by Rachel Caine
Unlike Lewis's house Djinn, who had favored the traditional look, this one was hip to the new. She was a well-groomed young black woman, glossily perfect, with cornrowed hair and wraparound dark glasses and a sunshine-yellow pantsuit. I especially liked the yellow nail polish. It was a nice touch.
I managed not to drive the car off the road, though I did fumble a gear change.
"You've got a lot of people very upset," the Djinn said. She had a nice, smoky voice, contralto, with a bit of a whiskey edge. "While it might be amusing, it makes more work for me."
She skinned down the shades, and I got a look at her beast-yellow eyes. Horror movie monsters never had eyes that scary, or that beautiful.
"I can see it in you," she said. "It's burrowing." She made a clicking sound with her tongue that sounded dry and insectile.
"Paul didn't see it."
"Wardens don't," she murmured. "Unless they ask us to show them. Which they don't, because they don't know the right question to ask."
Oh. "Want to take it off me?" I asked.
She smiled. "You know the rules," she said. "A Djinn doesn't do favors. A Djinn takes orders from her master. You, sistah, are not my master."
"What if Paul ordered you to take if from me?"
"I think he would not, considering it would destroy me and he would never get another Djinn." The Djinn put the glasses back on. "You're already corrupted, I can smell it on you like a rotting wound."
"Cheer me up some more," I invited.
She smiled. Long canines showed white in her smile. "Would if I could. You going to make the border?"
"If you don't fuck around with me."
She laughed. "Now why would I do that? Everything I do must be in my master's best interests. Rules of the game. Although if you'd slow down, you might at least make it interesting."
She seemed oddly talkative, for a Djinn. I decided to indulge my curiosity as we cruised in on I-95 toward Philly. "Must be a bitch, being enslaved and all."
"Enslaved?" she asked. It didn't seem to bother her. "We are not enslaved."
"That's what they teach us in school."
She sniffed and drummed yellow talons on Delilah's window glass. I hoped she wasn't leaving scratches. "Your school is sadly free of knowledge. Djinn are the children of Fire. We serve as we must serve, as Fire serves when chained and devours when freed."
"Freed? I thought you were—sort of eternally— um, damned." Which wasn't the best way to put it, but I couldn't think of a politically correct phrase.
She shrugged. "Fire serves no one forever. It is always ready to burn the hand it warms."
The Djinn were rare—we all knew that. Precious resources. One Djinn per lifetime, no more, and when a Warden died, his or her Djinn just went back into rotation, assigned a new master. Nobody had said anything about them ever getting freed.
She gave me another cool smile. "Too bad you're going to die. I rather like you. A favor, then. Ask a question."
"Did Paul tell you to kill me if I don't make it out of his territory?" I blurted.
She smiled. "That was a poor question," she said. "Care to try again? Secrets of the universe? Lotto numbers? Whether your true love will be tall, dark, and handsome?"
I thought about it. Never look a gift Djinn in the mouth. "Where's Lewis?"
She took her glasses off again, and even though I didn't look at her, I could feel the pressure of those horrible, beautiful eyes. She was a dangerous pet to keep, a sleek predatory beast with bloodlust kept in check only by a constant flow of Kibbles 'n Bits and a great big magical leash.
"You already know the answer," she purred.
"Oklahoma? What the hell's he doing in Oklahoma?"
She looked away. "Saving someone. Is that not what he is always doing?" She practically steamed with contempt. "One of these days, it will cost him."
"Can we cut out the middleman, here? Just take me to Oklahoma?"
Teeth flashed. "Your favor has been spent, Snow White. Choose better next time."
"Great. Forget favors. Got any advice?"
"Be kind to your Djinn."
"I don't have a Djinn."
She shrugged. "You will, if you survive. I can smell that on you, too."
"Wait!" I sensed she was about to poof again. She slid her sunglasses back on and sat, politely bored, swinging one hand in time with Ozzy Osbourne belting out a ditty about war pigs. "Can you give Paul a message for me?"
"I can," she agreed. "It remains to be seen if I will, Snow White."
"My name is Joanne."
