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"I'm also very well qualified, in case you're wondering, my sweet little peach. You see, I'm the only living example of what David's trying to do with you. I'm the only human ever to survive being made into a Djinn by another Djinn."

I needed to sit down, suddenly. There was a lot implied in that simple statement-one, this had been tried before, and two, it had only happened once successfully. Not the news I was hoping to hear.

Patrick must have sensed it, because he waved a hand and suddenly there was a guest chair behind me, of the same industrial discomfort as the waiting room furniture. I sat. Rahel put a hand on my shoulder, and between that and the friendly, heavy weight of Patrick's stare, I felt somewhat anchored again.

"When I was forty-two, I contracted a fatal disease," Patrick said, and settled back behind his desk with a protesting creak of chair springs. He steepled his fingers on the curve of his stomach. "I had been, to that point, what you would call a Fire Warden. When I died, my Djinn-"

"Sara," Rahel said quietly. They exchanged an impenetrable look.

"-my Djinn, Sara, made me into the man I am today." He smiled brightly. "Which isn't a man at all, of course. So therefore Jonathan feels that I am well qualified to teach you how to become a Djinn. You do understand you're not one now?"

"Jonathan was pretty clear on that," I said.

"You should believe it." Patrick's smile disappeared like he'd pulled the plug on it. "You'll die, and take David with you, unless you learn how to survive without the life support he's providing you. Do you understand that?"

I swallowed. "Yes."

"Then forget everything David has taught you already. We're starting over. The problem is that natural-born Djinn have no idea what you need to learn to survive-and it is completely different from what they think you need to know."

"That's what the thing in the elevator was about?"

"Not at all. That was just a bit of fun." Patrick had a naughty grin. "Rahel and I have quite a history, don't we, my sweet? And I'm sure she enjoyed a little challenge."

Rahel didn't look as if she'd enjoyed any of it, and this little conversation still less. "If you're done with me . . ." she began.

Patrick's turquoise eyes flicked toward her, and there was power there, all right, power as great or greater than Rahel's. "Yes, love, I'm done. Why don't you get on about your master's business like a good little doggie?"

The chill in the air between them deepened to an arctic storm front. Rahel's smile wasn't at all friendly. Neither was Patrick's.

Rahel said softly, "I release her in your care, Patrick. One warning. Jonathan will not take it well if you allow anything to happen to her."

"You're so sure of your master's voice in this matter? Because I wasn't under the impression that Jonathan had formed any special attachment to this girl. None at all."

Her eyes narrowed to burning gold slits. "Very well. I won't take it well if you allow anything to happen to her."

"I thought she was David's bit of mischief. Or is she yours? I do so love a girl who's flexible, you know. Perhaps I might join the fun . . . ?" He held onto an annoyingly bright smile as she hissed and stalked away. The door silently swung open as she approached, and shut when she departed.

I listened for any sense that she was going to hang around, watch out for me. All I sensed was that vast, quiet weight of Patrick's power, and the dark shadow of his Ifrit sliding around the edges of my consciousness.

"Alone at last," said Santa Claus, and gave me a particularly unsettling smile. "Mind if we go to my place?"

Patrick had a loft apartment on West Seventy-third, big and horribly expensive and decorated with as much abandon as a Djinn's imagination and apparently limitless budget could provide.

It was a disaster.

His "office" had been impersonal, deliberately bland, but his home didn't share the same flaws. Carpet in a color that even Rahel wouldn't have worn- aggressive, eye-hurting blue-competed with neon yellow leather couches and shiny green occasional tables. Those damned Warhol Marilyn prints on the wall. Tasteless plaster copies of naked Greek statues, the lewder the better. He liked smiley faces, too. The bathroom was