Rachel Caine: Chicks Kick Butt

David’s power was breathtaking and precise, and he wielded it quickly—dangerous, for a Djinn, because like Wardens, they had to be concerned with balance. He formed a solid pack of earth, a berm that ran straight through the Everglades, and knocked down enough of the cypress growth to provide a window for the plane’s wings.

“Coming down!” Whitney yelled, and I felt the hot burn of the exhaust as the jet roared right over our heads, so close that I swear I could count the treads on the landing gear, which was winching its way down. The plane wavered, slipped sideways, and Whitney and I clasped hands instinctively and merged our powers, applying force to the side that needed it, bringing the jet back into a semistable glide.

Twenty feet.

Ten.

Down.

The tires hit the packed earth with more force than normal, and I saw one of them blow out in a mist of rubber and smoke. David flung out a hand and kept that side of the plane up as the pilots applied brakes.

Whitney and I changed the thickness of the air flowing along the flaps, adding to the drag, burning off speed at about twice the normal rate, until the plane was coasting, then a smoking, scarred wreck sitting motionless on the makeshift runway.

Whitney took a deep breath and closed her eyes, and the doors on the plane popped open. Yellow emergency chutes deployed. I could hear screaming from inside, but there was also shouting, people imposing order onto chaos.

I turned toward Whitney. “How did you know?”

She opened those eerie purple eyes, and for a second, I saw the woman she’d once been … infinitely tired, frightened, and burdened under all that glitter and gleam. “Once you’ve died that way, you know it’s coming,” she said. “It’s just how it is.”

I said, “I thought you died alone.”

Whitney studied me for a few silent seconds, then nodded. “I did,” she said. “I was in a plane that went down in the water. I lived. I lived a long, long time. And nobody found me. Nobody ever will.” I was still holding her hand. She glanced down at our linked fingers. “This don’t make us engaged, you know.”

I let go, feeling a little off balance after all of this craziness. It wasn’t often that someone threw me, but Whitney had, in every possible sense. She wasn’t at all what I’d expected.

“Why didn’t you just tell us about this, if you knew it was coming?”

She shrugged, which set off lots of glittering waves from the diamonds. “What kind of fun is that? I got you here, didn’t I? I just did it my own way.”

“Your way is insane. Go do something useful,” David told her. “Send up a flare for the emergency rescue parties. They’ll be on the way by now.”

She gave him a smart little military salute, which was very weird considering her outfit, and executed a perfect turn to march away.

“Wait!” I said. “The guy you threw in our way on the road. Who was he? Why did you do that?”

She glanced back at the plane. Smoke blew away from the fuselage, and I saw a long, ragged hole, with the fragile metal skin peeled away. “He’s the man who put the bomb on board,” she said. “I didn’t think you’d care if you didn’t stop in time. I wouldn’t have.”

And then she vanished in a mist of diamonds. Gone. I looked over at David, who was shaking his head.

“What?” I asked.

“She took the bikini,” he pointed out. “And nobody’s going to get it back. That’s her price for altruism.”

I laughed. I could hear emergency sirens back toward the road, and I could just see Whitney standing out there glittering like a diamond convention, pointing the way for all the rescuers.

“I think I like her style,” I said.

David rolled his eyes. “ You don’t have to be her boss,” he pointed out. “Now. Let’s see to the wounded.”

In the end, there were remarkably few, and most of the injuries were minor. MIRACLE FLIGHT , they called it on the twenty-four-hour news channels, which featured interviews with everybody possible: people who’d been anywhere in the flight path of the plane, the crew, the passengers, and the director of Whitney’s failed commercial shoot, who somehow managed to take high-definition footage of the aircraft on its dramatic flight and landing. He did a documentary. It won an Emmy.

The Case of the Missing Million-Dollar Model occupied headlines for many months, along with positively drooling pictures of Whitney leaning against the Bugatti Veyron with just enough diamonds on her lady parts to make her legal. She was spotted in Rio de Janeiro, and then in Cannes, and then in Argentina and—on the same day—in Shanghai. I think she enjoyed playing Where’s Waldo.

David and I never got our beach picnic, but back home, many hours later, we made do. We moved the furniture out of the way, put down the blanket, and had wine and cheese and bread and each other, and somehow, that was still utterly blissful. As we lay there wrapped in each other’s arms, lit by candlelight, I felt the rumble of suppressed laughter in his chest.

“What?”

“I was just thinking,” David said. “Whitney. She’s just insane enough to make a good second in command for me, don’t you think? If Rahel can’t do it?”

Rahel was a longtime friend and a very formidable Djinn. I couldn’t imagine any set of circumstances under which Rahel wouldn’t be able to step up to the plate, so I shrugged. “I suppose,” I said. “She’s certainly not the obvious choice.”

He kissed me, long and sweetly. “That’s what everyone said about you,” he told me, and traced his thumb across my damp lips. “I think my instincts are pretty good.”

“And I think you have a weakness for girls in bikinis.”

“You’re not wearing one now.”

“I’m not wearing anything .”

“Oh yes,” he agreed soberly. “I do have a weakness for that.”

And he showed me, all over again.

The bottom half of my longneck shattered, splashing golden liquid all over my jeans and the bar’s floor. The mirror in front of me, already pockmarked with chips, now also had a hole courtesy of the bullet that had drilled through to the wood. The cracks spidering out from the center showed me back my own short brown hair and startled black eyes, and the joker with the gun backlit in the doorway.

I couldn’t see him very well, just a dark silhouette against the rusty evening light spilling down the stairs of the basement bar. But I wouldn’t have recognized him anyway. Most of my varied acquaintances wouldn’t have taken the shot, and the rest would have made damn sure not to miss.

“That’s gonna cost you five bucks,” I said, swiveling around. My own gun was out, but I didn’t return fire. The guy hadn’t taken the second shot, which meant he wanted to chat. Since I was still recovering from a near death experience all of two days ago, I was up for it. And if my vampire sense was anything to go by, a handgun wasn’t going to be much use against this joker anyway.

“You want to stay out of our business,” I was told, as everyone else scattered to the four winds. The large shape moved into the bar and resolved into a good-looking Asian guy in khakis and a brown leather jacket. The ensemble looked more weekend-in-the-Hamptons than biker chic and clashed badly with the orange and black tiger tat prowling around the right side of his face.

The tat told me a lot, none of it good. The Chinese don’t like tattoos. In ancient China, they were used as punishment, branded on criminals before exile to ensure their easy identification should they ever return. They are still seen by many as a defilement of the body and a sign of generally poor taste. That attitude is changing among the young, but despite the glossy black hair and unlined face, this guy hadn’t been young in centuries.