“Exactly. You must learn to feed from what’s all around you, change its form and consume the excess energy produced. My poor Ifrit there exists as a kind of vampire, stealing the souls of others because she cannot touch the forces of life herself. Yes?”

I wanted to shudder, but I didn’t want him to see me do it. I just raised my chin and stared. Patrick smiled.

“Tell me something about yourself.”

“I’d rather save the small talk.”

“There’s no need to be rude, child, and believe me, I’m asking for a reason. Tell me something about yourself. Anything.”

“I’m twenty-eight…”

He rejected that one out of hand. “Something personal. Something… interior. Tell me something you love.”

I thought about it for a long few seconds, then said, “Ralph Lauren’s summer line this year. Not the spring collection, which was way too pastel, and the winter was really crappy, all bland browns and grays. But he’s got some good fabrics this summer, kind of a hot tangerine matched with dull red. Only the skirts, though. His capri pants are for shit. Pockets? Who wants pockets on capri pants? What woman in her right mind puts extra fabric on her hips?”

There was a long and ringing silence. Patrick’s eyes were wide and rather frightened. He finally cleared his throat and said, “Anything else apart from fashion?”

“What do you want me to say? Puppies? Fluffy kittens? Babies?”

“Let’s try something simple. Your favorite food.”

I rolled my eyes. “Chocolate.” Duh.

Patrick went to the kitchen and came back with… a cup of sugar. He set it down in front of me. I eyed the white crystals. “Um… not really that hungry. Or that desperate.”

He settled in a bright red armchair with a creak of leather. “No. Make it chocolate.”

I gave him a blank stare.

“Alchemy,” he reminded me. He reached into a candy dish and took out a silver-wrapped Hershey’s Kiss, shelled it and set it down next to the sugar. “There’s your exemplar. Transmutation. You alter the chemical formula of the sugar and take the resulting energy into yourself. Also, if you’d like, the chocolate, of course.”

He reached into the sugar and dipped out a handful of granular white, put it in the palm of his hand, and waggled his eyebrows theatrically. The sugar thickened, darkened, and morphed into a small, perfect Hershey’s Kiss. He popped it into his mouth and sucked with lascivious delight.

“It’s not necessarily proportional,” he said, smacking on the chocolate. “It depends on how much power you want to pour into it. But you will need at least something to work from. That’s not usually difficult—most things you need are all around you. Once you get proficient enough, you’ll be able to draw the raw material without it being necessarily in a similar form, but we’ll start with the easy steps.”

I had no idea what he was talking about, really. I mean, I got the theory, but there was a big-ass step between sugar and a tasty silver-wrapped treat. I thought about a lot of things, but mostly I thought about the power still flowing out of David into me, sustaining me. I needed to learn how to break that life support. Had to. Both our lives depended on it.

I reached out for the sugar, took a pinch, and contemplated the white granules as they glistened against my palm. Hmmm. Chemistry. I’d always been good at chemistry. It was no more than floating up into Oversight, then driving down through the atomic structure until you were at the most basic levels and rearranging things.

Okay, it sounded simpler than it really was, but doesn’t everything? I took a deep breath, closed my eyes, and focused on the chemical structure. Crystals first, until the edges were clear and sharp in my mind. Then down a level to the thickly nested lattices that made up the crystals. Then into the interstitial spaces that made up the layers…

I was reaching out for the glittering, blue-white beauty of the sugar’s basic blocks when I felt something tear across my mind like a set of white-hot claws. I yelped, grabbed for my head, and felt myself caught. Impaled on something that felt like a knife through my chest.

We weren’t starting with sugar into chocolate after all, it seemed, because Patrick just sat there looking benign and friendly and interested while I screamed and fell to the floor. On the aetheric level, his Ifrit was kneeling on top of me, ripping and tearing at me. I felt the swirling colored layers of my aetheric form go dark with shock, and struggled to break free, but it was on me, crushing me, and there was no way I could get free. I screamed, both in sound and the aetheric plane. Screamed David’s name. Reached for that thick, lifegiving stream of silver that pointed the way to where he’d gone, but I couldn’t find him, couldn’t see him, couldn’t see anything for the agony that rippled over me in waves.

The thing on top of me was laughing soundlessly. It reached for the silver cord that bound me to David, and to life, and it took hold of it in black-shadow claws…

I lashed out. I didn’t know how to fight like a Djinn, so I fought like a Warden, reaching for power from the aetheric, drawing it up through myself like a spring through a well—hot, pulsing power, blood in invisible veins. I put my hands flat against the thing’s chest and screamed as I slammed power into it, through it, out the back of it in a splash of fury so hot I wondered why I didn’t burn with it.

The thing howled, slashed at the umbilical, and I pulled more power, spending it recklessly to keep the Ifrit from getting a good grip.

“Help me!” I screamed at Patrick, who was watching with great, bright-eyed interest. “You bastard!”

“Sugar into chocolate,” he said smugly. “Transmutation. You know this one.”

And somehow, somewhere, I did know. I grabbed hold of that power I’d been slinging so violently and focused it to laser-beam intensity, and allowed my Djinn senses to come back online again. Instantly, the aetheric bloomed into shades and shapes and dimensions, too much, too bright, too confusing, but in the center of the spotlight was the Ifrit. No nicely concealing shadows this time, just ugly angular darkness, all sharp teeth and overdriven muscles. Not a demon, which I’d fought before (and died in the process). An Ifrit was to a demon what a housecat is to a lion—but to a mouse like me, more than enough to do the job.

“Back off!” I snarled at it. It smirked and whirled away in a blur too fast to follow. Circled around behind me. Ripped at me before I could focus the energy properly. “Patrick! Call it off!”

“Now why would I do that?” he asked mildly, and ate another piece of chocolate. “You can’t expect others to defend you, Joanne. It’s the first responsibility of any Djinn. Preserve your life. Then preserve your freedom.”

I didn’t have the energy to spare for a reply. I was looking for a vulnerability, and trying to keep its teeth and claws away from my vulnerability—that silver cord stretching off to the horizon. So fragile, my God, no wonder Jonathan was afraid of leaving David tethered to me—David was vulnerable, too, through me…

Behind the coal black skin and shifting aura like an rainbow oil slick, there was something even darker inside the Ifrit, but soft. Fragile.

On the aetheric, I extended my hand and felt metal claws slide free. They were bright and sharp as starlight, translucent as crystal.

I slapped aside the Ifrit’s tearing attack and plunged those knifelike claws home into its body, not to rip or savage, but to deliver something else.

Light.

Darkness into light.

One thing into another.

Transmutation.

The Ifrit turned pale, translucent, insubstantial, and for a second I heard its cry of joy echo through the aetheric, high and beautiful and strange, and then— pop—it was gone.

And I was lying on the floor of Patrick’s ugly, overdone living room, staring up at a ceiling painted with pornographic renderings in the style of the Sistine Chapel. My Djinn senses were still locked on full, and every damn thing in the place had a history, sweaty and heavy in my head. I wanted to laugh, but I was too tired.