Cape Storm

Chapter Two

The very rich are like everyone else, provided you classify “everyone else” as “spoiled rotten brats with vast incomes and little sense of responsibility.” There are exceptions, of course, but money gets you excused from all kinds of social constraints, just as fame does, and that never does a body good.

We had a whole cadre of spoiled rotten brats holed up, refusing to leave their stash of gold bars, drugs, or folding money—whatever they had stored in the ship’s hold and safe. I wondered how they’d feel using it as life preservers.

The harassed Chief Steward pointed me toward the first-class lounge area, where apparently a lot of our troublemakers had forsaken their magnificently opulent cabins and gathered to jointly declare their displeasure at being inconvenienced. You’d think that anyone could see it wasn’t a good idea to be riding out a storm on a boat, but then again, people do dumb crap all the time, and they always seem astonished that it turns out to be dangerous. Seriously. Look at YouTube.

My first brush with the Richie Riches came in the form of a very famous singer, with aspirations of being an equally famous starlet. She was actually obeying orders, believe it or not, and she was on her way out, practically clawing the expensively paneled walls with frustration. She was surrounded by a milling entourage who scrambled to juggle her coffee, BlackBerry, bags, appointment diaries, and small yappy dogs. She was scowling as much as Botox would allow, and had her Swarovski crystal- encrusted cell phone at her ear.

“I’m telling you, it’s outrageous!” she was saying. “I want a lawsuit in place before I hit the limo, do you hear me? I want to own this stupid ship, and then I want to use it for target practice. Just do it, Steve. And make sure that wherever I’m going, it’s five star. I am not going to some shelter with cots!—What? I don’t care what category the storm is, you find me a suite! What do I pay you for, idiot?”

I suddenly had a great deal more sympathy for the business-suited corporate drones who had no choice but to smile and take it for the paycheck. Once the flood of minions was past, I approached an immaculately white-uniformed steward who stood helplessly at the entrance to the first-class lounge, looking in.

“Joanne Baldwin,” I said, and presented ID. “I’ll be taking the room that Botox Diva just cleared.”

He looked at me wearily. “Ma’am? Why that room in particular?”

“Because she probably left Godiva chocolates and chilled Dom Perignon, not to mention random stacks of cash in the couch cushions,” I said, straight-faced. “I’ll guard it with my life.”

That broke the ice a bit. He even managed to produce an anxious second cousin to a smile. “You’re one of them, right?” Them presumably being the Wardens. I nodded. “I hear you guys have some kind of, uh, magic. Would you mind . . . ?”

“What, working some on these idiots? Not sure you really want me to do that. It tends to not be so great at crowd control, unless you’re trying to kill people or put them in comas. Better let me try the persuasion route first.”

“Be my guest. I hope you brought horse tranquilizers.” He gave me a bow and handed me the room. Cherise and I exchanged glances and stepped inside.

We stepped in it, all right. The place was complete chaos, which was odd, because it really was a room with all kinds of calm built right in. The designers had envisioned the space as a Victorian-style reading room, complete with expensively bound leather volumes and comfy couches and chairs. Nobody was enjoying the decor now, though. Middle-aged society matrons rubbed shoulders, however unwillingly, with young, vapid starlets (I might have recognized one or two of those, but truthfully, they’d all been sculpted and styled into the same person, so it didn’t much matter). A thick cluster of black-clad people who I assumed were New York literary types clumped together like a dour flock of crows toward the outer edge. West Coast bling glittered in a group on the opposite side of the room. It was like a map of the wealth of America, from coast to coast—all arguing at the same time.

Another steward, looking not-so-crisp, was trying his best to calm people. They were ignoring him and all yammering away at each other, waving tickets, papers, cell phones, and BlackBerries. The din was all focused on one thing: I’m going to sue. I’m not leaving without my (fill in the blank).

I beckoned the steward over. He came, looking grateful that someone—even a potential troublemaker—was paying attention to him instead of shouting at full volume. I could understand why; this room full of people, at least fifty strong, had enough clout to bury the cruise line in legal red tape for years, if not generations. “We need to move these idiots out,” I said. “It’s time to go.”

