The Storm Makers

by Jennifer E. Smith

  “You mean who wouldn’t want to be your little puppet?” Simon shot back.

  London simply shook his head, still chuckling. “You’re no better than your sister,” he said, and this time, when Simon lifted his hands again, a fleeting thought crossed Ruby’s mind, a possibility that was horrible and thrilling at once, but tempting enough to make her linger on it for the briefest of moments. She looked at London, leaning there against the ledge with a manic grin, and she wondered what it would take to tip him right over the edge.

  The wind was coming in from the west, rushing out toward the lake, and the numbers came to her almost automatically as her eyes bored a hole through him: speed of the wind, and weight of the object, and amount of leverage, plus a jumble of other calculations and factors, variables and measurements.

  All this, in the seconds that passed while her brother—gathering himself, angling his hands, muttering something under his breath—aimed all of his concentration at that very same man. And with the quickest flash of movement, to Ruby’s great surprise, it worked this time, and he seemed to channel the wind, directing it sideways at London, who—with a look of shock—was knocked backward, falling against the wall with his hands up, as if trying to block some invisible opponent.

  And then, just like that, the wind died again.

  Everything happened fast after that. Simon was still staring at his hands in amazement when London staggered to his feet and lunged at him. Ruby let out a yell that sounded as if it should have come from someone else, then threw herself at London’s back, where he had Simon pinned to the ground, a big hand around his neck.

  Simon’s face was turning a deep red, and the only thing Ruby could think to do was grab London’s tie and pull hard. A fog seemed to roll in all around them then, though where it came from Ruby couldn’t be sure, and she heard voices behind them, halfway across the roof. Before she even had a chance to register who it was, whether they were friends or enemies, Storm Makers or just regular old people, she felt herself being hauled away from London, still clinging to his tie so that his face went purple, and he let out a gargling sound as he tried to claw at her.

  “Let go,” someone said, but Ruby held on, her teeth clenched. Through blurry eyes, she could see that someone else had Simon by the foot and was trying to wrestle him away from London, whose hand was still at his throat, and it wasn’t until she saw his fingers go slack that Ruby dropped the tie. London slumped to the ground, breathing hard, and then it was Otis—Otis!—who pulled Simon a safe distance away, putting himself between them before turning to face London again.

  Ruby whirled around to find Daisy, and she felt weak with relief, her legs wobbly and a lump forming in her throat. But Daisy said nothing, only moved out in front of her so that she was a few feet from Otis, the two of them facing down London, who was now backed into a corner of the roof.

  He flashed Otis a smile. “It’s been a long time.”

  “Not long enough,” Otis said.

  “You’ve heard about all my efforts, then?” London asked, looking pleased with himself. He flicked his eyes over to Daisy, whose hands were balled into fists. “Your father would have been impressed, no? Not just with my events on the solstices, but also my restoration of the Vacuum…” He turned back to Otis with a wolfish grin. “Perhaps that’s something you’d like to try?”

  Otis didn’t even flinch. Instead, he raised one eyebrow in a look of amusement. “I’m not worried about your little machine, Rupert.”

  London paused for a moment, and a strange smile spread across his face. “I’ve missed this,” he said. “You were always the only one who could best me.”

  “It was never about beating you,” Otis said. “It was about getting good enough to protect people. Or have you forgotten?”

  “Have I forgotten?”

  There were a few beats of calm, the eye of the storm, and then London lunged forward again, a crazy glint in his eye, his arms outstretched. A wall of flame erupted between the two men as London moved forward, and the fire seemed to move with him, almost like it was something alive. The rest of them stumbled backward, but Otis—Otis didn’t move a muscle. He should have been backing away; he should have been putting up a wall of wind, a blast of cold air, anything. But he just stood there, his face glowing in the heat as the flames moved closer.

  “You were the one who forgot,” London said as he stepped closer. “You were the one who stopped protecting someone.”

  Otis said nothing. He only stared down the wall of fire, his mouth set and his eyes curiously far away.

