She passed me a piece of paper with directions. “Margie remembered him wiping her memory. He told her he was doing it to protect her, that she was better off not knowing what was happening to him. The last thing he did before casting that spell was to make her sign over the deed to the family hunting camp.”

I had just merged onto 127 North when Ponce de Leon misted onto the rearview mirror. Lena had put the top down before we left, and the air rushing past made it difficult to hear de Leon’s greeting.

“You know, I have a phone,” I shouted.

He glanced past me, and when he spoke again, his voice was amplified by the car’s speakers. “And which is more likely to be tapped, your phone or my magic?”

He had a point. I wondered which worried him more: that a murderer might listen in on our conversation, or that the Porters might do so. “Have you ever heard of someone gaining magical abilities as a result of an injury to the brain?”

“Not precisely, no.”

“So be precise.”

“Wouldn’t the Porters be a better resource for this sort of question, Isaac?” His question had only a shadow of his usual taunting, which worried me.

“What can I say? I seem to be running out of friends.”

With an opening like that, I would have expected a killer jab at my personality, but de Leon merely sighed and turned away. “Oh, Johannes. I warned him . . .”

“Warned him about what?”

“Do you know how to perform a locking spell, Mister Vainio?”

I wasn’t sure my efforts in Detroit counted. “I managed to seal off a book by—”

“I didn’t ask about books.”

I felt like he had punched me from inside my own rib cage. The car drifted onto the rumble strips to the right of the road as his words sank in. Lena grabbed the wheel, guiding us back into our lane.

“Sorry,” I said. “Are you saying you can lock people?”

He smiled and spread his hands. “The terms of my exile prevent me from divulging certain secrets. This is nothing but conjecture on your part.”

A locking spell to prevent someone from accessing his magic. “Why?”

“What would you do with individuals who became dangerous or unmanageable?” de Leon asked. “Magical imprisonment isn’t terribly cost-effective, and execution seems rather extreme.”

“Banishment works,” Lena suggested.

De Leon smirked. “Does it really? We’ll see.”

“Locking someone’s power wouldn’t be enough,” I said slowly. Maybe you could seal off a man’s magic, but that wouldn’t prevent him from returning the next day with a high-powered rifle and taking his revenge, or from simply going to the media to spill the truth about the Porters. “You’d have to erase his memories of magic, too.”

“Keep going,” said de Leon. “This is a fascinating mental exercise.”