Lord of Unkindness: Chapter Five

 Notes: Oooh, is that plot I detect? Are we moving into the plot zone? Exciting!

Title: Lord of Unkindness: Chapter Five

***

Chapter Five

 

“Go away.”

“Awww, don’t be like that!” The girl leans across the table and gives him a grin. “After all we’ve been through together? We should be friends now!”

“We didn’t go through anything together,” Ciro informs her. “You got into trouble and I got you out of it. Over. Done.”

She ducks her head a little. “I mean…that wasn’t all you, ya know? Had to give you a little push to get you movin’ in the right direction, y’know?”

Ciro freezes as he remembers her brief, flailing touch from the night before. She marked me. “That’s how you focus your luck,” he says, more to himself than to her. “It’s touch-based.”

“Yeah.” She shrugs. “Makes it hard sometimes, but at least I understand my own limits, you know?”

“Is that how you found me?”

“Sort of.” She waggles a hand. “Luck’s not a real concrete kind of spell. There’s no telling exactly what it’s going to bring me. Like, I had no idea you were going to spill a light on that fool’s head! God damn, he was so angry.” She cracks up behind her hands, doing her best to stifle laughter that sounds a bit like a wheeze. “Shoutin’ and runnin’ around and mostly just going in circles because you clocked him so hard. Perfect time for me to get out of there, so I did—with my winnings, of course—and I went home to my boss and told him about it.”

Ciro raises an eyebrow at her. “You live with your boss?”

“He’s got an open-door policy, lots of space, and he likes to make sure we’re taken care of,” she says simply.

“And all he asks in return is…”

“We help him run his animal rescue.”

Ciro waits for her to start laughing, but after a few seconds he realizes there’s no joke, no punchline. She’s telling the truth. “Animal…rescue.”

“Yeah! Well, not just, like, normal animals and shit, although he sees a lot of them too. The doc has vaccination clinics every other week—totally free—and he does spaying and neutering real cheap too. But,” she says, glancing at Ciro’s raven. “He also works with familiars.”

“Does he now.” That’s an interesting specialty, but not a unique one. “Good for him.”

“Yeah, right? He’s got a niche, our doc. Really good at it, too—people come to visit him from Japan, from China, from Singapore… He even saw one dude from Mongolia who had the biggest damn bird I’ve ever seen before. Some kind of eagle.” She gestures with her arms, hooking her fingers over to indicate the size of the beak. “Like, so big.”

“Neato.”

She frowns at him. “I feel like you’re not taking me seriously.”

“I feel like I don’t know what I would be taking you seriously about,” Ciro replied honestly. “You haven’t told me anything, really, other than that you’re lucky and that your boss is a stand-up guy. I don’t know how you work for him, I don’t know what he does for you, and I frankly don’t care.” He stands up and throws the remnants of his food into a trash can. “Glad you made it out of there. See you never.”

“Hey, wait!” She follows him out of the shop, her boots clomping noisily on the pavement. “Come on, wait!”

Ciro doesn’t wait. There’s no point. He’s not here to make friends or engage in meaningless chit-chat. He needs to keep a low profile, and this girl comes off the opposite of that.

“You can’t run from me, man!” she shouts after him. “Not while I’ve got you on my fingers!”

Ciro stops. People, normal, regular people are staring at him now, probably wondering what the hell she’s talking about. He spins around, walks past her, and snarls, “Keep your fucking voice down,” even as he slows enough for her to keep up.

“What? I just mean that you’re the last person I used my luck on.” She wiggles her fingers at him. “Until I cast the spell on someone else, I’m gonna be able to find you over and over again.”

“Why did you want to find me at all?” Ciro asks tightly. He’s only letting one bird circle overhead for now; the others need to make space. She thinks she knows his game, so better not to give anything away that he doesn’t have to at this point.

“Oh, I mean, I don’t know.” She shrugs. “It’s not really my call, man. I just told the boss how you got me out of that scrape, and then he asked me to find you and bring you back to talk to him. Just talk!” she adds quickly when Ciro turns a murderous glare on her. “He’s not gonna—look, he’s a good guy, okay? A really good guy. He’s not going to do anything to make you uncomfortable.”

“He already did by sending you after me,” Ciro tells her.

She frowns. “Well that’s just hurtful. And here I thought we were getting to be friends.”

“I don’t even know your name!”

“Oh.” She skips a few steps, then winces like it’s hurting her feet to do so. “I’m Maria Graciela Martinez de Acosta. And you?”

Nice try.

“Come on, I’ve got to call you something other than ‘bird man’ in my head, right? What’s your name?”

“None of your business. And,” he adds, “none of your boss’s business either.”

“Maybe he just wants to thank you for saving me!”

“He can keep his thanks.”

“Hey.” Maria sounds genuinely affronted now. “I get that you’re new to this area, right, and I’m trying to be nice about it too, but you really don’t want to be rude to my boss, okay? Nobody is rude to him. He’s a nice guy, but he’s got connections with people way up in the magical world, right? Like, he’s had people meet with him through fucking portals, that’s how powerful some of these folks are.”

Portals… That’s enough to slow Ciro’s pace a bit. Portals means the fae, or some other powerful magical being. If this guy does business with the fae, then he might know how to negotiate for a portal to another realm. Not that Ciro really wants to go to another world, but it would be nice to have the option in case he’s hunted to the ends of this one.

“He just wants a meeting,” Maria continues, knowing that she’s sunk the hook and capitalizing on it as fast as she can. “Not gonna make you sign anything in blood or hand over a feather or any shit like that. Just a meeting.”

Just a meeting…a meeting with a man who might just have the kind of connections that Ciro himself used to have. That made him dangerous; the number of people in the world who were elevated enough to merit visitors from another realm were few and far between. It was possible that, if Ciro went to meet this man, he might be recognized. That would be…there weren’t words for how badly that could go for him.

On the other hand, he doesn’t really want to waste more of his magic making Maria’s luck fail. Not to mention, if she reports back and the guy is pissed off, that could lead to a fight. The last thing Ciro wants was to make waves by fighting a big name in the local community.

He sighs. “Fine. I’ll meet him, briefly. Where can I find him?”

Maria grins broadly. “All right! His rescue’s up near Echo Park.”

That’s around seven miles from here. Ciro starts thinking about bus lines and trams, but then Maria pulls out her phone and calls for a rideshare. “I got you, boy,” she promises him.

“Not your boy,” Ciro tells her.

“Nah, I can already tell I’m not your type,” she says. “But don’t worry, maybe your tastes will get better someday. Two minutes,” she says as she puts away her phone. She glances up. “Wanna call your bird down?”

“I don’t think he’d like being in a car,” Ciro replies. “He’ll be fine above us.”

“Your call.”

Like any of this has been my call. But Ciro can’t deny he’s…interested. Maybe this will turn out to be a good thing. “What’s his name?” he asks.

“Just call him Doc for now,” Maria says. “He’ll let you know when you can call him something else.” She looks him up and down. “Actually, play your cards right and he might just let you call him ‘Daddy.’” She laughs at Ciro’s disgusted expression, then points to the car pulling over for them. “There’s our ride. Let’s do this!”