Chill Factor

TWO

When I scampered through the pneumatic doors of the Holiday Inn, a rain-lashed, bedraggled mess, I had one of those shivery, disorienting dйjà vu moments. Everybody gets them, and of course the important thing to do is just forget about it and keep moving on.

Except that I took about six steps into the lobby, spotted the faux-rock fountain with its floating rings of silk flowers, and realized it wasn't dйjà vu at all. It was memory.

I really had been here before. Six years ago.

"Crap," I whispered, and fought a deep, clawing instinct to get back in the car and just keep driving. But outside thunder rattled plate glass, and there really wasn't any point in trying to get away from this particular past.

Besides, I don't run from bad memories.

I straightened my back and walked to the front desk. It wasn't quite a sashay, because of the squishing shoes, but I held it together. I didn't recognize the girl behind the desk-staff must have changed over several times since the tight-assed blonde I remembered handing me my last room key. This one-brunette- stopped popping her gum and straightened up, smiling sympathetically.

"Wow," she said. "Real mess out there, huh?"

"No kidding," I said, and wiped strands of hair back from my face. "Hope you have a room available."

"Yep," she said. "Nonsmoking, is that okay?"

"Does it come with a hair dryer?"

"Definitely."

"Perfect."

We did the credit card thing, and she made me a cute little electronic key, and I squished out toward the stairs, past the gently tinkling fountain. No such things as ghosts-at least, I hope there aren't-but I couldn't help but feel a very cold, very real chill as I passed the spot.

Charles Spenser Ashworth III.

Man, I so didn't want to be here. Not now.

David was waiting for me when I unlocked the door to the room. He was dressed in a casual blue-checked flannel shirt, blue jeans, sneakers… his WWI-vintage olive-drab coat was draped over the arm of the chair, and he was kicked back on the bed, lying flat with his hands under his head. I kicked the door shut and stood there staring at him.

Dripping.

Without a word, I went into the bathroom and stripped off my wet clothes, cranked the shower on hot, and had a luxurious, spine-melting wash, with complimentary shampoo and cute little soaps. Two applications of hotel-provided conditioner made it barely possible for me to work the complimentary comb through my uncomplementary hair. Which was curling again, drat it. In my original human incarnation, I'd had glossy, straight, jet-black hair. Since my rebirth, I'd acquired a disturbing tendency to Shirley Temple curls. I used the hair dryer and worked, teeth gritted, until I had everything straightened to my satisfaction.

When I came out, my clothes were dry, folded, and put away in drawers, and David was still lying on the bed in exactly the same position, only bare-chested and covered by the sheets. I set his unsealed bottle on the nightstand, next to the clock radio.

He smiled, eyes closed, and his chest rose and fell as he breathed me in. "You smell like jasmine."

I dropped the towel and slid under the sheets next to him. "Hotel soap. I hope it's an improvement."

He rolled up on his elbow to look down on me. What I saw in his eyes took my breath away. Sweet, hot intensity. Djinn are made of fire, and passion, and power. Having one feel that way about you… it's like nothing else on earth. His skin wasn't touching me, and it didn't matter; he was touching me in ways that were more intimate than that. A sweet burn of pleasure ignited somewhere near the base of my spine and worked its way up.

"How far are you willing to go with this?" he asked me. Which was not what I was hoping for him to say, and I blinked to indicate I had no idea what he was talking about. David read my confusion and continued. "Kevin's afraid. He's young, he's stupid, and he's scared. I think there's every reason to believe that if he wasn't insane before, he probably is by now. So how far are you willing to go to get him?"

Something flashed past me, something from the dream in the car. Wildfires, burning themselves out. I shook it off. "As far as I need to. Somebody's got to take him down."

He moved a lock of hair back from my face. "Others can."

"In time to save Lewis's life?" I asked, and saw a slow cooling of those molten-bronze eyes. "Don't. This isn't about personal feelings, David. He's important. Lewis is important to… hell, to everyone. And what Kevin's done is killing him."

"You need to ask yourself something," he said softly.

"How far I'm willing to go? Because I just said-"

"No." His gaze held me still. "Why it always has to be you. Are you that powerful, or just that arrogant?"

I froze. Then I rolled over and pulled the hurt close. I felt his warm fingers lightly caress my shoulder. His voice was a bare whisper against my ear, soft and textured as velvet.

"I'm scared for you. I lost you twice already, Jo. Please. Stop trying to save the world. Can you do that for me?"

I had to be honest with him. "I don't think I can. Not this time. It's our fuckup, David. I have to try."

I felt the warm puff of his sigh. "That's what I thought." His lips pressed gently on the bare skin of my shoulder. I took a deep breath and turned toward him…

… but he was gone. Disappeared. Vanished like the Djinn he was.

