Chill Factor

ELEVEN

Rahel, not being claimed anymore, couldn't jump us magically from one place to another. A drawback, but not a huge one… I didn't think that Quinn could use Jonathan to do any transportation, either. I'll delay him as long as I can, Jonathan had said, before he'd been yanked out of the world. I grabbed Myron Lazlo, who was having some sort of old-guys meeting in the corner of the room that seemed devoted to snuffboxes and cigars and brandy. Literally. By the arm. He didn't take it well, but I'd come to realize that manhandling the Ma'at was a whole lot less dangerous than taking on a militant Warden. Ashworth had caned me pretty handily, back in the lobby of the Luxor, but Lazlo had done nothing but called one of the associated Free Djinn to take care of me.

Lazlo just retained his personal dignity and shrugged free of my grip.

"Yes?" he asked neutrally. "I've already made it clear, the Ma'at will not-"

"Provide transportation? Think again. We need to get to White Ridge. What've you got?"

He frowned at me for a full thirty seconds, then said, "Are you asking me for the loan of a vehicle?"

"No, Laz, I'm telling you that I'm taking a couple of cars. You pick which ones, but the faster the better." Warmth registered near my back. Lewis, Marion, Kevin, and Rahel had tagged along with me, to lend support. Lazlo's eyes skipped over them, unreadably, and focused back on me. "Time's wasting. He's your mess, in case you forgot, which means you're just as bad a judge of character as I am."

"I liked him," I said. It burned me to admit it, made parts of me flutter uneasily as memory reasserted itself. Darkness, pain, violation. I'd looked him in the eyes and I hadn't recognized him, not even the capacity for violence. I'd trusted him, like a complete brainless moron. "Cars, Laz." I snapped my fingers.

Behind me, Rahel murmured, "I believe you'll find them outside at the valet stand."

"Oh?"

Lazlo's face shut down hard. "Take what you'd like. We'll speak of this when you return. If any of you return. I don't give you very good odds. He'll know you're coming, of course. By now, he will know that his attempt to silence you failed."

I waited for him to wish me luck. He didn't.

I turned and led the way out to the lobby. It was still mostly deserted, thanks to the excitement over Bellagio way, and we walked straight out the doors, past Ma'at security, to the covered portico where uniformed valets waited. They were clustered together, nervously gossiping, but sprang into action when we approached.

"Rahel?"

She pointed to two matching Dodge Vipers. One was a deep, glistening midnight blue, flirting in the sunlight; the other was silver.

I knew the blue one. She was unmistakable.

"Mona?" I felt stupid asking it, but Marion nodded. "You had David bring it with you when you came here?"

"I thought we might need it," she said. "And he knew it would please you. I confess, I thought it would be to make a quick escape, not to go riding off to… whatever we're riding off to…"

"And the silver one?"

Rahel buffed her talons on her shirt. "It wasn't being used." She opened her palm and dropped keys into my hand. I tried to hand them back, but she stepped away with an expression of distaste. "I do not drive."

It was, apparently, a Djinn thing; David had claimed not to, either, but he'd come around when I'd needed him to. I tossed both sets of keys in the air, thinking, and then underhanded one set to Marion. The silver car.

"Take Rahel and Kevin," I said. "Rahel, watch out for trouble." I didn't look at Kevin, but I didn't think I needed to. Her hot amber eyes glowed just a little brighter. "Marion-"

"I'll watch out for it, too." Neither one of us trusted Rahel completely either; I could see the acknowledgment of it in her serene face. I wouldn't have trusted anyone but Marion to shepherd those two. "How fast are we driving?"

I stepped out from the thick shade into the molasses-thick glare of the Las Vegas sun and walked to the driver's side of the blue Viper. It was too hot to put my hand on the blue finish, but I held it a couple of inches above the blazing metal. Petting her was almost irresistible.

"What?" I asked absently. Marion, unlocking the silver Viper, repeated the question. I looked across the car at Lewis, who had opened the passenger side.

I laughed, and said, "Just try to keep up." It sounded hollow, felt worse. I should have felt free, opening the driver's-side door and easing into Mona's comfortable seat, feeling the potential of her ignite at the turn of the key. Cars had always made me feel safe. Powerful.

But I was driving this one into the past, and that was one place I didn't want to go.

What surprised me was that I hadn't recognized his voice. Not recognizing his body or face, sure, that was understandable; the only clear look I'd ever had at Orry was that morning in the desert, and it had been fifteen seconds long, at a distance, with a baseball cap shadowing his face and panic jittering my focus.

But the voice. I should have recognized the voice.

When the shadow in the dark grabbed me in the caves and held me underwater, I'd honestly thought that I was dead. Coming awake again in the darkness, I still thought I was dead; combine the trauma with the heat exhaustion and dehydration, not to mention the head injury, and dead was what I probably should have been.

Instead, I opened my eyes in the dark and for a few seconds there was nothing, nothing but the drip of water and the sound of my own heart slowly, steadily working its way toward death, one beat at a time.

