Rachel Caine: Ill Wind

"Paul," Martin Oliver said quietly. "Enough."

Paul shut up. So did Bad Bob, who closed the folder. Martin Oliver opened his own.

"Joanne, maybe what we should be talking about is a great deal more basic. Do you want to be a Warden? It's not an easy life, and it's not especially rewarding. You'll never have fame, and even though you'll save a lot of lives, you'll never receive gratitude or recognition. You'll need to go through another six years of training, minimum, before you're trusted as a Staff Warden." His gray eyes studied me with absolute impartiality. "Some people don't have the temperament for it. I understand that you're prone to act first and think later."

I licked my lips. "Sometimes."

"Under what circumstances would you believe it was permissible to use the kind of powers you've been given? To, for instance, get rid of a violent storm?"

"To—save lives?" Nobody had told me there was going to be a test. Dammit.

Martin exchanged a look with Bad Bob. "What about saving property?"

"Um… no."

"No?" Martin's eyebrows levitated, making his gray eyes wider. "Is there no time when saving property might be preferable to saving lives?"

My heart was beating too fast; it was hurting my chest. I could hardly swallow for the lump in my throat. "No. I don't think so."

"What if the property were, say, a nuclear reactor whose destruction might result in the deaths of thousands more?"

Oh. I hadn't thought of that one.

"What if the property were the central distribution center for food in a country full of starving people? Would you save the property, or the lives, if by saving lives you starved even more?"

"I don't know," I whispered. My hands were shaking. I made them into fists when Bad Bob's laugh sawed the air.

"She doesn't know. Well, that's typical. This is what we end up with these days, a bunch of kids raised on free lunches who never had to make a decision in their lives more important than what TV show to watch. You want to trust her with the power of life and death?" He snorted and shoved my folder into the center of the table. "I've heard enough."

"Wait!" I blurted. "I'm sorry. I didn't understand."

Marion Bearheart looked at me from the other side of the table, her warm brown eyes full of compassion. "And do you understand now, Joanne?"

"Sure," I lied. "I'd save the power plant. And— and the food."

Silence around the table. Bad Bob stood up. Nobody argued with him; nobody moved so much as a muscle as he raised his hands at shoulder level.

A cloud started forming above our heads. Just mist at first, clinging to the ceiling like fog, and then getting denser, taking on form and shape. I felt humidity sucking up into that thing, fueling power.

"Hey—," I said. "Um—"

Power leaped through the air, jumping from each one of the Wardens in the room and into that cloud. It was feeding on them, drawing energy. It was… It was…

… alive.

Bad Bob watched me with those eerie, cold eyes. "Better do something," he advised. "Don't know how long it's going to be content to just sit there."

"Do what?" I yelped. I didn't remember standing, but I was out of my chair, backing away. The power in that room—the uncontrolled, unfocused menace— the sense that the cloud overhead was thinking —

I felt it click in on me as if a channel had opened, and something hot and powerful tore out of the cloud at me. I didn't have time to think, to do anything but just react.

I reached up into the cloud and ripped it apart. No finesse to it, no control, just sheer raw power— and power that got loose, manifested in arcing static electricity from every metal surface. Glass shattered. The pitcher of water on the table hissed into steam.

I ducked into a crouch in the corner until it was all over, and the room was clear and silent.

Very, very silent.

I looked up and saw them all still sitting there, hands on the table. Nobody had moved an inch. Marion was the first to get up; she walked over to a covered cart and took out a thick beach towel, and went about the business of mopping up beads of water from the conference table. Somebody else— probably a Fire Warden—brought the lights back online. Except for a couple of burn marks around the power outlets, it all looked normal enough.

Bad Bob sat back down in his chair, slumped at ease, and propped his chin on his fist. "I rest my case," he said. "She's a menace."

"I agree," said the snippy-looking librarian type from Arkansas. "I've rarely seen anything so completely uncontrolled."

Martin Oliver shook his head. "She has plenty of power. You know how rare it is to find that."

They went around the table, each one putting in a comment about my general worthlessness or worthiness. Marion Bearheart voted for me. So did two others.

It came down to Paul Giancarlo, who stood and walked over to me and offered me a hand up. He kept holding my hand until he was sure I wasn't going to collapse into a faint on the floor.

"You know what this is?" he asked. "What it is we're deciding here?"

"Whether or not to let me into the Wardens," I said.

He shook his head, very kindly. "Whether or not to let you live. If I say you can't be trained, you go into Marion's keeping, and she and her people try to take away your powers without killing you. Sometimes it works. Sometimes… not so well."

If he was hoping to scare me, he'd succeeded brilliantly. I wanted to say something, but I honestly had no idea what to try. Everything I'd done so far was wrong. Maybe keeping my mouth shut was the best thing I could do.

He finally smiled. "Not going to beg, are you?"

I shook my head.

"That's something," he said, and turned around to Martin Oliver. "I'll take her on. She can't cut it, it's my responsibility. But I think she's going to be a damn good Warden someday."

Martin winced. "Not quite yet, though."

"Yeah, well. Who is, at eighteen?"

"You were," Martin said. "I was."

Paul shrugged. "We're fuckin' prodigies, Marty. And neither one of us ever had half the power this girl does coming into it."

"That's what I'm afraid of," Bad Bob said. "That's exactly what I'm afraid of."

It was four to three to make me a Warden.

Two hours later, I made it to Albany. Not a bad town, Albany—nice, historic, a little run-down but still the kind of kid-and-dog place that people boast about. Probably smaller than the residents preferred it be, considering it was the state capital and all. I'd hit it in pretty season—tulips bloomed in shocking rows of red and yellow, like velvet rings of fire rippling in the wind around trees and home gardens. I passed through the industrial area near Erie Canal, past narrow brownstones with soot-dark stoops, and turned toward the southend—up Hamilton toward the part of town called—appropriately—the Mansions.

Paul lived in a house that had to cost at least a cool quarter million… with spacious lawn, gracious styling, and a lacy white gazebo in the back overlooking a rose garden. I pulled into the drive and parked the Mustang, let the engine rumble to a stop, and took a little peek into Oversight.

I almost wished I hadn't. Paul's house was a castle in the aetheric, I'm talking castle here, with battlements and flags and arrow slits. Not too surprising, since Paul had always been a knight—in the warlike sense, the old-fashioned, bloody, mace-and-sword kind. And his Sector was a fiefdom. Paul's world was heavy on the black and white. Bad news for Team Me, whose colors these days were gray and grayer.

I dropped back into tulips and Doric columns on the portico as the front door opened. Paul walked out to meet me. However knightly he might have looked in Oversight, in the real world, Paul was pure Italian Stallion… strong, muscular, with bone structure that bordered on godlike. He still had designer stubble, except I'd long ago learned it was really just a permanent five-o'clock shadow. Paul had turned forty a couple of years ago, but it hadn't slowed him down any, and damn, he was still gorgeous.