Gale Force

Chapter Four

So . . . I healed.

David came to visit, of course, and he stayed as long as his duties would allow—longer than he should have, by the expressions of the Djinn sent to remind him of other duties at hand. But despite what I’d confidently said to Lewis, I could tell that David didn’t wholly believe me about the black shard, or the dead Djinn. He couldn’t. There was some kind of selective blindness that he couldn’t control, and that was weird and scary. It didn’t matter, though. The Wardens figured it out without the help of the Djinn.

Somehow—I don’t know how—Lewis and a few other top-level Wardens managed to remove the black shard and take it to a containment facility, where experts, brought in under high-level security clearances, agreed that in fact it was, as Silverton had said, antimatter. Antimatter in some kind of stabilizing matrix. When I asked where the stuff was, and how it was being contained, I was told it was need-to-know, and I didn’t. Frankly, I was a little bit relieved. I was busy recovering, trying to get my strength back. My muscles seemed loose and weak, and once the doctors let me out of bed I spent my time mostly in the physical therapy room, working hard to get myself back in shape again. The pain went away. After a few weeks of natural healing, they tried Earth Wardens on me again, and this time, it worked; burns and scars smoothed out and disappeared, and I was left with glossy skin badly in need of a tanning session.

Of course, I could always count on Cherise for that kind of therapy. She showed up one day toting a blue beach bag and told me to get dressed. Undressed was more to the point. She’d brought my favorite swimsuit, a skimpy little turquoise number that showed off as much skin as the law allowed. I changed, assuming we were going to the hydro pool for some swim therapy, but instead, she got me in the elevator, stripped off her white camp shirt and shorts, and revealed her own bathing suit choice: even less than I had on, though technically I supposed it could be considered clothing. It was a couple of scraps of tangerine orange, and she looked spectacular in it.

“Tell me we’re not going to the cafeteria,” I said. “They’re having meat loaf. Again.” Cherise winked at me and pressed the button for the roof. It was restricted access, but she had a key card, which she used with the kind of triumphant flourish usually reserved for magicians with hat-dwelling rabbits.

“I know you’re not up to a trip to the beach,” she said, “so we brought the beach to you.”

They really had. It wasn’t just Cherise; it was Kevin—her sometimes boyfriend, despite a five-year age difference—a Fire Warden with a deep-seated attitude problem. He was sitting in the shade of a beach umbrella, wearing camouflage baggy shorts and a death’s head muscle T-shirt. He was, at eighteen and change, growing into his height; he was looking less like the underfed, awkward teen I’d first met, and more like the tall, strong man he would become.

Across from him sat Lewis, wearing khaki shorts and a ratty T-shirt advertising that Virginia was the place for lovers. They were both wearing slick sunglasses,and I had to admit, they looked pleased with themselves.

“Hey,” Kevin said. Too cool for any kind of more enthusiastic greeting. I nodded back. We kept our dignity. “Heard you screwed up. Way to go.”

“Isn’t this great?” Cherise didn’t much care about things like dignity, if they got in the way of enthusiasm, but then, that was something I loved about her. Something I suspected Kevin loved, too. “Check it out, we’ve even got waves!”

They’d outdone themselves. God only knew how they’d managed it, but they’d cordoned off part of the roof and put up patio tables, beach umbrellas, spread sand several inches deep, and put in a pool. Not a big one—more of a landscaping kind of thing—but sure enough, Lewis obligingly generated some rolling miniature surf. It was very cute.

There were two lounge chairs. I settled myself on one, already relaxing in the warm glow of the afternoon sun, and stretched my long legs out as Cherise kissed Kevin and took the other lounger. We debated the merits of coconut-scented oils over banana sunscreens. I went with sunscreen, figuring that I’d had enough dangerous radiation for a lifetime.

As I rubbed it into my legs, a male hand reached over my shoulder and took the bottle away. I looked up, pulled down my sunglasses, and squinted.

David gave me a slow, wicked smile. “I’ll do it,” he said. “Lie still.”

I licked my lips, tasted sweat, and returned his smile. I settled back against the cushions. David came around to the side of the lounge chair, perched on the edge, and squeezed some sunscreen out into his palms.

