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  MIDNIGHT AT MART'S: A Weather Warden short story

  An original Weather Warden short story by Rachel Caine

  Quitting the Wardens sounded like a really, really good idea at the time. I mean, there's nothing like going out in a blaze of glory with a great exit line, kicking sand in the bully's face, all that stuff. And it did feel good, when I told my bosses to stuff it, and exited stage left with my dignity intact.

  Besides, I wasn't exactly losing on the deal, thanks to Rahel's parting gift of cash and newly-minted (and hopefully valid) credit cards. I was feeling like the star of my own slightly over-the-top action film as I burned rubber out of the hotel parking lot and onto the endless desert road.

  That feeling wore off after thirty minutes of monotonous travel. After that, I was just feeling tired, achy from all my assorted abuse of the past few days and weeks, and ... lonely.

  I couldn't decide whether I loved the desert, or hated it. Bit of both, I supposed. There was something eerie and remote about the vast stretches of land; it seemed so unapproachable, and so empty. Hostile. But when the sun touched it just right, layered it in velvet and gold, it was like a goddess had opened her jewelry box. The sky was a bright, brilliant turquoise, with a glittering diamond sun. The road gleamed like onyx.

  I kept the Viper's air conditioning on high. Experiencing the beauties of nature is one thing. Sweating through it is something I like to leave to sturdier people ... say, some who haven't been killed a few times, beaten up, and nearly drowned. I deserved a little peace and comfort, right? I did. I was convinced of that. In fact, I got myself good and worked up about how much I deserved not to be tossed in the center of the crossfire again.

  I was so convinced that when I felt the air shift around me in patterns not associated with the air conditioner, and sensed a presence forming in the passenger seat next to me, I felt a flash of utter fury. Enough, already. I'm done. "Get lost," I said flatly to whatever Djinn was about to pay me a visit. It wouldn't be David, and he was the only one I wanted to spend time with at the moment.

  Sure enough, it was Rahel. The tall, elegant Djinn looked over at me as she manifested herself, and I returned the favor just for a second. She looked great, as always. Gorgeous, smoothly groomed, dressed in a lime sherbet color that was something of a change from her usual neon shades but still startling against her dark chocolate skin. Eyes of a haunting shade of gold. She'd done something new with her hair. Still in cornrows, but there were more beads woven in, shades of greens and golds and blues. Vaguely Egyptian.

  "Is that any way to greet someone who saved your life?" she asked. And yes, she had. More than once, technically. But I wasn't feeling all that fair at the moment.

  "Sure, when they just drop uninvited into a moving car. Seriously. Whatever chain you want to yank, yank it and go. I'm done with the drama."

  I pressed additional speed out of the Viper. When I'm pissed, I drive aggressively. Yeah, like you don't. Please.

  "I need something from you," Rahel said soberly. "A boon."

  Wait a minute. Wait just a damn minute. The Djinn didn't ask for favors. They granted them. Grudgingly, sure, but in accordance with an agreement laid down in the mists of time and space. Their view was that mortals basically had nothing they wanted, so ... a favor? Weird.

  I thought about it for several seconds, eyes fixed on the road. My shoulders were hurting. I deliberately relaxed them, or at least tried to; apparently while I'd been thinking of other things, my muscles had been replaced with metal guy wires, strung at maximum tension.

  "What kind of favor?" I asked.

  "Return to the Wardens."

  I blinked. Surely I hadn't heard her right. "Why?"

  Rahel drummed her sharp-nailed talons on the window glass next to her -- dry, clicking sounds that tightened those guy wires just another ratchet. "They have need of you."

  "Oh, please. If you weren't Free Djinn, I'd swear some Warden had put you up to this, but ..." One had. Crap. "Lewis sent you."

  The steady percussive rhythm of her tapping continued, as annoying as fingernails scraping paint.

  "No," I said. "I'm not going back. Not for Lewis. Not for anybody. I'm done, Rahel, and you can tell him that for me. I'm not putting up with the bullshit, I'm not playing politics, and I'm not going to make compromises and tell myself it's for a just cause. I'm no longer Warden material."

