The Cursed Read online

  “Okay, then we know why the birthday is important, but why, specifically, is my birthday important? Why did Merelith even know anything about it? Why did she call me a Halfling?” Rio scowled, yanking him out of his fantasies of waking up next to her for the next twenty or thirty or hundred years.

  He decided to be useful while he thought about it. He poured a bowl of water for Kit and put it on the floor, and then he stood watching the little fox daintily drink about half of it while he considered Rio’s questions.

  “I have no idea. None of this makes sense to me. The only way any—wait. Is there any chance your parents were Fae?”

  Rio’s face drained of all color, and she sank down into the overstuffed chair next to his couch, as if she’d lost the ability to stand upright.

  “I have no idea who my parents were. I have two things that the nuns claimed came with me to the orphanage. A necklace and a little stuffed animal.” She glanced at Kit. “Oddly enough, the stuffed animal is a fox.”

  “I’m not a big fan of coincidence, especially as the explanation for any fact in a mystery, but even I have to admit that the stuffed animal thing sounds like one.” Luke grabbed a couple of bottles of water and headed over to sit down on the couch next to her.

  “The important question, I guess, is what am I going to do? Maestro didn’t even try to deny that he was the one who got me fired. Fired and evicted, for that matter. I can’t imagine that he’ll let me find any other job without exerting this unbelievable influence he seems to have in order to keep me unemployed.”

  Rio stared at the floor and then suddenly, in spite of the topic, she smiled. “Is that a brand-new cushion for Kit?”

  They both watched as the fox turned around three times and curled up in the little pet bed he’d found at the store when he’d bought the bowls for food and water, the brush, the shampoo, and the freezer box of recommended fox food. Luke shrugged and pretended he was only imagining feeling the tips of his ears heating up.

  “It’s no big deal. I happened to drive past the pet store, and they were having a sale, and I thought if you stopped back by, Kit might be more comfortable in that than on the floor.”

  He scratched the back of his neck and changed the subject. “What I don’t get is why Maestro had you evicted. What could he possibly gain from that?”

  “You tell me. He wanted me to move in with you. How exactly does that work? Is the League of the Black Swan suddenly your tenant pimp?”

  Luke almost laughed, but the look on her face warned him not to do it, and he realized that he cared—cared quite a lot—what she thought of him. He was sinking into quicksand with this woman; slowly going under. Defiant and in denial with one breath, and wishing it would happen faster with the next.

  “Soon it will be all over but for the sucking noises,” he told Kit mournfully.

  He could have sworn that the little fox laughed up at him.

  “I have no idea why he’d want you to move in with me, but for once, I have to agree with the man. For whatever reason, dangerous people are suddenly very interested in you. You’d be safer here than anywhere else, at least until we get this figured out.”

  Luke’s cell phone rang before Rio could answer him, and he wisely kept from making any comments about being saved by the bell.

  “Oliver.”

  The voice on the other end was frantic. “I’ve got demons fighting in my shop! Help! They’re destroying half my merchandise.”

  “Who is this?”

  “Connor Kinney, down at the potions shop. Oliver, I can’t—”

  A loud crash interrupted whatever Kinney had been about to say, and Luke pulled the phone away from his ear a little. Rio raised her eyebrow, and Luke held up one finger to ask her to wait a minute.

  Kinney came back on the line. “Never mind,” he said, panting heavily. “They left. No thanks to you. When the fuck are you going to just accept the sheriff’s job and be done with it? Things are getting worse and worse around here.”

  Before Luke could answer, Kinney hung up.

  Luke dropped his phone on the couch next to him and tried to ignore the throbbing that had taken up residence in the middle of his forehead.

  “What was that about?”

  “People seem to have the mistaken impression that they should call me instead of the sheriff’s office when they have problems,” Luke growled. “I’ve turned down that job over and over again. They can’t sneak me into it through the back door, either.”

