The Cursed Read online

  “My daddy is human,” Elisabeth said wistfully, distracting Rio from the budding confrontation. “He lets me eat hot dogs at the baseball games. My mommy went to France for a job, though, and he went along. They’ll be home soon, I hope. Have you seen Auntie Merelith? She’s going to be so angry I was late.”

  “She’s going to be so happy you’re safe that she’ll probably let you eat all the hot dogs you want,” Rio said, hugging the girl closer.

  “No, she won’t. There are rules,” Elisabeth said, either consciously or unconsciously imitating Merelith’s icy voice so perfectly that Rio nearly shivered.

  “And what are you planning to do about your stupidity problem?” Luke mocked, as he sauntered closer to Dalriata, placing himself between the man and Rio.

  Since she couldn’t see him anymore, she sent out a feeler toward his thoughts and got back exactly zero. Dalriata’s mind was closed up tighter than a bottle of whiskey at a meeting of the Bordertown Temperance Union.

  “A gift for the child’s family, as my offer of recompense,” Dalriata said. “I would prefer if your lovely companion retrieves it from my desk. You will understand if I’d rather you keep your distance.”

  “Not a chance,” Luke snarled. “You keep your eyes and your thoughts off her.”

  “But you are the one who invited my attention by bringing her with you, are you not?”

  Rio was fed up with being talked about as if she weren’t in the room. She stood, pulling the girl with her.

  “I’m right here, gentlemen. You can talk to me, instead of about me.”

  She leaned down to whisper in Elisabeth’s ear. “Go stand behind Luke, okay, sweetie? We’ll be leaving and taking you to your aunt in just a few minutes.”

  The girl shuddered once, all over, like a tiny fawn caught in a blizzard, but then she nodded and obediently followed Rio to the center of the room and stopped directly behind Luke. Rio continued until she was even with Luke and then paused to take a better look at the man who could consider abducting a child to be nothing more than an unpleasantry.

  Dalriata wore a suit that had probably cost more than Luke’s Jeep. His bronze hair waved back over a strong face that looked only about a generation away from gracing a golden coin. His brown eyes assessed her coolly, as if measuring her worth and finding her slightly—and only slightly—interesting.

  “Rio of the many and varying last names, I’m assuming?” He smiled at her, and thoughts of earth-burrowing predators with strong, shiny teeth flashed through Rio’s mind. “I must apologize to you, as well. The Grendels and their former supervisor were, shall we say, overenthusiastic.”

  “Not very smart, either,” she pointed out.

  “One takes what one finds, I’m afraid. Good help, and all that.”

  “We’re leaving,” Luke said flatly. “Now. I’m sure that Elisabeth’s family will have their own conversation with you, but this is no longer my business. Stay out of my way, and keep your hands off the innocent people in Bordertown, and we’ll never have to see each other again.”

  “Now, what fun would that be?” Dalriata said mockingly. “After all, now the League owes me a favor.”

  Luke’s head snapped up, but before he could respond, Dalriata held up a basket that had been sitting on his otherwise pristine desktop.

  “Ms. Stephanopoulos? If you please?”

  Rio dodged Luke’s restraining hand and crossed the floor to accept the basket. “Since it’s an apology, we should take it. It might help avert something really awful.”

  “Don’t touch that basket, Rio,” Luke commanded, as if he had the right to tell her what to do.

  She ignored him and put a hand out for the basket, but a burst of gleeful thought from somewhere in the vicinity of the empty space in front of the bank of windows stopped her. Slowly, she stepped away from Dalriata’s desk, putting her hands behind her back.

  “Luke, there’s someone in front of the window, behind some kind of magical camouflage,” she said quietly, keeping her gaze trained on the man behind the desk. “That’s probably where that faint scent of . . . yuck is coming from.”

  “I know,” he said, reaching out to pull her next to him. “Dalriata knew enough about me to find out my private phone number. Do you really think he’d face me alone?”

  The air shimmered and then suddenly the two Grendels from the night before stood between them and Dalriata. They looked pretty beat up, so Miro must have given as good as he’d gotten, but they were definitely both still alive and well. Behind Luke, Elisabeth whimpered once, a tiny, muffled sound that pierced Rio’s heart like a spear.

