Chill Factor (19 page)

Straight and clean and simple.

‘Better?’ he asked, when I put the brush aside. I nodded. ‘Toothpaste and lotion and all kinds of crap in there. Probably ought to check it out.’

I didn’t move. ‘What are you going to do with me?’

‘Ask Lewis.’

I would, while I was hitting him repeatedly with my fist. Hitting something sounded really, really good right now. Not Quinn, though. Quinn would hit back.

I got up, fought off the various grinding aches and pains, and went into the bathroom to inspect the damage. On the bright side, it wasn’t as bad as if I’d gone ten rounds with a heavyweight; on the dim side, it definitely gave me a piratical, dangerous look. No make-up available; I did my best with lotion and toothpaste and mouthwash, ran the brush through my hair until the curls became glossy black waves. I needed sunglasses. That would complete the picture of the battered wife.

When I came out, Lewis had arrived, and he’d brought reinforcements. As in, Myron Lazlo, Charles Ashworth II, and Gnarly Guy, whose name I learnt was Rupert McLeish. They also brought breakfast in the form of black hot coffee and some truly excellent pastries, which I cheerfully accepted; no sense in going on a hunger strike, especially since I planned to kick the ever-loving crap out of them the first chance I got.

Out the expansive windows, Las Vegas was still lit up like Christmas, but the clock reported it was nearly 4 a.m.

‘So,’ I asked around a mouthful of muffin, ‘have you blown the kid’s head off yet, or are you saving that for the big finale?’

The Ma’at had taken up seats in the various comfortable armchairs, except for Lewis, who – stubborn as usual – remained standing, braced by his cane. Quinn manned a strategic vantage point in
the corner. I’d settled on the edge of the bed that was closest to the breakfast tray.

‘We don’t find any of this amusing, Miss Baldwin,’ Ashworth said severely.

‘Really?’ I said, and raised my eyebrows. ‘Neither do I, but I figured it was right up the rich-white-guy humour alley. And just a comment, but don’t you guys ever take off the suits? ‘Cause it’s kind of strange. Really.’

Lazlo, Ashworth, and McLeish were all still in conservative business attire – blues and greys, with perfectly knotted silk ties. Still perfectly turned out. Lewis was, as always, informal. He’d given up the denim shirt in favour of a ratty old NYU T-shirt with a hole at the neck. No flannel. I kind of missed the flannel look for him.

Lazlo looked over at Quinn. ‘Has she been cooperative?’

‘Sure.’ That was nice of him, but then, being a cop, he probably had sliding scales of cooperation. I hadn’t actually tried to hit him with a blunt object, at least.

Lazlo turned his attention back to me. ‘That was quite a display you put on in our lobby, Miss Baldwin. What exactly was the point of that?’

I was starting to wonder myself; Rahel still hadn’t appeared to save my ass, and I was starting to suspect that I’d been robbed. ‘I wanted out.’

‘You might have asked nicely.’

‘You might have said no.’

Lazlo’s lips curled faintly, and he and Lewis exchanged a look. ‘We regret the extreme measures taken to subdue you. I trust you are feeling better?’

‘Much.’ I noticed Ashworth wasn’t providing the apology. ‘Nobody else got hurt, right?’

‘You were surprisingly adept at rendering our operatives ineffective without harming them. My congratulations.’

‘It was luck.’ I stared hard into his eyes. ‘Next time I may not be so lucky.’

‘Next time, Mr Quinn might just have to resort to something more than unpleasant words.’

I crossed my legs and made sure they saw the bruises. ‘Gee. Imagine my debilitating terror. If we’re done with the bluster, why don’t you explain why you’re keeping me here? If your great plan is just to have Quinn put a bullet in Kevin’s head, why do you need me? You know I’m not going to sign up for your little club, and I’m damn sure not going to betray the Wardens for you. So why bother?’

Stalemate. Lewis stepped forward, crouched down next to me, and rested his elbows on his thighs. An entirely natural pose for him, but the pallor and strain in his face were disturbing. God, he looked bad.
Really
bad. Worse than he had earlier.

‘I need you to see something,’ he said. ‘Are you up to it?’

‘Well, I just ate, so use your discretion if it’s going to be gross.’

He didn’t smile. ‘Laz. If you please.’

And then we were
moving
.

I yelped as the world dropped away. I forgot all about my discomfort, because there was far too much to see up here. My body, for instance. All bright glass, with an aura of blue and gold, and a hard white core of light centred around my abdomen. Lewis, darker than the darkness, like a hole in space shot through with poisonous red lines.

