"What's going on out here?" I called, stepping outside to see what all the shouting was about. "Ben?"

I'd woken up on the couch alone, and felt a pang of disappointment that Volkir had not at least stayed for breakfast.

My breakfast, that is.

As for him, while I hoped he'd enjoyed our shared experience and would want to share it again, I also felt the side-effects of losing a considerable quantity of blood. I was off the menu for the time-being—a week or so, at least.

Rising, I shivered in the chill of the morning air and wrapped myself in the thin blanket I'd found draped over me. There was no sign of the cat.

I'd just started to wonder if the cat-djinn would be offended if I asked Valerie for some of Pickles' food until I figured out what it liked, when the sound of shouting reached me from outside.

Wondering if Valerie had finally noticed that Mr. Park, who lived a few houses down, had replaced his leaky old mailbox with a shiny (and very modern-looking) new one, I'd gone downstairs and opened the door.

Instead of Valerie, though, I saw that the source of the shouting was Ben, and that he was aiming a very Van Helsing-esque look at Volkir. The two of them were below me, standing on the lawn, and as I glanced from one to the other it was clear that Ben was getting all kinds of wrong ideas.

"Oh no, Ben—it's not what you think," I said quickly, taking a step in his direction. "He just bit me, that's all."

"That's all!?" Ben shrieked.

He gets a bit screechy when he's stressed, and I winced as his voice carried up and down the street. It was still very early.

I tried to explain, but while Ben gets screechy, I become mildly incoherent—or so I'm told—and Ben continued to spiral. I'd just mentioned the cat when Volkir's expression shifted from something like boredom to alarm.

"Matthew! Behind you!" he cried and started towards me, but at the same moment, something very large and strong grabbed me from behind and yanked me backward so hard I was lifted off my feet.

The door slammed shut as soon as I was through it, and then whatever had me dragged me up two flights of stairs, down the hall, and into the spare bedroom so fast it made me dizzy. That, and the fact that I was low on blood.

As abruptly as it had seized me, the thing let me go, and I fell to my hands and knees on the old rug that covered the floor—the one that I could never seem to get the dust out of no matter how often I vacuumed it. Maybe it was a cursed rug, I thought, as I involuntarily studied the pattern swirling in front of my eyes. Cursed to be a dusty rug.

I don't think enough blood was getting to my brain.

Giving in to the dizziness, I collapsed and then rolled onto my back to take a look at whatever had decided to interrupt the morning's drama.

"Oh, it's you!" I said, staring up at a swirling mass of black, smoke-like mist and a pair of glowing red eyes. "I wondered where you'd gone."

Even as I spoke, the writhing cloud coalesced into the shape of a hulking man, as tall as the room and with arms thicker than my torso. His lower half remained an insubstantial, smoky mess.

His body was the same black-gray color as the smoke, and his eyes remained as red as glowing coals. He didn't seem to have any hair that I could see, and his features were regal and severe, like an ancient warlord or a prince.

As I stared up at him from the floor, he gazed down at me without speaking. Since he seemed to have finished dragging me about, I lifted myself and sat up, wobbling a little as the room finally stopped spinning.

"What was that for?" I asked. "Are you hungry or something? I'm planning to ask the neighbor lady for some cat food later, but I think I have a can of tuna in the pantry. I was saving it for Ben, because he likes his tuna sandwiches, which I think are blech, but you can have it if you're hungry."

The enormous smoky man stared—or maybe glared—down at me, arms crossed over his chest, eyes glowing red.

Then he spoke, and his voice was deep and dark, and had a strange raspy quality, as if he breathed in instead of out to form the words.

"You are strange," he said. He had an unfamiliar accent, too; something that curled his Rs and deepened his Gs—an odd, musical sound.

"Um...thanks? You're...really neat. I've never talked to a cat-djinn before. Do you have a name? My name's Matthew, but most people call me Matt. You can call me Matt, too, if you like. I prefer Matt, usually, but sometimes—"

"I am not cat," the djinn said, cutting me off. "I am djinn."

"Oh, I know," I reassured him, "but you look like a cat. Not right now, obviously, but before. Volkir told me djinn are shapeshifters. Can you take other shapes, or just a cat? Not that the cat isn't cool enough on its own—actually, it's adorable—but—"

"Izumu."

The djinn's eyes flared as it spoke the word, and I held my breath, unsure if maybe it was a spell to set me on fire or something (I've been told I talk too much when I'm nervous, and some people find it annoying).

Then, when nothing happened, I realized what he meant.

"Oh! Is that your name? Izumu?"

The djinn nodded.

"Izumu...I like it," I said. "Can I call you Zumi? That would be a cute name for a cat. It sounds like 'zoomy,' you know, and—"

"You are strange," he said again. "When you released me, I meant to destroy you. You have soul of sorcerer, and I feared you would enslave me once more. But I look at you and see innocent heart. To destroy innocent heart earns lifetimes of punishment. I am happy I avoid this fate."

"Oh...me too," I said.

I was still sitting cross-legged, leaning back on my hands, and my neck was getting a little sore from having to look up so much. Carefully, I got to my feet and dusted myself off. I was really going to have to do something about that rug.

"So, why'd you bring me up here?" I asked. "I'm happy to talk, of course, but I was kind of in the middle of something."

The djinn—Izumu—uncrossed his arms and drifted a little closer.

"The man upset you. I protect," he said.

