Ill Wind tww-1 Read online

  The Djinn had smelled the Demon Mark on me. That was bad. Very bad.

  It meant I didn't have much time left.

  God has a sense of humor, and in my experience, it is never kind. I'd tempted fate consistently for days now… I hadn't packed a toothbrush, a change of clothes, or a tampon. Well, at least I had my American Express Platinum, with the infinite credit limit for emergencies… but then again, I didn't dare use it. My friends and colleagues would be watching for any sign of me, and until I found Lewis—and safety—I didn't dare attract their attention. If the FBI could find me, the Wardens sure as hell wouldn't have any trouble.

  I kept myself awake as I drove my sweet midnight-blue 71 Mustang out of town by making a mental shopping list. Underwear: check. Toiletries: check. Clothes: definitely. New shoes: a must.

  I sniffed the air inside the car. A shower and a car deodorizer wouldn't hurt, either. Maybe something with that new-car aroma. I love classic cars, but they come with baggage and years of ingrained stinkiness. Feet, sweat, sex, the ancient ghosts of spilled coffee. I smelled it only after a few hours on the road, and maybe it was all in my head, but just now I'd give anything for a clean, fresh scent like they claimed in the commercials.

  I rolled down the windows and smelled something else, something more menacing. Rain. The storm was getting closer.

  I find that as a Warden, it pays to drive something aerodynamic and fast that the wind will have a hard time shoving over a cliff. Just because I can control weather—with the proper focus—doesn't mean the weather likes it, or that it won't decide to screw with me at the most inconvenient times. In my business, we not only understand chaos theory, but we totally abide by it, as well. Chaos happens. Plan for speed.

  I accelerated out of town in complete defiance of traffic laws and headed out on the maze that was the Connecticut road system. Basically heading south and west, because that was away from the coming storm, which had turned the eastern sky a heavy gray green. You'll be contacted with directions. Had the Djinn just screwed with me? Possibly; the Djinn were known for their mean-spirited sense of humor. Maybe he hadn't gotten hold of Lewis. Maybe Lewis had told him he didn't want to see me, in which case the only directions the Djinn was honor-bound to give me led straight to hell.

  I was in antiques country on CT 66, driving past shops that sold Federal chests and Shaker chairs, some of them even genuine. On a better day, I might have been tempted to stop. My Florida house was due for a redecoration, and I liked the psychic feel of antiques. It was definitely time to get over that Martha Stewart everything-in-its-place phase; I was so tired of pastels and good manners, I could yak. The fantasy that I would be going home—ever—to a normal life was something I was clinging to like a spar on a stormy ocean.

  I was just passing a shop that housed every piece of junk from the nineteenth century when suddenly the radio crackled on. Hair on the back of my neck stood rigid, and I knew there was a spell traveling with me. A big, powerful spell, coming, no doubt, from my friendly neighborhood Djinn.

  The radio spun channels, picking out its message like words on a ransom note.

  A high female voice. "Drive…"

  Midrange male. "To…"

  Full-throated Broadway show tune. "Oklahoma is OK!"

  "What?" I yelped. "You're kidding, right?"

  The radio flipped stations again. It settled on classic rock. "No-no, no, nuh-no, no, no-no-no-no-no no no no, nuh-no." Either the Djinn was putting me on, which would be seriously unfunny, or the spell was coming from Elsewhere, I hoped not an Elsewhere that began with the letter Hell.

  "Very funny," I muttered. I shifted gears and felt the Mustang stretch and run beneath me like a living thing. "Any special place in Oklahoma? It's not exactly Rhode Island. There's a lot of real estate."

  Letters this time. "O… K… C" Oklahoma City.

  I got a bad feeling. "No offense, but can I at least get some proof this message is from Lewis?"

  "No," said a female voice, decisively. Static. The radio clicked off.

  It could be the Djinn. In fact, it was even likely; I'd embarrassed him, and he owed me payback for that. But he had made a call, and I couldn't waste the chance if he was honestly giving me instructions on how to find his boss. Djinn had a host of faults, but out-and-out lying wasn't among them.

  And besides, I had to outrun the storm behind me anyway.

