Chill Factor

SIX

When I woke up, I was in darkness. My head throbbed like a high-performance engine in need of a tune-up, and I was folded into someplace cramped and hot. Blood tasted burnt copper in my mouth. It took me a few stupid seconds to remember where I'd been, what I'd seen, and I saw the man plunging the knife into the woman's unprotected back with a shock that made me flinch.

Focus, I told myself. My senses reported that I was probably in the trunk of a car. A nice big one, at least. Roomy. It smelled of spilled oil and hot metal. There was a wet softness underneath me, and that smelled like blood. Mine. My head was bleeding like a son of a bitch, and that edgy light-headedness-that came from shock.

Judging by the road vibration, we were on the highway. I reviewed my options. One, I could stay still and quiet and hope that a ruthless killer forgot he'd stored me back here. That option didn't look so good. Two, I could knock the car off the road with a wind strike, get out of the trunk, and rip the bastard limb from limb… that one was actually pretty attractive. I felt around and found nothing to use to pop the trunk- no tire iron, which was unfortunate; I'd feel a hell of a lot better with a big heavy weapon in my hand. I hadn't brought my cell phone on the run, and even if I had I doubted the coverage out here in the middle of nowhere.

The car was slowing down. I swallowed a burst of nausea and tried to put myself in the best position possible to launch myself out as soon as the trunk opened. Time to focus, get everything still and quiet inside so that I had the fine pinpoint control of the wind that I required. My pulse refused to cooperate. I’d worked under pressure before, but that had been when I was fighting nature, not a cold-blooded killer. I kept seeing the woman, the knife, the blood. I kept picturing myself facedown in the sand, digging for freedom.

A sudden application of brakes rolled me forward. We were stopping.

I gathered the threads of control together despite the sickening pain in my head. Thermals flowing high and deep, a layer of cool air sinking toward the ground. Warm air slowly circling up. The dance of a stable, quiet system. Chaz had manipulated it to drag the surveillance plane off course, but he'd put everything back, nice and neat.

A Warden had been an accomplice to murder. That made me sick to my soul.

I felt the car shudder as the driver's-side door slammed shut. Felt, rather than heard, footsteps crunching alongside. A key scraped metal somewhere near my nose, and I braced myself…

… and, as the dark got sliced in half by a square of lemon-yellow light, I let out a warrior's yell and lunged up, powered by feet braced against the quarter panel. I grabbed at the dark shape standing there, caught fabric, and as he flinched backward I held on and let him pull me the rest of the way out.

As my feet touched asphalt, I superheated the air above us and created the mother of all updrafts. Its power lifted us off the ground. I wrenched free of my captor and stumbled back against the trunk of the car as the man was yanked upward by the airflow, out of control.

"Wait a minute! Joanne! Help!" he yelled, and I froze and clawed hair back from my eyes.

Chaz Ashworth III, pale as milk, was hovering up there, on the verge of taking a trip to Oz the hard way. I had planned to express-train him right up to the freezing cold and low oxygen content of the higher regions, which would knock him out in seconds, but now I had a problem.

Chaz wasn't the killer. That guy had been shorter, thinner, scarier. Chaz just looked clumsy and ridiculous.

I slowly reversed the process, calming down the wind a little at a time, balancing forces until Chaz touched down on the gravel of the shoulder of 1- 70. A petulant burst of wind blew past us, stinging me with sand.

"What the hell-" I began, but he held out both hands, palm out, to stop me.

"I can explain. Everything. Just… don't do that again, okay?" He looked genuinely spooked. "We can't stay here. Get in the car. Please. Hurry!"

"Why was I in the trunk?"

"It was the only way I could get you out of there without…" He darted anxious looks at the empty horizon, the blank shimmering road. "Just get in the car, okay? Please?"

"I saw him kill that woman." I don't know why I said it; it was almost as if the words were under pressure; I couldn't keep them in. I had to get rid of that moment, that image, that horrible silent pantomime of death. "He stabbed her in the back."

Chaz's face went even whiter, if that was possible, and his eyes had a blank, haunted look. He grabbed my arm, moved me aside, and slammed the trunk. Hustled me around to the passenger side of the car, which I now saw was his roadmonster of a Seville, maroon, with pimp-gold trim and wheels. I wasn't shocked to find he'd gone with the expensive Italian leather interior. It felt cold and stiff against me as I edged inside. Chaz ran around the long hood and piled into the driver's seat, put the car in gear, and scratched gravel out onto the road again.

When the speedometer was pegged at eighty, he pulled a deep breath and said, "Look, you have a nasty bump on the head; maybe you imagined-"

"Bullshit."

"Hey, give me a chance here, honey-"

I held out a shaking finger at him. "Not your honey, and the next time you give me some name like baby or sweetheart I'm going to kick your ass so hard you can read your underwear label. Got me?"

He was silent. Typed a message on the steering wheel in urgent Morse code. Finally nodded.

"Who was he?" I asked.

"I don't know."

"I hate to repeat myself, but ass? Underwear label? I know you were manipulating the weather out there to drive off aerial surveillance. Drugs, right? He was making some kind of drug deal."

"I don't know!"

"You get paid. You have to know his name."

He looked really ill now. "Look, I just know him as Orry, okay? Orry."

"Know him how?"

"Business."

"And again, see previous threat."

"No, I'm serious, we have a business arrangement," he said. "I didn't know he was… you know."

"Killing unarmed women?" I felt sick to my stomach, but damned if I'd throw up in front of Chaz. "What kind of business arrangement?"

"He pays me to keep the weather clear for his couriers, and knock police planes off course. You know, the surveillance planes, like you said. That's-"

I interpreted. "He pays you to facilitate trafficking." Which explained Chaz's unusual weather patterns out here in the barrens. He'd been manipulating systems to create clear paths for the planes coming in, and storm fronts to frustrate the cops. "Jesus, Chaz." I rubbed my aching head. "You had to know you'd get caught."

