Chill Factor

SEVEN

I knew it was a dream, because obviously David couldn't be here. Dream or not, I was more than happy enough to hold on to it; I woke up cradled in warm arms, against a firmly muscled male chest, and smiled and cuddled closer and refused to open my eyes and find out that I'd imagined the whole thing.

I felt a hand smooth my hair, then touch my cheek and glide gently along my jawline.

"You're awake," he said.

No, clearly I wasn't, because that was David's voice, wasn't it? Warm and intimate as his touch, which was waking fire all over my body. I was limp and relaxed and utterly, completely dreaming.

And then his hand touched a bruise, which set off a red flash of complaint, and I realized that I wasn't dreaming at all. Not even I dreamed of having bruises. Now that I let myself drift back into the real world, I had a monster headache, pinpoints of sharp, glasslike pain all over my body, and a general feeling of having been run through the wood chipper headfirst.

I opened my eyes and looked up.

Warm copper eyes looked back, half-concealed behind round glasses.

David was seated on the bed, back braced against the wall, with me lying in his arms. I reached out to touch him. The crisp rasp of his cotton shirt felt real. So did the heat of his skin underneath.

His smile vanished as he looked down at me, replaced by a look of concern. "Jo?"

I blinked. There were two of him, both staring at me. I tried to touch one of them and jammed my fingers into the wall. "Ow."

"Dammit." He had large, sensitive hands, and one of them explored the back of my head and found that extremely sore spot, which was about the size of an egg. The words that followed weren't in English, but the venom in them left no doubt as to their meaning. David was angry. They weren't going to like him when he was angry.

"What happened?" I asked blurrily, and let myself curl up back against him. Because if it was a dream, I'd take it over my present reality any day. "Shouldn't be here."

"No, you shouldn't," he agreed grimly.

I tried again. "You shouldn't be here."

"Oh." He stroked hair gently back from my face. "Long story."

"Can't sleep." That was a bit of a lie; my eyelids were heavy, my body drugged by his warmth. The only escape from the crushing throb of the ache in my head was sleep, and I was starting to like the idea. "Tell me. I left you with Marion…"

He kissed my forehead, and I felt the trace of a smile in it. "Once upon a time there was a Djinn…"

"Not kidding."

"I didn't think you were."

And I remembered something, something that made me sit up too fast and grab my aching head in both hands to steady it. I glared at him through a curtain of disarranged-and curling, dammit-hair. "You! You… you…"

He watched me with a little line grooved between his eyebrows. It was a concerned look, not a guilty one. I managed to roll off of him to my hands and knees and crawled to the edge of the bed. He sat up, following, hands outstretched. I admit, I was none too steady.

"You!" I repeated, and swallowed a mouthful of nausea at the way the world insisted on bobbing up and down. "You bastard! I know what you did!"

That little line cut deeper. "What exactly did I do?"

"You and Lewis… cooked this up. The night you left me at the hotel." It came to me like a blinding burst. "You knew Jonathan wouldn't let us in. You let them separate us."

He had the grace to look a little guilty. The worry line didn't disappear. "Jo, settle down. You've got a head injury."

"Head injury?! You knocked me up!" The self-righteous fury of it drove me off the bed to my feet. I swayed there, hands on my hips, trying to focus on the two of him. "Well? Nothing to say?"

"Sit down."

"Screw you! I'm pregnant!"

"Sit down before you-" He lunged. I didn't realize I was falling until I was in his arms, hovering a few inches above the floor-"fall down."

"Sorry," I mumbled. Tears stung hot in my eyes. "No, not. You 'pologize first."

The world bobbled again, and I closed my eyes to stop it. Felt myself lifted and settled back on the soft bed, covers pulled over me in a warm, rustling embrace. David's hand cupped my cheek with warmth, and I opened my eyes again to see him bent over me, close enough to kiss. His lips were parted, as if he were on the verge of saying something, but then he just closed the distance and those lips touched mine. It melted me into gold, and even though my head felt like it had used as the soccer ball in the World Cup I couldn't help but respond by kissing him back. Hungrily.

"I had to protect you. I love you," he whispered into my open mouth. "I'm watching over you. Now sleep."

As if the kiss were opium, I did.

I woke up to stillness and a cold bed. The headache was at half-mast, and the bruises had faded to dull aches. No sign of David, but someone had left the hotel television playing silently on the hotel informational channel. Apparently, the PR spin was that there was a freak windstorm that had blown into the lobby through a jammed set of doors, and some shorts had erupted in the electrical system before circuit breakers kicked in. The message told me that everything had returned to normal and there was nothing to worry about.

The human race had a vast, apparently endless capacity for rationalization. It had always served the Wardens exceptionally well.

I tried to get up and winced at a sharp stab of pain in my shoulder.

"Easy," said a slightly rough male tenor voice somewhere to my right, against the gaudy glare of sunset. "Hairline fracture of the collarbone, not to mention one heck of a whack to the head."

Quinn was back. I started to ask about David, but something made me hesitate. It was still possible I'd dreamed the whole thing, that Quinn had been the one to catch me down in the lobby and carry me back up here. And I wasn't going to give him the satisfaction of mooning around over my lost Djinn lover.

I felt the weight of Quinn's body settle next to me on the bed. When I looked, he was leaning over me, staring down. He reached over and lifted my head, then probed the lump at the back with sure and impersonal fingers. I winced. "Oh, don't whine; you're going to live. And it isn't like you didn't ask for it."

"I just wanted out."

"And we put you out. Follow my finger." He moved it around, tracking my eye movements. "Any blurred vision?"

"Well, I think I'm hallucinating, because I see a big talking pile of crap."

"Funny. You're a riot, sweetheart." He sat back and lowered his eyelids to an assessing sleepy look. "Who's David?"

"Bite me. I'm not playing twenty questions; my head hurts." I was being bitchy. I couldn't help it. "You can't keep me prisoner here. I insist that you-"

His hand came down over my lips, stilling them. I continued to make cranky muffled noises for a few more syllables, then fell silent.