The Three Amigos, up on the aetheric, had the look of – believe it or not – wizards. Their shapes were all flowing robes and tall hats, spangles of dark blue and star white. They had the muted, shadowy flow of regular humans, but the aetheric imaging of Wardens. Eerie.

And then there was the
city
.

Human emotions sculpt the aetheric. Human actions echo so strongly that the results can be awesome or terrible, beautiful or tragic. Sometimes all of that at once. New York had been layers upon layers of reality – you could read the history of the place through its emotional remains. There had remained an essential core of hope to the place, of fierce and abiding pride. Darkness, yes…but a great, almost sentient presence, too.

Vegas was nothing like that. It was
empty
. The aetheric was almost flat. There was history here,
but it was layers of darkness, not light. Where the city in the real world was a blaze of light, on the aetheric it was shadow and midnight, velvet and silence. Hunger and the death of hope. This place
consumed
.

The Luxor was a lone blaze of light, burning and shimmering with power. There was a golden mist streaming away from it like a flow of dry ice, heading across an empty stretch of darkness towards…something else.

The absence of fire. A flickering blackness full of shadows, gravity,
hunger
.

It was consuming light, not producing it. Like a black hole, devouring everything around it in ever-increasing spirals.

We dropped back out of the aetheric. I fell hard back into my body with an all-over jolt that pulled sore muscles. Winced.

‘That’s Kevin?’ I asked. Lewis slowly nodded. He looked mortally tired, even by so brief a journey. ‘Hey. Sit before you fall.’

He lowered himself to a cross-legged position on the floor. ‘So. You understand?’

‘Not really.’

‘I told you, she’s useless,’ Ashworth said, and gripped the silver head of his cane more tightly, as if he wanted to bean me with it again. ‘Try putting it in words of one syllable for her.’

Lewis put his hands on his knees, palms up, in a
lotus pose. ‘Kevin’s not producing enough power anymore,’ he said. ‘His natural talent was fire; he exhausted that weeks ago. He’s burning through what he took from me too fast, and now in order to sustain himself and Jonathan he’s learning how to take power from the world around him.’

I felt a sudden chill. ‘Like a Djinn.’

‘No. Djinn do it on a much more balanced scale; he’s drawing power like a demon. He has to be stopped, Jo. Regardless of his age, he’s becoming a threat deadlier than anything that’s walked the earth in ages. He has to be stopped,
now
.’ Lewis sucked in a deep breath, then let it out.

Lazlo took up the thread. ‘We need you to draw him out of hiding.’

‘Excuse me?’

‘He doesn’t come out of that room. We were able to act once, to get you out of there, because he was about to kill you, but we can’t do it again. He’s ready for us now. I need you to draw him out in the open so Quinn can take him. He’ll be defending against magical attacks. He won’t expect this kind.’

I stared at him, stunned. ‘You want me to be bait?’

‘No. We want you to gain his trust and then betray him. And it’s very possible he might kill you before we can take him down.’

‘Wow, I’m just
jumping
at the chance to help you out now.’

Lewis reached out and took my hand. I tensed, waiting for the burn of power that had always passed between us, but felt nothing. Of course…all his powers were gone, drained away, leaving a huge bleeding hole that was killing him. I’d never feel that burn between us again. Even if we succeeded in…

‘No!’ I yanked my hand back. ‘Lewis, dammit, if you kill the kid, we can’t get your powers back. You
know
that!’

I wasn’t saying anything they hadn’t already thought of themselves. None of them had so much as a flicker of shock. Not even Lewis. ‘I know.’ He shrugged. ‘That’s how it has to be. He can’t be allowed to get any stronger. It’s tearing things apart. And that’s just him sitting still. If he starts really
using
those powers, God help us all.’

‘No!’ I practically yelled it. Lazlo glanced at Lewis. So did Quinn. ‘You’ve got power, I know it, I can
feel
it! Combine forces, get over to the Bellagio, and kick his teenage ass! All we have to do is get Jonathan away from him. Hell, you even had the
chance
when you sent Quinn to get me!’

‘Jonathan doesn’t want to go,’ Lewis interrupted me. ‘Believe me, we’ve tried. Best we can figure, Jonathan
wants
to be Kevin’s Djinn.’

