Thomas frowned and said nothing.

“I could run, but I couldn’t hide,” I said. “Better to face it here, on my home ground, while I’m still relatively rested”—I let out a huge and genuine yawn—“instead of waiting for faerie goons from one Court or the other to, ah, depreciate me by surprise after I’ve been on the run for a few weeks.”

“What about the Council?” Thomas demanded. “You’ve been wearing the grey cloak for how long, now? And you’ve fought for them how many times?”

I shook my head. “Right now the Council is still stretched to the limit. We might not be in open battle with the Red Court at the moment, but the Council and the Wardens have got years of catch-up work to do.” I felt my jaw tighten. “Lot of warlocks have come up in the past few years. The Wardens are working overtime to get them under control.”

“You mean kill them,” Thomas said.

“I mean kill them. Most of them teenagers, man.” I shook my head. “Luccio knows my feelings on the matter. She refuses to assign any of it to me. Which means that other Wardens are forced to pick up the slack. I’m not going to add to their workload by dragging them into this mess.”

“You don’t seem to mind adding to mine,” Thomas noted.

I snorted. “That’s because I respect them.”

“So long as we have that clear,” he said.

We drove past a city snowplow. It had foundered in a deep drift, like some kind of metallic Ice Age beast trapped in a tar pit. I watched it with bemusement as Thomas’s truck crunched slowly, steadily on by.

“By the way,” he asked, “where do you want to go?”

“First things first,” I said. “I need food.”

“You need sleep.”

“Tick-tock. Food will do for now.” I pointed. “There, an IHOP.”

He hauled the big truck into a slow, steady turn. “Then what?”

“I ask people impertinent questions,” I said. “Hopefully turning up pertinent answers.”

“Assuming someone doesn’t kill you while you do.”

“That’s why I’m bringing my very own vampire bodyguard.”

Thomas parked across three spaces in the tiny, otherwise unoccupied lot of an International House of Pancakes.

“I like the scarf,” I said. I leaned over and inhaled through my nose as best I could. It stung, but I detected a faint whiff of vanilla and strawberries. “She make it for you?”

Thomas nodded without saying anything. The leather-gloved fingers of one hand traced over the soft, simple yarn. He looked quietly sad. I felt bad for mentioning Justine, my brother’s lost lover. Then I understood why he wore the gloves: If she’d made it for him, a token of her love, he didn’t dare touch it with his skin. It would sear him like a hot skillet. So he kept it close enough for him to smell her touch upon it, but he didn’t dare let it brush against him.

Every time I think my romantic life is a wasteland, I look at my brother and see how much worse it could be.