Chill Factor

EIGHT

I had time to take about six breaths before I was too high up for it to matter, and then the gasping started. The elevator kept rising. I can't breathe… . No, I was breathing, but it wasn't doing any good. Oxygen content too low. I was filling my lungs to no effect. Create oxygen. You can do it. Sure, I could; it was just a matter of forming new molecules out of the available surroundings, but God, I couldn't think, I couldn't…

I just couldn't. For the first time, I found myself unable to do what I knew I had to do.

Which left dying. Normally, that would have been one hell of a motivator, but my brain was fraying into threadbare strands, and I couldn't feel my body anymore. Dying was more like fading. It hardly hurt at all.

Something white exploded through me like a surge from a cattle prod.

No, please, I just want to rest… Tired…

Another white flare, crawling up my spine to catch fire in my brain. Panic. Panic from some part of me buried so deep it couldn't even express itself in words, just flashes.

I opened my eyes.

It had hold of me. It had been a Djinn, once… I could still see the furious liquid-aqua eyes in that distorted, screaming face. Not a Djinn anymore. Not even an Ifrit, which was at least a coherent entity, a being. This was a tumor of magic, cancerously overgrown, swollen with…

… with a black, glowing Mark that burned and rippled on its distended chest.

This wasn't a Djinn anymore; it was a cocoon for a demon. I sensed the Djinn trapped within, but it was failing, dying, being consumed slowly and horribly by the other. It was desperate.

They were both desperate.

Black spots danced madly in my vision. Lack of oxygen. I blinked and tried to remember again how to fix that, but there were too many missing pieces, and it was much too difficult…

The Djinn opened its mouth, and I saw something black move inside it.

Crawling toward me.

I had a helpless, suffocating flashback of coming to on Bad Bob Biringanine's couch, his cold blue eyes on me, a bottle full of demon in his hand. Hold her down, he'd snapped at his Djinn, and pried my mouth open…

Maybe I didn't mind dying so much, but I minded that. Without even a second's thought, I grabbed at the energy around me, channeled it, and slammed it down in a hundred million volts, blue-white plasma, right on top of the thing that had hold of me.

At the last instant, I remembered that if I hit the Djinn, the Djinn was still holding me, and that meant I was going to fry with him. As the particle chains whipped together, as the charge began to flow like liquid through the ripped sky, I jammed together air molecules between us and sent them hurtling toward the Djinn, shoving him away. He wasn't corporeal enough for it to move him far, or misted enough for it to make him disappear, but it gave me a precious foot of space as the sky turned white around me.

The lightning hit the Djinn with the force of a nuclear bomb, shredding it into shadows. I saw it even through closed eyes and covering hands, and then the shock wave hit, knocked me flying, and gravity started to claim me.

The sky was screaming.

I emerged from the clouds, falling like a star. Friction heated my skin, lashed my clothes into shreds around me. I was spinning helplessly, spiraling toward the brilliant spilled jewel box of Las Vegas.

One good thing: plenty of fresh air. I breathed, fast and hard, pumping up the oxygen in my bloodstream, and began working on slowing my fall. My head was clearer. It almost felt like a nightmare, except that nightmares generally didn't come with partial blindness and singed hair. I still saw the afterimages of the flash, the frozen, distorted scream of the demon-infected Djinn.

I hadn't killed it. You don't kill a thing like that, or at least humans don't; David had succeeded in destroying a demon once, but he was a Djinn, and second only to Jonathan in power at the time.

I wasn't slowing much, and the ground looked closer. My skin had gone numb from the cold rushing air. I'd stopped spinning, but I could feel the greedy suck of gravity pulling me down, and no matter how fast I grabbed for air to create a cushion it was too slow.

At this rate, I'd manage to break my fall just enough to die breathing through a tube in ICU.

I went up to the aetheric. Instinct and panic, rather than a conscious plan, like rats climbing the spars of a sinking ship… up there, the demon-infected Djinn was still raging, black and furious, and the whole plane was roiling with power.

Below me there were some brilliant lights-not the neon glare of the strip; the blaze of Wardens, channeling power.

One was an orange torch big enough to light up the entire aetheric… that had to be Kevin. The other was a rich golden color, like summer sun.

Kevin had Lewis's stolen powers, and he could act if he wanted to, but I knew better than to assume he'd save me, even if he understood how. And the other Warden, glittering like summer, wasn't a Weather Warden.

I was so screwed.

I sucked in a deep breath and concentrated, hard, managed to slow my descent enough that it didn't feel like terminal velocity, but when I opened my eyes again I saw that the ground was rushing up, close, God, closer than I'd thought, and there was no way I could stop myself in time.

I wasn't going to hit the street. I was heading for a stretch of desert somewhere near the airport. Dirt and thornbushes and a death that was going to hurt-a lot.

A flash of lightning lit up the patch of pale sand that was going to be my final resting place.

I screamed, threw up my arms in a useless, instinctive move to cover my face, and hit the ground.

It was like hitting a bed full of the softest down feathers. It exploded up in a fluffy cloud, and I sank, slowly.

Drifted. I felt weightless, floating.

I felt oddly giddy, and realized I was holding my breath; my eyes were squeezed tightly shut. When I opened them, I didn't see anything. The air I gasped in tasted dusty.

It was dark.

I reached out and felt loose, drifting particles, fine as talcum, and then there was solid ground under my feet, lifting me up.