I licked dry lips-even though there was water beaded on them, they felt dry and painfully cracked- and whimpered as pain stabbed through my head. I tried to pull in a deep breath, but it gurgled in my lungs, and I coughed.

Coughing with a head injury, not recommended. My head exploded in pulsations of white agony, and I couldn't stop hacking. By the time I stopped I was huddled in a sitting position, my back against what felt like wood. It creaked when I moved against it. My chest was on fire, but that was nothing compared to the complete devastation of my headache. I carefully leaned my skull back against the wooden boxes, in the hope that not moving it anymore would help the nauseating throbbing to settle down. I had both hands clutching my temples, but that didn't seem to be helping-it felt like it was holding the pain inside-so I let them fall back into my lap. The air tasted damp and cool. Not a breath of wind.

I heard the scrape of footsteps. My first thought was to call for help, but my second was a memory of being held underwater, and I kept still. I stared into the dark-which was complete-and saw nothing. Not a flicker of light. Maybe I'm blind. That was a freak-inducing thought that I tried to put well behind me.

The sound of someone coming got louder. Pebbles rattled. He must have misstepped once; I heard someone curse softly-male voice-and there was some scuffling that sounded like things being rearranged. Metal, maybe, dragged over rock. Tough to say.

I was still trying to figure out which direction the footsteps were coming from when he flicked on a flashlight, and I was hit squarely but a rush of light so bright it felt like he'd set my eyeballs on fire. I screamed and covered my eyes, turned my face away, but even then I could see the halogen flare, burning bright red on my eyelids.

He'd meant to do that, just in case. He wanted me blind and disoriented.

I felt something grab my foot and drag me suddenly forward; I was able to save my head from smacking into the rock, which might very well have killed me, and then there was a weight astride me, a belt buckle digging painfully into my stomach as he leaned forward. The light was still in my face. I couldn't see him at all.

"Open your eyes," he said. I couldn't have, even if I'd wanted to; I was already crying from the blaze of light. I tried to bat the flashlight away, and he grabbed both my hands in one of his and slammed them back to the stone. The light loomed closer, bloodred on the other side of my eyelids, like a giant blazing eye. "Open your eyes!"

I tried. I think I must have managed to get them open just a little, because I heard him say, "Blue. Huh. I'd have bet they were brown."

He didn't sound crazy. In fact, he sounded very normal, as if we were standing at a cocktail party with our little drinks, making small talk. As if he hadn't just tried to drown me and killed another woman and was kneeling on my chest with a light in my eyes.

"What's your name, sweetheart?" he asked. I could almost see him smiling, saluting me with a martini.

No reason to lie. "Joanne." My voice sounded weak and fractured. Nothing like what I wanted it to be. "You already know that."

"Smart girl. Indeed I do know. Chaz told me." He leaned over closer. That made it harder to breathe. I coughed again, and couldn't help a sobbing moan when the headache dug claws deeper. "You're in sad shape, Joanne. Wish I could say that I was here to help you out, but you already know that's not true, eh?" I felt a sharp sting as he slapped me to keep me focused. "Eh?"

I nodded.

"What did Chaz tell you? Oh, by the way, I saw what you did out there. Very impressive. Chaz tells me most of you can do that by yourselves, right?" He bent very close, close enough that I smelled aftershave and a hint of herbal shampoo. "Without a Djinn. That how you say it? Djinn?"

"I don't know what you're talking about." It didn't matter. He wasn't a Warden. When I went up on the aetheric-I could barely catch a glimpse of it in Oversight now-I saw no power in him. No potential. He was as absolutely normal as the guy next door. "I don't know what that is."

"You don't have one." He sounded definite about it. "Chaz didn't have one, either. Guess it's just the really high ups that get them, huh? Or… the ones who need them? Out in the middle of nowhere, storm central? Places that get out of control quick?"

He was too close to the truth. There were more Wardens with Djinn in trouble spots; half of the ones in Oklahoma and Kansas were equipped, and an even greater portion of the ones in California. He understood an awful lot more than he should have.

Starting with the fact that there were Wardens. "Chaz told you," I whispered.

The flashlight switched off. It was like being doused with cold water in the desert-sweet, shocking relief. Felt like the darkness was a place of safety, a place to hide, even though I knew better. I heard the soft sound of plastic and metal on stone as he set it aside.

"Chaz told you things," he said. "About me. Blabbed his stupid head off. Right?"

I didn't answer. Saving my breath for the screaming part.

"This is going to go better if you just tell me now. The end's the same, but like the Chinese say, it's the journey that counts."

"He told me you were running drugs," I said. "That other Wardens went along with it. Look, I was going to take the money. I'll still take it. You don't have to kill me."

"Honey, I wish I knew that for sure, because I kinda like you. You don't fold under pressure, and that's a gift." He straightened up and let go of my hands. I didn't try to hit him; there was no percentage in it yet. He still had me pinned. "No, I figure you… you'd take the money and run right back to your little friends, and next thing you know, I'm out of business. Can't have that."

