She had left her son at home in San Francisco under the watchful care of Mr. and Mrs. Vo. Orlando and Quinn had agreed that this was not the time for Garrett to be introduced to Quinn’s family. Perhaps the following summer.

Before she could retrieve her phone, though, several women approached them.

“Jake, that was just lovely-what you said about your father,” one of the women said.

“Thank you,” Quinn replied. He remembered her as the mother of someone he’d gone to school with, but her name escaped him.

“Yes,” one of the other women said.

“Absolutely lovely,” the last told him.

“Thank you.”

“I can’t believe how grown up you are now. And who is this beautiful woman you’re with?” the first asked.

Quinn could feel Orlando tense beside him. “Oh, I’m sorry,” he said. “This is my girlfriend, Claire.”

The first woman smiled. “Nice to meet you, Claire. I’m Mrs. Patterson.”

“How nice you could come with Jake,” the third said. “I’m Mrs. Moore.”

“Claire? I wouldn’t have expected that name,” the second one said.

Quinn frowned, annoyed, but Orlando immediately put a calming hand on his thigh and said, “My father was part Irish.” It wasn’t a lie. Her father was half-Irish, but her father had also been half-Thai, and her mother one hundred percent Korean. When someone looked at Orlando, her Irish ancestry was the last thing she saw.

“What name do you want my family to call you?” Quinn had asked Orlando before they’d left for Minnesota. “Your real name?” Orlando was not the name she’d been born with. Like most in the secret world, she’d taken on a new identity, burying who she had been.

She scoffed. “I hate my real name.” She was silent for a moment. This would be the name Quinn’s family would always know her by, so it wasn’t something to be taken lightly. “Claire was one of my father’s favorite names. He always said he wished it had been mine.”