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thing didn't look either poor or related. Or even vaguely female.

Right on cue, the elevator dinged and the cage shuddered to a stop. The doors slowly creaked open on a spacious but faded hallway, an expanse of not very new business-class carpet . . . and Santa Claus.

Really. Big, burly, tall, with thick bushy white-blond hair, twinkling Caribbean blue eyes . . . He was wearing a blue velour jogging suit, Nike cross-trainers, and little narrow Claus-friendly glasses perched on the end of his nose.

"Actually, she's mine. Sorry for the inconvenience," he said. He stuck his hand out sideways for me to shake. I stared at it, at him, at Rahel, at the Ifrit who was now lounging against the elevator wall as if it didn't have a care in the world. The air still smelled of fear and ozone.

"Joanne Baldwin, I presume," he said, with that same devil-in-the-details smile.

Chapter Nine

"Who the hell are you?" I blurted. Rahel sighed, shook her hands and inspected her restored nail polish critically.

"His name is Patrick," she said. "And I regret to say that he's your new instructor."

The Ifrit vanished while I wasn't looking, but I had the strong impression that it hadn't gone far. Patrick and Rahel exchanged long looks. On Patrick's side it was cute and twinkly and frankly lecherous; on Rahel's it was pained, long-suffering, and repulsed.

"Don't," she said when Patrick opened his mouth. He looked hurt. "I have no need for intercourse with you, social or otherwise. Now. You're expecting her, I presume."

Patrick nodded and slapped a hand out to stop the elevator doors from closing between us. He gave us a grand, sweeping gesture that included a comic-opera bow. Rahel ignored him and pushed past. I followed, and I had the strong impression that while he was down there bowing and scraping, he was checking out my ass.

Patrick let go of the doors and offered me his arm, which I didn't take. Rahel watched the pantomime impatiently. "Let's get on with this," she snapped. "I do not appreciate your little joke."

"What, my Ifrit? Please. As if you could possibly have been hurt by her, Rahel. Nice theater, though, very nice, I very much liked your screaming. I presume Jonathan told you there might be some excitement along the way?"

"He neglected to mention it. I assume you were testing our new friend?"

"Of course." He offered Rahel his elbow this time; she looked at it like something fished out of a sewer line and kept walking. Patrick darted ahead down the hallway, presumably leading us somewhere as he talked over his shoulder. "No offense, my dear, but I do like to know that she won't curl up and die before I even work up a good sweat. I thought with you here, she might expect you to save her, but that was quite a nice surprise. Got backbone, this one. No brains, but backbone."

"Hey!" I snapped, and walked faster to catch up. They had pulled ahead of me by at least ten feet, taking long strides that my high heels, no matter how kicky, weren't appropriate for matching. "So that was some kind of test?"

Patrick threw Rahel a bushy-eyebrows-raised look. "Oh, she's quick, isn't she?"

"Very." For the first time, they were on the same wavelength.

We came to a halt in front of a narrow office door, unmarked except for a number and a weathered sign that read please knock. Patrick twisted the knob, swung the door wide, and stood aside to let me precede him. I took a tentative step in and found a not-very-comfortable waiting room, the standard for HMO doctors and low-cost dentists-industrial furniture, magazines that looked vintage, a crappy, out-of-register TV playing silently in one corner. No receptionist visible, nothing but another door, this one unmarked.

"That way." He nodded toward the other door. I crossed the empty waiting room and reached to open it ... and it silently drifted open before I touched it. "Don't mind that. My Ifrit's a little bored, and really, you are remarkably beautiful, my dear. She's drawn to that sort of thing."

I'd never been leered at by Santa before. It was unsettling.

"Patrick," Rahel said reprovingly. "Behave."

Santa-Patrick-put on an injured, kicked-puppy expression. He had a smooth tenor voice, buttery soft, with an accent I couldn't quite pin down hovering around the edges-not American, maybe antique European. "I'm extremely well mannered," he huffed.