Windfall

My allies-never plentiful-were MIA. I tried making calls, but Lewis wasn't answering his cell, Rahel didn't seem inclined to show up at my beck and call, and I knew better than to count on anything but the back of Jonathan's hand at this point.

David... no. I couldn't rely on David at all.

It was just me, and time wasn't on my side. Neither was power. I had enough power to get by, not enough to stage a major confrontation. It would take more than vitamins and protein shakes to bring me back from the kind of energy devastation I'd been through recently... it was going to take time, and rest.

Neither of which I'd had, or was likely to get.

I stood on the balcony, watching the horizon. There was something out there, something big and badass and coming this way, and I could feel it like a storm of needles over my skin. It wasn't supposed to be there, hadn't been forecast by any of the normal weather models. It was purely, aetherically magical.

Everything was out of balance, wobbling like a bent wheel, and I didn't know if it could ever be fixed again... or if it could, what that price would be.

I closed my eyes and went up to the higher plane.

The world dissolved into a map of shadows and lights and fog. My apartment building turned featureless; nobody spent enough time in it to give it character. I soared up, arms outstretched, and watched the city grow smaller under me, consolidating itself into a flickering pattern of energy.

I went higher, until the Earth curved away from me. As high as Wardens could safely go. I felt the drag warning me to stop, and hovered there, staring down at the world's giant, swirling mass. In Oversight, it wasn't blue and green and peaceful; it was a mass of shifting colors, bands of energy that moved and twisted, fought and shattered and reformed. That wasn't just human potential at work. Part of it was Djinn. Part of it came from deeper, stronger places.

The world was fighting. Struggling with itself.

The storm off the coast of Florida was a black hole, a photonegative of a hurricane. Still tightly wound up, clouds just starting to spiral out from that hard center. It felt... old. Ancient. And powerful.

I tore my attention away from it and concentrated on what else I could see.

Djinn were hard to spot; they registered as flickers in the corners of my eyes, if they were bound to service, and as nothing at all if they were Free Djinn and trying to keep out of sight, which most of them would be. Wardens flared here and there like fireworks. Lots of activity throughout North and South America.

The intensity of the flares meant that substantial power was getting expended. I couldn't help but imagine what that meant. Wardens were being killed, or fighting for their lives at the very least. And there was nothing I could do about that, either. A lot of them would be friends, people I'd met or worked with. Lots of names going up on the memorial wall, if there was a world at the end of this to remember them at all.

I couldn't see anything that would help me. The closest Warden to me was in the Florida panhandle, and he or she was hard-pressed with some kind of tornadic activity. Besides, from the intensity of the flares, no Djinn were involved.

Somebody has you, I whispered into the fog. Where are you, David? Who found you? Who took you?

Something stirred, creating eddies of power that whispered warm on my skin. I couldn't see him, but I could feel him. David was still alive. Still barely qualifying as Djinn, hoarding the power he'd taken from me at the dump.

Just tell me, I begged him. Tell me and I'll come get you.

I wasn't prepared for something to hit me, but something did, hard, knocking me in a stunned loop on the aetheric. My insubstantial body wavered, and I started to fall back toward reality in an uncontrolled spin. The world spun into a blur, and wham, I hit flesh again with enough of a shock to cause my body to stagger and make painful acquaintance with the stucco wall.

Whoever had David didn't want me finding him.

I remembered, with a hard shock, that I'd actually seen someone with a Djinn just two nights before. On the beach. One of Shirl's wolfpack going toe-to-toe with Lewis had been packing a Djinn. The last I'd seen of them, they'd been taking to the hills, but if they were really serious about taking out Lewis ...

... then, if I found Lewis, I'd find Shirl. And a Djinn. Right now, any Djinn would do. I wasn't about to be picky, and somehow, taking a Djinn away from that particular crowd didn't bother me nearly as much as it probably should have, but then, when it came to people trying to kill the people I loved, my ethics got a little bendy.

I went up on the aetheric level again, this time searching specifically for Lewis. A bright flare of power to the west, maybe an hour down the coast. Where other Wardens showed up in Roman candle spurts, Lewis was a steady, bright torch. He had the ability to disguise himself nearly as well as a Djinn, but he wasn't currently bothering.

I kept half of my attention in Oversight, grabbed minivan keys and purse, and banged out of the apartment. I didn't have a lot of time, and God knew the mommy-mobile was hardly power transportation...

When I got to it, I realized that the land yacht was canting sideways, like a ship heeled over on a reef. Eamon had taken the trouble to slash two of my tires before he'd absconded with my sister. Probably had done it while I'd been sleeping. Son of a bitch... !

I grabbed my cell phone and hit speed dial, pacing the parking lot nervously while it rang, and rang, and rang...

Cherise's sleepy voice finally said, "Oh, you'd better be cute, male, and horny."

"Shut up. I need you," I said flatly. "Skip the gloss and get your ass over here."