  “Why?” She tilted her head to one side in what he was fast coming to recognize as her expression of frank curiosity. “Clearly, you’re the best person for the job. Nobody would mess with you, and the ones who were stupid enough to try would learn their lesson. Don’t you think you ought to do your civic duty?”

  He barked out something that approached a laugh. “Civic duty, my ass. Look how well that worked out for Wyatt Earp.”

  Rio pulled her legs up onto the chair and wrapped her arms around her knees. Luke tried not to notice how nicely she filled out her jeans, but it was a losing proposition. She was in trouble, and he was turning into a horny lecher. He was going to the special hell.

  “How about this? You stay here. In one of the guest rooms,” he added, when she shot him a look. “You stay here until things calm down. It’s almost your birthday, right? We get you past that, nothing happens, and you can go back to your normal life.”

  She started laughing. “Oh, sure, rich boy. Maybe you rack up a big pile of savings when you live for five hundred years, but some of us have to work for a living. I can’t afford to wait a week before I get another job. I need to pay my cell phone bill and rent a new apartment, which means security deposits on rent and utilities, and I have about enough in the bank to cover maybe half that. Bike messengers are not exactly rolling in money.”

  Luke winced and felt like a complete ass. It had been a few centuries since he’d had to worry about money, it was true. He kept the front office looking dingy deliberately, so as not to scare off his typical clientele, who were people who didn’t have a lot of money to offer him to help them solve their problems. But he could afford to have nice things in his home, and he looked around, trying to see his place through her eyes, and wondered what she thought of him.

  The perfect solution popped into his brain, and he whooped triumphantly, making Kit open one eye for long enough to see that all was well before she went back to sleep.

  “You can work for me.”

  Rio slowly lifted her head from her knees and hit him with a glare so hot he was surprised it didn’t set his couch on fire.

  “I’m not a whore,” she snapped. “Is that the kind of work you had in mind?”

  “What the hell led you straight to that?” He was honestly baffled, and a little bit pissed off, and he figured it showed on his face because she looked embarrassed.

  “I’m sorry. You’ve been nothing but helpful to me, and I shouldn’t think the worst of you. It’s just that I’ve had offers before, to ‘leave all this hard work behind,’ and it was almost always so I could take up a position in somebody’s bed.”

  He could read every bit of how much it had cost her in pride and shame to admit that, in the way her shoulders tightened and she held her head perfectly straight.

  “Well, that’s not me. But if you want to give me a list of names, I’d be glad to beat some sense into the ones who offended you like that,” he told her.

  Kit lifted her head from her new cushiony bed and growled, as if in agreement, and pieces suddenly clicked in Luke’s brain. He leaned down to look closely at the animal.

  “How many tails do you have?”

  The fox tilted her head and looked at Luke as if he’d finally done something interesting. She stood up and waved her single tail in the air, quite deliberately, and then she lay back down.

  “How many tails were you expecting?” Rio asked, smiling a little. “Also, thank you for changing the subject. I’m on to you and your secret chivalry, but I’m
happy to let you pretend you’re just a gruff guy.”

  Luke wanted to kiss her when she smiled at him. He also wanted to kiss her when she was sad, to cheer her up, and when she was angry, to calm her down. Basically, he was falling like an iron cauldron dropped off a cliff, and the whole idea of it freaked him completely the hell out, so he ignored it.

  “I think she might be a Yokai, and from what I remember, they can have up to thirteen tails.”

  “You’re the third person to say that to me, and I haven’t had a chance to go online. What’s a Yokai?” Rio slipped out of her chair to sit on the floor, and she reached out a hand to stroke Kit’s long tail.

  “A kind of supernatural entity with special powers. Kit has already proven she’s no ordinary fox, and her name—Kitsune—seems to point us in the direction of her being a Yokai. Now we sit back and wait to see if she leans toward the helpful, benevolent kind or the willful, mischievous kind,” he said, privately betting on the latter.

  It was the way his luck had been running.

  Rio stared at Kit for a minute or two, and then she shrugged. “Whichever it is, she’s not saying. So I’m just going to go with fox for now, and worry about the rest later.”

