Rachel Caine: Gale Force

Maybe I was just feeling catty because I was sweaty, bruised, and covered in dust.

She raised an eyebrow at my appearance, looking coolly amused. Nope. It wasn’t because I looked like crap. I felt catty because I just plain disliked the woman.

Lewis and I took seats at the table. He slid in next to the Weather Wardens, leaving me stuck next to de Winter, but also next to Rocha, who winked at me as he shoveled syrup-drenched waffles into his mouth.

The server appeared, and Lewis and I gave our orders—I went for waffles, after seeing Rocha’s evident happiness with his. Also, just so I could see de Winter look pained. Waffles were clearly déclassé. Hooray for waffles.

“First of all,” I said as the waitress closed our doors, “and just to get it out in the open, this is not my fault. Ask Lewis.”

All eyes turned to him, if they weren’t already there. He sipped coffee and nodded. “She’s in the clear,” he said. “Whatever’s going on, I don’t think any Warden is behind it.”

Luis Rocha put down his fork. “It wasn’t natural. No way in hell. Did you see it?”

“We saw,” Lewis said. “And I agree. It wasn’t natural. But it’s nothing a Warden could be powerful enough to do alone, either.”

There was a moment of silence. Brewer said, softly, “Djinn?” It was the question we were all dreading and the reason, on some level, that Lewis and I hadn’t wanted to go to David about what we’d found. Because either he knew, which was bad, or he didn’t know, which was worse.

Either way, it put him, as the leader of the New Djinn, in an impossible position.

“That’s certainly a possibility,” Lewis said. I knew what he was thinking: Ashan, and the other half of the Djinn. The old, arrogant half. But the truth was, I didn’t believe even for a second that Ashan would have driven that evil black thorn into the skin of Mother Earth. In a curious sort of way, he cared more for her than for himself, his people, and certainly humanity. He wouldn’t have done it, and he wouldn’t have allowed it to be done, not by any of his people. Or David’s, I thought suddenly. There’d have been war first.

Nothing scarier than a war between the Djinn.

Been there. Had scars.

“Did you try to get it out?” Rocha asked Lewis. Lewis nodded and held up his hands. They were blistered. “ Madre de Dios. That happened on the aetheric ?”

“Yeah.” Lewis studied his palms with a frown. “Shouldn’t have.” I knew that self-healing was one of the toughest things for Earth Wardens, and so did Luis Rocha; he gestured to Lewis, and the two of them went off to a side table to sit close together, backs to us. Healing was, sometimes, kind of a private thing. Intimate. I sipped coffee and tried to ignore the fact that I’d been left on my other side with Janette de Winter, who was shooting me looks that could kill.

“Any report on injuries?” I asked the table at large. They all glanced at each other, and then Sheryl Brewer took on the job.

“Minor stuff so far,” she said. “We’ve got some superficial cuts and a couple of broken bones, but nobody dead or seriously injured. The damage was contained pretty quickly. Whatever you guys did—”

“Wasn’t much,” I said, “at least on my part. Rocha deserves the credit for containment, definitely.”

Credit for more than containing the earthquake, apparently, because when he and Lewis rejoined us— coincidentally, the same time my waffles arrived, all fluffy and begging to be drowned in syrup—Lewis’s palms were smooth and blister-free again. “Surface damage,” he said to our questioning looks. “Looks like the thing’s hot.”

“Hot hot, or radioactive hot?” Brewer asked. It was an excellent question, and not the one Lewis had been hoping to answer.

“Radioactive,” he said reluctantly. “We need to find this thing in the real world and contain it. Fast. Jo, I want you to talk to Paul, figure out if we’ve got anybody who specializes in radioactivity. We’re going to need somebody who knows what they’re getting into.”

I nodded and dipped my first bite of waffle into syrup. It never made it to my mouth, because my phone rang. I stepped away from the table to answer it—it was a number that didn’t pop up with a name, but it was a New York City area code.

“Ms. Baldwin? Phil Garrett here, New York Times. I hope you weren’t injured in the disturbance down there?”

I was surprised first of all that he’d gotten a cell signal through; the Wardens had priority on connections in a crisis, along with various emergency services and governmental agencies, and I was pretty sure reporters weren’t on that list. After that surprise wore off, though, a big, ugly ball of black stress formed in my stomach where my waffle was going to go, and my knees went a little weak. I felt light in the head for a second, and braced myself against the wall. So not cut out for this.

“No, Mr. Garrett, I’m fine,” I lied, and was pleased that my voice sounded steady and almost welcoming. “What can I do for you?”

“Well, I don’t know if you remember, but a couple of days ago I tried to reach you when you were on vacation. . . . I wanted to talk about the Wardens organization that you’re part of.”

My heart trip-hammered, thanks to a sudden dump of adrenaline into my bloodstream. I supposed as an Earth Warden I ought to be able to take care of that stuff, but no, not happening. I struggled to keep my voice calm and light. “Mr. Garrett, I’m ashamed of you. A journalist, ending a sentence in a preposition?”

He laughed. He sounded at ease. I supposed this was fun for him. All in a day’s work, terrifying the people on the other end of the phone. “Ms. Baldwin, if dozens of English teachers and journalism professors couldn’t beat it out of me, I think you’ve got a lost cause on your hands.” The amusement fell away like a discarded carnival mask. “Let’s talk about the Wardens. What would you say if I told you I had a credible source telling me that not only are the Wardens real, and acknowledged by every government on Earth, at least in secret, but they also function as a kind of shadow governmental agency? One that fundamentallyaffects and controls the lives of ordinary people?”

“I’d say you need to call Spielberg,” I said. “Bet it would make a great movie. Your source is a mental case, Mr. Garrett. If you actually have one. Which I notice you didn’t actually say. So, in theory, I didn’t actually answer the question, either.”

He ignored that, although it at least deserved a chuckle, I thought. “This is serious stuff,” he said. “I take it seriously. I’m not convinced about all this talk of paranormal events and controlling the weather, but there’s got to be something behind it. Maybe you guys have technology we’re not aware of, something classified; we can get into the details later. What I want to know is the structure of your organization. I understand it’s worldwide. Do you report up through the U.S. government?”

“I’m not having this conversation.” I kept it simple this time. Garrett waited for me to blurt out something else; silence was pressure. I held on to my tongue and turned to see the entire table of Wardens watching me. Lewis put down his fork and got up, walking toward me. Whatever he saw in my expression, it couldn’t have been reassuring.

“So the organization is independent of national interests? A shadow government of its own?”

“No!” One-word answers were going to land me in trouble; he’d box me neatly in. “I’m afraid I can’t confirm any information for you, Mr. Garrett. I really have no idea what kind of fiction you’ve been fed by your source, but—”