Ill Wind E-Book

Rachel Caine

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

Seitenzahl: 465

Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2013

Beschreibung

Joanne Baldwin is a Weather Warden. Usually, all it takes is a wave of her hand to tame the most violent weather. But now Joanne is trying to outrun another kind of storm: accusations of corruption and murder. So she's resorting to the very human tactic of running for her life. Her only hope is Lewis, the most powerful Warden. Unfortunately, he's also on the run but Joanne and her classic Mustang are racing hard to find him - because there's some bad weather closing in fast.

Leseprobe

Storm Advisory in Effect

In my business, we not only understand chaos theory, we totally abide by it. Chaos happens. Always plan for speed.

Either the Djinn was putting me on, which would be seriously unfunny, or the spell was coming from Elsewhere. I hoped not an Elsewhere that began with the letter Hell.

I got a bad feeling. ‘No offence, but can I at least get some proof this message is from Lewis?’

‘No,’ said a female voice, decisively. Static. The radio clicked off.

It could be the Djinn. In fact, it was even likely; I’d embarrassed him, and he owed me payback for that. But he had made a call, and I couldn’t waste the chance if he was honestly giving me instructions on how to find his boss. Djinn had a host of faults, but out-and-out lying wasn’t among them.

And besides, I had to outrun the storm behind me anyway.

‘Oklahoma City,’ I sighed aloud. ‘Home of heavy weather. Fabulous.’

The only redeeming thing about it was that I knew the territory. I hadn’t spent a whole lot of time there, but one of my best friends in the world had retired out there. It’d be nice to have a friend right now. Somebody to count on. Some shoulder to cry on.

I had to look on the good side, anyway. Because the bad was pretty overwhelming.

Ill Wind

Book One of the Weather Warden series

RACHEL CAINE

To those who inspire:

My husband, Cat (always), and to my dear friends Pat Elrod, Kelley Walters, Glenn Rogers, Pat Anthony, and – of course – ‘the’ Joanne Madge

To those who believe:

Everybody in ORAC (you know who you are!) and my friends at LSGSC

To those who made it happen:

Lucienne Diver and Laura Anne Gilman

To my musical inspiration:

Joe Bonamassa

And finally,to the one who taught me to lovethe storm as much as the calm:

Timothy Bartz

Rest softly, my dear. This one’s for you.

Contents

Title PageDedicationEpigraphExcerptChapter OneChapter TwoChapter ThreeChapter FourChapter FiveAbout the AuthorAvailable from Allison & BusbyCopyright

Thunder is good, thunder is impressive; but it is the lightning that does the work.

Excerpt from Owning Your First Djinn publishedby the Wardens Association Press, 2002.

Owning Your First Djinn

By granting you the possession of one of the Association’s Djinn, the Wardens Association has recognised that you are among the finest in your area of specialty, whether you control Weather, Fire, or Earth. You should accept this great honour and grave responsibility with humility and courage.

Djinn are a valued, precious resource. Abuses of Djinn or their powers will be prosecuted to the fullest extent of our Association’s laws, up to and including execution.

Do

Use your Djinn to augment your powers, and rely upon your Djinn for advice in your area of specialty.Guard your Djinn’s home (commonly a bottle) with great care. Although your Djinn will (of necessity) be loyal only to you until your death, or until the Association removes the Djinn from your care, misplacing a Djinn is a very serious matter with associated penalties. All Djinn must be housed in breakable containers (see ARCANERULES, below) but precautions should always be taken against accidents.

Don’t

Manifest your Djinn in public unless first asking it to remain invisible or to take human form.Abuse your Djinn by asking it to perform unsavoury or immoral actions.Break your Djinn’s container UNDER ANY CIRCUMSTANCES.

ARCANE RULES

Once Djinn have been assigned a master, they can take orders only from that master, unless the master temporarily assigns control to another Warden for business purposes.Djinn cannot break their own containers. They are allowed, however, to trick others into destroying these containers, thus freeing them from their services. YOU MUST BEWARE OF THIS AT ALL TIMES. A freed Djinn is a very serious danger to all of us.Never ask a Djinn for the Three Things Forbidden: eternal life, unlimited power, or raising the dead.

ETIQUETTE

You may begin to develop a certain fondness for your Djinn over time. This is normal and healthy. But never forget that your Djinn is a magical creature of nearly unlimited power and lifespan, and is not human. The motivations of Djinn are not always understandable. Never trust them completely.

TECHNICAL SUPPORT

If you have questions about the day-to-day administration of your Djinn after the initial training period, please contact our 24-hour hot line for assistance. Specialists are on hand at all times for your protection.

Chapter One

Cloudy and cool, with an eighty per centpossibility of moderate to severe thunderstormsby mid-afternoon.

Well, thank God this is about to be over, I thought as I drove – well, blew – past the sign that marked the Westchester, Connecticut, city limits. Traffic sucked, not surprisingly; rush hour was still in full swing, and I had to moderate my impatience and ride the brake while I watched for my exit. Calmdown. Things will be back to normal in just a fewmore minutes.

OK, so I was a little too optimistic. Also unrealistic, since me and normal have never really been on speaking terms. But, in my defence, I needed all the optimism I could muster right then. I’d been running on adrenaline and bad coffee for more than thirty hours straight. I’d been awake for so long that my eyes felt like they’d been rolled in beach sand and Tabasco sauce. I needed rest. Clean clothes. A shower. Not necessarily in that order.

First, I had to find the guy who was going to save my life.

I found the exit, navigated streets and annoying stoplights until I found the residential neighbourhood I was looking for. I checked the scrap of paper in my lap, studied kerbside house numbers, and finally pulled the car to a stop in front of a nice Colonial-style home, the kind of place a realtor would describe as a ‘nice starter’. It had flame-red tulips planted in mannered rows under the windows, and the lawn looked well behaved, too. Weird. Of all the places I’d have expected to find Lewis Levander Orwell, the most powerful man in the world…well, this wasn’t it. I mean, suburbia? Hello!

I tapped chipped fingernails on the steering wheel, weighed risks and benefits, and finally popped open the door and stepped out of the car.