  Rahel's eyes narrowed. Burning. "I am asking as a favor, sistah. Understand me. This is not something I do lightly."

  "Or ever, I'm guessing," I said. "Respect, babe, but I'm not doing it. Not for you. Not even for Lewis. I got their asses out of a sling, and that's all I'm good for. Just let me rest."

  She laughed. It was a thick, velvety laugh, dark with possibilities. It raised the fine hairs on my arms. If tigers could laugh ... "Dead men rest very well."

  I hit the brakes. The Viper's tires grabbed, screamed, slid and fishtailed. Even before the car had come to a complete stop, I turned to face her. I was feeling an overburn of fury, and I'm pretty sure she read it in my expression. Or aura, at least. "Don't you dare threaten me," I said, low and certain. "You're a Djinn, sure, but you're not claimed, and I'm a well-trained Warden at the top of my game. Maybe both of us get hurt. I don't care."

  Her face went utterly still. With the Egyptian-style beading in her hair, it gave her an eerie look, like Tutankhamen's gorgeous funeral mask.

  "You presume," she said. "Crawling mortals do not threaten the Djinn. You should know better."

  "I'm tired of pussy-footing around your ego. You have a problem with it? Leave!" I roared it at her. It occurred to me, in that red-tinged moment, that I was doing something really stupid, but I'd had enough crap, and I was being human. Unreasonable. Taking out my wounded, scared feelings on the first likely target.

  Well, at least she was up to it.

  Rahel regarded me with bright-swirling eyes, as incandescent as the sun above, and I was coldly reminded of the kinds of powers the Djinn could touch, if they chose. Of the vastness of their history, and the fragile bonds that constituted Djinn civilization, at least as it related to humans.

  "I will go," she said. "But you should have been more mannered, Snow White. Remember that when you find yourself ... lacking."

  And she was gone. She went without fanfare or warning, another shift of air and a slight popping sound, like what you get when you twist the lid on a sealed jar.

  I was shaking all over. Hysteria, fury, fear ... shame. Why had I yelled at Rahel? I thought I'd been at the top of the world, when I'd pulled away from the motel, and yet here I was, less than an hour out of town, throwing the most dangerous sort of tantrum. Lashing out.

  Humans are weird like that. I had no excuse.

  I breathed in and out for a while, then wiped sweat from my forehead, turned up the air conditioner, and put the Viper back in gear.

  ###

  I didn't think she meant it literally, about finding myself lacking.

  Rahel's revenge for my fit of temper became blindingly, stupidly apparent when I stopped at Mart's Texaco in Pine Springs, Arizona, because when I opened my wallet, it was empty. All the new credit cards: gone. All the cash she'd granted me earlier: missing. She'd been scrupulously fair about it. I still had what I'd had before her contributions.

  Well, that was okay. I didn't need Djinn charity, I told myself self-righteously, and proffered my Warden-issued American Express card to pay for the gas.

  It was dead as the proverbial doorknob. Figures. The Wardens hadn't let any grass grow in cutting me off the payroll.

  It ain't cheap to gas up a Viper in this day and age. And I had exactly twenty-nine dollars and forty-two cents in my purse -- not enough to pay for the gas, much less the soda and pretzels I was cravin
g. You know that feeling, right? That cold, sinking feeling. The freezer-burn of panic setting in when you semi-calmly check all the pockets and nooks and crannies and come up with an additional penny and a half a mint.

  I was the only customer in the place at the moment, which was a relief; at least I didn't have some poor sucker standing behind me, shuffling his feet and sighing over my stupidity. No, I only had the cashier, a middle-aged balding man resplendent in his red canvas vest and nametag that said he was ED. He stared at me over the plastic jar of made-in-China American flags.

  "Um ..." He was going to make me say it. He was just going to stand there and wait for it. Probably the most excitement he'd seen in days around here, unless somebody had driven off with the nozzle still in their gas tank. I took in a deep breath and felt my cheeks getting hot. "I'm sorry. I'm a few dollars short."