I emerged on my feet, borne out of the ground in a shower of powder-fine quicksand.

Oh. The other Warden had been an Earth Warden. Not to mention favorably inclined. I'd have to thank somebody, big-time…

I took one step forward, and keeled over to my hands and knees, coughing and gagging. Somebody patted me helpfully on the back, raising dust clouds.

I looked up to see the face of my savior.

" Marion?"' I paused to cough up some more of the desert. "Jesus-"

"Breathe," she advised me.

Marion Bearheart looked pretty much exactly as she had back at the Denny's, before I'd been driven off to die and go to Vegas… even down to the black-fringed jacket. Her hair was still neatly braided, tied off with turquoise-beaded accents. She looked untroubled by the storm, the demon-Djinn howling overhead, or the fact that I'd just plunged a couple of miles straight down, feet first into the ground like the stupidest Acapulco cliff diver ever.

"Thanks," I finally managed to gasp out, and spat grit. Uck. I so needed a toothbrush. She gave me a faint smile. "What… how…"

She ignored me, looking up into the clouds. "Can you stop that thing?"

"Not really." I wiped my hand across my mouth and struggled up to my feet. Bare feet. Damn. My clothes were in tatters. I looked like a reject from Les Miserables. "The Djinn up there has a Demon Mark."

She nodded, as if she already knew that. It was always hard to tell just what Marion knew, because nothing really seemed to surprise her all that much. She took out a bottle from her pocket. It was simple, square, and looked sturdy enough to survive most ordinary disasters. Nice, thick glass. She held it balanced on her palm and looked up into the storm.

"Keep it busy," she said. "Keep it off of me if you can. I'll have to get it caged."

The clouds boiled, as if they sensed what she was about to do. I heard the wind start to howl, and knew it was coming for us. I braced myself, but even so, the sheer fury of the blast that hit me almost knocked me over; Marion 's fringed coat flapped and belled, and her braid frayed into waving strands of gray hair. Sand whipped away from me in pale streams, and in the tangled glare of light on the other side of the fence, where Las Vegas really began, I saw streetlights pop and transformers spark.

Keep it off of her? Was she kidding?

I felt the storm turning its attention on us, and shook the residual haze away to focus on the aetheric. I couldn't do much about the Djinn, but I could fight its effects… flip polarities, break up the wind shears. The lightning continued to flare, but I was able to keep it in sheets, high up in the ionosphere.

"Be thou bound to my service!" Marion shouted into the wind.

I felt it coming. "Hang on!" I screamed, and threw up a wall of still air around the two of us, a lame-ass attempt at a shield that shattered under the fury of the Djinn's attack. Marion clutched the bottle and held on to my arm; I wished there were something nice and solid for me to hold on to, like a mountain, because the gust that hit us even through my buffering knocked us back at least ten feet, lifted us off the ground, and flung us flat on our backs. I immediately scrambled up and grabbed for Marion. She still had the bottle.

"Be thou bound to"-the wind hit us again, lashing, and I felt the hot ozone burn of a lightning strike trying to form. I focused hard on it. Marion swallowed a mouthful of wind and choked out-"my service!"

Hurry the hell up, I thought, but I didn't have enough time to say it, because a face roared down from the circling clouds and headed straight for me, accompanied by a curtain of sideways-blown rain that felt like tiny silver nails on my cold skin.

It opened its mouth, and I saw the demon in it, staring out, hungry for warm, fresh screams. I had another flashback to the black, slick taste of a demon squirming down my throat, burning itself into my flesh. Never again.

The Djinn whirled in the wind, picking up a lethal dose of rocks, sand, thorn-spiked branches, tin cans.

It was going to strip the skin right off of us.

I hit it with the strength of panic, compressing air molecules and freezing the rain, blowing it backward and into a shredding minitornado that trapped the Djinn inside.

"Finish!" I screamed. I didn't know if Marion could even hear me; I couldn't see her, in the confused darkness with my hair whipping wildly over my eyes.

Whether she could hear me or not, I definitely heard her.

"Be thou bound to my service!"

It rang out, loud and clear, and there was a sudden sense of indrawn breath and a pressure drop so sharp it made my ears pop, and in a last, blue-white flash of lightning, I saw blackness streaming into the mouth of the bottle in Marion 's hand.

She slammed the cork down and collapsed to her knees, breathing in convulsive gasps. There was blood trickling from the corner of her mouth, and as she slipped the bottle into her coat pocket, she hugged her right arm close to her ribs.

The wind blew on for another few seconds, then faltered and began to calm down. Overhead, the bruise-colored clouds, stained by sodium and neon, began to shift and break against each other.

"You okay?" I asked her. My legs were shaking, and I realized how cold I was. My heart galloped on, ignoring the message my brain was sending about the danger being over. Hearts are funny that way. Prove it, it was saying.

"Yes," she said. She sounded faint and exhausted.

She had reason, I supposed-she hadn't been blown a couple of miles up and tossed straight down, but she definitely had carried her weight. Not to mention saved my ass from pancaking on the desert floor. "Broken rib, I think. It'll mend. The boy did this, you know. Broke the bottle, freed the Demon Marked Djinn. He has to be stopped."

I extended a hand. She needed a lot of help getting up. With her hair blown into a wild tangle, she looked much less like the intimidating Marion I knew and feared.

"How did you get here?" I asked. The faint smile she gave me had a tinge of pain to it.

