Ill Wind tww-1 Page 3

  Lewis and Star and Paul.

  It'll be okay. If I found Lewis, if he did as I asked, if everything worked out okay… I wouldn't need to put her at risk.

  If. If, if, if.

  It was a small word to hang the rest of my future on. Star's, too.

  When I was fifteen, my mother fell in love with a guy named Albert. First of all, I ask you—Albert? I guess it could have been worse. He could have been named Cuthbert or Engelbert, but at fifteen it was still a crushing horror to me. Albert the Bear. Big, hairy guy, with a laugh that sounded like a rusty chain saw and a fashion sense second only to Paul Bunyan for addiction to flannel.

  Albert wanted us all to get closer to nature. Even then, knowing next to nothing, I knew it was a really bad idea, but Mom thought he not only hung the moon but painted it, too, so we all packed our outdoorsy equipment and flannel shirts and hiking boots, and headed off into the Big Empty.

  Actually, it was Yellowstone National Park, but same diff.

  All right, it was beautiful—breathtaking, even to a disaffected fifteen-year-old girl who didn't want to be pulled away from the mall and her friends for the summer. Beautiful and wild and powerful.

  But mostly I was bored, and I wished for TV and MTV and boys. Awesome geysers: check. Incredible vistas: check. Crushing ennui: gotcha.

  We hiked. And hiked. And hiked. I wasn't much for that, and when my boots rubbed blisters on the first day, Albert the Bear wouldn't let me rest; he told me it would toughen my feet. I sulked and snapped at Mom and wished desperately that I would fall and break my leg so that a good-looking rescue party of tall, dark-haired men would come carry me away. Occasionally I wished Albert would get eaten by a bear, but that was before I actually saw one; once I had, I didn't wish anybody to get eaten by a bear.

  Somehow, we got to the top of whatever ridge we were trying to climb, and while Mom and Albert were admiring the downhill view, I was looking up.

  "It's going to rain," I said. The sky was a perfect ocean-deep azure, the sun a hot gold coin glittering like sunken treasure. I sat down on a rock and started to take my shoes off.

  "Don't take 'em off," Albert advised me in his rumbling bass voice. "Feet'll swell. And I think you're wrong, Jo. It doesn't look like rain."

  I craned my neck, shaded my eyes, and looked up at the thick black bulk of him standing over me. Nice to be in the shade. Not so nice to be in Albert's shade.

  "See that?" I pointed to the thin, wispy clouds in perfect waves. "Cirrus clouds, coming out of the east."

  "So?" For some granola-chewing, tree-hugging forest nut, Albert wasn't very weather wise.

  I smiled. "Look." I grabbed a stick and drew a circle in the dirt. "The planet spins this way, right? East to west."

  "Just figured that out, did you?"

  I ignored him and drew an arrow the opposite direction. "Wind moves west to east, against rotation. So why is the wind coming out of the east?"

  This time he didn't say anything. That was fine; I wasn't listening anyway. "It's coming out of the east because there's something rotating—" My stick drew a spiral somewhere over where I guessed we were. " — that's changing the direction of the wind. Rotation means a storm."

  He looked over at my mother. She looked back. I figured the silent conversation had something to do with what a freak I was, what the hell were they going to do with me, and on and on and on. Not like I hadn't already said it and wondered it myself.

  I drew some wavy lines in the sand next to the spiral. "Cirrus clouds form way up high—ice crystal clouds, running ahead of a pressure system. So. It's probably going to rain. Based on how fast they're moving, it'll probably be here before dark."

  A freshening eastern breeze frayed my hair out of its braid and plastered strands to my sweating face.

  Somewhere out there, beyond the trees, beyond the place where morning started, I could feel it growing, pulling energy from the collision of warm and cold air, condensing water and energy, sucking micro-drops together to form mist, mist to form clouds, clouds to form rain.

  I closed my eyes and I could almost taste it, cloud-soft on my tongue, the taste of brass and ozone and cool, clear water. God, it felt good. Tingles all the way inside, deep down. I'd never been out in the open before to a storm forming. It had a raw, wild power I'd never expected.

