Gale Force E-Book

Rachel Caine

• Herausgeber: Allison & Busby
• Kategorie: Fantasy und Science-Fiction
• Serie: Weather Warden
• Sprache: Englisch
• Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2011

Seitenzahl: 468

Beschreibung

Weather Warden Joanne Baldwin is taking a holiday from her duties when her idyll is interrupted by her worst nightmare: a reporter from a legitimate newspaper. The last thing Joanne needs is someone exposing the supernatural world she inhabits. The sun chases the clouds away when her Djinn lover, David, asks Joanne to marry him. She's thrilled to say yes, but there are certain parties - some human, some otherwise - who are less enthusiastic. Joanne's premarital bliss ends when a devastating earthquake hits Florida. And this time she won't be able to ask David and his kind for assistance. The cause of the quake is unlike anything Joanne has ever encountered - and it is fuelled by a power even the Djinn cannot perceive.

Leseprobe

Gale Force

WEATHER WARDEN BOOK SEVEN

RACHEL CAINE

To the librarians and staff of the New Orleans Public Library system, struggling to return from the disaster of Hurricane Katrina. You are truly amazing.

Almost every branch of the NOPL sustained damage during Hurricane Katrina in 2005, and many are still closed and in need of renovation.

Donate by visiting the Rebuild Website: http://nutrias.org/-nopl/foundation/katrinafoundationdonation.htm

Other Gulf Coast-area libraries are also still in need of your help. You can find a complete list through the American Library Association: http://www.ala.org/ala/cro/katrina/katrina.htm

Contents

Title PageDedicationAcknowledgementsPrologue Chapter OneChapter TwoChapter ThreeChapter FourChapter FiveChapter SixChapter SevenChapter EightChapter NineChapter TenChapter ElevenChapter TwelveChapter ThirteenChapter FourteenSound TrackAbout the AuthorBY RACHEL CAINECopyrightAdvertisement

Acknowledgements

Joe Bonamassa, for giving me Sloe Gin

Prologue 

‘Honey!’ I yelled. ‘Get the phone, would you?’ It was ringing off the hook, and I was a little busy trying to put out a fire – a wildfire, actually, blazing across Alligator Alley along the coast of Florida. It had been burning for three long days, sending choking black smoke our way.

Never off duty, that was me. Joanne Baldwin: Weather Warden by first choice – if a world-ending storm blew up without notice, I was the go-to girl. My secondary ability – and second choice – was to act as a Fire Warden, which was what was occupying me at the moment. Being an Earth Warden, helping living things heal and grow, and controlling things such as earthquakes and volcanoes, was also something I could do, though not nearly as reliably or as well. As far as being comfortable with the abilities, having Earth powers was still a distant, weird, cautious third.

I stood on the balcony of my apartment building, my eyes stinging from the whipping wind and drifting smoke, and worked magic. It didn’t look like I was doing much of anything. Truthfully, I probably could have gone inside, picked up the phone, and talked to whatever cold-calling telemarketer was on the other end … but I was feeling frustrated, and I needed to do something positive, so I was concentrating, from a distance of several miles away, on rendering burnable underbrush less burnable. These changes would have to be undone later, for safety, but they made dandy firebreaks in the meantime.

Of course, I was interfering with Fire Wardens and Weather Wardens who were already doing their assigned jobs. Well, that was why I was the boss, right? That was what bosses did – interfere. (My bosses always had, anyway, although come to think of it, I hadn’t liked it much when I’d been on the sticky end of the problem.)

The phone quit ringing. Good, I thought. Maybe they’d just given up.

The glass door behind me rumbled open on its track. I didn’t turn away from the railing until a man’s hand dangled the phone over my shoulder. I looked at the phone delivery service, eyebrows raised in silent question; David just raised his own in response.

David was always fantastic on the eyes, but he was especially great just now, at sunset, when the red sky picked up bronze tints in his skin and highlighted supernatural sparks in his eyes. Oh, his eyes – currently the rich, dark color of old pennies – were taking on a brighter hue as I watched, because although David was currently wearing human form, and liked to wear it a lot, at a DNA level he was something completely different. We call them Djinn, because the old tales of those supernatural creatures able to do humans’ dirty work were somewhat true.

Of course, these tales were also a whole lot not true, as I continued to learn every day.

David was only half dressed, in a pair of worn blue jeans riding low on his hips. There was a lot of tempting gold-dusted skin on display, and so much to admire, from broad shoulders to abs that would make a Greek statue cry with envy.

He usually had a shirt on, but then, David was actually more modest than I was. At least, in public. In private … well. Let’s just say that when David played at being human, he brought his A game.

David waggled the phone again, significantly. I blinked and took it, thinking that the last thing in the world I wanted just now was to get distracted from enjoying the view. ‘Hello?’

I wasn’t prepared for the volume – or the tirade – that erupted out of the phone. ‘Joanne, would you please butt out already? Jeez, woman, we can save the world without you! Just go relax! Do you even own a dictionary? Vacation! Look it up!’

The voice on the other end was Paul Giancarlo, one of the most powerful element-controlling Wardens in the country. He happened to specialize in weather work; he was also one of my oldest surviving friends. The tone was a strongly Jersey-accented bellow, barely contained by the phone’s speaker. I held the phone farther from my ear, ‘Oh, hey, Paul,’ I said. ‘So. How’s that fire going?’

‘The fire is going fine, and you need to quit screwing around. You are not on duty. I have coverage on the damn fire, and you need to stop—’

‘Helping? Thought you needed it. Because three days is kind of a long time to be breathing smoke—’

‘Kid. Stop already. We’re on top of it!’

I doubted that. ‘Let me talk to Lewis.’ Lewis Levander Orwell, my old college buddy and part-time crush, was the only guy in the entire Wardens organisation who still had the right to tell me what to do, a fact that made me a little smug and – yes, I could admit it – a little insufferable.

‘Lewis doesn’t want to talk to you. Lewis wants me to tell you to butt out. Get it? You’re on vacation. Vacate already.’

