Chill Factor (Weather Warden #3)

"Why are you here?" I asked. His dark eyes flashed to me.

"Don't play games with me." It was an unmistakable warning, followed by a wintry smile. "Besides. Philosophy's really not my strong suit."

I chickened out on the Rule of Three. "Never mind. I already know. Don't tell me it was because Kevin ordered you to bring him here. You arranged for that kid to claim you. You made it easy for him, because you knew it would be simple to do exactly what you've done. Manipulate him like Gumby and get whatever you wanted." I sucked in a deep breath. Siobhan was sitting on the couch next to me, and I wasn't entirely sure how much she knew, but knowing Kevin, he'd probably told her everything he knew and lied about a whole lot he didn't. "You're killing him, you know. Just like you're killing everything around you. You need to stop this."

"Stop what, exactly?" he asked mildly.

I was tired, aching, pregnant, and fed up. "Jonathan, you look like the kind of guy who gets what he wants, and damn the consequences. Which is why you and Kevin are a match made in heaven. Look, I know why you're on a crusade. Lewis told me about the missing Djinn. You're using Kevin to suck power out of everything and everyone around us to try to find them, but more power won't do it. This isn't a situation that calls for a bigger hammer."

"I suppose you know what it calls for."

I moved the ice pack from my nose to my throbbing forehead. "Not a friggin' clue. Why, should I?"

For answer, Jonathan took me up on the aetheric. It wasn't like what had happened when the Ma'at had dragged me up, kicking and screaming; this was more like he made the aetheric descend to us. I never even moved, and yet suddenly everything was in that deep Oversight color palette, ringed in translucent shell-like auras. Siobhan turned to a shadow, sparkling with jealous-green and envy-red; she looked positively festive. Kevin was... nothing. A hole in the aetheric through which energy poured, draining into Jonathan. Dispersing... elsewhere.

That wasn't what he was trying to show me. As I watched, Jonathan dipped his fingers into shadow and tugged, revealing thin spiderwebs of lines. Lines that ran from several different directions... and connected to me.

"What...?" I reached down to touch one, but my aetheric fingers passed right through it. I could barely see it, and I was pretty sure that was because Jonathan was allowing me to see it. It wasn't anything humans were equipped to sense... or, I thought, Djinn.

"Everything connects," he said. "The important thing is who connects, and when, and why. And the missing Djinn? They connect to you. I never knew that until I saw you here."

"How?" I asked, mystified. He shrugged.

"You tell me."

Another eyeblink, and the aetheric disappeared, melting into the expensive luxury of Kevin's stolen suite. Outside the windows, thunder rumbled.

"The lines connect to you," he said. "You know where my Djinn are."

I sat up, felt my nosebleed threaten to start up, and went flat again, ice pack in place. "I don't."

"Do."

"Don't," I said definitely. "Look, if I'd seen a whole bunch of bottles lying around someplace, don't you think I would have said something?"

I happened to be looking at the bar, with its gleaming ranks of scotch and gin and tequila, with its crystal glitter of glasses catching the light.

If I'd seen a whole bunch of bottles lying around...

"Holy shit," I murmured. I sat up, headache forgotten, nosebleed forgotten; the ice pack thumped to the carpet.

If I'd seen a whole bunch of bottles.. .

Goddamn. Pretty smart, kiddo.

"Wake him up," I said. Jonathan frowned, put aside his drink, and stood up as I did. "Wake him up right now!"

He didn't do anything that I could see, but Kevin groaned and flopped and came upright with a jerk. Siobhan got up and teetered over on her high-heeled hooker shoes to his side; he grabbed her hand and held it, and for a second I saw the scared kid under the surly adolescent.

"He knocked you out," Siobhan told him. "I told him it was a mistake. You should punish him."

Kevin groped her thigh awkwardly. She hauled him to his feet, and he put his arm around her and faced Jonathan squarely.

"Don't do that again," he said. His jaw muscles flickered, trying to hold back anger or fear. "I mean it. I'll put you back in your bottle and I'll toss it in the nearest sewer, I will, I swear."