The euphoria I’d felt when I was pulling into town vanished as soon as my feet hit solid ground, crushed under a load of exhaustion. Too much stress, too little sleep, too much fear. Speaking of fear…I felt wind on the back of my neck, and I turned to look east. A storm loomed like purple mountains’ majesty, big cumulonimbus clouds piled on top of each other like a fifty-car interstate pileup. I could feel it noticing me, in the way storms had. No question about it, I needed to be out of Westchester before that thing decided to pounce. I’d been watching storms crawl along the coast, paralleling me all the way from Florida. The nasty part was that it might actually be the same storm, stalking me.

They did that sometimes. It was never good.

Nothing I could do about it right now. I had bigger issues. Up the concrete walk, up three steps lined with geraniums in terracotta pots, to a spacious white front door. I knocked and waited, rocking back and forth on three-inch heels that felt like something from the spring collection of the Spanish Inquisition. Bad planning on my part, but then I’d been expecting a pleasant little business meeting, not a two-day panicked flight cross-country. I looked down at myself and winced; the blue French-cuffed polyester shirt was OK, but the tan skirt was a disaster of car-accordioned linen. Ah well. It would have been nice for Lewis to swoon with desire on seeing me, but I’d definitely settle for him pulling my bacon out of the fire.

Silence. I cupped my hands around my eyes and tried to peer through glass not designed for peering. No movement inside that I could see. With a sinking feeling of disaster, I realised I’d never considered the possibility that my knight in shining armour could be away from the castle.

I knocked on his door once more, squinted through the glass again, and tried the bell. I heard muffled tones echoing through the house, but nothing stirred. The house looked normal.

Normal and very, very empty.

Out where I was, Westchester was enjoying spring sunshine. People walked, kids whooped around on bikes, dogs ran with their tongues hanging out. Inside the house, there was winter silence. I checked the mail slot. Empty. Either he’d been home earlier, or he’d stopped his mail altogether. No papers on the lawn, either.

I considered my options, but really I had only two: get some idea of where else to look, or lie down and die. I decided to do some scouting. Unfortunately, the grass was damp, and my three-inch heels weren’t designed for path finding. With some cursing and tripping and excavating myself from spike-heeled holes, I clumped around the house.

The house had that don’t-touch-me feeling that indicated strong wards and protections, but I circled it anyway, checking the windows. Yep, wards on every one, good strong ones. The yard was nice and neat as a pin, with the look of being maintained by a service instead of somebody with a passion for plants. Lewis had a very nice workshop in the back, which was devoted half to woodworking, half to magecraft; that half was warded up the wazoo, no way I could do more than just glance in the window before I had to retreat or get zapped.

Powerful stuff. That was good – I desperately needed a powerful guy.

I banged on the back door and squinted in the square of window. Still nothing moving. I could see the living room, decorated in Basic American Normal – looked like everything in it had come out of some upscale catalogue. If Lewis lived here, he was a lot more boring than I’d ever imagined.

I had plenty of powerful tricks up my sleeve, but they didn’t include breaking and entering. The kind of powers I possessed, over water and wind, could destroy a house but not open a door. I could have summoned a hailstorm – a small one, OK? – to break a couple of windows, but no, that would be wrong and besides, I’d probably get caught because it was pretty showy stuff. So I resorted to human tactics.

I tossed a rock at the window.

Now, I was pretty sure it wasn’t going to work, but in a way it did; the rock bounced off some thick invisible rubbery surface about a half inch from the window, and the back door slammed open.

‘Yes?’ snarled the guy who blocked the doorway. He was big, and I mean huge – big, tanned, bald, with two gold earrings that twinkled in the sunny Westchester morning. He was wearing a purple vest with gold embroidery over rippling muscles. I had the impression of dark pants, but I didn’t dare look down. Didn’t matter, his chest was definitely worth checking out. Pecs of the gods, no kidding.

Just my luck. Lewis had left a Djinn at home – his own personal mystical alarm system.

‘Hi,’ I said brightly. ‘Lewis around?’

He scowled. ‘Who wants to know?’

‘Joanne Baldwin.’ I held out my hand, palm up; the Djinn passed his palm over mine and read the white runes that glittered in its path. ‘We’re friends. Me and Lewis go way back.’

‘Never heard of you,’ he said brusquely. Djinn are not known for their chatty nature, or their sunny disposition. In fact, they’re known for being difficult to handle and – if they don’t like you – fully capable of finding some sneaky way to do you in. Not that I was an expert, exactly; Djinn were reserved for bigger fish than me, sort of the equivalent of a company car perk in the Wardens Association. I didn’t even rate a reserved parking space yet.

The Djinn was still staring at me. ‘Go now,’ he rumbled.

I stood my ground. Well, it was really his ground, but I stood it anyway. ‘Sorry, can’t. I need to talk to Lewis. Urgently.’

‘He is not here. Being that you are a Warden, I won’t kill you for your lack of manners.’ He started to close the door.

‘Wait!’ I slapped my hand – coincidentally, the one with the rune – flat against the wood. It wasn’t my upper body strength that made him hesitate, that’s for sure. Even Mr Universe couldn’t have held a door against a Djinn, much less a five-foot-five woman with more attitude than body mass. ‘When will he be back?’

The Djinn just stared at me. Djinn eyes are colours not found in the human genome, specially formulated to produce maximum intimidation. Some of them are citrine yellow, some bright fluorescent green, and they’re all scary. This guy’s were a purple that Elizabeth Taylor would have envied. Beautiful, and cold as the colours in arctic ice.

‘Look, I need to find him,’ I said. ‘I need his help. There are lives at stake here.’

‘Yes?’ He hadn’t blinked. ‘Whose lives?’

‘Well, mine, anyway,’ I amended, and tried for a sheepish grin. He returned the smile, and I wished he hadn’t; it revealed perfect white teeth that would have looked more appropriate on a great white shark.

‘You stink of corruption,’ he said. ‘I will not help you.’

‘That’s up to your master, isn’t it?’ I shot back. ‘Come on, he knows me! Just ask him. I know you can. He wouldn’t leave you here without any way to contact him. Not even Lewis goes around abandoning Djinn like disposable pens.’

