Wicked (A Wicked Trilogy 1)

Pink crept into my cheeks as I stared at David. "I didn't run because I'm a coward. He had—"

"I didn't say you were a coward, Ivy. The man had a gun. You cannot fight a bullet."

Still, the tone of his voice stung like a sting from a hornet. I wet my lips. "It wasn't a man."

David eyed me for a second then reached toward the table next to my bed. "Thirsty?"

"Yeah. My mouth feels like sandpaper."

He poured water into a plastic cup, and just the tinkling sound was enough to drive me crazy. "Need help sitting up?"

Members of the Order weren't weak, so I took a deep breath as I shook my head and forced myself to sit up. There was a dull twinge of pain along the left side of my stomach, but not as bad as I expected.

"Harris gave you a shot while you were out, so you shouldn't be feeling too much pain." David noted what must've been reading my mind as he handed over the water. "You want to drink that slowly."

The moment the cool wet stuff hit my lips, it was hard not to gulp it down, but I managed to not look like a horse at a trough.

David leaned back, grabbing a bottle out of his pocket. "Here are some pain meds to use if your stomach starts hurting, which Harris said probably would for a day or so since he had to stitch you closed." He tossed the bottle toward my lap, where it landed with a little rattle. "I'm gonna pull you off rotation until next Wednesday."

I lowered my empty cup. "What? Why? I can—"

"Your wound could reopen when you're fighting. We don't need you bleeding all over our steps again like a stuck pig. You're off until next Wednesday."

I was knocking off points for lack of empathy. "But I'm working for Val this Saturday."

"Not anymore. She needs to find someone else or do it herself. Not your problem." He refilled my cup from the pitcher. "Do you have class today?"

It took me a moment to catch up with what he was asking and figure out what day it was. "It's Thursday, right? I don't have class again until tomorrow." Normally, I worked Monday through Friday and had the weekends off. "About what happened last night. David, the fae—"

"I know what you said to Harris and Ren, but—"

"Ren? Who's Ren?" Then it hit me, and my tongue silently worked around the name. "Is he the guy with green eyes?"

David tilted his head to the side as he scowled. "Well, I haven't really been checking out the boy's eye color, but he was with Harris last night when you bled on my steps."

"I didn't bleed on your steps on purpose," I snapped.

His brows flew up. "Are you taking a tone with me? Because I'll take that cup of water right away from you."

"I'll never let go." I cradled the cup of water to my chest as I eyed him. "Never."

David's lips twitched as if he wished to smile, but he was too cool to do that. The man was a brick of ice. "Anyway, Ren Owens is from Colorado, transferring to our sect."

Oh. Colorado. Never been, but always wanted to visit. And what kind of name was Ren Owens?

"But back to what you said you saw, there's no way that's how it went down," he said. "The fae must've had the gun for some reason, and yes, that is concerning but expected. We knew eventually they would start using human weapons."

Frustration pricked at my skin like a heat rash. "The fae wasn't using glamour. Or maybe he was, but it didn't matter. His skin wasn't silver. It was . . . I don't know. Like a deep tan—an olive color."

He leaned forward, resting his elbows on his knees. "Are you sure it was a fae, Ivy?"

"Yes! I'm sure, David. He made a gun appear out of thin air, and I threw my stake at him. It hit him in the chest, and it didn't do a thing to him. He pulled it out and tossed it aside."

He opened his mouth and seemed at a loss for words as he stared at me.

"Yeah. Exactly. The man wasn't human, David. He was a fae that didn't have silver skin, could conjure a gun out of nowhere, and the iron stake did nothing to him. Didn't burn him. Didn't send him back to the Otherworld. It did nothing."

"Impossible," he said after a moment, and my shoulders tensed with irritation.

"I know what I saw. And you know me. I'm not unreliable. Never once have you ever had to question me or—"

"Except the time you ended up in jail."

"Okay. Except that one time, but what I'm telling you is the truth. I don't know what it means, but . . ." A trickle of fear moved through my veins, forming a ball of unease in the pit of my stomach. I downed the glass of water and sat the plastic cup aside, but it didn't lessen the feeling. "If hitting a fae with iron does nothing to them, then they would be unstoppable."

"No, they would be an ancient," David said, and then stood.

My eyes widened at a word I hadn't heard spoken in a long time, not since I was a child and Holly and her husband Adrian would tell me stories of the race of the oldest and deadliest of fae—the warrior knights of their courts, the princesses and the princes, and the kings and queens. Fae that could change shape and form, and had abilities beyond our understanding. None of the fae that walked the mortal realm lived as long as the ancients had in the Otherworld, at least not as far as any of us knew. Basically, the ancients were the kind of fae that could wreak untold havoc in the mortal world if they ever crossed over. It never even occurred to me that the one I faced last night could've been an ancient.

"I thought they were all sealed in the Otherworld," I said. "When the doorways were closed, they—"

"They were." David walked to the window and pulled the flimsy pale blue curtain back. "It could be possible that a few remained here undetected, but it's very unlikely."

That ball of unease doubled in size. "But not impossible?"

Letting the curtain fall back into place, he rubbed a hand over the tight curls that were sheared close to his skull. "Very unlikely. It seems far-fetched that there'd be one who survived this amount of time without our knowledge—without anyone seeing it."

"I saw it," I said. "And this one could easily blend in. If you weren't looking straight at it, paying attention, you wouldn't even know it was a fae."

David faced me. "We don't know what you really saw." He held up his hand as I opened my mouth to protest. "We don't, Ivy. That doesn't mean I'm disregarding what you're reporting to me. I'm going to contact the other sects and see if they have had any experiences like this, but until I hear back from them, we need to keep this quiet."

At least he was starting to take what happened seriously. For that I was grateful. Reaching down, I tossed the blanket off my legs and carefully swung them off the edge of the bed. "Shouldn't we warn the others?"

"And create a panic situation, one where we have members killing humans because we think they might be an ancient?"

"But—"

"Ivy," he warned. "I cannot afford for any of our members to panic, or for innocent lives to be lost."

I didn't like it, but I conceded. "I'll keep quiet."

Doubt crossed his features. "That also means not telling Valerie, who, by the way, you might want to call before she flips her shit."

"Ye of little faith," I murmured, tugging at my bloodstained shirt. Thank goodness it was black or I would've scared the bejeezus out of a bunch of people last night, running all bloody.

"I'm being serious." He pierced me with a stern look. "Tell no one until we know what we're dealing with, especially when we have suffered as many losses as we have this year. You understand me?"

I kind of felt like a misbehaving child when he looked at me like that. The man was hard to deal with, but since I'd lost my family, he was the closest thing I had to a . . . to a father figure. "I understand, David."

"I would hope that you do." He placed his hands on his hips. "Look, take as long as you need here, then go ahead and head home. Remember, you're off until Wednesday, but

I expect to see you at the meeting tomorrow."

Baby Jesus could land in front of me, and I wouldn't miss the weekly bitch session.

He started to leave but then stopped. "Did the fae say anything to you?"

Sliding off the bed, I ignored the tender pull of the skin over my stomach. "Nothing really. I mean, he creeped up on me after I got rid of another fae—a normal one who said the same old 'your