Before I could fire back, Paul hung up on me. I stared at the phone, surprised and a little wounded. David took it from my fingers, put it on the patio table behind me, and said, ‘I assume he told you that you aren’t needed right now. No, actually I don’t assume that. I overheard.’

‘Eavesdropper.’

‘People three doors down heard it,’ he said. ‘It wasn’t a great feat of supernatural detection.’

I glared at him for a second, but honestly, I couldn’t stay angry at David, especially when he gave me that look.

But I glanced toward the fire again anyway, and I heard him sigh. ‘Jo. Let go. I know how hard it is for you, but you need to let other people handle their jobs. That’s why they have them.’

‘Three days!’ I said, pointing an accusatory finger toward the smoke. ‘Come on, you don’t think they could have been a little more aggressive about it?’

‘You know as well as I do that sometimes managing how a fire burns is more important than putting it out,’ he said all too reasonably, and stepped between me and my view of the conflagration. Not that he wasn’t, you know, burning hot himself. Because he definitely was, and I felt myself inevitably getting distracted.

‘Stop that,’ I said, not with a lot of strength.

‘Stop what?’ He reached for my hands, and I shivered as a breeze moved across my back, which was left mostly bare by my sky-blue halter top. Florida had been kind to me, for a change, with lots of sun, lots of untroubled, cloud-free beaches. It was as if the Wardens themselves had conspired to make my vacation uneventful, at least on the weather front, until this fire thing had popped up.

And that had been OK for the first couple days. And then it had just kept on coming. I know it sounds crazy, but I’d gotten a little bit too rested.

Not that David couldn’t make that haunting feeling of uselessness go away; he was promising to, just with the gentle pressure of his fingers moving up my bare arms.

‘Stop making me want you,’ I said. That got the eyebrows again, and a slightly wounded frown.

‘Making you?’

‘You know what I mean.’

‘No, I don’t, actually. You think I’m manipulating you?’

‘You’re Djinn,’ I said. ‘Manipulating people is basically built into your DNA. I’m not really sure you can help it. But – I didn’t mean that. I’m just – I’m sorry. I don’t know what I’m thinking. I just—’

‘You want to be taking action,’ he said. ‘Yes. I know. You really do need to learn how to let go.’

‘What I don’t need is even more vacation.’ I stepped back from David and dropped grumpily into a deck chair, stretching my long, bare legs out in front of me. The tan was coming along nicely. Greataccomplishment. Everybody else is saving the world; you’re golden-browning.

‘Oh, I think you definitely do,’ David said, and draped himself over the other chair, chin propped on his fist. ‘I have never met anyone who needed to learn to relax more than you do.’

And that was saying a lot; he’d met a lot of people – millions, probably. I still didn’t have any clear idea of how old David really was, only that his birth date was so far back in history that the idea of calendars had been newfangled. He’d been around, my lover. The fact that he was hanging around here, letting me be bitchy to him, was kind of amazing.

Before I could apologize to him, the phone rang again. I picked up the cordless extension, pressed the button, and said, ‘Paul, I swear, I’m not—’

A businesslike voice on the other end said, ‘May I speak with Joanne Baldwin?’

‘Speaking.’ I rolled my eyes at David. Another attempt to sell me flood insurance or steel hurricane shutters. I readied the I’m-in-an-apartment speech, which usually served to put a stop to these things.

‘Ms Baldwin, hello, my name is Phil Garrett. I’m an investigative reporter with the New York Times. I’d like to speak with you about the organisation known as the Wardens. I believe you’re one of its senior members. Could I have your title?’

I blinked, and my expression must have been something to behold, because David slowly straightened up in his chair, leaning forward. ‘You – sorry, what? What did you say?’

‘Phil Garrett. New York Times. Calling about the Wardens. I have some questions for you.’

‘I’ – my voice locked tight in my throat – ‘got another call, hold on.’ In a panic, I hit the END CALL button and put the phone down on the table, staring at it as if it had grown eight legs and was about to scuttle off. ‘Oh my God.’

‘What?’ David asked. He looked interested, not alarmed. Apparently, I was amusing when panicked.

The phone rang again. I didn’t move to pick it up, David took it and said, pleasantly, ‘Yes?’ There was a pause while he listened. ‘I see. Mr Garrett, I’m very sorry, but Ms Baldwin can’t speak to you right now. What’s your deadline?’ His mouth compressed into a thin line, clearly trying not to smile at whatever my face was doing now. I could hardly breathe, I felt so cold. ‘I see. That’s fairly soon. Ms Baldwin is actually on vacation right now. Maybe there’s someone else you can—’ Another pause, and his gaze darted toward mine. ‘You were given her number.’

I mouthed, blankly, Shit! David lifted one shoulder in a half shrug. This could not be happening. I mouthed, By who? David dutifully repeated the question.

‘Not at liberty to divulge your sources,’ he said, for my benefit. ‘I see. If you want my opinion, I think you’re being used, Mr Garrett. And you’re wasting your time.’

He listened. I felt my heart hammer even faster. Mr Garrett wasn’t going down easy.

‘I’ll have her call you back,’ David said, hung up, and put the phone back on the table. He leant forward, watching me, hands folded. ‘You’re scared.’

I nodded, with way too much emphasis. ‘Reporters. I hate reporters. I hate reporters from little weekly papers in One Horse, Wyoming, so how much do you think I’m going to hate somebody from the New York Times? Guess.’

‘You don’t even know him. Maybe this is a good thing. Good publicity.’

‘Are you on crack? Of course it’s not a good thing! He’s a reporter! And we’re a secret organisation! Who the hell gave him his info? And my number?’

‘Jo, he’s a reporter. He didn’t have to get your number from anyone inside the Wardens. He could have gotten it through simple research. As to what put him on to the whole topic …’ David shrugged. He was right. With all the disasters and potentially life-destroying events that we’d had the last few years, the Wardens had been a little more public than anyone liked.

And so had I.

