Chill Factor Page 0,40

to?"

"I know you thought you were being all clever and shit, but the kid wasn't giving you Jonathan's bottle. Oh, he was going to give you a bottle, but it was one with a nasty toy surprise inside. He already pulled that on one other poor bastard." Quinn's glance in the rearview mirror was grim and assessing. "I take it you have some experience with Demon Marks."

"Chill Factor"

Where the hell had he heard that? Not even the Wardens knew much about it. The Djinn knew, but this guy wasn't Djinn; I'd have been able to tell that much. Not a Warden, not Djinn, but something.

And yet, when I took a look at him in Oversight, he was just a guy. Nothing special. Not even any powers to speak of.

Quinn could tell I wasn't going to offer any color commentary. "If he'd given you the bottle, you'd have uncorked it to order Jonathan in," he said. "Only problem is, that would have let something else out, and we've got quite enough of that kind of problem going around right now. So sorry, but I had to stop you."

I felt a flush of cold through my veins. It was possible Quinn was right; Kevin's brain worked that way. If he could have found a way to screw things up, he'd have done it. And giving up... it wasn't really his style, was it? Taking out the enemy in the most horrifically violent way possible, that was his style. And if there really had been a booby-trapped bottle...

Chapter Eleven

During Kevin's escape in New York three weeks ago, he and Jonathan had released from their bottles at least three Djinn who were infected with Demon Marks, which meant that they were clinically insane, at the mildest interpretation; I knew that two of them had been located and recaptured, safely labeled as hazardous materials, and stored in some underground vault in Colorado. The third remained on the loose. It figured that Kevin might have grabbed up one of the other unbroken bottles as insurance. He could have passed one of those to me, and that would have meant passing me the Demon Mark when I opened up the bottle. Yippee. Been there, done that. Really didn't care for a return engagement.

"Where are you taking me?" I asked. Useless question. He didn't even bother to glance in the rearview. There was no plastic divider between me and Quinn, and I was starting to wonder what the effects of a decent wind gust would be inside the passenger area of a Taurus, but then Quinn took an abrupt right turn, up a long, wide drive.

Toward the gleaming glass pyramid of the Luxor Hotel, guarded by the massive golden bulk of the Sphinx.

"Oh," I said. "Cool. I always wanted to stay there."

The Luxor was like the Bellagio, only different. I kind of liked the Egyptian theme better, but then I've always been pretty ostentatious in my fashion sense, and besides, in the cluster of high-end shops by the entrance I spotted evidence of Jimmy Choo, Prada, and Kate Spade. That plus all the ornamental gold and enamel... well, I almost forgot about Quinn's gun and badge and hand on my arm.

For a minute.

The gaming area was virtually identical to the Bellagio's; only the wallpaper and carpeting and uniforms were different. The money was universal, and so was the mingled, vibrating sense of euphoria and desperation. I couldn't resist; I let myself slip the leash of the material world a little and rose up into the aetheric, just enough to catch a peek.

When I was a Djinn, the aetheric had registered in patterns and wavelengths of light. These days, human senses limited me to the surfaces of things, and a kind of broad psychological interpretation of auras. On the aetheric plane, the casino was almost a photonegative of how it appeared on earth. Instead of brilliant and glittering, it was dark, shadowy, peopled by ghosts whose auras fired in flares of manic excitement or despair. I don't mean that everybody there was addicted... far from it. But there was a shine to it that reminded me unsettlingly of the way the blue sparklies had looked, up on the aetheric, when the route had been open from the Demon Realms into our own.

I wasn't sure what that meant, but I decided I didn't have time to solve the world's problems, anyway. One problem at a time, and mine was towing me through the casino at a relentless pace.

"Hey, you're