The Cursed Read online

  “This doesn’t make any sense at all. I’m getting that the egg is in the middle of Black Swan Fountain Square. There is no way somebody wouldn’t have noticed it there.”

  “Black Swan again,” Rio said. “Do you think Maestro is playing games with us?”

  “I’d love to blame him for everything bad that happens in Bordertown, but even I can’t figure out what he would want with a giant duck egg. Especially if the damn thing hatches.”

  “Guess it’s duck season,” Rio said, grinning.

  “Wabbit season,” Luke corrected her.

  Both she and Young looked completely bewildered, so Luke just sighed and shook his head as they left his office to go find a duck egg. It took a rare person to appreciate a good Elmer Fudd line.

  Rio picked herself back up off the ground, for the sixth or seventh time, and wiped duck poop off her face with her hands.

  “We were bringing you back your baby,” she shouted at the freaking duck. “Don’t make me get the orange sauce.”

  “Good one,” Luke said, grinning like a fool.

  Or at least she thought he was grinning. It was hard to tell because he was also covered in muck. Between the two of them, Rio didn’t think there was an inch of clean or dry skin or clothing. They’d found the egg exactly where Luke thought it would be, resting in the water in the fountain, and then brought it to the park to return it to its mother.

  Easy job. No problem.

  Except for the duck.

  When she’d caught a glimpse of Rio, Luke, and Mr. Young trundling her egg in on a cart, she’d completely lost her feathery little mind. Mr. Young had yelled something about no way did Bordertown pay him enough for this, and he ran off as fast as his government-worker legs would carry him. Luke and Rio had stayed to make sure the egg got safely off the cart and onto the duck’s enormous nest.

  Big mistake. Huge.

  The enraged duck waddled right at them and knocked them down as if she were playing a wild game of Bowling for Humans. Fortunately for Luke and Rio, they were mostly hit by feathers and she didn’t manage to stomp on them, so they weren’t hurt.

  Unfortunately for Luke and Rio, ducks poop. A lot.

  So ever since, the two of them had been playing keep-away with a giant duck and a huge but fragile egg in a field of nastiness that Rio would have preferred to imagine was only mud.

  Sadly, her imagination wasn’t anywhere near that good.

  “I smell like duck poop. I am covered in duck poop, and I have ruined my only skirt. If this is what your normal day as a PI is like, you’re out of your mind if you think I want the job,” she yelled, over the sound of the loudest quacking anybody had ever heard anywhere in the history of the world.

  “Distract her,” Luke yelled back.

  The duck picked that moment to take another run at her. Rio turned and ran, or at least that was what she told her body to do. Her feet were stuck in the muck, though, so she managed one step before she fell flat in the crap again.

  The actual, literal, crap.

  “I’m going to kill you,” she told Luke. “I’m going to kill you slowly, and I’m going to enjoy it. And then I’m going to stand in the middle of a car wash for an hour.”

  The duck headed for Luke with murder on her mind.

  “I think she has fangs,” Rio shouted.

  “She doesn’t have fangs. Ducks don’t even have teeth. Do they?”

  The duck slipped in its own mess and fell on its fat feathery butt, and Rio felt triumphantly vindicated.

  “Ha! How do you like it?”

  “You do realize you’re asking questions of the duck, right?”

  Rio sneered at him. “It’s only crazy if I expect the duck to answer.”

  Luke hid behind the egg when the duck got to its feet again.

  “Distract her,” he shouted again.

  “Distract her? Distract her? Are you out of your freaking mind? How am I going to distract a duck bigger than a house when you have her baby in your stupid wizard hands?”

  “Try singing,” Luke suggested, as he tried to maneuver the egg the last few feet up and over the edge of the nest.

  Rio screamed and waved her arms frantically when the duck began to turn toward Luke again.

  “Over here, you sorry excuse for a bird. Your mother has webbed feet. Your father made Donald Duck look smart,” she yelled at it, and then she turned to stare at Luke. “Sing? Sing what?”

