Thin Air

I felt stunned, and a little sick. The hit man, I thought. The hit man who'd been waiting outside the jail. Was that possible? Would she really sell my life like that? For money?

Eamon took another step toward me, and I snapped my attention back to the present. "Put down the knife, Eamon."

He looked at it, turning it in his long, sensitive fingers like he'd never seen it before. "Ah," he said. "But that would mean I wouldn't have any fun at all. And I'd so hate to disappoint dear Sarah by not living down to her expectations. She does need to understand that there are limits to my patience, and you're just the way to show her."

And he lunged for me, knife out.

I blew him backward, and I didn't even know how I'd done it, except that I'd reached for something, and something had responded.

I didn't blow him far, and he snarled, and he came back for me, and I knew if he came within slashing distance my ass was dead.

So I made the sand melt under his feet, like the Wardens had done to me when they'd been trying to trap me, and Eamon plunged without a sound below the surface.

Venna, who'd been ignoring me through all this, whirled around, lips parted, eyes blazing. "Look at you," she said. "Look at you. So pretty. So bright. So strange."

I had no idea what she was talking about, because I was trying to figure out what I'd done. I'd meant to trap Eamon's legs, the way I'd been restrained, but instead...Where the hell was he? "Eamon?" I asked, and took a step forward. "Eamon, are you all right?"

The sand eroded under my feet. I yelped and jumped back.

Whatever I'd done, it was still spreading.

The sand sagged where I was standing, and I continued a slow, uncertain retreat. "Um...Venna? What's happening?"

She was still staring at me, with a light in her eyes that was creepily close to rapture. "It's you," she said. "You're happening."

"Not helpful!" I tried to figure out how to make sand sticky again. That seemed to be not quite as instinctual as making it slippery and talcum powdery. "How do I stop this?"

"Let him die," she said. "It's the best thing, really."

And she skipped away.

What the hell...?

I had bigger issues: Namely, I was killing a guy, probably, and whatever chain reaction I'd set in motion looked likely to collapse the entire beach, the cliff, maybe the whole California coastline before I could get it under control. And I had no idea what I was doing.

But somebody did.

I circled around the spreading pit of quicksand and vaulted over the low rocks. Jamie Rae and Stan, my friendly neighborhood Warden cops, were stretched out on the sand, carefully arranged to look like they were napping. Jamie Rae murmured something in her sleep and burrowed closer to Stan. Cozy.

"Hey!" I said, and grabbed Stan's arm, hauling him up. His eyes tried to open, then fluttered shut. He wasn't quite deadweight, but damn close. "Stan, wake up. Wake up! Warden emergency! Yo!"

I slapped him. That made his eyelids flutter some more, and when I went to hit him again he clumsily parried. My third attempt was met with a fairly precise interception, and Stan finally focused on me.

"You," he mumbled. He sounded drugged and loopy. Great. Just what I didn't need. "Thought you were going to kill us. Dangerous."

"Yeah, well, you're right about the dangerous part," I said. "Hurry."

I dragged him to his feet, leaving Jamie Rae to whimper in dreamy frustration at the loss of his warm, solid body, and pulled him around the rocks. It had been less than a minute, but the sinkhole was growing. Fast. It was already at least ten feet in diameter, and as I watched, part of the rock wall sagged with a groaning sound.

"Oh, crap," Stan said. "What did you do?"

"Hell if I know. Do something!"

He tried. I could feel the surges of energy radiating out of him, plunging deep into the earth. Trying to reinforce the erosion. Trying to stop what was spreading like some virulent plague through the beach.

"There's a guy in there!" I said, and pointed at the center of the depression. "Can you get him out?"

Stan cast me a wordless look of horror.

"Please?" I asked, because even if it was Eamon, there was something far too horrible about choking to death in a pit of talcum powder. Maybe he deserved it. No, I'd been in his head-I knew he deserved it-but I didn't want to be the one dispensing justice.

