Rachel Caine: Ill Wind

I didn't intend to be anywhere near it.

You might wonder why I didn't just give it a wave of my hand and get rid of it—which was entirely within my powers. Well, Newton was right: action gets reaction. Every time a Warden balks the weather, the power has to go somewhere, and believe me, you don't want the power of a supercell discharging through you; it's something on the order of three or four larger-than-average nuclear bombs. If I'd tried directly to make my stalker-storm disperse—waved my hands and parted the winds, to give it a biblical interpretation—I might have succeeded here and created the world's largest-ever tornado whirling its way directly at me from the opposite direction. Plus, I wasn't an official Warden in this area… or anywhere, come to that. Not anymore.

Still, I'd been one of the most subtle weatherworkers in history, all my performance reviews said so; I could probably slide it under the radar of anyone who might be looking for me up there in Oversight. Not that I had a lot of choice, really… No matter how fast I drove, this storm was bound to catch me. It had the scent of me now.

I turned the radio on, settled myself comfortably in the body-hugging seat of the Mustang, and began humming while Jim Morrison sang—funnily enough— about riders on the storm. As I drove, I shifted —not gears, but the air above. Cooled it here, warmed it there, slowed the elevator-fast updrafts that were feeding the storm its power. It was delicate work, making sure the energy expended didn't add up to another problem, and still making enough changes that the storm weakened. Also, I had to do it quietly. Last thing I wanted to do was attract attention from the local officials.

It took about two and a half hours to reduce it from a badass mofo to an inoffensive low-pressure system, which is nothing much if you're driving a Mustang and listening to a Doors album marathon. I pulled off the road in the parking lot of a roadside diner called the Kountry Kafe, put the car in neutral, and closed my eyes as I left my body to check out the results.

In Oversight, the world looks very different. I lifted my hand in front of my face and saw a tracery of crystal, my aura cool blue edged with flashes of green and—most unsettlingly—streaks of red. Red was bad. Red was trouble. No wonder the Djinn had smelled the Mark on me.

Nothing I could do about it now. I stepped out in my astral form and admired the crystalline perfection of the Mustang, which was even more beautiful in Oversight than in the mundane world. A real magical beauty of a car. One look at the Kountry Kafe convinced me I didn't want to eat there; it pulsed with bad vibes, like a quaking mass of rancid Jell-O.

I spread my weightless arms and went up. There was no sense of speed—not in this reality—and no sense of resistance, either. I glided up, and up, and up, until the earth curved off beneath me. From that dizzying height, I studied the deforming spiral of the storm. In Oversight it looked almost the same as in the real world, only instead of lightning, the energy displayed in colors—brilliant, vibrant colors that a trained Warden could interpret. I'd done enough with it, I thought. Its overall rotation had been disrupted, and the lightning flickers were showing in golds and greens, sheets of positive and negative charges in scattered glitter. If I'd missed the mark, I would've seen reds and a steady photonegative undertone.

I let go, and the planet rushed back at me. The first time I'd traveled in Oversight, I'd absolutely freaked, and no wonder: the sensation of falling back into your body is one of the most terrifying feelings in the world. These days, I enjoyed it like a thrill ride. Few enough thrills in my life recently. Not to mention fewer dates.

I filled my body again, and the world took on weight and form and dimension. Delilah the Mustang assumed her familiar glossy midnight-blue paint job.

My stomach rumbled again. With one last, regretful glance at the Kountry Kafe, I eased on down the road.

The diner where I finally stopped looked outwardly a lot like the last one, but its Oversight characteristics were more encouraging. It was called Vera's Place. Vera, it turned out, was long gone, but the owner and operator was a perky thirty-year-old named Molly with hair that showed several indecisive home dye jobs and the kind of creamy milkmaid skin that every Hollywood actress wants.

"Pie?" she asked me expectantly as I polished off the last of my open-faced turkey sandwich and mashed potatoes. There wasn't a lot of commerce going on inside Vera's Diner; I counted about six old coots and a yuppie couple dressed from the L.L. Bean catalog who sneered at the menu selections and would never even have considered eating something as middle-American as pie. Which decided me.

"What, you think I'm hungry or something?" I asked, and scraped up the last of the delicious pan gravy with the edge of my fork. I got a dimpled smile in response.

"Last one we had in here didn't eat pie was some hot-shot defense lawyer from L.A.," she confided. I passed over the turkeyless, gravy-free plate.

"Wouldn't want to be included in that company," I agreed. "What kind of pie you got?"

She raised an eyebrow. "You really want the whole list?"

"Just the high points."

The high points could have filled a couple of pages, single spaced. I decided on chocolate.

"German, cream, or meringue?"

"I'm sorry, is that a choice? Meringue, of course. Definitely."

The meringue was taller than most three-layer cakes, a hugely delicious confection that went down perfectly cool with the rich, creamy chocolate beneath. The crust was to die for, crisp and delicious. Best pie I ever had. Honest. The Oversight never lies about the quality of food, especially pies.

While I was savoring the last few bites, I took out a road map and looked over the route. Long. Long and boring. I asked Molly about good places to stay and got two recommendations, visited the little Wardens' room, and went back to my car full of chocolatey satisfaction, with the full intention of finding a Holiday Inn with adult channels and a minibar. One gets fun where one can.

Just as I reached for the car's door latch, a feeling swept over me, pins and needles, unmistakable and terrifying. I snatched the door open and dived. My feet had just left the ground when lightning hissed up from the dirt where I'd stood, down from the gray clouds, and met in the middle with an awesome snap of power. The flash blinded me. My ears rattled from the force of the boom. I smelled harsh, metallic ozone and thought about how close I'd come to being a fuse in that current.

Lightning can come from a clear sky, but it has to be driven by energy from somewhere, and the storm that I'd doctored no longer had the charge necessary.

There wasn't any potential—and yet, I could feel it all around me, a strong positive charge in the ground, negative charges building overhead in the clear but humid sky.

In Oversight, chains of electrons formed and rippled like translucent snakes in the sky—a cold hard glitter striking straight for me. Dear God, somebody was doing this. Somebody really powerful.

I rolled over, clawed hair away from my face, and saw that the ground was blackened and smoking where I'd been standing. The diner's front door banged open, and Molly and the other patrons— even the yuppie couple—crowded around the opening. Too sensible to come outside, too interested to be really safe. I waved at them to show I was all right and started to pull the door of the Mustang shut.

The interior of the open door was charred in a straight line, up and down, poor baby. I hesitated, touched the metal carefully, and found it hot but not scorching. It squeaked in protest when I hauled it closed, but the engine started and the gears still fit.