I saw him swallow whatever he was tempted to shoot back at me, and try again. “Yes, miss, I’m trying,” he said, in that smoothly patient tone that only the very stressed develop after years of therapy. “I explained that if they didn’t disembark, we couldn’t wait for them to do so, but—”

“They called your bluff.”

“Exactly.” He swallowed and tugged a little at the white collar of his formal jacket. “I’ve tried to get the captain, but he’s busy with preparations to cast off.”

A woman of indeterminate age—indeterminate because plastic surgery, heavy makeup, and a forty-hour-a-week workout schedule had effectively rendered her a wax figure of herself—grabbed the steward by the arm with expertly manicured, clawlike fingers. “What are you going to do about this?” she demanded. “I demand to speak to the captain! Immediately!”

“Ma’am, I’m sorry, but the captain is occupied,” the steward said, and patiently removed her grip from his uniform sleeve. “You must depart the ship immediately, for your own safety.”

“Don’t be ridiculous.This ship was advertised as being able to sail through a hurricane without a wineglass tipping. It’s the safest place to be! I refuse to be turned out like some penniless hobo into a storm. My people say there are no hotels, and no flights out. There’s nowhere to go. I’m staying.”

“That’s not an option,” I said. “If you get your people and head toward the exit, you might still make it off the ship. Go. Right now.”

She fixed me with an icy stare. “And who are you?” Her glance traveled over me, dismissing every item of clothing on me with ruthless clarity, and then summing me up and dismissing me as a whole, all over again. “Are you with the cruise line? Because if you are, I will have a word with the captain about the dress code for—”

“Shut up,” I said. She did, mainly because I don’t think anybody had told her that in her whole life. “Pretend there’s a bomb on board. Now. What should you do?”

She blinked. “Is there?”

I stared at her, unblinking.

She lifted one heavily ringed hand to cover her pouty lips. “Is it terrorists?” Terrorists, the new monster under the bed. Well, whatever worked.

“I can’t confirm that,” I said, in my best poker-faced government-agent style. Hey, I learned it from television. “You should go immediately. But don’t tell the others. We don’t want to cause a panic.”

That was an added kicker, because by being told to keep it secret, she felt privileged, and of course that convinced her. She gulped, grabbed her personal assistant in red talons, and whispered something urgent. Then they hustled off, presumably heading for the docks.

“One down,” Cherise said. “Terrorists, huh?”

“The FBI can Guantánamo me later,” I said. “It does the job. You take that side of the room, I’ll take the other.”

And so it went. About three repetitions later of the terrorists-but-keep-it-quiet story, I ran into someone who demanded to know if I had any idea who he was. I tried to control my instinctive awe and assured him I did—how could I not? He seemed to like that, and especially the whole I’m only saving your ass because you’re so special undertone. When he strode off, trailing employees like a comet, I turned to see the steward watching me with a look that was half appalled, half amused. “What? Who is he?” I asked.

“I believe he’s in the film industry,” he said. “You’re scary.”

“You should see her when she’s really bothered,” Cherise said as she passed us, heading for her next victim. “But I hope you won’t.”

I felt the change in the ship before I saw the expression shift in the steward’s face from nervous to outright alarmed. There was a deep, throbbing sensation coming up through the decks, transmitting itself all the way through my body.

“We’re moving,” I said. “Holy crap. Lewis wasn’t kidding around.”

“Guess not,” Cherise said. We’d cleared half the room, but there were at least thirty of the first-class passengers still staging a sit-in, and we were out of time. “Maybe we can load them into lifeboats or something.”

“Cher, do these guys look like they’d let us put them into lifeboats?”

“I didn’t say they’d agree. We could, you know, knock them out or something.”

“So we’ve moving up from threats to assault.”

“Oh, come on. Not like you haven’t assaulted anybody recently.” And Cher punched me in the shoulder for emphasis.

“It wouldn’t do any good,” the steward broke in. “In these conditions, we don’t dare launch any lifeboats, not even the new speedboat type that this ship carries. We have to have relatively calm seas or there’s a significant risk of the lifeboats being compromised.”

Compromised was, I assumed, ship-speak for sunk. Which was kind of where we were, from the standpoint of achieving our goal.

