Rachel Caine: Gale Force

“He’s going to go after the Oracles,” I said. “After my daughter, Lewis. I can’t let that happen.”

He didn’t argue the point. “He won’t go after anybody if we don’t give him the time.”

“Do we have anything that can counter what he’s got?” Meaning, the Unmaking. And his sheer, horrible power.

“Maybe,” Lewis said. “But I think this is going to be more a matter of wearing him down until we can strike. More of a siege than a blitz attack.”

The light dawned. “You know where he is.”

“He’s at the Wardens’ safe house, on the beach,” he said. “He didn’t try to hide it. He’s inviting us to come get him.”

“Which means it’s a trap.”

Lewis nodded. “But what are our options? We’ve lost the Djinn, but if we don’t go for him now, he’ll have time to build up his organization again. Even if Bad Bob’s got control of Rahel, we may never have a better opportunity.”

No, I didn’t like it. This was Bad Bob’s version of our wedding—an obvious, juicy target, just waiting for us to strike it. “We can wait him out.”

“He can move through the aetheric, like a Djinn. How do you propose we seal him off, without the Djinn’s cooperation?”

Lewis had a point. We needed to get Bad Bob to fight us on our terms, and that meant letting him think he was winning.

That meant walking into the trap—but being ready to turn the trap to our advantage.

Lewis was thinking of something I hadn’t, but then, he usually was. “Your link to David. It’s still holding?”

I went still, listening. It was—slender as a silk thread, but strong as steel. I couldn’t reach him, because he was blocking me, but I could feel him. I nodded.

“Can you draw power from it?” Lewis asked.

I concentrated, and felt a tingle of energy creep along the link from David to me. Then more. I held up my hand, and a golden, unfocused glow formed in my palm.

Lewis didn’t look happy with the outcome, which surprised me until he said, “Then you’re the one who has the best chance. He’ll send you energy to keep you alive, and as the Conduit, he’s got access to more energy than any other Djinn except Ashan. That could give you the edge you need to defeat Rahel, if it comes to that. And Bad Bob.”

I needed to tell him, couldn’t avoid the embarrassing and fatal truth any longer. I shook the glow out like a match and opened my mouth to explain about the mark Bad Bob had burned into my back— about my vulnerability to him.

I couldn’t. Not a single word.

“Jo?”

I focused past him, to the delicate, antique desk in the corner. There was creamy, expensive hotel stationery and a Montblanc pen right there, just waiting for me to scribble out a warning if I couldn’t force my voice box to cooperate.

Except I couldn’t so much as make a move toward it.

Dammit. Bad Bob had installed safeguards.

“Nothing,” I heard myself say. “I think you’re right. Send me in. I think I’m your best bet.”

Lewis didn’t seem happy with it, but I knew he’d do it. “Not alone,” he said. “I’ve already got teams surrounding the compound. I’ll go with you.”

“No, you won’t,” I said, and I meant it. “Lewis, one of us at risk is enough. The Wardens need a leader, and like it or not, you’re it. I’m expendable.”

“Don’t say that,” he said. Not, I noticed, a denial, just an avoidance. Lewis was far too practical not to realize that I was right about that. “I said you had the best chance, but we can do this another way, Jo. All you have to do is say the word, and we’ll—”

“Lose? Yeah, that works great. Good plan.” I felt tears sting my eyes. “Come on. Have I ever backed off from certain death? Ever? Even when I had something to live for?”

He flinched at that one, but he didn’t look away. “No,” he said. “Bad Bob knows that, too. He’s going to count on it. Don’t let him push you into a corner, or you’ll die for nothing. I don’t think I can stand that. You mean too much to me, Jo.”

It was the closest he’d come to admitting how he felt about me, and he’d done it right out in public. The room—full of Wardens—was deathly still, though whether they were waiting for more revelations or for me to reject him, I couldn’t tell.

“I know,” I said softly. “I won’t.”

Cherise cleared her throat. “If you need somebody to, you know, ride along and—”

“No,” I said flatly. “Not this time. This is no job for anyone who can’t throw a lightning bolt, a car, or a ball of fire the size of Cleveland. I don’t want you anywhere near Bad Bob.”

She looked disappointed, but not really surprised. Despite the chaos of the day, there wasn’t a smudge on her. Kevin put his arm around her and looked down; elfin and lovely and entirely human, she looked up into his face. The smile they exchanged made my heart ache.

“You’re going?” she asked him. Kevin shrugged.

“Might as well,” he said. “Got nothing else planned for the day. My Nintendo’s busted.”

“Watch your ass,” she told him.

Ah, young love.

“Ready?” Lewis asked me. I nodded. I still wished I could live a normal life, have what I wanted, be at peace. I should have taken all of my vacation. I was just now starting to see the wisdom of waiting for trouble, instead of courting it. “Can you get David to help at all?”

I shook my head. “No. He’s—staying away.”

Lewis looked very, very grim. “You mean, he’s walled himself off on the aetheric. The way Jonathan used to do.”

“I can’t be sure. He’s not giving me anything back about where he is, but it would make sense.” David could save himself, and his people, by shutting himself off like that for as long as necessary. Ages, if need be.

Lewis pulled in breath to say something, then decided that discretion was the better part of valor; he held up his hands and walked away to confer with the others.

He didn’t have to say it. I’d already figured out that if David had really withdrawn into his stronghold on the aetheric, I might never see him again.

Not even to say good-bye.

To say that there was a military operation at work on the beach when we arrived was an understatement. One handy thing about the Wardens coming out in public was that we no longer had to make do with covert ops-style equipment. No, this time we had cops, FBI, air surveillance, coast guard boats . . . everything but the dancing bear and big top.

I was pretty sure that none of it was going to mean a damn thing to Bad Bob, in the end. Mortal firepower was beyond insignificant to him, except as an inconvenience, and with the Djinn off the board, we had very little left to counter him.

Just me, the battered and damaged white queen, with a little fleck of black to betray her true allegiances.

Lewis and I sat in a surveillance van, the tricked-out kind, watching monitors in all different spectrums. There was no movement from the beach house. SWAT teams had gone into position, stealthily moving from cover to cover inside the overgrown estate grounds. It wouldn’t help them. Bad Bob knew they were there; he had to know. He probably just didn’t damn well care. Humans weren’t his thing, and in fact they mattered very little to him except as window dressing.

“Nothing on any of the monitors or sensors,” one of the Wardens reported. “Maybe he’s not there.”

“He’s there,” I said. I was watching the house itself. I couldn’t sense or see anything, and I had absolutely no basis for believing what I’d said, but somehow, I knew. I just knew. “He’s got ways to conceal himself. Probably using Rahel.”

“We need physical recon,” Lewis said.