"Never mind that now." She probed her side, and winced. "You need to get moving. They'll be looking for you, and I'd rather not take on anyone else just now, if you don't mind. If you're going to stay here, we could use your help. The boy needs to be neutralized. Soon."

She didn't look up to it; that was certain. I held her dark eyes for a few seconds.

"I'm going there now. Listen, if I leave you here, will you be okay?"

The smile etched deeper and spawned little lines of amusement at the corners of her eyes. "Joanne, I've survived far worse than you. And I'm not so old as all that."

To prove it, she pulled free of my grip and straightened up. It almost looked credible. Overhead, the clouds scudded fast, moving south, as the wind pushed and searched for its path.

Moonlight wandered through a slit in the clouds, and bathed us in a circle of silver.

"Get moving. I'll see you later," Marion said, and turned and walked away into the desert.

I limped barefooted through sand, wincing at the rocks and stabbing thorns, and came up against an eight-foot razor-wire-topped cyclone fence.

"Great." I sighed.

I was really starting to miss being a Djinn.

There didn't seem to be any reason to go limping back to the Luxor, particularly since it was at least a half a mile hike farther than the Bellagio, and I'd just have to turn right around and go do the bidding of the Ma'at, not to mention the Wardens. Since no cabbie in his right mind would be stopping to pick up a shoeless, windblown, ragged waif in the predawn darkness, I hit the sidewalk. It was marginally easier than scaling the fence had been, which had involved layers of scrounged rags, a piece of old tire, and a fine collection of lacerations. I kept to the shadows, avoiding any unnecessary attention from the pervs and the cops. The fountains were quiet in front of the hotel; I suppose it had something to do with the wind, which was still kicking up hot and fast.

Even as early-late-as it was, there were plenty of people entering and leaving. I paused, considering the brightly lit front entrance, and looked down at myself.

Nope. Not happening. The Bellagio did have standards.

The parking lot was a sea of cars, all nicely docked at anchor. I limped through a couple of rows, spotted a few-there were always a few, even in these suspicious times-with doors left unlocked. The first two yielded nothing but nice velour upholstery and change in the drink holders; the third had a gym bag lying on the back floorboard. Black leggings, T-shirt, socks, and cross-trainers, all smelling of recent use. I went with the leggings and T-shirt, couldn't stomach the socks, and jammed the too-large shoes on over my abraded feet. My in-shape benefactor had included a hairbrush. I put it to use, wincing through the tangles, and tied the lot back with a scrap of fabric from my trashed skirt.

I'd pass. Sort of.

I jogged through the parking lot, trying to look as if I were enjoying the exercise instead of wincing with every step, went the long way around to work up a good coating of sweat, and then jogged into the lighted portico. Uniformed doormen held open double glass portals, and I threw them a jaunty wave and walked in without so much as a raised eyebrow. Bent over to pull in some deep, gasping breaths, which weren't at all feigned.

"Glad you made it back, miss," one of them said pleasantly in a lovely British accent. "Quite a storm out there."

"Was there?" I put my hands behind my back and stretched. "Didn't notice."

I tossed him a grateful smile and escaped into the lobby. Most of the desk clerks were off duty; only a couple maintained the graveyard shift. The casino continued its constant money gulping, to the accompaniment of pleasant electronic beeps and the glittering metallic tinkle of change. I turned and walked down the endless stretch of carpet, to the hallway that held the elevators.

There was still a uniformed security man on duty. I made a production of wiping sweat from my face as I walked toward him, gave him my most vapid smile, and waved. He ignored me. Evidently no self-respecting hooker would go out looking quite so bad.

I punched the button from memory and leaned against the wall, trying not to catalog the ways I hurt, starting with the still-throbbing headache that was reasserting its claim, and the various aches, bruises, and near-death experiences. I needed a week at the spa, with deep-tissue massage and hot stone therapy. Not to mention some intensive chocolate care.

The floor was deserted when I arrived, a long channel of expensive carpet and closed doors. No sound. I walked down the hall to the door where Kevin and Jonathan had made their little home-away-from-hell.

When I reached out to knock, it swung open. Very Addams Family.

"Hey," Jonathan said. He was sitting on the couch, exactly as I'd first seen him-lean, athletic, military without the uniform. A black round-necked knit shirt that was somehow more formal than a simple tee, some kind of khaki cargo pants with lots of pockets. Sturdy lace-up boots. "Jo," he greeted me, and nodded at the armchair across from him. "Come in. Take a load off."

I did, without comment.

His salt-and-pepper eyebrows quirked as he gave me the merciless once-over. "Bad day?"

"Not the worst I've ever had. Which doesn't say a lot for my life, does it?"

"You look like you could use a beer."

There were two bottles on the end table next to him. I twisted off the cap of one and took a swig. A little harsh and hoppy, but acceptably cold and refreshing.

"Nice cuts and bruises," Jonathan said pleasantly. "How's it going?"

"Good. You?"

"Can't complain." His eyes were dark, dark like the space no stars could ever shine. "And that takes care of the small talk. You do understand that I'm going to kill you if you so much as think about getting in my way, right?"

"I don't want much. I want a halfway decent massage, an herbal scrub, and to put a stop to this before we all get killed." I leaned back and kicked a leg over the arm of the chair, casual as could be. After the night I'd had, Jonathan didn't really bother me all that much. "You knew about the Djinn with the Demon Mark. You let Kevin set him free."

