Thin Air

Lewis must have taken his silence for assent, because he was coming back. He elbowed David aside and reached for my hands again. I yanked them free.

"No!"

"Don't be stupid. You've got frostbite. I'm restoring circulation." Lewis made a frustrated sound and grabbed my wrists, hard, when I tried to pull away again. "Dammit, quit fighting me!"

"Let her go," David said very quietly. "She doesn't recognize you. She doesn't understand."

"What?"

"I can't see her," he said. "She's not on the aetheric."

Lewis frowned at him and rocked back on his heels. "That's impossible."

"Look."

Lewis turned the frown toward me, and his eyes unfocused. For a long few seconds, nothing happened, and then a very odd expression overtook his irritation, smoothed it out, and made it into a blank mask.

"Oh, shit," he breathed. "What the hell...?"

"I can't see her past," David said. Which made no sense to me at all, but then, this was making less sense as it went along. "Someone's taken it from her."

"How is that even possible?"

"It isn't." Suddenly David crouched down, startlingly graceful about it, and stared into my eyes. "Joanne. Do you know me?"

I recoiled from him, crab-walking backward. Answer enough. For a long moment he didn't move again, and then he smoothly got back to his feet and stepped away. He crossed his arms across his chest and bowed his head, relieving me of the pressure of that stare, at least for a little while.

"Who are you people?" I blurted. "He's got some kind of superpowers. And I don't know what the hell you are!" I pointed shakily at Lewis and then at David. I'd gotten farther from the fire, and I could already feel the chill biting hard on my exposed skin. "No! Don't touch me!"

Lewis had started moving after me. He stopped, frowning again. "What are you going to do?" he asked in a voice that sounded way too reasonable. "Run around in socks and a coat in an ice storm? It's suicide. Let us help you."

"Why? Why should I believe you?"

"Because you'll die without us," David said. He hadn't looked up. "We've been out here looking for you for days without rest." He slowly raised his head, and I saw something that rocked me back as if he'd pushed me: tears. Very human tears, in those not-human eyes. "Because we love you. Please."

This time, when David came toward me, I forced myself to hold still for it. I still felt that nearly uncontrollable urge to run, to hide, and I couldn't stop the way I flinched when he slid his arms under my shoulder blades and my knees. Unlike Lewis, he didn't smell like a guy who'd been living rough. He smelled like fresh wind and sunlight and rain, and against my will I buried my face in the hollow where his neck flowed into strong shoulders. He felt solid and real, and he picked me up as if I weighed less than an empty plastic bottle. Heat cascaded out of him, crashed into me, flooded me in a drunken tsunami of warmth. Oh, so good. I clung to him, my hands fisted in the fabric of his shirt, and shuddered in sheer animal pleasure.

"I'm going to need to touch you," Lewis said. I glanced up into David's face.

"I'll hold you," he said. "I won't let go."

I nodded. Lewis's hands pressed against me, palms flat, this time against my shoulders, and jolts of electric fire began to flood through me. I might have resisted, but if I did, David was more than enough to keep me still.

When it was over, I felt nerves still firing in white-hot jerks, but as it passed a sense of numbing exhaustion took over, and I felt myself going limp.

"That'll do it," I heard Lewis say in carefully colorless tones. "Better get her dressed. It's going to get colder out here tonight, and she's still very weak."

David's voice seemed to be moving away from me, growing thinner and fainter. "Wait. What did you find?"

"Nothing," came Lewis's faint, smeared whisper. "Apart from nearly freezing to death, there's nothing wrong with her. Physically, anyway."

"Then what happened?" David's question came as a ghost, lost in darkness, and then I was gone.

I didn't sleep for long, but when I woke up, I was dressed-blue jeans and a denim shirt over a thermal tee-and wrapped up in a sleeping bag next to the fire. I tried to figure out which one of them might have taken the liberties, but gave up. Either way, it was a deeply unsettling question.

"I can carry her," David's low voice was saying from somewhere on the other side of the crackling fire. Night had fallen, and with it an absolutely deathly chill. Even in the sleeping bag, fully clothed, I could feel it nipping at me. "I don't like keeping her out here longer than necessary."

"I know," Lewis replied. He sounded agitated. Exasperated. "Dammit, I know! But it's more than a day's hike to the closest rendezvous point, and no matter what I do, the temperature just keeps falling. You think she's strong enough to make the trip? Like this?"

"She won't be any stronger tomorrow."

"Okay, I give. It's not just her I'm worried about. If I don't get some sleep, I could collapse on you, too."

"You think I couldn't carry you both?" David asked. He sounded amused. "All the way back, if necessary?"

"I'm pretty sure you could, but my pride's already taking a serious beating, and you know I love you, man, but I'm not ready for us to be quite that close." Lewis's voice was as dry as old paper. "And besides, if I start losing it, we start losing the weather. If you start messing with things, they'll find you, and us, and her."

"Ah." Evidently a convincing argument.

"I'll put up the tent," Lewis said. "Won't take long."

I peered out from under half-closed eyelids and saw David walking toward me around the fire. Something different about him now-oh, he was wearing a coat. Not a modern hiking accessory; this one was a long olive-drab affair, like something out of the First World War, and it came down almost to his boots. He looked antique. Out of place.

Beautiful.

He noticed me. "You're awake," he said, and crouched down beside me. "Thirsty?"

I nodded and pushed myself up on my elbows. He unscrewed a plastic bottle and handed it over. I guzzled cool, sterile water, almost moaning with ecstasy as the moisture flooded into me. I had no idea how long I'd been without a drink. Too long.

He leaned forward to move hair back from my face, and I instinctively jerked back, putting air between us. He froze. Oh, God, I thought. We're lovers. There was no other explanation for the ease of his gesture, and the look on his face, as if I'd stuck a knife in his guts and broken it off. The expression came and went in a flicker, and then he was back to safely neutral.

