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  BLACK CORNER: A Weather Warden story

  An original short story by Rachel Caine

  Flying is not my favorite thing. It's not the favorite thing of any Weather Warden, but the stronger you are in talent, the more likely you are to end up in the middle of some very unpleasant turbulence along the way, especially on a cross-country flight. When you're up in the air, you're out of your element as a human, and the forces that exist up there know.

  They react.

  On the plus side, I was flying with my own personal Djinn bodyguard, which meant that the plane wouldn't crash, the storms wouldn't become so bad innocent bystanders would be slaughtered, and I had a strong hand to crush in a death-grip for the duration of the endless, bumpy, slippery trip. David didn't complain. In fact, he found it a wee bit funny. I hated him a little for that.

  We landed in Lubbock amid wind gusts and blowing red sand - in other words, normal West Texas weather. The plane bumped, jerked, slipped, and threw me forward into the too-close seat in front of me as the pilot hit the brakes and flaps. David helpfully pushed me back upright and patted my shoulder. "You did fine," he said.

  "You mean, I didn't shriek in terror or get tasered by a flight attendant?"

  "Yes."

  "Missed it by that much." I concentrated on slowing my pulse rate and centering myself - easier to do, now that I was ground-adjacent. "Explain to me again why I'm here?"

  David's smile turned just a touch bitter. "Because Lewis snapped his fingers and summoned you?"

  That was not exactly fair, although it was more or less accurate.

  He hadn't said much on the phone call, other than a simple "Need you here, now, hop a plane." David hadn't provided much in the way of information either, which was odd -- Djinn were usually better than a gossip column if you wanted the skinny on hidden motivations.

  "So," I said as we made our way out of the cattle chute and into the gate area. "Is he here? Or are we on our own?"

  "You tell me." David nodded at the window directly facing us. It had frost forming on the inside of the glass -- and the outside temperature was hot enough to melt pavement. The frost formed letters: @ BAGGAGE CLAIM.

  "Great," I said. "Remind me to teach Lewis the proper use of a courtesy phone. Or text messaging, Jesus."

  "He's rattled," David said. "He wouldn't usually make that kind of gesture."

  We exchanged glances, and I lifted my shoulders in a mini-shrug. I didn't know what was up; if David did, he was keeping it strictly to himself.

  We headed for Baggage Claim.

  Lewis was leaning against a much-leaned-against concrete pillar just beyond the rotating metal suitcase carousels - arms crossed, slouching, looking like he'd just walked in out of the desert after two weeks of roughing it. His brown hair had grown out to brush his shoulders and fall across his eyes, and he was rocking a solid week's worth of manly stubble, which was starting to look more hobo than metrosexual.

  It meant he was no longer bothering with appearances.

  "Let's go," he said, pushing off of the pillar as we approached. I had to skip a little to catch up as his long strides ate up carpet; David didn't seem to move any faster, but he fell in next to me.

  "Yeah, our trip was great," I said. "What's that? You're grateful we dropped everything to come running at your beck and call? Why, you're welcome. I'm sure it's very important - "

  "I don't have time for your crap," Lewis said. Not in a funny way. I stopped walking, and David -- attuned with my mood in a way only a Djinn (and/or a lover) could be -- stopped with me. It took Lewis two more steps to realize he'd lost us, and he turned to look at us. There was a jittery energy in him that seemed completely at odds with the usual laid-back man I knew.

  "Lewis," I said, very quietly. "Do not snap at me. We came as a favor, and it was a bitch of a flight, and I have no fricking idea what you want from us. We can just get right back on a plane if you're going to give attitude."

  His eyes cleared. Nothing like a brisk, cold slap to knock some sense into someone. Lewis took a step toward us, then stopped and pulled in a deep, deliberate breath. "Sorry," he said. "I need your help, and we don't have a lot of time. I'll tell you everything in the car."

  David was watching me. I stared hard at Lewis, and finally said, "This had better be good. Seriously. I flew. You know how much I hate that."

  "I know," Lewis said. "Please."

  That did it. I started walking again.

  Outside, the afternoon sun was harsh and unfiltered. A gust of wind spit sand in my face, then rattled away to torment someone else. The parking lot beyond the terminal glittered with windshields and sun-faded paint jobs. We crossed the street to the parking lot, dodging around a few passing cars. He'd parked his vehicle - a battered, dusty SUV - near the back of the lot.

  When we got to the truck, Lewis jumped in the driver's seat. David and I looked at each other; David quirked an eyebrow and said, deadpan, "Shotgun." I stuck my tongue out at him and hauled my self up into the back seat. I stayed behind the passenger seat; the driver's seat was jammed all the way back to accommodate Lewis's freakishly long legs. David jumped up with that unearthly grace of the Djinn, and we were in motion almost before his door closed.

  "So," I said, leaning over between the seats. "We're in the car. Now can we hear why?"

  Now that there was no good reason for him to keep quiet, he still seemed reluctant to share. It was a good thirty seconds of road noise-filled silence before he finally said, "There's a missing boy."