Don't go, I need you, please stay. … I really did need him, especially tonight, especially here. But I was a tough girl. Tough girls don't beg.

I closed my eyes and tried to sleep, but the memories kept coming back.

Now that I'd remembered being here before, I couldn't forget the circumstances, and the circumstances started with Chaz.

You probably know somebody just like Charles Spenser Ashworth III. Maybe not with as fancy a name or pedigree, maybe not as rich, but you know him. He's the guy without much talent but with a whole lot of mouth, a fast-talker with flashy ideas. He never follows through, because that's hard work. He's all about the ideas. Ideas, he will tell you, are much more important than execution. Because anyone can do the grunt work. Men like Chaz are usually successful, because there's an entire business culture out there who buys into the notion that actual work is cheap and somehow dйclassй. He's usually a consultant, or an executive, and he usually has a flashy car (but one without any real performance), a mistress, and at least one ex-wife and the associated ex-children.

My Chaz was a Warden. I had the misfortune of being assigned to audit his work.

First of all, understand that being a Weather Warden in Nevada isn't exactly the world's most stressful job. The surrounding states are the ones with the big problems; by the time the shit hits the fan in Nevada, the Wardens have generally had plenty of chances to slow it down or stop it. The place is strong in Earth Wardens, not Fire or Weather. So for a Weather Warden to get audited in that state is pretty… well, unusual. But for about two years prior to my assignment, there had been some funky things going on.

It was luck of the draw as to who would get the free trip to Vegas, and it turned out to be me. Florida, California, Texas, Oklahoma, Kansas, Missouri… those are the hot-weather experts, and we do get tasked for this sort of thing on occasion. If he'd been in Montana, somebody from the Vermont or Alaska regions would have been given the treat.

But no, it had to be me. Lucky me.

I knew I was in trouble when I arrived at McCarran International Airport in Las Vegas and found that Charles "Call Me Chaz" Ashworth hadn't bothered to pick me up. I mean, if you were being audited, and you were asked to arrange transportation, wouldn't you try to make a good impression? Not Chaz. He left a message for me to rent a car, and told me that he'd reserved me a room at Caesar's. Since I fully intended to charge Chaz for the car, I rented a Jaguar, drove down the Neon Mile to the trashy-cool Roman extravagance of the Palace, and pulled into the valet spot. There was a wait. I hesitated for a few seconds, then flipped open the folder that I'd been reviewing on the plane.

Even though Chaz was nominally based in Las Vegas, that wasn't where the questionable weather behavior was being registered. It was up in the lonely northern part of the state, the empty expanses. Too many storm fronts, coming too close together, and usually at odd times. Interesting. And-not so coincidentally-it looked like he had some property up there in that area.

The valet knocked on my window. I looked up, smiled at him, and hit the power switch to roll down the glass.

"Sorry," I said. "Changed my mind."

I drove through and checked the courtesy map that came with the Jag, eased back in the blood-warm leather seats, and decided to take a road trip.

The epicenter of the trouble was a place named White Ridge, which was a dot on the map so small that it looked more like a printing error than a population center.

I headed for it without delay.

It was a four-hour drive through hard, bright, merciless country, and at the end of it I found a town that had a Wal-Mart, a deserted downtown, one decrepit diner, and-just at the edge of it-a small Holiday Inn. I parked in the lot, pulled my cell phone from my purse, and consulted the file for a phone number. I dialed and got voice mail, and Charles Spenser Ashworth III's smooth, radio-announcer voice. Please leave a message and I'll get back to you. If you're a single lady, I'll get back to you sooner. Oh, he just oozed charm. Or maybe just oozed. I left him a businesslike message that said I'd arrived, where I was, and that I expected him to meet me as soon as possible.

It was white-hot outside when I walked in through those automatic doors at the Holiday Inn. I was wearing a white pantsuit, and a neon-yellow halter top under the jacket. Kicky yellow shoes. The outfit was disappointingly pedigree-free, but then I was on a budget, saving up for couture in the future. It was still big-city enough to draw looks.

I trundled my sturdy wheeled travel case up to the counter and booked a room. Cooled my heels in my new temporary home, flipping TV channels and trying to figure out why all hotel pillows are either too hard or too soft. Two hours later, the hotel phone rang.

Chaz was in the lobby.

I descended the somewhat rickety steps, past the fountain, and there he was. Unmistakably a Chaz, not a Charles. Tall, solidly muscular, deeply tanned, with wavy dark hair and sparkling blue eyes. An artificially white smile, perfect teeth. He looked like he belonged out in Hollywood, hanging poolside, especially considering the casual Polo shirt and Dockers, loafers without socks. Altogether too preppy, but I wasn't going to hold that against him.

Much.