The purple eyes were really, really getting on my nerves. I could feel the Djinn’s power burning my skin where my hand touched the door, another spiteful tactic to get me to let go so he could slam it shut and ward me clear out to the street. There’s nothing stronger than a Djinn on its home territory. Nothing.

The pain in my hand got worse. Smoke rose from my hand where it pressed against the white-painted wood door, and my whole body shook from nausea and reaction. But I didn’t let go.

‘Illusion,’ I stammered. The Djinn was still grinning. ‘Don’t waste my time.’

‘My powers could not touch a true Warden,’ he said. ‘If you burn, you burn because you deserve it.’

All right, I’d had about enough of playing with Mr Clean gone bad. I took my hand away from the door and held it up.

The world breathed around me.

I might have stunk of corruption, but I still commanded the wind, and it slammed into the Djinn with force of a speeding Volkswagen. Djinn are essentially vapour.

I blew him away.

He was gone for about a half-second, and then he re-formed, looking ready to pull my brain out through my nostrils. So I hit him again. And again. The last time, he re-formed very slowly all the way across the room, looking pissed off but respectful. I hadn’t made the mistake of setting foot across his threshold, so he couldn’t strike back. All his awesome power – and it was truly awesome – was useless. So long as I didn’t break the wards, I could stand out there all day and toss microbursts and katabatic gusts.

The Djinn muttered something unpleasant. I held my hand up again. A strong breeze shoved my hair around, and I felt the warm tingle that meant I had at least one more good Djinn-blasting gust at my command.

‘I really, really don’t have time to dick around with you,’ I said. ‘Give him my name. Tell him I need to see him. Or else.’

‘No one threatens me!’ he growled.

‘I’m not threatening, sweet pea.’ I could feel the white runes on my hand glowing. My dark hair whipped around my face in the wind, which I kept coiling around me, building tornadic speed. ‘Want to bet I can blow you all the way into a teeny little open bottle and stick a cork in you?’

‘You know not what you are doing,’ he said, more quietly.

‘Wrong, I know exactly what I’m doing. Want another practical demonstration?’

He held up one hand in the universal language of surrender. I let the wind swirl and die. The Djinn reached over and picked up something from the table, and it took me a few seconds to realise it was a cell phone. Good God, the Djinn had entered the age of technology. Next thing you know, a satellite dish in every bottle, broadband Internet, microwave ovens…

The Djinn punched numbers, said something, and turned away from me while he talked. I had the leisure to examine the back of a Djinn, which is something you rarely do. He had a nice ass, but his legs ended in a swirl of vapour somewhere around knee level. Still, not a disappointment.

He finished the call, turned back, and bared pointed teeth at me. Uh-oh, I thought.

‘Come inside,’ he invited. ‘No harm will come to you.’

‘I’ll wait out here, thanks.’ I rocked back and forth. My feet felt like somebody had set them on fire from the soles up, and the couch in the living room looked cushy and inviting. I wished the Djinn hadn’t started being nice. It was harder to maintain my tough-as-nails bitchy attitude, especially when I wanted to cry and curl up in a ball on those nice, soft cushions.

‘Suit yourself.’ The Djinn turned away to root around in some drawers in the kitchen. He came up with a battery, scowled at it, and threw it back. A corkscrew. One of those clippy things for opened bags of chips. ‘Ah! Here. Take this.’

He tossed something shiny at me. I caught it and felt a flash of cold, something sharp turning in my fingers, and then I was holding nothing but an expanding breath of mist. I opened my hand and stared down. Nothing to show for it but a faint red mark on my palm. I frowned at it and extended a tingle of Oversight, but there was nothing there. Nothing harmful, anyway.

‘What the hell is it?’ I asked.

The Djinn shrugged. ‘A precaution,’ he said. Sharp-toothed grin again, very unsettling. ‘In case you lose your way.’

Before I could offer a polite thanks-but-no-thanks, I felt the steel psychic slam of wards coming up to full strength. The Djinn was evidently done screwing around with me, even as a diversion.

He floated up to the doorway, watching me as I backed down the steps while fighting against it.

‘Hey!’ I fumed. ‘Dammit, I just want to talk to him! That’s all! I’m not going to turn him in or anything!’

‘Drive,’ he said. ‘You’ll be contacted with directions.’

I was off the back porch and out of the yard and on the sidewalk before I could even think about fighting back.

I flexed my hand, but it didn’t feel any different than it ever had. In Oversight, there was nothing visible but flesh and bone, muscles and nerves, the luminous course of blood moving on its busy way.

The Djinn had smelt the Demon Mark on me. That was bad. Very bad.

It meant I didn’t have much time left.

God has a sense of humour, and in my experience, it is never kind. I’d tempted fate consistently for days now…I hadn’t packed a toothbrush, a change of clothes, or a tampon. Well, at least I had my American Express Platinum, with the infinite credit limit for emergencies…but then again, I didn’t dare use it. My friends and colleagues would be watching for any sign of me, and until I found Lewis – and safety – I didn’t dare attract their attention. If the FBI could find me, the Wardens sure as hell wouldn’t have any trouble.

I kept myself awake as I drove my sweet midnight-blue ‘71 Mustang out of town by making a mental shopping list. Underwear: check. Toiletries: check. Clothes: definitely. New shoes: a must.

I sniffed the air inside the car. A shower and a car deodoriser wouldn’t hurt, either. Maybe something with that new-car aroma. I love classic cars, but they come with baggage and years of ingrained stinkiness. Feet, sweat, sex, the ancient ghosts of spilt coffee. I smelt it only after a few hours on the road, and maybe it was all in my head, but just now I’d give anything for a clean, fresh scent like they claimed in the commercials.

I rolled down the windows and smelt something else, something more menacing. Rain. The storm was getting closer.

I find that as a Warden, it pays to drive something aerodynamic and fast that the wind will have a hard time shoving over a cliff. Just because I can control weather – with the proper focus – doesn’t mean the weather likes it, or that it won’t decide to screw with me at the most inconvenient times. In my business, we not only understand chaos theory, but we totally abide by it, as well. Chaos happens. Plan for speed.

