“You came back,” she said. “I was so worried. You came back.”

“Hey, hey. I need my rib cage, kid,” I said, but I hugged her in return for a quiet moment, before straightening.

“Did it work?” she asked.

“I’m not exactly sure. God, I need something to drink.” We both boarded the Water Beetle, and I went below and removed a can of Coke from a cabinet. It was warm, but it was liquid, and more important, it was Coke. I guzzled the can’s contents and tossed it into the trash bin.

“How’s Morgan?” I asked.

“Awake,” Morgan rumbled. “Where are we?”

“Demonreach,” I said. “It’s an island in Lake Michigan.”

Morgan grunted without emphasis. “Luccio told me about it.”

“Oh,” I said. “Oh, good.”

“Miss Carpenter says you were attempting a sanctum invocation.”

“Yeah.”

Morgan grunted. “You’re here. It worked.”

“I think so,” I said. “I’m not sure.”

“Why not?”

I shook my head. “I thought that when a bond was formed with the land in question, it gave you access to its latent energy.”

“Yes.”

Which meant that my magic would be subsidized by the island, whenever I was here. I’d get a lot more bang for my buck, so to speak. “I thought that was all it did.”

“Generally,” Morgan said. I saw him turn his head toward me in the dim cabin. “Why? What else has happened?”

I took a deep breath and told him about the hidden trail, the hornets, and the skunk.

Morgan sat up in his bunk by the time I got to the end. He leaned forward intently. “You’re sure you aren’t mistaken? Confrontations with a genius loci can leave odd aftereffects behind.”

“Hang on,” I said.

I went back to the woods where I knew the hornets were, and found their nest in short order. I retreated without crushing anything and went back to the boat.

“Yeah,” I said. “I’m sure.”

Morgan sank back onto the bunk as if he was being slowly deflated. “Merciful God,” he said. “Intellectus.”

I felt my eyebrows go up. “You’re kidding.”

Molly muttered a couple of candles to light so that we could see each other clearly. “Intell-whatsis?” she asked me.

“Intellectus,” I said. “Um. It’s a mode of existence for a very few rare and powerful supernatural beings—angels have it. I’m willing to bet old Mother Winter and Mother Summer have it. For beings with intellectus, all reality exists in one piece, one place, one moment, and they can look at the whole thing. They don’t seek or acquire knowledge. They just know things. They see the entire picture.”

“I’m not sure I get that,” Molly said.

Morgan spoke. “A being with intellectus does not understand, for example, how to derive a complex calculus equation—because it doesn’t need the process. If you showed him a problem and an equation, he would simply understand it and skip straight to the answer without need to think through the logical stages of solving the problem.”

“It’s omniscient?” Molly asked, her eyes wide.

Morgan shook his head. “Not the same thing. The being with intellectus has to be focused on something via consideration in order to know it, whereas an omniscient being knows all things at all times.”

“Isn’t that pretty close?” Molly asked.

“Intellectus wouldn’t save you from an assassin’s bullet if you didn’t know someone wanted to kill you in the first place,” I said. “To know it was coming, you’d first need to consider the question of whether or not an assassin might be lurking in a dark doorway or on top of a bell tower.”

Morgan grunted agreement. “And since beings of intellectus so rarely understand broader ideas of cause and effect, they can be unlikely to realize that a given event might be an indicator of an upcoming assassination attempt.” He turned to me. “Though that’s a terrible metaphor, Dresden. Most beings like that are immortal. They’d be hard-pressed to notice bullets, much less feel threatened by them.”

“So,” Molly said, nodding, “it might be able to know anything it wants to know—but it still has to ask the right questions. Which is always harder than people think it is.”

“Yeah,” I said. “Exactly.”

“And now you’ve got this intellectus, too?”

I shook my head. “It’s Demonreach that has it. It stopped when I got out over the water.” I tapped my finger against my forehead. “I’ve got nothing going on in here at the moment.”

I realized what I had said just as the last word left my mouth, and glanced at Morgan.

He lay on the bunk with his eyes closed. His mouth was turned up in small smile. “Too easy.”

Molly fought not to grin.

Morgan pursed his lips thoughtfully. “Can the entity feed you any other information, Dresden? The identities of those behind LaFortier’s murder, for example.”

I almost hit myself in the head with the heel of my hand. I should have thought of that already. “I’ll let you know,” I said, and went back to the shore.

Demonreach sensed me at the same time as I perceived it, and the mutual sensation felt oddly like a hand wave of acknowledgment. I frowned thoughtfully and looked around the island, concentrating on the issue of LaFortier’s killer.

Nothing sprang to mind. I tried half a dozen other things. Who was going to win the next World Series? Could I get the

Blue Beetle out of impound yet? How many books had Mister knocked off my shelves in my absence?

Zip.

So I thought about hornet’s nests, and instantly felt certain that there were thirty-two of them spread around the hundred and fifty or so acres of the island, and that they were especially thick near the grove of apple trees on the island’s northern side.

I went back to the boat and reported.

“Then it only exists upon the island itself,” Morgun rumbled, “like any other genius loci. This one must be bloody ancient to have attained a state of intellectus, even if it is limited to its own shorelines.”

“Could be handy,” I noted.

Morgan didn’t open his eyes but bared his teeth in a wolf’s smile. “Certainly. If your foes were considerate enough to come all the way out here to meet you.”

“Could be handy,” I repeated, firmly.

Morgan arched an eyebrow and gave me a sharp look.

“Come on, grasshopper,” I said to Molly. “Cast off the lines. You’re about to learn how to drive the boat.”

By the time we made it back to the marina, the sun had risen. I coached Molly through the steps of bringing the Water Beetle safely into dock, even though I wasn’t exactly Horatio Hornblower myself. We managed to do it without breaking or sinking anything, which is what counts. I tied off the boat and went onto the dock. Molly followed me anxiously to the rail.

“No problem here, grasshopper. Take her out for about ten minutes in a random direction that you choose. Then turn off the engine and wait. I’ll signal you when I’m ready for you to pick me up.”

“Are you sure we shouldn’t stay together or something?” she asked anxiously.

I shook my head. “Tracking spells can’t home in too well over water,” I said. “And you’ll know if someone’s coming for you from a mile away. Literally. Keep Morgan out there, and you should be as safe as anywhere.”

She frowned. “What if he gets worse?”

“Use your noggin, kid. Do whatever you think is most likely to keep you both alive.” I started untying the line. “I shouldn’t be gone more than a couple of hours. If I don’t show, the plan is the same as when I went up to the tower. Get yourself vanished.”

She swallowed. “And Morgan?”

“Make him as comfortable as you can and leave him.”

She stared at me for a minute. “Really?”

“If I get taken out, I don’t think you’ll be able to protect him,” I said, as matter-of-factly as I could. “Or catch the real bad guy. So run like hell and let him look out for himself.”