  “If you did anything to hurt that child, I will kill you. Slowly,” Luke said, his voice still calm and even.

  His body, though, told another story. He was leaning forward, perfectly balanced as if ready to charge, and blue flames snapped and crackled around both of his hands.

  The thugs growled, but Dalriata waved a hand and they stepped back. “Since you refuse to carry my gift, perhaps you will report to Lady Merelith on its contents.”

  One of the Grendels, snarling horribly, shoved the lid off the large basket, knocking it to the floor, and the head of the man Rio had seen grab the girl fell out with a thunk on the carpet. Rio put an arm out to keep Elisabeth from moving forward to see what had happened, and then she pulled the girl against her, blocking her vision, and headed carefully and slowly toward the door.

  “That was a horrible thing to do, with this child in the room,” Rio said, her voice shaking so hard she could barely get the words out. “You may be a king wherever you come from, but we don’t do things like that here.”

  “I think the residents of Bordertown do things exactly this way,” Dalriata said, his voice lightly mocking. “And perhaps there is need for a king here as well.”

  Luke slashed one hand through the air, and a line of blue flame, easily nine feet tall, seared through the carpet in front of the Grendels, creating a wall of fire between them and the rest of the room.

  “They are not afraid of a little fire,” Dalriata said, his eyes narrowing.

  “That is not a little fire,” Luke said, in a voice that had gone dark and hollow. “You have reminded me what you did to my—to Rio last night. That was unwise.”

  “Luke, we need to go. Elisabeth is terrified,” Rio said. “Please.”

  “Ah, but you have reminded me that I have another debt to pay,” Dalriata said, arrowing his gaze in on Rio. “For the harm my employees dealt you. What would you have of me?”

  He glanced at the thugs trapped behind the wall of flame. “Another head?”

  Rio shook her head frantically. “No. No, let’s just call it even, and we’ll—”

  But a small, quiet voice spoke up, throwing Rio completely off her train of thought when she realized it was coming from inside her mind.

  You should ask for me, if you would. I would be very happy to be your guilt gift from the Pict lord.

  “Who said that?”

  “Said what?” Luke asked, looking as if he wanted to blast something or someone else.

  “Shh.” Rio jerked her head around, searching for the source of the voice, and just when she was about to give up and ask Luke to see if his magic could discover it for her, a small, tapered head peeked out from around the corner of Dalriata’s desk, and then the rest of the body followed the head.

  It was a dog. Or, maybe it was a dog. It was the dirtiest, saddest-looking dog she’d ever seen; gray and brown dirt covered it from nose to its bushy, matted tail, and it was limping, carrying its hind leg at an awkward angle. A silver collar that looked exactly like the receptionist’s necklace tightly circled its neck, and a silver chain trailed off from the collar to somewhere behind the desk.

  “Oh, baby,” Rio said involuntarily, taking a step toward it.

  Luke grabbed her arm and jerked her to a stop.

  “What is that?” he demanded.

  “Some creature my employees found living in the basement,” Dalr
iata said. “It amused my receptionist to chain it to my desk this morning, apparently.”

  His eyes lifted to stare at his office wall, as if his gaze could burn through to see the woman in question. “She will be punished appropriately.”

  A wave of fawning glee snaked through the air from the direction of the lobby. The ugly emotion was so nauseatingly powerful it nearly knocked Rio on her butt as it rushed through the room. The dog stared up at Rio with its enormous green eyes, and somehow Rio knew that it was the one speaking to her telepathically.

  The woman enjoys punishment. I do not. I am meant for you, Rio. Do not fail me.

  “I’ll take that,” Rio blurted out, pointing at the dog. “You said you have a debt to pay to me, and I don’t want there to be anything owing between us, so I’ll take that. You don’t want such a dirty creature messing up your office, anyway, and you can have the silver back, it’s probably valuable, and I’ll just buy a leash—”

  “You’re babbling,” Luke interrupted, so quietly that she was sure nobody else in the room heard him. “Stop. We don’t even know what that thing is, or if it’s dangerous, or—”

  “Done,” Dalriata said, and Rio didn’t like the hint of triumph he’d let escape from his carefully shielded thoughts as he said it.