  "Oklahoma City," I sighed aloud. "Home of heavy weather. Fabulous."

  The only redeeming thing about it was that I knew the territory, and one of my best friends in the world had retired in OKC. It'd be nice to have a friend, right now. Somebody to count on. Some shoulder to cry on.

  I had to look for the silver lining, anyway. Because the storm cloud was pretty damn dark, and only getting worse.

  I'd met Lewis Levander Orwell at Princeton. He was a graduate student—already had a degree in science, then a Juris Doctor to practice law. His explanation, strangely, had been that he'd wanted something to fall back on, in case the whole magic thing didn't work out. Apparently he had the whole Magical Arts thing mixed up with Liberal Arts.

  And for a while, it looked like having a fallback career was a good idea. Lewis had been recruited— or drafted—after demonstrating some definite weatherworking abilities at the age of fifteen, but that talent had seemed to fade. He had loads of potential but no actual… nothing concrete to show what his powers might be or what form they might really take. Then, his second year in the Program, he was spotted working in the garden. In the winter, knee-deep in snow. Growing roses.

  Red, blooming roses the size of dinner plates. He was honestly surprised that it was hard to do.

  He was originally identified as an Earth Warden— someone who could shape living things, alter the land itself, make crops grow in fallow fields, prevent or cause earthquakes and volcanoes. A strong, deep power, and very rare. Then, in his third year of the Program, they'd discovered he also had an affinity for fire. Dual specialties are vanishingly rare. Only five other Wardens in recorded history had ever commanded earth and fire together. Water and air—that was expected, even typical—but earth and fire didn't blend well. Lewis was talked about a lot. He was, we all heard, expected to do Great Things.

  Must have been a lot of pressure, but you'd never have known it from the way he acted. Lewis was quiet; he did his work, went to classes, had some friends but gave the strong impression that if any man was an island, it was Isla Lewis. I admit, I pined after him. I had my reasons.

  Unfortunately, Lewis avoided Program girls like the plague—which was kind of my fault, because our first encounter had been, shall we say, memorable. Anyway, he deliberately went for the normal girls. Sociology majors, psych grad students, the occasional goofy art student. Girls whose biggest aspiration was to get a secretarial job at Smith Barney and vacation with their bosses in the Bahamas… unlike those of us in the Program, who dreamed of facing down F5 tornadoes and calming raging rivers.

  Because I was not stalking him, just keenly aware of his presence, I happened to be around for The Event, which was what we began calling it later when there was some perspective on what had happened.

  That was the night Lewis got the shit kicked out of him by six frat boys on a bender.

  It was the Kappa Kappa Psi party, which was a music fraternity… for some odd reason, the band geeks always knew how to throw a bitchen party. Four of us from the Program crashed the scene— Lewis, who came on the arm of some miniature brunette flute player; and Paula Keaton, Ed Hernandez, and me, who came looking for free drinks and the slim possibility of getting charmed out of our underwear. I glimpsed Lewis early on, talking to his flute player but not looking very comfortable; he didn't drink much, and the party was rolling pretty well.

  Flute Girl eventually got swept away on a tide of Everclear punch, and Lewis was left to ramble around on his own. He knew I was there—I think— but we didn't hook up. If we had… well. Water, bridges, et cetera.

  Sometime around 2 a.m
., he knocked over a guy's drink. Pretty stupid reason for what happened, but the reason ceased to matter after the third or fourth round of insults, and suddenly there were six of them and one of him, and punches started flying. Two of them held him down, the others took turns kicking him when he went down. Like everybody else standing around at the party, I was frozen in shock, cold beer in hand. Violence happens so quickly. Unless it's you taking the beating, it takes time for it to sink in, especially when alcohol's involved. If you're an onlooker, reaction comes later, when you're asking yourself why the hell you didn't do anything to help.

  It couldn't have been long as serious beatings go, maybe less than a minute, but a guy can get really fucked up in sixty seconds when it's a free-for-all, six on one. About the time some of the other guys at the party realized they should be doing something and I opened my mouth to scream, Lewis got kicked in the head and he rolled on his side toward me, and I saw his face.

  Bloody. Scared to death. Desperate.

