“He knew what you are.”
I stiffened like steel had been dropped down my spine. “What?” I whispered.
“He knew that you were the halfling,” he repeated. “He had to die.”
Maybe it was the shock of everything—Ren unexpectedly returning and being okay with what I was and then snapping Henry’s neck like it was a twig—because I suddenly wanted to laugh, but nothing was funny about any of this.
“How?” I croaked out. “How did he know?”
“I don’t know,” he answered.
My brows furrowed. “Then how do you know he knew? And if he knew, then that means Kyle knows. And if they know, then how am I still standing here? They’ve had ample opportunity to come after me.” I scrubbed my hands down my face. “They don’t seem like the type to wait around.”
“They will if they believe you will lead them back to the prince,” Ren replied, kneeling at the side of Henry’s body. He reached into the pocket of the man’s tactical pants and pulled out a cell phone. “After all, they wouldn’t want to just take out the halfling.”
But taking me out would be an end to one of the major problems we faced. At least temporarily, until the prince located another female halfling. But with me out of the picture, they’d have more time to figure out how to kill the prince. Having a special stake was only going to get them so far.
Ren shoved Henry’s phone into his pocket and rose. “I’m sorry that this bothered you, but it had to be done.”
I inhaled sharply. Did it? If Henry knew what I was, he was a danger to me. So was Kyle. I got that. I also got that Ren was protecting me, but he’d just killed a man and it hadn’t even fazed him.
“I need to take care of the body,” he said, stepping over said body. Then he was in front of me. I jerked when he curved his hand around the nape of my neck. “I should do this alone.”
I was at a loss for words, my heart beating so fast I felt sick.
“It’ll be okay. I promise.” He lowered his head, kissing me, but I didn’t feel it. My entire being was numb. “I’ll catch up with you later,” he said.
I found myself nodding and then I slipped free. I gathered up my weapons and started to pass Ren, but he caught my arm. My gaze flicked to his. “You know I had to do this, right?” he asked.
I nodded, even though I wasn’t sure of why I was nodding. All I knew was that leaving his apartment was a good idea, because I needed to get out of there and think.
“I’ll catch up with you later,” he repeated. “You meet me back here?”
“Okay,” I managed to force out as I lowered my gaze, staring at his throat.
Ren let go and I beat feet across the room. At the door, I stopped and looked back at Henry’s body. All I kept thinking was that this man, this human being, was dead by Ren’s hands. Literally. Sometimes humans get caught in the crosshairs when it comes to fighting the fae, and they get killed. Other times a human gets fed on too much, they get out of control, and have to be . . . put down. I hated that—hated that part of my job more than anything, but it happened. This though . . . A shudder rolled through me. This was different. No matter how I wanted to spin it. Whether Henry knew I was the halfling or not, this was in cold blood.
And I never, not even once since the moment I met Ren, had thought he could so efficiently,
coldly,
end another human’s life. No way. I thought about the day in the Quarter when the guy was killed in the street and Ren had been unable to save his life. That had gutted Ren. I’d seen it in his eyes. Ren was like me in that way—pained when a human life was lost, unlike some of the other Order members.
But he hadn’t even batted an eyelash at this.
~
Once I was out of the warehouse district and standing near Palace Café on Canal, I snapped out of what felt like a bizarre trance. That’s how I’d felt since I was at Ren’s place. Like I was under some kind of spell and was only capable of walking out of his apartment and getting into a car. My head had been strangely empty, but now as I started walking toward Royal, the numbness vanished. Reality was the chilly wind whipping down the street.
I took deep, even breaths. Okay. What went down back there had seriously happened. Ren had killed Henry and right now he was most likely disposing of Henry’s body. My hands opened and closed at my sides. Part of me wanted to vomit a little, but that wasn’t going to solve much. I didn’t even know what
would
solve this.
Turning onto Royal, I wasn’t even sure where I was walking. I just needed to keep my legs moving so I could make this right in my head, because right now everything was the furthest thing from right.
I needed to get the facts straight. Henry was a danger to me. Ren rectified that threat. That was all that had happened. It wasn’t like Ren had . . . had murdered someone.
But hadn’t he?
