“Um, it’s going . . . fine.” Stupidly embarrassed, I was unable to admit that I was dropping out.
His brows furrowed as he walked over to where I sat. “You sure you’re okay? Looks like you have a black eye.”
And I guessed my makeup was fading. “I got mugged about a week ago.”
“Fuck. For real?” He leaned his elbows against the table. “This damn city, man.”
My eyes widened slightly as I stared down at my hands. “I have a question for you,” I said.
“Ask away.”
I smiled. “Have you seen Val recently?”
“Val? Hell, I haven’t seen her in . . .” His brown eyes rose to the ceiling. “I haven’t seen her in a couple of months. Probably not since July.”
Dammit.
Reggie worked every Sunday evening and most of the nights throughout the week. If he hadn’t seen her, she probably hadn’t come by and wasn’t going to. But for her to not have been here in months? Obviously, the whole working for the fae thing wasn’t something new that had happened in the last couple of weeks.
“Did you two have a falling out or something?” he asked.
“You could say that.”
A wry grin formed. “Sounds like a good story. I got time.”
I started to respond, but my phone rang from inside my bag. Holding up my hand, I hopped off the stool and pulled my cell out. It was Brighton, which was weird because that woman was terrible when it came to using the phone, finding the phone, and returning calls. Needless to say, I was surprised.
“Hey,” I answered, turning and leaning against the bar. “What’s—?”
“My mom is gone,” Brighton blurted out.
My spine stiffened. “What?”
“She’s gone, Ivy. But that’s not all.” Her voice was pitched and strained. “Can you come over? I . . . This isn’t something I can talk about over the phone. You have to see it.”
“I’ll be right there.”
~
Brighton and her mother Merle lived in the Garden District, not entirely far from my apartment. They lived in a gorgeous antebellum with one of the nicest kept courtyards, the kind that put my overgrown mess to shame.
Normally Merle would be out back, and Brighton would be watching over her. The doors would be open and jazzy music would be drifting out from inside the house.
The front door opened as I stepped through the wrought-iron gate and approached the sprawling porch. Brighton stood in the open doorway, her blonde hair in a loose ponytail at the nape of her neck. She was in her mid-thirties, gorgeous in an all-American, beauty pageant winning way.
“Thank you for coming over right away.” She stepped back, letting me into the cool interior of the house. The place was very traditional, with old furniture and walls papered with dainty flowers in muted, pastel colors. It probably had been that way since the house was built, lovingly taken care of through the ages. “I didn’t know who else to call. I don’t really trust the other members and I know things are really bad right now.”
I couldn’t blame her for not trusting the Order. Merle had been fed on by the fae and hadn’t fully mentally recovered from that. A lot of the Order members were dicks when it came to Merle, but before the incident with the fae, she was pretty high up there.
This wasn’t the first time Merle had disappeared. Sometimes she roamed off, but I’d never seen Brighton this stressed out about it before.
“What’s going on?” I asked her.
She walked through the sitting room and into the dining hall. There were several journals and handwritten notes laid out on the oval, cream-colored table. “Mom hasn’t been acting right since the gate opened.” She paused, picking up a short glass of what I assumed contained liquor. “More so than normal. It’s like she knew this was going to happen.”
I thought back to the last conversation I’d had with Merle. The woman had known a lot—all about halflings, the fact there were two gates—and she’d always had a major problem with Val. I’d always believed Merle was just being a Judgey McJudgers over Val’s dating habits like some older people tended to be, but now I was wondering if she was just seeing something we’d all been blind to.
“Tell me what happened.”
She took a swig of her drink then stopped. “You want something to—”
“No, I’m fine.”
Brighton wet her lips then swallowed hard. Her knuckles on the hand holding her glass were bleached white. “She hasn’t been sleeping a lot since the gate was opened. Maybe an hour a night, and I would wake and hear her pacing in her bedroom, murmuring to herself about how it wasn’t safe here anymore. At first, I wasn’t too concerned. It may not be safe for anyone since the knights and the prince came through the gate, but three days ago it changed. She started talking about these places where the fair folk lived.”