He looked me up and down in blatant appraisal- not the usual fast I-shouldn't-be-doing-this-but-I-can't-help-it appraisal that polite men tend to give, but the kind that ought to be reserved for Friday nights around closing time at the strip club. His stare centered on my breasts. Okay, I know, don't wear the halter top if you don't want the attention, but jeez, it was 120 in the shade. Bulky turtlenecks were right out.

"Joanne? I was expecting you to wait for me in Las Vegas. I was coming into town later." He didn't wait for my response. He captured my hand and gave me an extravagant kiss on the back of it, staring deep into my eyes the whole time. "Charmed."

"Mr. Ashworth-"

"Chaz, please. Really, you wasted a trip; this is just where I have my country house." He made it sound like he was a landowner back in the old country, titled and bursting with noblesse oblige. "Honey-"

"Joanne." Two could play the interrupting game, and I'd already had it up to here with Mr. Charm. "Please refer to me by name, if you don't mind."

He flashed me a smile that was too toothy to be apologetic. "Joanne, yes, of course. Sorry. Look, there's just no reason for the Wardens to send somebody all the way out here. No deep, dark secrets in the attic. Not that I'm not thrilled to have your company."

I reclaimed my hand. "I'll be needing your records."

"Certainly." Another toothpaste-ad smile. "But they're back in the city."

"You don't keep anything at your country house? Seems like you spend quite a bit of time here." I spread out the folder on the counter and found the maps I was looking for. "When I mapped the weather patterns, it sure looked as if a lot of the manipulation occurs from this location, not from Las Vegas. So it stands to reason that you'd have an office here, wouldn't you? If you're keeping proper records."

He lost the smile. "I haven't got anything to hide."

My Aunt Fanny! From every note in the file, everybody knew there was something weird out here, but the prior three auditors sent to investigate hadn't found a thing. My mission was to investigate and find something to bust his ass, so that there could be a formal inquiry, and he could be removed from duty.

Protocol. Even in the supernatural business, you have to follow strict human resources procedures.

"Then you won't mind if I audit the records at your home office," I said.

"I don't have a-"

"Chaz," I interrupted, and held on to a thin, don't-screw-with-me smile. "I know you have a home office. Let's not spend more time on that, okay?"

He didn't look happy.

"Let's go," I said, before he could throw out any more lame pickup lines, and led the way out to the Jaguar.

I kept silent all the way out to his house, a good half hour's drive even at excessively indulgent speeds. I virtuously resisted the urge to smack him, which surely must qualify me for some kind of sainthood… believe me, he was annoying. I could easily see why they'd sequestered him out here in the middle of nowhere. Mouthy, hyperactively on the make, shallow, and none too smart. I couldn't tell how talented he was, but even the biggest store of power in the world wouldn't make him a good Warden.

And then I realized that I could also be accused of being shallow, hyperactively on the make, and mouthy. I hoped I was smart, though. Smarter, anyway.

We turned off on a paved road and passed under a big wrought-iron gate decorated with-I'm not kidding-the chromed silhouette of a nude woman, the exact copy of what you see on taste-free truckers' mud flaps. The name over the entrance was FANTASY RANCH. Oh, yeah, this was going to be fun.

The house was an overdone Tudor style, ridiculous out here on the prairie. There was a struggling, desperately green lawn in front that looked suspiciously like it might have been freshly spray painted. A garage with three cars, all crap-year Corvettes. All red, of course. In the corner, a gold pimp-trim Cadillac Seville, maroon.

He kept chatting me up all the way up the front walk, but I wasn't listening; I was looking into the aetheric. Oversight gives you a nice lay of the land, particularly since there's a fourth-dimensional time layer to it that represents the past. The history of Chaz's pad was nothing to be proud of. On the aetheric, the place showed its true character. A shell of a place, barely there… overlaid with shadows. That was kind of sad. Even the place where he lived didn't make much of an impression on the world.

Neither did Chaz himself. People tended to manifest on the aetheric in visual representations of their self-image; his looked pretty much like a sad, faded image of his physical form. I wondered what he saw when he looked at me. People tended to get the oddest expressions.

Well, the only good news was that Chaz wasn't likely to be a serial killer, not with a basically boring aetheric presence like this. Not that I couldn't defend myself, but it was nice not to have to worry about it. I had plenty of other things on my mind.

His house was self-consciously tacky-retro-seventies without any semblance of a cool factor. He made reference to the water bed. I shut him down and made it clear that I expected to be shown to the home office.

It was at the back of the house, and it looked like he'd set it up from some office catalog rather than to suit any kind of actual work process; everything was expensive, but nothing was very good. The filing cabinet was some exotic handcrafted wood, but the drawers stuck. Inside, there was a chaos of unmarked folders, piles of haphazard papers, crap mixed in with vital documents. I'd heard he hadn't filed quarterly reports in a year; they were probably here, stuffed in with downloaded porn photos. The records I found… well, threadbare would have been a generous description.

