Chill Factor

FOUR

I was lying on a tiled floor. It was hard, warm, and damp. The air smelled hot and moist, earthy, heady with the perfumes of a hundred flowers. I saw blackness and star fields streaming away from me, and people were running toward me.

Being dead was oddly painless. Oh, wait, I wasn't dead yet, was I? Just dying. Takes minutes for the brain to shut down, and meanwhile, I had a fixed-stare view of thick-leafed succulents rustling overhead, of a tracery of milky glass and black iron beyond that. Faces kept appearing and disappearing. They all looked alarmed.

One of them leaned over me and did something that made my ribs creak. As he leaned over, I thought, I did not give you permission to French me, and then I realized what was happening.

I was being revived. Chest compressions. Mouth-to-mouth.

I choked, and felt something flutter in my chest under the painful stiff-armed pumping someone was giving me. The first hint of a heartbeat.

"She's coming back!" My rescuer had turned away, yelling; he was young, African-American, wearing what looked like an official-type security blazer with a logo on it. Nice cologne. When he turned back, I offered him a loopy smile. "Hey, just stay still, okay? We've got an ambulance coming."

"I'm fine," I said, and tried to get up. He was as strong as he looked, and I felt a good deal weaker than I should have. "What happened?"

"You collapsed, ma'am. Look, don't move. Everything's-"

Definitely not okay, I saw as I pushed myself up on my elbows. Prada was down flat on the tile a few feet away, and a black, sharp-edged shadow was crouched on top of her like some hideous gargoyle.

"Hey! Stop it!" I tried to sit up. I'd been locked in a struggle with an Ifrit when I'd been a Djinn myself; I knew how terrible it felt to have the life torn out of you… "Rahel, stop!"

The Djinn was eerily silent, but the Ifrit was making noises-eager, whimpering noises, like a starvation victim at an all-you-can-eat buffet. Prada's face was turned away from me, so I couldn't see the agony in her expression, but I could see her whole body trembling. Shaking apart. Misting at the edges, sublimating into the aetheric.

The Ifrit began to change. Take on shape and form and texture.

Take on color.

Lel must have finally mastered her confusion and ordered the Djinn back in the bottle, because suddenly there was a sensation of vacuum, and she was gone. The Ifrit, deprived of her feast, fell to humanlike hands and knees on tile, still making those raw, wretched noises. Her form wavered, solidified, became… Rahel.

"She's not making any sense," my savior in the security blazer said to an army of paramedics, who arrived wielding tackle boxes and professionally bored expressions. One had a gurney. Not that a bed didn't look good, but I really didn't have time for this.

I swatted aside his hand. "Am too." And then it came to me, why he thought I was crazy. I was watching Rahel, and Rahel didn't exist for them. They couldn't see her. I blinked and fell back flat, being obliging for all the nice medical folks who took BP and pulse and talked about various things that I didn't understand but which sounded very official. The world slowly came into focus around me, now that the crisis was passing. We were in a huge greenhouse, a Victorian monstrosity that stretched up at least two or three stories in graceful arches of wrought iron and frosted glass. The place was delirious with flowers and lousy with plants, but every single one was perfectly groomed. Not a speck of dirt out of place. I couldn't tell if the birdsong and insect hum were real or prerecorded; this was so perfect it was more like a simulation of nature than nature itself. We were in the center of the garden, near the picturesque, dignified gazebo where tourists by the millions had no doubt taken blurry photos to commemorate losing their shirts. I smelled food, and spotted a restaurant about twenty feet away. At the far end of the indoor garden, there was a hallway leading into the hotel lobby.

This all looked familiar. Really familiar.

The paramedics and security were keeping gawkers at bay, but there were lots of them. People of all ages, races, classes. Tourists in tacky shirts and walking shorts, complete with fanny packs. Guys in hand-tailored $5,000 suits talking on cell phones. One woman in a dress far too cool to be anything but couture, carrying a Fendi bag and wearing a selection from the Miu Miu fall collection on her feet. Kids in Rugrats T-shirts.

Holy shit. I was in Las Vegas.

It took me the better part of an hour to get rid of the various forms they wanted me to sign. I also had to appease grimly unhappy officials, and discovered I was now a guest of the Bellagio Hotel, courtesy of scaring the crap out of them by dropping dead in their conservatory. They had no way of knowing that I'd been dumped there out of the aetheric, and I didn't see any reason to explain it. I whipped up a quick story about coming to town and looking for a good hotel, and they bought it; I accepted a complimentary key card and escaped back to the conservatory as quickly as I could, hoping she'd still be there.

And there she was. Rahel. Sitting on a park bench, waiting. She rose gracefully to a standing position, brushed nonexistent dust from the neon-yellow pant-suit she favored, and straightened to look down at me as I walked up. Her head tilted to one side, cornrows rustling like dry leaves, and in that beautiful, dark-skinned face her eyes blazed yellow as summer suns.

"Snow White," Rahel greeted me. Her voice still sounded strained, as if she'd spent hours screaming. "Feeling better?"

"Not very." I extended my hand. She looked at it as if she had to decide whether or not to snap it off, then took it in hers, shook, and dropped it. Her skin felt hot and dry, perfectly solid. "Thanks for waiting."