A rustle of sheets. Cherise's voice sharpened into focus. "Jo? What's wrong?"

"I need a ride and a driver who's not afraid of the gas pedal. Are you up for it?"

"Um... okay..." She sounded cautious. I didn't blame her. She'd never heard me in full-on action mode before. "Give me thirty min-"

"I don't have thirty minutes. I don't care if you show up in a sheet and fuzzy slippers; for Christ's sake just get here. Five minutes, Cherise. I'm serious."

I chewed my lip and finally added, "My sister could die if you don't."

I heard her intake of breath and had a bad moment, wondering if she'd just quietly hang up and leave me stranded. But Cherise, when it came down to it, was made of sterner stuff than that.

"Five minutes," she promised, and I heard the phone clatter to the nightstand before it shut off.

It was six minutes, but I was impressed with her commitment; when Cherise's car screeched to a stop in front of me, she was wearing a pink crop top, tight sweat pants, and flip-flops. No makeup. Her hair was yanked back into a ponytail, still frizzy from the bed.

It was the most unpolished I'd ever seen her look, and I loved her for it.

I dived into the passenger door as she threw it open, and she hit the gas and scratched the Mustang's first gear as she accelerated back toward the road. I managed to get myself buckled in-that much, I figured, was necessary-and got myself up into Oversight. Just enough to keep an eye on Lewis's beacon.

"Get to the beach and head west," I said. Cherise threw me a look, blew past a yellow light, and scratched the gears again as she hit third. The car roared and threw itself into a flat-out run. "I owe you."

"Fuckin' A," she said, and checked her rearview mirror. No cops, so far. I didn't dare glance at the speedometer, but when Cherise made the turn onto the highway I felt the tires screaming and struggling to hold the road. She wasn't cutting it any slack. The Mustang got traction and fishtailed and broke into a full gallop on the open road. There was early-morning traffic, but it was light.

Cherise pegged her speed at just under a hundred and maneuvered in and around the slower traffic with the kind of precision reserved for combat drivers and NASCAR professionals. I'd picked the right girl. She did love to drive.

"So," she said as we hit a clear stretch and the Mustang opened up to a low, feral growl in fifth, "maybe you'd better explain to me why I'm about to get my ass arrested, not to mention take a mug shot with bad hair and no makeup."

"Cute British Guy," I yelled, and held my whipping hair back from my face in the brutal wind. I'd forgotten how much of a beating it was to drive this speed in a convertible. "Turns out he's not so cute. He says he's going to kill Sarah if I don't turn over a ransom."

"What?" Cherise's eyes were all pupil in the dim wash of the headlights, her face zombie green from the dashboard lights. "No way. Cute British Guy? Dude, he was fine!"

"I'd tell you that you can't judge a book by its cover, but..."

"I know, first I'd have to have read one." Cherise sent me a faint, wind-whipped smile. "I'm not dumb, you know!"

"I never thought you were."

"I just like guys!"

"Yeah. I know."

"So he's bad? Really?"

I thought of him on the couch, smiling, a hand gripping Sarah's pale, slack throat. "The worst."

Cherise considered that for a few seconds in silence, and then nodded. "You going to pay him off?"

"I don't know."

She nodded again, as if everything I'd just said made perfect sense. "I'm glad we have a plan."

We blew past one hundred twenty miles an hour, still accelerating.




The winds started kicking up twenty minutes later. I shifted my view in Oversight and saw that the storm was picking up speed and rotation. From the color bands in the aetheric, the eyewall probably had already hit Force Three speeds, and it was just getting started. The clouds were unfurling like war banners out of its core. The rotation was going to be monstrous. It could cover the entire state, once it got to its full size.

I could feel it. This storm was old, and angry, and it wanted blood. The core of it was surrounded by a thick, black curtain that felt like death.

I swallowed hard as I dropped back into real-world time. Cherise was nervously eyeing the clouds.

"I think I'd better put the top up," she said.

"Do you have to stop to do it?" She sent me a wordless Are you mental? look. "We don't stop, not for anything."

"We'll get soaked!"

"I'll keep the rain off of us," I said. There wasn't any point in concealing anything now. "I can do that. Just worry about keeping us on the road."

The rain hit about five minutes later, a patter of thick drops that quickly turned into a flickering silver curtain. Cherise backed off on her speed, shivering, and I hardened the air in a bubble over the top of the car. Warmed it a little, too. Invisible hardtop.

The rain hit the hardened barrier and slid off, just like glass. Cherise nearly wrecked her Mustang trying to get a look at it. "What the hell... ?!"

"I can do that," I repeated. "Don't worry about it. Just keep going." If we survived all this, I'd be in big trouble, but trouble was a cute, fond memory, at this point. I'd settle for mere trouble. If the Wardens wanted to haul me in and dig out my powers with a spork, they were welcome to, but after I finished this. Anybody who got in my way today was going to get a very ugly surprise.

