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"Can you grant wishes?" I asked Rahel bluntly She looked faintly insulted "Well? Can you?"

"Please Don&039;t be ridiculous"

"Ritual third Can you?"

She smiled thinly "Can I what?"

"Grant wishes"

"Thank you for playing, but you must put it in the form of a-"

"Question, I know Skip the rules and just tellany less demonic here"

That zapped the fun out of her "If I wished"

"Well, I wish you would all just stop screith er and terror into the scream, and even Rahel looked disturbed She took her foot off the dashboard and sat up straight, staring at ot screwed by Bad Bob-" And David, oh, God"-and by you and by Star and now you&039;re telling er trouble than I am Please Kill me now"

"Stop the car," she said

"It&039;s not a car It&039;s an SUV" I had a bad thought "That &039;Kill me now,&039; that was metaphorical"

Her turn to bellow, and believe me, the bellow of a Djinn makes my pissant outburst look like an undernourished peep

I swerved off the freeway Luckily, there was an off-ramp about twenty feet ahead to the tay service road; I buot tires back on tar like control

"What the hell?" I asked Rahel was looking behind us There was a reddish glow gathering back there

"Out," Rahel ordered

"Out&039;s not such a good idea Driving is a good idea-"

"Get out!" This was a yell, not an order, and before I could even think about responding, she was out of the car, yanking the driver&039;s-side door open She dragged ravel, and she kept draggingWhen she paused for a fraction of a second, I tried to get , and I had no idea how I could do that in the real world, but there were things e pressure at my back

and then I was down, flat on the ground, tasting blood and feeling nue and black into the sky, and for a blank second, I didn&039;t even connect it to the Land Rover Not that there was much left of the Land Rover, and it for da tires, crisping paint, an interior that looked like a gli, untouched, a few feet away, staring at the inferno Djinn were creatures of fire, they said She glowed like a torch, beautiful, scary, sexy, and I could feel the heat fro out of the wreckage of the fire and s bad

She turned her head, and her eyes were enorold In an eerily practical voice, she said, "You need to run now"

"What is it?" I scraard for bruises and cuts Her face was calm and set

"Just run!"

She didn&039;t waste anywith me She shoved, I stumbled, almost fell, and then ile hu out of that fireball took over, and I started to run

I vaulted over the sagging barbed wire fence and fell into thick underbrush, th of panic Like Lot&039;s wife, I looked back, and I saw that the fire fro straight for Rahel It hit her with so much force, I saw her yellow coat blow back like bird&039;s wings, and then she was engulfed

I couldn&039;t stop The underbrush was dry, all it would take would be a casual brush fro that had erupted out of the Rover and I&039;d be nothing but charcoal and dental records It was hard to work the weather in a panic, and I could feel things blocking me, forces in the aetheric that had control of the air, the water, the ground under h the underbrush and found myself in a plowed field Neat dark-bros of earth, jewel-green seedlings just pushing out of the soil A farmhouse sat at the far end, lit up like a kitschy craft fair painting On the other side of the field, a grassy fenced area with brown, placid cows

And a round metal stock tank for water

I s and didn&039;t know if it was the fire co for me or an overload of panic I fell into the cow pasture As I rolled back to ot a look back

The underbrush was burning No sign of Rahel There was nothing left of the Land Rover but a sizzling metal skeleton

I ran for the stock tank Cows trotted out of my way, amiably uncertain, and I hoped they wouldn&039;t end the day as barbecue, but I couldn&039;t do anything about that just now I spared a look over my shoulder

Fire boiled out of the underbrush in a straight line, burning a path straight for me It hit the fence and blew a blackened hole in it Somehow, I knew-felt-it was Star I forced round and jumped

I dived into the ice-cold water of the stock tank and found the slimy metal bottom My skin took the shock hard, and it was all I could do not to gasp in a big drowning breath, but I held on, and the icy slap of it wore off in seconds, leavinghit the stock tank hard enough to rattle through the e and white sheet across the water, felt the teht ca, I&039;d boil like a lobster in a pot Quite a lot of deaths to choose fro- none of theen ot my lips into it and refilled I crab-walked backwards to the farthest part of the tank froae- on the other side Pretty soonto beco to the surface and haulingit all the way to-where?-before getting fried? No No, I did not

Mastery over air and water didn&039;t ht now, except that I could probably keep breathing right up until my skin boiled off and my eyes popped Maybe I would lose consciousness before that I hoped so

It got dark all of a sudden I wondered if my eyes had failed, but then my brain slowly crawled to the conclusion that the fire had stopped

Somebody had hold of my hair and yanked It hurt I opened ful ofout of the water and into chilled air and I was on the ground, reen ooze

I sucked in air, coughed, and felt the linings of ain Could you die of disgust? I coughed until I was shaking and weak, smeared wet dirt all over my face, and rolled over to look around Hard to tell if anything else had been baked or fried-it was too dark-but I didn&039;t s in panic at the far side of the pasture

Rahel stood over me, fresh and neon as ever She stared down at me and said, "I&039;m out of patience, Child of Deain, wiped asped, "What?"

"Hi in front ofalong his skin, pooling in his eyes "Do you love hiers again, and ere standing somewhere else Or noI could still feel the wind on rass under me

But what I saas a cellar Dark, stacked here and there with boxes There was a wooden worktable against the far wall, and on it

On it lay the book from Cathy Ball&039;s store

Estrella stepped fro up next to the sheer prirateful for the war colder

I sat up Rahel helped me to my feet

Estrella went to the book and opened it

"No," I whispered, and looked at Rahel; her face was ilowed like jack-o&039;-lanterns "Stop her!"

"I can&039;t," she said "I can&039;t interfere in the clai process"

"The fuck you can&039;t! Hell, set her house on fireblow it downanything!"