He got a crafty look. Great. Chaz, who was monumentally stupid, actually thought he was clever. "Well, I'm not the only one, you know. Everybody gets a little something on the side. It's how the Wardens work."

I stared at him, lips parted. Amazed. "What?"

"Oh, come on, drop the innocent act. Look, I agree, Orry's out of control-Jesus, I freaked when I saw what he'd done to that poor girl. The only thing I could do was get you out of there. He was going to kill you!"

"So you saved me by knocking me out and sticking me in the trunk of the car." Which made me wonder how the hell he'd gotten a maroon pimp-trimmed Seville all the way out into the desert like that, without having it become a permanent desert monument. It wasn't exactly an SUV. In fact, there was no way he'd driven this car all the way out there.

But there had been a dun-brown Jeep parked near the arroyo, which would have nicely done the job of carting my unconscious body back to the roadside.

It belonged to the killer. Orry.

I turned my face away from Chaz, afraid what it might say.

"How'd you get me back to the car?" I asked.

"What?"

"Did you drag me? We were a long way out in the desert. That's a hell of a distance to carry me."

"Well, I couldn't leave you out there." He tried to sound altruistic. It came off as ridiculous. "Let it go, Joanne. Look, I have money. Lots of it. Just give me a bank account number and you're an instant millionaire, I swear. All you have to do is turn in a good report to the Wardens and take the money, right? It’s what all the others did." The three previous audits. He'd greased the wheels. Of course. No wonder the audits had smelled funny.

"Did the others see a woman get killed?" Her hands, scrabbling at the dirt, fumbling for rescue. "What'd she do, Chaz? Shortchange the shipment? Blackmail him?"

He sighed. "You're not going to take the money."

It would be smart to tell him I would, but I wasn't in the mood to lie. "No."

"I knew. I knew the minute I saw you. You know what you look like in Oversight? Goddamn Saint Joan the martyr. You burn real bright, Joanne, but you're burning yourself right up." Chaz shook his head. "It's the way things work. You take the money and you shut the hell up. Look, you do good things, right? We all do. We save people. Why shouldn't we make a little-"

"She's dead!" I shouted, and was a little shocked at the raw edge of fury in my voice. "And you're finished. Understand? This is over. Over. Nobody else dies."

Chaz sent me a pitying look. He reached down, picked up a cell phone that lay on the seat between us, and dialed a number. "Yeah, I'm on I-Seventy, coming up on the caves. Be there in a couple of minutes."

Guess I was wrong about the cell coverage, I thought stupidly. He hung up. I stared at him, at his neat preppy outfit, his perfect tan, his expensive manicure.

"You knocked me out," I said. "He drove me back to your car. Why didn't you just leave me there? The two of you already killed one woman; why not two?"

"Look, you don't have the slightest idea of what's going on," he said. "I can't just kill you. If you disappear, I'm going to have to answer questions. Just… just take the money, okay? Take it and go. You weren't supposed to come out here in the first place; you were supposed to stay in Las Vegas."

"This was where the trouble was."

"And you go looking for trouble. Great. Out of all the Wardens, I have to get the Lone Ranger."

Unfortunately, I was terminally short a Tonto. We passed a flashing blur of a road sign that read CARLSON CAVES, 1 MILE. So I had about forty seconds to figure out what to do. The problem was that I was wounded, weak from blood loss, and I was facing another Weather Warden, which was the worst possible matchup. We could hurt each other, all right, but we'd hurt everybody else a hell of a lot worse. At least neither of us had a Djinn-that made it a little less destructive.

I eyed the cell phone. If I could call for help… No, they couldn't get here in time. Well, if I called John Foster, he could task his Djinn to get me out of here; that was something…

I made my decision, and grabbed for it. Chaz jerked the wheel sharply to the left, tossing me against the passenger door; the phone clattered noisily against window glass and slid into the dim recesses of the backseat. Fuck. I was committed. Too late for caution now…

I called wind.

So did Chaz.

The car spun out, slammed from two different directions by fifty-mile-per-hour gusts. It skidded weightlessly, grabbed gravel, and tilted, and I nearly lost control of the freight-train blast of the jet stream I'd redirected. Airborne rocks pelted glass with snare-drum impacts, and something heavier hit and shuddered the frame. The glass on my side spider webbed. I pushed harder, because Chaz was reaching over to grab me, and the Seville tilted up on its side, groaned like a living thing, and rolled.

The window shattered and fell away as gravity writhed, and I yelped and hit the car again with a roar of wind, rolling it again back over on its tires. I squirmed out the broken window and ignored the hot drag of glass splinters against my skin, slithered out, and fell onto hot sand. The Seville was still moving, blasted by the jet stream, and I cowered as it was pushed over me. I hit it again with a gust, this one more than a hundred miles an hour, and it flipped up in the air and spun like I'd shot it out of a cannon. It traveled about twenty-five feet before slamming back down on its tires on top of a saguaro cactus.

I killed the wind and realized that something had happened to me. A numb feeling in my leg. I twisted around and looked, and saw a piece of shiny metal embedded in the back of my thigh, big as a flatiron, sharp as a knife. I went light-headed and gray, looked away and breathed deep.

That was when I realized that it wasn't over.

Out in the distance, something terrible was happening. A growing roar of power, thundering out of control; he'd done this, or I had, or both of us had sparked it like a match in a powder keg. I reached for the wind but couldn't grab it; it was slick as glass, moving too fast, too full of its own fury.

A smear on the horizon.

An ominous layer of haze.

A wave of brown, turning black. Breaking like surf. Birds were flying frantically south ahead of it, but I could see the wave overtaking them. I'd heard stories of black rollers from the dust bowl, but I'd never actually seen one; it was terrifying, awesome, uncontrollable. A sea of darkness blotting out the sun as it came, a horizontal tornado of lethal force. It was picking up everything in its path-cactus, tumbleweeds, fences, barbed wire, the shredded remains of animals unfortunate enough to be caught in its path.