He didn't confirm or deny. He just tilted his beer bottle slightly in my direction, and I saw the Djinn's past go by in a blur. Enslaved to a bottle. Working for a hated master. Being called one day and commanded to stretch out its hand…

… and take a black scorched Mark on its master's chest as its own.

Locked away in a bottle, sealed for all eternity with an enemy it couldn't defeat and couldn't ever surrender to. Dying, but never dead. Infected.

The bottle being grabbed and stuffed in Kevin's pocket, at the Wardens Association vault in New York. A distorted, wavering view of Kevin, Jonathan, David, Lewis…

… me.

"Not that you care," he said remotely, "but that's a friend of mine trapped and dying."

"I can't save him."

"No," he agreed. "You can't. Neither can I. Sucks, right?"

He tipped his beer back upright and took a sip. Dark eyes never leaving me.

I sighed. "Come on, Jonathan, let's quit playing games. What do you want from me?"

"You trying out the Rule of Three? I wouldn't." His smile warned me of all kinds of unpleasantness. "How's it feel when the chickens come home to crap all over you?"

I leaned forward, rolling the beer bottle between my palms, and looked him directly in the eye. "David's here. In Las Vegas."

"Bullshit. You don't have his bottle."

"Somebody does. Maybe it's the same guy who's been bogarting Djinn for the past decade. You know, the one you're looking for?"

"You're lying."

"I could be." I deliberately upended my beer and drained it dry. Burped. "Explain something to me. You didn't give a shit about freeing him the whole time he was Bad Bob's property." The second the words left my mouth I wished I could rewind the tape, but he didn't react. Much. "You didn't rescue him when Bad Bob was whoring him out to Yvette Prentiss for her little games. It occurs to me to wonder why you're so hot to protect him from me. Who doesn't mean him any harm, as well you know."

He shrugged and took a pull off of his own beer.

His eyes never left me. "He hated Bad Bob," Jonathan said. "He hated Yvette. You…" He kept the heat off the words, but the air felt electric and harsh. "I can deal with the others. They only enslaved his body. You've gutted him."

"And you want things back the way they were?" I set the bottle down on the shiny antique side table. "That's not mine to give, Big J. Take it up with him. Oh, wait, you did, right? And when you told him to choose, he picked me. Wow. Bummer."

I felt a sharp pain go through my chest. Arrhythmia. Jonathan took another casual sip of beer.

"How's it feel, being back in the old body again? Working out for ya?"

"Famously." I wasn't going to beg. Another stab of agony, this one longer. "I need your help."

"Kinda figured you might."

"If you care about this kid at all, you need to help me get your bottle away from him."

Jonathan raised his eyebrows. "So you can be my new owner? Sorry, I dance with the one that brung me."

"You mean that you're not through with him yet."

"You've got to admit, the kid has talent. And one hell of a lot of power."

"Which he stole."

"Some of it." Jonathan shrugged. "Hey, his idea, not mine. Don't shoot the messenger."

"Not that it'd do any good to shoot you."

"There's that… The Ma'at are ready to move, is that what you're telling me?" Jonathan adjusted his position slightly, rolled his head to the side, but kept me pinned in his stare. "Time's up?"

"They'll kill him," I said softly. "You know they won't hesitate if they think there's no alternative."

No answer. He tipped his beer up, and his throat worked.

And he smiled.

"Hey, kid," he said, and put the bottle aside. "You're awake."

I looked around to see Kevin standing in the bedroom doorway. He looked pale and nervous and small, hair stuck up at odd angles as if it had never seen the toothy side of a comb. Next to him stood the thin tattooed girl, her short red hair gleaming, her hands clasped around Kevin's arm. Siobhan. The hooker.

Kevin stared at me with dead eyes. "I thought I told you to kill her," he said.

"Didn't tell me when," Jonathan pointed out, and when Kevin opened his mouth to rectify the mistake, Jonathan held up a single finger and waggled it.

Kevin shut up.

"Hey!" Siobhan glared, and took a step forward. She had cheap plastic high-heeled hooker shoes, but great balance, and the orange toenail polish was all that. She was too sharp in the chin, too narrow in the eyes, but the whole package was effective as hell in a knit top and low-rise jeans. "He owns you, man! You have to do what he says!"

"Siobhan," Kevin said quietly. "Don't."

"Yeah. Don't." Jonathan's tolerance for Kevin clearly didn't extend to girlfriends. "Butt out, Red, and I won't feel the need to show you the curb the hard way."

That gave me a nice, cold shiver. When Siobhan started to fire back a retort, I shook my head. "No," I said. "He's not kidding. Just relax, okay?"

"Like you care." She had a glare identical to Kevin's. Interesting. Maybe he actually had found a soul mate, all the way out here. A soul mate with her picture plastered on call-girl cards all over the street, but hey, it wasn't like Kevin was fresh out of the Innocent Academy. Kevin would find someone more screwed up than himself to fall for. It was inevitable. Since he'd been powerless for so long, someone in worse shape than him would have a powerful appeal.

"I care," I said gently. "I'm trying to keep him alive. Just do what this guy tells you, okay? And let me handle the witty banter."

Jonathan was looking bored. When I turned my attention back to him, he did an exaggerated lift of his eyebrows to indicate just how extreme his ennui was.

"What do you want?" I asked.

His eyes flickered, and for a second I thought he really was going to swat me like a fly. And then he smiled. "Okay. Here's the truth: I want you to be careful."