"I was about to abandon you. I don't have long." She looked peeved at the reminder. "She was weak." Meaning the power she'd drained from Prada wouldn't last long, and then she'd start to revert back to the shadows. "I did what I could for you. Be mindful, sistah. You owe me."

"Definitely… Ah, quick question, but do you know where David is-"

"Still in the hands of your friends," she said. "I can help you no more. I must feed to regain my power."

I grabbed her hand, and quickly let go. It didn't feel right. It sure didn't feel as smooth and soft as it looked. "Wait. You can't, Rahel, you know that it'll wear off. You have to know of a way to cure yourself. Don't you?"

Hot, predatory eyes met mine, and I had a very hard time holding the stare. She growled out, "No. I will exist in this form, feeding from others, or I will die. Your doing. Yours and David's."

I remembered the last time I'd seen her; like most of the Free Djinn, she'd been trapped by the contamination in the aetheric, poisoned by pretty little blue sparklies that had eaten her from the inside. I'd watched her die, or at least I'd believed so at the time. Her disintegration had looked more like being digested than just temporarily banished.

Okay, great, she was holding a grudge. Not good, but then, she'd just saved my life… at least temporarily.

She took my silence for agreement. "There will be an accounting. For all of those who are brought down."

"But not now," I said. Without realizing it, I'd started rubbing my chest, over my heart. "Right?"

Long, long stare. I broke out in goose bumps, but didn't let her see it, hopefully.

"We will speak of it," she said softly. "If you survive."

"Doing okay so far." It came out sarcastic. I swallowed my reflexive need to strike out. "Rahel, thank you. Thank you for my life."

She regarded me without blinking, then turned and plucked a bright yellow flower from a nearby plant. The broken stem oozed clear blood; she licked it away contemplatively, fastened the flower in her glossy black hair, and gave me a smile that betrayed razor-sharp teeth.

"You're welcome, Snow White," she said. "But don't get too comfortable in your new skin. You may not have it for long."

I held myself very still. She circled slowly around me, walking as gracefully as a tiger, watching me all the while. Sunlight caught in the amber beads at the ends of her cornrows, and glinted on an Egyptian ankh worn around her neck. Soft gold, with a look of antiquity to it. The Djinn were such an odd mix of old and new, like Socrates on a skateboard. "Your enemy is coming."

"Which one?" That sounded flippant; I hadn't meant it to. I mean, it wasn't like I just had the one anymore. Lewis, oh, God, what the hell deal did you make, and what devil did you make it with…?

Rahel grabbed hold of my shoulder, leaned closer, then shivered as if she'd been caught in a mortally cold wind. The shape of her changed, hardened, grew cold, then snapped back into focus, into defiant neon yellow and elegant, tall lines. Into flawless skin and the eyes of a predator, glittering with urgency. "Your enemy is coming. Listen to me, Snow White. The Djinn need you. You must not trust…"

Her lips were still moving, but what was coming out was just noise: a kind of grinding, growling screech, fading into silence. Despair sparked once in her expression, and then she blurred like an out-of-focus projection and turned dark, glistening, cold.

Nightmarish and spidery.

I yanked my hand away and jumped back, driven by memories of what it had been like to fight an Ifrit, but she didn't come after me. Humans didn't classify as food for something like her. She just… faded away.

"Rahel?" I looked around. Filtered sunlight, glossy green leaves, the whisper of flowers and fountains. I turned in a slow circle, stunned by the beauty, by the loss, by the enormity of what I was supposed to accomplish. Just surviving seemed like a heavy load, right about now.

A family of five passed me, consulting maps and pointing in more directions than a compass. They crowded the gazebo for a picture. I had to wait for them to clear the path. I fumbled the key card to my complimentary suite out of my skirt pocket and wished to hell I'd actually thought to slip a credit card in there… or cash…

I felt a surge of power zip along my spine, smelled ozone, and got up, fast. Something was coming my way, and it wasn't good.

Your enemy is coming, Rahel had said. Looked like he was almost here. I cast about for someplace to go, realized it would be pointless, considering who I was up against, and decided to stand my ground.

A blue static spark jumped from the wrought-iron bench across six inches of empty space, and zapped me just as the hum of insect and bird activity in the conservatory went still.

The earth stopped breathing, or at least it stopped where I was, as Kevin Prentiss wandered into the building. He saw me, paused for a few seconds, then stuck his hands in his jeans pockets and sauntered my way. Funny, becoming king of the world hadn't changed the kid much. He was still plain, acned, surly, shaggy, and badly dressed. From the aroma that wafted my direction-sweat and sour clothes and desperation-he hadn't taken personal hygiene to heart, either. He was wearing a hooded gray sweatshirt over a T-shirt that read, partially obscured, uck you, with a one-fingered illustration. His sneakers-red Keds-looked battered almost beyond recognition. Greasy too-long blue jeans with the hems torn out sagged around his shoetops.

He stopped about ten feet away. Gunfighting distance.

"Been wondering when you'd show up," he said. "Where's your boy toy?" Meaning David.

That stung. I had a hard time keeping my voice even. "I'm alone."

"How'd you get in?" Kevin jammed his hands in the pockets of his sweatshirt and made belligerent fists in the fabric. "Shouldn't have been able to. Nobody can get in who's like you."

"You mean Wardens? The Wardens can't get in?"

