déjà vu. She was as exhausted as she’d been the night before, but not from the Scarlet Pathogen. Rearranging molecules took its toll. Why, oh why, hadn’t she listened to Darius? It had been insane to try a teleportation round-trip, especially on top of the earlier incident at the crime lab. Julio noticed immediately. He was bussing a table in her section and gave a low whistle when he saw her.
“You still don’t look so good,” he said. “You need more of last night’s magic.”
And why not? she thought. She’d already given a blood sample today, so she didn’t need to worry about skewing the lab results. Declan might have a problem with it, but Declan wasn’t here, and she wasn’t interested in getting high, just getting through the shift. “Julio,” she said softly, aware of Kristoff nearby, “do you have any more síúlacht?”
“No,” he said. “No, I’m all sold out. I got some nice mushrooms. Organic. But not good if you’re working.”
“Mushrooms? Are you nuts?”
“Tell you what, let me make a phone call.”
Twenty minutes later Julio showed up in the kitchen as Sailor was garnishing a pair of entrées. “Here,” he said. “It’s only half a pill, but it’s the best I can do until later.”
“Thanks.” A thought occurred to her. “Julio, the person you get the síúlacht from, is it the person who actually manufactures the pills?”
He shook his head. “No. My supplier, he gets it from...I don’t know, some woman in Topanga, I think. I don’t sell a lot. The people who love it, they love it. Me, I tried it, it didn’t do much.”
Sailor nodded. Probably you had to be Elven to feel its full effects, just as only the Elven were susceptible to the Scarlet Pathogen. “Can you find out this woman’s name for me?” she asked.
He frowned. “I don’t think so. Even if I could, that’s bad business practice.”
“It’s important, Julio,” she said. “And I don’t need to buy anything from her. I just need a bit of her knowledge.” Alessande had said that síúlacht was hard to make, so anyone who could do it well enough to manufacture pills from it had to have considerable expertise.
“I could make a few calls,” he said, doubtfully. “You get off at midnight, right? Meet me in employee parking.”
She went back to work. Business was slow, and that was a piece of unexpected luck. The half pill revived her just enough to take the edge off her fatigue. At one point she went into her purse and dug out the business card printed with Reggie Maxx’s phone number. Although he was called the Coastal Keeper, his territory included canyons, too, the ones to the west of hers. She left a voice mail asking if he knew of any healers particularly adept at creating síúlacht or in any of the healing arts. It was a borderline kind of message, suggesting Elven business while not actually saying anything outright.
She then checked her own voice mail, hoping to hear Declan’s sultry voice. Her body had developed a craving for his British accent, and just a few words coming through her cell would keep her going, she knew. But there was nothing. Only a curious message from Justine Freud, the Valley Keeper, asking Sailor to phone her. The call had apparently come in hours earlier, but in the incomprehensible ways of voice mail, she was only just now hearing it. She made a mental note to phone the elderly woman tomorrow.
After a few dozen hours of sleep.
* * *
At midnight, dressed once more in her street clothes, she found Julio leaning against her Jeep. “One síúlacht,” he said, hopping up. He put the little pebblelike pill into her hand. “One is all I could score. It’s not exactly a popular item.”
“One’s all I need. And I’m definitely paying you.”
“No way.” Julio shook his head. “But listen, that information you wanted? No luck. Nobody likes to give up their sources.”
“Thanks for trying,” she said, hiding her disappointment. She popped the pill, chasing it with a bottle of water she’d brought for the purpose. She gave Julio a hug. “You look as exhausted as I feel. You should go home. Get some sleep.”
“Can’t. Gotta finish my shift. Besides, my car’s in the shop, so I have to wait for Tafiq to give me a ride, and he’s closing tonight.” Tafiq was another busboy.
She tossed him the keys. “Here, take mine. I’ve got a ride. I’ll figure out how to pick the Jeep up