  He reached out to me. No, that's wrong; he reached out toward me. He reached for power, as unconsciously as a child reaching for its mother.

  The Mother Of Us All reached back.

  I felt power sweep over—out of me—in a storm of pins and needles, felt the air gasp around me, felt water drops pulled off my skin and my beer bottle by the sheer power of his call.

  The wind hit with the force of a freight train. It was targeted, specific, and it was hungry. I felt its tugging passage, but it barely ruffled my hair; it slammed into the six frat boys and picked them up and swept them across the parking lot, into the side of a brick building, and pinned them there thirty feet off the ground.

  Nobody except those who study weather really understands the incredible nature of wind. A fifty-mile-an-hour gust is brutal, but a seventy-five-mile-an-hour gust is more than twice as powerful as that because of the increased pressure per square inch. A ninety-mile wind, three times worse.

  These college boys were crushed by, at minimum, a wind of above 120 miles per hour. Enough to fracture bones from the sheer force of the impact. More bones broke from the pressure acting on them as they were held up against the wall. I remember thinking, as I looked at this incredible display of power, My God, he's going to squeeze them into jelly, but in the next second Lewis blinked and the wind died and they fell thirty feet to the grass.

  Chaos followed. Lewis lay on the ground, gasping for air, staring at me. I stared back in total shock. After what seemed like ages, I hurried over to him, hunkered down, and put my hand on his forehead. He felt burning hot.

  "Jesus, Lewis, you called the wind," I blurted. "You've got everything. Everything."

  He just managed to nod. He probably didn't understand exactly what it meant, the state he was in. The Association got there before five minutes was out, and he was loaded into an ambulance accompanied by three of the most powerful Wardens in the entire world, all of them arguing furiously about what had just happened.

  He looked afraid. And woozy. I keep thinking that if I'd done something then, said something to him, tried to stop them from taking him away, maybe things would have been different.

  But, realistically, probably not.

  I drove for about half an hour before I decided the radio wasn't going to make any more mystical-musical pronouncements. I fished the cell phone one-handed out of my purse and checked the battery level. Two bars. No chance of recharging; I hadn't had time to pack for basic hygiene, much less handy phone accessories. I paged through the numbers in memory— Mom, Sarah, my dry cleaners, my massage therapist… Ah. Estrella Almondovar. Just who I was looking for.

  I punched the speed dial and waited through the clicks and rings, lots of rings, before a sleep-mashed voice mumbled, "This had better be important."

  "Kinda," I said, with as much fake cheer as I could pack into my voice. "Gooood morning, my little jumping bean."

  She cleared her throat. I could just see her dragging a hand through midnight-black hair, trying to rub away the dreams.

  "I got your salsa right here, bimbo," she said. "Jesus Maria, what time is it?"

  "Eight a.m. on the East Coast."

  "Yeah, that's like six here. You know, big hand on the six, only you can't see it 'cause it's dark? What, they don't teach you time zones in Florida?" I heard sheets rustling. Static clawed the line. "I guess you want something."

  "Great sex," I sighed. "With a gorgeous man, with a great big—"

  "Bank account," she finished. "Some things never change, eh? Sad thing is, you'll probably get it. Meanwhile, I get to listen to your wet dreams at you've-got-to-be-fucking-kidding-me in the morning."

  I downshifted and drafted behind a semi tractor-trailer hauling ass in the fast lane. With cars like my lovely Delilah, and ever-rising gas prices, it pays to conserve all the fuel you can. The Mustang shuddered from the buffeting before we settled into the slipstream, then purred out her pleasure.

  Somewhere in the wilds of Oklahoma, Estrella banged what sounded like metal around, dropped the phone, picked it up. "It's your dime, Jo. You've got until my coffeemaker fills up the first cup, and then I'm gone whether you're finished or not."

  "Places to see, people to do?"

  She snorted. "Chica, you ought to cut down on the crack. I got no place to be and nobody to do, as usual." That was closer to the truth than either of us wanted to explore.

  "Then this would be good news: I'm headed your way."

  "Seriously?" Her tone turned guarded. "What's wrong?"