"I'll need your help," he said. "Just relax. I'll show you." He put a hand on the back of my neck, and through the connection I felt something warm moving through my body. I remembered what it had felt like when Lewis had healed me-not too different. I held still for it, tried to relax as instructed, and concentrated all my energy on the idea of saving Eamon's life.

The pit of sand rolled, as if a miniature fault line had shifted beneath it, and began to fill in, or rise up-it was hard to identify what was happening. But it was happening quietly. Nobody on the beach, not even the news crews, had paid any attention to us so far.

That changed when Eamon emerged from the sand, a limp body lying curled in on himself and flour white with fine dust. His eyes were tightly shut.

He wasn't breathing.

I exchanged a quick glance with Stan; he let go of me and nodded, as if he understood what I intended to do. I stepped out onto the treacherous sand. It shifted-more than it should have-more like tiny balls of slick ice than gritty grains. I fought for balance, windmilling my arms like a tightrope walker, and slowly moved forward. My shoes kept sinking-not enough to stop me, but enough to make me sweat. Stan hadn't fixed things so much as temporarily stopped their disintegration, and I wasn't at all sure how long he could hold on. A look over my shoulder told me that he was sweating bullets and trembling-not exactly a vote of confidence. "Hurry?" he not quite begged. I took a deep breath and crossed in four quick, sinking steps to Eamon, grabbed him by the shoulders, and started dragging.

One problem. With every backward step my feet went deeper into the sand. "Stan!" I snapped. I took a firmer grip under Eamon's limp arms and heaved hard, fighting my way through the rapidly softening sand. "Hold it together!"

Which wasn't really fair. It wasn't his fault in the first place; he was just trying to clean up my mess. But right at the moment the price of failure would be a little out of my budget.

The news crews were paying attention now, running toward us with lights and cameras, shouting questions. That drew the attention of some firefighters and cops.

The term media circus doesn't really do justice to that moment when the clowns start rolling out of the tiny little car, does it?

Chapter Twelve

ELEVEN

Luckily I didn't have to decide whether or not I had the ethical strength to give Eamon the kiss of life. After the firefighters formed a human chain and pulled us out of the mysteriously formed pit of dry quicksand, the paramedics pounced, did some paramedic-y things, and got him breathing, choking, and swearing again. He looked like he'd taken a bath in flour-dusty white except for his bloodshot, furious eyes and the blood caking his mouth and nose. He started raving, but he shut up quickly enough when he realized our little feud was no longer private.

Stan was sweating bullets. I stood next to him, shaking a little myself, as the cops formed a cordon around the sinkhole and the news crews swarmed in frustration near the barrier, camera lenses and microphones pointed our way.

"Oh, man, this is bad," Stan whispered.

"You've got some kind of system for handling these things, right? Right? This can't be the first time in the history of the Wardens that people saw something happen..."

"Well, it's the first time for me!" he shot back. "Jesus, I'm not even allowed out on my own yet. I'm still on probation! I'm not equipped to handle this!"

"And you think I am?"

"Well...you're the most senior, right?" He looked puppy-dog hopeful.

We didn't have time to do any more plotting; one of the cops-a detective in civilian clothes with a badge hung on his shirt pocket-came over and herded us away, behind a crime scene van parked a little way down the beach. "Names?" he barked. He looked more stressed than me and Stan put together.

Oh, crap. I was supposed to be out on bail in Nevada, and I was pretty sure it was a violation to be out here in California...and maybe there was more that I didn't remember that could jump up and bite me when he entered my name in the system. So I gave him my best, shiniest smile and said, "Jo Monaghan." Where it came from, I have no idea. He wrote it down and pointed a pen at Stan, who said, "Stanley Waterman."

Waterman? For an Earth Warden? Funny.

"ID," the cop demanded. Man of few words. I was about to fumble around for an excuse when I felt a tug on my sleeve and looked down to see Venna.

Kind of Venna, anyway. Not blond Alice in Wonderland anymore; she'd ditched the telltale blue dress and pinafore in favor of blue jeans and a cute pink shirt with kittens on the front. "Mommy?" she said, and held up a purse. "You dropped it."