After two hours I was ready to scream and blow the whole place away with a tornado. Instead-reminding myself that I was a professional, dammit-I grabbed and boxed up everything that looked remotely interesting, while Chaz's smile got thinner and thinner, and wrote him out a receipt for what I'd taken.

The Jag's trunk was roomy. I got six boxes in there, added the remaining four to the backseat, and headed back to the hotel.

Time to settle in with room service tuna salad and pay per-view movies while I struggled through the paperwork.

It was going to be a long, long audit.

I drifted back to the present, and realized that instead of lulling myself to sleep I was lying in the dark, staring up at the ceiling and watching rain patterns ripple across the spackle. The light out in the parking lot was a bright blue-white, like sustained lightning.

I considered doing something about the rain, but so long as it didn't develop into something devastating, I decided to let it ride. There were Weather Wardens aplenty roaming around the country; the Wardens Association was on the verge of chaos, what with the senior leadership being dead and all hell breaking loose out here in the desert. I was here with a specific job, and I ought to concentrate on it.

Like last time. And look how that had turned out.

I closed my eyes on a vision of blood and tried, uselessly, to sleep.

I woke up, not remembering drifting off, to find myself on my right side, staring into David's face. He was watching me. I yawned, stretched, and inventoried the need for a good toothbrushing, not to mention mouthwashing-more things I hadn't needed to deal with when Djinn. Those halcyon days were making resuming normal life one giant pain in the ass.

"Sleep well?" David asked.

I hadn't, and he knew it. "Where'd you go?… No, I take it back, I don't really want to know. Why did you go?"

"We were going to fight." He lifted a hand and traced a fingertip up the outside of my arm to my shoulder. "I didn't see any reason it had to happen. You were just tired and discouraged."

"Fighting can lead to other things." It had before. Our first real lovemaking had happened as the result of a fight in a hotel. I saw the memory move in him, too.

"No need to fight to have that." His voice had dropped an octave, gone even quieter, but there was a tension behind it that made him seem even more alive, even more intense. The light glide of his touch on me took a left turn, followed the line of my collarbone.

"Close the curtains," I whispered. Behind him, the curtains snapped shut, all on their own, blocking out the frowning clouds and the steady, mournful pulse of rain. It occurred to me, late and with an electric jolt to the spine, that David was under the covers with me, and he'd already done away with the bother of clothes. His glasses lay carefully folded on the nightstand, next to the fragile blue glitter of his bottle.

Nothing between us but skin, mine real-whatever that meant-and his manifested by will and magic. And all the more real for that, because he'd chosen this. Chosen me.

I felt cold. As if he knew it, he put his arms around me and pulled me close to his heat. His lips pressed a burning kiss on my forehead, a benediction I didn't deserve, and slowly traveled down to my mouth. Sweet, slow, leisurely kisses, gentle as the rain outside. Healing the chill inside me, filling the empty places.

He murmured something into my open mouth- words I didn't know, in a language like liquid fire. I pulled away a little, looking into his eyes. So much passion in him, constrained by so much will.

"What did that mean?" I asked him. He traced the line of my lips with his fingertips like a blind man memorizing the shape of my face, and didn't answer. "David, what did that mean?"

I felt him go tense against me. The lazy focus of his eyes sharpened. "Don't," he warned me.

"What did that mean?" I was being very specifically repetitive, and I felt the surge of power as the Rule of Three kicked in. He was compelled to answer me truthfully, but of course, the truth with Djinn could be fluid. It wouldn't be outside the boundaries for him to reply to me in another language. We could play this game all day, if he felt inclined. Owning his bottle didn't mean I owned his soul.

But he didn't try to avoid it. His eyes went the color of dark, tarnished brass, almost human, and his hand went still against my cheek.

"It's part of a ritual," he said. "The literal translation is that I will mourn you when you're gone. Because you're mortal, and you take stupid risks, and I'm going to lose you. I hate it, but I know it's going to happen. Because you won't be sensible."

There wasn't a breath between us. Skin on skin, sealed together with sweat as body heat rose. My whole body was aching and throbbing for him, but my mind kept struggling.

"What kind of ritual?"

"Joanne-"

"What kind of ritual?" No answer. "What kind of ritual?"

This time, the words were in that liquid-fire language again. The language of the Djinn, but with a rough edge to them that sounded human. He pulled me to him again, put those burning lips to the column of my throat, and made me arch uncontrollably against him. It wasn't exactly clear in this relationship who owned who, I thought when I was capable of thinking. And he wasn't going to answer me. Not in words.