“You guys aren’t going to make this X-rated, are you?” Cherise asked. “Because if you are, I need a barf bag. Or a video camera.”

David didn’t glance toward Lewis, and I had to fight not to. “Nothing that couldn’t air on the nightly news,” he said. “Word of honor.” He held up his glistening hands. “Ready?”

“Oh, yes.”

I closed my eyes in total, animal satisfaction as his fingers massaged sunscreen into every inch of my feet, then worked their way slowly up my legs, my knees, up my thighs, seeking out every ounce of tension in every muscle. He skipped areas that might have led to excessive moaning (not that I wasn’t moaning already) and moved on to my hips, my stomach. What he did to my shoulders should have been in the Kama Sutra. It felt . . . healing. And yes, sexy as hell.

“Turn over,” he said, low in his throat, and I glanced up to see that wicked, lovely spark in his eyes. “Time to do your back.”

Oh, and he did me. Thoroughly. I was a boneless, purring heap by the time he’d finished. David pulled up another lounge chair and parked himself next to me. When I looked at him, he was showing more skin than I could remember seeing from him before in public; he had on a simple black pair of swim trunks, and nothing else, and it was spectacular. I let my gaze wander down the clean sculptural lines of his chest, bump over his taut abs, and found myself staring none too subtly at his swim trunks.

“Jo,” he said. I heard the curl of soft reproach in his voice.

“Sorry,” I said. “But you’re worth a rude stare or two, you know.”

He smiled. I couldn’t tell if he found me amusing or arousing, or both. He took in a deep, slow breath without replying and turned his face up toward the sun. I remembered how it felt for a Djinn, that almost sexual pulse of warmth and energy. Gave new meaning to the term hot.

It was a long, lovely afternoon. Lewis read a book.

Kevin and Cherise played cards. There were cold beers, and all in all, it was just . . . perfect. Peaceful. There was weather out over the Gulf, but it held politely off, stacking up its clouds at the boundaries of the low-pressure system in neat storage ranks.

I wished it would never end, but of course eventually it did. As the afternoon cooled, and the clouds began to move in, David kissed my fingers and murmured, “I have to go.”

“I know,” I said, and opened my eyes. His were brown, almost completely human in color as well as in the emotion they contained. I wondered from time to time what Djinn really thought about us, about the tedious nature of human existence, but David really seemed to delight in participating when the opportunity presented itself. “You’re being careful, right?”

That got me an ironic tilt of his eyebrows. “Look who’s talking.”

“Exactly. You’re consulting an expert here. Nobody better at getting into trouble than me.” I rolled up to a sitting position, facing him. “I mean it, David. I dreamed—” No, I didn’t want to talk about that. The image of him lying broken in the street, pierced by that black thing . . . no. “I mean, I’m just worried you’re not taking this seriously. About the antimatter. ”

That earned me a trace of a frown. “It’s not that I don’t take it seriously. It’s that for the Djinn, it’s invisible. We can’t see it, touch it, measure it. It doesn’t exist to us. How can I possibly watch out for it?”

“If it doesn’t exist, how did it end up inside a dead Djinn?” I demanded. He kissed my fingers again.

“Jo, I already told you, there is no dead Djinn,” he said. “Believe me, we’d know. We always know. None of us is missing.”

He kissed me again, an apologetic good-bye, and that was it. He misted away, off about his business, and I felt a sudden chill. Cherise had thrown a couple of wraparound robes in the beach bag, and I donned one, shivering in its terry cloth embrace.

Lewis noticed. I suspected he noticed a hell of a lot. “Let’s get you back in bed,” he said. “You’re checking out tomorrow. Don’t want you relapsing.”

Not that there was much chance of it; with Lewis’s Earth Warden treatments, and David’s Djinn-powered supplemental healing, I’d have to be damn stubborn to screw up that badly.

But I felt cold—cold and scared, for no reason I could really put a name to. Once I was back in my room, even piles of blankets didn’t seem to thaw the ice. I wanted David. I wanted him here, with me.

I wanted him safe.

And I was desperately afraid that he wasn’t.