I was too weak to really use my powers, but I had one advantage: He didn't know it. I concentrated hard, readying myself. I wasn't going to get a lot of opportunities, and I'd better act fast and with perfect timing when one came.

"Tell me about the Djinn," he said. "Chaz didn't know much, or at least he said he didn't. It's interesting."

"It's a myth," I said. "It's a TV show. He was putting you on."

"Oh, I don't think so, because I asked him with lots of nice folding money. You, unfortunately, money won't do it. I'll have to be more persuasive." I heard something metallic tap the rock. "You know what that is?"

It could have been anything. A nail file. A ring. A bottle opener. "Knife," I whispered. "It's a knife."

"Good memory." Suddenly the sharp edge of it was under my chin, pressing, and I felt myself start squirming. I couldn't help it. My body wanted to get away so badly that it refused to listen to reason and stay still. "Here's how this works, Joanne. You tell me what I want to know, and you never even feel this knife move. You don't tell me, and this knife knows how to do things the hard way, the slow way. Get me?"

"Yes." I was sweating. I couldn't afford to sweat. My brain felt slow and stupid, desperate for moisture. There was so much around me, in the air… and I couldn't reach it.

"Now answer my question."

"You haven't asked one," I heard myself say.

"What?" The knife moved at my throat, pressed harder. I squeaked. "You playing with me, honey? Because you won't like the way I like to play."

"They're Djinn," I whispered breathlessly. "They live in bottles."

"What kind of bottles?"

"Any kind." No, that wasn't true. "Glass bottles. Crystal. Has to be breakable."

He made a gratified sound. The knife moved away. Where it had touched me, I felt a core of cold that stung hot after a few seconds.

"How do you use one?"

I licked my lips with a dry, rough tongue. "First you have to have the scroll-"

The knife plunged into my skin. I screamed. It was buried about a half an inch deep in my arm, and he kept moving it. Cutting. When he finally stopped, I didn't; the screaming dissolved to helpless sobs, but I couldn't shut up until I felt him prick me in another place with the sharp, merciless tip of it.

"There's no scroll," he said. "Right?"

"Right." I swallowed tears. "You're right, you son of a bitch."

He seemed to like that; I heard him chuckle. A warm, friendly sound. He patted my cheek.

"Tell me the truth," he said. "We got all the time in the world to cut through the lies."

"Quinn's been stealing them for six years," I said aloud. The road was blurring in front of my eyes.

"What?" Lewis had drifted off into a twilight state, nearly asleep; he jerked back awake at the sound of my voice. We were about two hours outside of Vegas, heading north. Mona was running at close to top speed. We were lucky in a lot of ways, but mostly because Rahel was keeping us off the radar, both literally and figuratively.

I swallowed and felt my throat click. "The Djinn. They've been disappearing for six years, and that's exactly when… when I told Quinn about the Djinn. That's how he found them. He gave up drug running to take up black-market Djinn, and I'm the one who taught him how to do it."

Lewis listened to me as it poured out-the fear, the pain, the dark, Quinn's questions. When I stopped, the air tasted poisonous. He didn't look at me.

"You don't know how much Chaz told him," he said. "Don't assume this is your fault, Jo."

"It's very much my fault, Lewis, and you know it. Chaz was a low-level functionary; he knew the basics of the Djinn but nothing else. I'd gotten the advanced-level training because they were grooming me for bigger things. I had the practical info he needed."

"Theoretical," Lewis pointed out. "You didn't own one. You'd never worked with one. You were telling him what everybody knew."

"The thing is," I said, "it doesn't matter. If he'd gotten the information from Chaz, he might have blown it off as the bullshit of an amateur. Chaz couldn't back it up, after all. But I confirmed it, and that means he started to take it seriously based on what I said. That means I'm to blame. This happened because I cracked."

He looked somber. "Everybody cracks. You stayed alive. That matters."

I didn't think so, at the moment.

Lewis checked the side mirror to make sure that the silver Viper was still behind us, then glanced at the speedometer. It registered two hundred, but I was pretty sure we were doing better than that. I'd helped us with a strong tailwind, and screw the balance. The headwind was a bitch, and it kept trying to shove the car sideways. My arm was getting tired, and my whole body was vibrating with tension.

I kept waiting for something, anything to stop us, but it was clear sailing all the way to White Ridge.

The gates to the Fantasy Ranch were wide open when we arrived, tarnished silver girls arching their backs to the sky; I pulled the Viper in cautiously, alert for trouble from any direction, but apart from the creak of iron and the skitter of tumbleweeds, the place was utterly still.

"He's got a rifle," Lewis warned me. "Let Rahel do this."

Rahel, in fact, was already out of the silver Viper and moving fast as a blur toward the house. She didn't pause for the door. It blasted open ahead of her, and we sat tensely, in silence, waiting.

She appeared in the doorway a few minutes later and shook her head. I let out an aching breath.

"He's gone."

