by Vivi Andrews
“The room is moving, Steve. Make it stop.”
“It has stopped. Come on. Up and at ‘em.” Prometheus frowned, not sure where the hell that had come from. He’d never said up and at ‘em in his life.
“I’m gonna sleep here,” Karma announced. “The floor is my friend.”
“Better than being your enemy, I guess, but you can’t sleep there. Come on.” He gave her shoulder a little shake and she moaned, swatting at him. “Wouldn’t you rather sleep in your nice, comfy bed?”
She mumbled something that sounded a lot like, “Fuck off, Steve,” but he figured he must be mistaken.
“Karma.” He bent to singsong in her ear. “Karma, I’m looking through your things. Violating your inner sanctum. You’d better wake up and stop me.”
She smiled sleepily. “Mm-hm. Thas nice.”
Prometheus cursed under his breath. This was why he wasn’t the good guy. He had no freaking idea how to do it. But he’d gotten her wasted in the name of training. The least he could do was get her into her own bed before he ran like hell in the opposite direction.
He pulled her up into a sitting position, propping her back in the corner. She sagged there bonelessly, a soft snore escaping her lips. He got an arm under her legs and another behind her back, but when he tried to stand she slithered out of his arms to puddle on the floor again. Prometheus cursed and hitched her up again. Her body was sleek, but she was no lightweight and she wasn’t exactly helping, flopping in his arms like a rag doll. Even with his telekinesis stabilizing her, he barely got them both out of the elevator without braining her on the wall. Once in the apartment, he flipped her over his shoulder in a fireman’s carry to keep from dropping her. And through it all, Karma snored softly, oblivious.
He looked around him, taking stock of Karma’s Bat Cave. It was one giant open room—loft style, the support beams exposed, each room flowing into the next. In style it was similar to the office above. Tidy, elegant and so perfectly feng shuied it could have been the showroom at a Chinese museum. It was beautiful, but somehow sterile, her taste for quality and need for control visible on every surface.
Karma stirred, making a low, puzzled noise from her position slung over his shoulder. He braced an arm around the back of her thighs to keep her in place and made his way to the far side of the apartment where the space was dominated by a California king bed, the bed frame set low to the ground. Matching bedside tables flanked the bed, and a giant armoire dominated a nearby wall, carved in the same style as the headboard. The only thing that didn’t fit—in fact the only thing in the entire apartment that didn’t seem a part of the whole—was the chair. Positioned facing the bed, the massive wingback chair looked like the kind of thing stodgy guys in smoking jackets would read Dickens in while thanking viewers like you on PBS—provided the stodgy guys in smoking jackets were built on the scale of WWF wrestlers. He couldn’t picture Karma there. Imagining her in the bed was much easier, but that way lay madness.
Prometheus flipped back the covers and rolled her onto the bed. She’d probably be more comfortable out of her clothes, but she’d probably also kill him when she woke up if he laid a finger on her while she was out cold, so she’d just have to be uncomfortable. He tugged the covers back up over her, patting them awkwardly. Was that all there was to tucking someone in?
She’d probably be hung over in the morning. Since it was his fault, he fetched a glass of water from the kitchen and a bottle of aspirin from the cupboard in the bathroom. When he returned, she was twisting restlessly beneath the sheets, her aura agitated. I hate the dreams. He remembered the fierce way she’d said it, the feeling of being locked inside someone else’s future. He set the water and the aspirin on the bedside and brushed her hair away from her brow, reaching out with a tendril of energy to soothe her.
Her eyes popped open. He jerked his hand back but she caught it between both of hers, clutching it tight. “Don’t go,” she murmured. “Promise you’ll stay.”
She couldn’t know what she was saying. The Karma he knew couldn’t get rid of him fast enough. But she was clinging to his hand with such desperation, he heard himself saying, “Of course I’ll stay. Sleep. I’m not going anywhere.”
She sighed, nodding sleepily. “Good. You stay.” Her eyes fell closed again as her hands went lax around his.