I accelerated out of town in complete defiance of traffic laws and headed out on the maze that was the Connecticut road system. Basically heading south and west, because that was away from the coming storm, which had turned the eastern sky a heavy grey green. You’ll be contacted withdirections. Had the Djinn just screwed with me? Possibly; the Djinn were known for their mean-spirited sense of humour. Maybe he hadn’t gotten hold of Lewis. Maybe Lewis had told him he didn’t want to see me, in which case the only directions the Djinn was honour-bound to give me led straight to hell.

I was in antiques country on CT 66, driving past shops that sold Federal chests and Shaker chairs, some of them even genuine. On a better day, I might have been tempted to stop. My Florida house was due for a redecoration, and I liked the psychic feel of antiques. It was definitely time to get over that Martha Stewart everything-in-its-place phase; I was so tired of pastels and good manners, I could yak. The fantasy that I would be going home – ever – to a normal life was something I was clinging to like a spar on a stormy ocean.

I was just passing a shop that housed every piece of junk from the nineteenth century when suddenly the radio crackled on. Hair on the back of my neck stood rigid, and I knew there was a spell travelling with me. A big, powerful spell, coming, no doubt, from my friendly neighbourhood Djinn.

The radio spun channels, picking out its message like words on a ransom note.

A high female voice. ‘Drive…’

Midrange male. ‘To…’

Full-throated Broadway show tune. ‘Oklahoma is OK!’

‘What?’ I yelped. ‘You’re kidding, right?’

The radio flipped stations again. It settled on classic rock. ‘No-no, no, nuh-no, no, no-no-no-no-no no no no, nuh-no.’ Either the Djinn was putting me on, which would be seriously unfunny, or the spell was coming from Elsewhere, I hoped not an Elsewhere that began with the letter Hell.

‘Very funny,’ I muttered. I shifted gears and felt the Mustang stretch and run beneath me like a living thing. ‘Any special place in Oklahoma? It’s not exactly Rhode Island. There’s a lot of real estate.’

Letters this time. ‘O…K…C’ Oklahoma City.

I got a bad feeling. ‘No offence, but can I at least get some proof this message is from Lewis?’

‘No,’ said a female voice, decisively. Static. The radio clicked off.

It could be the Djinn. In fact, it was even likely; I’d embarrassed him, and he owed me payback for that. But he had made a call, and I couldn’t waste the chance if he was honestly giving me instructions on how to find his boss. Djinn had a host of faults, but out-and-out lying wasn’t among them.

And besides, I had to outrun the storm behind me anyway.

‘Oklahoma City,’ I sighed aloud. ‘Home of heavy weather. Fabulous.’

The only redeeming thing about it was that I knew the territory, and one of my best friends in the world had retired in OKC. It’d be nice to have a friend, right now. Somebody to count on. Some shoulder to cry on.

I had to look for the silver lining, anyway. Because the storm cloud was pretty damn dark, and only getting worse.

I’d met Lewis Levander Orwell at Princeton. He was a graduate student – already had a degree in science, then a Juris Doctor to practice law. His explanation, strangely, had been that he’d wanted something to fall back on, in case the whole magic thing didn’t work out. Apparently he had the whole Magical Arts thing mixed up with Liberal Arts.

And for a while, it looked like having a fallback career was a good idea. Lewis had been recruited – or drafted – after demonstrating some definite weather-working abilities at the age of fifteen, but that talent had seemed to fade. He had loads of potential but no actual…nothing concrete to show what his powers might be or what form they might really take. Then, his second year in the Program, he was spotted working in the garden. In the winter, knee-deep in snow. Growing roses.

Red, blooming roses the size of dinner plates. He was honestly surprised that it was hard to do.

He was originally identified as an Earth Warden – someone who could shape living things, alter the land itself, make crops grow in fallow fields, prevent or cause earthquakes and volcanoes. A strong, deep power, and very rare. Then, in his third year of the Program, they’d discovered he also had an affinity for fire. Dual specialties are vanishingly rare. Only five other Wardens in recorded history had ever commanded earth and fire together. Water and air – that was expected, even typical – but earth and fire didn’t blend well. Lewis was talked about a lot. He was, we all heard, expected to do Great Things.

Must have been a lot of pressure, but you’d never have known it from the way he acted. Lewis was quiet; he did his work, went to classes, had some friends but gave the strong impression that if any man was an island, it was Isla Lewis. I admit, I pined after him. I had my reasons.

Unfortunately, Lewis avoided Program girls like the plague – which was kind of my fault, because our first encounter had been, shall we say, memorable. Anyway, he deliberately went for the normal girls. Sociology majors, psych grad students, the occasional goofy art student. Girls whose biggest aspiration was to get a secretarial job at Smith Barney and vacation with their bosses in the Bahamas…unlike those of us in the Program, who dreamt of facing down F5 tornadoes and calming raging rivers.

Because I was not stalking him, just keenly aware of his presence, I happened to be around for The Event, which was what we began calling it later when there was some perspective on what had happened.

That was the night Lewis got the shit kicked out of him by six frat boys on a bender.

It was the Kappa Kappa Psi party, which was a music fraternity…for some odd reason, the band geeks always knew how to throw a bitchen party. Four of us from the Program crashed the scene – Lewis, who came on the arm of some miniature brunette flute player; and Paula Keaton, Ed Hernandez, and me, who came looking for free drinks and the slim possibility of getting charmed out of our underwear. I glimpsed Lewis early on, talking to his flute player but not looking very comfortable; he didn’t drink much, and the party was rolling pretty well.

Flute Girl eventually got swept away on a tide of Everclear punch, and Lewis was left to ramble around on his own. He knew I was there – I think – but we didn’t hook up. If we had…well. Water, bridges, et cetera.

Sometime around 2 a.m., he knocked over a guy’s drink. Pretty stupid reason for what happened, but the reason ceased to matter after the third or fourth round of insults, and suddenly there were six of them and one of him, and punches started flying. Two of them held him down, the others took turns kicking him when he went down. Like everybody else standing around at the party, I was frozen in shock, cold beer in hand. Violence happens so quickly. Unless it’s you taking the beating, it takes time for it to sink in, especially when alcohol’s involved. If you’re an onlooker, reaction comes later, when you’re asking yourself why the hell you didn’t do anything to help.