"The man? Oh! Ben. We're married," I explained.

"To whom?"

"Um...each other?"

"He is your wife?"

"Er...no. My husband," I corrected.

"You are...his wife?"

"Um, no. I mean, it's just semantics, I guess—husband, spouse, partner, whatever. But usually, we say we're each other's husband."

The djinn regarded me in silence for a moment. "The world has changed since last I was free, it seems. I have much to learn."

"Free?" I asked.

Before he could answer, a loud bang sounded in the hallway, and then the door of the spare bedroom flew open, revealing a brightly glowing blue mist, which quickly solidified into a familiar form.

"Pete!" I said, surprised. Usually, it took him a while to recharge between manifestations, and he'd visited me in the bathroom only the day before.

"Get back, friend Matt," he said, his slimy tones sliding through the air like something slippery in the dark. "You are in grave danger."

"What? Oh, no, I don't think so," I said, looking between the poltergeist and the djinn. Why were there so many misunderstandings this morning? "Pete, this is Zumi, the cat-djinn. Zumi, this is Pete. He guards the house."

"I guard house now," Izumu said. "And I am not cat."

Pete made a rather disturbing sound in his throat and his black-hole eyes glowed with twin pinpricks of fire in his gaunt face.

"Er...actually, Zumi," I said, intervening, "I'm not sure you can stay here. You see, I ordered a dybbuk box, but your jar-thing came instead, and I don't—"

"Contract is binding," Zumi said with a firmness I could almost feel.

"C-Contract?"

"You make wish I stay here, protect house and ghosts and 'things'. I agree. It is done."

"Oh. So you do grant wishes?" I asked hopefully.

"No. I make contract."

"Friend Matt, this creature is more dangerous than you know," Pete said, drifting to hover between the djinn and myself. "You must banish it now, before it is too late."

"Dangerous isn't the same as harmful, Pete," I pointed out. "I mean, this house is full of dangerous things, but none of them have harmed me."

Well, except for Pete himself, who'd briefly killed me, but his heart had been in the right place.

Pete continued to glower with his death-void eyes, and the djinn watched him with a sort of noble obstinance.

I sighed. Despite the lovely sense of restfulness I'd enjoyed after Volkir sated himself on my blood, I was exhausted.

In the space of twenty-four hours, I'd enchanted a cupcake, caused a major rift in my marriage, decided to give up a lot of what I thought made life worth living for the sake of peace, met a djinn, let a vampire bite me, and woken up to a fight on the front lawn.

I was tired and I just wanted things to go back to 'normal' and—I realized with a sudden sharp pain—and I wanted Ben.

"I wish we could all just get along," I said, falling back to sit on the bed. "Can't we all just live or—" I looked at Pete, who technically didn't 'live' at all, "—at least exist, together in peace? I don't know much about djinn, Zumi, but if you don't hurt anyone, and don't ruin the furniture, or tip over mugs or whatever cats do, then you're welcome to stay. He can stay, right, Pete?"

"This house is a place of refuge," Pete said, his voice sounding hollow and a bit echoey. "A place for those who have no other place. I do not trust this creature. However..." He turned his awful black eyes on me. "I trust friend Matt. If this is your wish, then so be it." He bowed, his spectral form flickering.

"I am not cat," Zumi said. "But I agree to terms. I stay."

Despite his words, he rapidly dematerialized into the swirl of smoke once more, which shrank down smaller and smaller, until it was only about the size of a basketball. Then it uncurled itself, having taken the form of a sleek little black cat. This then jumped up beside me on the bed and then leaped to my shoulders, where it curled itself around my neck.

I looked up at Pete. "Where'd you get so much energy, Pete? I thought you'd be out for at least a week," I asked, stroking the cat. Or the not-cat. Zumi.

"As you wake up, the house wakes up," Pete said cryptically. "I draw from this power."

"Er...Okay then," I said, and yawned. I still had a vampire and an angry husband to deal with, and the sun wasn't even properly up yet.

"Friend Matt..." Pete drifted closer. "Do not leave. We need you. This house needs you. You belong here, with us."

I smiled up at his ghastly visage. "Thanks, Pete. I'd like to stay, but...I have to think of Ben, too."

Pete frowned. "The night you heard him speaking to his father, the root of all this trouble, you stopped listening too soon. I heard all. He fought for you, friend Matt, out of love. He did not agree with his father's words."

"R-really?"

Pete nodded, beginning to lose substance as he faded. "Ask him. No magick bakering this time," he added, and then vanished.

I sat for a moment, watching the sparkles in a mote of dust as a streak of sunlight slipped in over the edge of the windowsill. Then, with Zumi still purring on my shoulders, I stood and went downstairs.

The door was shut, but not locked, and I wondered why the others hadn't followed me inside.

Opening it, I stepped out onto the porch and found Ben sitting on the top step beside Volkir, the vampire's arm around his back.

"Ben...? What's going on?" I asked.

He spun, face blanching with shock and relief, and scrambled to his feet. For a moment he stood frozen, and then he rushed forward and grabbed me in his arms. Dislodged, Zumi leapt to the ground and wove in and out between our feet, rubbing on our legs.

"Matt—sweetheart, are you okay?" Ben asked, his voice so strained it sounded torn.

"Of course I am," I said, squeezing him back. "Are you?"

He nodded against my shoulder. "I am now," he said, holding on tight.

And then, to my astonishment, he started to cry.