"You got no rights here, and you don't insist. You want to play rough, we'll play."

Quinn took his hand away from my mouth. I sucked in a breath and asked, "Why do you want me so bad?"

"Think a lot of yourself, don'tcha?" His smile was gallows-dark. "I don't. Somebody does."

"Who? Lazlo? Ashworth?" I made rude noises. "They already got their pound of electrocuted flesh out of me. Why can't I hit the road?"

"To do what? Get tossed out a window by that kid and his pet Djinn?" Quinn shook his head. "We've got a plan. You're part of it. We'll tell you the rest when you need to know it."

"Yeah. Great plan. Chock-full of foresight. Loved the whole bashing-my-brains-out part."

"I think there was something a little personal in the cane thing."

I couldn't exactly deny that one. Before I could find a suitably snarky reply, there was a knock at the door. Quinn got up and opened it, and a security guy handed over a blue canvas bag. Quinn locked the door again and rummaged around in the bag, looking for something.

"How's the head?" he asked. I shot him a filthy look. "Look on the bright side, sweetheart, you looked terrific. If you're going to go down in flames, you might as well do it in style. Great dress. You buy that here?"

I wanted to throw something at him, but the only thing available was a pretty new shoe, and I didn't have the heart. I settled for a superior hmph and settled down on the pillows again, a forearm over my eyes.

"Want an aspirin?"

"No."

"Good for you, tough guy. Now, you want to tell me what all that display downstairs was about?"

I massaged the bridge of my nose, where the headache seemed to be hiding. "I wanted to get to Kevin. To warn him."

"About…?"

"You're going to kill him."

"Well, yeah." He sounded surprised. "Obviously."

"You don't have to do that. And there's a girl with him. She's got nothing to do with this."

"Siobhan?" Quinn made a raspberry noise. "You're talking out your ass. She's a pro. She's still there, she's there to take him for everything he's worth. I'm not going to worry about a whore getting in the line of fire."

"You know her?"

"Busted her a few times." He shrugged. "She's a tough girl, and no civilian. She gets caught in the middle, I'm not wasting any tears."

He finally found what he was looking for in the bag and brought it out. A long black case about the length of his arm. He set it on the bed, flipped it open, and started assembling pieces.

He meant the line-of-fire thing literally.

He was putting together a rifle, a fine shiny one with a red-tinted scope. I stared at him in silence for a few seconds before I realized what he was showing me.

"You're going to shoot him," I said, and sat up. I didn't let the rodeo-bucking world stop me. When things got uncertain, I wrapped a hand in the collar of Quinn's shirt and used him for a brace. "You're going to just shoot him?"

"You say that like it's easy." Quinn removed my hand and dumped me back on the bed. He continued snapping things together with metallic clicks. "Not like he'll be standing still for it, I'd imagine; probably have to correct for wind, maybe worse. Don't worry, though. He won't feel a thing. As soon as he drops, Jonathan goes back in the bottle, we pick it up, and decide what to do with him after the fact. Zim, zam, zoom. Problem solved."

I had to admit, he was right. It was a solution. So long as you didn't have any qualms about putting a high-velocity round through a kid's brain, it was the perfect answer. "You can't do this, Quinn. He's just a boy!"

"He's a killer," Quinn said. All of the false joviality was gone now, and what was left was hard as bone and ruthless as razors. "This is what I do, sweetheart. I take care of problems. So you just be a good girl, stay in bed, and don't become a problem, and we'll get along just fine. Right?"

"Yeah? Does the AARP executive committee downstairs know what you're about to do?"

Quinn snapped back the bolt on the rifle, sighted down the barrel at the window, and smiled. "Don't play a player. Of course they know."

"They know you're a cold-blooded killer."

"Sticks, stones. You know why you've got a headache? You think too much." Quinn leaned the rifle back against the door. "By the way, somebody's been asking after you."

"Nobody I want to meet, I'll bet."

He ignored me. He picked up the telephone and dialed four numbers. "Yeah," he said. "She's awake. Better get over here. She's kind of feisty."

I subsided, waiting. Realized that I was still wearing the ьber-expensive raw silk dress. Unfortunately, Quinn was totally immune to my charms, so far as I could see; no point in even trying to be seductive, and frankly, with the headache and bruises, I'd be more likely to barf on him than kiss him. Speaking of kisses… had David really been here? It must have been a dream. If he'd really been here, he'd have taken the time to get rid of these little bumps and bruises, wouldn't he? Unless he'd been afraid they'd know.

Maybe David was even deeper undercover than I was.

Knock on the door. Quinn checked the peephole, then opened it for my visitor.

Oddly, I wasn't surprised to see that it was Lewis. Well, I was surprised, but seeing him again seemed inevitable, really. I'd been expecting the other Lewis-shoe to drop, and now, looking at him, it did. He'd made it to Vegas-actually, for him it had probably been easy; the wards would have passed him right through without any Warden powers, and besides, I'd been waiting for him to make an appearance. He'd arranged for me to get abducted. He'd stood by and allowed me to be killed. He had a plan, and it just had to be a jim-dandy one, so long as you weren't on the receiving end of it.

He looked terrible. Grayer in his flesh, and his eyes were bloodshot. Hands trembling as they gripped his cane-unlike Ashworth, his wasn't for flash; it was for support. He moved like an old man. Quinn grabbed an elbow and guided him to a chair; Lewis eased himself down with an almost inaudible sigh of relief.

I would not feel sorry for him. No way. I refused.

"You okay?" he asked me. His voice sounded exactly the same, a warm tenor, slightly rough, like velvet stroked against the grain.

"Oh, hell, yeah. Never better," I said, and tried to look as if I were leaning against the headboard for effect rather than support. "I should've known. This had your smell all over it. I was such an idiot, you know; here I thought all these years you'd spent avoiding the Wardens you'd been out doing good, spreading rainbows and happy horseshit. You were working for the opposition."

