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still liked the sensation, even though it wasn't tired, wasn't thirsty or hungry or in need of bathroom facilities-and turned to David . . .

Who was awake and watching me. His eyes weren't brown now, they were sun-sparked copper, deep and gold-flecked, entirely inhuman. He was too beautiful to be possible in anything but dreams.

The car shuddered as three eighteen-wheelers blew past and slammed wind gusts into us-a rude reminder that it wasn't a dream, after all. Not that reality was looking all that bad.

"What now?" I asked. I wasn't just asking about driving directions, and David knew it. He reached out and captured my hand, looked down at it, rubbed a thumb light and warm as breath across my knuckles.

"There are some things I need to teach you."

And there went the perv-cam again, showing me all the different things he probably didn't mean . . .

"So we should get a room," he finished, and when he met my eyes again, the heart I didn't really have skipped a beat or two.

"Oh," I breathed. "A room. Sure. Absolutely."

He kept hold of my hand, and his index finger traced light whorls over my palm, teasing what I supposed wasn't really a lifeline anymore. The finger moved slowly up over the translucent skin of my wrist, waking shivers. God. I didn't even mean to, but somehow I was seeing him on the aetheric level, that altered plane of reality where certain people, like Wardens and Djinn, can read energy patterns and see things in an entirely different spectrum.

He was pure fire, shifting and flaring and burning with the intensity of a star.

"You're feeling better," I said. No way to read expressions, on the aetheric, but I could almost feel the shape of his smile.

"A little," he agreed. "And you do have things to learn."

"You're going to teach me?"

His voice went deep and husky. "Absolutely. As soon as we have some privacy."

I retrieved my hand, jammed Mona into first gear, and peeled rubber.

We picked an upper-class hotel in Manhattan, valeted Mona into a parking garage with rates so high it had to be run by the Mafia. I wondered how much ransom we were going to have to pay Guido to get her back. We strolled into the high-class marble and mahogany lobby brazenly unconcerned by our lack of luggage.

"Wow," I said, and looked around appreciatively. "Sweet." It had that old-rich ambiance that most places try to create with knockoff antiques and reproduction rugs, but as I trailed my fingers over a mahogany side table I could feel the depth of history in it, stretching back to the generations of maids who'd polished it, to the eighteenth-century worker who'd planed the wood, to the tree that stood tall in the forest.

Nothing fake about this place. Well, okay, the couches were modern, but you have to prefer comfort over authenticity in some things. The giant Persian rug was certainly real enough to make up the difference.

The place smelled of that best incense of all-old money.

David waited in line patiently at the long marble counter while the business travelers ahead of him presented American Express cards and listened to voice mail on cell phones. A thought occurred to me, and I tugged at the sleeve of his olive drab coat. "Hey. Why-"

"-check in?" he finished for me. "Two reasons. First, it's easier, and you'll find that the less power you use unnecessarily, the better off you are. Second, I don't think you're ready to be living my life quite yet. One step at a time."

He reached into his pocket and came out with- an American Express card. I blinked at it. It said David L Prince in raised letters. "Cool. Is that real?" I said it too loudly.

His eyes widened behind concealing little round glasses. "Not a great question when we're about to use it to pay for the room, is it?"

Oh. I'd been figuring we were still in some unnoticeable fog, but clearly not; the guy in line ahead of me was distracted enough from the cell phone glued to his ear to throw us a suspicious look. True, we didn't have the glossy spa-treated look of the rich, or the unlimited-expense-account confidence of the corporate, but we weren't exactly looking like homeless, either. I shot him a sarcastic smile. He turned back to his business.

"Sorry," I said, more softly,