"And you care because…?"

His eyes focused briefly and pointedly where the warm spark of life fluttered inside me. "Got reasons."

"I'm not naming him after you, if that's what you're thinking."

Jonathan's lips curled into a deeper smile. A real one, nothing sinister or sarcastic about it. When he looked at me like that-no, at what was in me-I felt faint. He had the same supernatural power David possessed to make women's clothes fall off; he just rarely bothered to show it. I was grateful. If he'd looked at me like that before, I might've handed over David's bottle without a fight.

Well, not really. But I would've thought about it.

"Because of Imara," Jonathan said. Purred, actually. It was that kind of a word.

"Excuse me?" Before I could react, he stood up, reached over, and put his hand over my stomach. His touch was hot enough to scorch, almost painful, and I opened my mouth to yelp…

… and it ceased to hurt at all. There was a fast whirl of images that burned through me: a young woman with luxuriant black hair that fell in cascades to her waist. Laughing, talking, moving with the supernatural fury and grace of a Djinn. Her lips were David's. Her eyes… God, her eyes. Stern and burning, and the color of pure gold. She smelled of warm things, vanilla and cinnamon and woodsmoke; she was smiling and then she was gone, a whisper, a memory.

I caught my breath and felt tears run cold down my cheeks. Where Jonathan's hand had rested felt branded.

"Imara," I whispered. My child.

He was still next to me, close as a second skin, and his lips were warm at my ear. "Djinn can be born only out of death."

"So why are you keeping me alive, then?" I wiped at the tears, angry. He took a step back.

"Not human death. Not powerful enough."

I felt a cold flash, and said, "The death of a Djinn?"

No answer. Just that look from him, unexpectedly unguarded.

"And not just any Djinn."

"No," he said. "Not just any."

I felt light-headed and sick, every cut a nuclear fire, every ache another notch on the torture rack. My head throbbed hard and continuously, a strobe light of pain. I was aching and weary, and my hairline-fractured collarbone screamed every time I dared to move it, which now that adrenaline was fading I didn't even attempt.

I slowly let myself sit down again. "You mean David," I whispered. "David has to die for her to be born. God, I can't do this."

"Can't what?" he asked me. "Can't survive? Sure you can. That's what people do. They survive. It's the one thing about them I admire."

"I want to stop hurting." I was cold, wet, exhausted, wrung out. My daughter-the daughter I couldn't have without losing someone else I loved-my daughter had looked superhuman. I wasn't. "I want to be out of this, Jonathan. Let's end this."

He nodded, not unkindly. "Then get out. Walk away."

Kevin stepped up again, chin jutting out. "Hey! I said I want her dead, okay? She's trying to screw us! Just do it right-"

Jonathan, in a lightning-fast move, reached out and thumped him on the forehead. Just once.

Bop.

Kevin's eyes rolled back in his head, and he dropped. Siobhan yelled and went down on her knees next to him, fingertips pressed to his neck, but she needn't have bothered; Jonathan couldn't kill his own master. No matter how much he wanted to.

Kevin was sleeping like a baby.

"We'll take that up later," Jonathan said, and fixed Siobhan with a warning look. "Don't say a word."

She swallowed a mouthful of curses and ducked away.

I should do something, I thought. But honestly, what did it all matter, anyway? The kid was going to either get me killed or kill me himself. If he formulated the order right, Jonathan wouldn't have any choice but to carry it out.

I didn't have to care about any of this. Jonathan had already told me I could walk away. The Ma'at weren't my buddies. The Wardens… well, the Wardens hadn't exactly stepped up to shouldering the burdens. They'd sold me down the river when I most needed their support. And maybe Quinn was right… maybe the Wardens were corrupt and venal. I'd certainly seen enough of that to make it credible. I'd never taken money to change the weather, but I knew it went on. Rain on some farmland here for an extra sweetener… starve some folks over there to get them to cough up. As chaotic in nature as it all was, who'd know?

Worse… who'd care? Yvette Prentiss had violated every code the Wardens possessed. She'd ignored her duties, abused her stepson, used her Djinn for purposes even the Marquis de Sade might have found repulsive. Had anyone stopped her? No. Not until I made it impossible to ignore.

The Ma'at had some clear ethics-not to be confused with morals-but it was a chilly kind of arrogance, an icy view of the world. Human suffering didn't even factor into the equations. They concerned themselves with numbers, not faces. I could see why that appealed to Lewis; as caring and vulnerable as he was, numbers must have been an escape from the constant agony of feeling the weight of the world.

But I couldn't be that. I couldn't reduce people to numbers and trend lines. Ma'at's principles said that the forest had to burn, but I'd fight the fire every step, protect every tree, until the smoke choked me or I went up with the rest. That was my nature. You know what you look like in Oversight? Goddamn Saint Joan the martyr. You burn real bright, Joanne, but you're burning yourself right up. Chaz Ashworth had said that, before I'd started the fight that had killed him and left me in a cave, trapped and wishing I was dead.

You're burning yourself right up.

I didn't want to burn anymore. I was entitled to a little not-burning. Just for a while.

I clasped my hands over my stomach, over the tiny spark of potential life that was our child, and mourned something that wasn't even gone.

I felt a warm hand on my forehead. Not Jonathan's; his touch didn't comfort; it seared. This was something easier and gentler.

