"Lucky her," I said. "So who's trying to kill me?"
"Wish it were that simple," he said, and shifted uncomfortably. "Jesus, would it kill you to do a little reupholstering here? It's more springs than padding."
"Yeah, your big fat ass is just used to that luxurious German craftsmanship." But I knew that what was making him nervous wasn't the springs in the seat. "Come on, Paul, you have to have some idea."
"There's a lot of folks that loved Bad Bob. Personally, I thought he was a gigantic pain in the ass, but that's just me. No question, he was one hell of a Warden." Paul shrugged, looked down at his large, strong hands. "I know you two didn't get along."
There was a lot I could say about that-a lot I wanted, desperately, to say-but it wasn't the right time or place, and I wasn't sure Paul could ever really understand anyway. Things were simpler in Paul's world. I wish I lived in it.
"You need to tell me what happened that day," he said when I didn't start talking. "It's important. Unless you're planning on pleading guilty, you need to think about mounting some kind of defense. I can help you. I want to help you."
"I can't."
"Jo." He twisted in the seat with a creak of springs and looked directly at me. Nothing soft in his eyes now, nothing but direct, unmistakable warning. "You have to. I'm not saying this as your friend, I'm saying it as a Warden. You don't give yourself up and start telling your side of the story, you know they're coming after you. You can't run around loose like this. One of the most powerful guys in the world is dead."
"You're going to call the Power Rangers?" That was our own private joke. . . . Marion Bearheart's division of the Association had no official name, but they were the justice system of our screwed-up little world. Quietly took care of the problems. Calmly dispensed justice when required. No arrest, no jury, just the gentle, final judgment of the executioner.
He held my eyes. "I don't have to, and you know it. They'll find you. They're already on your trail."
I had a very cold, cold thought. "You think the lightning bolt-"
"I think it's a warning, Jo, whether it came from the Rangers or not. This is a serious thing you're into. You don't want to laugh it off. Not this time." He reached out and took my hand, and even in that gentle touch I knew he had enough physical strength to crush my hand like paper. If Paul wanted to restrain me, it wouldn't exactly be a challenge-unless I wanted to fight on the aetheric. Which made me think of Bad Bob, and I felt a wave of sickness break over me. It left me shaking.
"Stay," he said. Still a request.
"Thought you had a lunch date."
"It can wait." He was looking at me again, watching me in that half-lidded, intense way that carbonated my hormones. And worse, he knew it. If I stayed, I was going to get myself in trouble, one way or another. "I don't believe you did anything wrong. I think Bad Bob lived up to his reputation, things got out of hand-is that how it was?"
"I can't do this," I said, and pulled my hand free. Paul was staring at me with big, calculating brown eyes. His eyebrows pulled together. The smell of aftershave reminded me that I wanted to kiss him, and I sank farther back in my seat, trying not to give in to temptation, trying not to notice the way sunlight slid warm across his cheekbones and turned his skin to gold. God, I wanted comfort. I wanted someone to make everything . . . better.
I knew better than to believe I could find it anywhere except inside myself.
"You need my help to stabilize the system?" I asked him. The lightning bolt would have torn his careful manipulations to shreds, sending the weather into chaos even if it wasn't yet visible to the naked eye. He shook his head.
"I've got three people on it already. The less work you do in the aetheric, the better," he said. "And stay the fuck out of Oversight. Especially if you're determined to keep on with this. You glow like a heat lamp."
"I don't have a choice, Paul. I've got to keep on with it."
"I could stop you, you know."
"I know." I leaned forward and kissed him. Caught him by surprise. After a few seconds, those sensual full lips warmed under mine. The fantasy had been good; the reality was better. When I pulled back, he had a glazed look in his brown eyes, but he blinked and it cleared up. So much for my ability to cloud men's minds . . .
"Jesus," he breathed.
"It wasn't that good," I protested. But he wasn't kidding. He was looking at me with wider eyes, really staring now. Seeing.
"There's something wrong with you," he said. "I can't see it, but your aura's turned red. Blood colors, Jo. You know what it means-"
When I looked down at myself, I saw the black writhing form of the Demon's Mark on my chest, over my heart. It was working its way down. I focused hard and halted its progress, but I couldn't hold it for long. When I looked up, Paul was in Oversight, right in front of me-layers of green and gold and blue, perfect in their intensity. He'd see it. He had to see it in me.
Back in the real world, he only said, "Are you sick?"
I wanted to tell him. I didn't know why he couldn't see it in me, but I needed him to know, to help-to get this thing out of me. I was shaking all over with the desire to tell him.