  “And now look at you,” London said, drawing near him. “No fight left in you, old friend? Still haven’t learned how to put out a fire?”

  Beside Ruby, Daisy was poised to move, her whole body vibrating. Ruby, too, was torn; why wasn’t Otis doing anything? He just stood and stood and stood as the flames drew closer. It was maddening and mystifying and brave all at once.

  London was laughing now, his voice muffled by the rush of flame. Ruby watched, horrified, as it came within inches of Otis’s nose, but the stony look on his face didn’t change. She wasn’t sure if he was trying to prove a point or just waiting for the right moment to strike. But as the first flames reached him, singeing his eyebrows, Ruby let out an involuntary cry, and it was this that finally shook Daisy into action.

  She seemed to coil herself and then unwind again, jerking her head at London, and out of nowhere, out of the clear sky and the thin air, a rush of water met the fire, and Ruby watched in wonder as the whole thing died with a loud hiss.

  For a moment, nobody moved. A thin trail of smoke rose between London and Otis, who reached up to remove his hat, examining the brim where it was charred black. Beside him, Daisy stood breathing hard, her eyes darting from London to Otis and then back again. Time seemed suspended as they waited to see what would happen next.

  “This is what you want?” London said finally, cutting his eyes over to Simon and practically spitting the words as he backed up to the ledge. It began to hail then, but irregularly, like something in London had been short-circuited. The pebbles of ice came down in patches from the otherwise clear sky, pinging off the rooftop like crickets. Ruby raised her hands above her head to shield her face, but she could see that London’s eyes were focused on Simon with a bright fury as he backed right up to the ledge. “You’d prefer to throw your lot in with a nobody?” he said. “With a coward? With a murderer?”

  Ruby’s eyes traveled to Otis, who still hadn’t moved, his whole body rigid, even as the stinging ice fell all around him.

  “Fine,” London said, hoisting himself up onto the ledge so that he was balancing above the whole of the city. The hailstorm tapered off, the last few pieces rolling to a stop on the speckled roof, and there was now nothing but the wind to surround him. “Best of luck to you.”

  He swung his legs around so that he was facing away from them now, poised on the edge, and Daisy took a few frantic steps forward. London half turned, and from over his shoulder, the words sounded thin and distant: “You’ll need it,” he said, and then like some kind of horrible magic trick—here one moment, gone the next—he disappeared.

  The rest of them stood in stunned silence, staring at the empty space where he’d been. Ruby’s heart was thrumming like a drill in her chest, and a strange kind of electricity seemed to course through her.

  She rushed to the ledge, standing on her tiptoes to peer over. Otis and Daisy were right behind her, and then Simon was there, too, and they all four stared down at London—not forty stories below on the sidewalk, but only a dozen feet down, on the window washers’ platform, one of them helping him to his feet while the other gaped at them, his mouth open.

  When he was up again, London threw his head back and gave them a jaunty little wave, and then to the utter astonishment of the two men, he lifted a hand and shot a bolt of lightning through one of the windows, the shattering of glass loud even from above.

  Then, for the second time in as many minute
s, London disappeared.

  twenty-nine

  IT MUST HAVE BEEN SOME TRICK OF TIME that made it seem to Ruby that one moment she’d been standing near the edge of the roof, and the very next she was in the elevator again. It was as if she was simply there, and then not.

  Just like London.

  The man with the red hair was no longer in the elevator, and so Otis was the one to pull the lever down, setting the car in motion with a heavy sway. Daisy and Simon stood off to the side, both of them looking pale and shaken by what had happened up above. Simon was still rubbing at his neck, as if surprised to find that London’s hand was no longer attached to it.

  Ruby kept blinking at Otis, trying to figure out which of her many questions to ask first. Now that the elevator was moving, he’d taken the opportunity to reach into his back pocket and pull out the floppy gray hat, but instead of putting it on, he simply clutched it in one large hand, rubbing a thumb over the fabric.