  Luke kept pushing the egg, but he started laughing uproariously. “How should I know? Sing something about ducks.”

  If she ever got out of this mess alive, she was going to kick a certain wizard’s butt for him. She stood up as tall as she could, threw her arms into the air as if she were conducting an orchestra, and started singing at the top of her lungs.

  “Be kind to your fine feathered friends, for a duck may be somebody’s mother,” she belted out, keeping an eye on Luke’s progress.

  He very nearly had the egg tipped into the nest.

  “Living alone in Bordertown, where it’s always weird and bizarre,” she sang, still at the top of her lungs.

  The duck suddenly spread her wings and squawked, blocking Rio’s view of the nest. A horrible sound ratcheted up, almost loud enough to drown out the duck’s quacking, and Rio wondered if the duck had killed Luke. She also wondered if she’d be all that sad about it, right at that exact moment.

  She wiped more muck out of her face, still singing, and looked around. Luke had finally levered the egg into the nest, the duck sat happily on top of her progeny, and Luke was standing about a half-dozen feet away from Rio, watching her sing like a fool and laughing his ass off. She did the only thing a woman could do in a situation like that.

  She walked up to him and knocked him down onto a particularly nasty, reeking pile of duck shit.

  “Take that! And that was John Philip Sousa, baby!”

  Then, with every ounce of dignity she could muster, she picked her way out of the park and headed for the nearest car wash, or Niagara Falls, whichever she reached first.

  CHAPTER 13

  After nearly an hour in the Bordertown Road Crew hazmat tent, Luke doubted Rio would ever speak to him again. When he was done being cleaned to within an inch of his immortal life, he found her sitting on a marble bench, looking at the Black Swan Fountain. She was wearing the same kind of dark blue road crew jumpsuit that he had on, donated by the grateful workers who fervently believed that Luke and Rio had saved their lives from vengeful Summer Court Fae.

  The swan was one of the most beautiful pieces of public art in Bordertown. The fountain itself was fifty feet in diameter. In the center of the fountain, a gracefully elegant black marble statue of a young woman stood with one hand held out to a beautifully sculpted swan. He’d once heard that there was a curse associated with the fountain, but you could hear rumors of curses around every corner in Bordertown, so Luke didn’t pay that much attention as a rule.

  “Are you ever going to talk to me again?” He cautiously approached from the side, wary of what she might do to him this time. He’d be glad if she punched him or kicked him in the shin, or anything other than freeze him out. When he’d planned to get her involved in the business, he’d never anticipated anything like this.

  She raised her head and flashed him a dazzling smile. “We kicked duck butt, my friend. It was you and me against a couple thousand pounds of poultry, and we freaking triumphed.”

  Luke almost fell over. She wasn’t angry?

  She was smiling.

  “You’re not mad at me? You don’t have a concussion, do you?”

  She laughed. “Let me just say that I never want to have an experience like that again, but three cheers for magical hazmat teams. I have never been this clean in my life. In fact, they even asked me if I wanted the hair removal option.”

  Luke eased down on the bench next to her and stared at the fountain, careful not to meet Rio’s gaze in case he started laughing. He didn’t want her to think he was laughing at her
. He was amazed that she had this incredible sense of humor; she was cheerful about an experience that most people would scream and run from.

  She was incredible.

  “They didn’t offer me that one.”

  She stretched out her legs, which managed to look good even encased in an ugly blue jumpsuit. “Apparently microscopic bits of dirt could possibly survive even their strenuous, magical cleaning. But the hair removal option removed all hair.”

  She paused, and he knew she was blushing again, even without looking at her. He wouldn’t have been able to tell in the dark, anyway, but he just knew it. He reached out a hand and touched the end of her damp, curling braid.

  “I would have missed your hair,” he admitted. “I’ve made it a personal goal to see it out of this braid as often as possible.”

  For some reason, his voice had gone husky, so he cleared his throat. She slowly turned her head to look at him, and then she raised one hand and pulled the ribbon out of her hair and loosened her braid, shaking all that glorious dark hair over her shoulders.