I grabbed for the phone and dialed Lewis’s cell. It rang to voicemail. ‘Lewis, call me back. I’ve got reporter troubles. Look, if this is your idea of a joke and you staked me out as the sacrificial goat for the media, I am not going to be the only one on the altar when they get out the knives—’

David took the phone and hung it up, very calmly. ‘That’s enough of the metaphor,’ he said. ‘Look, you don’t need to flail around. You know what to say. Deny everything. They won’t have proof. They never do. And even if they do have something, refer them to the government and the UN. It’ll go away.’

‘What if it doesn’t?’ I chewed my lip in agitation, tasting tangerine gloss. Great. Now I was destroying my makeup, too, and the whole purpose of lip gloss was to stay interestingly kissable. ‘Look, it’s the Times. This is different. I’m worried.’

David cocked his head, looking bemused now. ‘I’ve seen you face down monsters, hurricanes, and tornadoes, and you’re scared of a phone call?’

‘It’s bigger than that.’ I felt it in my gut. ‘There was a reporter a few months ago. When I was on my way to Sedona with Venna. She knew things. It was just a matter of time, I guess, before word got around and people got to digging. Dammit! I should have known this was coming.’

He leant forward and took my hands. His felt warm, strong, calming. ‘I have a question that will scare you even more, if you want to change the subject,’ he said, after a long moment.

I frowned at him. ‘No games.’

‘No. This is a serious question.’ He slipped off the deck chair, and one knee touched the concrete balcony floor. He never looked away from my face, and he never let go of my hands. ‘This is a question that’s going to need a serious answer.’

My heart froze, then skipped to catch up on its beats. ‘I—’ I couldn’t begin to think of what to say. I just waited. I probably had it all wrong, anyway.

‘Will you marry me?’ he asked.

Oh. I didn’t have it wrong at all.

My lips parted, and nothing, absolutely nothing, came out. Was he serious? He couldn’t be serious. We were comfortable together; we had love, we had partnership, we had – everything.

Everything except … well, this – an official kind of commitment.

Not possible, some part of my brain reported briskly. David was a supernatural Djinn, only partly tied to the mortal world. I might have been a Warden, with extra powers over wind, water, air, earth, living things … but I was just human, when it came down to brass tacks. He was immortal; I wasn’t, and I was achingly aware of that, every day that passed between us.

‘David …’ I came up against an absolute blank wall, inspirationally speaking. ‘I – can we talk about this later?’

‘Why? So you can come up with reasons to justify your fears about me leaving you?’ He wasn’t angry; he didn’t mean it to hurt. It was matter-of-fact and strangely even gentle. ‘Jo, I need to know that you feel as I do. I need to have you with me. And – it’s mortal custom.’ He was clearly reaching on that last one.

‘Have you been married before?’ There, I’d asked it. We didn’t go into his past a lot, but I knew it was ancient, and there had been plenty of relationships – Djinn as well as human.

He raised my hands to his lips, and I shivered at the warm, intimate kiss. ‘Yes,’ he said. ‘Ages ago. Before I knew what I was waiting to feel.’

I stared at him. ‘And now you know.’

‘Of course I know,’ he said. His eyes had taken on the burning purity of newly minted copper. ‘I was waiting for you.’

The phone rang. My gaze went to it; I was startled, but didn’t move to pick up. One ring, and it cut off. I wasn’t sure if the caller had thought better of it, or if David had severed the connection.

‘If you say no, it’s all right. I will stay with you as long as you want me to stay,’ he said. ‘You won’t lose me. You don’t have to agree if this doesn’t feel right to you.’

‘But it’s important to you.’

‘Yes. Or I wouldn’t have brought it up.’ David looked troubled for a second, as if he was unsure of how much – or little – to say. Then he plunged ahead. ‘When humans make their vows to each other, it’s the closest they can come to the depth of commitment a Djinn feels. You see? I just want – I’m afraid of losing you.’

And it had taken him a lot to risk the question – I knew that. David’s feelings for me were fierce and constant; it was part of who the Djinn were. But human feelings were changeable, and I had no doubt he lived in fear that one day I’d wake up and be a different person, one he couldn’t reach.

Being married wouldn’t lessen that risk, but it was a symbol, a trust.

It all came down to trust. His, and mine.

‘This is crazy,’ I breathed. ‘What the hell are the Djinn going to say?’

‘Nothing, if they know what’s good for them.’ There was a glimmer of coldness to his tone. David was the leader of about half of the Djinn – the good half, in my opinion, although there were exceptions. The other half was led by a Djinn named Ashan, an icy bastard who didn’t like me very much and wasn’t especially warm toward David, either. ‘If you’re worrying what it will do to my standing among them, don’t.’

But I had to think about that, didn’t I? It wasn’t just the two of us. The Wardens might have a thing or two to say about a human marrying a Djinn, too. And what minister was going to bless this union, anyway? Aside from their religious beliefs, most ministers didn’t believe in the supernatural, at least not in any good kind of way. And I knew David. He’d want complete honesty in this, no matter how difficult that would be.

The day was getting darker, the sky turning from denim to indigo. On the horizon, the sun was nearly down, pulling its glorious trailing rays with it.

Black, greasy smoke drifted into my eyes, and I blinked and coughed. David glanced at it, annoyed, and the smoke disappeared – moved elsewhere. The air around us was fresh and clear.

‘Jo,’ he said, ‘you don’t have to answer now. I just … had to ask the question.’

I ought to say no. I knew that. I just knew.

‘Yes,’ I said, and something in me broke loose with a wild, silent cry. I was off the cliff now, I realised, with a fierce joy, and that felt good. It felt free.

His eyes ignited into a color found only in the heart of the sun. ‘Yes?’

‘Yes, already. I’ll marry you. Yes. Hell, yes. What am I, stupid?’

The phone rang again. David let go of my hands, picked up the extension, and thumbed it on without looking away from my face, ‘Mr Garrett, I’m taking my lover to bed,’ he said. ‘If you know what’s good for you, you’ll reschedule your deadline.’

And he crushed the phone as if it were made of marshmallow crème and dropped the smashed pieces on the patio table.

‘Oh,’ I said faintly. ‘Problem solved. Good approach.’