"I like Snow White better. I am Rahel," she said, and pointed toward herself with one neon-yellow talon. Were they longer than they had been? Her teeth flashed into a smile. "Speak."
"Tell Paul that I'm sorry. And that I still love him."
She shuddered delicately. "I try to stay out of the sexual business of mortals."
"Yeah, well, we're just friends."
"So say you," she said, and cocked an elegantly shaped dark eyebrow. "You did not see him later."
That led to things I shouldn't be thinking about, not when driving a speeding car. Rahel flicked her fingernails together in a dry, yellow clatter and disappeared.
I tried not to feel quite so relieved.
I didn't know the Warden in Philadelphia, and I was just as happy to breeze by without making his acquaintance, but I needed a pit stop. I pulled off the highway for gas at the Independence Hall exit. After taking care of the bladder problem and filling up the Mustang, I scouted around for a likely spot to grab a quick cheeseburger for the road. Weariness was starting to liquefy the edges of my brain, and I could have used a nice long nap in a Motel 6, but I was taking Paul seriously. I needed to get out of Philly on time. The idea of Rahel's having any power over me at all was extremely motivating.
Independence Hall would have made a nice diversion and a great place to stretch my cramped, exhausted legs, but I wasn't about to risk another lightning bolt in a crowded place. What I saw of it was nice. As I cruised by, I couldn't help but notice that Ben Franklin—little specs and all—was sitting on a bench reading to a group of absolutely spellbound children. There was no way I wanted to bring my problems into that world. That world didn't know the sunshine was provided for them, just like the rain, or that somebody had to protect them daily from the fury of the earth and the weather.
It was a nice world to visit, even if I couldn't live there.
On the way out of town I checked both the horizon and the weather forecasts; the storm was still out there, moving inland in my wake, but Paul's folks could take care of anything still to do. I could relax and enjoy the drive.
Hopefully.
It was a good seven hours to my next safe haven in Columbus; between here and there lay cities with Wardens I barely knew, not likely to be friendly toward me. The Sector Warden from Philly to Columbus was Rashid Al-Omar, a beautiful man about seven or eight years older than me, known to be a straight arrow and conservative both in weather and everything else you could name. For some reason, most Weather Wardens were conservative; it was the tie-dyed hippie Earth Wardens who'd cornered the liberal market.
Weather Wardens on the right, Earth Wardens on the left… that left Fire Wardens in the middle. My friend Estrella had been a Fire Warden, once upon a time—one of the best. But fire's a funny thing. Like Rahel said, fire is always ready to burn the hand it warms.
I felt a hot knot of tension ease in my gut as I passed the city limits sign of Philadelphia and America stretched out before me. I was out of Paul's jurisdiction.
When I checked the rearview mirror, I saw Rahel standing there next to the sign, clicking her cheerful neon talons, watching me with beast-yellow eyes. She waved.
I shivered.
My cheeseburger was greasy but filling. I wasn't overly concerned about cholesterol; with the Demon Mark on my chest, I wasn't likely to live long enough to care. I felt it moving, and I flattened my palm over my breast. I wanted to squash it flatter than the tat
too it resembled, but it existed mostly in the aetheric, and there was nothing I could do. I felt its pulse against my fingers. Ick. I wiped my fingers on my blue jeans convulsively and tried a sip of Coke, aspirated down the wrong pipe, choked and coughed. Maybe it was my nerves, maybe it was something more, but I let the Mustang slip the leash a little too much.
I was blasting along at eighty miles an hour west on I-70, just passing Harrisburg, when I heard the wail of a siren start up and I looked in my mirror to see cherry lights popping blue and red behind me.
Well, that was just perfect.
No point in making the evening news by trying to outrun them; I gulped deep breaths and fumbled the Coke back into the cupholder. Downshifted. Pulled over to the side. Delilah's engine growled, frustrated at the delay, and I sympathized.
My hands were sweating as I waited. The cops didn't get out of their cruiser for a good three minutes, probably checking the car's registration and me for outstanding warrants… which, unless they were Wardens, I didn't have. I wiped my palms on my knees and watched as they got out, one on either side, and did a slow, menacing walk up toward me.