It couldn’t have been long as serious beatings go, maybe less than a minute, but a guy can get really fucked up in sixty seconds when it’s a free-for-all, six on one. About the time some of the other guys at the party realised they should be doing something and I opened my mouth to scream, Lewis got kicked in the head and he rolled on his side toward me, and I saw his face.

Bloody. Scared to death. Desperate.

He reached out to me. No, that’s wrong; he reached out toward me. He reached for power, as unconsciously as a child reaching for its mother.

The Mother Of Us All reached back.

I felt power sweep over – out of me – in a storm of pins and needles, felt the air gasp around me, felt water drops pulled off my skin and my beer bottle by the sheer power of his call.

The wind hit with the force of a freight train. It was targeted, specific, and it was hungry. I felt its tugging passage, but it barely ruffled my hair; it slammed into the six frat boys and picked them up and swept them across the parking lot, into the side of a brick building, and pinned them there thirty feet off the ground.

Nobody except those who study weather really understands the incredible nature of wind. A fifty-mile-an-hour gust is brutal, but a seventy-five-mile-an-hour gust is more than twice as powerful as that because of the increased pressure per square inch. A ninety-mile wind, three times worse.

These college boys were crushed by, at minimum, a wind of above 120 miles per hour. Enough to fracture bones from the sheer force of the impact. More bones broke from the pressure acting on them as they were held up against the wall. I remember thinking, as I looked at this incredible display of power, My God, he’s going to squeeze them intojelly, but in the next second Lewis blinked and the wind died and they fell thirty feet to the grass.

Chaos followed. Lewis lay on the ground, gasping for air, staring at me. I stared back in total shock. After what seemed like ages, I hurried over to him, hunkered down, and put my hand on his forehead. He felt burning hot.

‘Jesus, Lewis, you called the wind,’ I blurted. ‘You’ve got everything. Everything.’

He just managed to nod. He probably didn’t understand exactly what it meant, the state he was in. The Association got there before five minutes was out, and he was loaded into an ambulance accompanied by three of the most powerful Wardens in the entire world, all of them arguing furiously about what had just happened.

He looked afraid. And woozy. I keep thinking that if I’d done something then, said something to him, tried to stop them from taking him away, maybe things would have been different.

But, realistically, probably not.

I drove for about half an hour before I decided the radio wasn’t going to make any more mystical-musical pronouncements. I fished the cell phone one-handed out of my purse and checked the battery level. Two bars. No chance of recharging; I hadn’t had time to pack for basic hygiene, much less handy phone accessories. I paged through the numbers in memory – Mom, Sarah, my dry cleaners, my massage therapist… Ah. Estrella Almondovar. Just who I was looking for.

I punched the speed dial and waited through the clicks and rings, lots of rings, before a sleep-mashed voice mumbled, ‘This had better be important.’

‘Kinda,’ I said, with as much fake cheer as I could pack into my voice. ‘Gooood morning, my little jumping bean.’

She cleared her throat. I could just see her dragging a hand through midnight-black hair, trying to rub away the dreams.

‘I got your salsa right here, bimbo,’ she said. ‘Jesus Maria, what time is it?’

‘Eight a.m. on the East Coast.’

‘Yeah, that’s like six here. You know, big hand on the six, only you can’t see it ’cause it’s dark? What, they don’t teach you time zones in Florida?’ I heard sheets rustling. Static clawed the line. ‘I guess you want something.’

‘Great sex,’ I sighed. ‘With a gorgeous man, with a great big—’

‘Bank account,’ she finished. ‘Some things never change, eh? Sad thing is, you’ll probably get it. Meanwhile, I get to listen to your wet dreams at you’ve-got-to-be-fucking-kidding-me in the morning.’

I downshifted and drafted behind a semi tractor-trailer hauling ass in the fast lane. With cars like my lovely Delilah, and ever-rising gas prices, it pays to conserve all the fuel you can. The Mustang shuddered from the buffeting before we settled into the slipstream, then purred out her pleasure.

Somewhere in the wilds of Oklahoma, Estrella banged what sounded like metal around, dropped the phone, picked it up. ‘It’s your dime, Jo. You’ve got until my coffeemaker fills up the first cup, and then I’m gone whether you’re finished or not.’

‘Places to see, people to do?’

She snorted. ‘Chica, you ought to cut down on the crack. I got no place to be and nobody to do, as usual.’ That was closer to the truth than either of us wanted to explore.

‘Then this would be good news: I’m headed your way.’

‘Seriously?’ Her tone turned guarded. ‘What’s wrong?’

‘Wrong? Why would it be wrong?’ I thwacked myself on the forehead. Estrella – Star, to her friends – knew me too well.

‘You’re kidding, right? You – leave a life of topless beaches and hot hard bodies to vacation in Oklahoma?’

‘Dying to see you!’

‘Right.’ She dragged the word through three syllables. ‘How long has it been?’

‘Um…’ I couldn’t remember. ‘A year?’

‘Try two.’

‘Hey, I keep in touch. Don’t forget the phone calls. Or the Christmas cards.’

‘The Christmas cards show up in February,’ she said. OK, she had a point, I wasn’t exactly the most reliable friend in the world. ‘So what’s the deal, Jo? You need crash space?’

‘Maybe. Well. Yeah.’ I heard her pouring liquid into a mug. ‘I should be there in a couple of days. You think I can stop in, maybe just catch a shower and some rest? I may not need it. I’m just saying, maybe. I’ll pay for dinner, honest. And at someplace good, not the local roach factory.’

Star sipped coffee. I was desperately jealous; my mouth watered at the thought. ‘Tell you what, you maybe show up, I’ll maybe let you in. That’s if you swear there’s not going to be any trouble, like you were in last time.’

‘That was so not my fault. Tornadoes are a perfectly natural phenomenon. Not my fault you live where they go for vacation.’

‘Hey, we live la vida loca around here, girlfriend. So. Why are you really coming out to the ass-end of nowhere?’