"Looks like." Lewis popped the passenger door. I found myself looking at the separated garage off to the side; the doors were rolled up, and Quinn had left behind a dirty green Cherokee and a black Explorer. The Explorer had boxes in the back window, neatly stacked, labeled glass, fragile.

They were full of sealed bottles. I turned them over in my hands, wondering, but Rahel wandered over and checked them out simply by reaching over to pick one up.

"Decoys," she said. "There are many like these inside. He hid the priceless among the cheap. He's been gone for a while."

I dumped the box over, furious. "How are we going to find him? Can you track him?"

Her eyes were dark and serious. "I can try. It's difficult. Jonathan is masking their movements."

"Try." I kicked the scattered bottles. "Let's move it."

Back on the road. Rahel and Marion led the way this time, and I concentrated on staying right on the gleaming silver bumper, drafting. We were back on the freeway, and then made an abrupt turn to a farm-to-market road that wasn't built for speed. We were forced to slow down.

"Jo," Lewis said. "You need to accept that he may get away, for now."

"Bullshit. He's not getting away. No way in hell."

I kept a paranoid watch, but there was no sign of Quinn trying to pick us off with a sniper rifle. Although I doubted even Quinn could have made a hero shot at this speed. There was nothing to do but think, or talk, and neither one of us seemed to want to do much talking. The sun crawled over the sky, and we were losing time.

Rahel directed us down another road, this one heading into the desert. It was a little better. We edged the speed higher, heading for what looked like even more deserted country.

Lewis said, "Let me have David's bottle. Maybe there's something I can do to help him."

The purse was still slung across my body, under the seat belt. I resisted the urge to clutch it close and settled for a quick, definite headshake. "He's sick, Lewis. You can't take him out of the bottle right now. If he isn't an Ifrit, he's close. Just… leave him alone."

"Do you trust me?"

"Don't start."

"Do you?" He reached over and unzipped the compartment.

"Swear to God, Lewis, if you touch that bottle I'll rip your fingers off."

"I'm trying to help," he said, and reached inside.

I grabbed his wrist. It was like grabbing a ground wire-enough power to make me jerk and swear and have to quickly put both hands back on the wheel so that we didn't veer sideways around the tractor-trailer rig to our left, spin out, and flip like some Hollywood stunt gone horribly right. As it was, Mona fought me. She was stubborn, like my lovely Delilah, scrapped back in Oklahoma and still bitterly mourned. At this speed, steering was razor-sharp and as temperamental as a bipolar opera singer. Her tires were shrieking against the urge to turn. I held her straight, blindly concentrating, and didn't let my breath out until I felt her unclench first.

And then I remembered what had set things off.

David's bottle was in Lewis's hands. Held casually, catching the light through the tinted window in a pretty home-decorating sparkle. It looked empty, but then, it always did. What David was had no weight in the aetheric state, and when encased in glass, failed to even register at all on any plane of existence we could reach.

"It took a human death and Jonathan's and David's power to bring Rahel back," he said. "It'll take Jonathan's power and more death to bring David back. Are you prepared to pay that price?"

"Sure," I said grimly. "Quinn might as well serve some useful purpose. And hey, Mr. Morality, you were willing to sanction Quinn's putting a bullet through Kevin's head, as I recall. Don't break anything climbing off that soapbox; it's awfully high."

Lewis kept turning the bottle in his hands. "Does he make you happy?"

I didn't answer. I didn't have to. Lewis knew well enough. "Put it back, Lewis. Don't make me hurt you."

"I have an idea-"

"I have an idea that you're going to put that back right n-"

I never finished that, because all of a sudden I was just simply… not there. I'd been yanked out of the car with tremendous, magical force, far up into the sky. Below me, a dot of a blue car veered wildly, corrected, and shuddered to a screeching halt. The silver one braked after a two-second delay.

Then I was spinning out of control, heading…

… down.

Thump.

I landed in a dusty sprawl, out of breath, sweating, gasping, and blind. I clawed hair back from my eyes and saw that I was in shadow, lying on a soft bed of sand. To either side of me, canyon walls crawled up hand over hand toward the sky. They were astonishing… harvest gold shading to brick red shading to dull brown, a muted but glorious rainbow of layers. Overhead, the sky was the perfect, supernaturally bright blue of a Djinn's eyes. Where the sunlight hit, it hit hard and woke glassy sparkles from the sand.

The place wasn't completely devoid of life; there was a raw scuttling in a thin, straggly cactus that probably meant either a lizard or a rabbit, or both. It wasn't even devoid of hints of human visitation. There was a cool silver moon slice of a beer can partially visible near the canyon wall.

But nobody in sight.

I licked dry lips and called, "Jonathan?" I couldn't think who else would have had the ability to yank me out of the driver's seat and deliver me here without also delivering me in pieces. I got up and slapped dust from my jeans-what use it was, I have no idea, since the rest of me was thoroughly caked. I ached. I stank. I was grimy and horribly itchy and pissed off as hell.

I was also scared to death.

"Quinn?" I tried. "Hello?"