"Just the ones in Vegas here before me." He shrugged. "Thought this place'd be fun. It's kinda boring. I mean, it's cool and all, but… I wanted to be away from all of you, and you just keep on coming after me. I mean, what did I do to you?"

Besides wrecking the Wardens' vault and screwing around with powers he didn't understand? "I guess they're worried you're out of control, Kevin."

"I'm not."

"And then there's Yvette," I said slowly. "Who's dead."

Kevin's eyes flew up to meet mine, wide and defenseless, and I saw the memory unfold in them. He'd done that. He'd ordered her killed, and he hadn't flinched.

He was flinching now.

"Bitch deserved it," he said. It sounded tough, but it was all 'tude. He had a huge amount of power, and nobody could tell him what to do… but he was alone. More alone than anyone I'd ever seen. "You'd better not cross me, yo?"

"Yo." I spread my empty hands in a gesture of surrender. "Not crossing you. But maybe there's something I can do for you."

"Yeah?" He kept it neutral, but I saw the flare of hope in his face. "Like what?"

"Like make a deal for you. You give up Jonathan, give back the powers you stole-I think the Wardens won't make more trouble for you. You just go on about your business." Not that I was empowered to make deals for them, but I was here and he was talking. And with the deep game Lewis seemed to be playing, the faster and simpler I could make this, the better.

Kevin shook his head. "No way. He's all I got."

"Sooner or later they'll get to you. Look, Kevin, I don't care how much power you've got; sooner or later they'll take you down. You know that. Let me-"

"I don't need your help." He took a shuffling step my direction, probably trying to look menacing; he succeeded in looking like he was going to trip over his ragged hems. "You shouldn't even be here. No Warden alive can get past the city limits; that's what Jonathan said."

No Warden alive.

Oh, Lewis. You bastard… you could've let me in on the plan… He hadn't wanted Paul and the others to know. He'd been doing this himself, in secret. Hence the abduction by Lel and Carl, and where the hell did my innocent, peace-loving Lewis find a couple of hard-core killers like that? Lovely.

"Well? What're you waiting for? Go. I'm ordering you to… you know… go!" Kevin made a shooing motion. If it hadn't been so pathetic, I'd have laughed.

"I can't. Not a Djinn anymore, and I don't happen to have one on me, either." My mind was racing like an engine on idle, making lots of noise and going nowhere. "Hey, you want to send me packing, use your own."

"Who? Him?" Without looking up, Kevin made a little circle in the air with his finger in the general direction of the roof.

I figured he wasn't talking about God. "Jonathan," I clarified. His hand dropped back to his side, but there was a flash in his eyes that might well have been fear.

"You don't want that. Maybe you should just take a bus or something. But you'd better get moving, or I will tell him you're here, and tell him what to do with you."

"Is he in the bottle?" I asked. Kevin scuffed a shoe on tile and looked surly. "C'mon, Kev, be a sport. Is he running around loose or did you seal him up?"

"He told me if I stuck him in the bottle one more time he'd cream me." The prominent ball of Kevin's Adam's apple worked up and down. "Not like I can't handle him, but shit. Let the old geezer have some fun, you know?"

"If he's out of the bottle, he already knows I'm here," I said. "Look, Kevin, I never hurt you. I tried to help you. You know that, don't you?"

"You've been trying to bust down the door ever since I came here. You and all of them." He jerked his chin in the general direction of nowhere, referring to the Wardens, I was sure. "Well, you're here now. Hope you liked the ride."

I took a step toward him. Just one. His head jerked up, and so did his hand, pointing at me in some awkward parody of a stage magician. Theatrics, part of my mind reported dryly. He probably has incantations to go along with it. Kevin had power, and he'd rubbed elbows with trained professionals, but I was pretty sure his entire understanding of how magic worked had more to do with Saturday-morning cartoons than quantum physics. He had power of his own-fire, as I recalled, and a pretty sizable talent-but by himself, he wouldn't be hard to defeat.

But he wasn't alone, and if I started a fight I wasn't going to win. Lewis wanted me here, and he'd gone to amazing lengths to get me in position; it'd be a shame to waste a perfectly good murder on something so stupid as picking a fight with Superpsycho.

I stopped, folded my hands like a good girl, and waited for him to make some kind of rational decision.

His eyes swept over me, and I was sorry again that I hadn't dressed for the occasion-if you're going to risk your life, you ought to at least look good doing it. The shoes weren't holding up well under the abuse, and they'd been no-name knockoffs to begin with- I'd blown out of New York with no time for quality shopping. Ah, for the good old days of Djinnhood, when I'd been able to conjure Manolo Blahniks out of the aetheric… What did heroic last stands call for, anyway? Versace? Jimmy Choo? I was still steaming over Lel's last jibe at my shoe savvy. Those had definitely been knockoffs.

"Come with me," Kevin said. He shot me a brief, hot sideways look. "You try any shit with me, I'll do you like I did… Yvette." He had trouble calling her Mom these days. I was amazed that he'd ever been able to choke the name out, the kind of hell she'd put him through. My sympathy for him didn't make him any less threatening.

I had a vivid red memory of what had happened to Yvette. I didn't think I'd ever really be able to forget the sound of her skull crushing. "I'll be good."

He started to turn away, hesitated, and said, "What's your name? For real, yo. None of that Lilith bullshit you pulled last time."