  “Thanks for the note,” Daisy said from the back corner, and Simon turned sharply to Ruby.

  “You left them a note?”

  Before she could respond, Otis spun around, his face serious. “And it’s a good thing she did,” he said. “I don’t know what you were thinking, coming down here on your own.”

  “We were trying to help,” Simon said miserably.

  “Nobody asked you to do that,” Otis said, his voice a low growl. They were passing the twenty-fourth floor, and then the twenty-third, and Ruby wondered what would happen when they got to the bottom.

  “You have a plan, though,” Simon asked, “right?”

  Nobody answered.

  They continued to descend, lower and lower, the silence lengthening. Daisy tugged at one of her braids, and Otis shoved his hat back into his pocket. Ruby pulled out the barometer, looking at it hopefully, but the needle was still aimed at warning.

  “No change,” she said to Otis, who nodded wearily, as if he’d expected as much. Simon glanced over at the little device, then resumed staring at the floor. Two weeks earlier, he would have demanded to see it. Now there were too many other things he’d seen.

  As they passed the lobby, Ruby’s head began to throb at the thought of returning to headquarters, to whatever might await them there. She’d hoped Otis had planned to take them out a different way, to get out of there as fast as they possibly could, but they continued to drop, past the basement and the sub-basement, the elevator starting to seem too warm, so that despite their destination Ruby couldn’t help feeling somewhat relieved when they finally came to a rough stop.

  Otis put a hand on the grate, which rattled beneath his touch. “You stay with me, and you do what I tell you, okay?”

  He was looking at Simon, but Ruby nodded, too. Neither of them asked what it was they were doing. There was something in Otis’s face that told them not to bother.

  As they stepped off the elevator one at a time—Otis, followed by Simon, then Ruby, and, finally, Daisy—they were met with a high buzz of voices coming from around the corner. The reception area was empty, the phone ringing without pause, and it looked like a different place altogether than the one they’d seen a short while before.

  Beyond the entrance was a crowd of people, the same ones who had watched them earlier, who had trailed them through the office and then let them pass as they ran for the door. Ruby scanned the crowd for London, though she knew he’d be long gone by now; his loyal followers seemed to have disappeared as well. But the rest of them were huddled in small groups, their faces lined with worry. Around them, dozens of weather instruments warbled along unattended, and the binging and beeping of the various radar screens made it sound like they were in an arcade.

  But nobody seemed to care. And when they saw Otis marching down the hallway, Simon just a half step behind him, they seemed to take a collective breath, and a hush fell over the office before giving way to a flurry of voices and speculation.

  “Otis Gray?” asked a man with glasses, his eyes widening behind the lenses. “What are you…?”

  A woman in a red suit pushed forward. “Where’s the Chairman?”

  “And why do you have the boy?” asked someone else, who Ruby couldn’t see.

  “He’s back,” others cried, their voices heavy with shock. “He’s back!”

  The questions came swiftly, but Otis made no attempt to answer any of them. He just stood there with a hand on Simon’s shoulder, his eyes flicking back and forth through the crowd of his former colleagues, who were wedged into office doorways and around cubicles, all of them looking at him eagerly.

  One man raised a weather vane in the air to call attention to himself, waving the rusted rooster until Otis cleared his throat and the others fell silent. When he stepped forward, Ruby saw that it was the elevator operator.

  “Hello, Ned,” Otis said, and for the first time, there was a hint of a smile on his face.

  “Otis,” he said with a nod. “The room’s ready for you.”

  And with that, they were moving again, edging their way through the knot of people. Some of them stepped aside politely, while others looked troubled. “What about the Chairman?” they muttered. “Where’s London?”

  Daisy’s hand was on Ruby’s back to guide her, but they paused when a tiny woman, her face heavily mapped with wrinkles, stepped out in front of them. Daisy glanced up at Otis, unsure whether this signaled trouble, but the woman only reached out and touched a hand to Daisy’s cheek.

  “Your father…” she whispered, her eyes watery. “He was the greatest.”