I stopped walking and moved until my back was pressed against the cool stone of a building. I squeezed my eyes shut and cursed under my breath. I couldn’t make this right in my head. My stomach roiled.
I loved Ren. I was in over my head, under water and drowning in love with him, but what he’d just done didn’t sit right with me. I opened my eyes. It didn’t match what I knew about him. It would’ve been one thing if Henry had done something in that moment to prove that he was an immediate danger, but he hadn’t.
“Okay,” I whispered to myself. “Time to focus.”
I might not know how to feel about what Ren had done, but I knew I wasn’t okay with it. We needed to talk about it, even though deep down I knew talking wasn’t going to magically fix anything or bring Henry back to life. I didn’t know what else to do though.
I wish Val were here
.
I sucked in a breath as a sharp pang lit up my chest. The truth was, if Val were still alive and she hadn’t betrayed us, I would’ve called her. She’d been the type of friend, or at least I’d believed so, that would hide a body with you and go down in a ball of flames by your side.
But Val wasn’t here anymore, and it wasn’t like I could call up Jo Ann. That poor girl would have a heart attack. I had to deal with this by myself.
I pushed away from the wall, starting to walk again as I packed away what Ren had just done. If he was right about the other Elite members knowing what I was and using me as bait to lure out the prince, it was no longer safe for me to be here. The ticking clock over my head had sped up.
My phone ringing cut off my thoughts. Digging it out of my purse, I saw that it was Brighton. A flash of guilt caused me to wince. I’d totally forgotten about Merle and everything.
“Hey,” I answered, scanning left and right as I stopped at the corner. A police officer was across the street, and a small group of people were huddled in a half-circle. I could see two straight legs on the ground.
“I’ve found something,” Brighton said, her voice pitched with excitement. “Finally, I’ve found something.”
It took me a moment to catch up. Her mom was missing. Community of fun loving faes. Right. “What?”
“One of the old hand-drawn maps of the city shows a totally different city,” she said.
I frowned as I crossed the street. “What does that mean?”
“It means exactly that,” she said, sounding out breath. “At first I thought I was just looking at a normal map. It has a lot of the landmarks and businesses, but holy crap, you’re not going to believe this. They are
everywhere
, and they were right under our noses the entire time.”
A horn blew, and I placed my hand over my other ear. “Brighton, you’re going to have to give me more detail, because I have no idea where you’re going with all of this.”
She took an audible breath. “Okay. Sorry. It’s just . . . This is big, Ivy. So big.”
Laughter spilled out from a restaurant as a door opened, and I sidestepped a slow-moving couple. “Details, Bri.”
“It wasn’t really the map that caught my attention at first. There are dozens of these hand-drawn things, but one of them had these strange markings in front of certain homes and businesses. They looked like crudely drawn wings, and I remembered seeing the same thing in one of Mom’s journals,” she explained. “It took me forever to find the journal it was in, but those wings on those buildings symbolize a safe haven for the fae.”
I almost stopped in the middle of the street. “Are you sure?”
“That’s what it says. Now, we know that the fae obviously have some kind of network in the human world. It’s the Order’s responsibility to ferret out locations where they’re clustered together, but I don’t think these locations are the kind my mom wrote about—the good fae.”
“Wait,” I said. “I don’t get it. If your mom knew about these places, then the rest of the Order had to, right?”
“I can’t answer that, but that’s not all,” she added in a rush. “I think I know where my mom is. There’s this house—a mansion really—that keeps popping up on all the maps. It has that symbol drawn on it. Mom had circled it on another map, too. I know that’s not the best evidence, but I . . . I just have a feeling.”
“A feeling?” I repeated.
“Yes. I know it sounds stupid, but I just know that’s where she is,” Brighton insisted.
I bit down on my lip. The conversation with Brighton was all over the place, much like my life right now, and a “feeling” really didn’t mean anything, but she was desperate to find her mom. That meant she would probably go knocking on the door of this house. “Where is this place you’re talking about?”
“Okay, so that’s the weird part,” she said, and I waited. A moment passed. “It can’t be where it says it is on the map.”
My brows lifted. “Explain.”
“I’ve double-checked and triple-checked the location,” she said. “And I keep coming up with the same place. This mansion is located over on South Peters Street.”
