Keep him talking, I thought, feeling a weird sort of energy starting to slip from him to me. Damn it, was he trying to do a power pull? But the memory of him eating a pixy, the warrior struggling to pierce Ku’Sox’s throat even as he gulped him down intruded. As if. “What about Ivy?” I asked breathlessly, glancing at her.

“Bring her along,” he said. “Variety is the spice of life.”

“I meant,” I said in his ear, “you hurt her.”

“I didn’t do anything permanent.” His voice betrayed his bewilderment. “You want to know the way to keep her soul after she dies, right?”

Shock quivered through me. “You know how to do that?” I warbled.

I couldn’t help it. My grip eased, and Ku’Sox drew his arm to his chest, laughing low as he shifted out from under me, sitting up and turning to face me. Streaks of dirt had turned his black shirt gray, and he felt his shoulder before wiping the sand from his face and arranging his hair.

“That’s better,” he said, gaze taking in my rumpled body, eyes cataloging the curves and lines of my face all the way down to my borrowed shoes. “This is what you really look like?”

“You can return Ivy’s soul to her when she dies?” I prompted breathlessly.

“No. I just wanted you to let go.”

My jaw dropped. “You son of a bitch.” I swung at him, my wrist bursting into pain when he caught my hand, inches from his face.

“Find something new to call me,” he said, yanking me to him. My hand curled into a claw, and I panted through the pain. I was kneeling before him, and he pulled me closer, almost into his lap.

“I’ve been alone a long time,” he said, his hand gripping my wrist painfully, promising me even more hurt if I struggled. “Lots of time to think of how to pleasure myself with a woman who wouldn’t die at her first orgasm. Lots of time to imagine what it could be.” His groping hand reached, taking the chalk from my pocket and throwing it away. “Lots of time to lose what few inhibitions I might have had.”

My splat gun was next, and I struggled as he found it, slipped in the small of my back, and threw it into the nearby ocean.

“I can shift the smallest mote of energy,” he said, a new depravity in his eyes, as if he wanted to strip me of everything else. “Make it dance in you.”

“Promises, promises,” I said, listening for the bells, but still there was nothing but the shush of the water and the crying of the gulls. It wasn’t going to happen. They were too afraid, and my hope began slipping from me, leaving the sour taste of burnt amber on my soul.

“I don’t want to fight you,” he said, sounding reasonable as the wind moved the ends of his hair. “I’m not even asking you to submit. Simply…let me be.”