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while looking into certain jewels I once had the misfortune to find.
    Lou walked up and stared into the center of the pattern with an intense yet curiously detached interest. That wasn’t like him; he was usually all for something or all against it. There are few shades of gray in his world. Campbell came up and stood beside me.
    “What is Lou so interested in?” she said. That surprised me. Campbell isn’t technically a practitioner, but she does have talent. She wouldn’t be the healer she is if she didn’t.
    “You don’t see it?” I asked.
    “See what?”
    Rolf chuckled, although his voice was starting to slur as it sometimes did so it sounded more like a gargle.
    “She can’t see it,” he said. “Just about no one can, except me and those like me. Even practitioners.” He pointed down at Lou. “And him, of course. He’s an Ifrit, after all.”
    “I can see it,” I said. “Why is that? What is it, anyway?”
    “I figured you might be able to see it, ’cause you were here when it was made. You helped, remember.” Indeed I did. “There might even be a little bit of you in there.”
    Half the time I had no idea what Rolf was talking about. I bent down closer to the swirl. Raw power was coming off it, wild talent. The only other time I’d felt something like this was in the tunnels by the Sutro caves.
    “You might want to take care,” Rolf said. “I don’t think touching it would be a good idea.”
    I appreciated the warning, but it wasn’t needed. He might as well have been a shop foreman telling me, “I wouldn’t stick my hand in that circular saw if I was you.”
    Lou was still staring intently, motionless. His eyes had gone vacant and were starting to take on a glazed expression. The edges of his fur were beginning to glow, ever so slightly,
    “Lou,” I said. “Back off.”
    He ignored me. I don’t think he even heard me. I reached over and grabbed him by the collar, which I make him wear for just such situations. He gave a start, as if I’d rudely woken him from a nap, shook himself, and rapidly backed away from the lip of the swirling pattern.
    “What the hell is this thing?” I asked Rolf.
    “It’s the energy pool,” he said. “You remember; what that creature came out of? It was small at first. I never even noticed it; I thought it had gone, but it never went away. I think that has something to do with those stones you gave me. They had a lot of magic in them, and I think the power they contained may have caused the pool to become self-sustaining. After you left that night, after the fake Ifrit we called up ran off, it started growing. And then something else came out of it.”
    “Like the first creature?”
    He shook his head.
    “No, something else. I didn’t get a good look at it, but it made me nervous.”
    “I didn’t think there was anything that made you nervous,” I said.
    “There’s not too much. Not anymore. But this was . . . well, different.”
    Campbell had been listening intently, at the same time scanning the ground, hoping at least to catch a glimpse of what we were talking about.
    “How long ago was this?” she asked. Rolf looked momentarily baffled. I don’t think he had much of a sense of time.
    “A few months ago,” I put in, helping him out. “About the same time as all that other stuff.” She stared at him, quizzically.
    “And you’re just now getting around to telling someone about it?”
    She spoke in a gently reproving manner, something I wouldn’t have wanted to try myself. Rolf wasn’t entirely human, not anymore, and I was always leery of pissing him off, which isn’t difficult to do. But Campbell, for some reason, seemed to have a different effect on him. He shrugged, but at the same time shuffled his feet in embarrassment.
    “I didn’t think much about it,” he said. “It wasn’t doing anything to me. Live and let live is my motto. But a few days ago I was over in Marin with Richard. Richard Cory.” He turned to me. “You