  I'm not hard-hearted, but that seemed to be a relatively small matter to fly two of the most powerful Wardens in the country out here, plus the leader of the New Djinn. There had to be more to the story. I struggled to figure out how to phrase my questions without sounding accusatory, and then gave up. "Any reason why this isn't just a straight-up police matter?"

  "Yes. The boy's one of us. Or will be. He's already demonstrating some significant power, and he's only eleven years old." Lewis had another of those curious moments of silence, and then continued. "He's also a friend of the family, I guess you could say."

  "Whose family?"

  "He's Jane Falworth-Davis's son. Francis's grandson."

  Oh. That changed things, no doubt about it. Francis Falworth-Davis was one of the grand old ladies of the Wardens organization; she'd been an amazing talent in her day, and the leader of North America for almost thirty years.

  Everybody had expected that Jane, her daughter, would be just as impressive -- and she was, in some ways, but she was also fragile as glass. I'd known her at Princeton. Lewis had, too. She'd had some kind of serious psychotic breakdown at school and been whisked off for emergency psychic surgery -- removal of her powers, because she'd been uncontrollably lashing out. The surgery was always risky at the best of times, and these hadn't been. Jane hadn't come out of it well. As far as I knew, she was still clinically insane.

  It was only after the surgery that they'd discovered she was pregnant. Jane never admitted who the father was, and Francis had taken the baby to raise herself.

  The Wardens owed Francis, who could have blamed us for Jane's troubles, and hadn't. Not only that, Francis had saved the world dozens of times over. She was within her rights to call in favors, even in the form of Lewis, David, and me.

  "I'd think you would be more useful coordinating from a distance," David said.

  Lewis slid sunglasses on. I saw a muscle tighten in his jaw. "Tried it," he said. "Time could be running out for the boy. I want the best on this, right now."

  On the one hand, it was flattering that we were considered the best.

  On the other ... if Lewis couldn't handle it alone, that didn't exactly fill me with confidence. And I couldn't understand what David was thinking at all.

  ###r />
  Francis Falworth-Davis met us on the porch of one of an old-time ranch house, a sprawling two-story thing of sun-weathered wood with a wraparound porch. I couldn't decide how old she was at first glance - over sixty, but younger than the house. She had snow-white hair close-cropped around a tanned, strong face mapped with smile lines, but she wasn't smiling. Not now. As we got out of the SUV she nodded to Lewis, gave David a long, knowing look, then focused on me. It was like being hit unexpectedly with a laser pointer, full in the eyes; the force of her personality was so impressive I felt it from a dozen feet away.

  "Welcome," she finally said. "Come on in."

  Inside, the house had that lived-in feel, floors worn smooth by generations of footsteps. Walls smothered by photographs, from stiff-postured pioneer families to smiling informal snapshots of a smiling, lovely girl I recognized - Jane, the girl from college. In some of the later photos, Jane was missing, and there was only Francis and a smiling little boy. Ethan. Up until that moment, I'd been able to think of him in the abstract, but the sight of that smile made him real to me, a real person in genuine peril.

  Francis motioned us to what I thought was the old formal parlor - the stiff Victorian furniture I imagined had once occupied it was long gone, replaced by a sturdy, battered leather sofa and big, comfortable chairs. David paused in the doorway, his gaze darting around the room. Reading the past echoes of energy stored here in the walls, the carpet, the life of the house.

  All I could see was a room ... and tucked in the corner next to the couch, a baseball glove and bat, with a dirty red ball cap piled on top. I couldn't seem to take my eyes off of it once I'd seen that sad little cluster of things, tucked away like Ethan had just dashed off upstairs to wash his hands before dinner. I sat down in one of the chairs. Lewis and Francis took the sofa, and David leaned against the wall, arms folded.

  "Lewis here already knows this story," Francis said, "so I'll just be repeating it for the two of you. My grandson Ethan was starting to show the signs, you know the ones. Real strong earth potential in the boy. He has a connection to the land, to the animals. Like his mother." I almost missed the brief flash of pain that sheeted across her face, like lightning. "He came back from ball practice on Tuesday, around ten thirty, just like usual. He went out to feed Drury - his dog -- and take him for a walk. I thought he'd be back for dinner, like always. When he wasn't home by dark, I started calling folks. By midnight, I was calling the police." Francis nodded to Lewis. "And you, of course."

  He took up the story from there. "The cops haven't found a trace of any stranger in the area. They brought in scent dogs, but the trail went cold. There's an Amber Alert, but no leads so far."

  "And the Wardens?" David asked.

  "I sent Edward Tally first, and a team of other Earth Wardens. He brought along Gregor." Gregor was one of David's Djinn, a burly, intimidating guy in human form with a bluish cast to his hair, very Aladdin gone bad. "They spent the whole day looking. Gregor tracked the boy out to the desert, but he lost him. He wouldn't say anything else."

  "I don't think he had anything else to tell you," David said. "There's power involved here, something big enough to block a Djinn and the Wardens. That doesn't bode well. It also rules out mere humans."

  I took another look at the baseball glove, the bat, the cap. I thought about the smiling boy in those pictures out on the living room wall, and the flash of stoic grief that had shown briefly in Francis's face. "We should start from the beginning," I said. "If Gregor picked up a trail, we can, too." I stood up, and Lewis and David echoed the movement. "Let's retrace his steps. Maybe we can find something they missed."