His voice came down to me like God from the mountain, amplified into a divine echo. "Shouldn't have come after me, Joanne. I didn't come after you."

Like hell. "You tried to shoot me!"

"You wouldn't leave well enough alone," he said. His voice sounded hollow but self-satisfied; I couldn't see a thing, couldn't tell if he was up at the top leaning over or standing on some concealed ledge. "Sooner or later, you'd have figured it out. You're like a bulldog. I respect that. I was just removing a risk. And now you just won't leave me the fuck alone, will you? I'm just trying to leave, you know. Get on with my life."

"News flash, now the Ma'at know. And the Wardens will know. And whether you've got Jonathan or not, there's no place you can hide. They'll hunt you down and-"

"And kill me, yeah, I know. Very dramatic."

An explosion echoed through the canyon, louder than a scream; I felt stone chips dig hot into my shoulder, and dived for the dirt again. As if that would help. He was shooting down at me, and I had no place to hide. But then, if he'd been all about the shooting of me, he could have easily put one or two through my head.

"What do you want?" I yelled, and spat sand. "Hey, grab a knife, come down here, and stage a rematch, you bastard! I'll give you a really good time!"

"You know, I used to just want to get away with this, but you're pissing me off. Now I'm thinking, maybe I need a little recreation before I hit the road."

Another shot pinned me to the sand. He could drill me anytime he wanted; I knew it. And there wasn't a lot I could do to stop him.

"You remember what I asked you at the end? In the cave?" His voice sounded worse than hollow now. It sounded like a shell, and something lived in it that wasn't human. I stayed very still. "Joanne?"

"I remember," I said. I didn't know if he could hear me.

"Is it still what you're most afraid of?"

I felt the vibration coming up through the rocks. Next to my eyeline, sand jittered madly, and I felt a sudden cool, damp breeze.

I clawed my way up to my feet and looked at the canyon walls. Far, far up at the top, I saw a black dot of a head looking down.

I knew how he was going to kill me.

Fuck him. I wasn't going to die like this. Not like this.

I kicked off my shoes, ran for the wall, and grabbed for my first handhold.

I'm going to ask you one last question, he'd said, there in the dark, when all my screaming had died down to whispers, when he'd stopped cutting me and left me to bleed for a while. The scrape of his fingertips over my sweaty, bloody face had made me want to crawl away, but I'd been too weak. Too afraid.

What are you most afraid of? What's the one way you don't want to die?

And because I'd been too numbed to lie, I'd whispered, Drowning. As soon as I'd let myself say it, I'd tried to take it back, tried to pretend I'd lied, but he knew.

Orry knew fear when he heard it.

He'd dragged me to the edge of the pool, and he'd held me underwater until I'd stopped moving.

I'd had just enough power left, just enough skill, to keep the oxygen in my lungs refreshed as his hand shoved my face down to the bottom of that shallow pool and held me there with his fist knotted in my hair.

He was careful. Let me stay under for a full two minutes before he let go, and he left me there, floating facedown.

When I was sure he'd gone, I'd rolled out of the water and huddled in the dark, trembling. Weeping without sound and without tears. Then crawling, inch by torturous inch, back out of the caves into the hot sunlight.

Four hours later, I'd made my way outside to the highway, where a passing motorist had found me.

Just another victim.

What are you most afraid of?

I'd told him, and now he was going to use it against me again.

Son of a bitch, screw you, I'm not dying like this.

I hauled myself up with my right hand, found a grip for my left, and jammed fingers in. Nails broke, but I barely felt it. My bare toes scrabbled at the rock wall and clung to a tiny outcropping.

Three feet up. I found the next handhold, and hauled against the shattering strain in my arms and shoulders. Need to lose some weight. That was the crazy, insane, stupidly optimistic part of my brain that just never quite failed to see the funny side of dying horribly.

I could feel the vibration in the canyon walls. The breeze was picking up speed. Climb! The air in the canyon was unstable, already swirling. Trying to control it was a sucker bet.

I climbed another three feet, painfully achieved.

"Give it up," Quinn said from somewhere way up there, hundreds of feet above. "You know how this goes. A flash flood rips through these canyons, it pulverizes boulders, rips up trees like kindling. You won't even be a little bitty scrap of skin by the time it dumps you out in the river. Maybe you won't even have time to drown. Would that make you feel any better?"

Two more feet. My sweating toes slipped, then my left hand; I bit back a scream of rage and reached again. Pulled. Felt the burning tear in my triceps grow stronger.

A whip of wind lashed my hair back, and I heard the low grumble.

"Holy shit," Quinn said. "Looks like a real gully washer, there. Sorry. Want me to shoot you, put you out of your misery?"

"Fuck you," I gasped, and lurched another two feet higher. I glanced down. I was maybe ten feet up now, enough to make me dizzy but no way enough to save me. The low grumbling sound was getting louder, and the wind stiffer. It smelled like wet sand and death. Nothing clean about the water hurtling down the canyon toward me. It had started out as a flood at least half a mile back, maybe more, picking up speed and debris by sweeping the canyons. Foaming and raging like a sea, taking with it birds, rabbits, snakes, people, cars, anything in its path.