‘It’s not the ass-end of nowhere. And besides, you’re there.’ I winced again. That sounded suspiciously like what my buddy Andy had said when I asked him if I was getting fat. You’re not fat – you’re my friend! Well, at least it had made me go on a diet.

‘Actually… I wasn’t being completely honest before. Something’s kinda wrong. I have to find somebody. It’s important.’

‘Somebody around here?’

‘Last I heard, he was somewhere close.’ I was reluctant to say the name, but hell, Star was right; she knew everybody and everything that went on in that part of the world. ‘Um, it’s…Lewis.’

‘Qué?’ she blurted. ‘You know, I was only kidding about the crack, but seriously, are you high? You got any idea how many people have been looking for him since he disappeared?’

‘Yeah, I know. Pretty much everybody in the upper circles.’

‘What the hell you gonna do when you find him?’

Not anything I could admit to, certainly not to Star. ‘Look, let’s not get into it, OK? Let’s just call it catching up on old times.’

‘Sure. OK.’ She banged more metal – probably skillets. Star was a hell of a cook. ‘So I’ll watch for you, then.’

I sensed something on her end, something she wanted to ask, so I waited. She finally said, ‘Hey, you haven’t heard anything, have you? About me?’

‘From who?’

‘Forget it.’

‘No, really? From who?’

Another long hesitation. It wasn’t like her. Star was a do-it girl. ‘I just get worried sometimes, you know? That they’ll change their minds. Come and finish the job.’

That hit me hard, in unguarded places. I hurt for her. ‘No, baby, that’s not gonna happen. Everybody agreed, you deserve to hang on to what you have. You know that. Why would they change their minds?’

‘Why do they do anything?’ She forced a laugh. ‘Hey, no worries, I’m just freakin’ paranoid – you know that. I listen to the little voices in my head too much.’

I would, too, if I were Star. Which led down paths of speculation where I didn’t want to follow. ‘Well, now I’m all jealous. I wish I had little voices in my head. Guess I’ll just have to settle for people really being out to get me.’

‘Bitch,’ she said cordially.

‘Bimbo.’

Three or four uninspired insults later, we mutually hung up. I tossed the phone back in the passenger seat. Star would give me shelter, and she’d never rat me out to anyone looking for me, but she was really, really vulnerable. A few years ago, Star had taken a tremendous hit, both physically and emotionally, and she’d been forced to leave the Wardens. Usually, when people leave, they get blocked – a kind of magical lobotomy, to ensure they can’t go rogue. It had been a close thing with Star, but they’d let her keep what little she had left. Provisionally.

And Star was absolutely right – that didn’t mean that somebody wouldn’t show up on her doorstep with official sympathy and orders to rip the essence of power out by the bloody roots. They’d damn sure hop to it if they found me conspiring with her, what with me bearing the Demon Mark and all. God. I shouldn’t be dragging her into this, but there were only a few people in the world I could trust with my CD collection, much less with my life. In fact, there were only three.

Lewis and Star and Paul.

It’ll be OK. If I found Lewis, if he did as I asked, if everything worked out OK…I wouldn’t need to put her at risk.

If. If, if, if.

It was a small word to hang the rest of my future on. Star’s, too.

When I was fifteen, my mother fell in love with a guy named Albert. First of all, I ask you – Albert? I guess it could have been worse. He could have been named Cuthbert or Engelbert, but at fifteen it was still a crushing horror to me. Albert the Bear. Big, hairy guy, with a laugh that sounded like a rusty chainsaw and a fashion sense second only to Paul Bunyan for addiction to flannel.

Albert wanted us all to get closer to nature. Even then, knowing next to nothing, I knew it was a really bad idea, but Mom thought he not only hung the moon but painted it, too, so we all packed our outdoorsy equipment and flannel shirts and hiking boots, and headed off into the Big Empty.

Actually, it was Yellowstone National Park, but same diff.

All right, it was beautiful – breathtaking, even to a disaffected fifteen-year-old girl who didn’t want to be pulled away from the mall and her friends for the summer. Beautiful and wild and powerful.

But mostly I was bored, and I wished for TV and MTV and boys. Awesome geysers: check. Incredible vistas: check. Crushing ennui: gotcha.

We hiked. And hiked. And hiked. I wasn’t much for that, and when my boots rubbed blisters on the first day, Albert the Bear wouldn’t let me rest; he told me it would toughen my feet. I sulked and snapped at Mom and wished desperately that I would fall and break my leg so that a good-looking rescue party of tall, dark-haired men would come carry me away. Occasionally I wished Albert would get eaten by a bear, but that was before I actually saw one; once I had, I didn’t wish anybody to get eaten by a bear.

Somehow, we got to the top of whatever ridge we were trying to climb, and while Mom and Albert were admiring the downhill view, I was looking up.

‘It’s going to rain,’ I said. The sky was a perfect ocean-deep azure, the sun a hot gold coin glittering like sunken treasure. I sat down on a rock and started to take my shoes off.

‘Don’t take ’em off,’ Albert advised me in his rumbling bass voice. ‘Feet’ll swell. And I think you’re wrong, Jo. It doesn’t look like rain.’

I craned my neck, shaded my eyes, and looked up at the thick black bulk of him standing over me. Nice to be in the shade. Not so nice to be in Albert’s shade.

‘See that?’ I pointed to the thin, wispy clouds in perfect waves. ‘Cirrus clouds, coming out of the east.’

‘So?’ For some granola-chewing, tree-hugging forest nut, Albert wasn’t very weather wise.

I smiled. ‘Look.’ I grabbed a stick and drew a circle in the dirt. ‘The planet spins this way, right? East to west.’

‘Just figured that out, did you?’

I ignored him and drew an arrow the opposite direction. ‘Wind moves west to east, against rotation. So why is the wind coming out of the east?’

This time he didn’t say anything. That was fine; I wasn’t listening anyway. ‘It’s coming out of the east because there’s something rotating—’ My stick drew a spiral somewhere over where I guessed we were. ‘—that’s changing the direction of the wind. Rotation means a storm.’

He looked over at my mother. She looked back. I figured the silent conversation had something to do with what a freak I was, what the hell were they going to do with me, and on and on and on. Not like I hadn’t already said it and wondered it myself.

