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"You Joanne Baldwin?" he asked h, not impressive A trace of a West Coast drawl, maybe I nodded I couldn’t see throat "Good," he said "You got the bottle?"

I shook unht?" he asked "Dao in there and toss the rooun and held out his hand, and just like that, he cauy with black hair, a clever face, and light brown eyes Two-day growth of beard

"Nice to meet you My name’s Quinn," he said "I’m here to rescue you"

FIVE

Some rescue

When it became clear I wasn’t the damsel in distress-or at least not the kind Quinn could save rabbed me by the elbow and hustled h the casino in record ti hustled

As we stepped outside onto the wide portico, with its huge sweep of overhang and constant strea off money, I yanked myself loose and stepped back, hands in fists atnatural air

"Hey!" I snarled Quinn’s eyebrows did a funny little up-and-down jerk, and then his face went reflectively impassive "Pal! Back off, will you? I don’t need your das under control!"

"Yeah, it really looked like it," Quinn said He calain, in full view of the uniformed doormen One of them looked alarmed and reached for a phone; Quinn also e in a black holder snapped over his belt

Quinn was a cop

"Let’s take a drive, sunshine," he toldpen reserved for taxis and cars for hire A dark brown Ford Taurus sat a them, shiny as a roach, and Quinn popped open doors and put me in like a criminal with a hand on my head, into the backseat I immediately tried the door, but of course it didn’t open Childproof locks had a lot to answer for

Quinn’s driver’s-side door opened, and he bent over to fix ht toffee-brown eyes "Play nice," he said "Don’t make me cuff you"

I put roaned slightly as he got in, and then the engine fired and ere as sun, heading for a huge sign that spelled out the current Bellagio attractions in glowing starlike lights

"I’e?"

"Criminal stupidity," Quinn said

"And you’re full of shit I told you, I didn’t need rescuing, and if I’m not under arrest, Detective Quinn-"

"Consider yourself a ation"

"An investigation of what, exactly?"

He took a right turn onto Flae, and headed the car down Las Vegas Boulevard "Murder," he said "I had a guy pitched out of thatabout a week ago, you know Messed up uess you know that nobody else can see those knuckleheads up there You ht? Wardens can see the to subside, I felt tired and achy Groggy with leftover adrenaline "And you? You’re a Warden?"

He held up his right hand I made a pass in the air, concentrated, and saw the telltale sparkle of wards reflected on his skin Quinn’s aetheric tattoo was an ankh, the Egyptian symbol for life Which didn’t match the stylized sunburst I’d expected to see

"Not a Warden What the hell are you?"

"Need to know, sunshine"

"As in, I don’t need 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"I take it you have some experience with Demon Marks"

Where the hell had he heard that? Not even the Wardens knew uy wasn’t Djinn; I’d have been able to tell that

And yet, when I took a look at hi special Not even any powers to speak of

Quinn could tell I wasn’t going to offer any color coiven you the bottle, you’d have uncorked it to order Jonathan in," he said "Only probleot quite enough of that kind of probleht now So sorry, but I had to stop you"

I felt a flush of cold through ht; 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

During Kevin’s escape in New York three weeks ago, he and Jonathan had released from their bottles at least three Djinn ere 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 round vault in Colorado The third rerabbed up one of the other unbroken bottles as insurance He could have passed one of those tome the Demon Mark when I opened up the bottle Yippee Been there, done that Really didn’t care for a return engage lance in the rearview There was no plastic divider betweento 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 gleauarded by the olden bulk of the Sphinx

"Oh," I said "Cool I alanted 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 h-end shops by the entrance I spotted evidence of Jimold and enae and hand onarea was virtually identical to the Bellagio’s; only the wallpaper and carpeting and uniforms were different Thesense 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, hus, and a kind of broad psychological interpretation of auras On the aetheric plane, the casino was alative 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 froly 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