  "Wrong? Why would it be wrong?" I thwacked myself on the forehead. Estrella—Star, to her friends— knew me too well.

  "You're kidding, right? You—leave a life of topless beaches and hot hard bodies to vacation in Oklahoma?"

  "Dying to see you!"

  "Right." She dragged the word through three syllables. "How long has it been?"

  "Um…" I couldn't remember. "A year?"

  "Try two."

  "Hey, I keep in touch. Don't forget the phone calls. Or the Christmas cards."

  "The Christmas cards show up in February," she said. Okay, she had a point, I wasn't exactly the most reliable friend in the world. "So what's the deal, Jo? You need crash space?"

  "Maybe. Well. Yeah." I heard her pouring liquid into a mug. "I should be there in a couple of days. You think I can stop in, maybe just catch a shower and some rest? I may not need it. I'm just saying, maybe. I'll pay for dinner, honest. And at someplace good, not the local roach factory."

  Star sipped coffee. I was desperately jealous; my mouth watered at the thought. "Tell you what, you maybe show up, I'll maybe let you in. That's if you swear there's not going to be any trouble, like you were in last time."

  "That was so not my fault. Tornadoes are a perfectly natural phenomenon. Not my fault you live where they go for vacation."

  "Hey, we live la vida loca around here, girlfriend. So. Why are you really coming out to the ass-end of nowhere?"

  "It's not the ass-end of nowhere. And besides, you're there." I winced again. That sounded suspiciously like what my buddy Andy had said when I asked him if I was getting fat. You're not fat— you're my friend! Well, at least it had made me go on a diet.

  "Actually… I wasn't being completely honest before. Something's kinda wrong. I have to find somebody. It's important."

  "Somebody around here?"

  "Last I heard, he was somewhere close." I was reluctant to say the name, but hell, Star was right; she knew everybody and everything that went on in that part of the world. "Um, it's… Lewis."

  "Que?" she blurted. "You know, I was only kidding about the crack, but seriously, are you high? You got any idea how many people have been looking for him since he disappeared?"

  "Yeah, I know. Pretty much everybody in the upper circles."

  "What the hell you gonna do when you find him?"

  Not anything I could admit to, certainly not to Star. "Look, let's not get into it, okay? Let's just call it catching up on old times."

  "Sure. O
kay." She banged more metal—probably skillets. Star was a hell of a cook. "So I'll watch for you, then."

  I sensed something on her end, something she wanted to ask, so I waited. She finally said, "Hey, you haven't heard anything, have you? About me?"

  "From who?"

  "Forget it."

  "No, really? From who?"

  Another long hesitation. It wasn't like her. Star was a do-it girl. "I just get worried sometimes, you know? That they'll change their minds. Come and finish the job."

  That hit me hard, in unguarded places. I hurt for her. "No, baby, that's not gonna happen. Everybody agreed, you deserve to hang on to what you have. You know that. Why would they change their minds?"

  "Why do they do anything?" She forced a laugh. "Hey, no worries, I'm just freakin' paranoid—you know that. I listen to the little voices in my head too much."

  I would, too, if I were Star. Which led down paths of speculation where I didn't want to follow. "Well, now I'm all jealous. I wish I had little voices in my head. Guess I'll just have to settle for people really being out to get me."

  "Bitch," she said cordially.

  "Bimbo."

  Three or four uninspired insults later, we mutually hung up. I tossed the phone back in the passenger seat. Star would give me shelter, and she'd never rat me out to anyone looking for me, but she was really, really vulnerable. A few years ago, Star had taken a tremendous hit, both physically and emotionally, and she'd been forced to leave the Wardens. Usually, when people leave, they get blocked—a kind of magical lobotomy, to ensure they can't go rogue. It had been a close thing with Star, but they'd let her keep what little she had left. Provisionally.

  And Star was absolutely right—that didn't mean that somebody wouldn't show up on her doorstep with official sympathy and orders to rip the essence of power out by the bloody roots. They'd damn sure hop to it if they found me conspiring with her, what with me bearing the Demon Mark and all. God. I shouldn't be dragging her into this, but there were only a few people in the world I could trust with my CD collection, much less with my life. In fact, there were only three.