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."
"Chill Factor"
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 Djinn, we can't touch the big storms, the major disasters. The ones that kill a hundred thousand at a whack. Who will? You?"
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 Djinn, remembered the age and seduction and limitless power of him.
"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 cannon. You do know that, right? I think you're a diversion. Something for me to play with while they bring in the big guns."
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 Djinn, but then, the dynamics of that relationship had been a whole lot different. He'd looked on me mostly as a supernatural blow-up doll. Jonathan was, in a very real sense, the father he'd never had, and a very kick-ass dad he'd make.
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