Coming right at me.

I screamed and tried to grab for it again, but it was too much, too big; it would take a vast power sourced in Djinn to handle this thing.

Think. No time to run; it was almost on me. If I stayed where I was, it would strip the flesh off my bones, scour me dead. The wind wall inside the thing had to be upward of 150 miles per hour, maybe higher.

I did the only thing I could think of. I created a cushion of hardened air over me, locked the molecules tightly together, sealed myself in a bubble, and prayed.

The black roller roared across asphalt. I watched it strip a Joshua tree out of the earth, shred it into toothpicks, and fling it up into the impenetrable darkness. Lightning flared blue inside the darkness, static electricity flaring off of every surface capable of carrying a charge, crawling eerily on the breaking edge of the wave, flaring in hot blue lines along the telephone wires. A frantically flapping hawk disappeared in an explosion of shredded feathers.

I watched the sun disappear behind that black storm front, and closed my eyes.

Sound came distantly. Inside my hardened bubble it was one long, inhuman scream, like metal being tortured. I was afraid to open my eyes, but I knew the sand around me was gone, scoured down to hard-packed earth, eroded in patches down to bedrock. Dear God, please.. .

I felt a sting of hot sand spurt against my face. Static electricity zapped at me, burning; I smelled the hot snap of it everywhere around me. I struggled to hold on to the matrix protecting me, but the howling monster outside was so strong, so incredibly strong… I couldn't hold it. Couldn't… the pressure of the black roller was breaking down the bubble of air that was all that stood between me and being flayed alive.

I curled up tight, gasping in stale breaths, resisting the urge to add my scream to that of the insane wind out there. When I risked a look, I saw a black snake of razor wire flailing over me, held back from my skin by millimeters.

Another white-hot burst of sand broke through the shield, this one near my knees. I struggled to seal it, but the air was coming loose from its matrix, molecules spinning out of control; there were fiery strikes everywhere now, burning…

And then the shield weakened, and I was on fire.

It lasted for only a few seconds, but the pain was intense, disorienting. I couldn't breathe. Instinct wouldn't let me open my mouth or eyes. Sand quickly buried me, which in a sense was a blessing against the already abraded mess of my skin.

The pressure of wind against me slowed to a bully's shove, then gusts, then a breeze.

Then silence.

The black roller had moved on.

My lungs were aching. I clawed sand away, convulsed my way up to a sitting position, and sucked in a hazy, dry breath. Coughed and tasted ozone.

It was unnaturally still. Nothing but a low-hanging blur of dust so fine it barely qualified as talcum powder, and a landscape scoured clean of everything taller than the asphalt road, which had been worn down in spots to thin gray gravel.

I rolled over, took hold of the metal spike in my leg, and yanked it free. The world wobbled and went dark, and I saw stars, felt the hot spurt of blood, and fumbled my shirt off to tie it hard against my thigh. I managed to get to my feet and limped slowly into the devastation, looking for the Seville.

I didn't recognize it at first. It had the ancient look of something that had been left out here for years, scrubbed down to base metal; the tires were shredded into thin black fibers. The hood was gone, along with the doors and the trunk lid. The leather interior was a tattered, sand-heaped mess.

No sign of Chaz. I limped around the far side and spotted a heap of rags on the other side.

He'd crawled out and tried to take shelter against the back right tire; it had been the only real cover available, but it hadn't helped. He hadn't made a shell the way I had, or if he had, it hadn't worked long enough.

He was missing his skin.

His body was a glistening red-black mess with white bone showing in places.

I sank down on my knees and wished I could cry, but there was nothing left. Nothing but fear.

"You stupid bastard," I whispered. "God, I'm so sorry."

I checked, cringing at the contact of my fingers on his raw flesh. He wasn't breathing, and there was no pulse. After a long, weary pause, I got up and limped back to the wind-scoured road, light-headed, wounded, sand-burned.

Still alive, despite everything.

Stranded under the hot glare of the sun.

I didn't tell them the rest. I ended it with Chaz's death; there was more, but it was none of their damn business. When I was finished, there was silence in the poker room. Lots of it, flowing deep and cold. Most of the card players were staring down, up, away from me.

All except for Quinn, whose eyes were fixed on me in concentration so intense it was almost sexual, and Charles Ashworth, who looked drained. Tired. Old.

"Thank you," he finally said, and turned back to the table. His voice sounded rusty and ancient. "I have no further need for her. You may do as you like."

That had a bad ring to it. I shifted slightly in the chair. Nobody was holding me down, and I was mostly recovered from the last shock; despite the presence of Quinn and the big, burly guys outside, I was giving myself pretty good odds on getting out alive if I had to fight.

"Don't be alarmed," Myron Lazlo said, in that warm, gentle voice. "We don't mean you harm, Miss Baldwin."

I muttered something under my breath about "could have fooled me." Quinn heard. I saw the answering dark sparkle in his eyes.

"Yeah, about that, what exactly do you mean, Myron?" I asked. I didn't sound particularly obsequious about it. "What the hell do you want with me?"

Myron smiled. It was unsettling, because it looked kindly and grandfatherly and yet there was a kind of entitlement about it that made my spine try to crawl away.

"We want you to join us," he said. "We want you to report back to the Wardens and tell them all is well, the problem has been solved."

"Solved?"

"That Jonathan escaped, Kevin died. We do not want you to report anything about our meeting, or the existence of the Ma'at. From time to time, we will have assignments for you that will require you to act on our behalf. That is the price of your freedom."

I swallowed, wished I had a nice cold glass of water, and said, "Two problems. First, I don't take orders from you. Second, no matter what I say when I get back, they won't just believe me that our Kevin and Jonathan problem's miraculously solved itself."

The Ma'at, or at least as much of them as were gathered around a high-stakes table, looked at each other and smiled. Damn, they all looked smug. It must have been a requirement.