I looked around the room again. Thirty-odd people, of which approximately a third were the rich sons of bitches who’d refused to leave, aggressively arrogant and sure that the universe cared too much about them to put them in real danger.

The others were their hapless hangers-on, employees, and family members.

I hated having innocents in the line of fire, but they’d made their choice, and now I had to make mine.

“Let them go back to their cabins,” I said to the steward. “Confine them to quarters for now. If they want anything, deliver it. Don’t let them go roaming around. Let them whine all they want, but do not let them intimidate you.”

“Yes, miss.” He was glad to have a clearly defined order, and he signaled to a couple of discreetly suited security men standing in the wings. They were both impressive specimens—large, muscular, with the kind of no-bullshit expressions that only men who do violence for a living could afford to wear. I figured the bulges in their coats had more to do with weaponry than with overindulging at the all-you-can-eat buffet.

The steward stationed outside was waiting for us when we emerged, and he handed me a key card and a fancy colored map with something circled on it. “Your cabin, miss,” he said, straight-faced. “It’s the least we can do in exchange for your help.”

I remembered my earlier snarky request. “It’s not—”

“Oh, yes, it is. A special thank-you from the captain. And if you can’t locate any stray Godiva chocolates or Dom Perignon, please let me know. I’ll bring some to you straightaway.”

I shook his hand, held up the map, and waggled both in front of Cherise. Her mouth dropped open.

“You didn’t.”

“Botox Diva’s cabin.” I checked the details. “Two bedrooms. Want one?”

“Maybe. And maybe I want my own swanky digs—you ever think of that?”

The steward cleared his throat very respectfully. “The captain’s ordered us to close off all non-essential decks. We only have enough first-class cabins for about half of your party. The other half will get our best accommodations farther toward the stern.”

Cherise gave out a sigh. “Okay, fine. I’ll suffer with your guest room. You’d better not snore.”

We were about halfway to the cabin, according to the map, when I felt a flutter at the edges of my awareness, like a psychic breeze. It felt cool as a mint balm to my irritated soul, and I sighed in sudden relief.

David was back.

I turned my head to see him striding down the broad hallway, heading our way. He glimmered like a hot penny, even under artificial light—silky auburn hair, worn long enough to curl at the ends, perfect bronze skin that would make a self-tanning addict weep in envy. Behind round John Lennon glasses, his eyes sparked brilliant orange, like miniature suns. His eyes were the only thing that gave him away right now as being more than human. He was dressed in well-worn, faded jeans, a white Miami-weight shirt that fluttered in the air-conditioned breeze, and a ball cap advertising a local crab shack. He’d forgone his long vintage military coat, mainly because I’d lectured him enough about the unlikelihood of anyone except terrorists and flashers wearing coats in the Miami heat. Although the idea of David as a flasher—a private-performance-only one, of course—still lingered in my mind.

His gaze was fixed on me, and he crossed the distance fast, although he didn’t appear to be in a hurry. Even so, it still seemed to take forever before his hands touched me—a gentle stroke from my shoulders down my bare arms, to my wrists, then back up to cup my face. My whole body hummed and relaxed into the sensation. At close range, David’s eyes were both less and more human—less human in color and more human in content. He was worried.

He had good reason to be.

“How are you holding up?” he asked me. His voice was low and intimate, like the warmth of his body near mine. “Any pain?”

“Nope,” I said. “Nothing I can’t handle.”

His gaze held mine, searching. Waiting. I was dimly conscious of Cherise standing a few feet away, doing the awkward dance of exclusion from an intimate moment. With no key card of her own, she’d have to wait.

“I promise, if I feel anything change, you’re the first to know,” I told him, and put my hands on him, because I couldn’t not put my hands on him. I stepped forward and folded myself against his chest, and his arms closed over me, holding me close. I felt his lips brush my hair, a butterfly touch that made my heart skip.

“Let me check the mark,” he said. I shook my head. “Jo. Let me see it.”

“It’s fine.”

“Jo.”

I sighed and backed up a step, then turned so my back was facing him. His fingers touched my shoulder and moved down and in, pushing back the fabric and moving the strap of my bra aside to look at the thing on my shoulder blade.

