Heat Stroke

“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 ma

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 Dji

“Sara,” Rahel said quietly. They exchanged an impenetrable look.

“—my Dji

“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 Dji

“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 a

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 Dji

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 decorated in them, complete to see-through toilet seat with little yellow happy faces floating inside.

There was, demonstrably, no Mrs. Claus.

Patrick handed me off to the care of the banana yellow leather sofa, which was a lot more uncomfortable than it looked, and disappeared into the kitchen. He came back with two tumblers of something that looked alcoholic but in far too generous a portion for safety. He handed me one. I put mine down on the table, and he hastily dealt me a round coaster that featured an underwear-clad Bettie Page being spanked with a hairbrush.

“So.” He beamed at me, and dragged a chair closer to plump himself down. “You’re wondering how this works.”

“A little.”

“Very simple,” he said, and steepled his fingers under his chin. Those eyes—warm and deep as a tropical ocean. Deceptively peaceful. “Do you know what an Ifrit is?”

“Met one. Didn’t like her.”

“So you did.” Patrick looked past me, and I sensed something dark and shadowy lurking over my shoulder. I didn’t turn. “She is what you could become, if you don’t do this right. She is a fallen Dji

“I thought that was what Dji

“No, no, I told you to forget everything David told you.” He waggled a finger at me. “I grew up in an age of alchemy, so I will put it to you in alchemical terms. We transmute the essence of a thing. We have power of our own, that we draw from the world around us, but to do the great things, the miracles the Dji

“You mean slaves.”

Patrick shrugged. “I prefer to think of it as being in public service. In any case, you’re not ready for such a step just yet. First, you have to learn how to live without a power source, such as a human or another Dji

“That’s why I’m here.” I chanced a sip of the drink he’d poured me. Yowza. The good stuff. Apparently, Patrick’s bad taste didn’t extend to his palate.