My brows rose. Fair folk was another name for fae, one not commonly used outside of people who believed in fairy tales. “Was she talking about the Otherworld?”
“That’s what I thought at first, but she started talking about communities, and I realized she was talking about here, in our world.”
I frowned, not following the importance of that. The fae that had crossed over into our realms lived among humans. Hell, there could be one living a block from here.
“I know what you’re thinking, and I thought the same thing. That she was just talking about the fae.” Brighton coughed out a stressed, hoarse laugh. “Then this morning she came downstairs with all these papers and told me that it was no longer safe for her or me to be here. I tried to calm her down, but nothing was working. She was in a fit.” Lifting the glass to her mouth, she downed the contents in one impressive gulp. “She was saying that the Order couldn’t stop the knights and the prince. That only the fae could, and the Order knew that.”
I watched Brighton walk to the other side of the table. “I should’ve followed her immediately when she went outside, but I didn’t. Maybe five minutes passed, and when I went to check, she wasn’t in the courtyard. I searched all the nearby streets. It’s been decades since she’s gotten in a cab. She was just . . . gone. You know she couldn’t have gotten that far, but she was gone, Ivy.”
Okay. Unless Merle called an Uber, which was unlikely, that was very weird.
“When I came back in, I saw these journals, and once I picked them up and started reading them, I couldn’t stop. If you look at them, you’ll understand why.” She placed her glass down on the table then reached over, picking up a leather-bound journal. “You need to read this.”
I reached over the table and took the journal from her. The thing was old, the leather worn and soft, and the paper had a faint yellow tint. I turned it around and started reading as Brighton started walking back and forth.
At first, none of it really made sense. It was like picking up a book and starting it in the middle, but as I turned the pages and kept reading, things started to piece together.
Disbelief flooded me as I really started to make sense of what I was reading. “My God,” I whispered, staring at the journal. “This can’t be . . .”
Brighton stopped pacing and crossed her arms. “That’s what I thought too, but my mom’s not
that
crazy. They’re not the rantings of a lunatic.”
“I know she’s not, but this is . . . it would be insane.” I reread the lines again, recognizing names of past Sect leaders—names connected with other names I didn’t recognize, but attached to dates of when they’d either crossed over into our world or had been born into ours. I sat down in the chair before I fell down. “No, not insane but unheard of.”
“But not impossible,” Brighton said, dropping into the seat across from me. “You know nothing is really impossible.”
She was right about that, but this . . . this was beyond something any of us had ever imagined. If what was in this journal was true, then my world had just been blown to bits all over again.
Because what I was reading stated that there were fae who lived in our world—fae that did not feed on humans.
Fae that had worked alongside the Order in the past.
Chapter Eight
I sat back in the chair. I was currently knee-deep in a stunned daze as I flipped back a couple of pages to where the names of past Sect leaders were listed. It stopped about two decades ago, on Lafayette Burgos. The other names listed beside the Sect leaders I assumed were fae, based on the bizarre nature of some of the names.
“There are good fae,” Brighton said, and my gaze shot to her pale face. “I’m almost too frightened to even suggest that. As if an Order member will appear out of nowhere and accuse me of treason against my own kind.” She laughed again as she glanced up at the ceiling. “But if you keep reading, that’s what you’ll see. Fae who came into our world, but decided not to feed off humans. They lived normal lifespans, much like our own. They worked alongside Order members in the past.”
My thoughts were wheeling as I started flipping through the journal. Entries were meticulously dated, detailing investigations, searches, and even kills. Many of the entries included the names of Order members and the fae they worked alongside.
Brighton reached across the table and picked up a deep blue journal, a much thinner one than the journal I’d been looking at. “My mother took detailed accounts of everything. I’m not even exaggerating. I had no idea she had all of this hidden away. This book lists all the members of the Order, up until when she . . . when she left.” She placed it on the table. “I got curious and checked on some of the names associated with the fae. Some of them are still alive but have moved out of the city. But there is one still around. Jerome.”