  Nothing. Not even a blink. I got a blank, blue-eyed stare that lasted about an eternity, and then Ed abruptly said, "Seven dollars and twenty-six cents."

  Oh, this wasn't going to be easy. "Yes, I know. I'm sorry, I just -- well, I don't have it. So ...?" I tried a smile. That got me nowhere. Without a change of expression, Ed picked up the phone next to him on the counter, punched buttons, and said, "Hello, Sheriff's Office? Oh, hey, Harry, how you doing? Yeah, it's Ed. ... Fine, fine. Listen, I got me a girl here who's trying to drive off without paying -- "

  "What?" I yelped, and made wild no motions. "I'm not! Honest! Look, I'm paying! Paying!" Because the last thing I needed was to get rousted by the local police without the invisible might of the Wardens backing me up. Damn, Rahel was sneaky. She hadn't needed to risk breaking a nail in an undignified scuffle with me. All she had to do was step back.

  I must have looked pitiful indeed, because Ed hesitated, sighed, said, "Never mind, Harry," and hung up the phone. He leaned on the counter -- a fiftyish guy, lean and sinewy, the kind who deals with truckers and assholes on a regular basis and isn't impressed by a bad mo-fo attitude (or, I was guessing, anything less than a rocket launcher). Tattoos in blurred patterns all up his forearms, crawling into the hidden territory under his short-sleeved shirt. Balding. He stared at me with those cold, empty eyes. "So?"

  I did another frantic purse strip-search, which involved taking each and every thing out and laying it on the counter. Except for David's bottle, which was securely sealed and wrapped tight. If he wanted that, he could pry it out of my cold, dead fingers ...

  I came up with a battered, faded ten dollar bill stuck in a hole in the lining. It looked as if it might have come out the wrong end of the dog that chewed it. Ugh. I handed it over and took advantage of the mini bottle of hand sanitizer before I repacked my purse. Ed, with no visible change of expression, rang up the sale and handed back my change as I got myself together again. The crisis over, I was feeling hot and fluttery, and falsely relieved. Having come up with the money didn't exactly mean I was out of trouble. I had two dollars and change on which to drive to Florida in a car that drank gas like an alcoholic at open bar. I didn't want to end up holding a cardboard sign that said WILL (verb) FOR FOOD.

  Ed kept staring at me. I couldn't detect any warmth in it at all. I finished repacking my purse, gathered up my soda and pretzels, and wondered what I had in my possession at the moment that I could hock. Not a hell of a lot. Damn.

  "Hey," Ed called, as I headed for the door. I turned to look at him. He jerked his chin toward a sign hanging from the counter. It read, in jerky Magic Marker lines, HELP WANTED.

  "Just thought you might want to apply," he said. "Not long-term or anything. Just for a while, to get you down the road."

  I blinked. Offering to work off the debt had frankly never occurred to me. Now, that was a sure sign I'd been a Warden for way too long.

  "Apply?" I echoed. Man, I sounded dumb. Might have been why he was being so kind, after the equally brainless floor show with the lack of money. "Oh. Um ... I don't have a place to stay." And I'd slept in my car for two weeks on the way to Las Vegas; no way was I going to make it a life choice. I was way too sore, my body far too abused. "Maybe I'd better keep on going."

  Smiling transformed him. He was a hard guy, no doubt about it -- those tattoos were probably the least of it -- but there was something sweet and gentle and warm about his smile that made me feel cozy inside. "That car's going to run dry in a couple hundred miles. What are you going to do then? I'm just saying, there's a lot of trouble to be asking. You could stay here a week, eat cheap, sleep on the cot in the back so long as you don't object to twelve-hour shifts, seven days a week."

  I gave him a long stare. "How much?"

  "Six an hour. That's as much as I can pay. Free soda, though. One free hot dog a day."

