~
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?”