He looked up from whatever he was doing and smiled. “Hey there, Curly. Been a long time.”

“It has.” I made my way to the shiny, polished bar and hopped up on a stool. I snagged my sunglasses off my head and placed them in my purse. “How’ve you been?” I asked him.

“Good.” He moved a tray of shot glasses to the back bar. “Only have two classes this semester that are really giving me trouble. How’s Loyola?”

“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?”