It was coming fast.

"Sure you don't want me to shoot you? 'Cause if you're waiting on your friends, they're a little busy. Jonathan's helping out with that."

I lunged upward. My fingers were bloody, the nails ripped off at the quick, and my shoulders and arms were trembling. I flailed for a right handhold, found one and shifted my weight…

… and the shale under my fingers shattered like glass.

I screamed, clung to my left handhold, and felt my shoulder pop hot as a gunshot. The wind turned cold, flapped my hair like a flag, and when I reached up again for a grip my bloody left hand slipped. I scrabbled like a doomed cartoon character, managed to find something to cling to, and hung there, trembling.

No way could I get high enough. It was going to lick me off the wall.

I turned my face toward the first damp breath as the roar burst open. The flood was rounding the corner up ahead. It was a wall of black of mist and foam and death, thirty feet high. I saw the bloody, torn hindquarters of a cow being tossed on the leading edge.

I felt my fingers slip again, and there was no point in trying to stop it this time.

As the wall of water slammed into me like a speeding truck, I let myself fall.

What are you most afraid of?

Drowning.

That wasn't actually true, after all. It hurt, but what hurt worse was the knowledge that Quinn was going to get away. He was going to take Jonathan's bottle and he was going to get in his SUV and go bouncing across the desert, and if there was revenge to be had, it wouldn't be had by me, and dammit, I couldn't let myself go down like this. I couldn't. I'd survived him before, in the dark, when there was no hope.

I felt something warm move inside of me.

I might let you kill me, you bastard, but you will not kill my daughter.

The current had knocked me fuzzy and gray, but the real problem was the debris churning in the water with me, and the impacts with canyon walls that were going to rip me limb from limb. I had seconds left, maybe less. The water was moving so fast that the walls were a blur sweeping past, and all I could do was try to stay on top of the roiling cold surge. Swimming was stupid. I focused on the water itself, but it was driven by so much force and so much chaos that I couldn't grip anything, couldn't hold it…

Ma'at.

It wasn't about gripping and holding.

It was about removing the need for the water to move at all.

I took a deep, scared breath and ducked under the surface. It was almost black, laden with silt and debris, and the silk of the water swallowed me whole.

I left myself go. Drifting. Listening to the water's heart.

Letting it flow through me like a river. Surfing with it, undulating. Finding the frequency of the water and creating the counter vibration, exactly opposite.

Waves began to still instead of amplify. Surges became still patches.

Slowing.

I opened my eyes and bobbed up to grab another breath, and saw that the flood was still fast but no longer the roaring monster it had been. I could try to swim, at least. Stay ahead of the heavier debris, ride the crest of the-

There was a boulder straight ahead, jammed in a narrow part of the canyon, and I was heading straight for it.

Five seconds left.

Two.

Oh, God…

I felt myself lifting on the surge of the wave, and waited for the fall, the impact, the end.

I kept rising.

Rising out of the water.

Someone was holding me from behind, arms clasped around me under my breasts, and I felt a wild and burning heat that turned water between us to steam.

"Rahel?" I asked, and turned to look.

Not Rahel.

It was David.

He smiled at me with so much love and relief that it broke my heart, and said, "You think I'd let you go, after all this?"

I cried out and turned in the circle of his arms, and held him as we floated over the foaming, churning flood.

At the top of the canyon we had a welcoming committee. It consisted of Rahel, Lewis, and Marion. Rahel, of course, was spotless; Marion and Lewis were sweaty and dirty and breathless.

We touched down, and I winced at the burn of hundred-degree sand on my bare feet, but then David was collapsing in my arms and I forgot all about the discomfort. My shoulders couldn't take the strain. I had to let him fall.

"David?" I hovered anxiously over him. His eyes were flickering copper, turning brown. "David-"

"He's too weak," Lewis said, and fumbled the blue glass bottle out from his pocket. "David, back in the bottle."

He faded into mist. I rounded on Lewis in a fury, but he held up a hand to stop me. "If we leave him out, he'll fade again. The bottle is all that's keeping him alive right now. Djinn life support."

"And you called him out?" I didn't know what made me more angry. "Do me a favor-don't help, okay?"

"I was supposed to let you get smashed to pieces?"

"You were supposed to take down Quinn!" I yelled. "Did you?"

They looked anywhere but me. Rahel said, "We will."

"We will," I mocked. "Yeah, fine, whatever. Just let me find him and do this thing." I staggered when I tried to get up. Marion took my arm and hauled me upright, frowning.

"You're in no shape to take on anything more dangerous than a week in bed," she said. "You've torn muscles, damaged your shoulder-"

"I don't care." I bit the words off furiously and wiped wet hair back from my face, wishing that I were still a Djinn so I could clean myself up and smite somebody with a truly righteous amount of smiting. "He's got Jonathan, and he's got God knows how many bottles, and he's not getting out of this without a fight, and where exactly is Kevin?"