"No," Lewis said wearily. "I started the opposition. Not that it was totally my idea; there were a lot of us who saw what was happening with the Wardens. I was just the force that pulled it together. The Ma'at started operation about seven years ago, officially. Since then, we've been doing our best to mitigate the worst of the Wardens' excesses."

"Yeah, you're the hero here. Modest as usual," I snapped back. "So what's your excuse? The Wardens wouldn't let you be king of the world, so you found a bunch of stodgy old farts who would?"

Quinn eyed me grimly. Evidently, he didn't like me bad-mouthing his bosses. "Want me to get Lazlo?"

"No." Lewis continued meeting my eyes solidly. "Jo, after I ran from the Wardens, I spent a lot of time trying to find out just why they were so afraid of me. I found out a lot more than I bargained for. I know you want to believe the Wardens are good… I did, too. We trusted them with everything we are- we let them mold us and train us and shape us. But they shaped us wrong. And what they've done to the Djinn… I know you saw what David endured. That's not the exception, Jo. That's the rule."

One thing I could tell-he believed what he was saying. Lewis was speaking from the heart, speaking with unmistakable passion. He wanted me to understand. To become a true believer.

"They're corrupted," he said. "I'm not talking about individuals… there are still a lot of good Wardens, who believe in what they're doing. But it can't last. Power corrupts. You know that better than most anyone; you faced down Bad Bob and Star. You know it's rotten at its heart."

"You're so full of shit." I wobbled up to bare feet and took up a belligerent stance that was only a little compromised by having to lean myself against the wall. My collarbone shrieked a protest at the move, but I ignored it. A shivering coat of sweat broke out on my forehead. "Listen to yourself, Lewis. You think you're the good guys? You stood by while my heart stopped! Quinn kidnapped me at gunpoint! Your precious Ma'at tortured me!"

"Yeah, but we gave you five grand after," Quinn put in. "And holy shit, can you shop or what?" When I glared, he dropped the cute act. "They interrogated you because you're a Warden. Don't you get it? Half the Wardens Association is Demon Marked, and the other half might as well be. You're the first one I've seen that isn't a fuckin' killer with a rune. They're totally corrupt."

"You're one to talk."

Ooooh, wrong thing to say. Quinn gave me his dead-eyed cop stare. It was effective. "You're gonna want to shut up now before you piss me off."

No, but I was ready to adjust my sails to the prevailing wind. I turned back to Lewis. "What makes the Ma'at any better? They wear more expensive suits? They're all bitter old men too moral to sin?"

"No," he said quietly. "They don't have enough power to be tempted. They're all below the line that the Wardens consider as a material gift."

He walked slowly over to me and put a hand under my elbow. I didn't know why until I realized my knees had started to buckle. He guided me gently back down to the bed, lifted my legs, and got me prone again. My head throbbed so hard I saw flashes of red behind my eyes, and bit back a groan.

"She needs a doctor," Lewis said somewhere beyond the strobe effect of my headache. Quinn grunted. "Got someone we can trust?"

"We've got bigger problems. Look, just patch her up and let's get moving. We don't have time for this."

"I said that she needs a doctor." When Lewis got that particular tone, it wasn't worth wasting the breath to argue. "See to it."

I cracked open my eyelids to look through the lashes. Quinn was staring at me. Stone-faced was his natural expression, but I could see that he was deeply worried. Not for me. About me.

"You don't need to be getting sidetracked here." he said. Lewis didn't answer. "We can't get lost in the details. We're in the game now, and you know the stakes. If she gets in the way-"

"Quinn." Lewis's voice was soft, but inflexible. "Get a doctor. Now."

Quinn turned and left. The door clicked shut behind him. Lewis put his hand back on my forehead, and some of the sick throbbing eased.

"A month ago, I could've fixed this in two seconds," he said.

"A month ago, I wouldn't have needed it," I whispered. "Lewis?"

"Yeah."

"When did being the good guys include contracting murder?"

No answer. He was staring off toward the sunset, his face lit with gold and orange.

The saddest eyes I've ever seen.

"Lewis?"

"You don't understand." He didn't look at me. "Rest."

I didn't want to, but eventually, I slept.

With no sense of transition, I was somewhere else. I was limping, although pain was a distant, muffled sensation. My skin was red and abraded, my white T-shirt tattered and filthy, sweatpants ripped and stained.

I limped along a deserted road, one painful step at a time, and overhead the sun kept staring down. No wind. No birds. No sound at all. It was like being in a dead world, and I was dead too, I just didn't know it yet.

Dust hung like talcum powder in the still, dry air, and everything tasted like burned insulation.

I stopped, turned, and looked behind me. A ragged black ribbon of asphalt stretched toward the dim horizon. It was scoured gray in places by the wind, and there was a wreck of a car thrown off to the side. Paint gone. Nothing but junk.

I knew where this was. In the thin shade of that wreck was the body of Chaz Ashworth, and I couldn't be here; this was past, this was long past… Oh, God get me out of here, I don't want to be here… .

Panic surged along my nerves. It felt both over-amped and slow, dream-terror moving like cold molasses but packing the same intensity as waking fear. I was thirsty, overwhelmingly thirsty, and I ached all over, and I couldn't be here. I had to wake up, wake up, wake…

I turned and kept limping. There was shelter in the distance. A tumbled confusion of rocks that promised darkness and relief from the killing sun.

One agonizing step at a time, whimpering. Crawling, by the time I reached it, my knees and forearms scraping raw on rock and burning on sand.

Time sped up, the way time does in dreams, and I was inside, huddled against the cool darkness, shuddering in relief.

In the dream, my mind didn't know what was coming, but my body did, my nerves were screaming in panic, trying to drive me out of sleep and into the light. Better to die out there, food for ants and vultures and at the end a clean return to the earth, than go into the dark…

But I couldn't stop myself. The part of me that decided to move wasn't the part that knew the future.

I heard the steady, whispering drip of water, and it pulled me on into the shadows. I was too weak to pull water from the dry air; badly injured, I needed to drink to survive.