"My dear, we wouldn't expect they would," Myron assured me. "I promise you, Kevin will be dead. Quite thoroughly dead, before the end of the day. As for Jonathan… well, I expect you'll just have to be convincing."

One of the others said, "She won't betray the Wardens. She's as solid as a rock. About as thick as one, too."

"Rocks are easy," Ashworth put in. He brushed imaginary lint from his suit. "All you need is a large enough jackhammer."

Boy, I wasn't going to like him any more than I had his son.

"You don't have to decide now." Myron reclaimed the conversation, leaned forward and looked presidential. "Joanne-may I call you Joanne?-you're not stupid. Surely you know that the Wardens are riddled with corruption, that the situation you faced with Chaz"-his eyes flicked to Ashworth, exchanging a silent message that contained a swift apology-"was hardly unusual. I understand that you also encountered one of the worst offenders in Florida."

"Bad Bob," I said, and immediately wished I hadn't blurted it out. I got a slow nod from all the heads at the table.

"Dangerous," Myron said. "You did the world a great favor by removing his influence."

"I didn't do it for the world." I did it to save my ass.

"Regardless of why you did it, the results were good. Surely Bad Bob confessed to you that he didn't act alone, that there were other Wardens engaged in illegal activities. You must be aware that it runs rampant throughout the organization. You'd have to be foolish not to have concluded that to be the case. That's part of why we were formed, and why we continue to exist. Because the Wardens have become a force for evil, not good. And they need countering."

I didn't like thinking about Bad Bob, what he'd said, what he'd done to me. I had a sudden cell-deep vision of his weathered face, his sharp blue eyes, his hands pouring a demon down my throat. I felt a sudden dry constriction in my chest, a desperate need to get out of here, away from these men who were starting to strongly remind me of that whole experience.

I stood up. Nobody panicked, not even me. Quinn stayed where he was, shoulders against the wall, arms folded. I walked over to the bar, looked the uniformed attendant in the eye, and ordered a springwater. He handed it over silently. I broke the seal and chugged it, tasting desert and fear and confusion. Handed the empty bottle back.

And then I turned back to Myron and said, "The Wardens aren't perfect. What makes you think you're any better?"

He just smiled. Wrong tactic. These guys weren't going to feel anything less than omnipotent, no matter what I said.

I tried again. "You can't kill Kevin."

"Why not?"

"He's just a kid."

Myron studied me curiously. "Yet you've contemplated killing him yourself."

"I want to take away his powers, but I don't think that means he has to die. Jeez, you guys are so damn smart, you can't come up with a way to neutralize him?"

"The Wardens failed to," said one of the poker players.

"The Wardens were shut out. You were on the inside." I paced the room, letting them get used to the idea of me moving. It wouldn't work with Quinn, of course; the cop was watching me with tolerant, amused eyes, but underneath that was a cold core of absolute competence. I needed Quinn on my side, or gone. What was his story, anyway? A cop, working for the anti-Wardens? There was a story there… and no time for me to learn it.

"Okay, assuming that I'm considering your proposition to work for you… what are you offering?" I clasped my hands behind my back so they wouldn't see how badly they were shaking. The carpet felt soft and springy under my feet. I put a little more swing into my hips, a little more freedom in my walk. Being the only woman in the room had an advantage, especially among older men. "Money? Power? What?"

"We're offering you the chance to do what you've always wanted to do," Myron said. "We're offering you the chance to do good."

I smiled thinly. "Oh, my. And if I don't want to take your generous offer?"

Quinn didn't move, but he suddenly got a whole lot bigger. Nothing supernatural about it; it was a body-language trick, a cooling of the expression, the warmth draining out of his stare.

"We'd have to resort to regrettable alternatives," Myron said. His eyes didn't move to indicate Quinn, but I got the point. "I'm sure you're aware that at least one Warden has already met his death here-we did not cause it, but neither did we act to prevent it. Jonathan and Kevin would do a very nice job of eliminating you, if we provided them with reason to do so. But really, my dear, there's no need for any animosity. The Ma'at are dedicated to exactly the same principles that you honor. The Wardens are no longer the saviors of humanity; they're parasites, perpetuating a cycle of violence and destruction, enslaving beings who ought by rights to be free. You can't want to be part of that."

I inched up into Oversight as I paced the room. It glittered in strings and strands of power, a treacherous spiderweb. Just now, they weren't trying to control me, but the minute I started reaching for power, they'd shut me down. Physical attack was out; I was outnumbered and outgunned at every turn.

"Miss Baldwin? I'm afraid that I require an answer."

I was about to give him an unladylike one, but then there was a discreet knock at the door and it swung open. A woman looked in-businesslike, professionally coiffed, beautifully dressed-and gave them some kind of high sign. Shut the door gently as she left.

"Ah," Myron said. He sounded ever-so-slightly disgruntled. "It appears we'll have to delay this, Miss Baldwin. Our four-o'clock is here. Mr. Quinn? Please show our guest to her room."

Quinn pushed away from the wall, walked to me, and took my arm. It looked gentlemanly, and it felt authoritarian. He steered me across the soft carpet to the door, opened it, and squired me out without another word.

I glanced back.

They were opening another deck of cards. I wasn't even a topic of conversation.

Quinn took me out past the guards. If the old men of Ma'at had a four-o'clock, he or she wasn't cooling their heels outside; all I could see was the normal business of the casino. I considered screaming rape or fire or cardsharp, but considering that the security all seemed to know Quinn-he exchanged friendly nods with each uniform we passed-I decided to wait for a better opportunity. Maybe Kevin would come to my rescue. That would be ironic.

The Luxor was full of things I wanted to see- beautifully reproduced Egyptian statues, the faux treasures of Tut, souvenir shops that held the glitter of gold and silver and gems-but Quinn didn't even slow down.

"Hey," I said as he hustled me past a storefront full of reproduction Egyptian furniture, "you know what all villains have in common? They don't shop. They're too busy being evil to shop. You guys need to learn the fine art of browsing."