"She's burning up." For a second I thought it was Imara's voice, but then I cracked my tear-caked eyelids and saw it was red-haired Siobhan, perched next to me on the couch in her hussy jeans and cheap shirt and chipped nail polish. She had a fading bruise under one eye, concealed under makeup, and she smelled faintly like sex, as if it had soaked into her clothes. "She sick or something?"

"Or something," Jonathan said. He sounded remote. "Better get her a blanket."

Siobhan left, and a few seconds later I felt something heavy and soft settle over my sweating, aching skin. Her hand explored my forehead again. "She's been beat up pretty good," she said, with the authority of someone who knew the subject well. "Her eyes look funny."

"She has a concussion," Jonathan said. "She'll live."

"Yeah, well, you can't tell me you couldn't fix that shit." Siobhan sounded scared and mutinous. I felt a quick pulse of alarm and sat up, pulling the blanket close around me for comfort as I did.

Sure enough, Jonathan was giving her the hairy eyeball.

"I'm fine," I said, and sniffed when my nose ran. "You got any tissues?"

"Sure." She moved off again, came back toting a white box blooming with pastel sheets. I took a handful, thinking I was going to blow my nose, but then the unpleasant watery feeling let loose with a flood.

Nosebleed. I gasped and put the tissues to my nose, listened to Siobhan talking authoritatively about ice packs and putting my feet up, and watched Jonathan. He never stopped sipping his scotch. Never stopped watching me.

"You're not going to make it," he said finally, when Siobhan's fussing had me flat-out on the couch again with ice chilling my nose and my feet propped up on pristine down pillows. "You're not built for this kind of thing anymore. That body's taken enough abuse. Time to hit the showers."

I sniffed and swallowed a metallic taste of blood. "Don't snow me, Jonathan. You don't give a crap about me; you're worried about Imara. Assuming Imara isn't just some little illusion you conjured up out of your bag of tricks." I shifted the ice to a less painful angle. "How long is Kevin going to sleep?"

"As long as I want him to."

Valid answer. "Why are you here? Don't give me any bullshit about the kid. You could run rings around him. You do already. If you didn't want to be here, you'd be gone."

He went very still for the space of three or four seconds, then looked down into his drink. Which magically kept refilling. "I hear the shows are great."

"Why are you here?" I asked. His dark eyes flashed to me.

"Don't play games with me." It was an unmistakable warning, followed by a wintry smile. "Besides. Philosophy's really not my strong suit."

I chickened out on the Rule of Three. "Never mind. I already know. Don't tell me it was because Kevin ordered you to bring him here. You arranged for that kid to claim you. You made it easy for him, because you knew it would be simple to do exactly what you've done. Manipulate him like Gumby and get whatever you wanted." I sucked in a deep breath. Siobhan was sitting on the couch next to me, and I wasn't entirely sure how much she knew, but knowing Kevin, he'd probably told her everything he knew and lied about a whole lot he didn't. "You're killing him, you know. Just like you're killing everything around you. You need to stop this."

"Stop what, exactly?" he asked mildly.

I was tired, aching, pregnant, and fed up. "Jonathan, you look like the kind of guy who gets what he wants, and damn the consequences. Which is why you and Kevin are a match made in heaven. Look, I know why you're on a crusade. Lewis told me about the missing Djinn. You're using Kevin to suck power out of everything and everyone around us to try to find them, but more power won't do it. This isn't a situation that calls for a bigger hammer."

"I suppose you know what it calls for."

I moved the ice pack from my nose to my throbbing forehead. "Not a friggin' clue. Why, should I?"

For answer, Jonathan took me up on the aetheric. It wasn't like what had happened when the Ma'at had dragged me up, kicking and screaming; this was more like he made the aetheric descend to us. I never even moved, and yet suddenly everything was in that deep Oversight color palette, ringed in translucent shell-like auras. Siobhan turned to a shadow, sparkling with jealous-green and envy-red; she looked positively festive. Kevin was… nothing. A hole in the aetheric through which energy poured, draining into Jonathan. Dispersing… elsewhere.

That wasn't what he was trying to show me. As I watched, Jonathan dipped his fingers into shadow and tugged, revealing thin spiderwebs of lines. Lines that ran from several different directions… and connected to me.

"What…?" I reached down to touch one, but my aetheric fingers passed right through it. I could barely see it, and I was pretty sure that was because Jonathan was allowing me to see it. It wasn't anything humans were equipped to sense… or, I thought, Djinn.

"Everything connects," he said. "The important thing is who connects, and when, and why. And the missing Djinn? They connect to you. I never knew that until I saw you here."

"How?" I asked, mystified. He shrugged.

"You tell me."

Another eyeblink, and the aetheric disappeared, melting into the expensive luxury of Kevin's stolen suite. Outside the windows, thunder rumbled.

"The lines connect to you," he said. "You know where my Djinn are."

I sat up, felt my nosebleed threaten to start up, and went flat again, ice pack in place. "I don't."

"Do."

"Don't," I said definitely. "Look, if I'd seen a whole bunch of bottles lying around someplace, don't you think I would have said something?"

I happened to be looking at the bar, with its gleaming ranks of scotch and gin and tequila, with its crystal glitter of glasses catching the light.

If I'd seen a whole bunch of bottles lying around…

"Holy shit," I murmured. I sat up, headache forgotten, nosebleed forgotten; the ice pack thumped to the carpet.

