My lips twitched, and I turned to hide my grin. Ren didn’t stay long, and by the time afternoon rolled around, I was sitting in my chair in the bedroom, lacing up my boots. The apartment was oddly quiet. Tink was sulking in his bedroom, because he knew what I was about to do, or he was playing with the stuff that showed up today. Ren was still at his place, doing laundry or listing all the reasons why he wanted to strangle me or poison Tink, and then heading out to work.

Which was why I was slipping a dagger into one boot and carefully hooking the thorn stake into the other. Getting back out there to do my duty wasn’t the only reason I wanted to return to work so quickly. Besides feeling like I was going to murder someone (most likely Tink) if I stayed in this apartment a minute longer, I also needed to find Valerie. It was Sunday, and while I doubted she’d stick to a normal routine, I knew what she typically did on Sunday evenings.

There was a good chance that I’d run into Ren, but I’d cross that pissed-off bridge when I came to it.

I stood up and straightened the loose gray shirt I wore. It was long, coming to my thighs, and it successfully hid the stake I had secured to my hip. I made a pit stop in the bathroom and leaned onto the sink, studying my face in the mirror.

The bruises on my left side had faded dramatically, and the concealer had done wonders with covering what remained. A touch of lipstick camouflaged the mark on the center of my lip. Good chance that would be an actual scar.

I left my hair down just in case people looked too closely and realized I was hiding a mess of a face. Maybe I shouldn’t care about that, but whatever. I wasn’t the best-looking thing out there, and I had no idea how I’d really snagged Ren’s attention, but I didn’t want to look like a walking accident victim.

Then again, Ren was probably questioning his life choices at the moment. He hadn’t exactly been the happiest camper when he’d left this morning.

I started to push away from the mirror but stopped. My eyes. They were blue. A very deep blue, like the color of the sky right before it gives way to dusk. I had no idea what the color of my parents’ eyes were or which one of my parents was a . . . fae, but all fae had blue eyes—pale eyes that were the color of glaciers. I was guessing all the creatures from the Otherworld had those kinds of eyes, because Tink also had them. Did my mortal parent’s genes deepen the eye color so they . . . looked normal?

God.

I squeezed my eyes shut and took a deep breath. No matter what half of my blood said, I was still Ivy Morgan. For twenty-one years, I had operated like any other human being. Well, a human being warded at birth to see through the glamour of the fae, but whatever. I was still Ivy.

With that thought in mind, I left the bathroom. Grabbing a lightweight purse with a shoulder strap that wouldn’t get in the way of things, I strolled out into the living room. I wasn’t a big handbag fan, but I’d found the black, fringed piece of awesomeness at a thrift shop off of Canal, and I’d used it before. I grabbed my book bag, digging out the thin wallet, and that went into the purse with my cellphone.

“You’re insane,” Tink announced.

I didn’t look to see where he was as I lifted the strap of my bag over my head, draping it across my body.

“You shouldn’t go out,” he said, voice closer. I could hear his wings fluttering.

“Am I supposed to stay in here forever, Tink?”

“Yes. I don’t see anything wrong with that. Amazon does one-hour delivery now and you can get almost anything out of their pantry.” He was hovering by the window when I turned to him. His hands were folded together under his chin. “And you can use Man-Boy to get us beignets, since it’s the only thing he’s good at.”

There were a lot of things Ren was good at, but I wasn’t going to spend the next hour arguing with Tink. “I’ll be back,” I said.

“You hope.” He followed me to the door. “Ivy—”

“I’ll be careful.” I turned the knob and glanced over at the brownie. “I promise, Tink. I’ll be home in a little bit.”

He opened his mouth, but I stepped outside and closed the door behind me. A second later, something smacked into it, and my brows rose. I doubted it was Tink. Probably something I didn’t want him throwing at the door.

Shaking my head, I went down the staircase and out into the courtyard. The purple and blue periwinkles and bright pink hibiscus flowers were multiplying like rabbits along the stone walkway. Leafy green vines covered the fencing and the wrought-iron cornstalk gate. That stuff was going to take the whole place over, but I kind of liked it wild and out of control.

The weather wasn’t unbearable, probably in the mid-seventies with the sun behind the clouds, but I fished out my sunglasses anyway and slipped them on. Walking down Coliseum Street felt a little weird. With every step I took, I expected the prince to pop out from a courtyard or from behind the heavy moss. It was ridiculous, this ball of nerves weighing in the center of my stomach, but I put one foot in front of the other as I headed toward Perrier.

First things first. Find out where Val’s parents were and somehow, I didn’t quite know how yet . . . Wait. Change of plans. I needed to make a pit stop at Cafe Du Monde on Decatur. I needed a beignet—a fresh beignet. It had been forever since I had one that was still all warm and toasty, and hadn’t been brought home to cool off.

I caught a cab, because there was no way I was waiting around for one of the damn trolleys, and rode over to Royal. I hopped out, making my way toward Decatur as I kept my eyes peeled for fae.