"Joanne."

"Oh." A frown layered his forehead. "For real? Huh. I thought you had a better one than that."

"Better?"

A vague gesture. "You know. Hotter."

I took offense. "You mean like Vanna LaTramp or something? Some pole-dancer name?"

Shrug, and two hot little circles in his cheeks. "You don't look like no Joanne to me."

"Yeah, well, you don't look like a Kevin. Okay, you would if you had a haircut and some decent clothes…" I knew my mouth was running off with me, but I couldn't stop it, and then he was turning on me, hand raised.

I froze. He didn't hit me, but it was a close thing.

"Bitch, don't act like my fucking mother unless you want to die like her." Ouch. His tone had gone opaque and steel-cold, edged with fury. So much for the light conversation. He was trying to be those dangerous, badass villains he'd watched in movies. The problem was that he was dangerous, and I knew it better than anybody. The image of Yvette Prentiss came back to me as she screamed out her last moments of life. Kevin had watched her die without so much as a blink. However much he might look like just another Generation X punk, he was more than that. Worse.

She'd made him that way.

I didn't dare push him. I gestured politely and said, "After you."

He grabbed my arm and towed me toward the lobby of the Bellagio.

With enough money, everything can be made tasteful. The lobby of the Bellagio was a good case in point. I couldn't imagine the mind-boggling amounts spent on this place… the fantastically ornate blown-glass floral ceiling for a start, which would have been beautiful if it had been two feet across, but at forty feet was so overwhelming it nearly whited out the mind. Soft, soothing carpet underfoot, edged with bright, shiny marble. Well-scrubbed tailored staffers. Endless rows of counters waiting to do nothing but serve paying customers. The place was thick with tourists, most outfitted in whatever the latest Abercrombie amp; Fitch ad told them would make them cool.

Too bad for me that nobody seemed to notice me, Kevin, or the way he was twisting my arm to get me to keep up with him. I wasn't sure if it was a standard don't-see-me glamour or just people minding their own damn business.

"Like it?" Kevin had noticed my look around. He sounded proud, as if he'd designed it. "I coulda stayed anywhere, but this was the best."

Like he was paying for it. "How do you know?" I asked him.

"Cabdriver said."

If there was anything that spoiled the elegance of the Bellagio's image, it was the constant musical chatter of slot machines. Beyond the lobby stretched the casino…and it stretched, filling a mall-like expanse with a sea of multicolored flashing slots and quiet harbors of blackjack tables, roulette. Dark paneling gave the place a quiet nineteenth-century elegance. Lack of windows made it eternal early evening. Bars-and there were three I could immediately spot-were doing a brisk business. The thought of a steadying drink made the back of my throat ache. C'mon, Lewis, help me out here. Throw me a bone. I had one faint hope: Lewis had some kind of clever, deeply ingenious plan for getting me out of this alive.

Yeah, right. You axe the bone that got thrown. My snarky superego was probably right; the Wardens- including Lewis-weren't interested in my troubles at the moment. I was a distraction, and I was on my own.

People everywhere, moving with a purpose. This was a very bad place to try a confrontation, which was probably Kevin's point in choosing it. Or Jonathan's. Sounded like Jonathan logic to me; Kevin would have probably crawled into some hole in the ground and pulled it in after him, like a kid hiding his head from the bogeyman. Jonathan was the one who'd think of all of the defensive possibilities of a very public, high-profile establishment.

Kevin steered me off into the casino area, and we strolled past one bar, heading past slots, more slots, keno, blackjack. We passed a room marked private, where, when the door opened and closed, I caught a glimpse of a poker table and some intensely silent men hunched around it. And you think you're playing for high stakes, pals. Try my game.

"Where are we going?" I asked. Kevin didn't answer. We turned left at the T intersection, away from the casino area and into what looked like (to my instant, back-brained delight) a shopping mall. A high-class shopping mall. Only he didn't lead me that direction; he steered me toward a massive bank of elevators, complete with polite and flinty-eyed security men who waved us through when I fumbled out my card key.

We stepped into the lift and enjoyed a silent, efficient ride up into the stratosphere.

"How'd you get in?" Kevin finally asked, as the lights flickered past the twenty-fifth floor. "Just curious."

"I was dead."

"Oh." He stared, waiting for the punch line. "Kind of extreme."

"You're telling me."

He couldn't decide whether or not I was lying, but it didn't much matter; the elevator topped out, and we exited one floor from the top.

It was a long walk down an elegant hallway big enough for the chariot race from Ben-Hur. The last door on the left was his.

It swung open for him at a touch, and I felt the dim, out-of-focus surge of power. Fire, this time; he'd just fooled the locking mechanism with an electric charge. Nice bit of control, that; he'd been largely untrained last time I'd seen him, mostly in the smash-and-grab phase of things.

I took a step in and realized that Kevin had appropriated the presidential suite, or at least the vice-presidential one. It was huge, sumptuous to the point of pastiche, but never over the edge. I was pretty sure the furniture was antique, for the most part; if it was reproduction, it was in the best of taste.

Kevin let go of me, shut the door, and shuffled over the wine-colored Aubusson to a fully appointed bar. He poured himself a straight glass of Jim Beam. I refrained from lecturing him about the evils of distilled spirits or reminding him of the legal drinking age.

I looked around. "Where's Jonathan?"

