“Ronna’s seen that future. She told me. I could pick to see it too. I’ve never been able to pick.” Karma was breathing quickly herself—though the shortness of breath may have had something to do with the fact that he was crushing her.
Prometheus sat up, pulling her up beside him. “That was…”
There were no words to describe it. She’d been Ronna. That was her husband. Her baby. Her joy.
Which meant every other time it had been her pain. Her fear. Talk about nightmares.
Karma released a little hiccupping laugh. “It worked. I can’t believe it worked. It felt so different.” She blinked at him. “You actually did it.”
“That wasn’t me.” He rubbed a thumb along her cheekbone. Maybe he was still off balance from their dunk into her power, but all he could think was what a marvel she was. “You…” Amaze me. Awe me. Make me want—No. Best to cut that thought off right now. He wanted her help. Nothing else mattered. Life or death. No distractions.
She levered herself straighter with a hand pressed to his chest then frowned at her hand. “You really don’t have a heartbeat.”
“I know.”
“Heartless bastard,” she muttered, but the words were bemused rather than condemnatory. She flexed her fingers and he felt her power flex, little tendrils of it snaking into his chest, seeking the origin of his power. He knew the moment she found the tether that tied him to Deuma. And if he felt it, Deuma did too. This was exactly what he wanted Karma to be able to do, but if she did it when Deuma wasn’t contained by a summoning—Fuck.
He grabbed Karma’s wrist and yanked her hand off him. “Enough.”
She could have resisted, kept probing—he hadn’t been kidding when he said she could Hulk-smash him if she let herself—but her head wobbled on her neck and her face fell into an exaggerated pout. “What?”
Karma Cox was drunk off her ass and about five minutes from passing out cold.
“Come on,” he growled. “Let’s get you home.” He was rapidly approaching sober, but she was in no shape to drive and if he put her on the back of his motorcycle, she’d probably slide right off. “I’ll call you a taxi.”
She snickered, apparently finding this hysterical. “I think I can walk it.” Using him as balance, she shoved herself to her feet and staggered a zigzagging path across the room to where a black Chinese screen painted with a red and gold dragon hung on the wall. She opened a panel on the wall, swiped her thumb across it, and the screen parted to reveal an elevator. “Ta-da!” She twirled, going for some kind of Vanna White flourish, but the movement was too much for her and she tumbled into the elevator to land flat on her ass, giggling “Whee!” the whole way.
Apparently, they had reached the happy drunk portion of the evening. He should be recording this. No one would ever believe Karma had said, “Whee!”
Prometheus crossed to the elevator. She’d managed to get herself into a semi-seated position, wedged into the corner. After her somewhat half-hearted attempt to restore her clothing to order, her blouse was held closed by only two buttons and her skirt was back down around her legs rather than hitched at her hips. All of her attention was fixed on wiggling her stockinged toes when his shadow fell across her and her head weaved and wobbled to the side so she could look up at him.
“You’re tall, you know that?”
He crouched down in front of her so she didn’t injure herself trying to look him in the eye. “You live in the basement?”
“Mm-hm. Jo calls it the Bat Cave. Thinks I don’t know. But I know. I know all.” She waggled her fingers in front of her face, frowning at them. “I can’t feel my hands. The vodka stole my hands, Prometheus.” But the vodka had also stolen her enunciation and Prometheus came out Promshuss. “Your name is hard. Ima call you Steve. Okay, Steve?”
“No.”
She pouted. It was disturbingly adorable. He found himself regretting his why-the-fuck-do-I-need-a-camera-on-my-phone stance. The blackmail would be priceless.
“C’mon, Steve. Please?”
“Fine, whatever, call me Steve.”
“Or I could call you Betty and you could call me Al.” She giggled, then closed her eyes and began to hum. Very off tune. Music was most definitely not one of her gifts.
“I think in that scenario, I’d rather be Al than Betty. Can you stand?”
“Nope.”
“Okay then.” Prometheus straightened and pushed the down button. The elevator eased into motion so smoothly he barely felt it, but Karma moaned.
“Oooh, that isn’t good.” She flopped onto the floor, pressing her cheek to the carpet and groaning. “That’s bad. I don’t like bad.”
The elevator stopped moving and the door slid open without a sound. Prometheus crouched next to Karma as she huddled in the fetal position on the floor. “Karma?”
“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.