Chill Factor

"I know you didn't give him up on purpose," he said. "Who's got him? Where is he?" Jonathan asked. He looked relaxed, but I wasn't deceived; I also felt something weird in the air. Kevin was standing motionless, staring at the Dji

"The Wardens have him," I said. "It's out of my hands. You'll have to provoke a full-out war to get him back now."

"You say that like it's a bad thing." Jonathan took his feet off of the antique table and stood up. He had a kind of energy to him that made me shiver-restless, intense, fueled by something I didn't fully understand. "You think we can't win a war like that."

"I know you can't win a war like that. But more important, a whole lot of people would die in the middle of it, and neither one of us wants that to happen." I hoped.

He walked up to me, hands in his jeans pockets, and stood there looking down at me. Lightless eyes. Something cold moving in their depths, like dying stars.

"Don't assume you understand what I want," he said. "Human life is cheap. There's only one race I have a vested interest in protecting-the one you use and degrade and throw away. My people. If a war with the Wardens is what needs to happen to get my point across, well, that's just very sad for you. I'm not letting you trade us like trinkets any longer."

"Hey," Kevin said. He'd moved in behind me while my attention was focused on Jonathan; it creeped me to realize that I hadn't noticed. "Wait a minute."

"Quiet," Jonathan hissed. "The lady and I are having a conversation."

I yelped as my chair suddenly began to slide, as if shoved hard from behind. Heading for Jonathan, who stepped out of the way…

… and then heading straight for the plate-glass window.

I felt panic grab my throat, because the chair kept accelerating and I knew I was going to hit the glass, crash through, tilt out over that sickening drop, and fall. And scrabbling my feet on the carpet wasn't slowing me down.

Jonathan brought the chair cleanly to a stop right at the window. I grabbed the arms so tightly I felt something crack, either wood or my fingers, and panted out the shock and fear.

"See that guy down there?" Jonathan asked, and tilted my chair up on its front legs to give me a better view. I meeped and clutched the chair arms harder. "No? Well, okay, granted, they all look alike from up here. Here, I'll help."

My forehead touched the glass.

It rippled like water, and I melted right through the slick, cold surface, head and shoulders. I felt fresh, hot air blast over me, fast as the jet stream, and my hair whipped back in a tattered black flag over the back of the chair. I was afraid to breathe. The glass felt molten at the edges, thickly liquid around my body. It wasn't holding me in place. There was nothing now between my tilted chair and thin air but Jonathan's goodwill, which I wasn't sure I actually had. I kept trying to push backward, but I wasn't going anywhere.

"That man down there is some kind of Warden," Jonathan said. "A leftover from before I put up the wards. Granted, he's not very good, but hey, he's what you guys are known for, right? Secondhand crappy work? That's why people die night and day from your negligence. Can't blame me for that."

"I don't," I managed to choke out between clenched teeth. "We do the best we can. And if you'd work with us instead of against us, we'd be able to help more people. But you're not about helping anyone, are you? You're about freedom at any cost. Jesus, if we free the Dji

The chair thumped back down to the carpet, and the glass re-formed in front of me with a thick sucking sound. Waves rippled through it, then stilled. I looked up into Jonathan's dark, endless eyes, and remembered falling into them as a Dji

"Nobody ever asked us," he said, and sank down to a crouch next to me. That smile was beautiful, cynical, and utterly chilling. "Not that we'd say yes, but it'd be nice to be asked. But never mind all that. Who sent you here?"

"Nobody."

"Let me put it another way… somebody made sure that you were dead enough to get by the wards and dropped you right in our laps. Who?"

"Bite me." The chair tilted again. Glass against my forehead, fluid and warm, flowing around me. I whined somewhere deep in my throat and closed my eyes. "No, really, I mean that. Bite me. Just don't throw me out the window, 'kay?"

"Scared?"

"Oh, yeah." I managed a pallid, sweaty smile. "You?"

He leaned over to study me, upside down. "You're so expendable they practically fired you out of a circus ca

Kevin, in the background, cleared his throat. "Don't you think-"

"No," Jonathan cut him off. "Let me take care of this."

"But-"

"Son, this is out of your league," Jonathan said. Not unkindly. "She played you before; she'll play you again. Just let me handle it."

"Okay." Kevin sounded lost and uncomfortable and very much a kid. He'd been a lot more difficult when I'd been his Dji

Except I didn't think he had Kevin's best interests at heart.

I turned my head and looked straight up into Jonathan's eyes. "Don't use him. He deserves better than that. If you want to kill me, just do it; don't drag the kid into it. It's cheap and it's cruel."

I got a quirk of ash-gray eyebrows, a flash of surprise across the ageless face. "I thought he was a murderer. A rabid dog that needed killing. That's what the last Warden had to say before he took the express elevator down. You can still see the splash on the sidewalk if you look closer." He tilted my chair again. I yelped and tried to push myself through the back of the cushions. Hung on for dear life and tried to swallow the urge to beg for my life.

Twice in one day. "You really think the kid deserves a chance?"

"I think he needs to be stopped," I said breathlessly. "I don't think that necessarily means he has to be killed. And since I may be the only one who thinks that, you really ought to think twice about giving me the vertical tour."

This time the glass just disappeared. Poof. The legs of the chair were one inch from the window. Tilted forward as I was, my knees were already exposed to the bright Las Vegas sun. Below, the Bellagio's fountains roared like Niagara, and I could taste the metallic humidity of them evaporating under the desert's constant fixed stare.

I started to slide out, and the sunlight slid hot over my thighs, illuminated my stomach… I was going over, screaming.

That was when Jonathan pulled in a breath so sharp and hard it was audible over the tearing wind, and reached out to yank me back, into the seat. He let the chair thump safely back to the carpet.

Stared down at me with wide, dark, surprised eyes.

"No," he said. "He couldn't possibly be that stupid."

He, who? Lewis? Au contraire, mon ami. I was feeling like everybody was acting fairly stupidly, including me with the bravado. I struggled to breathe without sobbing. God, I didn't like heights, particularly heights from which I would drop to my death and do a fast, ugly survey of thirty-five floors on the way down. I looked up through my wind-tangled hair and saw Jonathan still staring. He looked honestly spooked. It lasted for two or three heartbeats, and then he got control of his face and went back to his habitual I-don't-give-a-crap expression.