He rattled crystal. "Around." Which meant he had no idea, probably.

"You keep his bottle on you?"

"You smoking crack? I'm not telling you where I keep it."

"Not asking you to," I said. "Hey, would you mind…" I mimed pouring. Kevin splashed some JB in another glass and handed it over, and I took a sip. Wow. Liquid heat, turning into burning lava somewhere midthroat. Well, it was happy hour somewhere in the world.

I nearly spluttered my drink when a new voice said, "Enjoying your stay?" It came from the corner of the room, where a big leather armchair sat facing a broad plate-glass window overlooking the white spray of fountains. I set the glass down and took a couple of steps to my left to get a better look.

Not that it was any surprise, really, to see Jonathan sitting there. He looked relaxed. Fully at home. Head back, eyes half-shut, feet up on a virtually priceless Federal table that really shouldn't have been mistaken for a footstool under any circumstances. I let myself stare at him for a few long seconds. It wasn't a chore or anything; he appeared middle-aged, light brown hair liberally scattered with gray. The wiry, strong build of a habitual runner, dressed in faded blue jeans and a forest-green fleece pullover. Some kind of deck shoes on long feet. The kind of casual cool that the trend-driven shoppers downstairs could never hope to imitate.

He was the only Djinn I'd ever met who had humanlike eyes, at least at first glance. His were dark. I happened to know, because I'd looked pretty deeply into them at one point, that they weren't just dark; they were black, they were infinite, and they were dangerous.

Jonathan didn't have to work to impress anyone. All he had to do was show up.

"Well," he said without looking in my direction. "I leave you for a little while, and you go all human on me. You really know how to survive, I'll give you that. So. Life treating you okay?"

"Yeah, not too bad." I was shaking inside, vibrating on levels I didn't know I could still feel. Maybe there was some Djinn left in me, after all. "You?"

He quirked a funny little smile. "Fine. Hey, about all this, it's nothing personal. You know. And incidentally, way to work the angles. He said I couldn't let in any living Warden. Dying for the cause-strategically sweet." He tipped back a bottle and swallowed a mouthful of beer. "They give you some kind of performance bonus for that?"

"Gift certificates and a special parking space," I said. "Mind if I sit?"

He shrugged and indicated an elegant brocade chair a few feet away. I eased down on it, smoothing my skirt with sweaty palms. Over at the bar, Kevin was drinking his Jim Beam and looking defiant about it.

"So," Jonathan said, and smiled. I didn't like the smile; it was cold and hard as a glacier. "I guess they sent you here to make a deal. What've you got that I might want?"

As if his master-his nominal master-weren't even present. That gave me the shivers. I'd known the kid wasn't up to the task of owning and operating a border collie, much less a Djinn, but…

"Nothing," I said. "Except I can call off the Wardens and give Kevin a chance. A better one, anyway, because you and I both know that his days of surviving this are shorter than the shelf life of a loaf of bread."

Preaching to the choir. Nothing moved in Jonathan's pleasant expression, in the impenetrable depths of his eyes.

"You're assuming I care about that," he said. "Maybe there's something else we can talk about."

I could guess. "You still want David's bottle. I don't have it anymore."

It occurred to me, rather too late, that if I didn't have David, Jonathan had no reason to keep me breathing. In fact, he had a pretty nice incentive to make sure I stopped. David would grieve, he would get over it, things would-on the Djinn scale-go back to relative normalcy; eventually Jonathan would be able to rescue him, and without the distraction of me, David would willingly go.

"I know you didn't give him up on purpose," he said. "Who's got him? Where is he?" Jonathan asked. He looked relaxed, but I wasn't deceived; I also felt something weird in the air. Kevin was standing motionless, staring at the Djinn. Like he was waiting for some kind of direction. Yeah, the whole master-servant thing was topsy-turvy on this one.

"The Wardens have him," I said. "It's out of my hands. You'll have to provoke a full-out war to get him back now."

"You say that like it's a bad thing." Jonathan took his feet off of the antique table and stood up. He had a kind of energy to him that made me shiver-restless, intense, fueled by something I didn't fully understand. "You think we can't win a war like that."

"I know you can't win a war like that. But more important, a whole lot of people would die in the middle of it, and neither one of us wants that to happen." I hoped.

He walked up to me, hands in his jeans pockets, and stood there looking down at me. Lightless eyes. Something cold moving in their depths, like dying stars.

"Don't assume you understand what I want," he said. "Human life is cheap. There's only one race I have a vested interest in protecting-the one you use and degrade and throw away. My people. If a war with the Wardens is what needs to happen to get my point across, well, that's just very sad for you. I'm not letting you trade us like trinkets any longer."

"Hey," Kevin said. He'd moved in behind me while my attention was focused on Jonathan; it creeped me to realize that I hadn't noticed. "Wait a minute."

"Quiet," Jonathan hissed. "The lady and I are having a conversation."

I yelped as my chair suddenly began to slide, as if shoved hard from behind. Heading for Jonathan, who stepped out of the way…

… and then heading straight for the plate-glass window.

I felt panic grab my throat, because the chair kept accelerating and I knew I was going to hit the glass, crash through, tilt out over that sickening drop, and fall. And scrabbling my feet on the carpet wasn't slowing me down.