I crawled for some period of time, don't even know how long; all that mattered was finding the water. Finding something that didn't hurt. I heard the tinkling sound getting closer, and crawled toward it in the darkness…

… and was blinded by a sudden hot flare of light.

Hands. Hands in the dark, dragging me down. The stranger slammed my head into the wall, and things went gray and soft, and in the white flare of his flashlight I saw my burned, bleeding fingers scrabbling at the rock.

Digging for rescue, like the woman in the sand.

What are you doing here?

My throat was too dry to do more than croak.

Who do you work for?

I couldn't see him. He was just a vague shadow behind the light, no particular height, no particular build. A baseball cap and stained blue jeans. The smell of leather and sweat and blood. I knew him. I'd seen him before.

What do you know?

He dragged me over sharp-edged gravel and dumped me facedown in a pool of water so cold it shocked me back to consciousness. I gasped, breathed water, rolled over coughing, and then turned back to suck down greedy mouthfuls of the clean, pure taste.

He was pacing behind me, kicking rocks. The flashlight beam bounced wildly off of rock, off of boxes stacked against the far wall. Off of scuttling insects fleeing a false and unwelcome day.

The mouthful or two of water I had time to swallow wasn't enough to cure me of thirst, and I was weak and exhausted and confused. I didn't even realize he had me until I felt the cold bite of the knife, panicked as I realized it was slicing away the tough elastic of my jog bra.

Cold cave air on my bare breasts.

Tell me how much you know.

His name was Orry. I knew his name, because Chaz had told me in the car. I'd delivered myself to the same fate Chaz had intended for me; of course I had, I'd been less than a minute away from the rendezvous when I'd called the wind…

I fought. The second time he hit me, I fell into the darkness, screaming, weeping, mourning. Trying not to feel what was happening to me. I wanted to leave, to wake up, but it hurt too much, and pain brought me back to the cave, to the darkness, to the knife.

He never made a sound, except for grunts and the pistonlike sound of his breath. I knew he was going to kill me; I knew every second because I'd seen what he'd done to the woman in the desert. When he was done, he would kill me.

Tell me what you know!

I lost hope.

I lost myself.

And then, when he had what he wanted, he shoved my head into the ice-cold water, and held me down to die.

I woke up screaming, or thought I did, but when my head was clear enough to register sound I realized it was just a thin, desperate moan vibrating in the back of my throat. I curled up on my side, drawing my knees to my chest, and realized that I wasn't wearing my new heavy silk sheath dress anymore. I wasn't wearing anything. The sheets clung cool to my damp skin, and I grabbed for them and wrapped them closer.

Someone in the room. My heartbeat hammered fast. I licked my lips and whispered, "David?" but I already knew that it wasn't, it couldn't be. David was far, far away, and he couldn't help me. Couldn't be with me, any more than he'd been there in the darkness of that cave while hope died.

Without meaning to, I slid my palm down from my chest to my abdomen, where a flicker of light remained. I am with you, something whispered, and some of the panic in me eased.

A light flicked on across the room, and revealed a sleepy-looking Quinn. He was reclining in a chair, feet up on a rich damask hassock, book folded open on his chest, a pair of reading glasses on the table next to the lamp.

Gun beside the glasses.

"Hey." His voice sounded rusty. He sat up, blinked at the book as it slid down to flop shut on his lap, and readjusted on me again. "How's the head?"

One big bruise. "Fine."

"The doc said you had a mild concussion, so somebody should stay with you. Lewis needed rest. You sleep okay?"

"Fine." Not. But I wasn't going to admit it to him.

He grunted and ran a hand over his face. Quinn was the kind of man who got more attractive from a day's growth of beard stubble, not less. "Yeah. You always whimper like that in your sleep when you're fine?"

"Mostly." I kept it cool and distant. "Clothes?"

"Sorry, I didn't figure you'd want to sleep in the three-grand dress. It's hanging in the closet." He was looking at me oddly. I wondered what my body language was saying. "Lewis took it off you, in case you're wondering."

"Thanks. You can go now."

"And you think I take your orders?" He sat up, kicked away the hassock, and holstered the gun. The glasses went into a pocket of his jacket, the book onto the table. "Coffee?"

"I want you to go." The panic was coming back, speeding up my nerves like a slow electric shock. "Go now."

"Sweetheart, I'm not going-"

"Go!" I screamed. It had the raw edge of panic. He froze. Watched me. I struggled to get my breath under control. "Just get out, okay? I want to dress."

He reached into the closet and retrieved three hangers draped with fabric, tossed them on the end of the bed, along with a sealed bag tied with a white ribbon. "You've got a selection," he said. "They cleaned your old stuff. I think they even threw in some new underwear and shit."

His eyes were dark and far too knowledgeable. "Get the fuck out, Quinn."

"I'll be in the bathroom. Oh, by the way, there's somebody outside the door, so don't bother. You won't get far."

He went in and shut the door. I crawled out from under the sheets and ripped the ribbon off the bag, shook out clean underwear, and stepped into them with a deep sense of relief. The skirt had been laundered and pressed; even the knit top looked like shiny and new. I slid my feet into the designer knock-offs, carefully bagged the midnight-blue Manolos, and draped the bag over the hanger with the silk dress.

"Okay?" Quinn's voice came through the door. I sat down on the edge of the bed, aware of a thousand pinpoint aches, of exhaustion, of an unsettling trembling in my hands. Of a headache that would kill me on other, less eventful days.

"Yeah," I said. "Fine."

He opened the door and stood there for a few seconds, watching me. I didn't look up as I focused on combing tangles out of my hair with my fingers. It was futile; the curls were back with a vengeance. Quinn wordlessly ducked back into the bathroom.

A sleek faux-ivory brush appeared under my nose. I looked up to see that he was holding it out. I took it and began dragging it through my curly hair, wishing I could make it straight again, wishing I could make everything straight again.

Straight and clean and simple.

"Better?" he asked, when I put the brush aside. I nodded. "Toothpaste and lotion and all kinds of crap in there. Probably ought to check it out."

