“Tornado?” I repeated, and tried to look like a dumb Iowan girl. “You’re kidding, right?”
“There’s a lot of disturbance in the aetheric. You didn’t know?”
“Well, sure. I just figured it was—” I made a vague gesture. Let him fill in the rest.
“Ah. Yeah. You must’ve heard we caught him.” When I stared at him, unmoving, he added the rest. “You know. Lewis. Lewis Orwell?”
“Really?” I tried to sound impressed, and not ready to backhand him into next week for the way-too-satisfied tone he was taking. “Was he here in the city?”
“Close by. New Jersey, as it turned out. All these years, looking for him, and he was right across the state line. Funny how things turn out.” Ron nodded sagaciously. “They think he’s behind this stuff.”
“What?” I didn’t have to feign shock on that one.
“Sure. You think it’s an accident that they get their hands on him, and all hell breaks loose on not one but three fronts? They’ve got the West Coast problem under control, but we’re going to take a real beating from this storm. Not to mention those poor bastards out in Yellowstone.” He leaned closer. “They think he might have some kind of Demon Mark. Anyway, they’re getting Marion Bearheart in here. I figure they’re going to try to, you know—” He made a yanking-up-by-the-roots gesture. I literally staggered, caught by sick surprise.
“They’re going to neuterhim?”
He looked surprised at my reaction. “Well, not… actually… I meant they were going to, you know, close off his connections. Make sure he couldn’t do something like this again.”
I’d known perfectly well what he’d meant. Neutering was the right word for it. Castration. Ripping out the heart and soul of who he was. It was as horribly malicious as throwing acid on the Mona Lisa—Lewis was a treasure, a once-in-a-thousand-years goddamn gift.
They could notdo this to him. I wouldn’t let them.
I forced a smile. “You’re on Marion’s staff?”
“Afraid so.” Ron tried for a sheepish little-boy cute look. It almost worked. “I’m just in training, though. No way they’d let me even in the same room for a procedure like that. They’re waiting for at least four other Senior Wardens before they even try anything.”
I smiled, nodded, and wished to hell that the elevator would start. Not that I couldn’t mist out and get away, but I couldn’t do it with Ron staring at me, not if I wanted to have any kind of chance for a clean escape. God, Jonathan, you’d better have him. I’d tear this building down one steel I beam at a time if I had to, to make sure that they didn’t carry through on their threats.
No wonder Lewis had been so paranoid all these years, running for his life. I’d have been catatonic, if I’d known what was waiting for me back here among my so-called peers.
Just as I was starting to wonder whether to seduce Ron or knock him out, the elevator jerked again and started sliding down. Fast. A red light on the panel read security lockdown.
“They’re sending us to the ground floor,” Ron said. “Looks like they’ll be searching everybody.”
“Fun.” I rocked back and forth on my low-heeled shoes, ready for fight or flight, but when the elevator doors opened a navy sports coat type with the UN emblem over his vest pocket waved me impatiently out, along with Ron. I followed his pointing finger. It looked like a mob scene, which was great for fading away. You’re never more alone than in a crowd of strangers. All Wardens, even better.
“Hey!” Ron was trying to keep up with me as I slipped between people, heading for the sealed and guarded exits. “Um, Gidget! Wait up!”
I stepped behind two particularly bulky women who looked like they might have been part of a Russian delegation, and disappeared.
Jonathan? I sent silently. No answer. Earth to Jonathan! Dammit, you’d better be there!
Crap. Getting Lewis out of here without taking him through the aetheric was going to be next to impossible, but we had to find a way. We couldn’t chance leaving him here.
I waved my hand through the air and watched it collect an insubstantial weight of blue fairy dust. I crushed it into nothing, but that didn’t matter; it was a constant blizzard even here. The aetheric would be choked with it. No. We couldn’t leave that way.
I caught sight of a familiar face in the crowd, and went cold. Marion Bearheart was here—had just made it in before the lockdown, by the look of it. Her brown suede jacket was spattered with dark drops, and water caught the light in tiny glints in her gray-and-black hair. She looked grim and haunted, arms folded over her chest. She was listening to an earnest stream of dialogue from Martin Oliver, who even now looked like the nattiest, most in-control man on the face of the world. He wasn’t in control of much, today, but I still wouldn’t have wanted to cross him. He reminded me of somebody… Ashan, Jonathan’s chief rival back in the Djinn bubble. The same kind of severe, uncompromising confidence, and a kind of elegant, almost sexual grace.
I remembered, out of nowhere, a conversation I’d had back in college about a man I’d been thinking of dating. Describe him, my best friend had said. I’d giggled and said, He’s sweet. And she’d looked at me very seriously, taken my hands, and said, Corazon, sweet men are only sexy until you realize that they’re too weak to hurt you. I hadn’t agreed with her—still didn’t, in some ways—but there was no denying that dangerous men had a visceral attraction.
The woman who’d said that was on the Wardens’ wall of the dead. Like me. I hadn’t even had time to mourn her. I didn’t even really know if I should, and that was the worst of it.
Marion’s cool, strong gaze swept my direction. I quickly put out the don’t-notice-mevibe. She scanned right past me, frowned, and turned to someone at her elbow. I focused on her lips. She was asking if he sensed anything strange. He shook his head, but she didn’t look convinced.
Man, we needed to get the hell out of here. And I needed to get down to the vault.
A huge, rolling crash of thunder like the world’s largest pane of glass dropped from ten thousand feet made everybody in the room flinch and duck. Most clapped hands over their ears. Some, like Marion, turned toward the big picture windows, and the sharp white crack of lightning lit up their strained faces.
I heard the dull thump of the first of the hail hitting the street outside. Ice exploded like a bomb, scattering frozen white shrapnel for twenty feet. Before the debris had rolled to a stop, another piece of football-sized hail crashed down onto the roof of a yellow cab speeding by. It ripped a hole right through the steel.
The storm had shaken loose of any semblance of control, and now it had a target: the only people who had a hope in hell of stopping it.
Us.
I felt it drawing in, focusing around the building, and it was a sense so suffocatingly strong that I wanted to gag. Even as a Djinn, this was oppressive; I couldn’t imagine what it would feel like to a Warden. I didn’t need to imagine it, actually, all I had to do was look around. They were scared. Scared out of their minds.
“Down to the shelter!” That was Martin Oliver, who’d climbed on top of the security desk to address the crowd of several hundred milling around the lobby. “Everybody! Quickly!” Even now, he looked controlled and calm. No wonder he was the guy in charge.
Security started directing people toward a gray door marked with a bomb shelter symbol; the crush got intense, quickly. I noticed that Martin hadn’t joined the stampede. In fact, he stayed where he was, on top of the security desk, staring out at the street as rain started lashing the windows in thick, lightning-shot streaks.
More hail was crashing down. Cars had stopped moving out on the road, and drivers were abandoning their vehicles to run into any available cover. I felt power stirring, and knew what he was trying to do: cover the potential victims as they scrambled for shelter. I reached out and did what I could, which wasn’t much; I was feeling weaker all the time, and the connection to David had shrunk to a tiny filament, sparkling silver but feeding me nothing but a trickle of power.