  I considered. That was seventy-two dollars a day, and if I stayed a week, that would be enough money, hypothetically, to get me back home and cushion me a little. And Ed seemed hard, but he didn't seem scary. Not in that backwoods chain-your-ankle-to-the-bedpost way, anyway. I had the impression that he was honestly trying to do me a good turn.

  As I thought about it, his blue eyes wandered back around and fixed somewhere over my shoulder. Staring right through me. "Of course," he said, and the smile was long vanished, "if you want to move along, that's your business. I don't like to get in anybody's business. Maybe you got some other ways to earn money, pretty lady like you."

  I took three steps back to the counter, leaned on it, and got his stare straight-on. "Meaning?"

  His thin eyebrows levitated. "Nothing."

  Yeah, right. "I'm not allergic to honest work!"

  "Good thing," he said. "Got a toilet to clean. Second door, can't miss it."

  ###

  He wasn't kidding. The toilet really did need cleaning, in the worst way. The work wasn't so hard, though, and it had been a long time since I'd donned the bright yellow gauntlets and wielded the toilet brush in battle. There was a kind of simple-minded satisfaction when I threw everything in the bucket and looked around at a nice, clean, gleaming bathroom.

  I ached like hell, all over, but then again, I'd been aching before. Not a huge problem. And at least this had the feeling of accomplishment to it, instead of that wire-bound nervous tension I'd had before. Physical labor might actually do me some good.

  When I came out, sweaty and triumphant, Ed gave me a grudging nod of thanks and tossed me a red vest. It had a hand-lettered nametag on it that said JOANNE.

  "You know how to work a register?" he asked. I didn't. He gave me a ten-minute tutorial, punctuated with frowns and shakes of his head, until I could ring up a sale, cancel one, and make change to his satisfaction. We covered emergency cut-off switches, what to do in case of emergencies (like drive-offs, guys with handguns, and teens trying to buy beer and cigarettes).

  And then Ed stripped off his red vest, hung it on a hook in the back, and fixed me with the coldest stare I've ever seen. Including anything from a Djinn.

  "I'm trusting you," he said. "You run off with the till, you can't run far enough. Get me?"

  I got him. I nodded, one quick dip of my chin, and held his stare. "I'm not a thief," I said. Well, that was stretching the truth a bit, but in my heart, I meant it. "I'll take care of things here."

  "I'll be back in an hour. You have a problem, my cell phone number's on the note next to the phone. But don't have a problem."

  With that, he turned around and banged out of the back fire door, which thunked solidly shut behind him.

  I put on my red vest, adjusted it a couple of times, and gave up. Couture, it wasn't. I perched on the wooden backless stool behind the counter and looked around for entertainment. Free sodas, he'd said. I retrieved a cold one from the cooler and drank it with a clear conscience as I flipped through the latest issue of Entertainment Weekly.

  As I was wondering what the hell Viggo Mortensen thought he was doing wearing that godawful bolero tuxedo thing, the brass bell jingled at the door, and I looked up with my heart hammering, expecting to see a masked robber. Because that was kind of my lu
ck.

  Nope. Just a guy. He sauntered around the store, bought a candy bar, came and paid for gas and food. Nothing special happened, except that he had a nice smile and told me I was easier on the eyes than ol' Ed.

  I went back to the magazine afterward.

  The rest of the hour went pretty much the same: customers, no emergencies. When Ed returned, he looked just a little surprised to find that I'd inventoried the cash and totted up all of the sales by item in his absence.

  Thus ended my first two hours of indentured servitude. It was better, on the whole, than being a Djinn.

  ###

  Twelve hours is a long time, in a convenience store. Especially one like Mart's, which wasn't exactly the crossroads of excitement ... the Entertainment Weekly's charms paled fast. I moved on to Martha Stewart's Living, only because it was within reach. It wasn't too likely, even now that I had free time, that I'd feel moved to make origami swans or match table linens with my curtains.

  Before long, I was stir crazy enough to come out from behind the register and start inventory against Ed's meticulous list. So that's where I was, counting Snickers bars, when the brass bell rang over the door, and things took a radical turn for the nasty.