Quinn laughed softly and put his arm around my shoulders. No sexual intent-it only meant he could steer me more effectively. He smelled woodsy, a mixture of some sharp green aftershave and a dark hint of male sweat. Maybe some gun oil, too. No tobacco. He wasn't a smoker.

"Sweetheart," he said, "you are one lovely piece of work. I gotta tell you, I've seen rich men with power over major corporations break down and cry over less than you just survived. You gave as good as you got."

"If I gave as good as I got, did good old Chuck get electrocuted? I was too busy convulsing to see."

He patted my shoulder. From some men, all of this physical contact would have been prurient, but Quinn seemed to not have any ulterior motives, not even the obvious. He was just friendly.

We arrived at a huge bank of closed steel doors. One opened, and Quinn steered me in.

Oh. Glass. I blinked and looked out at the bright glare of a Las Vegas afternoon, which was nowhere near as gaudy as a Las Vegas evening. There was something vaguely weird about this elevator, which became clear when Quinn pushed buttons and it began to rise.

It didn't go up. Well, not directly. It went at an angle.

"It's an inclinator, not an elevator," Quinn said. "Like the view?"

I had to admit, it was pretty. Our elevator- inclinator-crawled up the slope of the huge glass pyramid, each floor announcing itself with a muted whispered ding, and the world fell away. I amused myself by identifying hotels along the strip. Paris. New York, New York, with its roller coaster and the half-scale Statue of Liberty. The white lace of the Bellagio's fountains shooting skyward in a silent, choreographed dance.

We stopped somewhere near the top.

Quinn tugged me out, walked me down the hall, and opened up a room with the standard electronic card key.

"Well," I said, startled. "This'll do."

My room had an entire wall of windows, sharply angled, and sunlight sparked from the muted gold of faux-Egyptian furniture. The bed looked sumptuous.

Through the bathroom door, I saw a huge Jacuzzi tub facing the windows. "I'll give your side this: You know how to imprison a girl in style."

"You're not a prisoner," Quinn said, and handed me the key. "And we're not necessarily on the opposite side, either. Listen, feel free to go downstairs, hit the casinos, the spa, the pool… just don't try to leave the building."

I took the cool, smooth plastic. "If I do?" Quinn raised a silent eyebrow. "Right. You know I can't just hang around here, waiting for the Geezer Patrol to decide what to do with me. There's a time limit. Jonathan and Kevin are going to come after me, and believe me, I don't think anybody wants that. It'll be one hell of a show."

"You don't need to worry about the boy."

"The fact that you can say that just proves to me that you don't know dick about that boy."

Quinn reached under his coat. No change in expression. I remembered the gun, felt myself tense, wondered if it was even possible to stop a bullet with the powers I possessed…

… and he came out with another card, this one a different color of plastic.

"Have fun," he said, and handed it over. "That's worth five thousand in chips. Go crazy. I've got to get back to work."

"Quinn!" I caught his arm when he turned to go. "I can't just stay here!"

He patted my hand, removed it, and walked to the door. "If you don't," he said pleasantly as he opened it, "I'll just have to break your ankles. That'd keep you from wandering."

He shut the door with a quiet click. I chewed my lip, counted to thirty, then went to look out.

He was gone. When I raced to the window, I saw the inclinator crawling back down the face of the pyramid, and Quinn was facing out toward the view. He didn't look in my direction.

I went to the telephone, got a dial tone, and called a number from memory. Long distance, but I wasn't particularly worried about the charges at the moment. Let the Ma'at pay for it, the crusty old Republicans.

Three rings. Four.

"Bearheart," a low female voice said. I let out a gasp; I hadn't realized I'd been holding my breath.

" Marion! Don't talk, just listen. I'm inside, but there's something wrong here. A whole different set of-"

Click. The line was dead. I rattled the posts, banged the receiver helpfully against the nightstand, then hung it up.

"You know," I said to the empty air, "this would be a whole lot easier if I had some help from a friendly neighborhood Djinn. Come on, I know you're here. You've been hanging around for hours. And thanks for not saving me, by the way. I wouldn't want to get rusty."

There was a heat blur in the corner. I focused on it, and watched Rahel sculpt herself out of shadows into glittering hard angles and cutting edges. Not that the Ifrit was recognizable as Rahel, of course, but I didn't really think that any other half-Djinn would be following me around like a lost puppy.

"Can you help me?" I asked her. No answer from the black, insectile statue in the corner. "Look, you went to big trouble to come here with me. I can only assume you had a reason. Can you tell me what it is?"

She stirred. That was unsettling, because she no longer moved like either a Djinn or a human. More like a bag of razors shifting. I took a step back, found the bed behind my knees, and sat.

"Do I have any allies here?" I asked her. "Anybody I can trust?"

I wasn't sure, but that kind of looked like a nod. Maybe.

"Who?" Useless question. She couldn't speak; she didn't have enough power left from her gorging feast earlier.

An arm of hard right angles and coal-black glitter extended. Claws extruded pale as crystal from something that vaguely resembled a hand. I resisted the urge to crawl back across the bed; if she wanted me, she could get me.

I felt something tug deep inside. Panic spiked deep, and I tried to move but it was too late.

Her glittering diamond claws plunged into me. Not me, exactly. There was no damage to my human flesh, but as I flashed up to Oversight to view what was happening on the aetheric, I saw what she was doing.

She had hold of a glowing white-hot core centered in my abdomen, just above my pelvis. Cradling it in her claws, carefully.

I caught my breath, staring down through the crystal lattices of my aetheric body at this revelation, this glowing strange visitor inside me.

"Oh, my God," I heard myself whisper.

I'd never seen anything like this before, and yet I knew exactly what it meant. I was pregnant.

I freaked.

First, I threw myself back across the bed, putting distance between me and Rahel's claws, instincts screaming. She didn't try to follow. I couldn't seem to get my breath, couldn't think, and as the world did a Tilt-A-Whirl spin I put my back against the hotel room door and slid down to a sitting position, head in my hands.