  A few people standing nearby exchanged worried glances, and Ruby guessed that you weren’t allowed to praise the former Chairman when you had a current one like Rupert London. But the woman was fumbling with the storm-cloud pin on her sweater, and when she had unclasped it she reached for Daisy’s hand, pressing it into her palm.

  “He hasn’t been forgotten,” she said, and around her, others began to do the same, slowly at first, and then all at once, unfastening their own pins from jackets and shirts, sweaters and ties, and lining up to hand them over to Daisy.

  “In honor of your dad,” one of them said in a voice of great reverence.

  “Welcome back,” said another, and still others simply murmured, “Thank you.”

  Ruby looked over at Otis, waiting to see if he’d follow suit, but then she remembered: That day on the farm, when Ruby had found the two pins attached to the collars of the dogs, Daisy had taken hers back wordlessly. But Otis had said the other was Ruby’s to keep.

  Her hand went to her pocket now. She’d been too embarassed to wear it all this time, knowing that Simon would point out the obvious fact that she wasn’t a Storm Maker, but she’d been carrying it around ever since, and she realized now that this tiny piece of metal in her pocket must have been Otis’s.

  When she looked up, he was smiling at her. He gave a little nod, and Ruby placed it in Daisy’s cupped hands, where it belonged.

  “Thank you,” Daisy whispered. She looked around the room, her eyes glassy. “Thank you all.”

  Someone handed her a jar that held a small patch of fog, and she dumped the pins inside, the cloud loosening as the metal clinked against the sides. She hugged it close to her as they all began to walk again, falling in behind Otis as he wound his way down the corridor. But as they arrived at a familiar juncture, the whole group at their backs, Simon came to an abrupt halt just ahead of Ruby.

  “No,” he said quietly, and Otis turned.

  “No, what?”

  “I don’t want to do the compass thing,” he said, his voice pleading. “It’s not going to be me.”

  Daisy glanced back at the rest of the office, where everyone had gone quiet again, waiting to see what would happen. But Otis remained still, his eyes focused on Simon’s.

  “London was going to make me,” he said. “Before.”

  “I know,” said Otis.

  “Then you know he was going to rig it.”

  Otis nodded. “Do you know why I came
up to find you in the first place?” he asked, and Simon shook his head. “Once you’re a Tracker, you’ve always got that sixth sense. For years, I’ve been ignoring it. Until you.”

  Simon swallowed hard, but said nothing.

  “I had a feeling you weren’t just any rookie. I had a feeling there was a change coming.” Otis smiled. “And that change is you.”

  “But—”

  “If it chooses you,” Otis said, looking at him levelly, “then it’s meant to be. You’d be the rightful Chairman of this Society. No tricks, no schemes. Just you and the compass.”

  “But there’s no way it’ll be me,” Simon said. “Not without whatever London was planning to do.” He dropped his voice so low that Ruby had to strain to hear. “I can’t make any weather.”

  Otis smiled at this. “You just did,” he said. “Up on the roof.”

  Simon still looked unconvinced, but he seemed to be steeling himself to walk into the room anyway. He glanced back at Ruby, who gave him a shaky smile, and then around at the rest of the room, the dozens of faces watching him with a kind of quiet faith.

  “Okay,” he said finally, and Otis straightened. When he cleared his throat, even Simon tipped his head back to look up at him, this scarecrow of a man, this quiet presence in a room roiling with nerves.

  “This is long overdue,” he began, and although there were murmurs, even a few muffled grunts, most everyone kept quiet. For the past four years, these had been London’s people. But they were first and foremost Storm Makers, sworn to a set of rules that hadn’t been followed, forced to carry out damage they might not have otherwise wished to do, and though more than a few seemed unfailingly loyal to London, there was also a feeling of great optimism in the room. Ruby knew that some of the people Otis had been talking about were here, too, the Storm Makers who disagreed with London’s philosophies, who’d spent the past four years horrified over all that he’d done.