If I'd seen a whole bunch of bottles.. .

Goddamn. Pretty smart, kiddo.

"Wake him up," I said. Jonathan frowned, put aside his drink, and stood up as I did. "Wake him up right now!"

He didn't do anything that I could see, but Kevin groaned and flopped and came upright with a jerk. Siobhan got up and teetered over on her high-heeled hooker shoes to his side; he grabbed her hand and held it, and for a second I saw the scared kid under the surly adolescent.

"He knocked you out," Siobhan told him. "I told him it was a mistake. You should punish him."

Kevin groped her thigh awkwardly. She hauled him to his feet, and he put his arm around her and faced Jonathan squarely.

"Don't do that again," he said. His jaw muscles flickered, trying to hold back anger or fear. "I mean it. I'll put you back in your bottle and I'll toss it in the nearest sewer, I will, I swear."

I looked at Jonathan, who shrugged. "Hey, you're the one who wanted to wake him up. I guess you have a reason."

I did. I hugged the blanket closer around my shoulders and walked over to Kevin and Siobhan. He took up a defensive stance and-how weird was this?- moved the girl behind him. Kevin, the knight in slightly tarnished armor.

His eyes darted from me to Jonathan and back. I must have looked fierce… bruised, bloody, wild-eyed, wrapped in a blanket like some Red Cross rescue. He opened his mouth to order Jonathan to do something, then gave it up with a visible effort. Smart kid. Starting to realize just how little owning and operating a Djinn of Jonathan's quality was doing to help him in the first place.

"I need to talk to you," I said to the kid. "In the bedroom. You." I pointed at Jonathan. "You stay here."

He gave me that thin little look that clearly said, Make me. All righty then.

"Make him," I said crisply to Kevin, who flinched, but nodded.

"Yeah," he agreed. "Back in the bottle."

Jonathan had a lot of power, but that was one command he couldn't resist. Whoosh. Vapor. Gone.

"And don't come out until I say so!" Kevin called after him.

"You ought to cork the bottle."

"And show you where it is? Blow me."

"You wish." I sighed. I trailed blanket all the way over to the bedroom door, opened it, and stepped into Shangri-la. "Oooooh," I said, and rubbernecked. "I could get used to this."

It was a palace. Space, expansive views (of clearing skies), carpet so thick and glorious it begged to be petted. A huge fantasy of a bed, heavily rumpled, with thick down pillows dented and disarranged. The entertainment center had a plasma TV. It was on mute, but it was tuned to a sex channel… I cleared my throat and walked over to hit the power on the remote.

"Hey!" Kevin protested.

"Trust me, you're not missing any plot points." I nodded across the room to a small grouping of elegant gilt-and-brocade chairs. Two were covered with piles of newspapers and room-service trays with half-eaten burgers. "Mind making a hole? I'm a little under the weather."

As jokes went, it was weak, and besides, neither of them got it, but Kevin shoved newspapers out of the way and Siobhan piled trays off on another piece of furniture-some kind of priceless antique that would have had dealers weeping at the abuse. I made sure the blanket cushioned the chair, and let myself relax.

A little.

"You know I'm not going to hurt you," I said to Kevin. "Number one, well, I can't. You're too powerful, and besides, I'm too damn tired."

"You can leave," he said. Being-for Kevin-magnanimous. "I'll let you walk out. Just go."

"That's nice, but if I go, so does your last hope for getting out of this thing alive. Those people out there, they're not going away. You're not going anywhere, because they've got this place locked down, and even though you've got Jonathan, you have to know that he's got his own thing going." I watched his eyes, and saw the flash of resentment and fear in them. "You're a means to an end, Kev. Have you tried to leave Las Vegas?"

He didn't answer. Siobhan did. "Once," she said. He frowned at her, but she ignored him. "He told that guy to get us out of here, but then there was this whole debate. It was stupid. I told him so."

Jonathan didn't want to leave, and if he didn't want to, Kevin had very little understanding of how to make him. Hell, Kevin hadn't even been able to control me, and it wasn't as if I were the most difficult of Djinn, back when I'd been all floaty. He was completely out of his depth.

"These people are going to kill you." I didn't pull any punches. There wasn't really any time. "It won't be like the movies, Kevin-it won't be some big blaze of glory, some badass villain ending. They'll just kill you, and then walk through your blood to get what they want. I can't stop them unless you help me."

"Jonathan will-"

"Jonathan," I cut him off, "will do just as Jonathan sees fit, and if you're not useful to him anymore, kiss your ass good-bye. Get me?"

He didn't want to, but he got me. Kevin played with a frayed hole in his jeans, glared at me from under a fringe of ragged, unwashed hair, and didn't seem to notice that his hooker girlfriend was rubbing his back for comfort. I took a second to scan her over more closely, then took a good hard look up on the aetheric.

She wasn't more than she seemed. Just a girl, nothing special, no Warden powers, no Ma'at glyphs. The longer I stared at her, the more I saw… a fragile blush of gold in her aura, like soft morning. Black slashes beneath of greed and pain. She had a bad history, but so did Kevin… that was what drew the two of them together. The dark gravity of desperation.

"You're running from something," I said to her, and saw her flinch in both the real world and the aetheric. "Someone."

"Maybe." Bravado wasn't her strong suit. "None of your business."

"Someone here in town? Who is it?" I had an instinct, and followed it. "Quinn. Quinn has something on you."