  "Bullshit," Albert said bluntly, and laughed. "Pretty good try, Jo. Hey, you've got quite the con artist there, Nancy."

  My mother wasn't smiling, and she wasn't laughing. She looked at me gravely, thumbs hooked in the straps of her backpack, and shifted from one foot to the other. Mom wasn't used to hiking, either, but she hadn't complained, hadn't talked about blisters or being thirsty or being tired.

  "Are you quite the con artist, Jo?" she asked me. I didn't say anything. She turned back to Albert. "We'd better start back."

  "Oh, come on, Nancy, you don't buy this stuff, do you? She's fifteen years old, she's not some damn weatherman. You can tell the weather around here for days around, anyway. Clear as a bell, that's what this is."

  "There's high pressure to the south," I said, lacing up my boots. "Wall cloud forming over the horizon to the east. It'll be bad by nightfall—it's moving fast. Warm air always moves faster than cold."

  "We should start back," Mom repeated. "Now."

  And that was that. Albert the Bear grumbled and muttered, but we started back down the ridge. The first darkness edged over the eastern horizon, like early night, at just after three in the afternoon, and then it flowed like spilled ink, staining the sky. Albert shut up about coddling my fear of nature and devoted his breath to making good time. We scrambled down sheer slopes, jogged down inclines, edged carefully past crumbling paths over open gorges. People talk about nature as a mother, but to me she's always been Medea, ready and willing to slaughter her children. Every sheer drop we navigated was an open mouth, every jagged rock a naked tooth.

  I wasn't attuned to the land, but even I could sense the power in it, the anger, the desire to smash us like the intruding predators we were. I felt it from the storm, too; the storms that made it into cities were less self-aware, more instinctual. This one pulsed with pure menace.

  Warmer air breathed through the trees, rattled branches, and fluttered leaves. The breeze picked up and it carried the sharp scent of rain.

  "Faster," I panted as we hit easier terrain. We ran for it as the storm clouds unfurled octopus tentacles overhead and the rain came down in a punishing silver curtain. Overhead, lightning forked purple white, and without a city to frame it, lightning was huge and powerful, taller than the mountain it struck. Thunder hit like a physical body blow. It rattled through my skin, my cartilage, bones. We're mostly water, our bodies. Sound travels in waves.

  Above us on the ridge, a tree went up like a torch.

  Albert was yelling something about a ranger station. I could barely see. The rain stung like angry wasps, and under the trees the blackness was complete. Better not to stay under the trees anyway, too much risk of drawing another lightning strike.

  Pins and needles across my back, at the top of my head.

  "Get down!" I yelled, and rolled into a ball on the ground, trying to present the smallest exposure to the storm. I could feel it now—it was like a blind man with an ax hunting a mouse. It wanted me. It was drawn to me.

  It hated me.

  Lightning hit close, very close. I felt the concussion and heard something that was too loud to be just a sound, it was a force with energy and life of its own.

  I was sobbing now because I knew the next time it would get me. It knew where I was. It could smell my fear.

  Somebody grabbed my arm and dragged me to my feet. We ran through the darkness, slipping on grass and mud. Deer burst out of the darkness and across our path like white ghosts fleeing a graveyard.

  We made it to the ranger station, and I realized only when I saw Mom and Albert were already there, wrapped in blankets and shivering, that the person who'd dragged me up and out from under the
storm wasn't anyone I knew.

  She was small and golden skinned and dark haired, and she was laughing as she swept off her park ranger hat and hung it up to dry.

  "Nice day for a walk," the other ranger said, the one handing Mom and Albert steaming cups of coffee. My rescuer grinned at him and looked out the window. Rain lashed the glass as if it were reaching inside for us.

  "Yup," she agreed. "Just about perfect."

  She glanced over at me, and I felt it like a current humming between us. We were the same, shared something fundamental.

  The storm wasn't hunting me. It was hunting us both.

  "You should be more careful," she said. "Some people just aren't cut out for communing with nature."

  "What's your excuse?" I shot back. She lifted one shoulder.

  "Somebody's got to be on the front lines," she said. "Estrella Almondovar. Star, for short."