  But now wasn’t the time to second-guess herself. At a touch of Dalriata’s hand, the silver chain and collar fell from the dog’s neck, and it limped toward Rio.

  “Out. Now,” Luke said from between gritted teeth. “Unless you want to start etiquette classes for the Grendels?”

  Dalriata broke into the first laugh they’d heard from him, and goose bumps raced over Rio’s skin.

  “I think I am going to like it here very much. Give my regards to the Fae,” the wannabe king said.

  Luke shot a pitying smile at him. “You are already a dead man. You just don’t know it. The Fae here are not sparkly little gentle beings, Pict. Merelith will crush you.”

  “Now. We need to leave now,” Rio said. Her arms were full with Elisabeth, so the dog would just have to limp its way over to the door. Unless . . .

  “Luke?” She made it a request without even uttering the question, and Luke scowled at Dalriata, the wall of fire that he still hadn’t put out but didn’t seem to be burning anything tangible, and even at her, but he knelt down and scooped up the dog in a single, fluid motion, and they left the room.

  Nobody followed them.

  “I’ll put out the fire when we’re on the street,” Luke called out, and they didn’t speak again until they were all settled in his Jeep. Rio sat in back with Elisabeth because the girl wouldn’t let go of her, and the dog curled up on the passenger seat up front. Luke closed his eyes in concentration for a moment, probably to stop the fire, and then he stared at the dog.

  “Why did you want to take this smelly animal with us?” He sounded honestly curious rather than annoyed. “She probably has rabies. Do foxes even get rabies?”

  “It’s a fox?” Rio said, blinking. “A girl fox?”

  The fox lifted its head and regarded first Luke, then Rio, from those unblinking green eyes.

  I am a fox. I am female. My name is Kitsune, and I belong with you, Rio.

  “She’s a fox,” Rio confirmed out loud to Luke. “And her name is Kit-SOON-eh. She says she belongs with me.”

  It was Luke’s turn to blink, but he just shoved the key into the ignition, started the Jeep, and pulled into traffic. “Of course she does. Well, hey, we have to get the Halfling daughter of a Fae aristocrat back home before Auntie Merelith destroys the city looking for her, and then we’re going to have a long conversation with a man about a horse.”

  “I like horses,” Elisabeth ventured, her first words since they’d left Dalriata’s offices.

  “Horses are lovely,” Rio agreed, stroking the child’s hair and staring at the fox, who was now sleeping with her nose resting on her tail.

  A talking fox. Why not? How much weirder could her day get, anyway?

  Luke muttered something that sounded a lot like a few mildly bad words. “Um, Rio? Things are about to get weird.”

  She started laughing. “About to get weird? You have very high standards for what constitutes ‘weird,’ my friend.”

  He silently pointed out the front window, and Rio’s mouth fell open. A duck the size of a city bus was squatting down in front of them, pushing an egg the size of a VW out of its hindquarters.

  “I like ducks,” Elisabeth said sleepily.

  Luke glanced down at the girl’s head, now resting on Rio’s lap, and then up at Rio. Their eyes met in a moment of perfect understanding, and they both started laughing. Really, really hard.

  “It’s Bordertown,” he finally said, shrugging. “Gotta love it.”

  Rio nodded, but she was starting to wonder if she’d be better off somewhere—anywhere—else.

  CHAPTER 7

  After the Bordertown Road Hazards Crew got the duck and her egg out of the middle of the road, hopefully shepherding them off to a nearby pond, Luke spent the drive to his place dividing his attention between watching Rio in the rearview mirror and waiting for the fox to either go rabid-crazy and bite him or shift into a human right there in the front seat. He’d never heard of fox shifters, but that didn’t mean much.

  He’d never heard of giant ducks, either.