I drew some wavy lines in the sand next to the spiral. ‘Cirrus clouds form way up high – ice crystal clouds, running ahead of a pressure system. So. It’s probably going to rain. Based on how fast they’re moving, it’ll probably be here before dark.’

A freshening eastern breeze frayed my hair out of its braid and plastered strands to my sweating face.

Somewhere out there, beyond the trees, beyond the place where morning started, I could feel it growing, pulling energy from the collision of warm and cold air, condensing water and energy, sucking micro-drops together to form mist, mist to form clouds, clouds to form rain.

I closed my eyes and I could almost taste it, cloud-soft on my tongue, the taste of brass and ozone and cool, clear water. God, it felt good. Tingles all the way inside, deep down. I’d never been out in the open before to a storm forming. It had a raw, wild power I’d never expected.

‘Bullshit,’ Albert said bluntly, and laughed. ‘Pretty good try, Jo, Hey, you’ve got quite the con artist there, Nancy.’

My mother wasn’t smiling, and she wasn’t laughing. She looked at me gravely, thumbs hooked in the straps of her backpack, and shifted from one foot to the other. Mom wasn’t used to hiking, either, but she hadn’t complained, hadn’t talked about blisters or being thirsty or being tired.

‘Are you quite the con artist, Jo?’ she asked me. I didn’t say anything. She turned back to Albert. ‘We’d better start back.’

‘Oh, come on, Nancy, you don’t buy this stuff, do you? She’s fifteen years old, she’s not some damn weatherman. You can tell the weather around here for days around, anyway. Clear as a bell, that’s what this is.’

‘There’s high pressure to the south,’ I said, lacing up my boots. ‘Wall cloud forming over the horizon to the east. It’ll be bad by nightfall – it’s moving fast. Warm air always moves faster than cold.’

‘We should start back,’ Mom repeated. ‘Now.’

And that was that. Albert the Bear grumbled and muttered, but we started back down the ridge. The first darkness edged over the eastern horizon, like early night, at just after three in the afternoon, and then it flowed like spilt ink, staining the sky. Albert shut up about coddling my fear of nature and devoted his breath to making good time. We scrambled down sheer slopes, jogged down inclines, edged carefully past crumbling paths over open gorges. People talk about nature as a mother, but to me she’s always been Medea, ready and willing to slaughter her children. Every sheer drop we navigated was an open mouth, every jagged rock a naked tooth.

I wasn’t attuned to the land, but even I could sense the power in it, the anger, the desire to smash us like the intruding predators we were. I felt it from the storm, too; the storms that made it into cities were less self-aware, more instinctual. This one pulsed with pure menace.

Warmer air breathed through the trees, rattled branches, and fluttered leaves. The breeze picked up and it carried the sharp scent of rain.

‘Faster,’ I panted as we hit easier terrain. We ran for it as the storm clouds unfurled octopus tentacles overhead and the rain came down in a punishing silver curtain. Overhead, lightning forked purple white, and without a city to frame it, lightning was huge and powerful, taller than the mountain it struck. Thunder hit like a physical body blow. It rattled through my skin, my cartilage, bones. We’re mostly water, our bodies. Sound travels in waves.

Above us on the ridge, a tree went up like a torch.

Albert was yelling something about a ranger station. I could barely see. The rain stung like angry wasps, and under the trees the blackness was complete. Better not to stay under the trees anyway, too much risk of drawing another lightning strike.

Pins and needles across my back, at the top of my head.

‘Get down!’ I yelled, and rolled into a ball on the ground, trying to present the smallest exposure to the storm. I could feel it now – it was like a blind man with an axe hunting a mouse. It wanted me. It was drawn to me.

It hated me.

Lightning hit close, very close. I felt the concussion and heard something that was too loud to be just a sound, it was a force with energy and life of its own.

I was sobbing now because I knew the next time it would get me. It knew where I was. It could smell my fear.

Somebody grabbed my arm and dragged me to my feet. We ran through the darkness, slipping on grass and mud. Deer burst out of the darkness and across our path like white ghosts fleeing a graveyard.

We made it to the ranger station, and I realised only when I saw Mom and Albert were already there, wrapped in blankets and shivering, that the person who’d dragged me up and out from under the storm wasn’t anyone I knew.

She was small and golden skinned and dark haired, and she was laughing as she swept off her park ranger hat and hung it up to dry.

‘Nice day for a walk’ the other ranger said, the one handing Mom and Albert steaming cups of coffee. My rescuer grinned at him and looked out the window. Rain lashed the glass as if it were reaching inside for us.

‘Yup,’ she agreed. ‘Just about perfect.’

She glanced over at me, and I felt it like a current humming between us. We were the same, shared something fundamental.

The storm wasn’t hunting me. It was hunting us both.

‘You should be more careful,’ she said. ‘Some people just aren’t cut out for communing with nature.’

‘What’s your excuse?’ I shot back. She lifted one shoulder.

‘Somebody’s got to be on the front lines,’ she said. ‘Estrella Almondovar. Star, for short.’

I told her my name. We shook hands. She got me a blanket and, instead of coffee, hot cocoa. As she handed it over, she lowered her voice and said, ‘You have a notice? From the Association?’

‘Yeah. I’ll have an Intake Board at eighteen.’

‘Well, don’t wait. Start getting the training now, like me – this is my internship. You need it. I’ve seen the Park react like this to only one other person before.’

‘Who?’ I asked. She gave me a teasing little wouldn’t-you-like-to-know smile.

‘You don’t know him,’ she said. ‘But his name is Lewis.’

She went back to the cabin window and stood watching the fire up on the ridge, the one that the first lightning strike started. As I watched, it flickered, sizzled, and went out.

That’s when I knew. She wasn’t a Weather Warden, not like me. She had power over fire.

From that day, we were friends. I don’t really know why; we didn’t have all that much in common, beyond the obvious, but we had a kind of vibe. Energy. We resonated to the same frequencies.

We ended up roomies at Princeton, shared a thousand joys and tragedies and triumphs. She was the best friend I ever had, and it looked for a while like we were going to live charmed lives forever. Smart, beautiful, gifted. Two peas in a pod. Perfect.