I didn't move. "What are you going to do with me?"

"Ask Lewis."

I would, while I was hitting him repeatedly with my fist. Hitting something sounded really, really good right now. Not Quinn, though. Quinn would hit back.

I got up, fought off the various grinding aches and pains, and went into the bathroom to inspect the damage. On the bright side, it wasn't as bad as if I'd gone ten rounds with a heavyweight; on the dim side, it definitely gave me a piratical, dangerous look. No makeup available; I did my best with lotion and toothpaste and mouthwash, ran the brush through my hair until the curls became glossy black waves. I needed sunglasses. That would complete the picture of the battered wife.

When I came out, Lewis had arrived, and he'd brought reinforcements. As in, Myron Lazlo, Charles Ashworth II, and Gnarly Guy, whose name I learned was Rupert McLeish. They also brought breakfast in the form of black hot coffee and some truly excellent pastries, which I cheerfully accepted; no sense in going on a hunger strike, especially since I planned to kick the ever-loving crap out of them the first chance I got.

Out the expansive windows, Las Vegas was still lit up like Christmas, but the clock reported it was nearly four a.m.

"So," I asked around a mouthful of muffin, "have you blown the kid's head off yet, or are you saving that for the big finale?"

The Ma'at had taken up seats in the various comfortable armchairs, except for Lewis, who-stubborn as usual-remained standing, braced by his cane. Quinn manned a strategic vantage point in the corner. I'd settled on the edge of the bed that was closest to the breakfast tray.

"We don't find any of this amusing, Miss Baldwin," Ashworth said severely.

"Really?" I said, and raised my eyebrows. "Neither do I, but I figured it was right up the rich-white-guy humor alley. And just a comment, but don't you guys ever take off the suits? 'Cause it's kind of strange. Really."

Lazlo, Ashworth, and McLeish were all still in conservative business attire-blues and grays, with perfectly knotted silk ties. Still perfectly turned out. Lewis was, as always, informal. He'd given up the denim shirt in favor of a ratty old NYU T-shirt with a hole at the neck. No flannel. I kind of missed the flannel look for him.

Lazlo looked over at Quinn. "Has she been cooperative?"

"Sure." That was nice of him, but then, being a cop, he probably had sliding scales of cooperation. I hadn't actually tried to hit him with a blunt object, at least.

Lazlo turned his attention back to me. "That was quite a display you put on in our lobby, Miss Baldwin. What exactly was the point of that?"

I was starting to wonder myself; Rahel still hadn't appeared to save my ass, and I was starting to suspect that I'd been robbed. "I wanted out."

"You might have asked nicely."

"You might have said no."

Lazlo's lips curled faintly, and he and Lewis exchanged a look. "We regret the extreme measures taken to subdue you. I trust you are feeling better?"

"Much." I noticed Ashworth wasn't providing the apology. "Nobody else got hurt, right?"

"You were surprisingly adept at rendering our operatives ineffective without harming them. My congratulations."

"It was luck." I stared hard into his eyes. "Next time I may not be so lucky."

"Next time, Mr. Quinn might just have to resort to something more than unpleasant words."

I crossed my legs and made sure they saw the bruises. "Gee. Imagine my debilitating terror. If we're done with the bluster, why don't you explain why you're keeping me here? If your great plan is just to have Quinn put a bullet in Kevin's head, why do you need me? You know I'm not going to sign up for your little club, and I'm damn sure not going to betray the Wardens for you. So why bother?"

Stalemate. Lewis stepped forward, crouched down next to me, and rested his elbows on his thighs. An entirely natural pose for him, but the pallor and strain in his face were disturbing. God, he looked bad. Really bad. Worse than he had earlier.

"I need you to see something," he said. "Are you up to it?"

"Well, I just ate, so use your discretion if it's going to be gross."

He didn't smile. "Laz. If you please."

And then we were moving.

I yelped as the world dropped away. I forgot all about my discomfort, because there was far too much to see up here. My body, for instance. All bright glass, with an aura of blue and gold, and a hard white core of light centered around my abdomen. Lewis, darker than the darkness, like a hole in space shot through with poisonous red lines.

The Three Amigos, up on the aetheric, had the look of-believe it or not-wizards. Their shapes were all flowing robes and tall hats, spangles of dark blue and star white. They had the muted, shadowy flow of regular humans, but the aetheric imaging of Wardens. Eerie.

And then there was the city.

Human emotions sculpt the aetheric. Human actions echo so strongly that the results can be awesome or terrible, beautiful or tragic. Sometimes all of that at once. New York had been layers upon layers of reality-you could read the history of the place through its emotional remains. There had remained an essential core of hope to the place, of fierce and abiding pride. Darkness, yes… but a great, almost sentient presence, too.

Vegas was nothing like that. It was empty. The aetheric was almost flat. There was history here, but it was layers of darkness, not light. Where the city in the real world was a blaze of light, on the aetheric it was shadow and midnight, velvet and silence. Hunger and the death of hope. This place consumed.

The Luxor was a lone blaze of light, burning and shimmering with power. There was a golden mist streaming away from it like a flow of dry ice, heading across an empty stretch of darkness toward… something else.

The absence of fire. A flickering blackness full of shadows, gravity, hunger.

It was consuming light, not producing it. Like a black hole, devouring everything around it in ever-increasing spirals.

We dropped back out of the aetheric. I fell hard back into my body with an all-over jolt that pulled sore muscles. Winced.

"That's Kevin?" I asked. Lewis slowly nodded. He looked mortally tired, even by so brief a journey. "Hey. Sit before you fall."

He lowered himself to a cross-legged position on the floor. "So. You understand?"

"Not really."

"I told you, she's useless," Ashworth said, and gripped the silver head of his cane more tightly, as if he wanted to bean me with it again. "Try putting it in words of one syllable for her."

Lewis put his hands on his knees, palms up, in a lotus pose. "Kevin's not producing enough power anymore," he said. "His natural talent was fire; he exhausted that weeks ago. He's burning through what he took from me too fast, and now in order to sustain himself and Jonathan he's learning how to take power from the world around him."