  I told her my name. We shook hands. She got me a blanket and, instead of coffee, hot cocoa. As she handed it over, she lowered her voice and said, "You have a notice? From the Association?"

  "Yeah. I'll have an Intake Board at eighteen."

  "Well, don't wait. Start getting the training now, like me—this is my internship. You need it. I've seen the Park react like this to only one other person before."

  "Who?" I asked. She gave me a teasing little wouldn't-you-like-to-know smile.

  "You don't know him," she said. "But his name is Lewis."

  She went back to the cabin window and stood watching the fire up on the ridge, the one that the first lightning strike started. As I watched, it flickered, sizzled, and went out.

  That's when I knew. She wasn't a Weather Warden, not like me. She had power over fire.

  From that day, we were friends. I don't really know why; we didn't have all that much in common, beyond the obvious, but we had a kind of vibe. Energy. We resonated to the same frequencies.

  We ended up roomies at Princeton, shared a thousand joys and tragedies and triumphs. She was the best friend I ever had, and it looked for a while like we were going to live charmed lives forever. Smart, beautiful, gifted. Two peas in a pod. Perfect.

  And then Yellowstone burned, and everything changed for both of us.

  I gloomily considered Oklahoma City. The most direct route was to follow the Connecticut toll roads until I could get on I-90. It would be the better part of a two-day journey. The coffee I'd slammed down in a caffeinated frenzy at 4 a.m. was no more than a memory, and my stomach rumbled to remind me that delicious as it was, mocha was not a food group.

  So should I stop to eat, or pile up the miles? My decisions almost always depend on the forecast, so I flipped stations until I got a weather channel.

  The storm that had followed me out of Florida was now ravaging the eastern seaboard. I could see darkness amassing on the horizon behind me, and a flanking line at the edges of the supercell. It was starting to turn, driven by Coriolis effect and the powerful internal engine of water heating and cooling; when it completed its rotation, it would be that most dreaded of East Coast storms, the nor'easter.

  I didn't intend to be anywhere near it.

  You might wonder why I didn't just give it a wave of my hand and get rid of it—which was entirely within my powers. Well, Newton was right: action gets reaction. Every time a Warden balks the weather, the power has to go somewhere, and believe me, you don't want the power of a supercell discharging through you; it's something on the order of three or four larger-than-average nuclear bombs. If I'd tried directly to make my stalker-storm disperse—waved my hands and parted the winds, to give it a biblical interpretation—I might have succeeded here and created the world's largest-ever tornado whirling its way directly at me from the opposite direction. Plus, I wasn't an official Warden in this area… or anywhere, come to that. Not anymore.

  Still, I'd been one of the most subtle weatherworkers in history, all my performance reviews said so; I could probably slide it under the radar of anyone who might be looking for me up there in Oversight. Not that I had a lot of choice, really… No matter how fast I drove, this storm was bound to catch me. It had the scent of me now.

  I turned the radio on, settled myself comfortably in the body-hugging seat of the Mustang, and began humming while Jim Morrison sang—funnily enough— about riders on the storm. As I drove, I shifted—not gears, but the air above. Cooled it here, warmed it there, slowed the elevator-fast updrafts that were feeding the storm its power. It was delicate work, making sure the energy expended didn't add up to another problem, and still making enough changes that the storm weakened. Also, I had to do it quietly. Last thing I wanted to do was attract attention from the local officials.

  It took about two and a half hours to reduce it from a badass mofo to an inoffensive low-pressure system, which is nothing much if you're driving a Mustang and listening to a Doors album marathon. I pulled off the road in the parking lot of a roadside diner called the Kountry Kafe, put the car in neutral, and closed my eyes as I left my body to check out the results.

  In Oversight, the world looks very different. I lifted my hand in front of my face and saw a tracery of crystal, my aura cool blue edged with flashes of green and—most unsettlingly—streaks of red. Red was bad. Red was trouble. No wonder the Djinn had smelled the Mark on me.

