Chill Factor

"Lewis, I don't know what kind of game she's playing with you, but she can't fix this," I said. "I asked David. He said no Dji

"True," Rahel purred. She turned to face me. Rahel had always had a certain feline quality, something as natural to her as breathing to me, and I felt the force of that again. A cat playing with her food, watching it run and squeak and hide. Dji

It happened so subtly that I almost missed it-did miss it, at first. It was only when an empty space behind her filled that I realized she meant it literally.

She really wasn't alone. Not in the least. The gray-haired, gray-eyed man behind her, with the pale, perfect skin… I remembered him, not fondly. Ashan. Jonathan's second-in-command, with David stuck in a bottle. Chilly bastard, full of power that boiled off of him in the aetheric like heat waves.

More of them, silently appearing in the room, mixed in and around us. A girl with raven-wing hair and elaborate eye shadow, dressed in crimson. Eyes like neon signs in a peculiar shade of magenta. A little girl named Alice in a blue-and-white pinafore. A skeletally thin, tall creature so androgynous that I couldn't decide what he/she was, except a fashion fatality.

Dji

I focused on little Alice, who favored me with a shy smile. "Hey, kid," I said. "Aren't you supposed to be somewhere?"

"Cathy isn't one of the Wardens anymore," she said. "She had enough. I'm free now." Alice's blond head inclined toward Lazlo. "She's with them now. Me too."

The room wasn't big enough to hold all this power, all this humming, vibrating potential. I heard glass rattling in a steady, musical jitter. Too many of them, too close together; I could feel the place heating up.

Lazlo could feel it, too. He said, "Enough. Your point is made, Rahel; there are a lot of you, and I know that you can help or hurt us, as you like. We trust you to make the right decisions, as you trust us. That's the principle of Ma'at. Balance."

"Balance," she agreed. "The Free Dji

Whatever second wind Lewis had gasped in was fading fast; his skin had taken on that ivory cast again, white around his mouth and eyes, and I could tell he was in pain. Maybe it was the presence of the Dji

Rahel slowly crouched in front of his wheelchair and laid her golden-tipped fingers on his knees.

"Ashan," she said. "Grant me your strength."

He moved to place a hand on her shoulder. Mr. Clean silently came to take Ashan's hand. The black-haired girl in red parted the humans in her way and laid fingertips on the back of Rahel's close-cropped head.

They came, one by one, moving like ghosts. Those that brushed past me made me feel sparks and chills from the contact. Each touching Rahel, or each other. Forming a network of power, in a very specific configuration.

Lazlo realized it first. He grabbed my elbow, hustled me over to Kevin, and said, "Take his hand."

"What? No!" Kevin yanked free. His eyes were huge and panicked. "You're not fucking with me, man! You'll kill me!"

"Kevin, shut up and do it." When I reached for his hand, he gave it to me in the form of a punch. It landed solidly in my solar plexus. I felt breath evacuate as if I'd been vacuum-sealed, and croaked for air as I doubled over.

But I grabbed his fist and held it in both hands, tightly. Death grip. Lazlo, bless him, held on to the kid's other arm. Once gravity and leverage were on our side, I transferred my grip to Kevin's shoulder to keep him down.

"Let me go, you fucking bitch!" He was screaming it now, writhing, trying to get away. I felt the air curdling. He was lashing out with powers, too panicked to do something targeted, but he could cause a lot of damage even unfocused if we let him. I sharpened my hold on my own energies, began to weight the air around him to damp down the chaos he was causing…

… and Myron Lazlo said, "No, Joa

"He isn't just going to try," I gasped breathlessly.

Tough to talk when my diaphragm didn't want to pull in air. "He's going to make what happened at the Bellagio happen here, don't you get it? Only worse!"

"I know." Lazlo closed his eyes. His face went serene. Not empty, just… peaceful. Behind him, Ashworth laid a hand on Lazlo's blue-suited shoulder, and then there were more of them, forming a human chain that matched the Dji

Balancing.

What the Ma'at were putting out wasn't energy; it was absence. Where the Wardens concentrated on the subatomic world, manipulating molecules, adjusting the vibration speed and makeup to rebuild the world in our image, the Ma'at went deeper. I couldn't see how, until I let myself go still and quiet with them.

Kevin's energy raged like a forest fire on the aetheric, power enough to destroy the city, level forests, break the land into rubble. And power moves.

But the Ma'at surrounded it. Contained it.

Negated it.

"For every action, reaction," Lazlo murmured. "For every vibration, a cancellation. We don't seek to win the struggle. We seek to stop the game."

I remembered the card game. The cards floating over the table. Even as it formed in my head, I heard Lazlo sigh. "You see power where no power exists. We didn't float the cards. We simply negated the forces that acted on them to make them fall."

Kevin, furious, screaming, red-faced, tried to rip the walls of the room apart by digging deep into the bedrock below the hotel. He didn't care anymore who he hurt. Maybe he never had.

My instinct was to act, to do something, but I waited, watching.

Marion's hand slipped over my shoulder in a warm, gentle touch, and when I looked at her I saw tears in her eyes.

"I see," she said. "I see what to do. All this time we destroyed them, and we could have saved them…" She was talking about the Wardens she'd been ordered to neuter-or kill. This was a revelation for her, and it couldn't possibly be a happy one.

The Ma'at, in their quiet, invisible way, focused their powers to still the vibrations. It was a basic principle of wave motion; hit the right frequency, and the wave disappears. At a molecular level, everything resonates at specific speeds, to specific notes.

Even the earth.

Even Kevin.

The Ma'at didn't fight what he did; they fought what he was, at the source… stilling him, quieting him.

Stopping him, as a mother's hand stills a child's lips.

Kevin wasn't screaming anymore, I realized, and I looked down. His tear-streaked face was open and vulnerable. Defenses gone. I felt him trying to get beyond his own skin; he had Lewis's earth powers, and that meant that if he wasn't particular about how he used it, he could easily blow my heart open or crush my brain into jelly inside my skull. The temptation to do something, anything to protect myself was almost overwhelming, but I had to trust Lazlo. The best I could understand it, if I introduced a chaotic vibration into what the Ma'at were laying down around him, it would destroy any chance of success.