He stepped back, frowning down at her as she slept, peaceful again. She couldn’t really want him to stay. That was the alcohol talking. She’d probably thank him if he let himself out. Sure, he’d promised to stay, but they were only words. He’d never worried about keeping his word before.
The chair caught his eye. It would fit him perfectly. As out of place in the room as he was. Still he had no good reason for folding his limbs into the chair to keep vigil over her dreams. He wasn’t that guy.
He didn’t know why he stayed.
Chapter Eighteen
What Dreams May Come
”Max? Max, where are you?” Frustration warped into uncertainty and fear as she shoved through the racks, bending frantically to look beneath them for a small head with dark curls. He was always so curious, chasing energy trails and wandering ghosts. Why had she let him out of her sight? He could be lost, scared, anyone could have him—
The dream melted, blurring and fading. Karma swam up toward consciousness. A lost kid, wandered off in a department store. Lucy and Jake’s kid. Not even born yet. No sense sounding a warning. It might never even happen. Years away, buried in a thousand possible futures, and for some reason this time the fear hadn’t felt quite so personal. Like it really was Lucy’s fear, rather than hers. An echo.
Still, in the residual fog of sleep, it was hard to shake the thought that Max needed her. Max, who didn’t even exist yet. Half-remembered agitation tried to linger in the wake of the dream, but then it too faded. She felt heavy. Tired. So tired. Instinctively, she resisted the urge to sink back into sleep, forcing her eyes open. There was a man, long limbs overflowing the chair, sleeping. Her resistance evaporated and she closed her eyes, falling back into the cotton softness of sleep.
Karma stretched, blinking blearily up at her ceiling. Her mouth was dry as the Sahara and her stomach was on the spin cycle, but other than that, she felt good. Rested. She hadn’t been catapulted out of sleep. She’d actually slept well. It was almost enough to turn her into an alcoholic. She could handle the hangovers if she slept that soundly every night. She wasn’t even that hung over and she still remembered her dreams, but with a safe distance. As dreams, not as prisons.
Snatches of the night came back to her, little fragments of memory. They’d succeeded, she remembered that, the feel of it, the victory, the kiss, but everything after that was a blur. Had Prometheus really thrown her over his shoulder? Had she sung to him? She never sang. But it seemed her time with Prometheus was an exercise in deleting the phrase I never from her vocabulary.
Had she really seen him sitting in that chair, that godawful chair she’d bought on impulse because she’d felt that strange, eerie compulsion that she needed it, even though it didn’t match a damn thing in her apartment? She turned her head to look at the chair—
And saw a long, lean body sprawled out in it.
Apparently, she hadn’t imagined Prometheus’s presence in the night. Karma’s stomach took another discomfiting roll. He looked good in the chair. Like it had been made for him. Maybe it was.
Ridiculous. Karma shook away the thought and sat up, noticing for the first time her attire—or lack thereof. Her blouse was half-buttoned, her skirt rucked up around her hips. She looked half-debauched. Another memory popped up—like the jack-in-the-box from hell—of her swinging her leg across Prometheus’s lap, telling him she was going to kiss him. She groaned, covering her face with her hands.
“Good morning.” His voice still held the rasp of sleep. “Sleep well?”
Too well. And it was too intimate, hearing him like that. She didn’t want to lower her hands and face him. He didn’t belong here.
&nb
sp; “Or good afternoon, I guess.”
That brought her hands down. “Afternoon?” She whipped around to gape at the clock. Twelve-fifteen. Twelve-fifteen. She’d slept the entire morning away. “How is that even possible? I never sleep in.”
Prometheus shrugged, casually evicting another I never from her lexicon. He stood, stretching the kinks from his back. “It’s not like it’s a crime. It’s Saturday. Everyone sleeps in on Saturday.”
“I don’t.”
“Relax, Karma. Even you are allowed to sleep in once in your life.” He shot her a look and she was suddenly aware that she was in her bed, half-clothed and rumpled.
She tugged up the covers, but that didn’t make her feel any less vulnerable so she flipped them aside, wrapping herself instead in her most businesslike manner as she crossed to her closet. “I only meant that I have a very busy day.”
