Wicked(75)

"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."

I shuddered. "How do you even find them?"

A cynical grin twisted his lips. "Because most of them are in the Order."

"What?"

Smoothing his finger along the label of his beer, he nodded. "Remember when I told you that no compulsion could be used for a baby to happen? Order members aren't susceptible to glamour, and every halfling—and I mean every halfling we've found—has been the product of a consensual union  ."

I recoiled. "You mean that they wanted—agreed to have sex with a fae, knowing what they were?"

"Yep."

"Gross," I muttered.

"So the halfling is usually brought up in the Order somehow. We keep a lot of ears to the ground, but another thing constant among halflings is that all of them have been adopted. So we check out everyone who is."

A cold chill worked its way down my spine. "I was adopted."