“Really?” I was trying to think of what was down there, but all I could muster up were images of old warehouses. Definitely no mansions.
Brighton drew in another deep breath. “It’s where the Market Street Power Plant is.”
My lips parted wordlessly and I paused to think. “That huge, abandoned and creepy-ass building on Peters Street?”
“Yes,” she said. “I told you. I’ve compared the different maps. Some of them show a different city—places that, as far as we know, don’t exist. That’s what I’m trying to tell you.”
That didn’t entirely make sense. “Are you going to be home all day?”
“Yes. Where else would I be?”
I stopped beside a delivery truck. “I’m going to swing by. Just promise me you will not go to that plant. Okay? I’ll check it out first.”
She didn’t answer.
My hand tightened around the phone. “Promise me, Bri. There are a lot of crazy things going on right now, and the last thing I need is you getting kidnapped or falling through a rotten floor. I’ll be over shortly. Just hang tight, okay?”
Brighton hesitated and then sighed. “Okay.”
“Thank you.” I started to hang up and then stopped. “I talked to Jerome. He knows something, but he warned me to not poke around about these fae.” I kept my voice low as people passed me. “You haven’t mentioned this to anyone else, right?”
“Who else would I tell?” She laughed, and it sounded forced. “Everyone already thinks my mom and I are crazy. No reason to give them further ammo.”
She had a point. “Okay. I’ll be over soon.” As soon as I disconnected the call, the phone rang again. This time it was my home number. I answered. “Tink?”
“How’d you know it was me?” he asked.
I rolled my eyes. “Who else would be calling me from inside my apartment?”
“I don’t know. People. Ghosts.”
“Ghosts?” I turned, walking back toward Canal.
“Maybe they can use phones. You don’t know.”
“I’m pretty sure ghosts can’t use the phone,” I replied dryly. “Is there a reason for you calling me?”
He huffed. “I have a reason. I was calling to tell you I set up the answering machine for you.”
I’d forgotten all about that. “Thanks.”
“And I also might’ve ordered something else. Okay, I definitely ordered something else. But not from Amazon. You can’t get these from Amazon.”
“Okay.” I picked up my pace, knowing more cabs would be on Canal. “What did you order?”
“It’s a surprise.”
Oh no. “Tink, I don’t like your surprises.”
“You’ll like this one.”
“Doubtful. What is it?”
“You’ll see when you come home. Bye!” Tink hung up on me.
I glanced down at my phone, half-tempted to call him back, but figured I didn’t have the brain space to deal with whatever he was up to. Catching a cab on Canal, I gave him the South Peters address, which earned me a puzzled look. Whatever. I’m sure the cabbie had driven people to weirder places.
As I stared out the window, I remembered the crack of Henry’s neck and winced. What was I going to do about that? I knew I had no intentions of going to David or law enforcement, and I knew that didn’t say great things about me. What I needed was more information from Ren about what he knew that led him to believe there was now such a risk.
Traffic was a pain, and it took about twenty-five minutes to get over to the old power plant. The moment I stepped out of the cab, the man tore out of there like an army of bats was chasing him. Guess I was going to have to Uber it back out.
I eyed the sprawling brick building that was several stories high and had many broken windows. I approached one that looked like a basketball had been thrown through the glass, and peered inside.
“Yikes,” I murmured, seeing overturned, broken workbenches and chairs. I really couldn’t see more than that through the window I was peering into. The place was incredibly dark.
Stepping away, I made my way to the end of the building and down the side. A tall metal fence enclosed the back and obscured most of the rear of the building, but there was no mansion inside. A trailer could fit back here and be hidden. Maybe a single-story home, but definitely no mansion. I walked the length of the fence, looking for a possible opening and not finding one as the scent of the nearby river grew stronger. A narrow alley appeared, and it looked as abandoned as the power plant.
There was nothing here.
Shows a totally different city.
I was going to have to get in front of Brighton and see whatever she was looking at to figure it out. Pivoting around, I hurried back up the side of the building, toward the front as my phone went off again. This time it was Ren. My stomach dropped, a mixture of excitement and unease. “Hey,” I answered.