On the horizon, the fire in Alligator Alley continued to glow. I discovered that I didn’t care at all, as David’s hand pulled me to my feet and into his arms.

I woke up hours later to the sound of screaming sirens. The Wardens had majorly screwed up – again. My apartment complex was on fire. We were being evacuated.

That was it. I was never going on vacation again.

Chapter One

Getting married was like planning a military invasion of a distant foreign country, only instead of moving soldiers and guns, you were organising bridesmaids and bouquets.

Of course, my bridesmaids were bound to be pretty tough chicks. I couldn’t really be sure there wouldn’t be guns.

‘You know,’ said my best friend, Cherise, staring thoughtfully into the mirror and smoothing her hands down the clinging lines of her dress, ‘there’s a math formula for wedding dresses.’

I blinked at her. I was trying to figure out if the layer cake of tulle and lace I had on constituted romantic excess, or if it looked like I’d fought off a demented pastry chef and barely escaped with my life. ‘What?’

‘The problem is, this dress looks totally fabulous on me. And the better the bridesmaid’s gown looks on her, the fuglier the bride’s. I’m just pointing it out because I’m a kindhearted person, you know.’

She was right – she did look totally fabulous in the dress. The color was a dark rose, one that wildly complemented Cherise’s blond hair and beautiful skin. It was a simple sheath dress, clinging in all the right places, and it ended at the right length for her, just below the knee, to display her perfectly sculpted calves to full advantage. No dyed generic pumps for Cherise; she’d scoured the stores and come up with a pair of Jimmy Choo shoes that made me pray to the fashion gods for something half as great to appear in my closet.

The first time I’d ever met Cherise, she’d looked fantastic. Cherise could look delicious wearing an oversized foam-rubber sun – I know, I’ve seen her do it, back in the days we both worked for the local bottom-of-the-barrel TV station as weather girls.

I, on the other hand, did not look delicious. I looked like a wedding cake that hadn’t quite risen properly. And white really wasn’t my color.

‘You’re a true friend,’ I said, and unzipped my dress to let it slide into a confusion of frippery on the dressing room floor. The waiting dress wrangler rescued it, fussily dusted it, and put it back on a hanger and in a garment bag, the better to protect its doubtful charms. ‘Right. Something in off-white? With less—’ I made a vague, poofy gesture with my hands. The sales clerk, who must have seen brides make a thousand terrible decisions, looked relieved. She nodded and turned to Cherise.

‘Ma’am?’ she asked. ‘Can I bring you some more selections?’

Cherise turned, hands on hips. ‘You’re kidding, right? Look, I gave her fair warning. I am not giving up this dress. I’ll be maid of honor, but not matronly of honor.’

‘Keep the dress,’ I said hastily. ‘It really does look great on you. So you’re done. It’s just me we’re still working on.’

Cherise, mollified, unzipped and shimmied out of the dress. She was the one who fussed with it, getting it hung just so, and zipped it into the garment bag before handing it to the sales clerk. ‘Be sure nothing happens to it,’ she said. ‘Put my name on it in giant letters: Cherise. In fact, if you’ve got a vault—’

‘Cher,’ I said, ‘leave the poor lady alone. She’s dealing with enough as it is. Your dress is safe.’

‘Maybe I should take it with me.’

‘Maybe you should put your clothes on. I’m feeling kind of outclassed, here.’

Cherise grinned, undermining her Playboy Bunny appeal but making herself real in a way most pretty women weren’t. She looked after herself with care, but she also didn’t put too much emphasis on it. Cherise liked to do things that the Genetically Chosen Few generally didn’t, like read, geek out on TV shows, indulge in online gaming. Her most prominent body decoration, which showed plainly as she turned to gather up her jeans and tank top from the bench, was a Gray – a little gray alien tattoo waving hello from the small of her back, where most beautiful women would have put a rose as a tramp stamp.

That was Cherise, cheerfully mowing down the barriers.

I sat down on the other bench, legs crossed, feeling exposed and vulnerable in my lacy underthings. I had a huge list of things still to do for the wedding, and I was running out of time, and the last thing I needed to be doing was obsessing about the dress. I mean, I had good taste in clothes, right? I could usually walk into a store, grab something right off the rack, and get it right.

Today, I’d gone through more dresses than I’d worn in the last year. Maybe I ought to try the designer line again. Or get married in a garbage bag. Add a couple of frills, a nice bow – couldn’t be worse than what I’d just seen myself in today. There was a fashion hell. I’d been there.

‘You OK?’ Cherise finished buttoning up her jeans, skimmed her top down to street-legal levels, flipped her hair, and voila, she was fantastic. She stepped out of the Jimmy Choo pumps and boxed them up with the care usually reserved for crown jewels or religious relics, and slid her perfectly pedicured toes into a pair of hot-pink flip-flops. ‘Because you look a little bit—’

‘Spooked,’ I supplied sourly. ‘Worried. Scared. Nuts. Insane. Completely, utterly—’

‘I was going to say hungry. It’s already two hours after we should have had lunch.’

Low blood sugar probably was impairing my impressive dress-choosing skills, and even though this was a full-service bridal store, I doubted that they catered. ‘Oh,’ I said. ‘Right. Lunch.’ Now that she mentioned it, my stomach growled impatiently, as if it had been trying to get my attention for a while and was ready to cannibalise another body part. I reached for my own jeans and top and began tugging them on. I wasn’t as perfectly body-balanced as Cherise, but I had legs for days, and even in flats I topped her by several inches.

The hard-working clerk came back, sweating under a forklift’s worth of alternate dress choices. I froze in the act of zipping up my pants. ‘Um—’

Cherise, rightly identifying a moment when a maid of honor could take one for the bridal team, smiled winningly at the clerk and said, ‘Sorry, but I’ve got a nail appointment. We’ll have to come back later. Could you keep those out? I swear, it’ll be an hour, tops.’ She caught my look. ‘Two, at the most.’

The clerk looked around the dressing room, which had far fewer hooks than she had dresses, sighed, and nodded.

