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it too much, but I kept coining back to the fact that I'd died. Last mortal thing I remembered, I'd been a battleground for two demons tearing me apart, and then I'd-metaphorically speaking-opened my eyes on a whole new world, with whole new rules. Because David had made me a Djinn. You know, Arabian Nights, lamp, granter of wishes? That kind. Only I wasn't imprisoned in a lamp, or (more appropriately) a bottle; I was free-range. Masterless.

Cool, but scary. Masterless, I was vulnerable, and I knew it.

"Hey," I said out loud, and glanced away from the road to look at my traveling companion. Dear God, he was gorgeous. When I'd first met him he'd been masquerading as a regular guy, but even then he'd been damn skippy fine. In what I'd come to realize was his natural Djinn form, he was damn skippy fine to the power of ten. Soft auburn hair worn just a little too long for the current military-short styles. Eyes like molten bronze. Warm golden skin that stretched velvet soft over a strong chest, perfectly sculpted biceps, a flat stomach . . . My hands had a Braille memory that made me warm and melty inside.

Without opening those magical eyes, he asked, "Hey, what?" I'd forgotten I'd said anything. I scrambled to drag my brain back to more intellectual pursuits.

"Still waiting for a plan, if it doesn't disturb your beauty sleep." I kept the tone firmly in the bitchy range, because if I wasn't careful I might start with a whole breathless I-don't-deserve-you routine, and that would cost me cool points. "We're still heading east, by the way."

"Fine," he said, and adjusted his leaning position slightly to get more comfortable against the window glass. "Just keep driving. Less than warp speed, if you can manage it."

"Warp speed? Great. A Trek fan." Not that I was surprised. Djinn seemed to delight in pop culture, so far as I could tell. "Okay. Fine. I'll drive boring."

I glanced back at the road-good thing, I was seriously over the line and into head-on-collision territory- and steered back straight again before I checked the fuel gauge. Which brought up another point. "Can I stop for gas?"

"You don't need to."

"Um, this is a Viper, not a zillion-miles-to-the-gallon Earth Car. Believe me, we'll need to. Soon."

David extended one finger-still without cracking an eyelid-and pointed at the dial. I watched the needle climb, peg out at full, and quiver. "Won't," he said.

"Okay," I said. "East. Right. Until when?"

"Until I think it's safe to stop."

"You know, a little information in this partnership would really help make it, oh, say, a partnership."

His lips twitched away from a smile, and his voice dipped down into octaves that resonated in deep, liquid areas of my body. "Are we partners?"

Dangerous territory. I wasn't sure what we were, exactly, and I wasn't sure I wanted him to tell me. He'd saved me; he'd taken the human part of me that had survived an attack by two demons, and transformed it into a Djinn. I hoped that didn't make him my father. Talk about your Freudian issues. "Okay, genius, I don't know. You define it. What are we?"

He sighed. "I'd rather sleep than get into this right now."

I sighed right back. "You know, I'm a little freaked out, here. Dead, resurrected, got all these new sensations-talking would be good for me."

"What kind of new sensations?" he asked. His voice was low, warm, gentle-ah, sensations. I was having them, all right. Loads of them.

I cleared my throat. "First of all, things don't look right."

"Define right."

"The way they-"

"-used to look," he finished for me. "You've got different eyes now, Joanne. You can choose how to look at things. It's not just light on nerves anymore."

"Well, it's too-bright." Understatement. The sun glared in through the polarized windows and shimmered like silk-it had a liquid quality to it, a real weight. "And I see way too much. Too far."

Everything had . . . dimensions. Saturated colors, and a peculiar kind of history-I could sense where things had been, how long ago, where they'd come from, how they'd been made. A frightening blitz of knowledge. I was trying to shut it down, but it kept leaping up whenever I noticed something new. Like the gas gauge. Watching that quivering indicator, I knew it had been stamped out in a factory in Malaysia.