I felt a sudden chill. "Like a Djinn."

"No. Djinn do it on a much more balanced scale; he's drawing power like a demon. He has to be stopped, Jo. Regardless of his age, he's becoming a threat deadlier than anything that's walked the earth in ages. He has to be stopped, now." Lewis sucked in a deep breath, then let it out.

Lazlo took up the thread. "We need you to draw him out of hiding."

"Excuse me?"

"He doesn't come out of that room. We were able to act once, to get you out of there, because he was about to kill you, but we can't do it again. He's ready for us now. I need you to draw him out in the open so Quinn can take him. He'll be defending against magical attacks. He won't expect this kind."

I stared at him, stunned. "You want me to be bait?"

"No. We want you to gain his trust and then betray him. And it's very possible he might kill you before we can take him down."

"Wow, I'm just jumping at the chance to help you out now."

Lewis reached out and took my hand. I tensed, waiting for the burn of power that had always passed between us, but felt nothing. Of course… all his powers were gone, drained away, leaving a huge bleeding hole that was killing him. I'd never feel that burn between us again. Even if we succeeded in…

"No!" I yanked my hand back. "Lewis, dammit, if you kill the kid, we can't get your powers back. You know that!"

I wasn't saying anything they hadn't already thought of themselves. None of them had so much as a flicker of shock. Not even Lewis. "I know." He shrugged. "That's how it has to be. He can't be allowed to get any stronger. It's tearing things apart. And that's just him sitting still. If he starts really using those powers, God help us all."

"No!" I practically yelled it. Lazlo glanced at Lewis. So did Quinn. "You've got power, I know it, I can feel it! Combine forces, get over to the Bellagio, and kick his teenage ass! All we have to do is get Jonathan away from him. Hell, you even had the chance when you sent Quinn to get me!"

"Jonathan doesn't want to go," Lewis interrupted me. "Believe me, we've tried. Best we can figure, Jonathan wants to be Kevin's Djinn."

That made no sense at all. Why would Jonathan-who I knew was no one's bitch-stay a slave? Unless there was something in it he wanted…

I had a blinding memory, real as the aching lump at the back of my head. Jonathan, standing in front of a plate-glass window that didn't really exist, watching the world go by, his eyes dark and bitter and angry. There are days when every single one of them deserves to be wiped off the face of the earth.

He'd been looking out at the mortal world.

And Rahel had said, He is the one true god of your new existence, little butterfly.

I said slowly, "Kevin's not doing this. At least, he doesn't know he is, and he probably doesn't want to do it. It's Jonathan. He's found a way to give the world back to the Djinn. As far as Jonathan's concerned, Kevin's the perfect answer-nearly unlimited power, not too bright, not too principled, too young to know that he's being stupid. Too innocent to understand that Jonathan's using him, not the other way around. Jonathan just says 'yes, master' a lot and goes about his own affairs. He's killing Kevin by drawing off every scrap of power inside of him, and he's reaching through Kevin to suck it out of the world around him."

Silence. Lewis's expression was unreadable.

"But you already knew that," I finished softly. "Didn't you?"

Lewis nodded.

"And you know what he's trying to do."

Another nod. Lewis wasn't looking so good. I could almost see the blood draining out of his face, leaving him an unhealthy yellowish gray.

"Actually, killing the human world is a bonus," he said. "Jonathan's looking for lost Djinn."

"Lost…" I frowned. "You mean free, right?"

"No. Lost." He sighed. "The Wardens have been losing Djinn, and we haven't been finding them. They're still sealed in bottles, best guess. And it's too much of a coincidence that so many have gone missing. Somebody's got them."

"Somebody around here?"

"Think about it. Jonathan manipulated the kid into coming here, remember? He put the idea in Kevin's head. He wanted to be brought here. That means the answer must be here, too."

"And you're sure it's not your friendly neighborhood Ma'at."

Lazlo looked offended. "We don't imprison Djinn. We free them."

I glanced at them each in turn. Ashworth looked like he was sucking lemons.

"Up to you, Jo," Lewis said. "You get the boy out in the open, where we can stop this. If we have to take this fight up on the magical level, it'll kill everything. That's what Jonathan wants. That's what he needs. You have to…"

His eyes rolled back in his head. I reached for him, but Quinn was there ahead of me, taking his weight and easing him down on the carpet full-length.

The seizure lasted a full two minutes this time, complete with bone-cracking, spine-bending galvanic spasms. I tried to hold him down but it felt like he was made of metal cables and stainless steel, not flesh and blood. Except there was blood, trickling bright red from the corner of his mouth. I wiped it away with a warm, damp washcloth Quinn brought from the bathroom. Once the convulsions stopped, he lay still as death except for the rise and fall of his chest. I ran my fingers through his sweat-damp hair and looked across at Quinn. Quinn looked as blank as marble, and just as hard.

"He'll sleep awhile," he said. "Let's get him on the bed."

I helped lift him. Now that the spasms were past, he felt like he was a disjointed marionette, all papier-mвchй and thread. Lighter than he should have been. When Quinn stripped off his T-shirt I realized I could count his ribs. I put my hand flat against the bony ridges and found his skin was burning hot, hot as a Djinn's.

"Pants," Quinn said, and pointed to Lewis's jeans. "Less confusing for everybody if you do it."

I swallowed an inappropriate laugh and unbuttoned and unzipped. Dйjа vu. Wasn't the first time I'd been in Lewis's pants…

Quinn whipped them off with medical efficiency. The boxers underneath were white with pale blue stripes, very 1950s. I pulled the covers up over him.

The three old men were looking at me expectantly. I closed my eyes for a few seconds, said a quiet prayer, and thought about what Lewis had shown me.

I'd been so arrogant to him. So self-righteous. Since when did being the good guy mean contracting murder?

Since standing by meant destroying the world. Or letting it be destroyed.

