Chill Factor

chips. Lazlo gathered the cards and neatly shuffled them back together before handing them off to a Luxor- uniformed factotum. The dealer put the cards into an envelope, pulled a self-seal, and labeled the outside of the envelope with the date, time, and some kind of code number. So there could be analysis done later, I assumed, in case of an allegation of cheating. Nice.

He put a fresh, unbroken deck on the table and stepped away to stand like a statue in the corner, near the bartender.

'Now,' Myron said, and gave me that parsimonious smile again, 'let's talk about you, Ms. Baldwin. What brings you to Las Vegas?'

If he could ante up that fake a smile, I could see it and raise him on wattage. 'Sun, fun, shopping…'

'Could it be that you're here to make a deal with Mr. Prentiss on behalf of the Wardens?'

I looked at Quinn. He was leaning up against the wall, arms folded, watching me with bright, uninformative eyes.

'Could be,' I said. 'Could be I'm here to kill him. Could be I'm just in the wrong place at the wrong time. That happens more than you'd think.'

Myron laughed. 'My dear lady, I can also see into the aetheric, you know. And while you are intemperate and occasionally unwise, you lack the necessary ruthless detachment to be able to execute young boys. Even in pursuit of the greater good. And besides that, the Djinn would stop you, you know. However, I think you actually believe you might do it, so I'll give you the benefit of the doubt and not consider it a lie.' The laughter faded out of his eyes and left them chilled and scary. 'You do not want to lie to me, my dear. Really, you do not.'

Okay, now I had a creepy bad feeling. They knew about the Wardens. They knew about Kevin. They knew about Jonathan. Was there anything these guys didn't know?

'Your attempt to stop him is foolish,' one of the others continued. He was a short, gnarly-looking little man, approaching middle age but not yet arrived: slicked-back black hair, rimless glasses, eyes of no immediate impact behind them. 'The Wardens need to stay out of this. They caused this mess, just as they've caused hundreds more in the past thousand years.'

'Oh, okay. We'll just pick up our toys and go home.' I smiled at Gnarly Guy, saw a faint flush spark high in his cheeks. 'You do know about the temperature rise, don't you? Global warming? Impending ice age? Earthquakes? You do think we should do something to stop that, right?'

Silence. They all looked at me, and then Myron Lazlo said gently, 'Actually, my dear, no. We don't. And that is our difficulty. The Wardens long ago exceeded their authority when they began to enslave the Djinn and force the world to their own uses. The system has long been out of balance, which is why you have to work so hard to keep it going. What you're speaking of is simply the logical result of so many mistakes. It can't be corrected by working even harder to control it.'

'Then how can it be corrected?' I asked.

'By letting go,' he said. 'By giving up the illusion of control and allowing the world to right itself. That is the only way we can find our balance again.'

'And how many millions is that brilliant strategy going to kill?'

'As many as it takes, my dear. If the Wardens had followed the right course a thousand years ago, we'd not be facing this kind of apocalypse now, but they refused to believe. More power, they said. More power will fix what's broken. But it won't, and you know that on some level, don't you?'

Things started to fall into place. 'You've been fighting us.'

'No,' Myron said. 'We've been correcting you. We stand on the side of the Mother. On the side of balance. We are Ma'at.'

I stared at them, blank. They stared back. After a long moment, Myron smiled beautifully and nodded at the bartender.

'I believe our guest might require a drink,' he said. 'You favor whiskey, I believe? Although I find a gin and tonic to be quite refreshing at moments like these.'

I ordered something, no idea what it was even as I was saying it, because my whole attention was fixed on what was opening up before me. Another world. The answer to the difficulties the Wardens had been facing, the reason the damn world didn't cooperate.

I was looking at an enemy the Wardens didn't even know they had. And dammit, they didn't even register as Wardens. As anything at all. How the hell could they do anything against us?

Silence reigned until the uniformed bartender pressed something into hand. I sipped. Not whiskey. Something bitter and bracing, cool as limes on my tongue.

Myron said, 'We are the keepers of the balance, Miss Baldwin. I trust you have some understanding of what I'm saying?'

'I don't care if you call yourself the Justice League of America, you're screwed up,' I said. 'Don't you realize that you're playing with lives? People are dying out there. Millions will die.'

'And that is a very natural thing,' put in another player. 'Sentimentality should have no place in an analysis of the environment. Things die. It's the nature of the world. You acknowledge that sometimes fires must burn so that the forests may be renewed. Surely you apply the same standard to the entire world.'

'So now humanity is a forest and you're going to let a fire burn us out? Kill to cure?' I gripped the sweating glass hard in my hands and strove to keep my voice steady. 'I stand corrected. You're not screwed up; you're insane.'

'We have a long view,' Myron admitted. 'To you, it might seem cruel, but I promise you, my dear, it's the best thing in the end. The more power you expend preventing the Mother from correcting the balance, the more violent the correction will be when it comes. And even the Wardens understand that you can't stop everything you identify as a disaster. Far from it.'

'Yeah, thanks to you guys, I'll bet.' I took another fast drink. The stuff was strong, judging by the numbed feeling in the back of my throat; I set the rest of it back down on the floor, but before it touched down another uniformed flunky was there to grab it and carry it safely back to the bar.

'It was the Wardens who forced things out of alignment thousands of years ago,' Myron said. 'The system began to fail the moment that they discovered they could force the Djinn to their service, instead of asking for their cooperation. Which brings us to the sorry state of affairs we find ourselves in. Djinn no longer act for us; they act against us, in constant subtle ways. The earth itself struggles to throw off the chains. And the Wardens are so oblivious, they simply tighten their grip around their own throats.'

'Wow. That's poetic,' I said. 'So you brought me here to lecture on the evils of the Wardens?'

Myron looked amused. So did the rest of them, even Gnarly Guy, who looked like he wasn't amused by much this side of the grave. Myron passed the unbroken deck of cards to his left and nodded to the table. As if he'd given some signal, the rest of them scooted around, leaving space for another chair.

'No. We brought you here to play cards,' he said. 'Join us, Miss Baldwin. We could use a bit of feminine strategy in this room. Don't worry. We'll play it the normal way, out of courtesy to you.'

I shot a look at Quinn, who was a statue against the wall; he had a long-distance stare that didn't seem to see me anymore. I stood up and instantly one of those suit-coated big men picked up my chair and carried it to the card table.

Myron indicated the place with an open hand. I tried another pleading look at Quinn. It was like pleading with a statue of Stalin.

I took the seat, and the new dealer-an elegantly put together little man with big Coke-bottle glasses- expertly snapped the seal on the deck, fanned the cards for inspection, shuffled, and began the deal. I was about to say that I had nothing but my shoes to bet with, but before I could draw the breath someone-I looked up and saw it was Quinn-had put a rack of chips down in front of me.

'I trust you know how to play,' Myron said.

I gave him my very best innocent smile. 'I went to a couple of casino nights in college.' I fanned the hand I'd been dealt. It sucked, naturally. That didn't matter. I was about to teach these masters of balance something about tipping the scales in your own favor. 'I'm in.'

We played Texas Hold 'Em, and they cleaned my clock.