I ran it all together, alarm sharpening my voice, and saw Marion and Lewis look around in shock.

"He was right here," Marion began, but I wasn't watching her. I was caught by Rahel's expression. Alone among us, she wasn't surprised by his absence.

"Let him do this," she said. "It's his right."

"Do what!"

She shrugged. I shook free of Marion's hold and turned around, looking down the edge of the canyon. It couldn't be that far, a few sand dunes in the way, maybe a thousand yards of desert in the way…

Something blew up out there.

Something very, very big.

The shock wave rippled over me, and the noise whited out my eardrums; a fireball the size of a blimp rose up into the air, curling in on itself in reds and crimsons and ropes of hot yellow, in waves of smoke like tattered silk.

A shattered metal frame rose up off the ground, powered by another explosion. The massive steel monster, turning end over end, sailing out over the canyon and dropping down to smash into the foaming water with a hiss of superheated steam.

"That was a Hummer," I said numbly.

"And I think that was Kevin," Lewis said.

The kid had finally found a decent use for his powers over fire.

Then we were running.

The explosion had left a crater the size of a meteor strike, black in the center. Sand had turned to glass.

Quinn was down near the edge of it, bleeding from ears and nose, coughing up mouthfuls of red. The second I saw him, memory clicked into place: baseball cap, windbreaker, the same lean, whipcord body. Sun-glasses hiding his face.

Quinn. Orry. One and the same, not that I'd had any doubt.

Jonathan was standing over him, staring down. When we pelted over the sand toward him, avoiding the burning scraps of what used to be a hugely expensive SUV, I saw Kevin kneeling nearby. He looked… blank. Exhausted. That explosion had taken everything out of him.

No time for him now. I fixed my attention on Jonathan, and held out one hand in a calming motion. "Easy. Let's not get crazy here. We come in peace."

"No, you don't," Jonathan said absently.

"Okay, I lied, we don't. But it looks like Quinn's not going to make it, so let's not increase the body count, okay?"

"I don't have a choice." Ouch. The bleak fury of that was painful. "I thought since he wasn't a Warden, I'd have more chances. But he's good. He knew exactly what to say, what to do…"

The first command you give is to restrict them from using any power without your express order. The second is to order them to protect your life unless you expressly countermand it. The third…

I'd told Quinn how to do it. I'd screamed it out in the dark, under his knife.

I'd taught him everything he needed to know.

I'd told all that to the Wardens, of course, during the debriefing, and they'd said, It doesn't matter. He's not a Warden. He'll never be able to use the knowledge.

Except he had, hadn't he? Quinn was nothing if not ruthless and resourceful.

But I hadn't told him the most critical things, even so.

"Can he talk?" I asked Jonathan. It came out cold and even. Quinn's eyes rolled toward me, wild and rimmed with white.

"No."

"Then his last commands to you remain in force."

"I'm supposed to protect his life," Jonathan said. He was watching Quinn, not us, but I knew that he'd have no choice but to act if we moved. "The kid was clever. He went for the car, not Quinn. Took the bottles out at the same time. I didn't have to stop him."

I felt a flashover of hope, hot as the sun beating down on us. "Where's your bottle?"

Jonathan gestured down at the kneeling man. "On him. In his jacket pocket."

I looked at Lewis. He made a little after-you gesture.

I snapped my head around, lifted a hand and gathered the wind like a hard coil, and sent it arrowing for Quinn.

It slammed into him hard. A microburst, containing a wind shear not strong enough to do him any harm- physically-but plenty strong enough for just what it had to do.

Break a bottle in his front jacket pocket.

I felt it pop, like a sudden change in air pressure.

Quinn flopped down on his back, twisting silently in agony. For a few seconds Jonathan didn't move, and then he slowly bent down and reached in Quinn's pocket.

He took out a handful of broken glass and sifted it onto the sand.

"You don't own me anymore," he said, and crouched down next to the dying man. "Do you have any idea how much this is going to hurt?"

Quinn managed to choke out a few words, after all. "… ordered… defend… life…"

"I didn't let her kill you," Jonathan said, and smiled. It was the most princely, evil smile I could imagine ever seeing. "It'll probably take you days to die. I'll watch over you the whole lime, maybe remind you of all the good things you've done in your life. It's the least I can do."

Quinn's eyes widened. Whether it was mercy or luck, something inside his body snapped. Blood gouted out of his mouth and nose, and he arched his back once, for an aching ten long seconds…

Then collapsed.

"Is he dead?" I asked quietly.

Jonathan leaned over and studied him closely. Then he reached down, hauled him up by the arm, and before anyone could stop him, pitched Quinn limply over the cliff into the swollen, rushing floodwater.

"Yep," he said, and walked away. He called back over his shoulder, "I'm going home. Take care of the kid. Keep him out of trouble."

"Wait!" I yelled it, desperately. "What about David?"

