“I have several. I put one in your Jeep this afternoon.”
“Why?”
“Easiest way to track you.”
She gasped. “You put a tracking device in my Jeep?” She felt herself growing hot with anger. “Why the hell would you do that?”
He turned to her. “Isn’t it obvious? I can’t trust you to take care of yourself.”
She drew herself up to her full height. “I’m a Keeper, Declan, like you are. I’m not a kid. I thought you knew that.” She walked away, throwing over her shoulder, “Rhiannon, I’ll meet you at your car.”
“I’m coming with you,” Rhiannon called back.
* * *
To reach Hollywood Boulevard, where Rhiannon’s Volvo was parked, they had to walk down the long drive, passing a handful of House of Illusion staffers gathered on the drawbridge. Those on the closing shift who hadn’t left the premises prior to the explosion were now stuck there until their cars were released when investigators were done. Some people were crying. Others greeted Sailor, but she was too distressed to stop and chat. When someone touched her arm, she jumped.
“Sorry to frighten you.” It was Dennis, the bartender. “You okay?”
“No, not even close. This is a nightmare.”
“Is it true? It was your car that blew up.”
She nodded.
“Are you guys parked on Hollywood?” he asked. “Come on. I’ll walk with you.”
She was glad of his company. She’d worked with Dennis for months and never had a conversation outside of work, but he’d known Julio, and that was all that mattered right now.
“You have the sickness, don’t you?” he said, as Rhiannon left them to talk and headed more quickly toward her car. “The Scarlet Pathogen.”
She looked at him. “You know?”
He nodded. “Your contact lenses tipped me off. Rumors have been running rampant among my people.”
Sailor often forgot Dennis was a gnome. Gnomes were notoriously well-connected and incorrigible gossipmongers. Bartending was a natural profession for them; tabloid journalism was another. She needed to watch herself with him.
“Yes, I have the pathogen,” she said.
“And Julio needed the síúlacht tonight for you.”
“Yes,” she said. “But I’d appreciate you keeping that to yourself. I didn’t mention it to the cops, for obvious reasons.”
“I won’t either.” They walked past a few onlookers; there weren’t many, due to the lateness of the hour, but she was surprised there were any at all. “I wanted to talk to you,” Dennis continued, “because Julio came to me a few hours ago. He’d sold me a couple of síúlacht pills earlier today and wanted to buy one back. I figured it was for you.”
“Why would you buy síúlacht? Does it have an effect on gnomes?”
Dennis shook his head. “I have an Elven girlfriend. She gets migraines. Hey, you’re shivering.” He took off his jacket and put it around her.
“No, I’m okay,” she said, trying to understand what Dennis was telling her. “But what does this have to do—”
“Here’s the thing. Julio asked me if by any chance I knew who made the síúlacht. Said it was important to him to find out. So I figured that if the síúlacht was for you, it was you who wanted the information.”
“Right, I did. Do. What did you tell Julio?”
“I told him I had no idea who made the stuff, that he should ask his supplier.”
“Maybe the supplier made them,” Sailor said. She recalled what Dr. Krabill had said. “If it’s hard to make síúlacht as a tea, it would take someone very good to make it into a pill.”
“‘Very good’ doesn’t cover it. Genius. And not just genius, but genius with access to the recipe, which is hidden away in some document as old as the Dead Sea Scrolls. We’re talking the stuff of myth and legend. My girlfriend says it has to be an Ancient.”
“A what?”
“Ancient. Like the underground, they support themselves dealing in what we’d call the black market. Off the books. Herbs, magic, healing potions. Nothing the IRS would ever see.”
“What underground? And what’s an Ancient?”
“You don’t know?” Dennis asked.
Sailor thought of Great-Aunt Olga’s window ornament. The symbol of the Ancients, Aunt Olga had called it, but she had never explained the term and Sailor had never thought enough about it to be curious. “No. Tell me.”
A police officer approached, and Dennis waited until