When I tried to follow up and find out more about the dead Djinn, the antimatter black shard . . . I was told it was none of my business. Officially. This came in a curt e-mail message from Warden HQ, courtesy of my good friend Paul, who had evidently decided that the only kind of ball I was going to play was hardball, and therefore he’d better play to win.

I couldn’t really resent this, because he was right; I was recovering, I was weak, and it was being handled by competent people. So I needed to stay out of it.

Naturally, I couldn’t stay out of it.

Not really my thing, being sensible. Instead, I did my work quietly, hidden in between the obvious tasks of drafting the guest list for the wedding (everybody wanted to attend, and no, I wasn’t going to feed the entire North American Warden contingent with lobster tails and open bar). I researched caterers, florists, and ministers.

Where we were having the actual ceremony, thankfully, was a foregone conclusion. There was a chapel in Sedona, one of the places where the Oracles reside . . . this one was the home of the Earth Oracle, a kind of super-Djinn who was an avatar of the Earth herself. I wasn’t entirely sure what the Oracles did, exactly, except that they were the direct conduits from the Djinn to Mother Earth. If you wanted to talk to her, you went through them.

This particular Oracle was also my kid. Long story, but she’d been born in the Djinn way, from power— David’s, and mine. Half-Djinn, half-human, and not strong enough to survive the Djinn civil war that had erupted around her literally on the day of her birth.

I’d thought I’d lost her forever, but she was alive, in a sense, if beyond my reach. Oracles didn’t have as much contact with humans, and they couldn’t reach us in the way that Djinn did.

If I wanted my daughter, Imara, to be at the wedding of her parents, then I had to bring the ceremony to her. Super-Djinn badass avatar or not, I didn’t think she could actually leave the chapel, at least on the physical plane. Besides, it was a gorgeous place. I couldn’t think of a better, more sanctified spot to exchange vows.

However, at most, it would hold only a couple dozen people, not nearly enough for the rapidly spawning guest list. That would be like trying to fit Mardi Gras into a two-room split-level. Maybe, I decided, we ought to have two ceremonies. A party in Fort Lauderdale, an all-access blowout to make the rank and file of the Wardens happy. And then a private ceremony in Sedona.

Maybe I could get the Wardens to kick in for the party as a morale builder.

I was working out the costs, and trying to persuade myself that I felt weak because I was tired, not because anything above four figures was unacceptable, when the telephone rang. I picked it up, had a bad reporter flashback, and checked the number. It was blocked, which meant it was probably a telemarketer. Annoying, but not nearly as stressful.

“Hello?”

The sound of breathing on the other end made my hackles go up. Couldn’t really say why; breathing was not, in and of itself, a threatening sort of sound. But I knew something else was coming, and so I wasn’t surprised when a rough male voice said, “You don’t care, do you? You don’t give a shit about the dead. The ones who stood up and died for you.”

I flinched, remembering Jerome Silverton, and forced myself to stay still and listen. “What are you talking about? Who is this?”

“You didn’t even warn them it was coming. You didn’t warn your own friends that the Djinn they trusted, the ones they liked, could turn around and rip them in half.” The hatred in that voice was chilling. “Now you’re screwing one of them. One of the enemy.”

“The Djinn aren’t the enemy. Who are you?”

“You’re already on the list,” the voice said. “Fair warning, Baldwin. You’re a traitor, and we don’t want you in charge. Quit now, before it’s too late.”

He hung up. I sat frozen for a few seconds, staring at the phone, then called Warden HQ and asked for a trace of the last call.

I got nothing. It would take a Fire Warden to disrupt the sort of trace we used, but clearly, our enemies were ourselves. That didn’t bode well for a long-term solution.

I was trying to decide how much of this—if any of it—to tell David, when the doorbell rang. It took me a few long seconds to lever myself out of the chair, put my laptop aside, and go to answer it. The apartment was cool and quiet, except for the distant, constant sound of construction on the other side of the complex, where they were repairing fire damage.

When I got to the door, there was nobody outside. I looked right and left, frowning, and remembered to look down.