"I'm your only hope to get close to Kevin, which is exactly what the Wardens want out of me, too," I said. "Here's the deal. Nonnegotiable. I'll play it my way first. If I can retrieve Jonathan's bottle without a fight, that's how it'll be done. If that fails, I'll get him out in the open, and Quinn can take him out."

"I hardly think that your way-" Ashworth started in.

"I hardly think you're in any position to tell me how this is going to go," I said. "I'm the only one of you that Jonathan will let get in spitting distance of the kid."

They all paused, looking at me. I put my hand over the warm spark that lived inside me, over the promise of life that I could use to deliver death.

"I'm the only one Jonathan won't kill on sight," I said. "If I can manage it, I'll get Jonathan's bottle and stop this the easy way. If not…"

I looked at Quinn. Quinn nodded.

"… there's always the easier way."

I told them to leave, afterward. Quinn and the rest of the League of Totally Ordinary Gentlemen trooped out. I spent the rest of the night curled up against Lewis's dreaming heat, listening to the steady, deep, even rhythm of his breathing. Sometime in there I faded into chaotic dreams of fire and flood, earthquake and storm, and me standing naked as the world eroded around me.

I woke up with Lewis spooned close behind me, still asleep but clearly awake in one part of his anatomy. I eased out from under the covers, went into the bathroom, and did the morning business. I struggled with the brush for ten minutes and was rewarded with shining body waves of dark hair that cascaded down past my shoulders.

Couldn't possibly be a bad day, if my hair cooperated like that.

I contemplated the blue beaded dress, but it was a little formally call-girlish for this early in the a.m. Back into the knit top and short skirt. My legs needed shaving. I attended to that, thanking the Luxor for the gift of personal safety razors, and finished up with a coating of lotion.

As I was smoothing on the last handful across the top of my thigh, I noticed I had company. Lewis was standing there watching me, eyes half-closed but not in the least sleepy. He'd put on his blue jeans, but nothing else… very sexy. I couldn't help but take in the view.

"Hey," I said, and took my bare foot down from the counter. I hastily wiped the extra lotion across hands and arms and tugged my skirt down to a more modest level. "You're alive."

"Barely," he agreed, and indicated the toilet. I vacated, closing the door on my way out, and fished my shoes out from under the bed. When he flushed and opened the door again, I was sitting on the bed, waiting. He sat down heavily in a chair and rested his head in his hands. "I'm tired, Jo. Really tired."

"Yo, boy, join the club."

"I'm going to get you killed, you know."

"Yeah, well, you look like you're going to drop dead at any minute, so I'll try not to hold it against you."

He wasn't smiling. "You were right. This was my idea. Mine and David's. We knew you'd never get to Kevin alive… I came up with the idea of stopping your heart temporarily, transporting you past the wards, and reviving you. He didn't like it much. He liked the idea of sending you in to Jonathan even less."

I remembered thinking how easy it would be for Jonathan to swat me like a fly. That would put an end to David's divided loyalties. "He found a way to protect me." The hot spark tingled under the press of my fingers on my abdomen. "We will be having a conversation about that later."

Lewis looked at me through latticed fingers. "What?"

"Nothing." I sucked in a breath and let it out. "So. Good move, getting me inside, but why didn't you use your business-suit buddies?"

"We've tried. Kevin's stopped us cold, and he's been sucking power at a faster and faster rate. We can't balance what's happening anymore. It's out of control. That's why we have to do this, Jo. It isn't that I want-" He broke off, shook his head roughly. "This isn't what I ever wanted. And using you to do it…"

"Sucks," I said crisply. "Well. There you go. Anything else I should know?"

He leaned back in his chair and regarded me through bloodshot, half-lidded eyes. "Yeah. Djinn are supposed to be returned to the vaults when Wardens die. There's always been attrition-some bottles breaking, some lost. But two hundred years ago, there were fifteen hundred Djinn known to the Wardens. Do you know how many there are today?"

I frowned at him. "No. Why does this matter?"

"Because there are fewer than six hundred in the vaults and assigned in the field."

"How many showed up free?"

"Maybe three hundred of them. Now, there will be losses. Bottles get buried, sunk in the ocean, there's predation by the Ifrit. Even then, there have to be a lot missing, and most of them have disappeared in the last six years. I think that's why Jonathan's resorted to this. He either believes we're behind it, or that we don't care."

"So somebody's stealing from the Wardens! And they don't know?"

"They suspect." Lewis rubbed his face as if he were trying to rub away exhaustion. " Marion 's been investigating. I helped her for a while. It all comes back here. To Las Vegas, or nearby. We can't find the bottles, since they don't show up on the aetheric, but there's this sense of…" He hunted for the word. "Evil. Jonathan manipulated the kid into bringing him here. He's looking for the same thing we are. He's just more ruthless about finding it."

"So our enemy isn't Kevin."

He shook his head. "Make no mistake, it is. Kevin's out of control, and Jonathan doesn't care what kind of damage the kid does, so long as he's left free to do what he likes. In fact, Jonathan's using the kid as a conduit. It all comes down to the kid. We have to stop him."

"And the missing Djinn?"

"One thing at a time."

I nodded. "Okay. How do I get over to the Bellagio?"

He gave me a genuinely sweet smile. "Nice day for a walk, or so I hear."

"You're coming with?"

"I'm not letting you out of my sight." When I raised my eyebrows silently, he did echoed the gesture. "David will kill me if I let something happen to you."

I cleared my threat. "Yeah… speaking of… is he…"

"Around?" Lewis's smile turned positively cruel. "You'd know more about that than I would. We work together, sometimes-doesn't mean we're the best of friends. Especially not where you're concerned. If he knew I'd just spent the night here-"

"Hey! Nothing happened!"

"Only because I'm at the point of death." He clutched his chest and mimed an elaborate choking. Except it wasn't really funny. He was at the point of death. "Sorry. It's sort of weirdly amusing from this end. It's the first time in my life you considered me safe to sleep with."