And I couldn't afford to. That was the one thing he wouldn't let slide.
"Sick," I finally agreed.
"Let me help you. Please, just let me get Marion. She can help you-"
"No!" The protest ripped out of me with so much force, I felt it slam into him like a punch, and he pulled back. I struggled to get my voice under control. "No, she can't. Nobody can. Understand?"
He kept looking at me, studying me. I felt like he was seeing all the way through to the black shadow of the mark. God, I couldn't risk that.
"I've got to go," I said. "Are you going to turn me in?"
It was so quiet in the car that I could hear the ticks and pops of Delilah's engine cooling, hear my own fast heartbeat. Somewhere off in the distance, thunder rumbled. He reached out and touched my cheek with one thick finger, caressed the line of my cheekbone, and then sat back like he wished he hadn't touched me at all.
"I'm not going to get on the hot line just yet. I'll give you that much. But we both know Marion's people will find you. And if they don't, when the Council calls me to join the hunt, I'll come at you, sweetheart. You know I will. I have no choice." He let out a long breath. "Maybe that's for the best. Because if you're really sick-"
"I know." I was no longer looking at him, and I concentrated instead on my hands. My fingernails were ragged and torn. I picked at one and focused on a shiny red bead that appeared at the corner of one cuticle, lifted the hand to my mouth and tasted the warm copper tang of blood.
"You have five hours to get out of my sector," he said. "Try to come back, and my Djinn will stop you. You don't set foot in my territory, Joanne. Not until this is over. Understand?"
"Yes." One-word answers were possible, but just barely. God, this hurt. I'd anticipated everything but how much it would hurt.
Paul reached over and took my hand in his. His skin felt very warm and, startlingly, very rough. He worked with his hands, I remembered. On his car.
"Tell me," he said. "Tell me where you're going. I swear, it won't go anywhere else. I just want to know."
"I can't." And I didn't dare. Finally, I pulled in a deep breath and said, "I'm going after Lewis."
He looked confused. Bothered, even. "Lewis?"
"Lewis Orwell."
"I know who the fuck Lewis is. Everybody knows. Why Lewis?"
"Because he has three Djinn. I met one at his house, so he still has two more. I just need him to give me one."
"At his house?" Paul repeated. He wasn't a guy who was surprised often, but his eyebrows shot skyward. "What do you mean, at his house? How can you know where he is?"
"He told me." I sounded smug when I said it, but there, I'd kept the secret a long time. I deserved a little round of I'm-cooler-than-you, especially with Paul, who was rarely out of the loop. "Long time ago."
He gave me a richly deserved glare. "I'm not even asking what you did to get it."
"Hey, I can't help it if I'm irresistible." Yes, definitely, that was smugness in my voice. I was comfortable with it. "Which is why he's going to help me out and given me a Djinn."
He stared. "You're fuckin' crazy. Why the hell would Lewis do that?"
"Because," I said, before I could think about it, "I think he used to be in love with me."
Paul shook his head, got out of the car, and then leaned in the passenger side window. An east wind ruffled his hair-storm on the way.
"Jesus, Jo, he's not the only one," he said, and walked back into his castle.
I drove out of Albany not knowing exactly how to feel. I loved Paul. I'd always loved him. Paul had written my introduction letter to the program at Princeton. It was because of him that I had the degree and the training to become a real Warden.
It was because of him I wasn't a drooling shell screaming out my lungs in an asylum, because I knew that despite Marion's gentle touch, I couldn't have gone on without my powers. I would have cracked. Paul prevented that.
All the good things in my life had happened because of Paul.
All the bad things had happened because of Bad Bob.
The Wardens have a big fancy home office where they hang plaques of outstanding performers, and Bad Bob's name was covering the walls. One of the most talented Wardens ever to join the team, he was also one of the most controversial.
He had been a brilliant, temperamental teenager; he'd grown into a brilliant, tantrum-throwing, bad-attitude adult. People feared Bad Bob. Nobody in their right mind wanted to be under him. Even at his own level, or above it, people hated to see him coming.
I got him as a boss.
I'd heard all the stories-Bad Bob threw a drink in the face of the President of the United States, and it had taken all the resources of the Association to get him sprung from Secret Service custody. Bad Bob had walked into a going-away party for a retiring National Warden in England and swilled down an entire bottle of Cristal champagne, when he didn't even like to drink, just to spite the old boy. He was feared, he was revered, and he was legendary for a reason. It was considered a badge of honor to have a run-in with Bad Bob, something you could dine out on for months.