It was a delivery service package, plastered with labels. I didn’t remember having ordered anything, but maybe someone had sent me a get-well present. I reached down for it, but as I did, David came up the steps at the end of the hallway and turned toward me with his luminous, lovely smile.

Now that was the best present ever.

“What are you doing up?” he asked as he came closer. He was tossing newly minted apartment keys in his hand; I’d insisted that if he was going to marry me, he’d have to start doing more mundane, human things, too, such as unlocking doors the standard way, and knocking before entry. He’d found it funny, of course. But he humored me.

“Just getting the package,” I said, and bent down again to pick it up.

As my fingers closed around it, David asked, in pure puzzlement, “What package?” and it hit me like a speeding express train—I was already feeling worse. Woozy. Something was wrong here.

And he couldn’t see the package.

Oh God.

“Get Lewis,” I said, and backed away, into the apartment. “Get him fast, David. Go!”

He didn’t waste time asking what I was on about; he just blipped away, moving faster than light could follow. I slammed the door and kept on moving, as far back as I could. I ran into the plate glass window, slid along to the opening, and stepped onto the balcony, where I braced myself against the far railing and slowly lowered myself into a deck chair. I was short of breath and sweating, and it wasn’t all just nerves.

That box. Dammit. How many people had been exposed? The driver, for sure. People at the distribution center . . . I grabbed a pad of paper, threw away the lists of florists I’d compiled, and began to frantically scribble down anyone I could think of who might have touched the package during the shipping process. They all needed to be examined and treated.

I was only halfway through the list when the phone rang, and I grabbed the extension sitting next to the pad. “Lewis?” It was. “Get a disposal team over here, right now. There’s a package outside my door. I think it’s the same stuff as in the office building. Antimatter. David can’t see the package at all. Get a team on tracing the package back through the system. People who came in contact with this thing—”

“Got it,” he said. “Look after yourself. Get the hell out of there.”

“I don’t want to go near it, and I’d have to if I leave by the door. I’ll have to climb down—” I didn’t feel up to the acrobatics, not at the moment.

I didn’t need to. David came out of thin air, moving fast. He picked me up, out of the chair, stepped up on the balcony railing, and off into open space without a second of hesitation. I didn’t even have time to gasp before his feet hit the ground, and then he was carrying me across the parking lot at breakneck speed. He dumped me in the passenger seat of my car, took the driver’s seat, and started it up with a touch of his finger to the ignition.

“David—”

He wasn’t listening. His eyes were focused and distant. He had a mission, and that mission was to get me out of danger. I didn’t have anything to say about it.

I realized I was still holding the phone. Lewis’s voice was a faint buzz on the other end. “Right, I’m out of the apartment,” I said to him. “And we’re about to lose the connection. Hurry up with the disposal team. I don’t want that thing lying around where anybody can pick it up. My God, Lewis, there are people here. Innocent people!”

David put the Mustang in gear, and we screeched out of the parking place, cornered hard, and accelerated out of the apartment complex and onto the street.

The phone went dead, of course. I tossed it in the backseat and rested my head against the cushions as David put the Mustang through its paces, driving way too fast for a human’s reactions. He must have screened us out of other people’s perceptions, because we blew past a police squad car doing about 120, and there was no reaction at all from the two protecting and serving in the front seat.

“I thought you didn’t believe in this stuff,” I said to David. “You’re acting like you do.”

“I’m trusting you,” he said. “If you say it’s there, and you say it made you sick, I’m not taking chances. But Jo—I can’t see it. I can’t sense it. It’s just not there.”

“Look, there are things that exist that are invisible to humans—”

“But not to Djinn,” he interrupted. “Nothing is invisible to Djinn. Nothing that belongs on this earth.”

This was kind of the point. He must have realized it, too. He was quiet for a moment, and when I looked over, I saw that his eyes had taken on a fierce orange color, like the heart of a fire.

“This isn’t something being done by the Djinn,” he said. “Not mine, and not Ashan’s. Whether I personally believe in it or not is beside the point. If an enemy is sending these things to you, personally, it’s someone human. Someone who wishes you harm.”

No kidding. I remembered the angry phone call. “Maybe it’s a Demon,” I said. “They seem to like to drop in for regular visits.”

“Not funny, Jo.”

