by Rachel Caine
I yanked the wheel, trying to get Delilah off the road and into the trees, where roots and plants would slow the progress of liquefying earth, but it was already too late, the wheel turned loosely in my hands, the tires spun without traction. Dust geysered into the dry air and puffed away on the waves of the ocean of air. The car settled about a foot, and I knew that there was nothing keeping it up now except an even distribution of weight over a large, flat undercarriage. That and possibly someone's goodwill.
We floated, me and Delilah, unable to escape.
In Oversight, I spotted my enemy before she ever pushed through the underbrush—a blue-green aura, laced through with pure white for power, gold for tenacity, cold silver for ruthlessness.
Marion Bearheart had found me.
I dropped back into my skin and saw her coming out of the trees to my left. She was just about as I remembered her from my intake meeting—middle-aged, dignified, skin like burnished copper and hair of black and silver hanging loose over her shoulders. Marion still had kind, gentle eyes, but there was nothing weak about her.
"Joanne," she said, and her low voice seemed welcoming somehow. "There's no point in trying to run. Wherever you go, I can dissolve the ground under your feet, tie you down with roots and grasses. Let's make this easy."
Of course. I'd forgotten. Marion was an Earth Warden.
A rustle of underbrush on the other side of the car drew my attention to someone else—younger than Marion, male. I didn't know him, but he had Scandinavian white-blond hair, fair skin, and summer-blue eyes. Like Marion, he had on a plaid shirt and blue jeans, practical hiking boots. Another Earth Warden. Their fashion sense—or lack of it—was unmistakable.
The third one, standing next to him, was so small I almost didn't see her—small, dark, delicate. Nothing delicate about her clothes, though, which featured a lot of leather and attitude. Her hair was cut pixie-short, streaked with unnatural greenish highlights, and she had face jewelry—a nose ring, to be exact, with a stud to match in the other nostril.
"You brought friends," I said, turning back to Marion. She smiled faintly.
"Against you? Naturally." She nodded toward them. "Erik and Shirl. If you're thinking of calling a storm, I'd advise you not to try it; Shirl is a damn fine practitioner, but she has a tendency to be a little heavy-handed."
Pieces of the puzzle started to drop together. "Oh. The salt?"
This time I got a full, delighted smile. "I just wanted to talk to you, Joanne. It seemed like the best way to arrange it. I knew you were looking for someone. It stood to reason it was another Warden. I was only hoping it was someone with an Earth power, or that would have seemed a little odd."
Since Lewis had the whole collectible set, nothing would have seemed odd to me… and didn't that just sum up the Wardens in a nutshell? We only thought talking salt was odd on a percentage basis.
Just my bad luck she'd gambled and I'd fallen for it.
I had a slightly darker thought. "The lightning bolt?"
Marion looked startled. "Of course not! We just want to talk to you, not kill you. Shirl's specialty is not weather, in any case."
I saw something flare bright out of the corner of my eye, and turned to see Shirl holding out a palm in front of her. Fire danced on her skin, flickering gold and orange and hot reds. It reflected in her dark eyes, and I felt a surge of dislike for the arrogance I saw there. I know, better Fire Wardens than you, sweetheart. Ones who don't have to show off for the boss. Still, fire gave me the willies, always had. I'd seen what it could do, close up.
"So talk," I said. "Or give me back the road and let me out of here. There's a storm coming."
"I know." Marion speared Shirl with a look, and Shirl put the fire back where it came from. "Let's take a walk, Joanne."
She reached out and opened the car door. A square stepping-stone of solid earth formed in the shifting dust, just big enough for me to stand on. I eased out, feeling Delilah rock like a boat in a pond, and bent down to test what my car was sitting on top of.
My fingers passed into the dust with barely any resistance at all; it was so fine, so frictionless than I felt a second's dizziness. Fall into that, and you wouldn't be coming up.
"This way," Marion said, and turned away. I put my hand on Delilah's dusty finish for a few seconds, trying to reassure her—and me—that things weren't as bad as they seemed, and then stepped off the square of solid ground and into the shadows of the trees.
It felt like another world. Marion's world. The Earth spoke to her, the way the sky did to me: whispers of leaves, dry creaks of branches, the padding footsteps of living things, small and large and minuscule, that made up her realm. I thought about the farm back there, the picture-perfect setting. That had been Marion's equivalent of doodling, while she waited. Perfect grass, artistic dottings of wildflowers. Marion created beauty from chaos, or maybe just demonstrated how beautiful chaos could be when seen through the right eyes.
We came out of the trees into a meadow filled with knee-high grass stalks, silver tipped, that rustled and murmured and bent under the touch of a brisk northeast wind. Overhead, white cirrus clouds shredded into lacework. A plane crawled the blue and threaded a white contrail through the lattice. It all looked flat, but I knew the plane was barely above the troposphere. The cirrus clouds were at least twenty-five thousand feet, maybe higher, well above the level of even a weather balloon. And those peaceful clouds were scudding fast, dragging the storm behind.
Marion turned her face into the wind and said, "The Zuni always said, first thunder brings the rain. But we're far from Zuni country."
"Everybody says something about the weather. Most of it's nonsense."
"Most of it," she agreed, and looked at me with those tired, patient, gentle eyes. "Murder's a serious charge, Joanne. Running from it makes no sense. You know you'll be found."
"I didn't murder him."
