Chill Factor

I leaned forward, rolling the beer bottle between my palms, and looked him directly in the eye. "David's here. In Las Vegas."



"Bullshit. You don't have his bottle."



"Somebody does. Maybe it's the same guy who's been bogarting Djinn for the past decade. You know, the one you're looking for?"



"You're lying."



"I could be." I deliberately upended my beer and drained it dry. Burped. "Explain something to me. You didn't give a shit about freeing him the whole time he was Bad Bob's property." The second the words left my mouth I wished I could rewind the tape, but he didn't react. Much. "You didn't rescue him when Bad Bob was whoring him out to Yvette Prentiss for her little games. It occurs to me to wonder why you're so hot to protect him from me. Who doesn't mean him any harm, as well you know."



He shrugged and took a pull off of his own beer.



His eyes never left me. "He hated Bad Bob," Jonathan said. "He hated Yvette. You..." He kept the heat off the words, but the air felt electric and harsh. "I can deal with the others. They only enslaved his body. You've gutted him."



"And you want things back the way they were?" I set the bottle down on the shiny antique side table. "That's not mine to give, Big J. Take it up with him. Oh, wait, you did, right? And when you told him to choose, he picked me. Wow. Bummer."



I felt a sharp pain go through my chest. Arrhythmia. Jonathan took another casual sip of beer.



"How's it feel, being back in the old body again? Working out for ya?"



"Famously." I wasn't going to beg. Another stab of agony, this one longer. "I need your help."



"Kinda figured you might."



"If you care about this kid at all, you need to help me get your bottle away from him."



Jonathan raised his eyebrows. "So you can be my new owner? Sorry, I dance with the one that brung me."



"You mean that you're not through with him yet."



"You've got to admit, the kid has talent. And one hell of a lot of power."



"Which he stole."



"Some of it." Jonathan shrugged. "Hey, his idea, not mine. Don't shoot the messenger."



"Not that it'd do any good to shoot you."



"There's that... The Ma'at are ready to move, is that what you're telling me?" Jonathan adjusted his position slightly, rolled his head to the side, but kept me pinned in his stare. "Time's up?"



"They'll kill him," I said softly. "You know they won't hesitate if they think there's no alternative."



No answer. He tipped his beer up, and his throat worked.



And he smiled.



"Hey, kid," he said, and put the bottle aside. "You're awake."



I looked around to see Kevin standing in the bedroom doorway. He looked pale and nervous and small, hair stuck up at odd angles as if it had never seen the toothy side of a comb. Next to him stood the thin tattooed girl, her short red hair gleaming, her hands clasped around Kevin's arm. Siobhan. The hooker.



Kevin stared at me with dead eyes. "I thought I told you to kill her," he said.



"Didn't tell me when," Jonathan pointed out, and when Kevin opened his mouth to rectify the mistake, Jonathan held up a single finger and waggled it.



Kevin shut up.



"Hey!" Siobhan glared, and took a step forward. She had cheap plastic high-heeled hooker shoes, but great balance, and the orange toenail polish was all that. She was too sharp in the chin, too narrow in the eyes, but the whole package was effective as hell in a knit top and low-rise jeans. "He owns you, man! You have to do what he says!"



"Siobhan," Kevin said quietly. "Don't."



"Yeah. Don't." Jonathan's tolerance for Kevin clearly didn't extend to girlfriends. "Butt out, Red, and I won't feel the need to show you the curb the hard way."



That gave me a nice, cold shiver. When Siobhan started to fire back a retort, I shook my head. "No," I said. "He's not kidding. Just relax, okay?"



"Like you care." She had a glare identical to Kevin's. Interesting. Maybe he actually had found a soul mate, all the way out here. A soul mate with her picture plastered on call-girl cards all over the street, but hey, it wasn't like Kevin was fresh out of the Innocent Academy. Kevin would find someone more screwed up than himself to fall for. It was inevitable. Since he'd been powerless for so long, someone in worse shape than him would have a powerful appeal.



