Ren cocked his head to the side.
“You like sugar in your coffee, like me. Actually, you usually put, like, six or more packets of sugar in your coffee. You don’t drink it black.”
His lips parted. “I like it both ways.”
“No one likes coffee both ways.” Okay, maybe someone out in the world enjoyed coffee both ways, but I’d never met one in real life.
He raised one shoulder. “It’s just coffee.”
It wasn’t just coffee. Something occurred to me then. He’d thrown away the beignets this morning, claiming they tasted bad. I was eating out of the same batch, and mine were fine. Once Ren had been introduced to beignets, he loved them like all people with good taste in fried pastries did. It’s like he’d developed a sudden allergy to sugar. And what he’d done to Henry? That wasn’t like Ren either. Not the Ren who enjoyed sugar in his coffee and on his pastries, but the Ren who viewed all human life as something precious.
A biting chill slammed into my chest as I took a step back. Deep in my heart of hearts, I already knew. I knew, and I was seriously going to be sick. “What was I studying in college?”
Ren blinked those cool green eyes at me. “What?”
My heart started pounding in my chest. “What was I studying at Loyola?”
He laughed quietly under his breath. “Why are you asking that, Ivy? Are you feeling well?”
No. I was not feeling well at all. “Just answer the question, Ren.”
The half-smile disappeared, and the iciness spread in my chest. “What did you call me the first time we met?”
A muscle flexed along Ren’s jaw as he slowly unfurled his arms. He didn’t answer, because I knew he couldn’t. There was no way, because this . . . this wasn’t Ren.
Chapter Twenty
Heart thundering in my chest, I placed my right hand on my hip, just below where the iron dagger was secured. His gaze flicked to my hand and back up to my eyes. He didn’t miss the movement.
Of course not.
Horror rose swiftly as full realization kicked in. This . . . this thing standing in front of me wasn’t Ren. It hadn’t been him in Jackson Square. It hadn’t been Ren kissing and touching me on that couch. My hand shook with revulsion. It looked like him, but it wasn’t him, and that meant the real Ren . . .
Oh God.
Pain lanced my chest. “Where is Ren?”
The thing in front of me raised its brows. “What are you talking about? I’m right in front of you.”
“You aren’t him.” I slipped my hand under my shirt and wrapped my fingers around the handle of the dagger.
“Okay.” It lifted its hands. “I do not know what’s going on in your head, but we can work this out together.”
Oh my God, even its speech patterns were different. This thing spoke too formally. How had I not noticed that until now? I unhooked the dagger and braced myself. “Where is the real Ren?”
It stepped out from behind the island, and I tensed. “Ivy—”
“Don’t say my name,” I ordered, fingers tightening around the dagger. Oh God, how long had it not been Ren? My stomach twisted like a cold knife had been thrust into it. No. It had to have been him the evening the knight showed up. We made love. I would’ve known if it was him, and I couldn’t focus on that right now. “Tell me where Ren is, or I am seriously going to make this hurt for you before I kill you, whatever you are.”
The only creature this thing could be was a changeling, but as far as we knew, none of them had come through the gates since the last time they’d been closed. We’d never caught one before, and according to lore, for a changeling to be in our world, the human they’d taken over was typically in the Otherworld. And that wasn’t possible. The gates were closed.
The worst possible scenarios were going through my head as I widened my stance. “You need to start talking now.”
It lifted its chin and eyed me for a moment. Then a slow, cold grin crept across the mirror image of Ren’s face. The thing blinked, and when its eyes reopened, they were icy blue instead of emerald. I sucked in a sharp breath.
“I was hoping you wouldn’t catch on so quickly,” the thing wearing Ren’s face and body said. “Unfortunately, you are more clever than I anticipated.”
The thing came forward, and I held up the dagger between us. “Stop,” I demanded. “Don’t come any closer.”
“What are you going to do to stop me?” it queried.
I opened my mouth to tell it that I was going to cut off a very important part of it and shove it down its throat, but the thing leaped at me. I spun out of its way at the last possible moment and jumped back. I swung with my free hand, and it caught my wrist.