Naughty Karma: Karmic Consultants, Book 7 (15 page)

“
This
is to give you a focal point, something external to center your magic through so you don’t have to break down your fortress of solitude to work your magic, and
this
is to help you relax.” The other hand appeared, holding a giant, economy-sized bottle of Stolichnaya.

Karma glowered. “That’s your master plan to train me? Vodka?”

“It’s a time honored technique for helping people relax. Why fight history?”

“History has taught us that people are
idiotic
when drunk.”

“And? You could use some idiocy in your life.”

“I’m getting tired of you telling me what I need in my life.”

“Do you want my help?”

She ground out, “I do.”

“Then you need me in your life. And tonight, vodka.” He smiled, a curve of the lips that was almost feral, in no way resembling the perfectly civil curve of Carlton Norris’s perfectly civil lips. Karma felt something low in her belly stir. “Aren’t you going to look at your present?” He swung the charm, rocking it like a hypnosis aid from his long fingers.

“Set it there.” She wouldn’t touch it until she’d had a chance to test it for traps. Not that she thought Prometheus would actually hurt her—they’d gone beyond that—but manipulate her? That he’d do without blinking.

He spread it before her on the desk with a flourish and stepped back. Another man might have been insulted by her obvious mistrust, but Prometheus seemed to take it as a compliment. “Do you have ice?” he asked as he backed away.

“The freezer in the break room. Down the hall to the left.”

Then he was gone, taking his massive presence—and massive bottle of vodka—with him and leaving her alone with the charm.

It was an elegant piece of work, both physically and magically, layers of pressed metal and subtle tendrils of spells. Confidence and strength folded over focus and something else she couldn’t quite describe, though if she’d had to put it into words, she would have called it one-with-the-universeness, a sort of cosmic acceptance. She looked for booby traps, probing into the soft layers of spell, but found nothing suspect. Just clean, white magic. Not the slightest oily slick of dark. Even the leather thong was harmless. She brushed a finger over it tentatively, alert for any spells that activated at her touch, but nothing changed, no spell trap snapped closed around her. Had he really given her a gift to help her with no strings attached?

“Did I pass?”

She looked up to see him cupping a tumbler filled with ice in one palm while the other hand gripped the neck of the massive bottle.

“Shockingly, yes. Thank you for the charm.”

“You should wear it constantly. The more you use it, the better it will be. It tunes to you.” He set the tumbler on the desk and unscrewed the cap on the vodka with a twist of his wrist. The seals crackled as they broke and clear liquid draped itself across the ice like a lover as he poured. He set the bottle on the desk and grabbed a chair. She knew that chair, knew it was heavy, but he spun it around to the side of her desk without even a grimace of effort and sprawled his long, lean body into it.

He waved for her to proceed and Karma arched a brow at the single glass. “If you think I’m getting trashed while you stay sober, you’re crazier than I thought.” If she hadn’t been watching him, she wouldn’t have noticed the minute hesitation, the way his eyes flicked to the side. He didn’t want to drink it.
Of course.
“I should’ve known. What’s in it? What did you spike it with?”

His hand shot out like a snake striking, snatching up the glass. He’d thrown back the contents and slammed the glass back onto her desk with a clink before she could do more than blink. “There? See? Harmless. But you’re right. It’s bad form to drink alone.” He flicked his fingers and a second glass appeared beside her right hand where it rested on the desk.

He filled her glass, then refilled his own, but she was getting better at seeing beneath his bluster and Prometheus looked uneasy. He lifted his refilled glass, arching a brow when she didn’t raise hers to meet his toast. “Watching for signs of cyanide poisoning?”

“I’d pegged you as more of an arsenic guy.”

He snorted. “My God, did Karma just make a joke?”

“Why are you so nervous, Prometheus? What’s in the vodka?”

“Distilled grains, if you believe the Russians.” When she made no move to lift her own glass, he lowered his own. “I don’t generally imbibe, okay? Alcohol tends to affect me rather strongly. The last time I drank, I accidentally summoned a demon because at the time it seemed like a good way of getting your attention.” He raised his glass again. “But I’m willing to take one for the team. To prove my good intentions.”

She looked at the bottle, still dubious, but starting to feel like a fool and prude for resisting. “How does this work?”

“You drink it.”

“Cute.”

“That’s all there is to this plan, Karma. You drink, you relax, and I help you figure out how to go with the flow rather than fighting the tide of your own power all the time. Simple. Which is good because if I’m gonna be hammered too, we probably should avoid plans with a lot of moving parts. Just think of me as the tour guide for your powers. I’ll drive the bus. You sit back and take in the sights.”

Simple. Simple sounded good. So did letting someone else be responsible for keeping her afloat for a while.

Karma lifted the vodka, pressing down the shiver of misgiving that seemed to tingle through her fingers and up her arm. The first mouthful of vodka kissed her tongue and then punched her in the back of the throat. She shook her head sharply, fighting down a cough as her eyes started to water.

Prometheus chuckled. “You get used to it.”

She glared at him and defiantly took another swallow. This one went down easier, just a twitch of her chin betraying the way it kicked as it slid down her throat. Prometheus silently toasted her and took a sip from his own glass.

“Why does alcohol affect you so much? Is it because of your heart?” She frowned, studying him. He
looked
normal. You would never know it was only magic keeping him alive. Like a vampire. How alive was he? “Do you eat? I mean, I know your heart doesn’t pump your blood, but is everything else about your physiology normal?”

“I can get it up, if that’s what you’re asking.”

Her face flamed. “That is
not
what I asked.”