His voice followed her into the closet though he, thankfully, did not. “Is that your way of telling me to get the hell out?”
“Of course not, but I’m sure you have places to be,” she called as she quickly stripped out of her slept-in clothes and pulled on a pair of crisp slacks and a bulky sweater.
When she emerged from the closet he was leaning against his chair—no, not his chair. Her chair. Nothing in her apartment belonged to him.
“The beauty of my life,” he said, “is that I get to be wherever I want to be whenever I want to be there. So no, I don’t have places to be. I can spend all day teaching you how to relax.”
“Well, I can’t. I have a date.”
She didn’t know why she told him that, but as soon as she said it she felt calmer, like she was back on even footing with him.
Prometheus’s eyebrows flew up, calculation rolled across his face and his expression sharpened. “Since when do you date?”
“Since now.”
“I’m serious, Karma. When exactly did this guy show up for the first time?”
“Yesterday, not that it’s any of your business.”
“A little after three o’clock? What does he look like?”
“Tall, dark and handsome,” she snapped. Then dread added to the already unstable mix in her stomach. “Oh God, what did you do? Summon a demon to ask me out?”
“No, of course not.” But he wouldn’t meet her eyes even as he waved a hand to brush away her concerns. “Never mind. It’s probably nothing. Just do me a favor and don’t make any deals with him, okay?”
“What? I can date other men but I can only negotiate with you?”
He smiled, a quick, merciless, predatory smile. He stalked toward her and she held her ground, refusing to retreat. He loomed over her, brushed a thumb over her lower lip and her breathing quickened. “Sweetheart, you go on your date. Have a good time. But we both know you’ll only be thinking of me.”
She expected a quick, forceful, claiming of a kiss. She was braced for it, ready to defend herself against his domination, but she was completely unprepared for the soft, sweet brush of his mouth over hers. The gentle, coaxing invitation of his lips. She felt her knees loosen and just when she was certain he would press his advantage, overpowering her, branding her, he pulled away.
And winked. “Just something to think about on your date.” He pressed a finger to her lips like he was marking his place and then he was gone.
Leaving her with a lot to think about and defective knees.
Chapter Nineteen
Facebook Frenzy
The bell had been ringing nonstop all afternoon, so when it jangled again, Prometheus didn’t even glance up from the horde of teenage girls crowded around the register. Word had apparently gotten around at the speed of Facebook that Micah Hot-Jock had only asked Carly Theater-Geek to the prom and elevated her to such social status that she was named Prom Queen after Carly Theater-Geek had purchased an irresistibility charm at the Prometheus Unbound Bookshop and Spell Emporium.
He hadn’t even been sure he wanted to open the shop today, but when he saw the crowd of squealing girls waiting outside like he was auctioning off Taylor Lautner’s abs, he’d realized commerce therapy was exactly the cure for his current baseless irritation.
Now, three hours later, with his stock of irresistibility charms sold out and the more expensive true love charms going fast, his irritation was no longer baseless. He was losing patience with the seemingly endless supply of teenage girls looking for the summer fling that would define their very existences—especially because so few of them paid any attention to his warnings about side effects and reading the instructions carefully. He’d had to flat out refuse to sell to one girl who’d proclaimed she was going to wear her irresistibility charm night and day until Aidan Something-or-other noticed her and refused to listen when Prometheus explained that irresistibility charms could easily turn into obsession and stalker-bait charms if they were worn too often. The brat would have deserved what she got, but damn Karma had him thinking about what would happen after the charm left his store—as if any of that was his fault. He’d had to give the brat a discount on an allure potion just to get her to stop screeching threats about what her father would do to his business license if he didn’t sell to her. No one screeched at him before he developed a conscience. Except Karma. Life was easier when you let everyone dig their own grave, but these were kids. Obnoxious kids with too many hormones, but just kids.