Weather Wardens sometimes resemble a Keystone Kops comedy more than they do an actual professional organization. That's because no large organization composed of mavericks with superpowers can ever be said to be truly organized. Yet, somehow, we manage to protect human beings from about 80 percent of the crap that Mother Nature throws at us, in our arrogant, mostly chaotic way.
Nobody, however, had been able to stop Hurricane Andrew.
It had swept in from the Hurricane Zone, looking very much like all its wimpy cousins who'd taken no more than a few well-chosen pressure shifts to counter. Nobody in the Florida office was much worried. Bad Bob, Sector Warden back then, hadn't even been informed. He had Staff to handle those kinds of things; his responsibility was looking after the macro events and keeping the whole Sector stable over time.
Andrew got out of hand. First two Staff Wardens worked on it, then five, then more. Before it was over, there were literally hundreds of Wardens focused on it, trying to defuse the ticking bomb of the storm.
Even Wardens have to be careful in dealing with a storm of that magnitude. It killed more than twenty of them, shattered the powers of at least ten more, and by the time Bad Bob physically made it to the scene, it had already hit the coast of Florida and begun its raving march of destruction.
I wasn't there, of course. Too young. But I heard all about it in school.
Bad Bob walked along into the center of the storm and stopped it. All alone.
Oh, damage was done-the worst hurricane to hit the coast in a century. But even in the middle of all that devastation, we knew how much worse it could have been. Andrew was a sentient storm, a storm that had gathered sufficient energy to hold its form and continue to ravage a path of destruction over land for a thousand miles or more. Andrew was angry and hungry in a way few things on this planet can be. And yet Bad Bob had faced it down and made it bow to his will.
After that, even those who thought he was a jerk and an asshole wouldn't turn down a chance to be on Bad Bob's team. It was considered both a nightmare and an honor. A badge of courage second to none.
By the dawn of 2002, I'd been a working Warden for four years, mainly up and down the Atlantic coastline. Technically, I was working for Bad Bob in Florida, but as with CEOs of major corporations, his presence was mostly made manifest by phone calls to those far above me, or with a scrawled signature on memos. I reported to Regional Warden John Foster, a capable, easygoing man with a penchant for tweed jackets and pipes, the kind of guy you half expected to have a plummy Oxford accent instead of the North Carolina drawl that came out of his mouth. We did the usual-more rain here, less there, smoothing out a tropical storm into a squall, diverting storms from heavily populated areas. Nothing really dramatic. Nothing important. I screwed up a couple of times-everybody does-and got bawled out by Bad Bob via telephone. It was nothing personal. Everybody gets reamed by Bad Bob at least twice, if you survive on his team at all.
And then in August, Tropical Storm Samuel came calling. Early for hurricane season, but in my experience the worst came early, or it came late. Samuel had some very unusual patterns in it, patterns that reminded us of Andrew. The decision was made, all the way up at the World Council level, to stop the storm before it came anywhere near to posing a threat. Nobody was complacent about that kind of thing anymore.
I'm still surprised that my name came up for that, but then it was still a small-sized thing, not a major event, and I had a solid rep with warm-weather storms. No doubt John Foster had thought it would be good training for me, since it involved working with a Warden on the other side of the pond- Tamara Motumbo, from Mauritania. I'd done tandem manipulation before, but in classroom and lab settings, nothing like the kind of power-sink that lurked out in that womb of storms called the Bermuda Triangle.
The National Weather Service has some nice offices in Coral Gables, Florida-rebuilt after being smashed to scrap metal and splinters by Hurricane Andrew. I arrived that morning feeling loose and relaxed and ready for anything; working in Florida had given me a chance to indulge myself in the quest for the perfect tan and the perfect bikini, and I was feeling confident that I'd finally mastered at least one of them. Six square inches of aqua-blue Lycra priced at about fifteen dollars per square inch. It was in a tiny little shopping bag on Delilah's front seat, my personal reward-in-advance for the job I was about to do. The plan was to finish up ridding the world of Tropical Storm Samuel, change into the bikini, and hit the beach for the rest of the day.
There was nothing unusual about visiting the NWS offices. We-meaning the Staff Wardens and Regional Wardens-did it all the time. Our badges said visitor or researcher, but at least half the building suspected we were something more, although nobody said it out loud and nobody asked any questions. Lots of significant looks, though. And people handing you free Cokes.
That morning, I signed in at the reception area, clipped my tag on my loose white shirt-which was subbing for a cover-up later at the beach-and exchanged chitchat with the receptionist, a gorgeous African-American woman named Monet. We exchanged bikini-shopping stories, and as we did, I happened to glance down at the visitor log. My eyes froze on a name.