I had already rolled down the window, and the smell of early spring wafted in, sweet with wild-flowers. I knew I looked a mess, and I verified it in the mirror—yep, circles under dark blue eyes, no makeup, lank, needed-to-be-washed black hair. I smelled, too. I needed a shower and sleep.
The cop appeared at my window so suddenly I thought that, like Rahel, he'd planned it for effect.
His mirrored sunglasses reflected my pallid face and mooncalf expression.
"Hi," I said weakly.
"License, registration, and insurance."
I handed them over. He took them without comment, but didn't look at them yet.
"You from Florida, miss?" he asked. The plates on the Mustang were from the Sunshine State. It wasn't a psychic leap.
"Yes, sir. Saint Petersburg."
"Uh-huh." He made it sound suspicious. "You were pushing this beauty pretty hard."
"I'm sorry about that. It sort of got away from me." As if a car had ever gotten away from me in my entire life.
"You really have to watch it, a car like this. It's a lot of power for—" He had been, I thought, about to say such a little lady, but sensitivity training had paid off. " — for everyday driving."
"Thank you, sir, I will." Was that a dark cloud moving too fast overhead? I had only the reflection in his glasses to go by, but I could have sworn there was a cloud….
"Just a minute, miss." He went away with my papers. I leaned over and tried to figure out what was going on above me. I let go of my body just enough to shift into Oversight, and saw myself flickering gold and violet and red, the Mark moving like a nest of worms above my heart. Then I looked up, through the crystalline roof of the Mustang, and I was staring straight down the throat of Hell.
What was happening up there wasn't obeying any natural laws. It was being forced to happen. I tried to reach for the clouds, the winds, the pressures, but I got shoved aside like a child. Something incredibly strong was manipulating everything from the exosphere on down, all the way to the friction layer. Red flickered in the clouds, and as I watched, it shifted spectrums, into photonegative.
Whatever was about to fall on me, it was going to fall very hard.
The cop popped back in my window, and this time I did flinch—in Oversight, he was a burly, twisted-looking bastard, probably neither good nor bad, but nothing I wanted to tangle with. He handed me a clipboard with something signable on it. I signed. He probably said something. I probably responded. He handed back my papers.
I badly wanted to scream at him to get back in his car, but it wouldn't have been a good idea; I clutched the ticket in one sweaty palm, fired up the Mustang, and eased it into gear. Carefully. The cops got in their cruiser and sat there, writing up records. I felt a lurch of relief…. At least they weren't going to be fried like eggs on the pavement. Now all I had to worry about was me.
"Easy," I chanted to Delilah. "Easy, easy, easy." We drove, holding it to the speed limit, and overhead the storm grew and swirled and muttered its hatred. It followed. Again, I tried to defuse it, but whatever force controlled it had effectively shut me out. I had seven hours left to go. I wondered if Hell planned to wait that long.
The storm stayed with me into Pittsburgh, traveling like a balloon tethered to the antenna of my car. The weather channel was in a panic. Meteorologists, not being in the know or having Oversight, were unable to predict the consequences, but their outlook was grim. Hell, I knew the consequences, and they were right—the outlook was grim.
After five long hours of steering, I was sweaty and trembling; the Mustang practically drove itself, but I'd worn myself out, trying to get a grip on the factors that were driving the weather system overhead. I could feel other Wardens trying to work on the storm, but it laughed at us. Heavy magic. Big weather.
It was a special kind of torment. The person who'd created the storm knew I was trying to stop it, and the stress of my not knowing when and where it would strike was half the fun for the sick bastard. I thought longingly of Paul. Maybe if I called him… or Rashid… No, they were in this up to their necks already, and if they hadn't already solved this problem, they weren't going to be able to do anything for me. So who was doing this? Somebody had come along and brute-forced this thing together, and if it hadn't been broken up yet by the combined power of the Wardens, it had one hell of a power supply behind it. When I looked at it in Oversight, there was no clear identification, nobody lurking nearby to blame it on. Which meant it was somebody strong enough to do it at a great distance without traveling in Oversight to touch it. That was—incredible. And really, really scary. Who the hell could manage that kind of thing? Very few, I thought. Senior Wardens, World Council members… Lewis.