Jonathan brought the chair cleanly to a stop right at the window. I grabbed the arms so tightly I felt something crack, either wood or my fingers, and panted out the shock and fear.

"See that guy down there?" Jonathan asked, and tilted my chair up on its front legs to give me a better view. I meeped and clutched the chair arms harder. "No? Well, okay, granted, they all look alike from up here. Here, I'll help."

My forehead touched the glass.

It rippled like water, and I melted right through the slick, cold surface, head and shoulders. I felt fresh, hot air blast over me, fast as the jet stream, and my hair whipped back in a tattered black flag over the back of the chair. I was afraid to breathe. The glass felt molten at the edges, thickly liquid around my body. It wasn't holding me in place. There was nothing now between my tilted chair and thin air but Jonathan's goodwill, which I wasn't sure I actually had. I kept trying to push backward, but I wasn't going anywhere.

"That man down there is some kind of Warden," Jonathan said. "A leftover from before I put up the wards. Granted, he's not very good, but hey, he's what you guys are known for, right? Secondhand crappy work? That's why people die night and day from your negligence. Can't blame me for that."

"I don't," I managed to choke out between clenched teeth. "We do the best we can. And if you'd work with us instead of against us, we'd be able to help more people. But you're not about helping anyone, are you? You're about freedom at any cost. Jesus, if we free the Djinn, we can't touch the big storms, the major disasters. The ones that kill a hundred thousand at a whack. Who will? You?"

The chair thumped back down to the carpet, and the glass re-formed in front of me with a thick sucking sound. Waves rippled through it, then stilled. I looked up into Jonathan's dark, endless eyes, and remembered falling into them as a Djinn, remembered the age and seduction and limitless power of him.

"Nobody ever asked us," he said, and sank down to a crouch next to me. That smile was beautiful, cynical, and utterly chilling. "Not that we'd say yes, but it'd be nice to be asked. But never mind all that. Who sent you here?"

"Nobody."

"Let me put it another way… somebody made sure that you were dead enough to get by the wards and dropped you right in our laps. Who?"

"Bite me." The chair tilted again. Glass against my forehead, fluid and warm, flowing around me. I whined somewhere deep in my throat and closed my eyes. "No, really, I mean that. Bite me. Just don't throw me out the window, 'kay?"

"Scared?"

"Oh, yeah." I managed a pallid, sweaty smile. "You?"

He leaned over to study me, upside down. "You're so expendable they practically fired you out of a circus cannon. You do know that, right? I think you're a diversion. Something for me to play with while they bring in the big guns."

Kevin, in the background, cleared his throat. "Don't you think-"

"No," Jonathan cut him off. "Let me take care of this."

"But-"

"Son, this is out of your league," Jonathan said. Not unkindly. "She played you before; she'll play you again. Just let me handle it."

"Okay." Kevin sounded lost and uncomfortable and very much a kid. He'd been a lot more difficult when I'd been his Djinn, but then, the dynamics of that relationship had been a whole lot different. He'd looked on me mostly as a supernatural blow-up doll. Jonathan was, in a very real sense, the father he'd never had, and a very kick-ass dad he'd make.

Except I didn't think he had Kevin's best interests at heart.

I turned my head and looked straight up into Jonathan's eyes. "Don't use him. He deserves better than that. If you want to kill me, just do it; don't drag the kid into it. It's cheap and it's cruel."

I got a quirk of ash-gray eyebrows, a flash of surprise across the ageless face. "I thought he was a murderer. A rabid dog that needed killing. That's what the last Warden had to say before he took the express elevator down. You can still see the splash on the sidewalk if you look closer." He tilted my chair again. I yelped and tried to push myself through the back of the cushions. Hung on for dear life and tried to swallow the urge to beg for my life.

Twice in one day. "You really think the kid deserves a chance?"

"I think he needs to be stopped," I said breathlessly. "I don't think that necessarily means he has to be killed. And since I may be the only one who thinks that, you really ought to think twice about giving me the vertical tour."

This time the glass just disappeared. Poof. The legs of the chair were one inch from the window. Tilted forward as I was, my knees were already exposed to the bright Las Vegas sun. Below, the Bellagio's fountains roared like Niagara, and I could taste the metallic humidity of them evaporating under the desert's constant fixed stare.

I started to slide out, and the sunlight slid hot over my thighs, illuminated my stomach… I was going over, screaming.

That was when Jonathan pulled in a breath so sharp and hard it was audible over the tearing wind, and reached out to yank me back, into the seat. He let the chair thump safely back to the carpet.

Stared down at me with wide, dark, surprised eyes.

"No," he said. "He couldn't possibly be that stupid."

He, who? Lewis? Au contraire, mon ami. I was feeling like everybody was acting fairly stupidly, including me with the bravado. I struggled to breathe without sobbing. God, I didn't like heights, particularly heights from which I would drop to my death and do a fast, ugly survey of thirty-five floors on the way down. I looked up through my wind-tangled hair and saw Jonathan still staring. He looked honestly spooked. It lasted for two or three heartbeats, and then he got control of his face and went back to his habitual I-don't-give-a-crap expression.

"It won't work," he said, and leaned over to get right in my face. "I don't care what he told you, it won't work. If he told you it would guarantee I wouldn't hurt you, he lied. Understand?"

I didn't. Before I could say so, Kevin said, "Don't throw her out the window. Bring her over here to me."

