Read The Cursed (League of the Black Swan) for Free Online Page B

looked away.
    “Ankle hurts,” she whispered. “I’m not very tough, I guess.”
    “You managed to get away from three Grendels. That’s pretty tough.”
    A smile curved her lips. “Maybe two Grendels and one of something uglier. Miro must have taken care of the other two.”
    He whistled. “It’s a good thing they didn’t catch you. You’d be dinner by now.”
    “They didn’t want me for dinner,” she said, her smile fading. “They wanted me for their boss. ‘The boss only wants to
talk
to you,’ they said, or something like that.”
    “Did you pick up who the boss was? He must be the kidnapper, right?”
    “I don’t know. Their thoughts were too one-dimensional for that. One of them wanted cake, one had indigestion, and the third—” She stopped and took a deep, shaky breath. “The third wanted to play with me.”
    Luke’s hands stilled on the ice that he’d been rearranging around her ankle, and he had to close his eyes and count to three before he could fight back the searing rage burning through him at her words.
    “You’re safe now,” he finally said. “They’ll never get their hands on you.”
    A cold wet sensation tingled on his thigh, and Rio’s eyes widened as she pointed.
    “Luke! Your hands—you melted the ice.”
    He looked down and, sure enough, his hands were glowing with blue flame. The towel was charred, and the water spread across his jeans and ran down his leg.
    She was safe. But maybe he wasn’t safe—from her. He could tell the League to go stuff their mission; he’d gone into this knowing it. How could he tell Rio that he couldn’t—wouldn’t—help her?
    He stood up, too quickly, and the room whirled around him in a carousel of spinning lights. Rio pushed her way up off the chair, balancing on one foot, and awkwardly put an arm around his waist. Her lips were pressed in a firm line, like she’d rather be doing anything rather than helping him, and he could see the pain etched in her face.
    “This isn’t helping anyone,” he said carefully, feeling around for words that wouldn’t make her want to leave. The certainty that if she left, she’d never come back pressed in on him, magnified by whatever the venom was doing to his mind. “Not that little girl, not you, and not me. We need to get some rest; it’s the middle of the night and I’ve been up since dawn. Even if I didn’t have Grendel poison floating around in my bloodstream, I’m not sure I’d be making much sense.”
    She glanced around the room, anywhere but up at him. “I don’t—where? I can get you to the couch, and I guess I can curl up on the chair for a while. I’m not going to be able to sleep, but you’re right. You’re no good to me now.”
    He winced, but she was right. “No, I live behind the office. We can go through that door just past the kitchen to my place, and you can bunk in one of the guest rooms.”
    Rio finally looked up at him, her eyebrows raised. “One of the guest rooms? Luke, that venom must be worse than you thought. There’s only room for a storage room behind your office. I’ve been in Helga’s Tea Room just a few doors down, and she only has room for a week’s worth of supplies in her storage room. Let’s just get you to the couch.”
    He felt the unfamiliar grin stretch across his face. “It’s okay. My house is bigger on the inside.”
    Rio just shook her head, clearly not a
Doctor Who
fan, but she turned toward the door he’d indicated and they started forward. The room had quit spinning, so he supported her slight form against him so she wouldn’t have to put any weight on her wounded ankle. He wanted to lift her up and carry her, but he had a feeling that wouldn’t fly—and might actually push her out of his door.
    When he touched the door to release the wards and it swung open, Rio stopped short on the threshold and whistled.
    “What in the world?”
    “I don’t exactly have the brainpower right now to explain the physics of interdimensional