It looked like a black torch tattoo. I knew that, because I’d spent enough time staring at it in pocket mirror reflections. It was the parting gift of my old boss, Bad Bob Biringanine—or what was left of him, anyway. He’d once been one of the most powerful Wardens in the world, but he’d gotten it illegally, the way some athletes abuse steroids. His particular poison was a Demon Mark—he’d volunteered himself as a host for a gestating Demon, and in return it had given him all the power he needed.

Until it was done with him, at least. I wasn’t sure that what was currently walking around in his skin had much in common with the original Bad Bob.

Bad Bob had also given me a Demon Mark—unwillingly—and eventually I’d gotten rid of it. I never wanted to feel Bad Bob’s sticky, foul fingers pulling my strings again; the very thought of it made my skin crawl and made me long for a shower and a steel scrub brush.

David’s gentle touch slid over the black torch mark, and it was as if his fingers disappeared as they passed across the dead space of it. I couldn’t feel the pressure at all. Then his touch was back, real and warm, on the other side of the numbed spot.

“It’s still contained,” he said. His voice was very quiet, meant only for my ears. “If you start to feel anything—”

I already had felt something—that sickening longing for destruction as I’d watched the storm. I knew it was bleed-over from the black tattoo . . . but I couldn’t make myself tell him, either.

“Yeah, I know, yell for help.” I hated being helpless. Hated it. But somehow, Bad Bob had found a way to strip away my defenses, and I couldn’t fight this thing. Not on my own. David could help, at least for now. He wasn’t making any guarantees long-term, though. We needed to get to Bad Bob and make the evil old son of a bitch take the thing off of me.

Or kill him. That’d work, too. I hoped. Though I had to admit, it hadn’t worked too well the last time I’d thought I put him in the ground.

I tugged my bra strap back in place and turned to face my lover. No—husband. I had to get used to that. Husband. We’d had the wedding ceremony, kind of. It had been interrupted by various attacks, but I thought we were married, anyway. I just didn’t feel married. “So, you’ve been AWOL most of the morning.”

“Busy,” he said, which was uninformative, as explanations go. His shoulders lifted and fell, as if he knew what I was thinking. “Djinn business.”

Which meant none of mine. “So what’s the plan? You guys coming with?”

“Some are,” David said. “This is obviously our fight as well as yours. He has Rahel prisoner. Even Ashan agrees that we can’t let this go without an answer.”

Just as David was in charge of the New Djinn, the ones who traced their origins to human ancestry, Ashan was the Mack Daddy of the Old Djinn . . . who liked to refer to themselves as the True Djinn. You see where this is going, because if half the Djinn are “true,” then the other half must be, well, “false.” It’s the equivalent of racial prejudice, among supernatural beings.

Most Djinn I’ve ever met are about seventy percent arrogance, twenty-eight percent altruism, and two percent compassion. David blew the curve; he was the least arrogant Djinn I’d ever met, and he maxed out on compassion. That made him incredibly hot to me, but it also made him vulnerable. Ashan buried the needle on the other end; he didn’t know the meaning of altruism, and he couldn’t care less about compassion. All arrogance, all the time.

He and David got along about as well as you’d expect, when they were actually talking at all.

“And is the great Ashan going to grace us with his presence?” I asked. I wasn’t exactly looking forward to it.

“He’ll be around,” David answered, which was a typically Djinn sort of evasion. Around could mean anything, and nothing. “He’s sending a delegation of four of his own, though.”

“Four? He did get the memo, right? World ending, danger, et cetera?”

“Four of his most powerful,” David clarified. “One of them is Venna.”

Oh. Well, that was all right, then; Venna, I trusted. For an Old Djinn, she was a-okay; she even displayed an interest in regular folks, in the way a kid develops a fascination with an ant farm. She didn’t consider us equals, but she thought we were kind of cool in a science-lab sort of way.

She liked to walk around in the guise of a child, but in no way could you classify Venna as vulnerable. Terrifying, yes. Frail, no.

David looked over my shoulder, and I followed his gaze. There at the other end of the hallway stood Venna, with three other, much taller Djinn. The expressions on the faces of the other three Djinn, whom I didn’t know, were identical: pricelessly annoyed. Not here by choice, I gathered. Their smelling-something-bad scowls could have shattered titanium.

