Chill Factor

smile, when she lost the 'tude. She was a natural redhead, with the soft pink skin to match, and the light was kinder to her than the world. 'Watch it, buster. I'm the one with the-'

'You got nothing,' Jonathan said. 'We both know you can't make me do a damn thing I don't want to do. Yeah?'

'Yeah,' I agreed glumly. 'So why don't you want to return Lewis's powers? What's the point in that? He'll die!'

The smile continued on Jonathan's sharp, handsome face, but there wasn't any amusement in his eyes.

'Trust me,' he replied. 'It's better this way. Just for a while.'

We could have played the game for hours, I knew that; I had Jonathan's bottle, but I didn't have Jonathan himself, not by any stretch of the imagination. He'd been newly under thrall when Yvette had him, and he hadn't figured out the boundaries properly in the heat of the moment; otherwise, he never would have carried out half the commands she'd given him.

Lucky me, I got him farther along the learning curve.

'Fine,' I said. 'Wake Siobhan up. We're all going downstairs.'

He didn't so much as glance at her, but the girl came straight up, gasping, and immediately launched herself at me again. Jonathan rolled his eyes and, without my asking, stopped her in midlunge.

Freeze-frame.

He shook Kevin by the scruff of the neck and said, 'Explain to your girlfriend how stupid that is.'

Kevin licked his lips, darted glances from Jonathan to me and back again. 'Can she hear me?'

'Sure.'

'Siobhan… uh… cool it, okay? It's not like this is a bad thing. Maybe they'll all quit chasing us now.'

Jonathan released her from the pause button. Siobhan, off balance, windmilled her arms and legs but stayed upright.

And a pout. 'You don't want it back?'

'His bottle?' Kevin gave Jonathan another cautious look. 'Uh, no.'

'Loser,' she muttered. She threw up her hands and scooted her butt up on a bar stool. 'Coulda been rich, you know. Living in some big white mansion with servants and shit. Swimming pool.'

I didn't dare leave her behind; she knew too much. 'Okay, kids, let's go. Play nice and maybe I'll give you some good toys.'

Siobhan, no fool, lowered her mascara-thick eyelashes. 'Like a big white mansion?'

I reached out and shoved her off the bar stool. 'Don't push your luck.' I nodded at Jonathan. 'Let him go.'

'You're a bitch,' Kevin said.

'And you say that like it's a bad thing.' I grabbed Kevin by the shoulder and steered him and Siobhan in the direction of the door. 'Move it.'

I took Jonathan aside in the elevator, turned our backs to Kevin and Siobhan, and whispered, 'The Ma'at have a sniper on call. He's under orders to take Kevin out. I need you to make sure that doesn't happen.' No change in Jonathan's expression. No acknowledgment, either. I sighed. 'Can we agree to a decent working rapport, here? Because I really don't have time for this, and I can always stuff you back in the bottle and shove a tampon in the top instead of a stopper, and all the other Djinn will point and laugh-'

'Fine,' he said. 'I'll make sure Kevin doesn't get shot.'

I smelled a rat. 'I'd rather not be shot, either.'

Jonathan shrugged. I took it as a gift and saw that Kevin and his girlfriend had taken the opportunity to whisper together, too… probably not soft little nothings, from the glances they were tossing us. Great. Now I had to worry about treachery from Jonathan and the simpleminded scheming of the juvenile Bonnie and Clyde.

The elevator glided to a smooth, elegant halt and deposited us back in the marble hallways, rows and rows of doors all opening and closing, people always moving. They say New York is the city that doesn't sleep; Las Vegas doesn't even nap. I wondered when they got the basic cleaning done. Even Disneyland closes long enough to empty the trash and polish the brass.

We joined the flow out into the main concourse, turned left, and went past the cashier stand, into the wilderness of gently chiming slots. To our right were trendy restaurants-the kind that didn't post prices- and somewhere at the back was a walkway that led to Caesar's Palace next door. Next door, in Las Vegas terms, meant about a ten-minute walk through a sky bridge that seemed to go on forever.

I halted us near a bar at the back corner, chose a table, and got everyone to sit. Everyone except Jonathan, who was examining slot machines and entertaining himself by making random ones spit coins. Kevin watched him raptly. I could tell by the greedy flare in his eyes that he'd figured out what the Djinn was doing.

'Don't even,' I said. The security cameras wouldn't see Jonathan at all, most likely; they'd just see machines randomly vomiting tokens… but if Kevin started flouncing around making the bells ring, there'd be a fast, heavily muscled presence and a windowless office, followed by some harshly worded questions we couldn't afford to avoid just now. 'Play later. Just sit.'

Kevin, still watching Jonathan, said, 'I know they're going to kill me.' His expression didn't change. 'You might as well just take him and go. Siobhan and I can hide on our own.'

Surprisingly, that was probably true. He and Siobhan could blend in, get out of town, find some big city like Chicago or Detroit where two more teenagers wandering homeless wouldn't attract any notice. Providing Siobhan didn't just blow him off once she realized he wasn't the bankroll she'd thought. But I couldn't lose him now. I needed him, for Lewis's sake.

I caught a flicker out of the corner of my eye, and turned my head. Marion Bearheart was coming our way. She looked, as always, cool and composed. Her hands were in her coat pockets, and she didn't hurry; she stopped to admire some items in a shop window, checked out the menu at Le Cirque. She made a slow circuit of the area, checking the aetheric, I was sure.

Then she pulled up a chair next to me and said, 'Nice to know you made it.'

'Yeah, likewise.' I shot a look at Kevin and Siobhan. 'I guess you know Kevin.'

She nodded politely to him, as if she weren't planning to get him behind closed doors at her facility and strip him clean of power and potential just as soon as the opportunity presented itself. Kevin didn't move. He was giving both of us his patented bad-boy glower.

Marion dismissed him, and focused her dark eyes on me. 'You have it?'

I opened my fist to show her Jonathan's bottle. 'I'd like to trade for something more valuable than your word. Not that I don't trust you, but… well, I don't trust you.'

She removed a hand from her coat pocket and mutely displayed the blue glass bottle that Yvette Prentiss had used, not so very long ago, to trap a man willing to give up his life for me.

I reached out, slowly, and took the glass. No stopper in the bottle. It felt warm. 'David,' I whispered, and closed my eyes for a second in relief as the connection between us hummed tight between us.

'Right here.' I heard a chair scrape, and saw that he'd joined us at the table.

He looked utterly unchanged-auburn-flecked hair worn a little untidily, brown eyes flashing behind round gold- rimmed spectacles. An old-fashioned olive-drab coat over a faded blue plaid shirt. Blue jeans.

I sucked in a startled breath and felt my eyes sting with tears; the vision of him turned into a colorful blur. A blur that reached across empty space and cupped my cheek in its hand, and yes, that was his touch, warm and sweet and gentle. I leaned against it, breathing in the smell of old wool and cinnamon, leaves and woodsmoke. 'Oh, God,' I whispered, and it sounded like the prayer it was.

He was leaning close; I could feel the aura of him against me, the barely-there touch of his lips against my ear as he whispered, 'I've been watching you.' The shimmer of heat that ran through me turned me into honey and butter, made me think thoughts that I shouldn't be having in public, much less in front of people who might want to kill me.

'Could've helped me out a little,' I said.

'You did fine.' He kissed me, and all the thoughts were refined into sheer, unadulterated longing. I wanted him to keep kissing me, forever if that was possible. I couldn't imagine it ending, but of course it did, a slow withdrawal of those soft, delicious lips from mine.

I opened my eyes and looked straight into his, and saw them burning copper and gold, molten with love and