  Luke watched Rio, sitting at his feet with the fox, and told himself all the reasons why pulling her onto his lap and kissing the breath out of her was a bad idea. The problem was, the predator inside the thin veneer of civilization he wore around him like an easily discarded coat didn’t agree with him at all.

  Luke Oliver knew that if anything were to happen with him and Rio at some point in the future, he needed to take it slow.

  Lucian Olivieri wanted to lick every inch of her creamy pale skin and then take her right there on the couch, lying on the shreds of the clothes he’d ripped off her.

  The Borgias take what they want; the phrase had been the lyrics to the lullabies of his childhood. And deep down where it counted, he was a true Borgia. The curse never let him forget it. His mother’s enemy had cursed Lucrezia’s unborn son with immortality, to be lived out under the threat of a horrific fate: If his actions ever veered from the path of goodness and justice—if he showed even a hint of the true Borgia nature, in other words—he would be cast into darkness forever.

  It would be difficult for Rio to enjoy a future with a man who’d lost his soul.

  He shoved up off the couch and walked away from her, before he could do something that they would both regret.

  “Where are you going?” she asked.

  “I’m heading out to grab some Chinese food for us, and then we’re going to eat, and I’m going to tell you all about how to become a private investigator.”

  For once, she was speechless, and he managed to make his escape. It was going to be an interesting couple of weeks.

  CHAPTER 11

  The door next to the kitchen slammed open, and Charlize Theron walked in, dressed in black leather and carrying a black duffel bag and three cloth tote bags from Dragon’s Eye Market.

  Rio had been sitting on the couch dividing her time between wistful thoughts of how unbelievably sexy Luke was, even when he was ticked off, and anxious thoughts of what to do about the grenade the League had tossed into the middle of her life. An Academy Award–winning movie star showing up with groceries was just the slightest bit unexpected.

  “Who the hell are you?” Charlize barked out, and Rio flinched. Kit jumped up on the back of the couch and stared at the newcomer, growling.

  “I’m Rio. This is Kit. We’re friends of Luke’s, and you—you—”

  “Well, are you going to help me with these groceries or just sit there with your thumb up your ass?” With that, Charlize slung her duffel across two bar stools, put the grocery bags on the kitchen counter, and headed back out the door. “I’ll get the rest. You unpack.”

  Rio’s mouth fell open as she watched the woman stalk back out the door. “Kit, I think I’ve just hit my quota of weird for, maybe, the rest of my lifetime. The giant duck was more normal than this.”

  Kit yipped, as if agreeing, but didn’t seem overly concerned. Rio jumped up and headed for the kitchen before she could get yelled at again. The actress returned, carrying three more bags, dropped them on the counter, slammed the door shut, and headed down the hall. “I’m going for a shower. Tell Luke not to touch those filets or I’ll kick his ass.”

  Rio, in the process of studying an odd-looking green leafy vegetable and wondering what in the heck it might be, felt like saluting.

  “She seems much nicer in interviews,” she confided to Kit.

  It occurred to her that she didn’t have to do anything simply because the woman had ordered her to, but putting away groceries was sane and normal, and Rio figured she could use a little bit of that.

  Luke walked in with the promised bags of Chinese food just as she was putting away the final tin of olive-oil-packed sardines.

  “Charlize Theron brought us groceries and is taking a shower,” Rio blurted out. “She told me to warn you not to touch the filets.”

  Luke started laughing, which was not at all the response she’d expected.

  “Alice is back early,” he said.

  “Who’s Alice?”

  “I’m Alice.” The woman who walked back into the living room, wearing comfortably faded jeans and an old Ohio State sweatshirt while toweling her hair dry, was attractive in a strangely generic way. Her wet hair was a dull brown that would probably be lighter when dry, and her eyes were hazel. She was blandly pretty; medium height, medium build, and medium skin tone. Someone you might forget as soon as you met her.

