I made it rain, a tiny patter of full-size drops on my hand—they had to be full-sized, because it had to do with gravity, not scale. I only squeezed out two or three, because of the size of the source material, but enough to get the point across. The friction of molecules sparked another baby lightning bolt; this one zapped me like a static charge. I winced.
Rodriguez dragged a hand through the cloud, and stared at his damp fingers in fascination.
“Real enough for you?” I asked him, and let it go. It broke apart into fog, which rapidly evaporated into nothing in the dry, air-conditioned environment of the van. I wiped my wet palm on my leg.
He didn’t answer for a long moment, and then he reached over and picked up the empty orange juice glass. Handed it back to me.
“We’re done,” he said. “Watch your step when you get out.”
That was it. He slid the door open. The glare of sunlight startled me, as did the humidity rolling in the door. I looked at Rodriguez, who stared back, and finally stepped out and onto the hot pavement.
“That’s all?” I asked him.
“Yeah,” he replied. “That’s all.” He started to slide the door shut, then hesitated. “Two pieces of advice; take them or leave them. First, get rid of the car. It’s a sweet ride, and it’s also hot and it attracts too much attention. Somebody’s going to figure it out.”
I nodded. Poor Mona. Well, I was really more of a Mustang girl, anyway…
“Second,” he said, “if what you told me about Quinn is true, he was in business with somebody, and he had a shipment to deliver. You might want to think about the possibility that somebody might be looking to collect, and why they wanted it so bad in the first place.”
I felt the skin tighten on the back of my neck. “You mean, collect from me?”
“You’re the visible link, Joanne. I found you. Somebody else could do the same thing. Watch your ass.”
I nodded slowly. “So this is good-bye?”
“You see me again, it’s because I found out you were lying to me, and believe me, that wouldbe good-bye.”
He slid the van door shut. I stepped back. He slid into the driver’s side seat in the front, and the van started up with a shiver and a roar. He rolled down the window, gave me a little salute, and backed out of the parking spot.
I watched him drive away. Except for a small patch of oil on the asphalt where he’d been parked, my cop stalker was gone as if he’d never been there.
One problem down. About a million to go.
Overhead, the clouds piled thicker, darker, and more imminently threatening.
I wished I knew what to do next. If Lewis hadn’t bugged out, at least I could have mined him for information—I knew he had a lot more than he was saying—but of course holding on to Lewis was like trying to hold on to a wave in motion.
And without access to the aetheric, trying to find anyonewas trouble. The Djinn were—at least for now—leaving me alone, probably too preoccupied with their own battles and problems. Jonathan, despite his threats, hadn’t come knocking for his pound of flesh. Ashan was proving the once-bitten, twice-shy cliché. I didn’t know whether that was a good sign, or bad, but at least it gave me a little more time to do whatever it was I proposed to do.
Which was… what?
I was in the middle of dithering about it when my cell phone rang, and it was Paul Giancarlo, calling from the Warden offices at the U.N.Building in New York.
“Good morning,” I said. “Before you forget to ask, thanks, I’m fine.”
“I wasn’t going to,” he grunted. “Lewis was with you last night?”
He had good sources, but then, he was the Head Hon-cho. At least for now. “Yeah. He needed someplace to stay and recover. Look, you’ve got rogue Wardens running in packs out here. Lewis has a bull’s-eye painted on his back. You need to do something, fast.”
“Would if I could. I’ve got a problem. I need your help.”
“Does the word noring any bells with you? Because I’ve said it before.”
“Joanne, I’m not fucking around here. When I say problemto someone like you, what do you think it means?”
“Disaster,” I said briskly. “From what I’ve seen, there’s plenty of that going around, and I’m sorry about it, but I can’t help.”
“Yes, you can.”
“Seriously, I can’t.”
His voice went very quiet. Gravelly. “Did you hear me ask you a question? Short declarative statements, sweetheart. Not negotiable. This is serious business, and you’re going to get in line or I promise you, your powers get yanked. Clear?”
Fuck. Frankly, Paul sending Marion’s team after me to rip out my powers was far down my waiting list of panic attacks, but it wasn’t worth risking, either.
“Clear,” I said. “What do you need?”
“Get over to John Foster’s office. Nobody’s answering over there. I got nobody on the ground I can trust right now. Just make sure everything’s okay.”
That gave me a quiet moment of worry. “Paul? Is it that bad?”
His sigh rattled the speaker of my cell phone. “However bad you think it’s gotten, it’s worse than that. And I don’t think it’s anywhere near hitting bottom yet. Get over there, but watch your back. I’d send you cover if I could.”
“I know. Are you all right there?”
“So far. Nobody wants to uncork a Djinn around here, though. Six Wardens reported dead in the Northeast, and word is their own Djinn stood by and let it happen.”
I remembered Prada on the bridge, her defiant anger. “And once they’re free of their masters, they go after others to free them,” I said. “Packs of them.”
“Yeah. It’s a mess. Swear to God, Jo, I don’t know if we’re going to survive it. We’re warded halfway to hell around here, so I think this building’s secure, and I gave my Djinn a preemptive that her job was to protect my life from all comers until I said otherwise. I passed that along to everybody in the system; don’t know if it’ll do any good. You know how expert they are in getting around orders when they want to.”
“Yeah,” I agreed softly. “I know. Listen—be careful. I’ll call you when I know something.”
“Thanks. I can’t afford to leave the Florida stations unmanned.”
I knew. Key areas had seasonal posts of enormous responsibility. California was important all year long. Tornado-prone states like Kansas, Missouri, Oklahoma, and Texas got extra staffing for the spring and summer.
Florida, in hurricane season, was a key weather post, and if John was missing …
We were in big trouble.
I signed off and headed for my car.
The Warden Regional Office was located not far from the National Weather Service offices in Coral Gables, conveniently enough; we’d sometimes used them for conferences and research. But the Warden offices were unassuming, located in a seven-story building with standard-issue brown marble and sleek glass. There was no sign on the building itself, just a street number etched in brass. Security on the entrance. I didn’t have a card key, so I sat in the car and waited until someone else pulled into the parking lot and wheeled a laptop toward the front door. I didn’t recognize her—she probably didn’t work in the Warden offices, of course, because they only had a couple of small offices out of seven floors, and the others were all occupied.
I moved in behind the woman, smiled when she smiled, and she carded me into the building and took off for the stairs. I, feeling lazy, went for the elevator.
The lobby was quiet and dimly lit, going for soothing and achieving a state of restfulness usually reserved for dropping into a nap. The elevators were slow—it was a general rule of the universe that the shorter the building, the slower the elevators—and I killed time by trying to imagine what the hell I was going to do if I got up there and found a major fight in progress. I wasn’t going to be of any help, that much was sure.
I was hoping like hell that it was a downed-phone-line problem. Weak, but sometimes optimism is the only drug that works.