Chill Factor

No shoes, disappointingly. Her legs misted down around calf level, in the traditional Djinn way. She didn't waste her energy on anything as human as feet.

I waited for Lewis to say something. Anything. To goddamn well look at me.

He moved the cane in front of him and braced himself with both hands, staring down. Absolving himself of responsibility.

'I swear to God, Lewis, I won't forget this,' I said. 'Whatever you're doing-'

Lel cut me off with a simple, direct command to her Djinn. 'Stop her heart.'

I sucked in a fast, hard breath, not really expecting to finish it, but then my lungs were full and I was holding my breath and still nothing was happening. The Djinn in Prada and Lel were exchanging looks like nuclear weapons.

'Did you hear me?' Lel asked through gritted teeth.

'Clarification is required,' Prada said. Ah, it was like that. Apparently, Lel had done something to get on the wrong side of this Djinn. Bad timing: Djinn liked to toy with people, especially ones they didn't like. And they really didn't like to be used as cheap executioners.

Lel's fingers tightened around the test tube, then relaxed; she couldn't risk even a hairline crack in it. Her dimples started looking hollow instead of cute, and her eyes took on a hard, sharp shine. 'Stop her heart from beating. How much more clarification can you need?' Lel's eyes cut to Lewis, but he didn't comment or move. His head was still down, his shoulders tensed.

Prada had a cruel tilt of a smile. 'Specify,' she purred. Carl muttered a soft, exasperated 'Fuck me!' and the Djinn's smile gathered force, as if she were really very amused. I glanced frantically from Prada to Lel to Lewis, and felt a scream building somewhere like fizzy soda at the back of my throat.

'Lewis, help me,' I whispered. I got an involuntary look from him, a flash of dark eyes that betrayed how much this was costing him, this stillness and silence.

And he looked away again, leaving me to my fate. My heart was hammering so fast and hard I thought it was shaking me apart; I was trembling all over, and my knees had gone the consistency of rubber bands. There was some panicked screaming going on in the back of my head, along the lines of I don't want to die! and if this went on any longer, I wasn't going to be able to keep my cool.

'If you're going to do it,' I said in a surprisingly steady voice, 'don't screw around. I'm not going to beg.' Unless it went on another thirty seconds.

For the first time, Prada's reddish eyes flicked toward me. Read me like a book. I saw her face go still and blank, and then those flawlessly made-up eyelids went to half-mast and she held out a hand toward me. An open hand.

I felt her power reach out and fold around me, sink deep into my skin, my muscles, my bones. It kept moving, tightening, focusing around the panicked thick drumming of my heart.

'No,' I whispered, and tried to back up.

No use. There was a second's pain, and then my heart just… stopped.

So much silence. I never knew how quiet it could be. The wind whispered over me, brushed black hair over my shoulders, and I knew I should breathe but breathing didn't seem that important now. Listening was important. There was so much to hear…

I fell to my knees. I know that because I heard it happen, heard the heavy, fleshy thump and each individual grain of sand rolling and scraping.

Lel bent over me. The sun gave her a completely inappropriate and undeserved halo. 'By the way, they're not knockoffs, bitch.'

Prada kept squeezing the life out of me. I wanted to say something, but I had no idea what, and anyway, there was nothing left now, nothing but the vast silence and a burning desire to see David, one more time…

It all happened so fast.

The cold black glitter of an Ifrit launched itself over me and battened on Prada like a glittering black second skin. It began to feed. Prada reflexively did the only thing that would save her… she translocated. Because she was still sunk elbow deep in me, stopping my heart, I felt the drag as she towed me with her.

'No!' That was Lewis, yelling. 'No, not yet, not yet-'

I felt Lel reaching out, but it was too late; we were already moving, already in that not there space between worlds.

My last thought was, Oh shit, my heart isn't beating…

And then I hit something, hard, and that all stopped mattering.

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