“Yeah, not from this side, either. Do you think it is? A Demon?”

He seemed to consider it seriously. “Demons aren’t so . . . strategic in their approach. Their goals are simple and straightforward—consume, kill, escape. Whatever this is, there’s no sense to what you described before. The dead creature—”

“Djinn, David. He was Djinn. We’re sure.”

He let that pass, but I could tell he was far from convinced. “And the black thing inside him. Who would do such a thing? Why?”

“Maybe,” I said slowly, “it was a test.”

“A test of what?”

“Of the Djinn,” I said. “A test that you failed.”

He took his gaze away from the road, which was eerie and alarming, though I knew he didn’t need to be staring straight ahead to drive. “Failed how?”

“Failed to sense the danger. Look, that was a Djinn we found—”

“It wasn’t.”

“Argument’s sake, if it was, why can’t you admit it? It’s as if you just can’t bring yourself to—”

“There’s nothing to admit!” he said, and I heard the unmistakable vibration of anger underneath the words. “I would know if a Djinn had died!”

“Except you don’t, and one did,” I said, and closed my eyes. “So what does that mean?”

“It means—” David took in a deep breath, and I could see him struggle to get his temper under control. “It doesn’t mean anything. Because all this is an illusion, Jo. Just an illusion. There’s no dead Djinn; there’s no such thing as your antimatter.”

Whoa. The blind spot the Djinn had was big enough to swallow the sun, and it was starting to really scare me. And there didn’t seem to be any point at all to trying to debate it, because he simply wasn’t going to listen.

I turned face forward as he steered the Mustang through traffic at speeds that would have made NASCAR drivers weep and flinch. “Glad we got that all straightened out.”

Sarcasm was wasted on him, right at the moment. He sent me a heartbreaking smile of relief, and I realized he actually thought we had straightened it out.

Oh dear God.

We finished the drive in silence. Once the traffic cleared, David pulled off the road at a beachfront area, one loaded up with pleasure-seeking, bikini-wearing sunbathers, all one tequila short of a Girls Gone Wild video. He turned off the engine, and we sat for a while watching the waves crash and roll, and the tanners sizzle and flirt.

“I need my cell phone,” I said. David . . . flickered. Like a bad signal, or a hologram. And then he reached in his coat pocket and handed over my cell phone, which I knew perfectly well I’d left back on the table in the apartment. “Hey. Don’t do that, okay?”

He looked puzzled. “Don’t do what?”

“Don’t go back there. Promise me.”

“Why?”

I swear, when I closed my eyes, I saw red. I counted to ten, deliberately, and tried to pry my fingernails out of my palms. “Because even if you don’t believe it’s there, that stuff is toxic to me, and it could be fatal to you. All right?”

He shook his head. “There’s no danger. If there was, I’d know.”

Which was just crazy. But he earnestly seemed to think he was telling me the truth.

I took the cell phone and called Lewis. “Where are you?”

“Just got here,” he said. I heard his breath huffing; he and what sounded like an elephant herd of people were jogging up the stairs. “Okay, I see it. Box in front of the door.”

“That’s it,” I said. “Be careful.”

“I’m not going anywhere near it, trust me. We’re using a bomb robot.”

“We’ve got bomb robots now? Cool.”

“It’s on loan from Homeland Security,” Lewis said. “They’re not going to like it if I get it blown up, though. I’ll call you back.”

Homeland Security was loaning us gear? Wow. When had we actually come up in the world like that? Apparently, while I’d been unconscious in a hospital bed for something or other, or on the run. I wasn’t sure if I liked it. Part of the reason the Wardens had existed for so long in secrecy had been the low profile. The more we “cooperated” with other governmental agencies, the more likely it was that we’d get attention, and any attention was bad.

I remembered the reporters, and shivered. They had a job to do, and although they’d grant me some sick time, they’d be back.

“Let’s change the subject,” David said. “The wedding. Where do you want to have it? At the chapel?”

There was only one chapel for us—Imara’s home, the Chapel of the Holy Cross. I nodded slowly. “But we’d have to have it in secret,” I said. “After hours. They don’t do official weddings there.”