I took another long drink to cover my confusion, to give myself time to breathe. Lewis glanced over his shoulder at us, and I wondered what the hell the dynamics were of this life I couldn't remember. David was-I was almost certain-my lover. And he wasn't human. Lewis was human, but not my lover-at least, I didn't think he was.

Not that Lewis was exactly the normal choice of the two. He could start fires with a snap of his fingers. And heal people. Whatever it was I couldn't remember about my life, it definitely wasn't what you could ever call boring.

David wasn't much for small talk, it appeared, which was a very good thing, given how confused I felt. He handed over a couple of trail bars, packed with sugar and protein, and I hungrily wolfed them down. Nearly dying takes a lot out of you. Eating served another purpose: It kept me from having to talk. I had a ton of questions, but I wasn't sure I was ready for any of the answers.

Lewis had the tent up in record time. Outdoorsy, clearly, though I guess I should have known that from his battered hiking boots and easy confidence and the neat, meticulously packed bag he was toting around. It wasn't a very big tent, barely large enough for two sleeping bags. We were all going to get very friendly.

At Lewis's orders, I clambered out of my warm nest, dragging my sleeping bag with me, and settled in. Claustrophobic, but at least it would be warm. I turned on my side and listened to the other two, who were still outside. Their fire-cast silhouettes flickered ghostly against the dark blue fabric of the tent.

"I have some MREs. Maximum calorie concentration," Lewis said. "So...does she like Stroganoff or meat loaf?" He was deliberately casual, but he sounded really, really tired.

"Ask her," David said. "But I doubt she'd have any idea. She remembers what they are, just nothing about how it relates to her directly."

"How..."

"He took it from her." David's voice had turned hard and brittle as metal. "We have to get her back."

"I'm not disagreeing, but...look, David, what if we can't get her back? We've got no idea at all what we're dealing with here. And the last thing we should do is get into this before we know-"

"He's taken everything!" David didn't shout it, but he might as well have; his voice ached. It bled. "Djinn can see the history of things, and she has none. Do you understand? As if she never lived. The people who know her-we're all that's holding her here. Without us, without our memories of her, she disappears. Unmade from the world. Clearly that's what he meant to do. We must find a way to undo it."

Lewis was quiet for a moment. I heard the fire crackle, as if he'd thrown another log on. "Then that's all the more reason not to go running off into the woods without a better idea of what we're doing," he said. "We've got problems beyond Joanne."

"I don't." David sounded fierce and furious.

"Yes, you do, David, and you know it. We're crippled. Both of us. Between the Djinn's withdrawal and the problems with the Wardens-"

"She's the only thing that matters to me now. If she's not the only thing that matters to you, then you shouldn't be here."

"I'm just saying that we need to take our time. Be sure we understand what's happening here."

"Use her as bait, you mean."

"No. I didn't say that."

"And yet I think that's what you mean. There's something out here-you know that. Something very wrong." Silence, and a rustle of cloth. David's shadow lengthened as he stood up. "She always thought you were a cold-blooded bastard at heart," he said, and ducked into the tent.

I hastily squeezed my eyes shut, but there was no way he wouldn't know I was awake. I could just...sense that. He'd be a very hard man to fool.

He settled down next to my feet, his arms propped on his upraised knees. "You heard," he said. It wasn't a question. "What do you want to know?"

I sighed, gave up, and opened my eyes. "Where have I been? Do you know?"

Either my eyes were adjusting to the dark, or there was a dim, suffused illumination running through the walls of the tent. Moonlight. I could see a vague shadow of a smile on his face. It looked bitter. "No," he said. "I don't. I'm sorry."

"Well, tell me what you do know."

"Beginning where?" he asked. "With your birth? Your childhood? Your first love?"

Just how much did he know about me? "How did we meet?" I asked.

"Ah. That's a good story. I guess you might say that I tried to kill you." He paused, head cocked to one side. "Technically, I guess you could say I succeeded."

"What?"

"It's a long story. You sure you want to hear it?"

I felt a bubble of panic growing in my chest, making me short of breath. "I want to know who I am. What's my name?"

"Joanne Baldwin," he said. "You're a Warden."

"A what?"

"Warden," he said. "You're part of a small group of humans who have the ability to channel the elemental power of the world. Control fire, earth, or weather. You control the weather. And fire, these days, although you're still learning that skill."

"I control the...Are you high?"

That drew a strange smile out of him. "Try it," he said. "Reach out and feel the wind. Touch the sky."

"You know, those lyrics must have been lame even back in the seventies." But even while I was mocking him, I remembered that vivid ghost vision I'd had, of the wind running like a river in the sky. I'd been able to see curls and eddies in the flow.

Was that what he meant? But that wasn't controlling the weather; that was...X-ray vision. Or something.

"You're insane," I declared. Which he found oddly amusing.

"I'm Djinn," he said. "So yes. At times, at least by your standards. Try, Jo. Try to reach out and touch the clouds. I'll help you."

I bit my lip and thought about giving it a try. What was the worst thing that could happen? No, something told me inside, the same thing that had told me to get up and run, out there in the woods. Don't do it. You have no idea what you're risking. What kind of attention you might draw.

"How?" I asked.

David held out his hand. I slowly reached out to take it, and our fingers instinctively intermeshed.

Before I could even think about saying no-not that he was asking-he pulled me up and against him, body to body.

"Hey!" I yelled, panicked, and tried to push him away. Not a chance. "Get off, dammit!"

He put a hand over my mouth, stilling my protest-not demanding, more like a gentle caress. "I'm not going to hurt you," he murmured. "If you allow yourself to feel for a second, you'll know that."