I had just finished fastening the top button on my pants when I felt the whole store distinctly shake, as if a giant hand had grabbed the place and yanked. I froze, bracing myself on the wall, and saw Cherise do the same. The clerk froze under her load of thousand-dollar frocks.

And then all hell broke loose. The floor bucked, walls undulated, cracks ripped through plaster, and the air exploded with the sounds of glass crashing, things falling, and timbers snapping. The sales clerk screamed, dropped the gowns, and flung herself into the doorway, bracing herself with both hands.

I should have taken cover – Cherise sensibly did, curling instantly into a ball under the nearest cover, which was the bench on her side.

What did I do? I stood there. And I launched myself hard into the aetheric, rising out of the physical world and into a plane of existence where the lines of force were more clearly visible.

Not good. The entire area of Fort Lauderdale was a boiling confusion of forces, most erupting out of a fault line running directly under the store in which I stood. It looked as if somebody had dropped a bucket of red and black dye into a washing machine and set it on full churn.

We were so screwed.

I sensed other Wardens rising into the aetheric, responding to the crisis; there were two or three of them relatively close whose signatures I recognised – two were Weather, which wasn’t much help, but one was an Earth Warden, and a powerful one.

I flung my still-new Earth Warden powers deep into the foundations of the building in which my physical form was still trapped, and began shoring up the structure. It was taking a beating, but the wood responded to me, healing itself and binding into an at least temporarily unbreakable frame. The metal was tougher, but it also fell within my powers, so I braced it up as I went, creating a lightning-fast shell of stability in a world that wouldn’t hold together for long.

I reached out, in the aetheric, and connected with the other Earth Warden; together, we were able to blanket part of the rift with power, like pouring superglue on an open wound. Not a miracle, it was just a bandage, but enough. I didn’t know enough about how to balance the forces of the Earth; it was different from the flashing, volatile energy of Fire or the massive, ponderous fury of Weather. It had all kinds of slow, unstoppable momentum, and I felt very fragile standing in its way.

Help, I said to the other Earth Warden – not that talking was really talking on the aetheric. It was crude communication, at best, but he got the message. I watched as he spread himself thin, and his aura settled deep into the heart of the boiling red of the disturbance.

Oh, hell no. No way was I going there.

Then again, if I didn’t, I was leaving him alone to do the dirty work – the potentially fatal dirty work.

I took a deep metaphorical breath, steadied myself, and stepped off the cliff.

Sensations are different on the aetheric – properly, they’re not sensations at all, because all the nerve endings are still firmly planted down on terra firma. But the mind processes stimuli, no matter how unpleasant or strange, and so what it felt like to me on my way down, following my Earth Warden colleague, was … pressure – being squeezed, lightly at first, then more intensely. It was like diving in the ocean and swimming deeper and deeper, but this didn’t feel like liquid; it felt more like a metal vise, cranking inexorably tighter.

I faltered and nearly bugged out, but I caught a glimpse of the other Warden. He was below me, only a bit farther, and I decided that if he could do it, I had to. Down I went, and if I’d had an actual, physical mouth and lungs, I’d have been screaming and crying by the time I got there.

His aetheric form – which, I noticed, sported shadowy, shoulder-length hair and the ghost of a guitar slung across his back – was kneeling down, studying something. I joined him. He silently indicated what it was he was examining.

I’d never seen anything like it in the aetheric, but I didn’t need a college course to tell it was very, very bad. It looked like some kind of black icy knife, sharp on all edges, wickedly pointed at the end. It was plunged deep into the ground, or what represented the ground up here.

The Earth Warden reached out and touched it, and from the way he jerked back, it was a very painful experience.

Well, I hadn’t come all this way not to try.

The jolt that went through me when I tried to take hold of the thing felt like being on the receiving end of a live power cable, only not as much fun. I let go – couldn’t do anything else – and looked wordlessly at my colleague.

He shook his head and pointed up, indicating we should rise. I nodded. Up we went, slowly, letting the pressure bleed off. I didn’t suppose we’d get the bends in the aetheric, but it didn’t seem prudent to push it, and besides, I was still trembling from the jolt that piece of black ice had sent through me.

Far above, in the softer regions of air, he made a gesture that was clear even in the aetheric – thumb toward his ear, little finger toward his mouth. And then he pointed from himself to me.

He was going to call me. I nodded and waved, and dropped out of the aetheric, back into my body.

The earthquake had stopped … temporarily, at least. The dress shop was a mess – plaster cracked, mirrors broken, racks toppled. Disaster with a designer label. Somebody was shaking me. Cherise. She had her hands fisted in my shirt and was trying to haul me up, but I was bigger and she was shaking too much to really be effective on leverage.

I helped her out by lurching to my feet and checking on the store’s other occupants, including the clerk. Apart from being terrified, they were all miraculously unharmed, though hair, makeup, and wardrobe had been sacrificed to sweat, tears, and sifting plaster dust.

I made Cherise sit down on a bench and stood for a moment, letting my awareness spread through the structure, looking for major damage. A few cracked support beams, but nothing that couldn’t be braced, and nothing that would come down unexpectedly, unless there was another hard jolt like the first one, which I couldn’t guarantee wouldn’t happen.

I pulled my cell phone out as it began to ring, and walked to the front, where plate glass windows had once been. They were now a glitter of broken fragments inside and outside the store. People were gathering out in the street, which was a hazard in itself, as drivers tried to navigate their way through to check on their families, their homes, their businesses. Nobody looked badly hurt, but everybody looked shell-shocked. Earthquakes in California came with the territory, but in Florida?

I answered the call. ‘Joanne Baldwin.’

‘Warden, it’s Luis Rocha. Earth Warden. We met up top.’ Meaning, up in the aetheric. I didn’t know his voice, but I liked it – warm, brisk, efficient. No wasted words. ‘Everybody OK there?’

‘Looks like.’ No wasted words here, either, apparently. ‘Good work up there.’

‘You too, but I’m worried. I don’t know what the hell that thing is we saw, but whatever it is, it needs looking into.’

‘You think it’s the cause of what just happened?’

