There were eyes in the shadows; I could feel them even if I couldn’t see them. Dark eyes. And a darker amusement. The ball of fire I’d made was starting to get hot, even through the layering I’d put around it. I tossed it from one hand to the other, looking casual and—I hoped—deadly.
The Ifrit purred, “Peace to you, my sisters.”
“War, my sister,” Rahel answered softly. “Who lets you hunt here?”
“Sweetmeat, I hunt where I choose,” the thing said. It had a voice like darkest velvet, and even though the air was too thin to hold a smell I could taste it, like rotting meat in the back of my throat.
“Not here. Not now.”
I don’t know how it did it, but it smiled. Grinned, actually. Maybe it was just that my eyes were getting accustomed to the lack of features in its face, and added some imaginary ones, but I thought I saw a flash of teeth. “This creature cannot survive,” it said, and pointed toward me. “Think you I will allow its energy to be wasted?”
The Ifrit was talking about me. “Who you calling a creature?” I shot back.
“Hush,” Rahel said absently. She was staring at the Ifrit with a frown now, no longer afraid. “Get rid of that fireball before you hurt someone.”
Oh. The fireball. I killed it by the simple expedient of cracking the carbon dioxide shell and instantly supercooling the molecules as they tried to hurtle out and fry us alive. By the time the snapping sound echoed through the elevator car, all that was left was a faint smell of ozone and a wisp of smoke that I left, just for effect.
“Now,” Rahel said, and slowly lowered her hand. “Who sent you, my poor sister?” I wondered what had made the attitude change. My poor sister? The 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.
“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?”