  “Um, hi, Alice, but what did you do with Charlize?”

  Alice grinned and rubbed the towel over her face. When she removed it, the face looking back at Rio was Jennifer Lawrence. While Rio stared, Jennifer shook her head and became Alice again.

  “Did you get enough for me?” Alice indicated the bags of Chinese food.

  “I got enough for an army,” Luke said. “I wasn’t sure what Rio liked, so I bought a little of everything.”

  Kit’s ears twitched wildly.

  “I don’t know if Chinese food is good for you, Kit,” Rio said, worrying she was feeding a wild creature horrible food that would harm the little fox.

  “She’ll be fine so long as it’s nothing spicy. Foxes live on berries, grasses, and other veggies in the wild, in addition to their carnivorous main courses, don’t you, gorgeous?” Alice said, sitting down on the couch next to Kit.

  Kit took one look at her and promptly flopped over to give Alice access to rub her silky white belly. If foxes purred, she’d be doing it.

  “I bet that feels good, doesn’t it, love?”

  Rio heard the hint of a British accent in the woman’s voice. “So, where are you from?”

  Alice laughed, shooting a sly look at Luke. “Worried that I’m moving in on your man? Luke and I aren’t like that. I just borrow a spare room when I’m in town. I don’t do wizards. Or men.”

  Rio’s face flamed hot. “No, I didn’t—he’s not—we don’t—”

  Luke looked up from where he was arranging cartons of food and plates on the small dining table and scowled at Alice. “I’m helping Rio out with a little pest problem.”

  “Ahhh.” Alice nodded. “Rats? Bedbugs? Shape-shifting horseflies?”

  “Black swans,” Luke said.

  Alice froze, one hand still resting on Kit’s fur, and her eyes narrowed. Her face transformed from blandly pretty to sharp and dangerous in a heartbeat.

  “If you need help with that problem, I’m carrying a Glock equipped with a little something special,” she said. “I owe the maestro one, and I warned him he’d never see it coming.”

  Rio shivered at the obvious menace in the woman’s voice and decided to help Luke with the food. Unfortunately, he turned toward her just as she started toward him, and they bumped into each other at the end of the kitchen counter.

  Something dangerous and hot flashed in his eyes and, instead of stepping away
, he pushed forward, gently nudging her back, and caged her in by leaning forward and putting his hands on the counter on either side of her body. Not even an inch separated them, and she could feel the heat of his hard body all the way up the length of her own.

  “Am I in your way?” She meant it to be sarcastic, but it came out breathless.

  “You’re exactly where I want you to be,” he said, so quietly she almost didn’t hear it, and then he leaned forward even farther and bent his head to whisper in her ear. “This is a conversation we’re definitely going to have later.”

  The warmth of his breath in her ear sent a shivering wave of sensation zinging through her body, and she was a heartbeat away from throwing her arms around his neck and kissing him when he leaned back and held up a bottle of soy sauce.

  “Hungry?” he asked, smiling at her so wickedly she was surprised her skin didn’t spontaneously combust.

  She decided to serve his little seduction tricks right back to him.

  “Oh, you have no idea,” she said huskily, licking her lips.

  Luke groaned and started to lean into her again, but Alice’s sharp voice interrupted.

  “Really? If you’re going to get all kissy-face, go do it in your room. Some of us would prefer not to have our appetites ruined, if you please.”

  Kit yipped, and Rio slid away from Luke, her face heating up again. She’d never been someone who was prone to blushing, until she started hanging out with Luke. Now her face felt like it was permanently red.

  Red. She worried at the thought like a dog with a bone while she set out chopsticks and forks. Red was a signal color, after all. Fire, blood, and danger were all red.

  Maybe there was a warning in that.

  Luke, who obviously trusted Alice completely, filled her in on what was going on while they ate, after looking to Rio for permission to tell all.

  Alice listened silently, raising an eyebrow occasionally for clarification, and then finally pushed her plate away and placed her chopsticks carefully down on one side.