‘Any place can have earthquakes, but not without some warning signs, and there weren’t any. External cause, has to be. That thing – it seems to be the epicenter, and no way is that supposed to be there.’

I frowned. ‘You think it could do more damage?’

‘Don’t know, but I wouldn’t leave it there. We need to figure out what this thing is, fast.’

‘My job,’ I said. ‘I’ll get the Djinn on it. You do your thing, Warden Rocha, and thank you. Excellent job.’

I heard the grin in his voice. ‘Yeah, well, put it on my bonus schedule. Adios, señora.’

‘Adios,’ I said, and hung up. I slipped the phone into my pocket and wondered, for the first time, why David wasn’t—

‘I’m right here,’ David said, appearing out of thin air in mid stride. He was dressed for business, not pleasure – sturdy blue jeans, a plain shirt, thick boots, and his long olive-drab coat. Glasses, too. They glittered like ice in the reflected shine from the broken glass. He didn’t halt at a polite distance; he came right up and put his hands around my face, wordlessly smoothing away plaster dust, and placed a warm kiss on my forehead. I felt the various aches and pains melt away, and a mad jittering inside me go still and calm. I hadn’t even realised how tense I was.

‘What kept you?’ My tone stayed dry, although I had a strange desire to burst into tears. ‘Next time, don’t stop for traffic lights, OK?’

He sighed and put his arms around me. ‘Safe driving isn’t just a good idea; it’s the law,’ he reminded me, in that mocking way that only Djinn can. He’d no more think of obeying traffic laws than I would that thing about not wearing white after Labor Day. ‘Sorry. We were busy.’

‘Yeah, no kidding. Busy here, too. What’s—’ My phone rang. I stepped back from him with an apologetic what-can-you-do lift of my hands, and answered, ‘Baldwin.’

It was my friend and (technically) boss, Lewis, and he was uncharacteristically angry. ‘What the hell did you think you were doing?’ he demanded. He was someplace close, or at least equally affected; I could hear the rising babble of confused voices and car alarms. ‘We’re going to be damn lucky if the whole eastern seaboard isn’t in chaos by the end of the day!’

I stopped what I was about to say, frowned, and rewound what he’d said. I listened to it again in my head before saying, cautiously, ‘Hang on a second. You think it’s my fault?’

I felt, rather than heard, him coming to a complete stop wherever he was, as if I’d gotten his undivided attention. I hoped he wasn’t standing in the middle of the street, like the idiots outside. And I thought he was replaying what I’d just said. ‘Are you saying it isn’t your fault?’ he asked.

‘I’m about ninety-nine percent sure I had nothing to do with it.’

‘You were seen in the middle of the—’

‘Yeah, trying to fix it, which is sort of my job!’ I snapped, and looked at David. He was watching me with warm brown eyes, looking almost completely human. I wondered what kind of effort that was taking. ‘If you don’t believe me, ask the other Warden. Luis Rocha. He was there. He saw what I saw.’

‘Rocha,’ Lewis repeated thoughtfully. ‘Yeah, I know him. Luis is solid. OK, let me talk to him, but meanwhile – sorry. I just thought, with you new to your Earth powers—’

‘You thought I’d go yank around at force lines in the ground, because they were there? What am I, four? Come on, man.’

Ah, there was the Lewis I knew and loved, in that ironic lift in his voice. ‘Jo, you know damn well that if you’re standing at ground zero of trouble, I have to assume you’ve got something to do with it.’

‘Convicted on prior bad acts?’

‘Something like that.’ He was moving again. I heard the shrilling call of a siren as it ripped by him and dopplered away, and then heard it coming into audio range on my end – same siren, or very similar. ‘Where are you?’

‘Delvia’s Bridal. Um, it was Delvia’s Bridal, anyway. I think it’s Super Discount Gowns now. At the very least, there’s going to be a whole lot of discounting going on.’

‘And you say you didn’t have a motive,’ Lewis replied. ‘Right. I’m heading that way. Stay put.’

He hung up before I could assure him I wasn’t going anywhere. I looked around. The clerk was making sad attempts to right sales racks and rehang gowns. Cherise exchanged a look with me, nodded, and went to help. David, of course, could have waved a magic hand and put it all back to rights, but that wasn’t the way things were done, at least not out here in the open, where it could be witnessed by the general public. We’d do most of our helping out later, when people weren’t looking.

At least, I hoped so. The old days of the Wardens leaving messes behind them were over – or so I’d been assured. This would, I thought, be a good test of their resolve to do the right thing, and if they didn’t … well, I could always take names, kick asses.

‘Not normal,’ I said aloud. ‘This shouldn’t have happened.’

I didn’t need confirmation, but David gave it to me anyway. ‘Someone caused it,’ he said.

‘A Warden?’

He was silent. When I glanced his way, I saw that his eyes were growing lighter in color and brighter in power … but then they cooled again, and he shook his head. ‘Unknown.’

‘What? How can it be unknown? How can you not know?’ Because David, after all, was sort of the running definition of omniscient these days. Imagine those surveillance cameras you see on every street corner, only for the Djinn, every single object in the world, living or inert, has a history and a path through time that they can follow. David was capable of unspooling that carpet back and following the threads to … nothing, apparently.

That was unsettling to me – to him, too, because he shot me a frown and said nothing in his own defense. He turned away to pace, head down, and I was reminded for all the world of a tracking dog trying to pick up a scent.

Vainly.

I felt a slight bump of power on the aetheric level – it took concentration to detect it – and knew that someone had arrived. Someone of the Djinn variety. Could be a good thing; could be a bad thing … Either way, it would be unpredictable.

I turned, a determined smile on my face, and was relieved to see the Djinn Rahel lounging in the cracked doorway, arms folded, surveying the damage with amused, lambently glittering eyes. She was a tall creature, elegant as a heron, but her nature always put me in mind of a hunting hawk – predatory, alert, always on the verge of striking.