His hands were everywhere on me, shivering my skin into goose bumps, making me moan with need and delight. Too long, it's been too long… He rolled me over on my back, settled his weight on top of me, took hold of my wrists, and pinned them on either side of the black spill of my hair, tormenting me with kisses and friction that didn't put him where I needed him to be.

"God, David, please…" I whispered. I wasn't sure what I was asking, whether it was for the white-hot surge of flesh between us or the answers to my questions. Or something else entirely. I felt like crying, and I didn't know why. My heart hammered like a cheap toy, fragile and unreliable, one beat at a time between me and the end of things. I hadn't faced the crashing, intimate knowledge of my own mortality, because I couldn't. I was always hiding from it in action, chasing after what came next.

Not David. He'd faced it. He'd been afraid of losing me, of having every moment between us threaten to be the last. I'd made a being of fire and power afraid.

He looked merciless staring down at me, except for the vulnerability in his eyes. The odd, unexpected humanity. "Please don't ask me what it means."

There was something in it that made my heart break. I whispered, "I won't," and felt the tension ease out of him. "Because you're going to tell me."

"You have to trust me."

I choked on a laugh. "Who's on top here?"

He let go of my wrists, sat up on his knees. The sheet slid away. The lamps gilded his skin, and I felt my breath catch and tear something inside of me. Some last shred of resistance.

His hands, hot on my thighs. Moving them.

"You have to trust me," he repeated. It was only a whisper now, and his eyes had kindled a bright new flame. "Can you do that?"

"Yes."

"You're sure?"

"Yes!" I pushed myself up on straight arms, looking into his eyes. Slowly bent my knees and drew them up, drawing him in with the motion.

His teeth lightly grazed the skin of my shoulder. I put my arms around him, holding him, feeling the waves surge and break. Waves of power, transforming and pure.

He whispered words against me that broke me apart, destroyed me, rebuilt me as we moved, and I didn't recognize a word of it, and it no longer mattered, because now I understood. The way flesh accepts touch, or lungs accept air.

He was telling me he loved me, the way Djinn say the words, and it was more beautiful and more terrifying than the banners of war.

I fell asleep in his arms, safe and warm and untroubled, and there were no dreams.

I woke up to thunder. Reflex action: I checked Oversight, and found nothing out of the ordinary out there, then realized that the thunder was knocking, and there were people outside of my hotel room.

"Jo!" A man's voice, rough and authoritative. "Open the damn door. Right now!"

I knew the voice. I let my head fall back against the pillow of David's warm skin, and said what he already knew. "Great. The boss is checking up on us."

David pulled away from me and I could feel the fury burning through him, see it boiling in his eyes. This could get very unpleasant.

"Go," I told him. "Let me handle it."

His hot eyes scorched me, just for a second, but behind the anger I saw worry for me. I kissed him, fast and hard, and felt him mist away.

The door slammed open. I yelped and crawled backward, clutching the covers over myself, until my naked back met the cold headboard.

My boss, Paul Giancarlo, flanked by three other Wardens. One of them was Marion Bearheart, the woman who scared me most in the world; nice lady, frightening powers, and the right and responsibility to use them.

I flipped up into the aetheric plane to get a quick reading, and saw Paul in his avatar form-his outline had the unmistakable suggestion of a knight in armor, sword in hand. In the real world he looked more like a refugee from The Sopranos, complete to gold chain peeking through dark chest hair, and a stretch golf shirt that didn't make him look like anybody who chased a ball around the back nine for fun. Sexy, and dangerous as hell.

Marion 's bronzed features were expressionless here in the real word, turned sharper by her gray-and-black hair being pulled back in a thick single braid. She was wearing a black leather jacket with fringe blurring the edges, blue jeans, black cowboy boots. Up on the aetheric, I caught the flare of eagle wings in her aura.

I didn't know the other two except on a nodding acquaintance. Both were seniors, both from outside the country. One was from Canada, one from Brazil. Their presence in my hotel room was not reassuring.

Paul gave me his most impersonal look, and that meant something really, really bad. Paul always took time to notice and appreciate the little things, like a naked woman in bed.

"Get dressed," he said. "Hurry."

He turned and left. Marion stayed behind, shutting the door after the others. She crossed her arms and watched me. I watched her right back.

"A little privacy?" I asked. She cocked her head to one side, eyes bright as a raven's, and smiled a refusal. I threw the covers back and walked naked across the floor to pull open drawers on the dresser. David had left my clothes neatly stacked.

As I dressed, Marion kept her eyes on the bed I'd just abandoned, and finally she said, "It's wrong, you know."

I didn't play dumb. I just asked, "Why?" as I fastened my bra.

"He's at your mercy. Even if he loves you, Joanne- and I have no doubt he does; I've seen enough to know that-inevitably, it'll turn to something else. A slave doesn't love a master. A slave endures a master. This will twist and sicken. It can't do anything else." Her voice dropped lower. "You'll lose him. And even if you don't, it makes you terribly, terribly vulnerable."

