The Cursed (League of the Black Swan) (13 page)

Naturally, this made her want to run the other way. But she needed to know what he was getting at with this talk of origins and the League of the Black Swan, so she forced herself to stay put and keep her budding libido in firm check.

“Okay, old man,” she joked. “Let’s say you are who you say you are, and you are as old as you say you are. It’s no weirder than a giant duck, that’s for sure. So let’s skip over all of that for now, and move on to what you wanted to tell me about this mysterious League.”

He turned his head and caught her in the full weight of that ocean-blue gaze, nearly making her gasp. Darn it, but he was beautiful. Dark-angel beautiful. Pardon-me-while-I-tear-off-my-clothes beautiful. She had an insane, nearly uncontrollable urge to run her fingers through all that wavy black hair and almost laughed when she imagined his reaction.

He raised an eyebrow at her grin, but she shook her head and motioned for him to continue.

“It’s not that I want to talk about it. It’s that I
need
to talk about it. Because when they contacted me? It was about you.”

A goose walked over Rio’s grave at that precise moment.

Or—more aptly, she supposed—a swan. A black swan. The urge to smile fled.

She rubbed her arms to keep from shivering, and Kit, as if understanding the terror that had overtaken Rio at Luke’s words, turned and rested her sleek head on Rio’s knee.

“Why? I’m a bike messenger. This doesn’t make sense.” She absently stroked the soft, slightly damp fur on the fox’s back. “None of it makes sense. Merelith, the way she acted—I don’t understand any of this.”

Luke made a frustrated noise. “I don’t understand it, either. All I know is that a very high-level operative in the League stopped by to give me a message last night, and the message was a picture of you.”

“Did you ask why? Why are they coming to you, anyway? Are you in the League?” She flinched as a thought popped into her mind, and suddenly it was very hard to breathe. “Do they want you to kill me?”

“What? No! Nobody’s killing anybody,” Luke said firmly. “If that were what they wanted, they never would’ve come to me. The maestro knows better than that.”

Rio’s heart slowed down, but only a fraction. “If they wanted someone to kill me, they would have gone to someone else, is what you’re saying by implication. In other words, the League of the Black Swan has a habit of hiring assassins.”

Luke jumped up off the couch and started pacing back and forth from the fireplace to the kitchen.

“Yes. No. I don’t know,” he said, shoving a hand through his hair. “I don’t know what they’ve been up to since I quit.”

Rio stood up and moved so her back was to the wall next to the fireplace. Not that she had any idea how to defend herself against a wizard, but something about the position made the cornered animal inside her feel minutely better. That would be just her luck—the hottest man she’d ever seen in her life would be the one sent to murder her. She’d die an almost-virgin, since awkward fumblings in her younger, drunk experimentation stage surely didn’t count.

“So you were part of the League,” she said quietly. “And now?”

“I have no intention of becoming involved with the League again, but I need to know what their plans are, and why they’re interested in you. I can’t protect you if I don’t know what’s going on.”

He took a step toward her, and she held her hands out to block him.

“I need to go home. Back to my apartment. Dalriata said he’s not after me anymore. You just admitted you don’t know what the League of the Black Swan wants with me. So, while you figure it out, I’m going back to my real life,” she said, putting every ounce of defiance she could muster behind the statement.

Kit, still seated on the couch, yipped.

Right.

“And I’m taking my fox with me,” she blurted out.

Of course, then Rio felt like an idiot, and the grin quirking at the corners of Luke’s mouth didn’t help.

“It’s a bad idea,” he said. “The League usually gets what it wants, and it never stops when it’s after something or someone. I know how they work. Let me protect you from them.”

“What exactly is this damn League, anyway?”

“The League is supposed to function like a supernatural police force. Back in 1300, the Knights Templar joined forces with the Summer Court Fae to defeat a bunch of demons who were trying to break free from what everybody thought was the mythological underworld.”

Rio nodded. “Okay, but now we know the demons have their own realm that has nothing to do with Hades, hell, or any of our human beliefs.”

“Right. But it didn’t matter at that point. The League’s
stated
mission ever since has been to protect humanity from evil, help the various supernatural factions negotiate treaties and keep the peace, and generally work as a force for good in the world.”

“You said
stated
mission,” she said slowly. “What’s their real mission?”

Luke threw his hands in the air. “I have no freaking idea. A megalomaniac took over the League back in the mid-1700s, and his goal was to conquer the world in a way that Alexander the Great never could have dreamed of, because this jerk had magic on his side. I left, came here, and never looked back. The last thing I ever expected to hear again was
Black Swan
.”

Rio thought about it and realized that none of it mattered. She needed to get out, get back to her normal life, and stop playing games with wizards, kings, Fae, and supernatural justice leagues.

For some weird reason, Wonder Woman popped into her mind, and she almost laughed.

“I’m leaving. I’m taking my fox. You should have my cell phone number on file from the delivery service, so you can call me—well, if the phone company gives me a new phone with my same number—if something comes up I need to know, but right now I can’t take any more of this. I hope you understand.”

She scanned the room for her backpack before remembering that it was still out in the office.

