Chill Factor

Too close. Too intimate. Very personal.

Stars in those eyes, like an endless sky. Unknown and unknowable, to anything human. And there was passion in there, too, the passion of gods that insects would never know or understand.

"This saves you," he whispered, and put his lips very gently against mine. A closed-mouth kiss, but it set my blood on fire, made my knees weak and rubbery. "She saves you. Count your blessings, Jo. This could have had a different ending."

… and time snapped back together. Jonathan stepped back, smiling.

And Kevin's fist hit my chin, snapped my head back, and instead of visions of mountains and gods I saw stars, but I hung on grimly to what was in my hand, even as his fingers scrabbled at it to take it away.

I slid sideways to the carpet, worked my jaw experimentally, and said, "Jonathan, restrain them, please."

When I opened my eyes and blinked away the blurring, he was holding Kevin by the scruff of the neck and Siobhan by the arm. They were both struggling-

Kevin was screaming curses, mostly directed at me- but they weren't going anywhere.

Jonathan raised his eyebrows in my direction. "Nice bruise you're going to have."

I glared. "Let's get this over with," I said. "Take the powers Kevin stole from Lewis, and put them back where they belong." He just stared at me. We did several long seconds' worth of that. "I said, take the powers Kevin stole from Lewis, and-"

"Heard you," Jonathan interrupted me. "You don't want me to do that right now."

"You want to play Rule of Three with me?"

"Trust me, you really don't want me to do what you just said."

"I-" I shut up and looked at him, deeply, and changed my mind. "Okay, I'll play. Why not?"

He gave me a Dji

"Meaning what?"

He shrugged. Siobhan was trying to bite his hand. He gave her one sidelong look, and she went limp and fell to the carpet.

"Hey!" I protested, and scrambled over next to her. She was still breathing. In fact, she had a sweet little 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 Dji

"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 Bo

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 Dji

"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.