The latest cluster—why did they always travel in packs?—finally gathered up their purchases and giggled and squealed their way out of the shop, leaving behind a heavenly silence. Prometheus surveyed the shop. It looked like a tornado had hit it, but his mortgage for the next two months was bulging in the register so he couldn’t complain. There were only two customers left—a mousy girl clutching a well-worn copy of Pride and Prejudice as she surveyed what remained of the romance charms, and a woman with curly brown hair and a designer handbag, who turned and beamed at him.
“Hi, Prometheus!”
“Brittany. Did Karma send you?”
The Karmic receptionist shook her head, curls bouncing. “She doesn’t know I’m here, but I had to warn you.”
“Warn me about what?”
Brittany sobered. “I’m sorry to be the one to tell you this, but Karma is seeing another man.”
“Yeah, she told me.”
“She did? Like in a make-you-jealous way? Or a warn-you-off way? Or an if-I-tell-you-about-my-date-I-can-pretend-we’re-just-buddies-and-I-don’t-really-want-to-jump-your bones-even-though-I-totally-do way?”
“If I had to guess, I’d say probably the second one.” But something still didn’t sit right with him about the timing. For some guy to pursue Karma immediately after Deuma had said she was worth tempting… “Brittany, did you see the guy? What’s he like?”
“Oh! I am full of reconnaissance about the enemy! He’s plastic.”
“Plastic. You mean she was lying and she doesn’t really have a date?”
“No, no, he’s a real date. But he looks stiff. Like a mannequin. Attractive though. If you like that sort of thing.”
Prometheus nodded. He still didn’t like the way his gut clenched at the thought of her out with another guy, but at least he knew it wasn’t Deuma or one of her minions in disguise. No one would ever call a maenad plastic. They were all heat—they’d melt a mannequin in seconds flat.
“Don’t worry,” Brittany soothed. “I don’t think Karma really likes him. She’s only using him to perpetuate her denial about her feelings for you.”
Prometheus frowned down at the perky little pixie he’d accidentally had a hand in kidnapping. “Brittany, why are you on my side? Shouldn’t you be the first one in line telling Karma to stay the hell away from me?”
Brittany cocked her head, visibly confused by the question, and a hesitant voice interrupted.
“Um, excuse me? How much is this one?” The girl with the book stood off to one side, holding up a true love charm. “The racks got all jumbled up and I can’t tell which ones go where.”
Promet
heus frowned at the charm. “You don’t want that one.”
Jane Austen Girl’s expression turned instantly militant. “Yes, I do.”
“What do you want?”
“What do you mean?”
“What do you want the charm to accomplish? What do you want to achieve?”
Jane Austen Girl blushed. “Never mind.” She started to turn away.
“There’s a guy, right?”
He half-expected her to ignore him, but she hesitated, drawing a circle on the floor with the toe of one Ked. “Aaron Walsh,” she mumbled.
Prometheus frowned. He’d heard that name several times today. Apparently, the kid was something of a heartthrob at the local high school. “That’ll make him love you.”
Jane Austen Girl spun back to face him, brown eyes fierce behind her glasses. “Then it’s the one I want.”
“You sure? It won’t make him be faithful to you or treat you well. Love isn’t always fun. Sometimes it stings like a bitch—and it isn’t always romance. It might make him love you as a friend, or a little sister. But go ahead and buy that one. If you just want him to love you.”
Jane Austen Girl was studying him speculatively now, all traces of defensiveness gone. “Which one will make him do all that other stuff? Treat me well and love me like I love him?”
“None of them. Magic doesn’t do that. It works with free will, not against it. It won’t change your nature to make you want something you normally wouldn’t. All it can do is let you see things you wouldn’t normally. For all I know, your Aaron Walsh is gay or so religious he thinks dating is a sin—or he is a dickhead who refuses to date anyone who isn’t a cheerleader. Magic won’t change that.”
“Then what good is magic?”
“It’s amazing. If you know how to ask for what you want.”
“But you said it can’t—”
“It can’t make Aaron Walsh love you, but do you really want someone who would have to be forced by magic to love you? Wouldn’t you start to resent the way you won him? Start to wonder if it was really love or just the spell tricking him into wanting you?”