Venna, however, waved cheerfully. She was dressed in child-sized pants and a cute little pink top with a sparkly rainbow. She’d largely given up her predilection for dressing as Alice from Alice in Wonderland, but she’d kept the long blond hair and innocent blue eyes.

I waved back. Venna said something to her fellow Old Djinn, and the four of them promptly vanished, misted away on the air like a mirage. Heading for their own quarters, I assumed, if they cared about such things.

“I’ve brought ten of the New Djinn,” David said.

“In case something happens, I’ve also left someone at Jonathan’s house who can take over as Conduit, at least temporarily.”

David, in other words, had made arrangements in the event of his own death. Jonathan’s house—Jonathan had been his friend, and the leader of the Djinn for thousands of years—existed in a kind of pocket universe, apart from both the human world and the other planes of reality where the Djinn could travel. It was the equivalent of a defensive bunker.

If David thought this was dire enough to name a successor and stash him away in the ultimate Undisclosed Location, then things were really not at all good.

“David—” I didn’t know what I wanted to say, except that I wanted it to all be okay. For once.

His fingers squeezed mine, very lightly. “I know,” he said. “But we’re in this together. For life. Whatever may happen.”

He meant it.

My husband.

I blinked back a sudden irrational flood of tears and hugged him, hard, until the impulse to weep passed. “Okay,” I said, and cleared my throat to bring my voice back to its normal steady range. “Want to help us out with something really, really trivial?”

“Always.”

“In the first-class lounge, you’ll find a couple of stewards, a couple of security guards, and a bunch of very rich jerks who don’t want to take orders and are probably giving the staff a very hard time. It might speed things along if they had something more to be afraid of than their platinum card getting declined.”

“You want me to intimidate them?”

“You betcha, buster.”

David smiled, and this time his smile had a whole different cast to it. Dark, powerful, frightening—even to me. His skin darkened and took on a metallic sheen beneath its surface, and his eyes glowed like storm lanterns. He looked fey and dangerous and oh my God, hot.

“I thought you’d never ask,” he said. “Point me.”

We left the harbor before the storm made landfall, which was lucky for nearly everyone except, obviously, us. The Grand Paradise was a pretty massive vessel, but she also had considerable speed at her command. Ships didn’t use old-fashioned screws anymore, but propulsion pods, and she was a lot more maneuverable than I’d suspected; we moved quickly but smoothly through the long navigation channel and out toward the open sea.

It was a good thing the ship was fast. That was all that allowed us to exit the man-made cut in time; otherwise, we’d have been boxed in, trapped like a ship in a bottle. And the bottle would have been smashed to smithereens.

Leaving port didn’t mean we were free, though. Not even close. The storm wheeled like a flock of crows and came roaring after us, brushing Miami with the hem of its black skirts and probably creating another aneurysm for insurance adjusters, although it was nowhere near the destruction that could have rained down on them. The Grand Paradise’s engines growled and throbbed, louder than I imagined they normally would be for pleasure-cruise speeds, and we took on extra speed, crashing through the choppy seas as fast as the captain dared.

The storm gained on us.

I stood at one of the thick glass windows in the first-class lounge and watched the trouble unfolding. The storm’s outer bands had spiraled over the city, but through the driving rain I could see the lights of the towers. Power was still on, and that meant things weren’t so bad. Miami was tough. It would make it.

I wasn’t so sure, now that we were sailing full speed ahead, that the same could be said of the Grand Paradise.

After a quick Weather Warden meeting, we agreed that we would attack the storm as one unit, but we’d wait until we’d lured it out well away from the mainland and any populous islands before we started screwing with it. Deeper, cooler waters would slow it down, too, which was to our benefit. The Grand Paradise was fast enough to keep ahead of the storm for a few hours at least, though the margin of safety would be steadily eroding. The winds inside the eyewall were ferocious.

Effectively, that meant I had an hour off, more or less, so I went to my cabin.

Considering that we were sailing off on a potentially lethal sort of mission, it was a bit surprising to find that I was enjoying the moment a little. I hadn’t been on a sailing ship in a very long time, and this luxurious-cruise thing was something I hadn’t even dreamed about. Dream honeymoon, part of me sighed. Except for the imminent threat of total destruction, another part warned.