And then Yellowstone burnt, and everything changed for both of us.

I gloomily considered Oklahoma City. The most direct route was to follow the Connecticut toll roads until I could get on I-90. It would be the better part of a two-day journey. The coffee I’d slammed down in a caffeinated frenzy at 4 a.m. was no more than a memory, and my stomach rumbled to remind me that delicious as it was, mocha was not a food group.

So should I stop to eat, or pile up the miles? My decisions almost always depend on the forecast, so I flipped stations until I got a weather channel.

The storm that had followed me out of Florida was now ravaging the eastern seaboard. I could see darkness amassing on the horizon behind me, and a flanking line at the edges of the supercell. It was starting to turn, driven by Coriolis effect and the powerful internal engine of water heating and cooling; when it completed its rotation, it would be that most dreaded of East Coast storms, the nor’easter.

I didn’t intend to be anywhere near it.

You might wonder why I didn’t just give it a wave of my hand and get rid of it – which was entirely within my powers. Well, Newton was right: action gets reaction. Every time a Warden balks the weather, the power has to go somewhere, and believe me, you don’t want the power of a supercell discharging through you; it’s something on the order of three or four larger-than-average nuclear bombs. If I’d tried directly to make my stalker-storm disperse – waved my hands and parted the winds, to give it a biblical interpretation – I might have succeeded here and created the world’s largest-ever tornado whirling its way directly at me from the opposite direction. Plus, I wasn’t an official Warden in this area…or anywhere, come to that. Not anymore.

Still, I’d been one of the most subtle weatherworkers in history, all my performance reviews said so; I could probably slide it under the radar of anyone who might be looking for me up there in Oversight. Not that I had a lot of choice, really… No matter how fast I drove, this storm was bound to catch me. It had the scent of me now.

I turned the radio on, settled myself comfortably in the body-hugging seat of the Mustang, and began humming while Jim Morrison sang – funnily enough – about riders on the storm. As I drove, I shifted – not gears, but the air above. Cooled it here, warmed it there, slowed the elevator-fast updrafts that were feeding the storm its power. It was delicate work, making sure the energy expended didn’t add up to another problem, and still making enough changes that the storm weakened. Also, I had to do it quietly. Last thing I wanted to do was attract attention from the local officials.

It took about two and a half hours to reduce it from a badass mofo to an inoffensive low-pressure system, which is nothing much if you’re driving a Mustang and listening to a Doors album marathon. I pulled off the road in the parking lot of a roadside diner called the Kountry Kafe, put the car in neutral, and closed my eyes as I left my body to check out the results.

In Oversight, the world looks very different. I lifted my hand in front of my face and saw a tracery of crystal, my aura cool blue edged with flashes of green and – most unsettlingly – streaks of red. Red was bad. Red was trouble. No wonder the Djinn had smelt the Mark on me.

Nothing I could do about it now. I stepped out in my astral form and admired the crystalline perfection of the Mustang, which was even more beautiful in Oversight than in the mundane world. A real magical beauty of a car. One look at the Kountry Kafe convinced me I didn’t want to eat there; it pulsed with bad vibes, like a quaking mass of rancid Jell-O.

I spread my weightless arms and went up. There was no sense of speed – not in this reality – and no sense of resistance, either. I glided up, and up, and up, until the earth curved off beneath me. From that dizzying height, I studied the deforming spiral of the storm. In Oversight it looked almost the same as in the real world, only instead of lightning, the energy displayed in colours – brilliant, vibrant colours that a trained Warden could interpret. I’d done enough with it, I thought. Its overall rotation had been disrupted, and the lightning flickers were showing in golds and greens, sheets of positive and negative charges in scattered glitter. If I’d missed the mark, I would’ve seen reds and a steady photonegative undertone.

I let go, and the planet rushed back at me. The first time I’d travelled in Oversight, I’d absolutely freaked, and no wonder: the sensation of falling back into your body is one of the most terrifying feelings in the world. These days, I enjoyed it like a thrill ride. Few enough thrills in my life recently. Not to mention fewer dates.

I filled my body again, and the world took on weight and form and dimension. Delilah the Mustang assumed her familiar glossy midnight-blue paint job.

My stomach rumbled again. With one last, regretful glance at the Kountry Kafe, I eased on down the road.

The diner where I finally stopped looked outwardly a lot like the last one, but its Oversight characteristics were more encouraging. It was called Vera’s Place. Vera, it turned out, was long gone, but the owner and operator was a perky thirty-year-old named Molly with hair that showed several indecisive home dye jobs and the kind of creamy milkmaid skin that every Hollywood actress wants.

‘Pie?’ she asked me expectantly as I polished off the last of my open-faced turkey sandwich and mashed potatoes. There wasn’t a lot of commerce going on inside Vera’s Diner; I counted about six old coots and a yuppie couple dressed from the LL Bean catalogue who sneered at the menu selections and would never even have considered eating something as middle-American as pie. Which decided me.

‘What, you think I’m hungry or something?’ I asked, and scraped up the last of the delicious pan gravy with the edge of my fork. I got a dimpled smile in response.

‘Last one we had in here didn’t eat pie was some hot-shot defence lawyer from LA,’ she confided. I passed over the turkeyless, gravy-free plate.

‘Wouldn’t want to be included in that company,’ I agreed. ‘What kind of pie you got?’

She raised an eyebrow. ‘You really want the whole list?’

‘Just the high points.’

The high points could have filled a couple of pages, single spaced. I decided on chocolate.

‘German, cream, or meringue?’

‘I’m sorry, is that a choice? Meringue, of course. Definitely.’

The meringue was taller than most three-layer cakes, a hugely delicious confection that went down perfectly cool with the rich, creamy chocolate beneath. The crust was to die for, crisp and delicious. Best pie I ever had. Honest. The Oversight never lies about the quality of food, especially pies.

While I was savouring the last few bites, I took out a road map and looked over the route. Long. Long and boring. I asked Molly about good places to stay and got two recommendations, visited the little Wardens’ room, and went back to my car full of chocolatey satisfaction, with the full intention of finding a Holiday Inn with adult channels and a minibar. One gets fun where one can.