“I could work it out,” he said. I was sure that was true, actually. “It won’t hold too many.”

“Small ceremony,” I said. “Big reception. It works.”

He nodded, staring straight ahead into the rolling surf, the eternal sky. “Are you all right?”

“Me? Sure.” I dredged up a laugh. “Why wouldn’t I be? Just because some crazy is sending me antimatter through the mail . . .”

“We changed the subject,” he reminded me gently. “If you’re worried about the wedding, you can still change your mind.”

I draped an elbow over my seat and curled around to face him, resting my chin on my forearm. “I really don’t think I can,” I said. “And I really don’t think I want to.” I felt a cold breath of . . . something. “Unless . . . you’re having doubts about us—”

“No,” David said immediately. “I’m just concerned for you. You seem . . . unreasonably upset. I just can’t understand how you can be so convinced and upset about something that has no evidence.”

Well, that was rich. He thought I was crazy. “David,” I said, “we’re not going to convince each other on this stuff. Are we?”

He shook his head ruefully.

“Then let’s stop trying.” I reached out. He took my hand, and some of the fluttering in my stomach quieted. “So if we can have only twenty people at the ceremony, who are we picking?”

He smiled. “You go first.”

“All right. One name at a time.” I took a deep breath. “Cherise.” Safe. He nodded.

“Lewis,” he said, which surprised me, but I supposed it shouldn’t have. He and Lewis had known each other long before I ever set eyes on David.

“Um—Paul.”

“Rahel.” He gave me a quick, apologetic smile. “I can hardly leave her out of the invitation. She’d only show up if we didn’t invite her.”

She would, just to be a pain in the ass. Djinn. What can you do? “Fine,” I said. “How many is that?”

“Counting us? Six.” He studied me for a second, eyes going gentle again. “Seven with a minister. Do you want to invite your sister?”

“Oh hell no,” I said. “Psycho sister Sarah is not welcome. She’s caused me plenty of trouble without this. I’ll go with . . . Venna.”

David’s eyebrows twitched, either in surprise or amusement, or maybe some of both. Venna was a Djinn, but she was on Ashan’s side of the fence; she’d done both of us favors, but as with most Djinn, I couldn’t peg her as good or bad, really. Still, she was always . . . interesting. “She might attend,” he said. “It might interest her. But she wouldn’t come alone.”

“You are not inviting Ashan.”

That got an actual laugh. “It would be politically wise.”

“And personally stupid because if I see him again, I swear I’ll rip off whatever passes for his—”

He kissed me. It was meant to be a shut-me-up kiss, quick and sweet, but it turned warmer, richer, and I melted against him like chocolate on a hot plate. “I’m asking Ashan,” he said when he let me up for breath. “And you’re going to play nice if he shows up. Which he won’t. But it will be wise to ask him.”

I made a noise that brides-to-be probably shouldn’t make, according to Miss Manners. He kissed me again.

We had so much to talk about—flowers, cakes, catering, dresses, tuxedos. . . . We didn’t talk about any of it. Instead, David pressed his lips to the pulse at my neck and murmured, “I’m bored with planning the wedding. Let’s plan the honeymoon. Better yet, let’s rehearse.”

I’d been recovering for weeks, and my libido had taken a serious beating along with my body, but when he said that, I felt a fast, hot flush of desire. Aside from some gentle play, he’d been careful with me, knowing I was fragile.

Now he sent waves of energy flowing into me, curing the lingering aches and exhaustion, and I caught my breath in true, deep pleasure.

“Right here?” I asked. “In the car?”

“I think I said before, the seats do recline.” Being a Djinn, he didn’t even have to crook a finger to make it happen. My seat slipped back, nearly level, and I made a sound low in my throat as his warm hands moved over me, sliding the strap of my top down my arm, folding back fabric. . . .

“Wait,” I said, and sat up again. “There’s a motel half a mile back.”

He looked surprised, and a little disappointed. I kissed him again.

“I’m not saying no,” I promised. “I’m saying . . . I want lots of time, and a bed. If it’s a rehearsal, let’s make it a full undress rehearsal.”

“Oh,” David murmured. “That’s all right, then.”