“Holy . . .” I couldn’t even begin to picture Jerome working with a fae. It went against everything I knew about him. “If this is true, why has this been hidden—erased from history?” I asked. “Why wouldn’t this be something known?”
“I don’t know.” She gestured at a dozen or so journals and a stack of loose sheets of paper scattered across the table. “There’s a good chance that there’s some sort of explanation in there, but as of right now, I have no idea.”
I sat forward, resting my elbows on the table as I dragged both hands through my hair, holding the curls back from my face. I opened my mouth but had no idea what to say.
A sympathetic look pinched Brighton’s features. “I know you’re already dealing with a lot, but I didn’t know who else to go to. You’ve always been so patient and understanding with my mom. She trusts you. I trust you.”
I nodded and drew in a deep breath. Neither of them would trust me if they knew the truth, but that was neither here nor there. I scanned the table as I collected my thoughts. Okay. First things first. “Do you have any idea where she could’ve gone?”
“Before she left, she told me it wasn’t safe any longer and that she was going to them. I didn’t know what she meant at first,” Brighton explained. “But I think she was going to them—to these fae who don’t feed on humans.”
Other than how absolutely crazy that sounded, I wondered why Merle would leave Brighton behind if she felt things were no longer safe. That didn’t sound like Merle at all. No matter what kind of mental state she was in, her daughter was always a priority. There was more to this than we knew.
A hell of a lot more, I thought as I stared at all the journals. “So do we have any idea of where these . . . good fae could be living?”
“Maybe.” Brighton reached over, choosing a longer and wider journal. “This one has maps of the city, places marked where hunts have been carried out and locations of kills. I’m hoping there’s something in there. It’s just going to take a little bit to search through it. Not like I can skip a page.”
“Are there anymore like that?”
“Not that I’ve found.” She placed the journal in front of her, then pressed her fingers to her mouth. “There was something else she said before she left.”
At this point, I had no idea what to expect. “What?”
Her cornflower-blue eyes met mine. “Before she left, she told me to contact that young man Ivy brought with her. Ren? She said Ren would know what to do.”
~
Ren would know what to do.
Back at my apartment, I sat cross-legged on my bed and stared at the journal Brighton had allowed me to take. I’d spent the last couple of hours reading through it, and if any of this was fake, it was an extremely well put together hoax, spanning decades.
“It’s not a hoax,” I whispered, reaching up and tucking a stray curl behind my ear. I was convinced that this crap was true or that Merle believed it to be true, and she had believed that for
years
, well before she was captured by the fae.
Closing the journal, I glanced at the clock as I rubbed the back of my neck. It was a little before one in the morning. Ren would be here soon. I’d texted him when I got back to my place, but I hadn’t mentioned anything about Brighton or Merle. I figured that would be a conversation to have in person.
Ren would know what to do.
Did he know there were fae that were . . . good? How could he not have brought that up at some point? I squeezed my eyes shut as I dropped my hand. He was a part of the Elite, and they probably had access to all kinds of information we normal and not so cool members didn’t. And could I get mad at him for not telling me? All things considered, probably not.
Good fae? I laughed under my breath and opened my eyes. How could that theory be so surprising? I lived with a creature of the Otherworld—a brownie. Tink was annoying. He was
expensive
, and he had this horrible habit of not being exactly forthcoming with information, but he wasn’t evil. Before I met him, I’d assumed that all creatures from the Otherworld were bad. Obviously I had been wrong. So it could be possible that there were fae who were like . . . like humans.
I had so many questions though. Without feeding, how did they use glamour to hide their appearance? From what we knew of the fae, they had to feed to use their magic. Were we fed false information?
I’d asked Tink about good fae when I got home. He’d been busy on
my
computer, creating
If Daryl Dies We Riot
memes. He’d genuinely appeared confused by my line of questioning. According to my pint-sized roommate, all fae were bad. There was no such thing as a good fae.