"It's not like that." Even as I said it, I felt the lie turn in my mouth, sticky and sour. It's what I'd been afraid of in the beginning. Why I hadn't ever wanted to claim him as a Djinn. What was between the two of us was fragile, and I was human and stupid. It was easy to screw it up.

She transferred her gaze to me. The look was too wise, too compassionate, and it made me feel cheap.

"Not yet, maybe," she said. "Give it time. I do speak from experience, you know."

Interesting. I'd never seen Marion 's Djinn; I didn't know of anyone who ever had. She had one, of course; at her level, it would be impossible for her not to. And yet… she was extremely private about that relationship. Those short sentences were, from her, a bombshell confession. I knew, without looking over my shoulder, that David was manifesting behind me. Not afraid to show himself now that he knew the game was up. I felt a little better for the support, though I knew there was only so much he could do in this situation.

Only so much either of us could do, actually.

"Thanks for the advice," I said. My chilly tone was a little undermined-and muffled-by the fact that I was pulling my black knit shirt over my head at the time. I tested my shoes and found them dry-another silent gift from David. I stepped into them and headed for the bathroom.

Marion, who'd taken a step farther into the room, got in the way. I stopped and frowned. "Look, no matter how urgent this is, it's not so urgent that I can't pee and swig some mouthwash, right?"

She looked doubtful. That scared me.

"I'll be thirty seconds," I said, and ducked around her.

Just to be rebellious, I took a full minute.

The saving-the-world confab took place downstairs in the Holiday Inn lobby, next to the tinkling artificial fountain where I'd first met Chaz. Paul had taken the liberty of rearranging the furniture, pulling sofas and chairs into a tight little group. Circling the wagons. The desk clerks looked oblivious; I guessed that Paul had used his Djinn to put a glamour around us, make us unnoticeable. (It was, as David constantly reminded me, a hell of a lot easier than making us invisible.) I clopped down the lobby stairs, following Marion; David was no longer visible. I never could tell when David was gone, or just pretending to be gone. That was a sense I'd lost along with my Djinn union card.

Paul was pacing. Not good. When Paul paced, it meant things were getting serious. I could see that responsibilities were already wearing on him; a month ago, Paul had been content to be a Sector Warden, overseeing a big chunk of the East Coast, reporting directly to the National Big Cheese. But the events that had taken a hand in making me a Djinn, and then unmaking me, had changed the landscape of the association. So far as seniority, Paul was one of the few left standing who could take on the additional work. And there was, God knew, a hell of a lot to do. The stress had already given him shadows and bags under his eyes, and I didn't remember the fine tension lines at the corners of his mouth.

I was shocked to see him out here, chasing after me. The situation with Kevin was bad, no doubt about it, but he had a national organization to run, and it wouldn't run itself. I hoped he wasn't putting personal feelings ahead of business.

I took a seat on the couch, next to Marion, and Paul stopped prowling long enough to say, "Joanne Baldwin, you know Marion. Meet Jesus Farias and Robert West. Brazil and Canada."

Two heads nodded at me. I nodded back. Neither looked happy to be here.

"The kid you're after-" Paul continued.

"Kevin," I said. Paul's eyes fastened on me for a second, then moved on.

"Kevin," he corrected. "He's got wards up around Las Vegas. Great big ones. He's been fucking with weather systems across half the country to play keep-away with you, and that can't go on. We're killing ourselves trying to keep the peace out there."

"Sorry," I said. I was. "There's not a lot of choices to this, Paul. Either we leave him alone, or we go after him. But either way, it's not going to be good news, and I thought we agreed-"

"We did," Paul interrupted. "We agreed that you should come out here and stop him, but Jo, you haven't stopped him. You haven't even gotten close. Your Djinn doesn't have the power to go up against this punk nose-to-nose, and all that can come out of this is disaster if you cowboy around out here any more."

The Canadian, West, put in, "Your boy Kevin is destabilizing more than the weather. We're reading a huge pressure buildup along the Cascadia Subduction Zone. If we can't stop it, your problems out here will seem very small indeed."

Oh. Right. He wasn't Weather; he was Earth. "How bad?"

"At current levels, we think we can expect a mega-thrust earthquake along the Cascadia line. That's offshore, around Vancouver and Oregon. It could potentially be as small as a nine-point quake, but we think it's probably going to be worse. A lot worse."

As small as a nine-point quake? The one that had just killed 25,000 in Iran had been a 6.5. "How much worse?"