  Francis didn't rise. She sat there on the sofa and looked up at us, and suddenly she didn't look strong, or capable, or in control. She looked tired, and very hurt. "Bring my boy home," she said. "Please, bring him home."

  Lewis took her hands. "I swear, we will."

  ###

  "So, about Jane," I said, as we let the screen door slam behind us, and the hot afternoon closed in. "Probably ought to talk about the big elephant in the conversational room. Is Ethan's mother accounted for?"

  "Yes," Lewis said. Just the one word, dry as the desert air.

  "You're sure. Because I'm thinking if she got herself out of confinement ..."

  "She hasn't. I checked in person," he said. This time the conversational door was slammed completely shut. "Next idea."

  "I'd say interview all the ranch hands and staff, but - "

  "Police are all over that. We need to use the time to our advantage."

  I wasn't sure what advantage there was. There wasn't anything much to be found out in the yard, which was a big, carefully tended patch of hardy grass beaten down in places by a big, friendly chocolate Labrador who loped around the chain link and barked at our passage. He was big enough to take down a bear, but I wasn't worried; Lewis could charm a shark, much less a dog. Built-in, deep-seated Earth powers. I had some, but not nearly as much.

  No dog on this earth would go after David, no matter how hungry or angry.

  We left the yard and headed for the barn. Lewis and I called up power out of the ground, a thick, golden tingle that spread through the soles of my feet and crept through my body like vines around a tree. Lewis spread the power out in a shimmering golden net that lapped our ankles like fog, spreading and rolling. "You think there'll still be a trace?" I asked. For answer, Lewis lifted the dirty red ball cap I'd seen back in the house.

  "I've got a DNA sample," he said. "Here."

  I took the cap and turned it inside out, running my fingers along the sweat band inside. I didn't have either the native skill that Lewis was born with, or the training, but I could sense the essence of the boy who'd worn the hat. It seeped into me like a faint, but definite, melody - a child's melody, simple and beautiful.

  I couldn't hear my own song, but I suspected it was as baroque as an Italian opera.

  Lewis slowly turned, orienting off toward the West. David was facing that direction too. As I shifted my weight to follow suit, I heard/felt the melody grow just a tiny bit stronger, and then I saw it - a very, very faint glimmer in the golden field of power Lewis had laid down.

  A trace, literally, of Ethan's passage through this part of the world.

  I wasn't looking forward to a long hike, even though I'd worn sturdy shoes. "There are ATVs in the barn," I said. "We could make better time that way."

  "We'd lose the trace," Lewis said. "It's faint enough that doing it on foot will be hard enough."

  So much for saving myself effort. I should have known that traveling with Lewis was going to mean an excess of healthy exercise. He loved to hike.

  "I'll take the lead," David said. "If the track disappears, I may still be able to find it."

  "Stay in sight," Lewis said. "Last thing I need is three people to find."

  ###

  It was my vacation, and I was spending it tramping through a breathtakingly empty prairie of fine reddish sand, broken with clumps of spiky bushes that erupted out of the soil like grasping hands. Lewis and I worked hard to maintain the field of power surrounding us as David led us deeper into the wilderness - away from roads, trails, and except for the white plumes of planes far overhead, away from civilization. Lewis continued to pick up random sparks of energy that were signatures of Ethan's trail, but they were few and far between; I doubted any lesser Warden could have managed to find them at all, in so much open space.

  The boy had gone pretty far out. I wasn't sure what that meant, but so far, there wasn't any sign that he'd been with anyone else on his nature walk.

  David kept ahead of us, but as Lewis had requested, he never got out of our sight. The Falworth-Davis ranch house vanished into the distance behind, and after a couple of hours I broke out water and passed it to Lewis as we paused for a break. David stood motionless on the horizon, facing outward, waiting.

  "So, did I interrupt something?" Lewis asked, and took another thirsty swig from the bottle before handing it b
ack.

  "Only our first real vacation together in, well, ever. At least, one without a crisis hanging over our heads."

  "Sorry." Lewis looked down at the swirling golden fog around us, and passed his hand idly through it. It eddied and curled over his fingers, clinging like a pet. "I'll get you back on a plane tonight if I can. Tomorrow, latest."

  The plane part didn't appeal to me, but going home did, so I nodded. "Can we talk about Jane now?"

  "Jane?" Lewis didn't look at me; he continued to stare down at the golden fog in his hand. "She's secure."

  "You're sure about that."

  "Positive. I checked on her in person before I came out here. She's in a padded room in Warwick, Rhode Island. They had to dope her last week. She cut herself again, pretty bad this time."

  God. I couldn't help but remember the pretty, sweet, gentle girl I'd known in college. "You dated her, right?" Lewis had been a serial dater, back then, but he'd mainly gone for the "normal" girls, the non-Wardens at Princeton. Still, Jane had wanted to be normal, and I thought I remembered seeing him with her.

  Lewis continued to sweep his hand through the fog. "Back in the day, yeah," he said. "Before she had her breakdown. Before they screwed up the surgery and left her broken for good."