  Nothing I could do about it now. I stepped out in my astral form and admired the crystalline perfection of the Mustang, which was even more beautiful in Oversight than in the mundane world. A real magical beauty of a car. One look at the Kountry Kafe convinced me I didn't want to eat there; it pulsed with bad vibes, like a quaking mass of rancid Jell-O.

  I spread my weightless arms and went up. There was no sense of speed—not in this reality—and no sense of resistance, either. I glided up, and up, and up, until the earth curved off beneath me. From that dizzying height, I studied the deforming spiral of the storm. In Oversight it looked almost the same as in the real world, only instead of lightning, the energy displayed in colors—brilliant, vibrant colors that a trained Warden could interpret. I'd done enough with it, I thought. Its overall rotation had been disrupted, and the lightning flickers were showing in golds and greens, sheets of positive and negative charges in scattered glitter. If I'd missed the mark, I would've seen reds and a steady photonegative undertone.

  I let go, and the planet rushed back at me. The first time I'd traveled in Oversight, I'd absolutely freaked, and no wonder: the sensation of falling back into your body is one of the most terrifying feelings in the world. These days, I enjoyed it like a thrill ride. Few enough thrills in my life recently. Not to mention fewer dates.

  I filled my body again, and the world took on weight and form and dimension. Delilah the Mustang assumed her familiar glossy midnight-blue paint job.

  My stomach rumbled again. With one last, regretful glance at the Kountry Kafe, I eased on down the road.

  The diner where I finally stopped looked outwardly a lot like the last one, but its Oversight characteristics were more encouraging. It was called Vera's Place. Vera, it turned out, was long gone, but the owner and operator was a perky thirty-year-old named Molly with hair that showed several indecisive home dye jobs and the kind of creamy milkmaid skin that every Hollywood actress wants.

  "Pie?" she asked me expectantly as I polished off the last of my open-faced turkey sandwich and mashed potatoes. There wasn't a lot of commerce going on inside Vera's Diner; I counted about six old coots and a yuppie couple dressed from the L.L. Bean catalog who sneered at the menu selections and would never even have considered eating something as middle-American as pie. Which decided me.

  "What, you think I'm hungry or something?" I asked, and scraped up the last of the delicious pan gravy with the edge of my fork. I got a dimpled smile in response.

  "Last one we had in here didn't eat pie was some hot-shot defense lawyer from L.A.," she confided. I passed over the turkeyless, gravy-free plate.

  "Wouldn't want to be included in that company," I agreed. "What kind of pie you
got?"

  She raised an eyebrow. "You really want the whole list?"

  "Just the high points."

  The high points could have filled a couple of pages, single spaced. I decided on chocolate.

  "German, cream, or meringue?"

  "I'm sorry, is that a choice? Meringue, of course. Definitely."

  The meringue was taller than most three-layer cakes, a hugely delicious confection that went down perfectly cool with the rich, creamy chocolate beneath. The crust was to die for, crisp and delicious. Best pie I ever had. Honest. The Oversight never lies about the quality of food, especially pies.

  While I was savoring the last few bites, I took out a road map and looked over the route. Long. Long and boring. I asked Molly about good places to stay and got two recommendations, visited the little Wardens' room, and went back to my car full of chocolatey satisfaction, with the full intention of finding a Holiday Inn with adult channels and a minibar. One gets fun where one can.

  Just as I reached for the car's door latch, a feeling swept over me, pins and needles, unmistakable and terrifying. I snatched the door open and dived. My feet had just left the ground when lightning hissed up from the dirt where I'd stood, down from the gray clouds, and met in the middle with an awesome snap of power. The flash blinded me. My ears rattled from the force of the boom. I smelled harsh, metallic ozone and thought about how close I'd come to being a fuse in that current.

  Lightning can come from a clear sky, but it has to be driven by energy from somewhere, and the storm that I'd doctored no longer had the charge necessary.

  There wasn't any potential—and yet, I could feel it all around me, a strong positive charge in the ground, negative charges building overhead in the clear but humid sky.

  In Oversight, chains of electrons formed and rippled like translucent snakes in the sky—a cold hard glitter striking straight for me. Dear God, somebody was doing this. Somebody really powerful.