"The amount of energy increases by a multiplier of forty times for every point on the Richter scale. This is probably going to register higher than the scale counts. Hypothetically, perhaps an eleven. Using the Mercalli intensity scale, it's a twelve, total damage, buildings thrown into the air-"

Big enough to scare the holy shit out of the Wardens, in other words. "I don't mean to tell you your business, but what about using smaller quakes to-"

"Bleed off energy? Useless. That amount of energy can't be bled away, not without spreading the devastation farther." His eyes were chilly. "And you're right. You shouldn't tell me my business."

The Brazilian weighed in. His English was excellent, spiced with a slight musical intonation. "Also, we estimate that the temperature all over this region has been raised by a mean of five degrees since this boy began his attacks; he has no conception of how to bleed off energy and balance the system. If it continues to rise, we won't be able to hold the network. Things will shift. And with the equations already so far off scale…"

Paul stopped pacing and looked directly at me. "We're talking about melting icecaps, Jo. Floods. Climatic devastation. Earthquakes worse than we can possibly control, even with Djinn. Which we have too few of, by the way. I don't know if you're aware of it, but things are getting critical on that front. We lost Djinn we couldn't afford to lose, back there in the vaults. We barely have enough to keep things together as it is, and we keep on losing them. Wish to God I knew where they were going…"

Marion shot him a look, a clear we-don't-talk-about-that message. I covered a flash of surprise. The Wardens were losing Djinn? I knew they were in short supply-they always had been-but I'd been under the clear impression that they knew exactly where their Djinn were, all the time. Of course, it made sense that there would be attrition. Once a Djinn's bottle was shattered, it disappeared. For all the Wardens had ever known, they left our plane of existence for someplace more exotic and safe… they'd never known what I knew, that many of them stuck around as free-range, unclaimed Djinn. Hiding in plain sight.

I wasn't about to tell them.

"All this could be followed by another ice age," Farias continued somberly. "One which we may no longer have enough trained personnel to stop. We've lost too many, both human and Djinn."

It sounded wacky. A teenage kid raised the temperature in Las Vegas by a few degrees, and boom, ice age. But weather's funny like that. The point wasn't the amount the temperature was raised; it was that it caused chain reactions. Altered rainfall. Shifted wind patterns.

El Niсo on a global scale.

The last time a serious, out-of-pattern weather shift had happened, the Mayan Empire died of thirst, and crop failures in Europe sparked chaos that killed millions. Some say it caused the Dark Ages. It had taken the Wardens generations to control things again, put the systems back in balance. Or some semblance of it, at least. When the entire world system wobbled, it was the work of several human lifetimes to correct it.

I sucked in a deep breath. "So if you don't want me to keep going after him, what do you want me to do?"

Paul sank into a chair, leaned forward, and clasped his hands together. The gold chain around his neck swung free. It was a Saint Eurosia medal, patron saint against bad weather. I was reminded that when his relatives had sit-downs like this, it was sometimes to talk about whom to whack.

"The kid's scared," Paul said. "He knows things are out of control, but he won't talk to us. I'm pretty sure he thinks we're going to kill him."

As if we weren't. Yeah, right. "So what's the plan?"

"I'm ready to bring the full power of the Wardens down on him if I have to, but I don't want to go to war here. It's too dangerous. People are going to die if we do it the hard way."

"So you want to make a deal with him."

"Yes."

"And you what-want me to be your middleman? That's bullshit. He's been spending the last three weeks trying to keep me the hell away from Vegas."

They were all looking at me… Paul with a dark, sorrowful intensity, Marion with compassion, the other two with a mix of contempt and curiosity.

I suddenly knew, on a very visceral level, that I really wasn't going to like this conversation at all.

Paul said, "Jo, give me your Djinn's bottle."

Silence ticked on, dragging the seconds with it; I felt blood start to pound loud in my ears. "What?"

"Your Djinn. David." Paul leaned forward, elbows on knees, looking earnest. "C'mon, Jo, it isn't like you have him officially anyway. You got him by accident; he was Bad Bob's originally. If we had a calm minute around here, we'd have asked you to turn him over to the pool anyway. You're not authorized to handle a Djinn yet, and we need every single one right now to keep the systems stabilized."

I sucked in a breath of air that felt thin and hot. "You're kidding me."

"No." Paul held out his hand. Just held it out. Nobody else moved. "Jo, babe, let's not make this official."

"If you didn't want to make it official you should've come without the posse."

Point scored. His eyes flickered. "Please, Jo. Swear to God, I'm too tired to fuck with you right now. Don't make it hard."

"Don't make it hard?" I repeated, and slowly got to my feet. They all stood up, too, and flesh crept along the back of my neck. "I'm not handing him over, Paul. He shouldn't even be chained to a damn bottle, anyway. He's not-"

Instantly David was corporeal, standing behind Paul's chair, face white and eyes blazing. He mouthed one word.

Careful.