No answer. Siobhan stared at me with pretty, empty eyes, and I switched back to Kevin. He'd reached out for her hand, like a boyfriend, not a trick. And I saw the corresponding flicker and glow of her aura.

True love. How romantic.

Kevin took in a deep breath, glanced at his girl, then back at me. "You're right," he said. It was the most adult tone I'd ever heard him use. "I got stupid. I shouldn't have taken that guy Lewis's powers… Hell, I don't even know how to, you know, do stuff with them. Well… I did some things…"

"Like what?"

"You know. Things. Like… made girls' T-shirts see-through. And there was this flower garden-I made it grow and gave Siobhan a rose."

"That was nice," she said.

He shrugged, indifferent. Only someone his age could be bored by ultimate power. He brightened up and continued, "I got GWAR to do a free concert downstairs, you know, in the lobby. With the blood and everything. It was cool, especially when they were cleaning it up later-they all kept yelling at each other about who let it happen. Pretty funny."

That was the human race, all right; a thrash-metal band shows up, plays at ear-bleeding volume, and everybody blames the next guy. Management was probably still shaking in their Bruno Maglis. I wondered why security hadn't put a stop to it, and realized that Jonathan had probably found it just as funny as Kevin.

Guys. What can you do?

"And there was that fire; that was cool." Siobhan said, eyes gleaming. Kevin shot her a look, and she got off the subject fast. "I said he should rub the lamp or whatever and say he never wants to work again, but he said that was stupid, that he'd end up paralyzed or dead or something."

Which was what I'd threatened him with, back in the bad old days of Kevin being my lord and master. I couldn't restrain a smile. Kevin's answering one was thin and fragile, and shattered when a far-off rumble of thunder sounded. He turned his face to the windows and looked out.

Even tired and drained as I was, I felt the pulse of power that went out of him-unfocused, overdone, like a cruise missile swatting a gnat. The clouds literally exploded into vapor, veiling the sun, and then vanished completely.

In three seconds, it was hot and clear as far as the eye could see.

Kevin turned back to me and saw me staring, lips parted.

"I don't like rain," he said flatly.

He'd always had Fire Warden powers, but it was surprising he was doing this kind of weather manipulation with Lewis's stolen bag of tricks. And that he was learning to use it without Jonathan's tutelage. No, on reflection, not surprising: alarming. "You shouldn't-"

He interrupted. "You don't tell me what to do. Nobody gets to tell me what to do, ever again."

I shut my mouth. No percentage in arguing with him, not now. His mood had changed again, just like the weather-gone dark and morose, in contrast to the bright shininess beyond the glass-and I'd seen Kevin in dark moods before. Not good. When he was scared he lashed out, and right now I didn't have the strength or the ability to go toe-to-toe with the little jerk.

We stared at each other in silence for a few long seconds, and then Kevin blinked and, still surly, said, "You want I should fix that stuff?"

"What stuff?"

For answer, he reached out and took hold of my wrist. I tried to pull back, but he was stronger than he looked-weedy, but roped with muscle-and then I felt the hot tingle and knew what he was doing.

I stared down at my exposed skin as the cuts turned pink, puckered closed, and sealed up. I felt things shifting inside, healing. The heat made me break out in a fast sweat, and the tingle turned to a more localized heat. Deep down. Really deep.

"Stop," I panted. Kevin kept holding on. "Stop it!" I yanked free, breaking contact, and knew my face was flushed. He'd been healing me, but he'd also been playing with me. Siobhan had taught him some tricks, consciously or not. He gave me a smug grin and settled back with a proprietary arm around his girl.

I wiped blood and sweat from my arms with the blanket and saw that he'd done it perfectly-no cuts, not even faint scars to mark where they'd been. I even felt energized. He'd pumped up my blood supply, too, made my bone marrow go into overdrive. Dangerous, but effective.

I looked down at the rest of me, sighing at the oversize T-shirt and too-large black leggings, and Siobhan-who had a professional understanding of the importance of wardrobe-jumped up and ran to the closet. She dug around and pulled out a pair of low-rise blue jeans and a crop top that would, with imagination, just barely manage to be decent.

I accepted the jeans, and found a red mesh T-shirt with a Chinese design to cover up the crop top. Since I'd gone without a bra this morning, and rejected the sweaty jog bra from the car, some layering was going to be crucial.

The Bellagio had thoughtfully provided a lovely stained-glass screen in the corner, probably just for decoration, but I went behind it and changed. The jeans fit, barely; I had to bite my lips and suck in a breath to get them zipped up. The crop top felt like hookerwear, but the mesh top redeemed it. When I stepped back out, Kevin had turned on the plasma TV again and was watching a writhing knot of bodies on screen.

"Get your head out of Penthouse Letters; it's never gonna happen," I said, and reclaimed the remote to flick the power button again. I sat again, leaned elbows on blue-jeaned knees, and looked from one of them to the other. "Here's the deal, kids. You've got exactly three options. You can give up-"

"Never gonna happen," Kevin said.

"Or you can die, because those guys out there, they will kill you. And believe me, they want to do it sooner rather than later."

Kevin's throat bobbed as he swallowed. He must have read the sincerity in my eyes. "You said there were three options."

"Yeah." I leaned back. "You can help me."

"Help you do what?"

I smiled slowly. "Save the world."

He hesitated just exactly the right amount of time to indicate how cool he was, and then said, "Yeah, whatever."