I looked at Jonathan, who shrugged. "Hey, you're the one who wanted to wake him up. I guess you have a reason."

I did. I hugged the blanket closer around my shoulders and walked over to Kevin and Siobhan. He took up a defensive stance and-how weird was this?- moved the girl behind him. Kevin, the knight in slightly tarnished armor.

His eyes darted from me to Jonathan and back. I must have looked fierce... bruised, bloody, wild-eyed, wrapped in a blanket like some Red Cross rescue. He opened his mouth to order Jonathan to do something, then gave it up with a visible effort. Smart kid. Starting to realize just how little owning and operating a Djinn of Jonathan's quality was doing to help him in the first place.

"I need to talk to you," I said to the kid. "In the bedroom. You." I pointed at Jonathan. "You stay here."

He gave me that thin little look that clearly said, Make me. All righty then.

"Make him," I said crisply to Kevin, who flinched, but nodded.

"Yeah," he agreed. "Back in the bottle."

Jonathan had a lot of power, but that was one command he couldn't resist. Whoosh. Vapor. Gone.

"And don't come out until I say so!" Kevin called after him.

"You ought to cork the bottle."

"And show you where it is? Blow me."

"You wish." I sighed. I trailed blanket all the way over to the bedroom door, opened it, and stepped into Shangri-la. "Oooooh," I said, and rubbernecked. "I could get used to this."

It was a palace. Space, expansive views (of clearing skies), carpet so thick and glorious it begged to be petted. A huge fantasy of a bed, heavily rumpled, with thick down pillows dented and disarranged. The entertainment center had a plasma TV. It was on mute, but it was tuned to a sex channel... I cleared my throat and walked over to hit the power on the remote.

"Hey!" Kevin protested.

"Trust me, you're not missing any plot points." I nodded across the room to a small grouping of elegant gilt-and-brocade chairs. Two were covered with piles of newspapers and room-service trays with half-eaten burgers. "Mind making a hole? I'm a little under the weather."

As jokes went, it was weak, and besides, neither of them got it, but Kevin shoved newspapers out of the way and Siobhan piled trays off on another piece of furniture-some kind of priceless antique that would have had dealers weeping at the abuse. I made sure the blanket cushioned the chair, and let myself relax.

A little.

"You know I'm not going to hurt you," I said to Kevin. "Number one, well, I can't. You're too powerful, and besides, I'm too damn tired."

"You can leave," he said. Being-for Kevin-magnanimous. "I'll let you walk out. Just go."

"That's nice, but if I go, so does your last hope for getting out of this thing alive. Those people out there, they're not going away. You're not going anywhere, because they've got this place locked down, and even though you've got Jonathan, you have to know that he's got his own thing going." I watched his eyes, and saw the flash of resentment and fear in them. "You're a means to an end, Kev. Have you tried to leave Las Vegas?"

He didn't answer. Siobhan did. "Once," she said. He frowned at her, but she ignored him. "He told that guy to get us out of here, but then there was this whole debate. It was stupid. I told him so."

Jonathan didn't want to leave, and if he didn't want to, Kevin had very little understanding of how to make him. Hell, Kevin hadn't even been able to control me, and it wasn't as if I were the most difficult of Djinn, back when I'd been all floaty. He was completely out of his depth.

"These people are going to kill you." I didn't pull any punches. There wasn't really any time. "It won't be like the movies, Kevin-it won't be some big blaze of glory, some badass villain ending. They'll just kill you, and then walk through your blood to get what they want. I can't stop them unless you help me."

"Jonathan will-"

"Jonathan," I cut him off, "will do just as Jonathan sees fit, and if you're not useful to him anymore, kiss your ass good-bye. Get me?"

He didn't want to, but he got me. Kevin played with a frayed hole in his jeans, glared at me from under a fringe of ragged, unwashed hair, and didn't seem to notice that his hooker girlfriend was rubbing his back for comfort. I took a second to scan her over more closely, then took a good hard look up on the aetheric.