Yeah, so, this is my life.

No sign of Cherise, but the downstairs shower was running. I hadn’t brought any luggage, so my unpacking consisted of trudging upstairs to the second level, and slipping off my shoes. My feet sighed, and so did I. The carpet felt like clouds exported from heaven in the ultimate free-trade agreement. I tried out the bed, and it was definitely from God’s own bedroom, from the body-contouring mattress to the silken sheets.

Then I sniffed myself. “Ugh,” I said, and fought my way back upright. It wasn’t right, subjecting this kind of luxury to the stench of my body. Besides, I’d been craving a shower for days now, and being caught in the cold, pounding rain hadn’t exactly counted.

The small bath proved to have a very nice shower, complimentary robes and slippers, and a variety of expensive shampoos and soaps.

Score. I spent a blissful half hour naked and slippery beneath the massaging showerhead, washing away the sticky exhaustion. When my fingertips started wrinkling, I finally shut down the water—honestly, it was better than a ride at Disney—and belted the robe as I walked down the curving stairs to the first floor.

The room was smaller than I’d expected, but still larger than many hotel suites, and it had all the good stuff even the most discriminating guest would demand. Polished mahogany, fine carpets, luxurious furniture. Genuine artwork on the walls. I was taking a disbelieving inventory when Cher came out of her own bedroom, dressed in a matching robe, toweling her blond hair dry.

“Dude,” she said. This particular inflection of that many-shaded word meant I’m completely impressed. “This is straight out of Titanic. I’m surprised they didn’t pipe Celine Dion into the shower or something.”

“Great. Now I’ll never get that song out of my head,” I said with a sigh. “How’s your room?”

“Fantastic. Wait, check that. Why’d I get the downstairs room? Because I’m the sidekick?”

“Because you’re shorter. I didn’t think your little legs could manage the stairs.”

She stuck her tongue out at me. Sometime in the past few weeks, while I hadn’t been paying attention, she’d had it pierced. A tiny diamond stud winked impudently at me in the butter-soft room lighting. “Are you and David going to be love bunnies and keep me up all night?”

“Maybe.”

“Oooh, promise? Because the porn’s all pay-per-view.” She fluttered her eyelashes. Cher was silly and goofy and endearing, and her silliness had a point; she knew how serious all this was. How dangerous. She’d signed up to go with me, knowing there might not be any coming back from it, and she didn’t even have any superpowers.

Just courage.

Impulsively, I hugged her. “Thank you,” I said. She wiggled free and flipped her damp hair back.

“First grope is free, but after that, you pay to play,” she said. “I’m going to jump on your bed, for payback.” Halfway up the stairs, she stopped and turned back to look at me. Her face was very serious. “We’re not going to die, you know. You can smile every once in a while.”

I wasn’t so sure about that, but I tried.

The Grand Paradise was a floating city. I studied the complimentary colored map as I paced the semi-spacious confines of the suite, occasionally stopping to stare out the large, very thick windows. Cher was fixing her hair, which I knew would be an hour-long epic struggle. I was content to air-dry. All the product in the world wasn’t going to make my upcoming day any prettier.

The rain had stopped. The room had a sliding door and a balcony, and when I stepped out on it, salty sea air closed in around me like a hand. I felt a little stupid standing in the open in my bathrobe, but at the same time, it was a damn nice robe, and who was there to gawk? Dolphins? Let them look.

I put my hands on the cool railing and let myself float up and out of my body, which remained motionless at the rail. I moved up into the aetheric, where the forces that work on the world can be more clearly seen.

The storm, from this view, was even more terrifying. Most storms glow in the darker spectrums of power, and the worst of them take on an almost photonegative sheen. This one was all that, and a hazmat bag of toxic purple. It was also hungry, and angry. The menace and fury of it stained the entire aetheric like lethal radiation.

Bad Bob wasn’t running the storm. He didn’t have to. These things were sort of like the weather equivalent of a cruise missile—point, shoot, walk away. Sooner or later, they’ll catch up to the target. He’d given it a taste of Warden power, and it wanted more. We were the best chance for it to indulge its cravings, and it would keep on coming.

It had a particular taste for me.