"I care," I said gently. "I'm trying to keep him alive. Just do what this guy tells you, okay? And let me handle the witty banter."



Jonathan was looking bored. When I turned my attention back to him, he did an exaggerated lift of his eyebrows to indicate just how extreme his ennui was.



"What do you want?" I asked.



His eyes flickered, and for a second I thought he really was going to swat me like a fly. And then he smiled. "Okay. Here's the truth: I want you to be careful."



"And you care because...?"



His eyes focused briefly and pointedly where the warm spark of life fluttered inside me. "Got reasons."



"I'm not naming him after you, if that's what you're thinking."



Jonathan's lips curled into a deeper smile. A real one, nothing sinister or sarcastic about it. When he looked at me like that-no, at what was in me-I felt faint. He had the same supernatural power David possessed to make women's clothes fall off; he just rarely bothered to show it. I was grateful. If he'd looked at me like that before, I might've handed over David's bottle without a fight.



Well, not really. But I would've thought about it.



"Because of Imara," Jonathan said. Purred, actually. It was that kind of a word.



"Excuse me?" Before I could react, he stood up, reached over, and put his hand over my stomach. His touch was hot enough to scorch, almost painful, and I opened my mouth to yelp...



... and it ceased to hurt at all. There was a fast whirl of images that burned through me: a young woman with luxuriant black hair that fell in cascades to her waist. Laughing, talking, moving with the supernatural fury and grace of a Djinn. Her lips were David's. Her eyes... God, her eyes. Stern and burning, and the color of pure gold. She smelled of warm things, vanilla and cinnamon and woodsmoke; she was smiling and then she was gone, a whisper, a memory.



I caught my breath and felt tears run cold down my cheeks. Where Jonathan's hand had rested felt branded.



"Imara," I whispered. My child.



He was still next to me, close as a second skin, and his lips were warm at my ear. "Djinn can be born only out of death."



"So why are you keeping me alive, then?" I wiped at the tears, angry. He took a step back.



"Not human death. Not powerful enough."



I felt a cold flash, and said, "The death of a Djinn?"



No answer. Just that look from him, unexpectedly unguarded.



"And not just any Djinn."



"No," he said. "Not just any."



I felt light-headed and sick, every cut a nuclear fire, every ache another notch on the torture rack. My head throbbed hard and continuously, a strobe light of pain. I was aching and weary, and my hairline-fractured collarbone screamed every time I dared to move it, which now that adrenaline was fading I didn't even attempt.



I slowly let myself sit down again. "You mean David," I whispered. "David has to die for her to be born. God, I can't do this."



"Can't what?" he asked me. "Can't survive? Sure you can. That's what people do. They survive. It's the one thing about them I admire."



"I want to stop hurting." I was cold, wet, exhausted, wrung out. My daughter-the daughter I couldn't have without losing someone else I loved-my daughter had looked superhuman. I wasn't. "I want to be out of this, Jonathan. Let's end this."



He nodded, not unkindly. "Then get out. Walk away."



Kevin stepped up again, chin jutting out. "Hey! I said I want her dead, okay? She's trying to screw us! Just do it right-"



Jonathan, in a lightning-fast move, reached out and thumped him on the forehead. Just once.



Bop.



Kevin's eyes rolled back in his head, and he dropped. Siobhan yelled and went down on her knees next to him, fingertips pressed to his neck, but she needn't have bothered; Jonathan couldn't kill his own master. No matter how much he wanted to.



Kevin was sleeping like a baby.



"We'll take that up later," Jonathan said, and fixed Siobhan with a warning look. "Don't say a word."



She swallowed a mouthful of curses and ducked away.



I should do something, I thought. But honestly, what did it all matter, anyway? The kid was going to either get me killed or kill me himself. If he formulated the order right, Jonathan wouldn't have any choice but to carry it out.