  The puzzle occupying his mind the most, though, centered on King Assfart’s snide little comment. The League owed him a favor, he’d said. “The League” had to be the League of the Black Swan. Luke doubted that the Bordertown Brew Pub softball league cared a tinker’s damn about Pict kings and their schemes. Also, he wasn’t much of a believer in coincidences. The League had suddenly jumped back into Luke’s life, focused in on Rio, and then Rio had gotten caught up in a scheme that had folded too quickly and without bloodshed.

  No bloodshed if he didn’t count the fried Grendel and the headless goon, who were both Dalriata’s thugs—so he didn’t. Count them.

  He snorted, and the bedraggled fox opened one eye to glance at him and then fell back into an exhausted sleep. Luke didn’t know why or how, but he had a feeling the fox was more than just a random stray that had happened to be in the building. Especially after Rio had mentioned that it was communicating with her. He scanned the little creature for magic, and only confusing impressions bounced back at him. Clearly, the fox had some magic of her own or someone had cast a spell on her, but he needed a little time to figure out exactly what was going on.

  Also, deciphering magical puzzles while driving wasn’t the smartest idea.

  “We should call Merelith and tell her we found her niece,” Rio said softly.

  “She doesn’t exactly carry a cell phone. I’ll put out the word when we get back to my place, behind the wards,” he told her, swerving to avoid a crazed taxi driver. The cab drivers in Manhattan and in Istanbul, Turkey, were the only ones Luke had ever known who could compete with Bordertown cabbies for sheer reckless determination.

  “That’s another thing that’s bothering me,” she said. “Why was it so hard to find this little girl? I know High Court Fae have some seriously scary powers. Wouldn’t they be able to track their own blood relative pretty quickly?”

  “They should have been,” he admitted, impressed that she’d picked up on that problem so quickly. Brains and beauty. “Dalriata may have some major Old Magic going on, but against Merelith? He wouldn’t stand a chance, on his own.”

  “On his own? Do you think he had help?”

  He glanced in the rearview mirror and saw her amber eyes flash with anger. For an instant, he could have sworn he saw actual gold sparks in the irises, which reminded him that he knew very little about the lovely Miss Rio Green Jones Smith Stephanopoulos, or whatever her name was.

  He knew she was brave as all hell when it came to protecting the defenseless, like the little girl for whom she’d put her own life in danger and the small, dirty fox sleeping next to him.

  He knew she’d had a lonely childho
od and didn’t let many get close to her, because he’d watched her go home, alone, every night during his stupid interlude of stalking her.

  He knew that he wanted to wrap her in his arms and never, ever let her face anything dangerous again.

  Okay, turned out he knew quite a bit about her, and every bit of it was a threat to his self-imposed, centuries-old bachelor status, which meant he was going to put a stop to this idea of hers that she could just march into harm’s way.

  “We need to talk,” he concluded, pulling to a jerky stop in front of his building.

  Rio shook her head, sending all that lovely dark hair flying. “Oh, no, we don’t. You heard him. He’s sorry, he won’t bother me again, he owed me a debt, blah blah.”

  “I didn’t quite catch the blah, blah,” he said dryly.

  He carried the sleeping child inside his office, holding the door open for Rio and her new pet to enter. She looked like she wanted to bolt, but it would have been hard to escape down the street with her arms full of filthy fox. Especially since he had no intention of letting her get out of his sight so easily, at least until he figured out what the League wanted with her.

  Right. Keep telling yourself that you’ve got noble intentions, he thought, as he watched the lovely sway of her hips while she crossed the room until she glanced back and caught him at it. He yanked his office door shut behind him and wondered why he was suddenly acting like a horny teenager. Another problem to think about later. For now, he reset his wards and led the way back to his apartment. He gently put Elisabeth down on his couch and gestured to Rio to do the same with her fox.

  “No way. Kit needs a bath. Now. Who knows what she may have picked up from the Grendels? They probably have fleas,” she said, scrunching up her nose in disgust.

  For some stupid reason, he found the expression sexy as hell. He decided to blame it on the residual Grendel venom.

  While Rio took Kit to the bathroom to clean her up, Luke called a guy who knew a guy, and Merelith was banging on his door inside three minutes.

  She flew into the room, nearly knocking him over, when he opened the door.