I had a very bad feeling suddenly.
The world slid by, shadowed by hovering clouds. Spring still tried to be cheerful but lost color as the sun disappeared. Birds fled with me, heading west. Other cars moved in formation, too, their drivers either oblivious or trying to make it despite the odds; I didn't have a choice. Stopping would be suicide. Driving on was just as bad.
I'd be out of gas by Columbus.
Think. I was a Weather Warden, dammit—maybe not holding on to the best possible reputation these days, but I was damned good at my work. My palms were sweating again. I wiped them, one at a time, and took another swallow of soft drink. My throat was so dry, it clicked. On the seat beside me lay the crumpled wad of ticket that I hadn't even bothered to read. If I survived this drive, I'd survive a fine from the Pennsylvania State Troopers.
Back at school, old Yorenson had always said there was no such thing as an unstoppable weather system. Weather was as delicate as a house of cards. Remove one card, and the structure would start to collapse; the trick was to plan the collapse. A perfect execution, he'd said, would negate the threat and create a beneficial environment at the same time.
Maybe I'd been thinking about it wrong. I'd been prodding at the storm itself, trying to loosen the magic that bound it together; maybe all I needed to do was change its location. I reached for my cell phone and dialed it one-handed from memory.
Paul's growling voice. "You've got to be kidding. Are you crazy, calling me? I thought we had an agreement."
"Listen. I know you're tracking this thing—"
"Yeah, I know it's centered right over you." He sounded depressed; I wondered if there was someone listening in. "You know what they taught you, Joanne. You fuck around with the weather, it will fuck around with you."
"This ain't a storm cell with a grudge, Paul. Somebody's driving."
"The brain trust thinks it's you. That you've gone over the edge."
"Brilliant," I sighed. "Just brilliant. You know better."
"I'm just sayin'."
I bit my tongue hard enough to taste blood. Blood and ozone. The storm was getting stronger overhead, rotating like a pinwheel. Other cars had
run for cover. I was driving all alone now, and up ahead I saw another small town on the horizon.
"Listen, we're running out of time," I said. "Help me."
"We're trying, dammit, but if you didn't put this thing together, I don't know who the hell did. It's stronger than anything I've ever seen—"
"We need to do this together. I need you to create a cold downdraft over the top of this thing. You're going to do it fast and hard."
He grunted. "We tried that. Didn't work."
"You do it at the same time I create a hot-air mass underneath. We ought to be able to pop this sucker straight up about twenty miles and start kicking the crap out of it with an adiabatic process. I need it in the mesosphere, Paul. We have to rob it of the fuel or we can't pull it to pieces."
Paul was quiet for a few seconds, then said, "Give me two minutes."
"It's got to be precise."
"It'll be precise."
I sensed he was about to hang up and talked fast. "You got a line to Rashid?"
"Yeah."
"Apologize for me in advance, and tell him to watch out for the shears," I said, and hung up.
Basically, the plan was for me to drastically warm and expand the air underneath the entire storm, shoving it upward while Paul created a vertical process to drag it all the way up to the mesosphere, where we could work on it with much greater forces until it fell apart. The downside of it was that creating that kind of sudden, drastic updraft was going to rip apart the stability of this area. Wind shears were a distinct probability—the kind that knocked planes out of the sky. Hence, my warning to Rashid; it would be up to him to handle the devastating side effects.
I watched the digital clock on the dashboard. It took forever to flick over one minute. I felt something happening overhead, a kind of power gathering, and I couldn't tell if the storm was about to strike or if Paul was marshaling his forces. Either way, not a pleasant sensation seen from my perspective.
The digital clock finally flickered a new number. I reached up, grabbed air, and poured in heat… heated it so rapidly, the molecules had to expand, no matter what the cost. The storm pushed back, but it couldn't fight two fronts; I felt it being dragged upward by Paul's cold air funnel, sucked up through the friction layer, the troposphere, the stratosphere. Slowing as it reached the arid, chilly spaces of the mesosphere.
