Wicked (A Wicked Saga #1)(54)
Author: J. Lynn

I closed the door, cheeks hot. "I was actually looking for the bathroom."

"Through my bedroom. Not very convenient for guests or my privacy." He swaggered back into the living room, a bottle of beer in one hand and a can of soda in the other. Placing my can on the table, he walked over to the second door and opened it. "Just through here, to your left. The other door is the closet, and no, it’s nowhere near as neat as the linen closet. I’ll wait for you out here."

Entering Ren’s bedroom made me feel weird. I hadn’t been in a guy’s bedroom since Shaun, and it was like walking through their inner sanctum. Like with the living room and kitchen though, there really were no personal artifacts. Just a huge king-sized bed with a thick, gray comforter left in a pile, a dark wood dresser, a nightstand, and a bookshelf—a fully loaded bookshelf. I wanted to check out what kind of titles he had, but I didn’t think it would be cool of me to loiter in his bedroom. I quickly entered a neat master bathroom, did my thing, and then made my way back to the living room.

Ren sat on one side of the sectional, his legs kicked up onto the coffee table. His shoes were off, feet bare. As I picked up my soda, I couldn’t help but notice he had sexy feet, and the moment that thought occurred, I decided I needed to get out more if I thought feet were sexy.

I sat against the arm of the sectional, kicking off my sandals and tucking my feet under me. He watched me out of the corner of his beautiful, thickly lashed eyes while he tipped the neck of the bottle to his lips. "I like seeing you in my place," he said. "Just thought I’d share that."

Stupidly flustered, I ignored that comment. "I think we need to start with this whole halfling thing," I decided.

"Good choice. Get the crazy out of the way first." Draping an arm over the back of the sectional, he looked at me. "You’re not going to believe any of this, so before I go forward and talk just to take up oxygen, I need you to have an open mind. You get me?"

"We hunt fae, Ren. I have an open mind."

He lifted an eyebrow.

"And I’ve lived in New Orleans for almost four years. I’ve seen a lot of weird crap."

"True," he murmured, and flashed me a quick smile. "A halfling is a child of a human and a fae."

Part of me had suspected as much, but I found myself shaking my head despite the fact I just said I had an open mind. "That’s not . . . I didn’t think a fae and a human could make a baby."

"It’s not easy. It’s actually kind of rare when you compare it to the billions of people having children, but they can and it does happen. As far as we’ve learned, it can only happen when no compulsion is used, and for all we know, it could have something to do with fae magic. No one knows exactly why one pregnancy happens and another doesn’t. Merle was correct when she said there used to be thousands of them but not anymore. There’s probably a handful left—a couple dozen at most."

"Why are there so few now?" I asked, deciding to play along with this and hold off on deciding if he was veering into Crazytown until the end of the discussion.

"Our job—the Elite’s—is not just to hunt down ancients." His attention drifted from me as tension formed around his mouth. "We are also given the duty of hunting down the halflings."

My lips parted on a soft inhale. "Hunting them down? As in killing them?"

He took another drink of his beer, and when his gaze slid back to mine, haunted shadows lingered in his stare. "There was a magical spell that shaped the doorways to the Otherworld, created by what we assume were the original king and queen of their world. When the doorways were created, they were done so with the ability to be closed and opened. However, there is a loophole in that creation—one act that could open all doorways, all across the world, and we would never be able to close them. Never, Ivy."

"Oh my God . . ." Horrified, that was all I was. The idea of the doorways being opened everywhere and there not being any way to close them was something I couldn’t even wrap my head around. All the creatures of the Otherworld, not just the fae and the ancients, could pour out into our world. There’d be no stopping them from coming . . . or from dragging humans back.

"That loophole has to do with a halfling. If the prince or the princess is able to . . . how do I say this? If they are able to procreate with a halfling, the child resulting from such a union—an ancient making a baby with a human half fae—it would undo the original spells creating the doorways." He coughed out a dry laugh as I gaped at him. "You see, a prince or princess should never be in our world. A halfling should not exist. And a baby created between them? Also should not be. It’s kind of like dogma—the ideology, the basic fundamentals of our world, the doorways, and the Otherworld, would be challenged, and therefore, the entire paradigm collapses."

"Holy shit."

He chortled. "Yeah. That."

My gaze flickered around the room wildly. "It’s like the apocalypse baby."

A choking sound came from him, and I blinked rapidly. "It really is. It’s so bizarre that it has to be true. God, I . . . I wish I drank."

Ren laughed then, the sound lighter. "Told you that you needed something harder."

Shaking my head, I tried to put all that together in my mind. "So the Elite hunt down the halflings just in case the prince or the princess ever makes it through the gateways. Basically, stopping the problem before it starts?"

"Exactly."

I took a huge gulp of my soda. "And you’re here because . . ."

"I’m here because of what I told you before." His eyes found mine again. "All that was true. The Elite fear they will open the gate this time."

My heart skipped a beat. "But that’s not all."

"No," he said quietly. "I’m also here because we have evidence there is a halfling in New Orleans."

Swallowing hard, I leaned over and placed my drink on the coffee table before I ended up spilling it on the couch and making a general mess.

"The person probably has no idea what they are. They usually don’t." A faraway look pinched his features. "What makes them stand out isn’t something that necessarily screams your mama or papa wasn’t from this world. Some have never had broken bones because they haven’t been in a situation where that’s happened, but a halfling is harder to injure. They don’t typically get sick as easily. That’s about the only thing the fae blood or DNA does for them . . . unless they start feeding on humans, but they don’t know how to do that. Another fae would have to show them, and even the fae can’t sniff out halflings, not unless they get near their blood, and then they can tell." Pausing, he took another swig of the beer. "As far as we know, the fae have never successfully gotten their hands on a halfling because we’ve . . . we’ve gotten to them first."