Impossible. This is totally impossible. I haven't… I couldn't…

I remembered Jonathan's sharp reaction to me, in the room at the Bellagio. His cryptic words: If he told you it would guarantee I wouldn't hurt you, he lied. Jonathan had assumed I knew about this spark of life inside me.

I gasped and looked up. Rahel was frozen across the room, still in a crouch, claws extended. Still as a black statue in the soft, filtered afternoon light. Alien as something out of H. R. Giger's nightmares.

"That bastard," I said. My voice sounded strange. "He knew, didn't he? David knew he was doing this to me. You guys don't do anything by accident."

I knew that because I'd been Djinn, recently, and I knew how much control they had over the forms they chose. David had chosen to put life into me-Djinn life. One thing I'd been taught in school-Djinn didn't reproduce. They couldn't. So how the hell was this possible?… According to the Wardens, Djinn were sterile and eternal, and they controlled them all. Except, of course, the Wardens had been dead wrong or outright lying about controlling them all, anyway. There were free-range Djinn, a lot of them. So it stood to reason they'd be wrong-or lying-about the Djinn being sterile, as well.

I knew with an absolute and unexplainable certainty that the Djinn could reproduce when they felt like it, and for some unfathomable reason, David had felt like it with me.

Of course, he'd forgotten to ask me first. Or even tell me after the fact.

Memory flashed hot. David saying, You have to trust me, his eyes flashing copper. And me saying, like an idiot, Yes.

Rahel made a move. I flinched back against the door, and she froze back into stillness, claws working as if they weren't really connected to the rest of her. Creepy. They slowly melted back into the glittering angles of her hand. Gone.

"You know what's going on," I said. Nothing. "Guess we need to find you something to eat if I want any more help out of you."

Something to eat, other than the glowing nucleus of energy inside of me. Which, to her credit, she hadn't tried to consume. Maybe it wasn't even the equivalent of an after-dinner mint yet.

"Any Djinn in this building?" I asked. Her head tilted slowly up, then down. "Let me guess. The Ma'at have some." Another slow, creaky, alien nod. "Perfect. So all I have to do is face down the opposition, steal a Djinn, let you snack on it, and I'm home free. Assuming that you don't just walk away and let me twist in the wind."

She didn't confirm or deny, like Quinn.

I let my aching head fall back into my trembling hands.

Oh, Jesus, I was pregnant.

I was going to kill him so very dead.

To pass the time while I worked out a plan- because nothing was immediately jumping up and down, waving its little arms-I took a long, hot shower, washed my hair, dried it, applied skin moisturizers from the complimentary selection in the bathroom, then slipped into the Jacuzzi tub to bubble away my troubles for a while. I stared out at the horizon, remembering how it had looked to see a black roller crest on that flat sandy plain.

I needed a Djinn, but the Ma'at weren't about to go trotting one out in public unless they had to. That meant trouble, big-ass trouble. Public trouble.

Something shivery crawled up my skin, and it wasn't bubbles. Maybe the heat was getting to me, but I had an idea.

Not a good one, but any idea at all was an improvement. It had two chances of success, at least. If plan A failed, plan B was still perfectly viable. I liked that. Plan A rarely worked, anyway.

I soaked awhile longer, waiting for a better idea to saunter into my head, but nothing arrived. Night was still hours away, but the sun was burning its way down the western half of the sky. I slipped into a luxurious cotton robe embroidered with the Luxor crest, wrapped my arms around my waist for comfort, and wished I could talk to David. Scream at him, preferably. What the hell was he thinking? Exactly when had the whole discussion about offspring happened? I'd been unconscious a few times. Maybe he'd mentioned it then. That would be guylike.

I couldn't deal with it now. I had other things to do, and everything was risky. Too risky to be attempting with that fragile, brilliant spark of life inside me, but I didn't have that much of a choice. David hadn't damn well given me one. I didn't know the first thing about baby Djinn, and I had no one to ask but Rahel, who couldn't answer me and probably wouldn't tell me the truth even if she could.

I put my clothes back on and went shopping.

There are two things you need to be successful as a hard-core Vegas ьber-slut: couture and attitude. I had the second. A trip downstairs to the Luxor bazaar would ensure that I had the first.

I toured the options and decided on a discreet place that reeked of high price tags-not that it was an indicator of class, but discount stores definitely were out. I needed the best, and I needed it now.

I came in, all wrinkled and lived-in, and showed the clerk the color of my Luxor card. She was a beautiful little thing, Cleopatra-cut honey-blond hair, gray-green eyes, skin like pale spring roses. Wearing Donna Karan, which went perfectly with her body type. Good shoes, too, something from the Valentino family. I was still partial to Manolos, but I wasn't monogamous.

"Day or evening, miss?" she asked, raising perfectly shaped eyebrows. She had a perfect, cultured, West-End-London accent.

"Evening."

"Casual or-"

"Tell you what, gorgeous, just show me what you think will make me absolutely irresistible."

She grinned, and mischief danced in those gray-green eyes. "That won't be difficult," she said, which made her my best friend ever. "Have a seat. We'll sort something for you."

Forty-five minutes later, I was standing in front of a trio of mirrors, wearing a knee-length midnight-blue raw-silk sheath dress. That wasn't anything so special, until you considered the parts that were missing. I turned slowly, gauging the effect. Transparent blue mesh from a high neck to a band of raw silk over my breasts-the parts that get you arrested, anyway-that faded into transparency again over my waist, dipping into beaded splendor low around my hips. Gorgeous. Striking. Utterly impossible to wear without supreme self-confidence.

Twenty-four hundred dollars, plus change. I did a slow turn again. The salesclerk draped a sapphire pendant around my neck, something large and real enough to make my heart skip a beat.

"Well," I said. "They say accessories are everything."