Today she wore a bright lavender pantsuit in what looked like (and probably was) the softest of peach skin. It was tailored within an inch of its life, clinging to her long legs and her sculpted torso. Purple was a relaxed color for her, as it was for me. In a less conciliatory mood, she’d have been wearing neon yellow.

‘So,’ she said, in a low voice as rich as spilt syrup, ‘does this mean the wedding is off?’

‘You wish,’ I said. ‘Thanks for the help. Oh, wait …’

Her smile widened, revealing white, even teeth. My, she was in a good mood. She didn’t even bother with sharpening them to freak me out. ‘Did you need help, little sister? All you had to do was ask.’

Like I’d had time to pretty-please. She tilted her head, still focused on me, and the hundreds of tiny, meticulous braids in her ebony hair shifted and hissed together, and the tiny beads clacked. Snakes and bones. I resisted the urge to shiver. I liked Rahel, and I thought she liked me, as much as that kind of thing could happen, but I was never really … sure. You never could be, with the Djinn.

And once again, she surprised me by saying, ‘What do you need?’

Djinn didn’t offer. But she did, and I gaped at her for a long, unflattering few seconds before I got control and composed myself into a grateful expression. ‘If you could check and let me know if you find anybody wounded, anybody in trouble—’

She flipped a negligent hand – perfectly manicured, with opal polish on the sharp nails – and misted away. I looked around. David hadn’t bothered to turn, and the humans in the store and on the street had been too preoccupied with their own trauma to recognise a truly strange thing when they saw it.

Two seconds later, more or less, a shadow darkened the doorway, and Lewis edged in past the sagging, glassless metal frame. He looked first to David and nodded; David had turned to face him, which said something about how Lewis rated on the whole threat-level scale as compared to Rahel. Not that Lewis was a threat, except in the sense that David probably never forgot (or could forget) that Lewis and I had once been … close. Not for ages, but still. It hadn’t been the kind of one-night stand you forget.

Even so, the two of them were friends, if cautious friends. And they respected one another.

‘Everybody OK here?’ Lewis asked. I gave him a silent thumbs-up, not quite daring myself to speak. He looked – well, like Lewis. Drop him in the middle of Manhattan or in a forest in the Great Northwest, and he basically remained unchanged. Blue jeans, hiking boots that had seen miles of hard use, brown hair that shagged a bit too much, a three-day growth of beard on a long, angular face. Almond-shaped, secretive dark eyes. ‘Jo. We’re setting up a staging area. I’m on my way there now. If you’re done here—’

‘Yeah, I’ll come with,’ I said. I’d had a purse at some point, and I went back into the changing room to hunt for it. Good thing it was a hobo bag. I felt as if I matched it nicely, what with the rumpled clothes, sweat, and plaster dust.

When I turned, David was right behind me. He steadied me with big strong hands, looking into my eyes, and I couldn’t resist an audible gulp. He just had that effect on me.

‘Be careful,’ he said, and kissed me. It was probably meant to be one of those gentle little pecks one partner gives another casually, but it turned into something else as our lips warmed and parted and made pledges to each other we couldn’t really keep at the moment.

When we parted, I felt significantly more alone, and I could see he did, too. David tapped me on the end of my nose with one finger, an unexpectedly human sort of gesture, and gave me a heartbreaking smile.

‘I almost lost you,’ he said. ‘I hate it when that happens.’

He’d really, truly lost me a couple of times. Once, he’d broken the laws of the Djinn and the universe itself to bring me back. I was well aware how much he’d risked for me, and how much he’d risk again if he had to.

I had to be more careful. Losing myself was one thing. Losing David was an unacceptable something else.

Cherise was still in the main room, hanging up gowns and dusting them off, shaking them out. The clerk, who looked pissed now rather than shattered, was muttering under her breath as she checked each dress for damage. I gave Cherise the high call-me sign, and she flashed me a grin and mouthed, You owe me lunch, bitch!

Cherise was the fastest rebounding human I’d ever seen. And that was only part of the reason I loved her like a sister.

Considering my actual bitchy, whiny, double-crossy, drug-addicted sister … better than my sister.

Lewis had a Hummer. I hated Hummers, but I had to admit, it suited him – and he was probably one of the few Hummer drivers who actually used it as God and Jeep intended, to be driven over hard terrain. It looked it, too – muddy, dented, cheerfully well used.

I came to a halt, staring up at the passenger door. ‘I swear,’ I said, ‘if I split these jeans climbing into your damn truck—’

‘Need a boost?’ Lewis asked from behind me. And I had a terrifically tactile premonition of his big hands going around my waist and lifting me up …

Bad for my discipline.

‘As if,’ I said, and, with a mighty effort, levered myself up to the step and into the cab of the truck. It was like an eighteen-wheeler, only with better upholstery. As I got myself strapped in, Lewis swung in on the opposite side with the ease of long practice, and longer legs. I sniffed. The truck smelt like mud, leaves, wood smoke, and mildew. ‘You ever get this thing detailed?’

‘What would be the point?’ Lewis put it in gear, and the tank began to roll. He drove slowly, negotiating around stopped cars and people still standing in the middle of the street. Normal life was starting to reassert itself. As we got farther from the dress shop, I saw that the damage appeared limited to broken windows and overturned shelves in the stores. It looked like New Orleans after a really rocky night of Mardi Gras. ‘OK,’ Lewis said, drawing my attention, ‘so give me the bullet points.’

I ticked them off, a finger at a time. ‘One, I was minding my own damn business, trying on wedding dresses when it hit. Two, I worked with Luis Rocha to try to figure out what was causing it and lessen the damage. Three—’ Number three was my middle finger, unaccompanied by the other two.

‘Classy,’ Lewis said. ‘I’m sure the Wardens Council would be impressed with the summary.’

I repeated the gesture for the missing Wardens Council. Because I didn’t much like most of them, anyway.

‘When you and Rocha went up on the aetheric, what happened?’

I described it for him – the red boil of forces out of control; Rocha diving down toward the source; me following; the ice black shard of – something – driven into the skin of the planet.

‘You touched it,’ Lewis said, ‘and it knocked you away.’

‘Like it was Sammy Sosa and I was the baseball.’