  “You have beautiful hair, Rio.” He was afraid to touch her hair—to touch her at all—in case he might break the moment.

  “You make me feel beautiful, and it’s not something I’m accustomed to. Nobody has ever had that effect on me before,” she said, her own voice soft and trembling a little. “I’m in the middle of an awful situation. Danger is coming at me from all sides. Suddenly, after twenty-five years, people seem to know who I am and who my parents may have been, and I just spent the evening rolling around in duck poop and singing.”

  He started laughing. “John Philip Sousa, baby.”

  The ghost of a smile crossed her face. “And yet, with all of that going on, I’ve never felt so alive. I’ve never felt so utterly and completely content to be exactly who I am, and I think—no, I know—that a lot of that has to do with you.”

  He started to speak, and she shushed him.

  “No. You don’t have to say anything. I have no idea why I’m admitting all this to you, anyway. Maybe it’s because my birthday is almost here, and I don’t know if I’ll live to see it. All I know is that I want to thank you for trying to help me.”

  The lump in his throat blocked him from speaking for a few moments, and it actually took him a couple of tries to get the words out. He felt like his world had turned upside down; that gravity had quit functioning.

  “Don’t thank me. Please, don’t thank me. You will never know how selfish I’ve been in keeping you with me. Monsters never get the princess in real life, but I’m selfish enough to want to keep you near me for as long as I can.”

  She leaned toward him and he held perfectly still, afraid that if he moved she would flee. She kissed him gently on the lips, and he didn’t push for more. For once, his body was content with the tenderness of her offering, instead of wanting to explode into sexual need. The beast inside him quieted, its rages and lusts subsiding, until it almost purred with the peace spreading through him from her touch.

  “This is going to sound completely wrong after what we’ve just been through,” she said, grinning up at him. “But I’m really starving.”

  “Your wish is my command. What are you hungry for?” He stood up, taking her hands and pulling her up with him.

  “Honestly? Anything but duck.”

  Rio slowly woke up and stretched, feeling slightly sore in every inch of her body. The bedroom was filled with sunlight because she’d been too tired to bother closing the curtains when she’d collapsed into bed the night before. She’d plowed her ravenous way through a steak, salad, and baked potato and then fallen asleep in Luke’s Jeep on the way back to his place. He’d picked her up and carried her into the house before she’d realized what was going on, and she hadn’t bothered to try to get down. Instead, she’d snuggled up to him, knowing she was playing with fire but not caring.

  The honesty she demanded, even of herself, made her admit to a somewhat different story. Maybe part of her had been hoping she would get burned. Burned with his heat, seduced by his fire, but with the out that the next morning she could claim she hadn’t really known what she was doing.

  “That’s just a little bit cowardly, coming from a mighty duck slayer, don’t you think, Kit?”

  The fox, currently curled up next to her on the bed, twitched one ear but didn’t open her eyes. Kit had been very interested in smelling both of them the night before, in spite of the thorough hazmat cleaning, so maybe the hair removal option would have been a good idea. She involuntarily glanced down at her underwear and shook her head. On second thought, no. There were just some places she did not want to be bare.

  She showered and left her hair loose. Then she dressed in jeans, boots, and sweater, ran a mascara brush over her lashes and a little gloss over her lips, and called it done. She had things to figure out today, and there was no time to waste trying to be glamorous.

  Luke was already in the kitchen, drinking coffee and scowling at his phone. His face lightened up when he saw her. “Lunch?”

  He was so mouthwateringly gorgeous that she wanted to just stop and stare at him. His hair was still damp, too, and pushed back from those incredible cheekbones. He wore a blue sweater that a woman must have given him, because the color matched his amazing dark blue eyes. Faded jeans and old boots completed the outfit, and the effect of the whole thing made her want to rush across the room and jump him.

  “Lunch sounds good, although I don’t know how I could be hungry again after everything I ate last night.”

  “Duck wrangling is hard work,” he said, flashing her that wicked grin that melted her insides and made her nipples twinge.

