“What do you want, Cassiel? I’m tired of your chanting.” Quintus smiled, but it wasn’t at all friendly. “Most human calls can’t reach us. Yours seems to be especially annoying.”
I was glad to know it. It might one day mean my death, if I annoyed them too badly. “Do you know what happened to Molly?”
His eyes narrowed, and it seemed to me that his face sharpened its lines, took on more definition along with more anger. “She was murdered. It was quick and vicious, and I was elsewhere. What more do you want?”
“I want to know how far you traced the killer.” I had absolutely no doubts that he’d done so. I’d raced after the car full of gunmen who’d shot down Manny, and if Quintus truly cared for the woman, he’d have done the same.
Seconds passed, thick and ominous. “It’s not that simple,” he finally said. “Even the Djinn can’t fight shadows.”
“How far did you trace the attack, Quintus?”
He looked past me, at Luis, who was snoring lightly on the couch. “I traced it to the end.”
“What does that—”
“Don’t ask me, Cassiel. I can’t tell you.” Not, I realized, that he wouldn’t. He couldn’t. “There is a geas on me.”
A geas was a special kind of restraint, one that only a Conduit could apply—or an Oracle, I supposed. It was beyond the power of a normal Djinn, even the mightiest of us.
I had narrowed our pool of suspects considerably—and made it infinitely more dangerous. “We are going to Colorado,” I said. “We think the attacks are originating there.”
I was careful not to make it a question; a geas would force him to silence in response, or even to a lie. But a statement might pass.
It did. Quintus seemed to relax a fraction. “I hear it’s nice this time of year,” he said. “Cassiel, be careful. There are more things happening than you can see.”
I tried again. “We’re going to The Ranch.”
Quintus went silent, staring at me. I couldn’t sense anything from him, not even a flicker of struggle. The geas was a very strong one, and watchful.
He had, however, confirmed by his very silence what Warden Sands had said—our enemies were at The Ranch.
In Colorado.
Now we just had to find it. According to the maps I had studied, Colorado contained more than one hundred thousand square miles of land, and much of it was wilderness or ranches.
“Cassiel,” Quintus said. “I know you have to do this. If you don’t, you’ll be killed.” He was giving me information, as much as he could. Warning me. “They won’t stop coming for you.”
I looked toward Luis. “Not only me. And it may touch more than the two of us. It already has.” I returned my attention to Quintus quickly, warily, but he hadn’t moved. “Our enemies are near a river.”
Quintus nodded, but it was very slight. The glow in his eyes intensified, and I thought I saw a flicker go through him.
“Near the border,” I said. The flicker intensified. He didn’t nod this time. He couldn’t. I knew better than to try to push past that point; if it was a truly deep geas, he would attack to defend it.
I wouldn’t survive it.
“Don’t try to stop us,” I said. Quintus stirred, just a little.
“I’m not trying to stop you,” he said. “I’m trying to prepare you.”
“For what?”
Quintus’s presence was flickering like a dying flame. “For the war.”
“We’re running out of time,” I said. “Help us, Quintus. Try. Give me something!”
He did try. The flickering intensified, and the outlines of his form blurred and dissolved.
“To find the greatest, look for the least,” he blurted. He looked up sharply, toward the darkened ceiling, and screamed in rage and pain, a scream that dissolved into nothing. The candle flickered out again. I quickly relit it, but apart from a discolored burn on the carpet where Quintus had been floating, there was no trace that he’d ever existed.
He’d paid a price—that much was clear—even as little as he’d said. The war. But the war between Djinn and Wardens—that was over. Wasn’t it?
“It has to be,” I murmured.
But I was forced to admit that cut off as I was, orphaned from my own people, I could no longer be sure of anything.
To find the greatest, look for the least.
It was a clue, but I didn’t know what it meant. When I’d been a Djinn, I would have taken pleasure in such cryptic comments; I’d have relished the confusion it caused. But Quintus—Quintus had tried very hard to be very clear.
The geas had prevented it, and punished him.
Look for the least. The least what? The least . . .
The least population?
Colorado was a land of a few population centers, and much wilderness, but as I studied the maps and Manny’s computer, I thought I found the answer to the riddle.
HinsdaleCounty held only 790 people in more than 1,100 square miles, and had the fewest roads.
It was, I thought, not only a place to hide. . . . It was a fortress made for those who wanted to retreat from the world.
I blew out the candle and shook Luis awake. He flailed, trying to get loose from the cocoon he’d fashioned out of the quilt, all too aware that another attack could be coming at any second.
“I think I know where to go,” I told him. “Get ready. We have a long drive ahead.”
“Wait.” He scrubbed a hand over his face. He looked very tired. “Tell me first.”
He heard me out, in the predawn silence, in the house his brother had once built a life inside. When I was done, Luis said, “No.”
“No?” I was surprised, to say the least. I’d thought he understood the urgency.
“We can’t drive to Colorado and be back in time for the funeral,” he said. “And I’m not letting Ibby down this time. And I’m not leaving her unprotected while we go off chasing ghosts.”
I hadn’t thought about that. Now that I had, the weight of it sat like glass in my stomach.
“You’re going to have to keep us both safe,” Luis said, “until we get Ibby some alternate protection.”
I don’t know what the look on my face was like, but if it was anything like the frustration that raced through my body, it was no wonder he seemed wary. “Humans,” I snapped. I felt energy crackle within me, and for a moment, being balked, I felt truly Djinn once again.
But I knew he was right, as well.
Chapter 10
THE DAMAGE TO Luis’s truck was relatively minor, all things considered—cosmetic damage to his meticulously maintained paint job, broken windows, dents. His body shop was run by a man who I thought, at first glance, was a Djinn, but I finally, uneasily, decided was human. His eyes were a very light amber, his skin a darker hue than Luis’s, and he had a very unsettling smile.
“Elvis?” Luis responded, when I asked about the man. “He’s okay. Hell of a wizard with cars, but not in the actual wizard sense or anything.”
Strange. Despite Luis’s assurances, I still didn’t trust the man. I waited next to my motorcycle while Luis settled his bills with the mysterious Elvis, and his truck was driven around from behind the square, rusting building. It looked as flamboyant as ever, with new glass glinting in the windows and a fresh paint job gleaming. Elvis had, it appeared, added some glitter to the yellow center of the flames licking down the sides of the truck.
Luis seemed pleased.
We drove from the repair shop, Luis leading and me following on the Victory, through winding streets and older neighborhoods until he pulled to a stop in the driveway of a plain, square house, finished to a shade of pale pink I liked very much. As Luis got out of the truck and I parked the Victory, the front door banged open, and a small rocket shot out toward us.
Isabel.
She leapt like a cat from the ground into Luis’s arms, and he staggered back against the truck. His reaction was exaggerated, but I was fairly certain that the staggering was not. Isabel had momentum on her side.