“I understand, but I don’t agree. I think you should stay here where I can protect you until we figure this out,” he said.

“You’re the Dark Wizard of Bordertown. You’ll figure it all out, I hope.”

“
Hope
is exactly the wrong word, Rio. This is Bordertown. Most of the people who live here don’t hope—they never hope. That’s a fragile and precious commodity in this town.”

Rio couldn’t accept that. If not hope, then what? A never-ending circle of drudgery and helplessness? Lives lived unnoticed, in the interstitial spaces between survival and despair?

No. It wasn’t enough. It could never be enough. Not even for an orphan whose only clues to her parents were a tarnished silver locket and a tiny stuffed fox.

She lifted her chin and tried to stare down the most dangerous predator she’d ever met. The fact that he’d made her eggs helped a little. The fact that he was so damn sexy made it hurt.

“Are you refusing to let me go?”

“No, of course not. But I want to be very clear that you have a place here, anytime you need it. If anything the slightest bit weird or dangerous happens, call me or come back. I’ll reset the wards so they let you in whether I’m here or not.”

She tried not to notice the way he was clenching his jaw, probably against yelling at her. She got that a lot. She also tried not to notice the lines of strain that had appeared on his face, probably from worrying about her.

She never got that at all.

Eileen, the receptionist, office manager, veterinary assistant, and all-around general everything at Dr. Black’s animal hospital, squeezed Kit in to an appointment between an elderly ocelot and a flatulent bulldog. Rio had delivered urgent test results to the office often enough that she knew how much of a favor it was. The practice was extremely busy because everyone said Dr. Black was the best veterinarian in town.

The rumor was that she and her husband, who was also now Dr. Black, could both speak to animals and understand their responses. But the original Dr. Black had a special gift; she could visualize what was wrong inside her patients’ furry, scaly, and feathery bodies.

Dr. Black the original smiled at Rio across the metal table on which Kit was stretched.

“She’s going to be just fine,” the veterinarian said. “It was just a sprain, not a break, and a mild one at that. As you can see, I’ve wrapped the leg and given her something for the pain.”

Kit had winced when the doctor inserted the needle, but she hadn’t moved at all or growled even a little. Rio was absurdly proud of her for that.

The woman lightly rested her hand on Kit and closed her eyes briefly. When she opened them, she smiled again. “Yes, definitely. We’ll give you a few pills, in case she has any residual pain, but she should be perfectly healthy in a day or two.”

“Thank you so much, Dr. Black, for fitting us in, and for taking such good care of Kit. I was really worried,” Rio said.

“You should be worried,” the vet said sternly. “Do you want to explain to me exactly how you let this lovely girl get so thin? Have you been starving her?”

Dr. Black’s eyes lightened to a pale, feral yellow, and Rio began to worry for her own health if she didn’t do some explaining, fast.

“I only rescued her today from a very bad man who had her chained to a desk. I promise I’m on the way to buy food for her, and I already gave her my breakfast,” she said quickly.

The vet looked to Kit, as if for confirmation, and Kit must have vouched for Rio, because the vet’s eyes darkened back to a more human color and the muscles in her shoulders relaxed.

“Good job on you, then.” Dr. Black awkwardly patted Rio’s arm, and Rio suddenly had the amusing thought that the vet didn’t quite know how to interact with nonanimal creatures.

“I promise I’ll take good care of her,” Rio said.

As she said the words, she realized they were true. She had been worried about the little fox, and she was already far more attached to her than made any sense at all. Maybe it was because they had both escaped the unwanted and unsavory attentions of the Pict king.

“Yes, yes,” Dr. Black murmured, waving Rio’s thanks aside. “She’s a beautiful creature—an absolutely superb specimen of her kind. I’d guess she’s about two years old.”

“Kit, how old are you?” Rio looked into the little fox’s eyes, but Kit wasn’t answering.

“She’s not saying,” Rio told Dr. Black. “I’m sorry.”

Dr. Black raised one eyebrow, but it was Bordertown, so she didn’t ask any questions.

“Bring her back if she has any further problems. Eileen will give you the pain pills and a list of recommended diet and the like, in case you’ve never dealt with foxes before.”

With that, the vet was clearly done with the human portion of the appointment, and she bent down to coo in Kit’s ear. Rio didn’t catch all of it, but “my beautiful little girl” was in there, and Kit was obviously loving every moment of it. Rio grinned at the back of the doctor’s white coat as the woman left the room to go treat her next patient.

“I like her,” she told Kit.

The little fox sat up on the table and panted, almost giving the impression that she was agreeing.

Rio briefly enjoyed the feeling of a task completed as she paid Eileen for the visit and tucked the written materials and little envelope of pain pills into her backpack. Kit insisted on walking, or at least that seemed to be pretty clearly what all the squirming and wiggling to get down had been about, so the two of them headed out on their own six feet for the next part of Rio’s plan: buying a new cell phone.

The phone was easy—B Town Cellular even gave her an upgrade and the same phone number. Unfortunately, part three of her plan didn’t go nearly as well as expected.