Chill Factor

them. Wish to God I knew where they were going…'

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

I wasn't about to tell them.

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

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

El Niсo on a global scale.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

'Yes.'

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Careful.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

I can't. Can't.

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

Too much goddamn emotion.

I prepared to smash the bottle against the railing.

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

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

I can't.

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

I gave him that chance.

He did nothing.

Paul caught the glass container, and I felt the connection explode, melt away into silence. Even though David