I blinked at her, trying to take it all in, and smiled. "Thank you, honey," I said, and accepted the purse as naturally as I could, under the circumstances. I glanced at the cop; he was smiling at Venna, so evidently she'd gone with a total-reality appearance this time. The purse was Kate Spade, and not a knockoff, either; Venna's little joke, I guessed. Inside, there were a few random things that she must have thought I'd need, like a travel-sized deodorant (trying to tell me something, Venna?), a small bottle of hand cream, a compact black shape that it took me a few seconds to recognize...

A Taser. She'd handed me a purse with a Taser in it.

I shot her a look. She kept smiling at me in sunny innocence.

The wallet was red faux alligator. I opened it, and there was a California driver's license in the name of Jo Monaghan, with my wide-eyed mug shot picture next to it. Unflatteringly realistic. I passed the plastic-coated card over, and the cop inspected it for a few seconds, noted down the address that appeared on the card-I wondered whose address it was-and then gave it back. Stan had produced his own ID. The cop followed the same process. Not a chatterbox, this guy. He hadn't even offered his name.

"Okay," he finally said, and looked at each of us in turn. "Somebody start talking."

Stan looked at me with mute desperation on his face. I controlled the urge to thwack him on the back of the head, and summoned as much charm as I could. (Not a lot. It had been a long day.) "I don't know what we can tell you, sir. My daughter and I were just walking on the beach-we saw the lights and sirens, and we thought we'd take a look."

"Your address isn't anywhere near the beach."

Venna looked chagrined. Of course, a Djinn wouldn't think about things like that.

"No," I agreed. "We were out sightseeing, and I didn't realize how late it had gotten. We were still driving around when the storm hit. Some storm, huh?"

The detective grunted. "So after that you decided to come looky-loo?"

"Yes." I pointed at the rock wall, dangerously sagging now. "We were sitting there on the rock wall, with a couple of other people-I didn't know them. There was a British man; I think he might have been a little..." I made the international symbol for crazy at my temple. "He was rambling, you know? And he sounded really angry. I was going to take my daughter home when he got up and ran out there and started yelling. He started to come back at us, and he started sinking."

The knife, I remembered, just as the detective turned his chilly X-ray eyes on me and said, "Somebody said he had a knife."

"Oh," I said faintly. "Did he? Oh, my God."

"Any reason this man might want to hurt you?"

I shook my head. Venna shook hers, too.

"So when he started sinking, you...what? Tried to save him?"

It didn't take a lot of work to look guilty. "Not right at first. I was afraid," I said. "I ran for help. I found this guy"-I nodded at Stan-"and he came with me. We managed to pull the other man out, but-"

"Yeah, yeah, I know the rest," the cop said. "So you, Waterman, you never saw Miz Monaghan before?"

"Never saw her before today," Stan said. He sounded utterly confident on that score. "She saved his life, though."

The detective was looking faintly disappointed with the whole thing. "Either of you here when the building came down? See anything either before or after I should know about?"

"Wasn't it an earthquake?" I asked, and tried to sound anxious about it. "The building collapsing, I mean? It wasn't bombs or anything?"

"We're still looking, but yeah, so far it looks like bad luck and bad weather. Still, we like to ask." He demanded phone numbers. I made Stan go first, then made mine up, hoping that his area code would work for mine as well. It must have, because the detective snapped his notebook shut. "Okay, I've got your statements. If anything comes up that I need clarification about, I'll call." He unbent enough to give Venna another smile. "Better get the kid home," he told me. Venna looked up with a grave expression, and I wondered just how funny she was finding all this. Hilarious, I was willing to bet. The Djinn seemed to have a very strange sense of humor.

I had no car. I was about to say something to Stan about that, but Venna shook her head minutely, pulled on my hand, and led me across the sand in the opposite direction from where all the crazy news media was gathered. Stan trotted to keep up. "Hey!" he said. "You can't leave!"