She wasn't more than she seemed. Just a girl, nothing special, no Warden powers, no Ma'at glyphs. The longer I stared at her, the more I saw... a fragile blush of gold in her aura, like soft morning. Black slashes beneath of greed and pain. She had a bad history, but so did Kevin... that was what drew the two of them together. The dark gravity of desperation.

"You're running from something," I said to her, and saw her flinch in both the real world and the aetheric. "Someone."

"Maybe." Bravado wasn't her strong suit. "None of your business."

"Someone here in town? Who is it?" I had an instinct, and followed it. "Quinn. Quinn has something on you."

No answer. Siobhan stared at me with pretty, empty eyes, and I switched back to Kevin. He'd reached out for her hand, like a boyfriend, not a trick. And I saw the corresponding flicker and glow of her aura.

True love. How romantic.

Kevin took in a deep breath, glanced at his girl, then back at me. "You're right," he said. It was the most adult tone I'd ever heard him use. "I got stupid. I shouldn't have taken that guy Lewis's powers... Hell, I don't even know how to, you know, do stuff with them. Well... I did some things..."

"Like what?"

"You know. Things. Like... made girls' T-shirts see-through. And there was this flower garden-I made it grow and gave Siobhan a rose."

"That was nice," she said.

He shrugged, indifferent. Only someone his age could be bored by ultimate power. He brightened up and continued, "I got GWAR to do a free concert downstairs, you know, in the lobby. With the blood and everything. It was cool, especially when they were cleaning it up later-they all kept yelling at each other about who let it happen. Pretty funny."

That was the human race, all right; a thrash-metal band shows up, plays at ear-bleeding volume, and everybody blames the next guy. Management was probably still shaking in their Bruno Maglis. I wondered why security hadn't put a stop to it, and realized that Jonathan had probably found it just as funny as Kevin.

Guys. What can you do?

"And there was that fire; that was cool." Siobhan said, eyes gleaming. Kevin shot her a look, and she got off the subject fast. "I said he should rub the lamp or whatever and say he never wants to work again, but he said that was stupid, that he'd end up paralyzed or dead or something."

Which was what I'd threatened him with, back in the bad old days of Kevin being my lord and master. I couldn't restrain a smile. Kevin's answering one was thin and fragile, and shattered when a far-off rumble of thunder sounded. He turned his face to the windows and looked out.

Even tired and drained as I was, I felt the pulse of power that went out of him-unfocused, overdone, like a cruise missile swatting a gnat. The clouds literally exploded into vapor, veiling the sun, and then vanished completely.

In three seconds, it was hot and clear as far as the eye could see.

Kevin turned back to me and saw me staring, lips parted.

"I don't like rain," he said flatly.

He'd always had Fire Warden powers, but it was surprising he was doing this kind of weather manipulation with Lewis's stolen bag of tricks. And that he was learning to use it without Jonathan's tutelage. No, on reflection, not surprising: alarming. "You shouldn't-"

He interrupted. "You don't tell me what to do. Nobody gets to tell me what to do, ever again."

I shut my mouth. No percentage in arguing with him, not now. His mood had changed again, just like the weather-gone dark and morose, in contrast to the bright shininess beyond the glass-and I'd seen Kevin in dark moods before. Not good. When he was scared he lashed out, and right now I didn't have the strength or the ability to go toe-to-toe with the little jerk.

We stared at each other in silence for a few long seconds, and then Kevin blinked and, still surly, said, "You want I should fix that stuff?"

"What stuff?"

For answer, he reached out and took hold of my wrist. I tried to pull back, but he was stronger than he looked-weedy, but roped with muscle-and then I felt the hot tingle and knew what he was doing.

I stared down at my exposed skin as the cuts turned pink, puckered closed, and sealed up. I felt things shifting inside, healing. The heat made me break out in a fast sweat, and the tingle turned to a more localized heat. Deep down. Really deep.

"Stop," I panted. Kevin kept holding on. "Stop it!" I yanked free, breaking contact, and knew my face was flushed. He'd been healing me, but he'd also been playing with me. Siobhan had taught him some tricks, consciously or not. He gave me a smug grin and settled back with a proprietary arm around his girl.