A straight-out order. Kevin's voice shook when he gave it, but Jonathan didn't object or try to screw with him; he towed my chair across the room and delivered it in front of the kid, then stood back, hands in his pockets. Watching me through half-closed, expressionless eyes. I could feel fury pulsing behind it, though. He was mad, all right. I had no idea why. Wasn't like I'd done anything but try not to get myself launched, and I hadn't even done that effectively.

Kevin looked fragile next to him.

"Close it," he said to Jonathan. The roaring hot wind coming in the open window suddenly cut off. Shiny, flawless glass back in place. Some tense, panic-stricken part of me kept on screaming, but I forced it to shut up.

"What happened to the other Wardens who were sent?" I asked. Kevin slumped those narrow, sharp-edged shoulders and studied the carpet.

"They came before I told him to keep them out."

"You had him kill them?"

"I didn't tell him to."

"Did you tell him not to?"

Shrug. I closed my eyes briefly to block out the sight of Yvette dying, screaming. "How can you possibly think you're going to get out of this alive, the way you keep screwing up? You can't kill these people; they'll never let go of you!"

"I know." Kevin looked forlorn. A little boy again. "It was just the one; I just scared the rest and they said they'd stay away. I just wanted them to leave me the fuck alone. Why can't they do that?"

"Because you have something that doesn't belong to you." And you're using it incredibly badly… or it's using you. "The Wardens don't know what's going on in here. They've sent people; they haven't heard back. They're afraid you're killing people in here. Kevin, if you'll just tell me what you've done-"

"Nothing!" He still had the crystal tumbler in his hand, half-full of Jim Beam; he launched it across the room to take out an elegant table lamp with a crunch of porcelain. "Jesus! I'm just trying to have some fun, that's all… don't I deserve that? Not like my life hasn't sucked hard enough…"

"Baby?"

We all came to a complete halt at the new voice… female, soft, high-pitched. Blurry with sleep. I twisted my head and saw that the door to the bedroom had opened, and there was a girl standing there. There was a lot of her on display, since the sheet she was covering herself with didn't exactly drape properly- lots of pale skin, some of it tattooed in dark blue Celtic patterns along the left arm and thigh. She had light hazel eyes, and her red hair was cut short in a straight-out-of-bed tangle that salons would work for hours to achieve. Not pretty, really. A wide jaw, narrow eyes, prominent cheekbones-and then she turned her attention away from me toward Kevin, and the light caught her face just right. Beautiful. Beautiful in a narrow, starved kind of way, a heroin-hungry elegance.

"Oh," Kevin blurted, and blushed. "Uh… nothing you need to worry about. Business." He pulled himself up straighter. "Just go back to bed, okay? I'll be there soon."

The hot hazel eyes wandered back toward me. "Who's she?"

"Nobody."

"Looks like somebody."

She pouted, and shuffled toward the door dragging the Egyptian cotton sheet along with her. "Come back to bed, okay?"

"In a minute."

"Now?"

"In a minute!" His temper flared, and I saw the hurt explode in her eyes in response as she looked back. "Jesus, Siobhan, just go back to bed, okay? I'll be there in a minute!"

She turned and went back into the other room, the door closing quietly behind her. I looked up at Kevin, who was staring after her, and said, "Siobhan?"

His cheeks flushed dark red. "Never mind."

"You pick her up out on the strip? Or did you get Jonathan to conjure her up for you?"

"Shut up, okay?"

"She's real. Not Djinn." I kept staring at him, forcing him to meet my gaze. "Kevin, tell me you didn't kidnap this girl. And how old is she? Sixteen? God!"

"I didn't kidnap her! She was on the street." The red flare in his cheeks was turning purple. "You know. There were these cards. Dropped on the sidewalk."

Hooker cards. Of course. "You're paying her?"

Jonathan, who'd resumed his comfy chair with his feet up, snorted and said, "No, she's with him for his witty personality."

"Shut up!" Kevin yelled. Jonathan picked up his half-empty beer and took a long pull. It must have warmed up while he was tormenting me; mist floated off of the bottle as he chilled it down again. "Look, she's… she's just company. Never mind her. She doesn't matter."

I wondered if she knew that. I thought about the hurt I'd seen flash in her eyes. "All right. Let's talk about you. You want to get out of this alive?"

"Depends." He settled into a mulish, utterly teenage expression. "Don't mind dying. I'm not afraid."

Unbelievable. I looked from him to Jonathan, who raised his eyebrows and gave me a lime-bitter slice of a smile. "Don't look at me," he said. "I'm just the help."

Right, I was the Church Lady. "If you want me to make a deal with the Wardens, you've got to give to get. What are you offering?"

Kevin cut his eyes toward Jonathan. "I'll turn him over if they let me go." He threw it out like a challenge.

Jonathan had no apparent reaction as he took a swig of beer. "Don't do it," he said mildly. "They'll screw you. It's what they do."

"Yeah, well, you don't listen to me!" Kevin looked even more stubborn, and turned his attention back on me. "You want him? Fine. Just let me go."

I felt the words wash over me like an ice-water shower, and tried to keep the expression out of my face. "So you'd just… turn him over. Give me his bottle."

"I don't need him." Like hell, but maybe he really believed it.