That made no sense at all. Why would Jonathan – who I
knew
was no one’s bitch – stay a slave? Unless there was something in it he wanted…

I had a blinding memory, real as the aching lump at the back of my head. Jonathan, standing in front of a plate-glass window that didn’t really exist, watching the world go by, his eyes dark and bitter and angry.
There are days when every single one of
them deserves to be wiped off the face of the earth.

He’d been looking out at the mortal world.

And Rahel had said,
He is the one true god of
your new existence, little butterfly.

I said slowly, ‘Kevin’s not doing this. At least, he doesn’t know he is, and he probably doesn’t want to do it. It’s Jonathan. He’s found a way to give the world back to the Djinn. As far as Jonathan’s concerned, Kevin’s the perfect answer – nearly unlimited power, not too bright, not too principled, too young to know that he’s being stupid. Too innocent to understand that Jonathan’s using him, not the other way around. Jonathan just says “yes, master” a lot and goes about his own affairs. He’s killing Kevin by drawing off every scrap of power inside of him, and he’s reaching through Kevin to suck it out of the world around him.’

Silence. Lewis’s expression was unreadable.

‘But you already knew that,’ I finished softly. ‘Didn’t you?’

Lewis nodded.

‘And you know what he’s trying to do.’

Another nod. Lewis wasn’t looking so good. I could almost see the blood draining out of his face,
leaving him an unhealthy yellowish grey.

‘Actually, killing the human world is a bonus,’ he said. ‘Jonathan’s looking for lost Djinn.’

‘Lost…’ I frowned. ‘You mean free, right?’

‘No. Lost.’ He sighed. ‘The Wardens have been losing Djinn, and we haven’t been finding them. They’re still sealed in bottles, best guess. And it’s too much of a coincidence that so many have gone missing. Somebody’s got them.’

‘Somebody around here?’

‘Think about it. Jonathan manipulated the kid into coming here, remember? He put the idea in Kevin’s head. He
wanted
to be brought here. That means the answer must be here, too.’

‘And you’re sure it’s not your friendly neighbourhood Ma’at.’

Lazlo looked offended. ‘We don’t imprison Djinn. We free them.’

I glanced at them each in turn. Ashworth looked like he was sucking lemons.

‘Up to you, Jo,’ Lewis said. ‘You get the boy out in the open, where we can stop this. If we have to take this fight up on the magical level, it’ll kill everything. That’s what Jonathan wants. That’s what he
needs
. You have to…’

His eyes rolled back in his head. I reached for him, but Quinn was there ahead of me, taking his weight and easing him down on the carpet full-length.

The seizure lasted a full two minutes this time, complete with bone-cracking, spine-bending galvanic spasms. I tried to hold him down but it felt like he was made of metal cables and stainless steel, not flesh and blood. Except there
was
blood, trickling bright red from the corner of his mouth. I wiped it away with a warm, damp washcloth Quinn brought from the bathroom. Once the convulsions stopped, he lay still as death except for the rise and fall of his chest. I ran my fingers through his sweat-damp hair and looked across at Quinn. Quinn looked as blank as marble, and just as hard.

‘He’ll sleep awhile,’ he said. ‘Let’s get him on the bed.’

I helped lift him. Now that the spasms were past, he felt like he was a disjointed marionette, all papier-mâché and thread. Lighter than he should have been. When Quinn stripped off his T-shirt I realised I could count his ribs. I put my hand flat against the bony ridges and found his skin was burning hot, hot as a Djinn’s.

‘Pants,’ Quinn said, and pointed to Lewis’s jeans. ‘Less confusing for everybody if you do it.’

I swallowed an inappropriate laugh and unbuttoned and unzipped. Déjà vu. Wasn’t the first time I’d been in Lewis’s pants…

Quinn whipped them off with medical efficiency. The boxers underneath were white with pale blue stripes, very 1950s. I pulled the covers up over him.

The three old men were looking at me expectantly. I closed my eyes for a few seconds, said a quiet prayer, and thought about what Lewis had shown me.

I’d been so arrogant to him. So self-righteous.
Since when did being the good guy mean
contracting murder?

Since standing by meant destroying the world. Or letting it be destroyed.

‘I’m your only hope to get close to Kevin, which is exactly what the Wardens want out of me, too,’ I said. ‘Here’s the deal. Non-negotiable. I’ll play it my way first. If I can retrieve Jonathan’s bottle without a fight, that’s how it’ll be done. If that fails, I’ll get him out in the open, and Quinn can take him out.’