I lowered my gaze to contemplate the practical. As in, shoes. I had the left one on and was toeing the right when I heard a rumble of thunder, and felt the flashover of power. Hot and fast.

I looked up. Lewis was already heading for the windows. "Were we expecting rain?" I asked.

"Not in the forecast."

"That doesn't exactly feel natural…"

I stopped, because he hauled back the curtains, and we both saw it at the same time. There was a storm forming outside. A big goddamn storm, purple-black, swelling like a tumor. The anvil cloud stretched dizzyingly high, a gray-white tower thrusting up practically to the troposphere. The amount of power in that monster was growing exponentially.

Worse, it had rotation. Big rotation. I watched the edges that were rapidly expanding to the horizon, counting seconds and cloud motion.

"Shit," I breathed. "I don't think we'd better plan on walking to the Bellagio."

Lightning laddered down from the massive clouds in three or four places, shattering like neon glass against the ground and buildings. I saw the hot blue flares of transformers bursting somewhere near the edge of the city.

Lewis cursed softly under his breath, then said, "I can't see anything. What is it?" Without his powers, he was barred from the aetheric. I rose up and took a look.

Not good. Not good at all.

"Tell me it's somebody we can stop," he said.

It wasn't. In fact, it wasn't somebody at all.

It was nobody.

Weather is mathematical, in a certain very basic sense… warming and cooling the air simply means controlling the speed at which atomic structures vibrate. In any normal situation, no matter how dire, atomic structures vibrate in harmony, in groups, like a grand and glorious choir. In storm situations, there is dissonance.

This was complete and utter noise. There weren't bands of heat and cold; there weren't winds, exactly. Or if there were, they couldn't sustain themselves; they began and died and shifted in the blink of an eye. Hot and cold vibrations were jamming up against each other at the subatomic level, not just as a leading edge of an event, but interwoven.

"What the hell…" I whispered, appalled. This wasn't nature gone crazy. This was nature without any mind at all.

Over at McCarren Airport, a wide-bodied jet angled in for a landing; I saw it seem to stutter as a wind shear hit it. The tail came up; the nose came down.

"No! Jo, do something!" Lewis yelled, and slammed his hand flat against the window.

I threw myself up fast to the aetheric, saw the chaos and destruction raging. I focused on the plane. It was full of terrified screaming people, burning like straw in Oversight; I had to ignore that and try to make sense of what was attacking the area around it.

Chaos. No sense to it at all…

I felt a harsh ripping flash, and saw particle chains snapping together.

Lightning hit the plane dead-on, frying the electronics with a hard white pop of energy, a fountain on the aetheric that just further contributed to the mania.

I reached out and crammed together a layer of air beneath the plane, forced it to behave like normal air under normal circumstances. It took a huge amount of effort, and I felt the strain vibrating through me like stretched steel wire. I propped the plane with an updraft, smoothed the air around it, and fought back another wind shear that attacked from the side. The plane was heavy, and the wind kept fighting back, trying to slip away, swirl like a matador's cape. It wanted to rip the wings off of that 737. I forced a straight runway of calm air ahead of the screaming engines.

I was shaking all over. Human bodies couldn't channel this kind of effort, not for long, not without the help of a Djinn, and David wasn't here. Wasn't connected to me.

A little farther, just a little…

The plane was a hundred feet off the ground. I felt the air trying to spin apart under the wings and grabbed hold, wove the chains together and forced it to stay connected.

Fifty feet.

Twenty.

"Hold on," Lewis whispered next to me. "You're almost there."

Ten.

Just before the wheels touched tarmac, I felt something give way inside me with a bloody rip, and everything fell apart. The plane bounced, landed, skidded, was slammed right and left by wind shears like fists.

I couldn't stop it, but I kept trying, grabbing for control. I fell to my knees, breathing hard, tasting blood in my mouth and seeing bright red spots in front of my eyes.

"Jo!" Lewis had hold of me. I struggled to stay out of the dark. "Let it go! They're down!"

The plane had come to a stop, through a panicked superhuman effort on the part of her pilots.

When I let go, the wind forged itself into a hard edge and came straight for me.

"Lewis!" I yelled, and pulled him down on the carpet, covered him with my body.

The wind shear slammed into the pyramid full force, at least a hundred miles an hour, and the window blew like a bomb. I felt a hot burn across my back, then an ice-cold burst of rain. I rolled off of Lewis and grabbed his arm, pulled him to his feet, and shoved him toward the door.

Before we made it there, another wind shear blasted in, hit me in the back like a freight train, and slammed me down to the carpet. Lewis turned and grabbed for me, but my hand was slick with blood, and the wind shear became a backdraft, sucking me out into the storm.

I felt gravity let go as I spun out of the broken window, hundreds of feet above the Las Vegas streets. The fountains at the Bellagio were still booming, but the water was ripped to mist as soon as it exploded out of the water cannons. I tried to grab control of the winds holding me, but being suspended in midair like Fay Wray in King Kong's hand didn't do a lot for my concentration.

The wind sensed my attempt to manipulate it and dropped me.

Straight down.

I screamed as I hit glass and started to slide down the side of the pyramid. I tried to reach to cushion the fall, but it fought back, flowing away, creating a downdraft that sucked me faster toward the concrete. I flailed at slick glass windows, cold metal, left bloody streaks behind.

This is it. I felt a sick, nauseating terror taking hold, shredding what was left of my magical control. One second closer to the ground. Two. I was going to hit…

I stopped falling with a jerk, like I'd come to the end of a bungee cord, was yanked back upward in a spiraling whirl. The pyramid's glass blurred by, reflecting white streaks of lightning. Rain hit me so hard it felt like strikes of hail, and I couldn't breathe, hadn't taken a breath since I'd begun screaming…

I passed the broken-out window, caught a glimpse of Lewis standing stark-pale, shielding his face against the fierce wind, blood-streaked from flying glass cuts.

He reached out to try to catch me, but it was too late. I felt the hot graze of his fingers against my bare ankle and then I was going up into the storm.

Taken hostage.