He gave a low, dark laugh and took a long drink. “I eat. I drink. I even sleep on occasion. My hair grows and when I try to grow a beard, it itches like a bitch, same as any other guy. The difference is the more magic I use, the more it sort of speeds up my body. I need to eat more often, shave two or three times a day, and I might as well be narcoleptic if I’m really burning hot, cuz I’ll pass out and wake up fifteen minutes later ready to do it all over again. So while I get drunk fast—one more of these and I’m gonna be singing show tunes—I also sober up fast.”

“What happens when you don’t use magic?”

He smiled. “I always use magic.” Their glasses refilled with a wave of his hand, the level in the bottle dropping in concert.

“I bet you couldn’t go one day without casting a spell.”

“And you would win that bet.” He shrugged, unapologetic.

She’d expected him to puff up at the challenge, but he tipped back in his chair, rocking it onto the hind legs as he swirled the vodka in his glass, calm and utterly unoffended. She really didn’t know this man. He’d been her greatest frustration for months, but what did she really know about him?

“What kind of name is Prometheus?” The vodka made her tongue feel loose and easy, words spilling right off it.

“Titanic.”

“But why call yourself that?”

“The man who stole fire from the gods and gave it to the masses, then was doomed to lose internal organs as a punishment? Somehow it seemed fitting.”

“But
Prometheus
. Don’t you ever wish your name was Steve or something?”

“You probably fantasize about being called Beth, don’t you?”

“Katharine, actually.” She blinked and frowned at her glass—she’d never told anyone that.

He laughed. “Sweetheart, you’re no Kate. People like us need names that could never belong to anyone else.”

“People like us. What does that even mean?”

“Demigods.”

“You’re saying one of your parents was a god?”

“Fine, I’m not a demigod by the strictest definition. Maybe just a minor deity. But
demigod
has such a nice ring to it, don’t you think?”

“You aren’t a god, Prometheus,” she said dryly. “Demi or otherwise.”

“I guess that depends on your definition. What is a god anyway? I have the power to bend the world to my whim. Isn’t that godlike?”

She ignored the question, realizing he was trying to pivot the conversation away from his past. There was so much more she wanted to know. “You changed your name after you traded your heart?”

“About that time, yeah.”

“What was your name before that?”

“That’s a useless question.”

“Why?” She noticed she was holding the charm he’d made for her and dropped it over her neck. It settled against her breastbone, warm and right, expanding her sense of calm.

“I’ve been Prometheus for longer now than I was ever known as anything else, and it’s more who I am than any other identity ever was. You won’t know me by looking back there. In all ways that matter, I was born a little over nineteen years ago.”

He rocked his chair and drained his glass. Karma sipped her drink. The vodka wasn’t kicking anymore. It slid down smooth and easy, warm and welcome. The glasses kept refilling on their own and now that she thought about it, the glass felt different in her hand, bigger. Or maybe it was her hand that felt different. Tingly and sort of swollen—like there was a delay between her skin and the nerves, a padding that filtered everything she touched.

And her lips, they tingled too. She ran her tongue over them, fascinated by the feel. She might be drunk. Was Prometheus drunk too? She looked at him, wondering if his lips felt tingly and flushed like hers. He looked relaxed, tipped back in his chair, his lead lolling back loosely as he rested his drink against his stomach. He nagged at her about relaxing, but he didn’t let his guard down around anyone else either. It was ingrained, that distance he kept between himself and the rest of the world.

“Did you like growing up in foster care?”

The chair legs thumped as they slammed back to the floor. Prometheus wasn’t relaxed anymore. His black eyes bored into her. She hadn’t meant to say it. Her filters were down and that
knowledge
that sometimes hit her had popped out of her mouth before it had even really had a chance to register on her brain.

“No one likes growing up in foster care.” He reached for the bottle, refilling their glasses by hand.

“I didn’t mean to—”

“You pulled that out of thin air, didn’t you? Post-cognition too, huh? Some fucking gift you’ve got there.” His face was tight. She’d never seen him angry before. She’d been furious in his presence, but he’d never gone past I-don’t-give-a-damn on the emotional spectrum. It was a little scary, seeing him like this. She felt the most animalistic part of her brain screaming at her to run like hell, there was a pissed off predator a few feet away from her, but she stayed perfectly still, watching him.

“Does it all make sense now?” he snapped. “Why I don’t give a shit about my birth name? Why I can’t understand why you wouldn’t have any curiosity about your birth father? What is with that? I’ll never know who my biological parents were and that shit makes me nuts. How does it not make you crazy?” He lurched up out of the chair, his long legs covering the ground to the couch in three strides.

Karma rose, the room swooping dizzily for a moment, and followed, drawn toward him like a tether connected them. She knew the answer to his question, but she didn’t say it. She had a family. Her parents. Jake. Sure, she’d been different. The ocean of power inside her had set her apart from them, made it so they could never wholly understand her, but they had always loved her. That’s why she didn’t need to know who had supplied the sperm to create her. Prometheus hadn’t had that. He’d been alone, trying to figure out who he was in a vacuum.

It was easy to picture him—she wasn’t sure whether it was imagination or some facet of her abilities supplying the images, but she saw them all the same. Smart, independent, resourceful, often in trouble. The system would not have rewarded his defiant brand of ingenuity.

She toed off her heels and sank onto the soft, ivory leather of the couch beside him, careful to keep all traces of sympathy from her expression. He wouldn’t want it. The topic was a minefield and she was too fuzzy to navigate it well, so she hid the way the thought of him as a kid made her ache, letting him see only the respect she had for what he’d become.

She raised her glass to him. “To hacking out a place for yourself in the world.”

That obsidian gaze landed hard on her. He went preternaturally still and for a moment, she saw the predator, pure and unvarnished, looking back at her. Her stomach clenched. Then he blinked, something unlocked and suddenly his mouth was twisted in a wry smile, his glass clinking against hers. “To hacking it out.”