Thin Air Page 0,75

and then he kissed her fingers, staring at me with bright, challenging eyes the whole time. "She's not jumping into anything," he murmured. "And really, Joanne, you're making far too big an issue out of this. I only want to make her happy."

"You want to use her," I said. "You want to threaten her to get me to do whatever you want. Trust you to find a way to make money off of disaster."

He made a tsking sound. "Construction companies, insurance companies, cleanup crews, police, fire, ambulance, paramedics, hospitals, doctors, funeral parlors, coffin makers...all those people make money off of disaster. And thousands more. I'm merely a novice."

"You want to cause them!"

"Don't be so negative," he said. "Freak accidents happen. No reason not to arrange them to our benefit once in a while."

Venna hadn't moved. She continued sitting on the wall, neat and prim, kicking her black patent-leather shoes like a kid, watching the emergency crews with every evidence of total fascination. I shot her an exasperated look. "Help me out here."

"It's human stuff. I can't," she said serenely. "Besides, they can't see or hear me. I'm a figment of your imagination, Joanne."

Hardly. My imagination would have conjured up a hunky, half-naked guy Djinn, preferably one who looked like David. I glared at her.

"Do you want me to kill him?" Venna asked, and met my eyes. It was a shock, seeing the complete flat disinterest in them. "I can, you know. I can kill anyone I want. Any human, anyway. Then you don't have to worry about him anymore. I could make it fast. He wouldn't even feel it."

I stared at her for a long, silent second, and then shook my head. No, I wasn't prepared to do that. Not even to Eamon.

Venna sighed again, jumped down off the wall, and looked up into my face. "It's been long enough," she said. "We should think about going now. Do you want their memories before we go?"

"Do I...what?" I was aware it looked to Eamon and Sarah like I was talking to empty child-sized space, because they were exchanging a look. The she's-lost-her-mind kind of look.

"Like what you did before, although you didn't do it very well," Venna said. "I can take their memories and give them to you. If you want. But you may not like it. Decide now, because we can't stay here much longer."

Memories. Sarah was the key to a lot of my childhood, wasn't she? Who else would I get that kind of thing from?

I nodded.

"Oh, you don't want hers," Venna said. "Hers won't be very good for you. You want his."

Venna didn't even bother touching me. She just turned those incandescent blue eyes on Eamon, and I was sucked into a different world.

Chapter Ten

TEN

Eamon was thinking about murder, in an abstract kind of way. He had no real objection to killing, but he did dislike complications, and he was, at that moment, royally pissed about just how complicated a perfectly simple scheme had become.

"All you had to do was pay her off," he said, staring at his business associate. Thomas Orenthal Quinn-Orry to his less than savory friends-shrugged. They were sitting at a cafe near the Las Vegas Strip, surrounded by noise and color, an island of calm in a sea of frantic activity. Eamon was sipping tea. Whatever Orry was drinking, it wasn't quite that English.

"Look at it this way," Orry said, and stirred the thick, dark drink in front of him. "She was badass enough to kill poor old Chaz. You should've seen what was left of him; Christ, it was disgusting. I couldn't take the chance she might come back for more. Dead is simple, right?"

"Generally," Eamon agreed. "Dead Wardens, not so simple. They'll investigate. I don't want them finding any link to you, forensically or otherwise." He glanced around-habit-although he was certain nobody was within earshot. Amazing what people would ignore. "You're sure she's out of the picture?"

"I'm sure." Orry gave him a tight, unpleasant smile. He was a nondescript man, and few who met him seemed to understand what lay underneath that unremarkable exterior. Eamon knew, and respected it. He might have been insane, but he was definitely not insane enough to cross Thomas Quinn without cause. "Unless she can breathe underwater, she's not bothering us again."

"You need to be sure."

Orry shrugged. "Let's go. I'll show you."

I felt that slippery fast-forward sensation, and fought to hold on to the memory. Eamon's filthy, cold mind made me shiver, but at the