‘Nice sports reference. You do that because I’m a guy?’

‘No, I do it because I like baseball. Back to the subject. I couldn’t hold on to it, and if I couldn’t—’ The only Warden walking around who was stronger than me was currently driving the Hummer. ‘You want to give it a shot?’

‘I’d like to see it,’ he said. We came to a stop light; he turned right, found a deserted parking lot, and parked. ‘Show me.’

I took his hand. It wasn’t strictly necessary, but it made me feel better. We launched up together, out of our bodies and into the aetheric, and I was, as always, interested to see that Lewis didn’t really look all that different on the astral planes than he did back home. Most people tended to reflect the person they wanted to be – prettier, fancier, stronger, taller, skinnier. Hell, our friend Paul manifested as a kind of King Arthur-era knight, although I was pretty sure he didn’t know that.

I had no idea how I looked up top. Did I want to ask? Yeah. But it just Wasn’t Done. Warden protocol.

The aetheric was abuzz with Warden activity. Lewis and I stayed out of it, floating high and looking down on the teeming, busy swirl of light that was the city of Fort Lauderdale. I pointed to a cluster of Warden activity, and tugged on his hand. Down we went, hurtling fast, flashing past startled colleagues I didn’t even vaguely recognise.

We headed down into the disturbance, which, though still roiling, was contained in a tight, glassy shell of power. It looked fragile – the shell, not the disturbance.

Lewis touched the surface, and it took on a milky swirl; then his hand passed through it. He went inside, pulling me after, and when I looked back I saw the bubble sealing itself behind us. Pressure closed in on me, real and intense, and I was glad I didn’t have blood vessels to rupture, because there would definitely be rupturing going on, followed by copious hemorrhaging.

Down we went, sliding through what felt like molten glass, and then I saw the black otherworldly glitter below and pulled on Lewis’s hand to let him know. He nodded, and we touched down on something that wasn’t ground, wasn’t surface, wasn’t anything really except a shadow of reality.

And there it was: the black thorn of glass, driven deep.

Lewis mimed that he was going to grab it. I shook my head. He mimed again. I shook my head again.

Fat lot of good that did. He grabbed it anyway.

Lewis held on for longer than I had – long enough that I began to think he was actually going to manage to yank the damn thing out – but then was thrown back, just as I’d been. Well, more violently. And he hit and bounced and drifted, seemingly unaware of anything until I grabbed on and began hauling him upward, away from that … thing. I couldn’t explain why, but it gave me the serious creeps. It glittered. It looked deadly sharp, no matter what angle you looked at it; there was a sense of purpose to it that made my skin crawl.

It meant to be there. And it meant to defend itself.

Lewis came awake again, thrashing, and broke free of my hold. I fumbled for him, but he was already swimming away from me, heading back down.

Crap. This wasn’t going well.

I couldn’t yell on the aetheric, but I damn well felt like shouting. I pushed after him, feeling sick from the pressure, and grabbed hold of his ankle. He shook free of my grip and kept going, arriving back in front of the black shard. He didn’t touch it this time; he just drifted slowly around it, taking in every detail.

And then he went up, into another aetheric plane higher than this one. I tried to follow, but I slammed into a glass ceiling that no amount of trying would get me past. I was anchored in the real world, and that line stretched only so far.

I had no idea how Lewis was able to do it, but then that was why he was at the top of the Warden food chain, and I wasn’t.

I waited impatiently, and in a matter of minutes he was back, falling back down. He grabbed my hand and we plunged through the aetheric levels, back down to the real world … into our bodies.

I coughed, gasped, and felt my head pound in time with my rapid heartbeat. I was covered in sticky, cold sweat. In fact, I felt downright sick.

So did Lewis, clearly. He looked just as bad as I felt, if not worse, and when I touched him, his skin was ice-cold.

Worse, his hands looked … burnt, flushed bright red on the palms. He wiped them on his jeans in a convulsive movement, as if there were something horrible on them that he wanted to get off, but it was clear from the way he was shaking that it went deeper than surface slime.

‘Christ,’ he said, and leant his head back against the whiplash rest. ‘What the hell?’

‘And here I was hoping you’d have some bright, easy answer,’ I said. ‘Because I’ve got no clue, man. I’ve never seen anything like it before.’

‘Have you shown it to David?’

I hadn’t, and as he mentioned it, I wondered why I hadn’t. And why he hadn’t immediately sensed it. Strange.

‘No,’ I said slowly. ‘And I – don’t think I should. Don’t you think?’

Lewis nodded, not looking at me. His face had gone the color of old newspaper, and his lips looked gray. ‘I don’t, either,’ he said softly. ‘Why is that?’

‘What?’

‘Why do we think that? Wouldn’t we usually ask the Djinn to take a look?’

Usually, but this time … it just didn’t feel …

I had no answer. I just stared at him, then shrugged. Lewis took a deep breath, started the Hummer’s engine, and pulled back out onto the road.

The rest of the trip was spent in silence.

‘You’re kidding,’ I said as Lewis negotiated the Hummer into a parking space built for a Hyundai. ‘We’re meeting at Denny’s? Was Chuck E. Cheese already booked for the president?’

‘Emergency meeting,’ he said. ‘This was the closest place we could find where we could have some privacy. Besides, I could use some food – how about you?’

Well, I supposed I could use a Grand Slam or a Moon Over My Hammy or something.

Getting out of the truck in the narrow space between two other vehicles proved to require moves illegal in some Southern states. I managed not to scratch the other car, which was good, because it was a Ferrari. Bright red.

Denny’s had suffered little or no damage, as far as I could tell. Maybe they’d been outside of the shake zone. Plate glass windows were intact; diners still sat at tables; waitstaff circulated with trays and plates. Lewis and I walked in, out of the cloying humidity and into the frigid embrace of air-conditioning. I shivered a little – still fighting off the chill I’d gotten on the aetheric, I guessed.

Lewis led me back to a private room, one with sliding doors. Inside were four of the most powerful people in the Southeast, never mind Florida, and they were all digging in to breakfast.