Rachel Caine: Ill Wind

"Dying to see you!"

"Right." She dragged the word through three syllables. "How long has it been?"

"Um…" I couldn't remember. "A year?"

"Try two."

"Hey, I keep in touch. Don't forget the phone calls. Or the Christmas cards."

"The Christmas cards show up in February," she said. Okay, she had a point, I wasn't exactly the most reliable friend in the world. "So what's the deal, Jo? You need crash space?"

"Maybe. Well. Yeah." I heard her pouring liquid into a mug. "I should be there in a couple of days. You think I can stop in, maybe just catch a shower and some rest? I may not need it. I'm just saying, maybe. I'll pay for dinner, honest. And at someplace good, not the local roach factory."

Star sipped coffee. I was desperately jealous; my mouth watered at the thought. "Tell you what, you maybe show up, I'll maybe let you in. That's if you swear there's not going to be any trouble, like you were in last time."

"That was so not my fault. Tornadoes are a perfectly natural phenomenon. Not my fault you live where they go for vacation."

"Hey, we live la vida loca around here, girlfriend. So. Why are you really coming out to the ass-end of nowhere?"

"It's not the ass-end of nowhere. And besides, you're there." I winced again. That sounded suspiciously like what my buddy Andy had said when I asked him if I was getting fat. You're not fat— you're my friend! Well, at least it had made me go on a diet.

"Actually… I wasn't being completely honest before. Something's kinda wrong. I have to find somebody. It's important."

"Somebody around here?"

"Last I heard, he was somewhere close." I was reluctant to say the name, but hell, Star was right; she knew everybody and everything that went on in that part of the world. "Um, it's… Lewis."

"Que?" she blurted. "You know, I was only kidding about the crack, but seriously, are you high? You got any idea how many people have been looking for him since he disappeared?"

"Yeah, I know. Pretty much everybody in the upper circles."

"What the hell you gonna do when you find him?"

Not anything I could admit to, certainly not to Star. "Look, let's not get into it, okay? Let's just call it catching up on old times."

"Sure. Okay." She banged more metal—probably skillets. Star was a hell of a cook. "So I'll watch for you, then."

I sensed something on her end, something she wanted to ask, so I waited. She finally said, "Hey, you haven't heard anything, have you? About me?"

"From who?"

"Forget it."

"No, really? From who?"

Another long hesitation. It wasn't like her. Star was a do-it girl. "I just get worried sometimes, you know? That they'll change their minds. Come and finish the job."

That hit me hard, in unguarded places. I hurt for her. "No, baby, that's not gonna happen. Everybody agreed, you deserve to hang on to what you have. You know that. Why would they change their minds?"

"Why do they do anything?" She forced a laugh. "Hey, no worries, I'm just freakin' paranoid—you know that. I listen to the little voices in my head too much."

I would, too, if I were Star. Which led down paths of speculation where I didn't want to follow. "Well, now I'm all jealous. I wish I had little voices in my head. Guess I'll just have to settle for people really being out to get me."

"Bitch," she said cordially.

"Bimbo."

Three or four uninspired insults later, we mutually hung up. I tossed the phone back in the passenger seat. Star would give me shelter, and she'd never rat me out to anyone looking for me, but she was really, really vulnerable. A few years ago, Star had taken a tremendous hit, both physically and emotionally, and she'd been forced to leave the Wardens. Usually, when people leave, they get blocked—a kind of magical lobotomy, to ensure they can't go rogue. It had been a close thing with Star, but they'd let her keep what little she had left. Provisionally.

And Star was absolutely right—that didn't mean that somebody wouldn't show up on her doorstep with official sympathy and orders to rip the essence of power out by the bloody roots. They'd damn sure hop to it if they found me conspiring with her, what with me bearing the Demon Mark and all. God. I shouldn't be dragging her into this, but there were only a few people in the world I could trust with my CD collection, much less with my life. In fact, there were only three.

Lewis and Star and Paul.

It'll be okay. If I found Lewis, if he did as I asked, if everything worked out okay… I wouldn't need to put her at risk.

If. If, if, if.

It was a small word to hang the rest of my future on. Star's, too.

When I was fifteen, my mother fell in love with a guy named Albert. First of all, I ask you—Albert? I guess it could have been worse. He could have been named Cuthbert or Engelbert, but at fifteen it was still a crushing horror to me. Albert the Bear. Big, hairy guy, with a laugh that sounded like a rusty chain saw and a fashion sense second only to Paul Bunyan for addiction to flannel.

Albert wanted us all to get closer to nature. Even then, knowing next to nothing, I knew it was a really bad idea, but Mom thought he not only hung the moon but painted it, too, so we all packed our outdoorsy equipment and flannel shirts and hiking boots, and headed off into the Big Empty.

Actually, it was Yellowstone National Park, but same diff.

All right, it was beautiful—breathtaking, even to a disaffected fifteen-year-old girl who didn't want to be pulled away from the mall and her friends for the summer. Beautiful and wild and powerful.

But mostly I was bored, and I wished for TV and MTV and boys. Awesome geysers: check. Incredible vistas: check. Crushing ennui: gotcha.

We hiked. And hiked. And hiked. I wasn't much for that, and when my boots rubbed blisters on the first day, Albert the Bear wouldn't let me rest; he told me it would toughen my feet. I sulked and snapped at Mom and wished desperately that I would fall and break my leg so that a good-looking rescue party of tall, dark-haired men would come carry me away. Occasionally I wished Albert would get eaten by a bear, but that was before I actually saw one; once I had, I didn't wish anybody to get eaten by a bear.

Somehow, we got to the top of whatever ridge we were trying to climb, and while Mom and Albert were admiring the downhill view, I was looking up.

"It's going to rain," I said. The sky was a perfect ocean-deep azure, the sun a hot gold coin glittering like sunken treasure. I sat down on a rock and started to take my shoes off.

"Don't take 'em off," Albert advised me in his rumbling bass voice. "Feet'll swell. And I think you're wrong, Jo. It doesn't look like rain."

I craned my neck, shaded my eyes, and looked up at the thick black bulk of him standing over me. Nice to be in the shade. Not so nice to be in Albert's shade.

"See that?" I pointed to the thin, wispy clouds in perfect waves. "Cirrus clouds, coming out of the east."

"So?" For some granola-chewing, tree-hugging forest nut, Albert wasn't very weather wise.

I smiled. "Look." I grabbed a stick and drew a circle in the dirt. "The planet spins this way, right? East to west."

"Just figured that out, did you?"

I ignored him and drew an arrow the opposite direction. "Wind moves west to east, against rotation. So why is the wind coming out of the east?"

This time he didn't say anything. That was fine; I wasn't listening anyway. "It's coming out of the east because there's something rotating—" My stick drew a spiral somewhere over where I guessed we were. " — that's changing the direction of the wind. Rotation means a storm."

He looked over at my mother. She looked back. I figured the silent conversation had something to do with what a freak I was, what the hell were they going to do with me, and on and on and on. Not like I hadn't already said it and wondered it myself.