“Once he finishes his revenge, he will turn against the lesser targets. He will seek to rule because that’s what he did in life.”

And we would be his targets. We had to end this chain of power-ups before it went any further.

“You’ve allowed me one question. I will allow you one as well,” he said.

“Why is he using the ghouls?”

“Because he is used to ruling. He likely thinks that he requires an army to do his bidding, and they, by their very nature, are easy for him to dominate for him. Your cake is getting warm,” Roland pointed out.

The fountain of knowledge had run dry. I had more questions. I wanted to ask about ghouls and about defeating the ifrit, but my time was up. One question was all he would answer, so I settled down to eat the rest of my cake.

•   •   •

THE EVENING WAS dying slowly, the sun bleeding its lifeblood onto the horizon when Curran pulled into our driveway. We had taken a short detour. The answer my father gave me at dinner made me rethink our stalker, so we stopped by the address the Clerk had given me. Derek had emerged from the shadows as we had pulled up and reported that he hadn’t seen anyone. We picked him up, I left a short note by the door, held in place by a rock, and we went home.

The magic had ebbed. Technology once again took the planet in its grip. At least we’d get a short break from the ifrit.

There were so many things I had wanted to ask my father. I wanted to know about the ghouls. I wanted him to tell me why he had broken Christopher’s mind. I wanted to know more about my mother. But this was a slippery slope.

There was one person I could ask about all of this. Trouble was, he wasn’t always reliable.

I stepped out of the Jeep.

“You okay?” Curran asked me.

“Yeah. I’m going to go talk to Christopher for a little bit. Do you think the note will work?”

“It can’t hurt.”

I walked to Barabas’s house. Here’s hoping Christopher was lucid.

Barabas let me in and went back to the Guild Manual. I found Christopher on the floor of the downstairs living room, sitting on a rug, surrounded by open books. His face lit up when he saw me, his eyes clear.

“Mistress.”

“Hi, Christopher.” I sat on the carpet outside his book fort.

“I’m glad you didn’t die.” He smiled.

“I’m glad I didn’t, too. I’ve come for advice.”

“My mind is shattered,” he said. “But I will try.”

“What do you know about ghouls?”

“Ghouls are the fallen djinn,” he said.

“Fallen like demons are the fallen angels?”

He leaned back, shifting his weight. “The djinn are creatures of magic. They require it to survive. The more magic, the more . . .” He struggled for a word.

“Powerful? Larger?”

“Evolved. When they lose their magic, they become ghouls. They are fallen.”

Christopher held his hand out, parallel to the floor. “Ghoul.” He raised his hand up as far as he could. “Marid.”

I nodded. A marid would have much more magic than a ghoul.

Christopher struggled with it for a few seconds and brought his hands together into a ball. “One S. Two S. Two P. Three S.”

And I lost him. “I don’t follow.”

Christopher frowned. “One S.” His hands moved wider. “Two S. Two P.”

“He is talking about the electron configuration of an atom.” Barabas came over with a piece of paper and a pen, sat next to me, and drew a circle on the paper. “This is the nucleus of an atom, protons and neutrons bunched together into a mass. It has a positive charge.”

He drew a circle around it and put a dot on it like a planet around a star. “The electrons have a negative charge. They have set orbitals.” He drew another circle, wider, and then another. “These orbitals are identified by scientific notations. This lowest one is 1s. This one is 2s. This bigger one is 2p. The farther away the orbital, the more electrons it can fit. The first can fit two, the second can fit eight, and so on.”

“Okay.” This was way above my pay grade, but if I could learn cuneiform, I could learn about electron orbits. “What does it have to do with djinn?”

“I’m not sure.” Barabas looked at Christopher.

“The electron jumps.” Christopher said. “It’s excited.”

“Ah. The electron can exist in two states: the ground, or lowest energy state, and the excited state. To make it really simple, the electron naturally wants to stay at the lowest orbit. However, if the electron absorbs some energy, it might ‘jump’ to the next orbit. I’m bungling this badly, but it’s been a long time since college chemistry. For example, if you have a neon atom, it has a configuration of 1s2 2s2 2p6, if I remember correctly. If we give it some energy, by shining a light on it for example, one of these electrons might ‘jump’ to a higher orbit such as 3s or 3p or sometimes even 5s. Then the electron emits the energy in a form of light and ‘falls’ back to the ground state.”