Robert Biringanine.
"Bad Bob's here?" I asked Monet.
She glanced up at me, looked around, and leaned over closer. "Meeting with somebody," she confirmed. "I didn't ask who."
"Well, I think I'll just sacrifice a small furry animal to whatever god spared me from that."
"Baby, I'd sacrifice more than that just to make sure I got out of the meeting all right." Monet rolled her eyes. "That man eats his own children, I swear."
"He damn sure eats his Staff's children. And his Staff." I checked my watch, which told me I had five minutes to launch. "Better get in there. Later?"
"Later," she confirmed. "Cuban sandwiches for lunch. There's a great place about six blocks down. Be there."
I waved and was buzzed through the door into a high-tech wilderness of cubicles, glass conference rooms, arrays of computers blinking in machine dreams. Two or three of the analysts and meteorologists looked up and watched me pass, but nobody spoke. I knew where I was going, and so did they.
Situation Room B is, technically, a secondary crisis center, but it's rarely in use; the Wardens use it for an informal office most of the time. I'd been in it five or six times already, so I knew what to expect when I opened the door.
Except that there was someone else already there.
Bad Bob Biringanine stared out at the cloudless blue sky, his feet up, drinking a glass of water with bubbles. I hadn't seen him in the flesh since my nearly disastrous intake meeting, and I felt myself turn small and weak at the sight of him. Especially when those laser-sharp blue eyes considered and then dismissed me.
"Baldwin, right?" he asked. He had a light tenor voice, neutral with indifference.
"Yes, sir."
"Just here to observe," he said. Observe. Like that wasn't worse than any trouble I might have been in already. Having Bad Bob staring over your shoulder was bound to make even the best Warden nervous, and I wasn't quite arrogant enough to consider myself the best. Yet.
I sucked it up and sat down to review the file: maps of pressure systems, satellite photos fresh off the printer of the growing circular mass of Tropical Storm Samuel, still lashing empty ocean beyond Bermuda. My opposite number was waiting in a seaport town in Mauritania named Nouakchott; the phone was preprogrammed for speed dial to reach her. Voices don't carry so well in Oversight. Landlines are always a plus for long-distance work.
"You getting on with it while I'm still young?" Bad Bob asked. He hadn't moved from his kicked-back spot, was still staring at the view. Funny how I think of it as a view, even though both of us were looking at a clear blue sky, not even any clouds in sight; we were drawn to the boundless and limitless possibilities. When I swallowed, I felt my throat click. There was a carafe of water on the table, sweating diamond drops, but I didn't feel like showing him that my hands were shaking. I wiped palms against blue jeans.
"Sure," I said. "No problem."
I speed-dialed. Tamara Motumbo picked up on the second ring, and we exchanged some nervous pleasantries, through which Bad Bob drummed fingernails against the table. I hurried along to Step One, which was confirmation of the scope of our work. It's always good to go into a powerful situation with a clear expectation of what you're supposed to walk out with.
We decided we wanted to disrupt Samuel enough to make it just another squall; no point in trying to wipe out the storm altogether, since it would only move the energy someplace else that might spawn something just as bad. I made notes as I went, and my writing was shaky. Nothing like knowing every move you make is on the record.
"Ready?" I asked Tamara. She said she was, though I'd lay money that neither of us was really sure.
I sucked in a deep breath, let go, and floated out of my body and into Oversight. The room turned gray and misty, but Bad Bob was like a brilliant neon sign, lit up with so much power, it was hard to look at him directly. Red tinged. I wondered if he was sick, but I wasn't about to ask after his health, not now. I turned away from him, oriented myself with the vast voiding power of the sea, and let the waves of its energy carry me up and out, far up, flying without sound or pressure through the liquid we call air. No clouds in Oversight, either, but there was a low red band of energy over the ocean and a corresponding white one coming down from the mesosphere-clouds later, then, and rain in a day at most. Warming and cooling ocean air is the unimaginably powerful engine that drives the machine of life. Connecting to it like this, right on the coast, was a sensuous, dangerous experience.
I soared. In Oversight, crossing huge distances takes a fraction of real time, but it still felt like a long trip by the time I saw the swirling entity we were calling Samuel. He was a big, growing boy, already well into rebellious adolescence and halfway to becoming a dangerous hooligan. Facing that kind of storm makes you feel small. No, not just small: nonexistent. The forces that formed him and drove him dwarfed anything I could summon out of myself.
I shifted just enough of my consciousness back to my body to ask Tamara on the phone if she had a Djinn.
