened, rubbing her hands over her hips. There was a faint glow rising from Deuma’s skin, like paintings of saints and gods. She was hypnotic, seductive and projecting harmlessness so hard the hair on Karma’s arms lifted from the underlying danger.

“I’m so close to perfection.” Deuma sighed, her face falling into an exaggerated pout. “And then my favorite pet warlock decided to try to cheat me out of our bargain. That wasn’t very nice, Prometheus.”

“Forgive me for wanting to live,” he said dryly.

“I don’t forgive.” Deuma’s face flashed to deadly seriousness—a flicker of vicious reality beneath her constant cotton candy veneer, the sight of it all the more brutally chilling for being so quickly masked by another gooey smile. “But I do renegotiate. If you can make it worth my while. And you have been one of my favorite pets.”

Karma’s heart stuttered, doubt surging with the sense that this was it, the moment when her vision would come true. Then reality intruded and she realized how completely different her dream had been from what she was seeing now. Brittany and Rodriguez weren’t even here. There was no summoning circle binding Deuma and time wasn’t frozen. Her dream hadn’t been the truth. From the power radiating off Deuma, she wasn’t likely to have allowed herself to be summoned and bound, so it seemed highly improbable that any part of that vision might have come true. Karma’s doubts had conjured up the unlikely future that most closely matched her fears. She really had seen what she wanted to see. Prometheus loves me. He would never do that to me.

Karma evicted that thought. No time for dwelling on it at the moment. Right now they had to find a way to tempt the semi-deified devil. “We have Bacchus’s Cloak.”

The sinuously moving devil went very, very still. “Do you? My, my, that is a precious find. However did you come by it?”

Karma borrowed a line from her dream. “Does it matter?”

“Not particularly.” She smiled. “Do you know what it does? Never mind, never mind, you’re right, unimportant.” She closed her eyes and shook her head sharply, giving a delicate little shiver. “Tempting, but as it happens, I’m not interested in Bacchus’s Cloak.”

Prometheus conjured a charm to his hand, the gesture eerily identical to Karma’s dream. “Are you interested in this?”

Karma didn’t know what it was. She only knew it gave off a silky gleam of magic and made Deuma’s eyes almost feral with greed.

“Oh, Prometheus, you do have the best toys. But no…sadly, I’ll have to decline.” She smiled, wagging a finger. “You’re trying to tempt me with objects, but they’re just things. Powerful, beautiful things, but they don’t have will. Do you know how a devil gets her power, dear boy? The power to appear unsummoned…the power to keep a man alive after you’ve taken his beating heart…the power to grant unimaginable wishes…where does it all come from?”

“I’d never given it much thought,” Prometheus said expressionlessly.

“Oh, now that’s a lie. You are all curiosity. It’s one of the things I love about you.” She danced closer, graceful and lithe. “It’s obvious, isn’t it? From the will. From my darling little contract signers ceding their free will up to me. Do you think we collect souls for the fun of it? What good is a soul, really? Bothersome things. But the signing, the completion of the contract, that moment when he places his very being into my possession— voluntarily.” She gasped. “What a rush. Contracts are power—not like your silly little magic, but real power. Freedom to move between the planes, coming and going as I please. Not a puppet to be summoned, called up whenever someone wants a she-devil to eat the flesh of their enemies. I’m almost a god now.” Her expression darkened abruptly, thunder gathering. “But that will all go away if one of my contracts breaks. So you see, Prometheus, I can’t let you out of our little deal. Not unless you’re willing to sign an addendum…”

“If you don’t want objects, what do you want?”

“Haven’t you figured it out yet?”

Karma held her breath. She knew what was coming. Deuma would ask for her. It had all been leading up to this…

“I want you, Prometheus.”

Prometheus frowned at Deuma as she pranced and danced flirtatiously around Karma’s office. He couldn’t have heard her right. “What do you mean, you want me?”

“I knew there was something special about you from the first moment you summoned me—drunk off your ass, but so incredibly focused. So driven. So angry. You’re a natural, Prometheus. I’ve been watching you and I think you’d make an excellent devil yourself. Think of the last twenty years as an audition.”

“A devil.”

“You would be my right hand. Making dreams come true—while collecting contracts and bolstering my power. And your own, of course. Your power would never go away, Prometheus, as long as you kept reaping for me. And then, with time, you would develop power in your own right. You yourself could ascend as I have—take on assistants, be a god. Though you did try to betray me.” She kicked the crate containing his drumming heart. “So I think a few years penance is in order. All the power you reap will go to me for the first, oh let’s say, thousand years. That seems fair, don’t you think?”

Beside him, Karma gasped.

“A thousand years of servitude?”

“I wouldn’t be a demanding boss. Think of it as a thousand years of the kind of power you’ve enjoyed for the last twenty. You could even keep your shop—it’s the perfect set up for a devil. Why, the marks would come to you! No summoning necessary.”

He knew from experience that deals with devils were designed to look appealing at the first blush. He’d prepared himself for her to try to tempt him. He just hadn’t expected to actually be tempted. He could go on as he had, indefinitely, with unlimited power. With Karma. It sounded too good to be true. “What’s the catch?”

“No catch. No hidden clauses. I give you back your heart as soon as you sign on the dotted line, saying you’ll come work for me. I like you, Prometheus. I think we’d rub along well together, don’t you?” She batted her eyes, reminding him of how irresistible he’d once found her. But now she seemed obvious and overblown, a caricature of sex appeal.

The woman who had come to define lust stood to the side and slightly behind him, her spine as rigid and unyielding as her morals.

“Don’t,” Karma said softly. “A thousand years, Prometheus. We’ll find another way. You don’t have to do this.” She would never love a devil, but what shot did he really have of her returning his affections anyway?

He could protect her if he was all-powerful. Yes, he’d have to put people into the same situation he’d been in, but he could bite down the taste that left in his mouth. The greater good, right? He’d be screwing strangers over to protect his own—he could live with that.

Deuma conjured a sheaf of papers with a flourish, waving a pink pen with a feather on the end. “Sign on the dotted line and all is forgotten.”

Prometheus thrust out a hand. “Let me read that.”

“Don’t you trust me? You weren’t such a stickler for reading last time.”

“I was drunk last time.”

“I like you drunk. You want a drink?”

A wine bottle appeared in his hand so abruptly he almost dropped it. “No more games,” he snapped. “The contract.”

“Fine, fine, read.” Suddenly the wine was a stack of papers.

“Prometheus, don’t.”

He ignored Karma’s low plea and began to read through the contract. A thousand years was a long time. He didn’t want any surprises. “There are a lot of clauses here.”