"Fine. You hand me the bottle; I'll find a way to get it to them." I kept it casual. Hopefully, he wouldn't realize that once I held Jonathan's bottle, I'd be in control of him… and that would be the end of Kevin's little joyride. I'd put Lewis's powers back where they belonged, set things right, smash the bottle, and be out of this whole damn affair. Then they'd have to give me David's bottle back.

Or maybe I'd keep Jonathan's bottle until he made them give David back. Yeah. That could work.

Kevin was thinking it over. "You swear? You'll let me go?"

"Absolutely," I lied without a qualm. "Trust me."

He was going for it; I could see it in his eyes.

"Okay," he said. "I'll get the bottle. You stay right here."

He took a couple of steps away, faltered, turned back.

"Oops," Jonathan said. He took another drink of beer.

"What?" I asked, and then I felt the air go odd and dead in the room.

I sucked in a startled breath, saw Kevin's eyes widen, and he asked, "You bitch, I said I'd let you-" He broke off into a sickening gagging sound and reached for his throat, whooping in a deep breath. I felt a burning, clawing sting in the back of my mouth, tried to scream, and realized that if I did I was dead. I turned toward Jonathan, who was watching us with mild interest.

"Can't let him do that," Jonathan said. "I've got things to do. People to see. If you know what's smart, Joanne, you'll stay the hell out of my way."

"Help-" I croaked. He shrugged.

"You're a Warden. Help yourself."

Kevin was already passing out. He pitched to his knees, clawing at his throat. His face was scarlet.

In seconds, he was down. Unconscious or dying.

I needed to breathe, and breathing wasn't an option at the moment. A stupid little rhyme ran through my mind, the punch line of which was what he thought was H₂O was H₂SO₄. Chemical humor. My brain cascading uncontrollably, trying to find the answer in the rummage cupboard of my memory.

I let go of my body and felt it thump down on the expensive burgundy carpet, thick enough to qualify for mattress status, and launched myself hard into the aetheric. Reached for clarity. The air turned solid around me in a three-dimensional glittering cube, and I plunged deeper, deeper, hunting for what I knew would be there.

Two molecules added to the complex chain that made air breathable. Just two.

No problem, I could do that. I was good under pressure.

I stretched out power like a thousand hands and began crushing those molecules-or, more accurately, shaking them up like soda pop, changing their electromagnetic signature and rendering them unstable. Crushing them would have meant too much energy being released, and with the kind of poison that had been formed around us, that would have killed us just as fast. Us and most of the top three floors of the hotel.

This shit was extremely flammable. Jonathan really didn't care, did he? This was just another exercise for him; he wanted to see me jump through hoops. Maybe he was mad because I'd actually made Kevin agree…

Quit dicking around and work fast. That voice in my head was entirely unnecessary; I knew how little time I had before either Kevin or I sucked down too much of this crap to survive it. I wasn't enough of a biology geek to know what it would do to me, but I figured it would be fatal and it probably wouldn't be an easy way to go. Come on, move it…

God, I needed David…

No, you don't. You did this fine on your own before. It's not big enough to need a Djinn. Need was such a subjective thing. You did this in training, remember?

Yeah, well, in training sessions I wasn't trying to breathe it while I was altering it.

I realized that my fingers-at least the aetheric representation of them-were getting clumsy, and I dropped down partly into Real World land to form a pocket of pure oxygen around my body, then around Kevin's. I felt myself gasp, felt the rush of relief that followed, and went back up to patiently continue the work.

Something prickled along the back of my neck, which up there wasn't really my neck, or really a prickle; if Jonathan had done this to us, why wasn't he trying to stop me from fixing the problem? And why go to such lengths? He could have just put Kevin to sleep if he'd wanted.

I abandoned the repairs, which were mostly complete anyway, and dropped down into my body like a speeding bullet, breathlessly fast, got to my feet and stumbled for the door…

… and ran into a man coming into the room.

A man with a gun.

I'd describe him, but really, the only thing in focus for me was the gun. I knew some fancy Fire Wardens who claimed to be able to block the ignition sequence in the firing chamber of a gun, but that took guts, mad skill, and a liberal dose of luck, none of which I had at the moment, and besides, I wasn't even a Fire Warden. My lungs and exposed skin were still aching from exposure to the poison-soup air.

I put my hands up and considered knocking him over with a gust of wind, but the steady stare of the gun made me abandon the idea. He looked like a guy who could shoot straight through a hurricane, if necessary.

He gestured silently. Sign language for get your ass out here. I shuffled cautiously out, hugged the wall, and stared at the gun some more. It was an automatic, I knew that much. It looked black, angular, and deadly efficient.

"You Joanne Baldwin?" he asked me. He had a nothing kind of a voice, not deep, not high, not impressive. A trace of a West Coast drawl, maybe. I nodded. I couldn't seem to take my hand away from my aching throat. "Good," he said. "You got the bottle?"

I shook my head and coughed. My lungs throbbed.

The gunman reached over and shut the door. "Poison gas, right?" he asked. "Damn. Guess it's not a good idea to go in there and toss the room just now."

I shook my head. He holstered the gun and held out his hand, and just like that, he came into focus for me. A wallpaper kind of guy with black hair, a clever face, and light brown eyes. Two-day growth of beard.

"Nice to meet you. My name's Quinn," he said. "I'm here to rescue you."