The Cursed (League of the Black Swan) (10 page)

“Here we go,” she said.

The wall of windows offered a spectacular view of Bordertown that stunned Rio into silence, even though the overcast day diminished the effect. She never made it past reception areas when she delivered packages, and she certainly hadn’t had any other reasons to visit top-floor offices before. She could see all the way to the shimmer of silver at the entrance to Winter’s Edge to the north, and the dark, pulsating cloud that guarded the gate to Demon Rift on the east. The Summerlands border to the south couldn’t be seen from Dalriata’s office, and Rio found that fact oddly fitting, especially since the entire office suite smelled of stinky armpit and rotten fish.

But the view, the smell, and the tall, dark man sitting behind an enormous desk, with his back to the view of Demon’s Rift, could only distract her for a second or two from the small girl waiting, very still and upright, in the middle of a slate-gray bench that ran the length of the left wall of the office. It was the girl from the alley, still wearing her sky-blue dress and clutching her pink backpack. Rio ran over to her before anybody could tell her not to do it.

Not that she would have listened.

She stopped in front of the silent, unmoving child and knelt down so as not to loom over her.

“Elisabeth? Are you okay?”

The girl slowly raised her head and aimed a silvery-green gaze at Rio. There were no tear tracks on her cheeks and no signs of fear on her face. Rather, the child looked dazed, and her eyes didn’t seem to focus exactly right.

Rio put a protective hand on the girl’s arm and half-turned to glare at Luke. “I think they’ve drugged her.”

The man on the other side of the room stood and cleared his throat. “I must disagree. We have not harmed the child in any way, beyond the unfortunate trauma of her abduction, for which I apologize.”

Rio glared at him, but she’d been right. This man wasn’t the man who’d grabbed the girl in the alley. This man was pure, leashed power, and even though she couldn’t read anything from his thoughts, his posture and presence fairly screamed menace and command.

Still, next to Luke? The man was a poser. There was nothing leashed about Luke’s power. His fingertips were glowing with blue flames as he stared down the man who must be Dalriata.

“You Dalriata?” Luke asked, more quietly than she would have expected.

The man inclined his head. “I am he. Your fingers seem to be leaking, Mr. Oliver. Problems controlling your magic?”

Luke laughed. “The better to fry your ass if you annoy me. You want to try explaining how somebody
accidentally
kidnaps a little girl?”

Elisabeth shivered, and Rio sat on the bench beside her and drew the unresisting little girl into her arms, never taking her eyes off the wizard and the self-proclaimed Pictish king. When she bent to kiss the top of the child’s head, an unpleasant
snap
of electricity smacked Rio in the lips and jolted her back.

Elisabeth raised her head and stared up at Rio. “You’re not only human, either? You hide it really well, ma’am,” she whispered.

Rio blinked. “I’m human. That was just . . . static electricity. Call me Rio.”

She automatically scanned Elisabeth’s thoughts with the gentlest touch and realized that, although Elisabeth was obviously Merelith’s niece—the girl looked like a tiny copy of the Fae—she was also human.

“Clearly, it was a gross misunderstanding combined with unacceptable stupidity,” Dalriata said calmly, as if he weren’t facing down the Dark Wizard of Bordertown.

On the other hand, he was new. Maybe he didn’t know.

“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,” Dalriata 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.