Free Chill Factor by Rachel Caine Page A

the two bathroom stalls. Nobody else in the room except my reflection.
    You know . I didn’t know if that voice was in my head, or put there from outside. Creepy, either way. I stared hard into the mirror, let myself float up into the aetheric, and finally spotted something that didn’t quite belong. A flicker. Use your eyes . Except that my eyes were just plain human these days, not Djinn; I couldn’t see in every spectrum, every level of the world. And what was talking to me didn’t exist in this one.
    Shall I lend you mine?
    Something happened in my head, a sharp, tearing pain, and then I was seeing edges to things that weren’t there, colours that had texture and depth and no name in the world I lived in.
    In the corner, shadows flowed black into a shape that glittered like faceted coal. Spiderlike. Dangerous.
    An Ifrit. A failed, twisted Djinn.
    A vampire.
    Sara? No, it couldn’t be Sara; she’d died along with Patrick, both giving up their essences to create a human body to house me. It was someone else. Who…?
    Who else called me Snow White? ‘Rahel?’
    Lumps of coal have no expression. She didn’t move. I took a step towards her, saw the edges of her start to fray as if she might disappear. ‘Rahel, wait. Please.’
    Can’t stay.
    ‘Why not?’
    Hungry .
    Ifrits ate Djinn. I had a sudden, startling moment of gratitude that David was safely locked in the case at Marion’s feet, out there in the restaurant. Much as I liked Rahel – if this was Rahel – I didn’t want her munching on my lover.
    My relationship with her was complicated at best. As a Free Djinn, she’d been my friend, sometimes my enemy; she’d acted to save my life at least once. And I hadn’t been able to stop her from being destroyed not so long ago. This wasn’t really Rahel. It was the zombie shell of her, undead and undying.
    I wanted strongly for her to go away.
    ‘What do you want?’ I asked.
    She answered me silently. Give me food. Tell you things.
    ‘What kind of things?’
    Things to save you.
    Her voice was getting fainter in my head, the edges of her looking misty. This was one hell of an effort for her, communicating on this plane of existence. Clearly she needed a recharge to continue. Too bad I didn’t carry any handy snack-sized Djinn.
    The bathroom door opened, and Marion came in. She ignored me and walked right to a stall, went in, and clicked the lock. The satchel with David’sbottle went with her, which gave me the total willies; the Ifrit’s head turned to follow her, but she didn’t attack. I went to the sink and ran water, scrubbed my hands, and watched the black shadow in the corner. Rahel hadn’t moved, but she was fainter now.
    ‘Stay with me,’ I whispered. I saw nothing, heard nothing in my head, but somehow I knew she’d received the message and agreed. I watched her shadow dissolve completely.
    ‘What?’ Marion’s voice. I shut the water off and reached for a towel.
    ‘Nothing.’
    That probably wasn’t a lie.
       
    When I came back out, there were two new faces at the table. Paul nodded at them. ‘Jo, this is Carl Cooper and Lel Miller. They’ll be taking you home.’
    Carl was bland. His hair was dishwater blond and thinning fast; he had thin lips out of practice for smiling. His eyes were hidden by aviator sunglasses, but I had the strong impression that he wouldn’t have been any more expressive if I’d been able to see his baby blues.
    Lel Miller was a different story altogether. Tall, leggy, gorgeously tanned. She had quite the salon finish, right down to the well-kept gleam of her French manicure. I held up my palm in the traditional Warden hi-there; they each followedsuit, and in the aetheric, our runes glittered.
    ‘Charmed,’ Lel said. She had a sexy contralto purr. She extended a hand to me, palm down, as if she expected me to kiss it.
    I took it and examined the bracelet chiming around her wrist. ‘Nice,’ I said. ‘Velada?’
    She looked impressed. She reclaimed