I realized, with a cold shock, what I'd almost blurted out. I'd almost told Paul about the Free Djinn, the ones roaming around loose and unclaimed out in the world. There were a lot of them, a lot more than the Wardens could ever have expected, and if I mentioned that then the Wardens would see it as their responsibility to find them and enslave them… for their own protection. Or some equally bullshit backward explanation that boiled down to benefiting the Wardens and no one else. Especially now, when they were running so scared. They'd use anything and everything to bail themselves-all of humanity-out.

I swallowed what I'd been about to say and finished up. "He's not going to be put in any goddamn pool. He's not a resource. I claimed him, and I'm keeping him."

David flickered and was gone. I felt suddenly, coldly alone, standing here with four Wardens staring at me. Four Wardens, I realized, who each had the power of a Djinn at their commands. No accident, that. Not when they were complaining about the shortages.

"You said you don't want a war," I said to Paul. "Don't start one with me, babe."

He let me make half of a dramatic exit. When I put my right foot on the staircase, beside the maniacally cheerful fountain, he said, "I get that you think you're in love with this Djinn-which is fucked-up beyond all measure of fucked-up, by the way. But beside that, which we will be talking about later, this doesn't end with you walking away, right?"

I didn't turn. Didn't let myself hesitate for more than a split second before I took the second stair.

Paul's voice went official. "By the authority of the Wardens Council, I'm ordering you to turn over your Djinn to us. And if you don't, I'm taking you down, and Marion 's authorized to put you under the knife. You'll lose everything, Jo. Everything. Even your powers. And maybe that'll kill you, but right now I can't fucking worry about that."

At the top of the stairs, David flickered into existence, walking slowly down toward me. He had on his traveling clothes, his long olive-drab coat, and he looked young and innocent and angelic. My vision of him, imposed on him? Or his own reality? How much of him was really him? I didn't know. I couldn't.

He locked eyes with me for a second, then went past me down to the lobby. Hands in his pockets. The Wardens had all come to their feet, staring, and I could tell they were a whisper away from throwing their Djinn into all-out battle.

He looked back over his shoulder. The overhead lights trapped a shimmer of red and gold in his hair, and reflected sparks of hot bronze in his eyes as he smiled at me. A gentle, heartbreaking smile.

"Give them what they want, Jo," he said. "It'll be all right."

All around him, Djinn were moving like disembodied shadows. He was surrounded. Hemmed in. Trapped.

I took the bottle slowly from my pocket, felt the pulsing heat of the magic inside of it, thought about what it would be like to lose him.

I can't. Can't.

If I started a fight, it would go nuclear in minutes. Too much power here. Too many people with the ability to destroy half the continent.

Too much goddamn emotion.

I prepared to smash the bottle against the railing.

"Jo." He whispered my name like a caress, and followed it by laying fingertips gently against my cheek. "Don't. This needs to happen. Just do what they tell you."

He led me down the two steps, over to Paul. Paul held out his hand again.

I can't.

I let the bottle drop from a height of about a foot, from my hand to Paul's. David could have intervened. Could have jostled Paul, made him fumble the catch; could have, in that split second, blown the bottle across the room to shatter against faux stone.

I gave him that chance.

He did nothing.

Paul caught the glass container, and I felt the connection explode, melt away into silence. Even though David was holding my hand, he was gone, gone from me. Even his skin felt insubstantial.

His eyes turned dark. Human. Brown.

Sad and quiet and-hiding just under the surface-wary.

"Good choice, kids," Paul said. He looked tired and unhappy as he looked at David. "Back in the bottle, please."

I could feel David trying to fight, but the pull was irresistible, and in a sudden convulsive flicker he was gone. Paul reached out for the stopper, which I handed over as well. My fingers felt numb.

I watched as he worked the stopper into the bottle. The four Wardens seemed to breathe a sigh of relief. Paul handed the bottle to Marion, who took a black magic marker out of her pocket and wrote a rune on the bottle itself. A sign, I recognized, that was a kind of mystical DO NOT OPEN, CONTENTS UNDER PRESSURE. She opened a leather satchel sitting next to the chair and eased the bottle into special padding, then closed and locked it.

"Okay." I pulled in a deep breath and tried to put the anger aside. "Now you've got David out of the way. When do I go?" Paul looked up, startled, frowning, as if I knew something I shouldn't. "Hello? Vegas? Meet and greet with Teen Psycho?"

Paul didn't answer me. Marion said softly, "Kevin doesn't want you, Joanne. He has no reason to trust you. You can't negotiate with him on our behalf."

My mind went blank. "Then why all this-"

To get David. To get David away from me, to play us against each other.

I had a sudden premonition of disaster even before Paul said, "You're going home, Jo. Now."

"Like hell!" I rounded on Marion, on the case where she'd put David.

And I heard Paul say flatly, " Marion, take her."