I didn't have to care about any of this. Jonathan had already told me I could walk away. The Ma'at weren't my buddies. The Wardens... well, the Wardens hadn't exactly stepped up to shouldering the burdens. They'd sold me down the river when I most needed their support. And maybe Quinn was right... maybe the Wardens were corrupt and venal. I'd certainly seen enough of that to make it credible. I'd never taken money to change the weather, but I knew it went on. Rain on some farmland here for an extra sweetener... starve some folks over there to get them to cough up. As chaotic in nature as it all was, who'd know?



Worse... who'd care? Yvette Prentiss had violated every code the Wardens possessed. She'd ignored her duties, abused her stepson, used her Djinn for purposes even the Marquis de Sade might have found repulsive. Had anyone stopped her? No. Not until I made it impossible to ignore.



The Ma'at had some clear ethics-not to be confused with morals-but it was a chilly kind of arrogance, an icy view of the world. Human suffering didn't even factor into the equations. They concerned themselves with numbers, not faces. I could see why that appealed to Lewis; as caring and vulnerable as he was, numbers must have been an escape from the constant agony of feeling the weight of the world.



But I couldn't be that. I couldn't reduce people to numbers and trend lines. Ma'at's principles said that the forest had to burn, but I'd fight the fire every step, protect every tree, until the smoke choked me or I went up with the rest. That was my nature. You know what you look like in Oversight? Goddamn Saint Joan the martyr. You burn real bright, Joanne, but you're burning yourself right up. Chaz Ashworth had said that, before I'd started the fight that had killed him and left me in a cave, trapped and wishing I was dead.



You're burning yourself right up.



I didn't want to burn anymore. I was entitled to a little not-burning. Just for a while.



I clasped my hands over my stomach, over the tiny spark of potential life that was our child, and mourned something that wasn't even gone.



I felt a warm hand on my forehead. Not Jonathan's; his touch didn't comfort; it seared. This was something easier and gentler.



"She's burning up." For a second I thought it was Imara's voice, but then I cracked my tear-caked eyelids and saw it was red-haired Siobhan, perched next to me on the couch in her hussy jeans and cheap shirt and chipped nail polish. She had a fading bruise under one eye, concealed under makeup, and she smelled faintly like sex, as if it had soaked into her clothes. "She sick or something?"



"Or something," Jonathan said. He sounded remote. "Better get her a blanket."



Siobhan left, and a few seconds later I felt something heavy and soft settle over my sweating, aching skin. Her hand explored my forehead again. "She's been beat up pretty good," she said, with the authority of someone who knew the subject well. "Her eyes look funny."



"She has a concussion," Jonathan said. "She'll live."



"Yeah, well, you can't tell me you couldn't fix that shit." Siobhan sounded scared and mutinous. I felt a quick pulse of alarm and sat up, pulling the blanket close around me for comfort as I did.



Sure enough, Jonathan was giving her the hairy eyeball.



"I'm fine," I said, and sniffed when my nose ran. "You got any tissues?"



"Sure." She moved off again, came back toting a white box blooming with pastel sheets. I took a handful, thinking I was going to blow my nose, but then the unpleasant watery feeling let loose with a flood.



Nosebleed. I gasped and put the tissues to my nose, listened to Siobhan talking authoritatively about ice packs and putting my feet up, and watched Jonathan. He never stopped sipping his scotch. Never stopped watching me.



"You're not going to make it," he said finally, when Siobhan's fussing had me flat-out on the couch again with ice chilling my nose and my feet propped up on pristine down pillows. "You're not built for this kind of thing anymore. That body's taken enough abuse. Time to hit the showers."



I sniffed and swallowed a metallic taste of blood. "Don't snow me, Jonathan. You don't give a crap about me; you're worried about Imara. Assuming Imara isn't just some little illusion you conjured up out of your bag of tricks." I shifted the ice to a less painful angle. "How long is Kevin going to sleep?"



"As long as I want him to."



Valid answer. "Why are you here? Don't give me any bullshit about the kid. You could run rings around him. You do already. If you didn't want to be here, you'd be gone."



He went very still for the space of three or four seconds, then looked down into his drink. Which magically kept refilling. "I hear the shows are great."