She gave me a knowing, conspiratorial smile and held up a pair of matching Manolo Blahnik pumps, midnight-blue raw silk, with pinpoint heels that raised me a good three and a half inches.

We high-fived. She gave me eight hundred in change from the chip card, bagged my old outfit, and promised to send it up to my room after cleaning. I tipped her generously, squared my shoulders, and called up my A-game.

Time to get to work.

I cut a swath through the bazaar, drawing stares from men and whispers from women; there were few who didn't look, even if they frowned. The Manolos felt perfect on my feet, completely natural; the dress clung like an expertly tailored second skin. Security watched me just like the rest of the gawkers, with a touch of assessment. They knew who I was, of course, but still, the dress had its effect.

I headed for the highest-stakes tables and came up with a likely candidate. I didn't recognize him, but he had designer clothes and two big, burly guys who were obviously bodyguards, and he had a stack of chips that could build a model of the Titanic without losing too much in scale.

I eased up to the table, gave him my best smile, and put down a single chip. Ah, we were playing blackjack. Cool. I was good at blackjack.

The croupier took my chip and dealt cards, and I crossed my legs as I sat down on the high stool. The man I was smiling at started smiling back. He nearly forgot his hand.

"Your play," I said, and nodded down. He focused quickly on the cards, asked for a hit, asked for another, busted, and watched about a thousand bucks travel into the croupier's territory. Then he swung around and watched me in open, frank appraisal. I pretended not to notice, checked my cards, and flipped over the ace on top of the jack. "Pay me." I salved the pain for the dealer with a smile and a wink. He smiled back.

Two professionals at work.

I got paid, a tidy little profit, and left a chip to ride as I scooped the rest back into the small, elegant bag that the saleswoman had insisted on throwing in. Midnight blue, with beadwork. Matched the shoes, of course. It wasn't Fendi or Kate Spade, but you don't get Fendi for free, now, do you?

The guy next to me leaned in closer with every turn of the cards. We did a little gambling, a lot of flirting. Drinks were free, but I had a passenger on board to worry about now, and even though Djinn were well-nigh indestructible I wasn't so sure about baby ones. I stuck to cola.

Mr. Big Spender introduced himself as a blur of syllables I didn't bother to catch. He mentioned a couple of TV shows and a film he'd starred in, none of which I'd seen. Big, broad-shouldered, dark hair and dark eyes. A face that was beautiful or brutal, depending on the lighting and angles. He liked dark colors-black, cabernet, midnight blues. We matched well.

Which was, for him, what it was all about, the look. I could tell that within seconds of making eye contact. He wasn't looking for intellectual stimulation. I wasn't sure if he'd ever actually had intellectual stimulation.

I was on his arm, with the bodyguards trailing behind, in about ten minutes, and suggested that the casino at the Bellagio might put out (and I might, too, with the proper application of cash or credit). We cut quite a swath through the crowd on the way to the lobby. A substantial number of tourists recognized my pickup, and stopped him for autographs; some snapped photos. He took it with good humor and used me as a poseable doll, which I suppose was the function most of his dates fulfilled both in public and in private.

We were halfway across the lobby, heading for the doors, when Quinn appeared. He took one look and knew what I'd done; fast, that boy. He didn't try to go for my date; he stepped straight up to the larger of the two bodyguards and did some whispering. Dammit. I was watching plan A turn to crap.

The bodyguard moved up to whisper in the pale ear of my escort, who looked nervous and gave me a twisted smile. "Ah…" He didn't seem to quite know what to say. We were in the lobby, nearly to the doors. "Sorry. You're really… that's quite a look you've got going. The dress and all. It would fool anybody. But I really don't… I can't be seen with… no offense. Really."

He nearly tripped over himself in his haste to beat a retreat back to the blackjack tables. His bodyguards closed in to let me know my presence was no longer welcome when I tried to follow.

I turned to Quinn and glared. "You told him what, exactly?"

He gave me a top-to-bottom look, and smiled. "That you had a little surprise for him under the pretty wrapping. Of the frank-and-beans variety."

"You told him I was a guy!"

Quinn shrugged.

"And he believed it?" In this dress? I think I was more upset about that than the failure of plan A.

"Some men are not very bright," he assured me solemnly. "Walk with me."

"Where?" I didn't move. Plan B was in the warm-up stage.

"Someplace quiet."

"You mean with fewer witnesses." I was too close to the exit not to take advantage. "Look… veni, vendi, vici. I came, I spent your money, and now I'm leaving. Try to stop me if you want. But in this dress, you'd better believe people are going to notice, especially when I start screaming at the top of my lungs right here in the lobby." I gave him a sweet smile. In the shoes, I was at least two inches taller than he was. "And then I'll start an electrical storm that'll disrupt every circuit in this place and fry half the computers, at least. Then I'll dump six inches of water onto this extremely expensive carpeting and short out the slot machines. Do you think they have flood insurance out here?"

Quinn wasn't amused. He gave me a hard look. "Don't be stupid, Joanne. You know I can hurt you. I can't sling around magic spells, but I can definitely hurt you." Great. He had a dress immunity. It figured.

I leaned closer and put my lips next to his ear. "Let me lay it on the line for you, Quinn. We're not in some private room now where your Old Republican Guard can zap me with lightning bolts out of pure spite. We're right out in the open, and I'm walking out the door. If you want to stop me, you'd better get your big guns out here, because you're going to need 'em."

He took my arm. I broke free, stepped back, and raised my voice. "Hey! Please don't touch me, you pervert! I will not wear your daughter's panties!" It stopped traffic and drew even more stares. He jerked his head at some security guards. I gathered power into my hands, felt the easy response of the aetheric, and sent a stiff breeze through the lobby. It rattled papers and stirred some exclamations from the clerks at the counter. Lifted a few full skirts, to feminine exclamations and male appreciation. I played to him this time, not to the audience. "Word of advice, Quinn, don't fight me. I'm not afraid of a little drama. I'm the one who ripped a hole in the UN Building in full view of the Security Council."

