Carol Shearer, whom I hadn’t known well, might have been in it, but I’d never know, would I? Because she was dead, killed in a car accident.
If it hadn’t been Carol…
Why was Ella still looking at me?
“Does John know?” I asked her.
“About… ?”
“Marvin.”
“Oh, sure. That’s why he won’t talk to you. It’s killing him, you know; he wants to believe in you, but… ah, hell, honey, he’s an idealist. You know how John can get. No sense of the real world.”
I decided to jump in the alligator pond. “Well,” I said, lowering my voice to a just-us-girls whisper, “confidentially, I wasn’t in on it. But you know that, right? I mean, Bad Bob told me about it that morning, and I was thinking it over, but I had no idea it was still going on. It is still going on, though. Right?”
She blinked and said, “You don’t think I have anything to do with it, do you?”
I raised my eyebrows.
And, after a split second, she lowered her eyelids and whispered, “Not while he’s here.”
I’m glad I wasn’t quite looking at her; she probably would have read the heartbreak in my eyes. But she didn’t notice. She turned away and finished putting the papers of my file in order, and bent the brackets to hold everything inside, nice and neat. I noticed there were some papers she hadn’t put back. She shifted the stack in my direction with an unmistakable take-them nod.
I felt sick, but managed to hold on to my smile. I collected the papers and stuck them into my purse, trying to look casual about it. Ella watched me with a strange little smile, then winked and turned away to grub in folders again.
We were collaborating.
I pulled in a deep breath and walked over to John and his Djinn. The Djinn focused on me, swept those white-fire eyes over me, and did such an obvious double take it was almost funny. I knew it wasn’t my outfit—it wasn’t that bad—and after the initial confusion I figured out what he was focusing so intently on.
I put a hand over my lower stomach, instinctively, as if I could somehow shield my unborn Djinn child from his stare.
He yanked his gaze back up, and I lifted my chin and dared him to say something.
He just lifted an eyebrow so dryly it almost made me laugh, then turned to John and said, “Will that be all, John?” He had an English accent, very butler-y.
John thanked him politely and poof, we were Djinn-free. I wondered what the Djinn’s name was, but it was impolite to ask. When you met a Warden and a Djinn together, you weren’t supposed to even acknowledge the Djinn.
I don’t think that was etiquette invented by the Djinn.
“I’m sorry, John, but I need to get going,” I said. He nodded and extended a hand for me to shake; I did, and then held on to it. I leaned forward and brushed a kiss across his cheek. He smelled of a dry, astringent cologne and a wisp of tobacco. “Take care,” I said, and dropped my voice to a whisper while I was next to his ear. “Don’t trust anyone. Anyone.”
I didn’t want to point the finger at Ella specifically, not yet, but a general warning never did anyone any harm. He pulled back, frowning, and then composed himself and gave me a placid nod. “You take care, now.”
“You, too,” I said, and made my way through the still-messy room to the Djinn-repaired door.
It hadn’t been a robbery. Somebody had come in here looking for records, and they’d gone through my file like a fine-toothed comb.
It looked like everybody wanted to keep track of me—good guys, bad guys, people I didn’t even recognize as being on one side or the other. Who the hell knew.
I was seriously considering grabbing David’s bottle and my sister, and fleeing the country.
Interlude
On the island, the storm strips hundred-year-old trees bare, then snaps the trunks and throws them with lethal force into every man-made structure in the way. Walls disintegrate. Roofs disappear into a blizzard of broken wood and tile. Even palm fronds become deadly cutting instruments, driven by winds of unimaginable force.
The storm stops, turns, and begins to feed.
Death comes mostly from the storm surge, which creeps up over the land not in a wave but with the constant pace of a pail poured into a tub. Water rises to fill houses in minutes, drowning frantic occupants who can’t flee into the killing winds. Some structures, farther from the shore, begin to shudder and breathe with the storm, walls collapsing outward, then pulling upright again, each vibration shattering more of the foundations.
Men, women, children, and animals are pulled from shelter and swept into the fury, where they’re stripped first of clothes, then of flesh, then shattered into ragged bits.
The carnage is constant and merciless, and the storm feeds, and feeds, and feeds. It has no will to move on from the feast. Even when the island is stripped bare, to the rocks, the winds and waves continue to lash and lick the last fragments of life.
The exposed bedrock blackens. Even the algae die.
When the storm has sucked every breath from a land that once held millions, it buries it under the sea and moves on, searching for its next victim.
This is where I come in.
Chapter Seven
As above, so below. The old saying was holding true today. I got to the security doors of the lobby just as the clouds cut loose and the rain began.
Florida rain is like a faucet—two speeds, flood and stop. The setting was definitely on flood this morning. I stood at the glass and looked out at the thick gray wall of water—couldn’t really make out the parking lot behind it—and looked down at my shoes. They weren’t rain-appropriate, but then the rest of the outfit wasn’t exactly going to be repelling a lot of water, either.
At least it’s just rain, I told myself. Could be worse…
And right on cue, a white stab of lightning split the sky outside, close enough that I didn’t need Warden senses to register the power jolt. I felt it sweep over my skin and draw every tiny hair to shivering attention.
The thunder that followed shook the glass and set off a howling chorus of car alarms.
The next strike was about fifty feet away from me, right outside in the parking lot, and it came as a fork of blue-white light reaching down and grounding itself in one of the cars. What the hell… ?It shouldn’t have done that.
There were lots of taller objects to draw it, but then lightning was whimsical that way. And vicious.
I jumped back from the glass and slapped my hands over my ears as the thunder exploded, and couldn’t see a damn thing for the overloaded white-hot afterburn on my retinas. I blinked fiercely as I waited for my eyes to return to normal and cursed my lack of strength as oversight would have been a real asset at the moment. Except that I was too weak to get to it, and it was only as the thunder died to an ominous, continuing growl that I realized the car that had taken the brunt of that lightning bolt had been midnight blue, lean, and sleek.
In other words, it had been Mona. Mycar.
“Oh, damn,” I whispered, and blinked faster. Not that I could really see anything through the incredibly dense rain out there. No, wait, I could. There was something flickering orange out there, barely visible…
My car was on freaking fire.
“Joanne!” John Foster, breathless, came pelting up behind me, grabbed me, and threw me to the floor. He landed on top of me, and while I was busy registering the unique ways a marble floor didn’t make for a comfortable landing area, something outside exploded.
Not lightning. Something more man-made.
The explosion blew in the windows in a bright-edged shower, and the rain followed, pounding in before the glass even hit the marble. I smelled burning plastic and metal and tried to get up, but John held me down with an elbow across my shoulders. He was breathing hard. I could feel his heart pounding against my back.