  He filled a mug of coffee and set it on the counter for her, then turned to the refrigerator and pulled out four different kinds of coffee creamer and proudly placed them in front of her.

  “Now you don’t have to drink it black.”

  She couldn’t help it. She smiled. The Dark Wizard of Bordertown had been out buying her coffee creamer.

  “Butterscotch. Wow, that sounds delicious. Thank you for this. Nobody ever—well, I just really appreciate it.”

  She busied herself pouring cream in her coffee so as to avoid having him see her face. Luke was extremely perceptive, and the last thing she wanted him to think about her was poor little orphan girl.

  “Are you ready to get your private investigator on?”

  She took a long sip of coffee before putting her cup down and looking up at Luke. “I think what I need to do today is try to find some answers about my past and about why everybody seems to be so interested in me all of a sudden. Would you be willing to go to the convent with me, so I can try to talk to any of the nuns who are still there?”

  It was one of the bravest things she’d ever done, asking him that. She’d sworn, the day she left the convent, that she would never, ever return.

  He put his own mug down, frowning at it, and then looked up, his face troubled.

  “Rio, I’m sorry. I’ve just been on the phone with five different nuns, all the way up to the Mother Superior. None of them will talk to me, and they warned me to tell you they would never speak to you again,” he said gently.

  The words hit Rio like a sucker punch. Not that she hadn’t expected it, or at least not that she wouldn’t have expected it if she’d ever thought she’d want to go there and ask them anything again. She’d left under bad circumstances—in fact, she’d arrived under bad circumstances—so she should have had no reason to expect help from them.

  But all that logic didn’t stop it from hurting. The convent and the nuns had been home to the only years of her childhood she could remember, and the pain of their rejection quite literally took her breath away and left her bent double and gasping to try to breathe.

  Luke was around the counter in a heartbeat, patting her back and holding her hair out of her face. “What can I do? Tell me what to do, Rio. I’m losing my mind here.”

  She forced herself to calm down when she heard the i
ntensity of his distress. In and out. In and out. The breathing exercises that she’d once learned to cope with childhood panic attacks surfaced in her mind, and she took long, slow breaths in and then steadily pushed them out.

  “I’m fine. I’m really fine. It was just unexpected. I have—I guess I had, somewhere inside me, the dream that someday we would reconcile, and I would have a home. I’ve never—I’ve never had anyone who didn’t abandon me, and without that kind of foundation, I’m left feeling adrift sometimes.” She tried to smile but was horrified to realize that tears were running down her face.

  “I’m so sorry, Luke. I don’t mean to be a pathetic, whiny little girl. I can’t believe I keep telling you all this stuff. I’m normally a very private person. Are you sure you didn’t whammy me with a truth potion?”

  Luke whirled around, then stalked across the room and out the kitchen door, slamming it behind him. Rio sat, frozen, miserably aware that she’d driven him away. Surely it wasn’t her feeble joke about a truth potion?

  Before she had a chance to even think about her next step, a thunderous explosion shook the house, and then the door burst open, and Luke stomped back in, slamming it behind him.

  “I just blew up the Helga’s Tea Room van,” he announced. “Blew it to smithereens. There’s not a scrap of metal bigger than a shoe box left of it.”

  Rio’s mouth fell open and she realized she was completely speechless.

  He advanced on her, swept her up off the stool into his arms, and kissed her until she was having trouble breathing again, and then he walked around the counter and started drinking coffee while she sat, half-dazed, tingling in every nerve ending she’d ever even thought of having. He wasn’t even breathing hard, darn him.

  “I know. Don’t yell at me,” he said, half sheepishly and half defiantly. “I’ll buy her a new van. Hell, I’ll buy her two new vans.”

  “But why—” She couldn’t wrap her head around any of it.

  He scowled, but somehow she knew it wasn’t directed at her. “I don’t know how to have all these feelings. I know how to blow stuff up. You were hurting, and I wanted to help, but I didn’t know how, so I blew something up.”