He stopped walking, but he didn't turn back. His shoulders tightened, and then slowly relaxed.

"You broke him," he said. "You fix him."

He vanished before I could get out more than half a curse.

The Wardens agreed to a meeting back at our old stomping grounds, the Holiday Inn outside of White Ridge. I'd spent an entire day showering, bathing, showering, and sleeping with David's sealed bottle resting in my arms; when I came downstairs the next day I looked rested, relaxed, and heavily abused. Bruises up and down my body. Wrecked fingernails. Sunburn on my face, not to mention the muscle tears and sprains that made holding on to a smile an effort.

Thank God for aspirin and Vivarin.

Paul was waiting, along with Marion, Lewis, and a few others. Wardens all, at least in name.

"Jo." Paul tried to put his arms around me. I backed him off with a look and took a seat on the couch. After a pause, he followed suit. He glanced from me to Lewis, me to Marion. "I guess we can call this a qualified success."

"Qualified," I repeated. "What did we qualify for? Bonuses? Free parking?"

"Look, it's just…" Paul fidgeted, then fixed me with a steady stare. "The kid's missing-Kevin. Jonathan's gone, and I don't have to tell you what kind of a loss that is for us. We're just lucky that things are moving back toward normal."

"Normal?" I sounded like a parrot.

"The earthquake thing, it's better. There's going to be a couple of big ones, but in remote areas and not too much damage. The warming trend's slowing down. We're still heading for an ice age, but I don't see that we can do shit about it without-"

"Without Jonathan." I rested my aching, torn hands in my lap. I was wearing jeans again-hip-huggers, in memory of Siobhan-and I'd gone for open-toed flip-flops, considering the state of my cut and bruised toes. "Jeez, sorry about that. Guess we'll just have to hope for the best."

Paul clearly wasn't liking my polite, nonconfrontational attitude. "What's up with you? I'm telling you that you failed. If you'd stayed out of things like we agreed-"

"Then we'd all be dead," I said sweetly. "But hey, next time? I'm booking a spa, getting a massage. Wait for the end in style, you know?"

He didn't respond. I dropped the sweetness from my tone. "Fine. Let's get to the important parts. What's the damage?"

"You've been lying to us, sweetheart."

No kidding. Where to start? "About what?"

"Jonathan, for starters." Paul's eyes were full of bitterness. "He's not in the goddamn register. He doesn't fucking exist, Jo. Where'd he come from? You know, don't you?"

"No."

"Are there more like him out there? More Djinn?"

I kept quiet, watching Marion's impassive face. She knew. And she wasn't talking.

"Jo, I'm giving you a chance to speak up, here. Take it."

"Gee, thanks. But no."

I moved from looking at Marion to looking at Lewis. He was a closed book, too. Quiet. Self-contained. He'd taken Kevin in hand, as I'd known he would; the kid was safely tucked away with the Ma'at, back in Vegas. Lewis would watch out for him.

Whether he would be able to watch out for me was an open question. I was the one thing that could break the secrecy of the Ma'at and the Djinn.

We'd all said the same thing: David's bottle had been destroyed. He was lost. The blue glass was hidden in the bottom of my purse, wrapped safely in a cocoon of bubble wrap.

I still had him, if he lived. If he could recover.

Paul was getting impatient. "I want you to understand that you're part of the chain of command, kiddo. You have a boss-that's me, in case you didn't know-and you do what your boss says from now on, or I'm going to have to consider removing you from the association. You get me? That means you give up your powers-Marion and her guys see that it's done humanely, but it's done. That's how it would have to happen."

Over his shoulder, Marion gave me a tiny, definite shake of her head. Behind her, a shadow flickered into existence, then into three-dimensional life. He was beautiful… tall, broad-shouldered, with impenetrable midnight eyes-not brown, a true, lightless black-and long dark hair frosted lightly with gray. Lines at the corners of his eyes that softened him into something more human. He was dressed, like Marion, in blue jeans and cowboy boots, but his shirt was a matte blue silk, something that begged to be petted.

Marion's Djinn. Marion's lover. He was back. That was the silent message from her. I didn't know if it meant she'd openly disobey orders, but she wasn't following them with a whole heart.

I said, with a weird sort of calm, "Oh, yeah, Paul, I totally get you." I stood up. "Thanks for the opportunity to get reamed out for doing the right thing, and by the way, doing it better than any of you seem to have managed. But I hope you don't mind if I decline the verbal abuse."

He opened his mouth, and shut it again fast when I turned and headed for the door, for the bright, merciless sunshine. I had brand-new credit cards, provided courtesy of Rahel. Wads of cash, from the same source. A fast car, waiting outside.

I could go back to Vegas, catch a tan, heal up. Eventually, I'd need to figure out what to do, but hell, I figured I deserved a vacation.

And the Ma'at damn well deserved to fund it.

"Jo," Paul called after me. I turned, slid on sunglasses, and gave him my best, brightest smile.

"Bite me," I said. "I'm not playing Warden anymore. Go save the world without me. I quit."