"Man, that's... cool," Cherise murmured. She took one hand off the steering wheel, reached up, and flattened it against thin air. "My God, Jo. That's, like, the coolest thing I've ever seen. Or not seen. Whatever."

The rain slid off in a continuous stream about an inch above her hand. The Mustang hit a puddle of water and shivered, unsure of its footing; she slapped her hand back down on the steering wheel and fought the car's need to spin out.

It took an endless two seconds, but she got it under control and never slacked off the gas. "Okay, that was close."

"No shit."

"Fun, eh?"

We blew past truckers and passenger buses and nervous morning travelers. No cops. I couldn't believe the luck, but I knew it wouldn't last...

There was a sudden, white-hot bolt of lightning through the clouds, traveling in a straight line above our car.

Up on the aetheric, Lewis's beacon suddenly went out.




Chaos. There was a lot of it, and it was getting hard to tell what was significant from what wasn't; the storm towering up over the sea and moving relentlessly this way was filling the aetheric with energy and a kind of metaphysical static. On top of that, there was power being thrown around on a more Wardenish level, adding to the general blizzard of instability.

I could barely get my bearings up there. I hung on grimly, half aware of Cherise talking anxiously next to me, of the Mustang hurtling on through the darkness, and tried to remember where Lewis had been. Had he gotten Rahel to airlift him out? No, Lewis didn't own Rahel, and without that bond, she wouldn't have been able to blip him from one place to another. No Warden I knew-not even Lewis-could do that sort of thing on his own.

So he was still here. Somewhere. Moving, maybe, and concealing his presence from a magical perspective. Lewis was really good at it; he'd eluded the entire organization for years while continuing to do his own thing. That took guts and talent.

I didn't see Lewis, but I did see a distinctive red-hot flare of power that surged and faded like a vacuum tube about to blow. I fixed on it and waited.

Another flare, brighter. It was off to the west, almost directly parallel to the road we were traveling.

"Turn right!" I shouted.

"Where?"

"Anywhere!"

I felt the heavy physical impact of the Mustang taking the turn, and grabbed for a handhold to keep myself from being thrown against the safety straps. Kept my attention up on the aetheric, though. It was getting tougher. The thin-air hardtop I was maintaining over the moving car took a hell of a lot of concentration and control, not to mention draining that finite reserve of power I had from Lewis.

Another pulse of power, this one longer. A couple of answering spurts of gold, weaker and briefer.

"Where am I going?" Cherise asked. She was yelling again, with that edge to her voice that meant she'd asked the question at least once or twice already. "Yo! Jo! Out of the coma already!"

I blinked and dropped down enough to study the real world. Not that there was a lot to study. We'd turned off the main road onto a smaller two-lane blacktop, and apart from the hard, relentless shimmer of the rain and the floating hot gold of the road stripe, we might as well have been pioneering intergalactic travel. Nothing out here. Nothing with lights, anyway.

The Mustang growled up a long hill and, in the distance, I saw a flash of something that might have been lightning.

"There!" I pointed at the afterburn. "See them?"

Cars. Two cars, driving fast. Not as fast as we were, but then, not many people would even think of trying it, especially in the rain. Cherise nodded and concentrated on holding the Mustang on the wet road as it snaked and turned. In the backwash of the headlights, I could see the flapping green shadows of thick foliage and nodding, wind-whipped trees.

Jeez, I hoped there weren't any 'gators on the road.

We took a turn too fast but Cherise held it, in defiance of the laws of physics and gravity, and powered out to put us just about five car lengths behind the other two drivers. They were side by side, matching speeds-or, at least, the big black SUV was matching speeds and trying like hell to drive the smaller Jeep off the road. Every time it tried, it hit some kind of cushion and was shoved back.

No grinding of metal.

"Lewis," I said. Lewis was in the Jeep. I couldn't see or feel him, but he was the only one I could think of to be able to pull off that kind of thing while on the move and driving. Driving pretty damn well, too. He wasn't Cherise, but he was staying on the road, even at seventy miles per hour.

"What now?" Cherise asked. I didn't know. The SUV gleamed in our headlights like a wet black bug, nearly twice as large as the Jeep it was threatening. There were Wardens in there. Even if I'd wanted to, I couldn't just go into a straight-up fight-lives at risk, and maybe they were innocent lives, at that.

Not to mention that the chaos swirling around us hardly needed another push.

I was coming to the conclusion that there wasn't a hell of a lot I could do until the two cars ahead of us resolved their dispute, one way or another, when I felt a surge of power and suddenly there was a presence in the backseat, moving at the corner of my eye, and two hands came down on my shoulders from behind and clamped down hard, holding me in place.

Diamond-sharp talons dressed up as sparkling neon fingernails pricked me in warning.

"Hold on!" Rahel yelled, and it all happened really, really fast.