I studied the inner mechanics of the storm as I hung silently in the drifting pastel clouds far above it. I could see the bright flashes of other Wardens coming and going from the aetheric, and subtle smears of movement that I knew were Djinn, who were much more difficult to see. Humans barely registered, except as muddy outlines. The ocean itself lit up on this plane like a spiral galaxy, thick with auras and lights. All that rich diversity of life in it, trailing beautiful colors, pasts, emotions. Down at the bottom, the seafloor glowed with ancient history, steeped in bands of color and power.

Mesmerizing.

I floated weightless on the aetheric.

I felt a violent shove from behind, and turned just in time to be battered again—a flat force, like a moving wall hitting me. I bounced off and floated back. I saw nothing, but I could feel . . . something. A ripple. A breath of warning . . .

I twisted aside, and the shearing force just clipped me this time. That was worse, because it wasn’t distributed evenly over my aetheric form; it caught my ghostly leg instead, and a bolt of pain lanced through me, odd and blurry.

I shouldn’t be able to feel physical pain on the aetheric. And nobody should be able to attack like this. I’d never seen anything like it before, and I’d been around the block. Hell, I’d gotten body-slammed by the unexpected so often they’d probably named a whole wing of the Warden hospital after me.

I backpedaled, fast, and then dropped the concentration that held me so far up in the aetheric. My body was like a massive anchor, heavy without the use of power to hold me away from it, and gravity kicked in hard. I snapped and fell across thousands of miles of open water and air, and as I was pulled back toward my physical form, I saw something peculiar happen in the clouds.

I saw them turn a particularly poisonous shade of green, with jagged black edges. It was eerie and beautiful and alien, the green of a toxic emerald, and I wondered what kind of power could do that to a natural force.

Nothing I could wield, or would want to face.

I slammed back into flesh, and my knees gave way. The deck of the balcony was hard, and it hurt to hit it even though I grabbed the railing for support. That’s going to leave a mark, I thought, but I was used to that, at least. I was more focused on the green color of those clouds, and then, belatedly, on the lancing pain that ripped through my left leg, from heel up to hip. I rose and put my weight on it, thinking it was some kind of cramp; the entire limb spasmed, shook, and gave way as if my electrical system had just cut out like a bad engine.

I clung to the railing, waiting for something. . . . It reminded me of the sensation you get when your leg goes to sleep, but I didn’t feel any tingle or prickling of blood returning to feed the nerves.

It was just numb.

Come on, I thought, exasperated. The exasperation faded. The numbness didn’t. I kept trying to put my weight on my leg, and it kept folding up on me like cheap paper.

Okay, now I was scared. What the hell? I plunked myself down on the balcony deck, legs extended, and massaged the numb leg, starting at my thigh. It was eerie. My fingers touched flesh, but that was the only feedback there was. It could have been someone else’s leg entirely.

And then, with a snap, everything came back online, as if the nerve channels had just been switched on again. No slow awakening, just a sudden shock of pain and heat that made me cry out, and then it was all just . . . normal.

I stood up, clinging to the railing, and tested the leg.

It hurt, but it held.

I limped back into the living area and stretched out on the sofa, probing my leg for anything that seemed oddly shaped, broken, or otherwise bizarre. Except for the continued random firing of pain through my nerves, everything seemed intact.

It faded, after a few minutes. I stood and cautiously walked around the room, careful to stay within grabbing distance of major pieces of furniture. Walk it off, Baldwin. I’d had worse. Hell, I’d had worse just yesterday. But it bothered me, because it shouldn’t have happened. Nothing was supposed to hurt me in aetheric form, certainly not echoed down into my flesh-and-blood form.

Unsettling. It just didn’t feel right.

I didn’t want to, but I knew I had to mention it to Lewis. Every odd thing that happened to me increased the chances that I would end up confined to quarters, or tranquilized in the brig, if this floating casino had one of those. But this didn’t seem like something I should keep to myself.

I checked the clock. I was due at the Wardens meeting.

“Cher!” I yelled to her closed door. “I’m out!” I don’t think she heard over the aircraft-carrier roar of her blow-dryer.

I put on my sadly wrinkled, salt-stained, and badly-in-need-of-laundering clothes, grabbed the map, and went to wage war with evil.