He stopped, staring into my eyes, and I got that sense of cold menace from him again. Quinn was nobody to underestimate. "They'll kill you, you keep this up." He flicked his gaze around. There were uniformed security closing in on us fast. "What are you doing?" Oh, he was quick. He knew I wasn't trying to get away, or I'd have broken for the doors already.

"Leaving," I lied. Leaving would just have multiplied my problems; I didn't have any expectation of walking out the door. The wind stirred my hair and teased it into a floating dark cloud. "I won't go down easy, and you're going to have a hell of a lot of explaining to do. Why do I get the feeling that's not a happy thing, with those guys? I'm betting they don't like failure any more than they like bad manners and displays of power in the hotel lobby."

He was silent for a few seconds, then made some imperceptible sign that stopped security in its tracks. We were no longer the center of attention; tourists were exclaiming about the wind, holding on to their suitcases as I let the air swirl and circle. Not even an FO on the Fujita scale yet, but enough to cause a real reaction. Quinn's suit coat fluttered, outlining the gun underneath. He wasn't reaching for it, but then I wasn't under the delusion he needed to.

"I like you," he said, and flashed me a nearly genuine smile. "You know that, right? You've got style; that's rare."

"Love you too," I said. "And now I'm going. See ya!"

I turned and headed for the glass wall of doors and the gleaming ass of the sphinx outside.

Someone stepped into my path, small and neatly suited in hand-tailored excellence. Holding a silver-handed black cane, in the best tradition of his generation. Charles Ashworth II had a kind of grave dignity that wasn't affected by the wind swirling around him.

"Desist," he said to me.

"Bite me, Grandpa," I said, and kept walking. I let the wind become a gale, knocking people down, drawing shrieks of alarm from clerks and tourists. I targeted Quinn and knocked him flat, then pinned security against the walls. Sent a gust straight for Ashworth.

It didn't so much as ruffle his silver hair.

"Don't be stupid," he said. "You can't hurt me."

"News flash, Chuck, I'm not going to sit still and get fried like your chicken dinner this time." I readied my own lightning, well aware that it was destabilizing the currents inside the hotel, that it was spreading out in a dark wave of imbalance over the aetheric. "Get out of the way or I'll return the favor."

He gestured with his cane, pointing behind me, and I felt a presence taking form up on the aetheric. "I warn you, we will stop you. And we won't be gentle."

A Djinn. Bingo. Plan B had actually yielded a decent outcome, for once.

"Rahel!" I yelled, and spun around to face the Djinn that was just manifesting. "Dinnertime!"

The Djinn was familiar. I'd met him before, on the first leg of my journey to this strange place; he'd been watching over Lewis's house in Connecticut, weeks ago. He wasn't the type to bother with modern trappings; he had a Mr. Clean sensibility, with a shaved head and bare chest and Arabian Nights pants. His legs disappeared into mist. He was already reaching out for me.

I targeted him with a blast of wind strong enough to rip carpet from the floor and sent him flying, straight into a razor-edged black embrace. Rahel folded around him and pulled him into the shadows, both of them screaming.

Rahel was very hungry. I felt a sickening qualm about that, but dammit, the stakes were high and getting higher. Maybe she wouldn't be able to destroy him. Maybe.

Plan B, it seemed, was working too well. I hadn't actually planned on getting out of the Luxor, except under the color of an escort; on my own, I'd be a clear target for Jonathan and Kevin. Well, I'd just have to take the risk…

I'd lost track of Ashworth, but he announced himself again by cracking that cane across the back of my head. I staggered, went down to one knee, and shook off the sparks. I sensed him readying for another swing and dove forward, found myself grappling with Quinn this time, who was shouting something in my ear. Ashworth hammered me with another hard blow in the back that sent sunbursts of agony up and down my spine. People were screaming, but our little tussle was lost in the general confusion I'd started. The wind was still tearing around aimlessly, fueled by my anger, and it was in danger of ripping loose from my control. The currents I'd been preparing crackled and twisted out of control, waking sparks from a row of slot machines nearest the lobby. Bells rang, lights flashed, coins poured out. Blue lightning jumped and sparked uncontrollably as the circuits discharged.

"Stop it!" Quinn was shouting at me. His face was stark and set hard as granite as he dragged me back to my feet. "Don't make me kill you!"

I put the Manolos to good use, kicking his shins with the sharp toes, digging spiked heels into his instep.

Ashworth landed another hard crack with the cane across my shoulders, and I felt a line of fire race through my collarbone. Dammit.. .

I twisted around. No sign of Rahel or the Djinn in the chaos. They were gone.

"Stop!" Quinn yelled in my ear. I ignored him and focused on the wind, sent it spinning through the casino area, flipping cards into the air, sending dice tumbling off of the tables. My lovely dark-haired TV star yelped as his pile of chips took flight from a blackjack table like swallows heading for Capistrano.

Chaos. There was something really, really petty about the satisfaction I felt, but I couldn't really regret it.

Ashworth's cane caught me once more in the back of the head, and everything went vague and smeared. Someone was speaking to me, whispering on the aetheric. But sound didn't travel on the aetheric, did it? No, it wasn't speech, it was… something else. Vibration. Light. Power. Connections.

Don't fight, Jo. Let go.

I knew him. Knew the voice, or the frequency, or the tenor of his power. Knew the whispering colors of his aura as he wrapped me in his arms.

Please, Jo. Please let go.

It wasn't Quinn. There was somebody else there, somebody else lifting me and carrying me away. I felt safe and dreamily peaceful.

I felt whole.

I opened my eyes and saw David's beautiful, intense face, those dark brown eyes flaring bright copper as they stared down at me.

"Can't leave you alone for a minute," he said, and his lips curved into a smile. "Love the dress."

The wind stopped. The electricity stopped arcing.

Everything stopped.

Including me, as darkness sucked me down.