Her dark eyebrows rose, but her face stayed still and closed. "You argued, he's dead. Do we really believe this is an accident?"
Well, no. It hadn't been an accident. I'd been trying to kill Bad Bob Biringanine.
I just hadn't expected to succeed.
She took my silence at face value. "You were to wait for me in Florida."
"I couldn't. I had things to do."
"Such as?" She shook her head, brushed hair back from her face when the wind played it into a veil over her eyes. "Tell me what happened between you and Bad Bob. Maybe I can help you."
I opened my mouth to tell her about the Demon Mark, but of course I couldn't; it would be suicide. And she couldn't see it—otherwise, Marion or a hundred other Wardens would have known about Bad Bob's condition long before he passed the infection on to me. Rahel had told me as much—they were impossible for humans to see, even Wardens, unless they asked their Djinn the right questions. I felt sick and trapped and more afraid than I'd been in a long time. Help, I wanted to say. But I didn't dare, because I knew there was no help, no cure, nothing but a long and terrible dying. If I didn't get a Djinn, I would never survive, and the Association would never give up one of their precious store to save my life. They were very firm on that point. One Djinn per customer, rationed strictly on rank, and I'd blown my chance before I got my own. Giving me a Djinn now would just be a waste of a good elemental. They certainly wouldn't sacrifice one just for little old me.
I hedged. Some of the truth was better than none.
"There was something wrong with him," I said. "Bad Bob, I mean. I don't know what it was, but he attacked me. I thought he was going to kill me. I had to do it."
"You pulled lightning," Marion murmured. She crouched down and plucked a weed out of the ground, held it lightly between her fingers. It sprouted a bud, which exploded into luxuriant color. Red, this one. Brilliant bloodred, with a black center like an eye. "You didn't try to, say, immobilize him instead, as you must have been trained to do."
"Hey, this was Bad Bob, not some fifth-year apprentice with a bad attitude. The hi
gher level a Warden is, the worse the consequences if he loses control— hell, Marion, you know that. Power and responsibility. Well, I had to fight him, and I had to use the big guns to do it. You want me to say I'm sorry?"
"No," she said. The flower in her hands blazed brilliantly through summer, faded, withered into winter, and died. A life in less than a minute. Marion's little silent demonstration: You control the weather. I control life itself. "I want you to understand that you will have a chance to tell your side of it. But when the judgment comes, it is final."
"Bullshit. You've already decided, all of you. You think I'm a danger. You want to—" To neuter me. Scrub my head with steel wool. Take away everything that I love.
"I don't, actually," Marion said, and dropped the flower. "But if the Council decides that you cannot be trusted with the powers you control, then those powers have to be taken from you. I know you know this. You can't keep running like this. You have to go back."
"I can't. Not yet."
"The Council meets tomorrow. Nobody sent me after you today, but if you don't submit yourself for judgment tomorrow at the Council offices, somebody will, and my orders will be very different."
"You're traveling with a hunting squad," I pointed out. "Two Earth Wardens and a Fire Warden. That's to counteract my powers without fighting me on the weather front. Right?"
She didn't answer. Didn't have to, in fact.
'Tomorrow's tomorrow," I said finally. The storm had crawled closer on its little cat feet, and I could feel distant tingles at the edges of my awareness; the storm talked to me, the way that the forest and this meadow talked to Marion. My power, and my enemy, all at once. "You going to let me go or what?"
Marion smiled, and I knew what that meant.
I felt tiny, stealthy ropes of grass moving around me, sliding over my shoes, climbing my legs, and I yelped in absolute disgust and ripped free, hopping from one foot to another. The earth softened under my feet, and even though they were relatively low-heeled, my shoes sank in fast, heels first. I kicked them off, scooped them up, and ran like hell.
It was like running on razors. Every stone turned its sharpest edge toward me; every branch whipped at my body or my face. Grass struggled to slow and trip me. I broke into a cold sweat at the thought of having to flail through those trees, but I didn't have a choice; I huddled low, below the reach of most branches, and tried to hop over the thrashing whirlwinds of grasses and roots that reached for me.
Fire blasted bright in a straight line between me and Delilah's open door, and on the other side of the car I saw Shirl, her hands outstretched, placing the fire and directing it toward me. Damn, I hate fire.
There was plenty of fine dust afloat, exactly what I needed to condense water in the air; I quick-froze the air in a twenty-foot circle, crowding molecules closer, forcing water molecules to attach around the tiny grains of dust. Mist hazed the air, and I felt my hair crackle and lift from the power. I poured energy into it, never mind the consequences; out here in the country, there wasn't as much damage to be done by a mistake, and I was damn near mad enough not to care.
Within ten seconds, I had a thick, iron-gray cloud overhead. I flipped polarity above it, and the charge began the process of attraction and accumulation, drops melting and merging and growing until their own weight overcame the pressure of droplet attraction.
The cloudburst came right on cue and right on target. Cold and hard and silver, slicing down from the sky in ribbons. The fire sizzled; Shirl cursed out loud and tried to counter for it, but I'd saturated the whole area with as much moisture as possible, and physics were against her. She couldn't get the core of the fire hot enough, not without pouring more energy into it than most Fire Wardens possessed. Their talent was in controlling fire, not sourcing it.
"Joanne, don't!" Marion was right behind me. I eyed the unstable pond of dust on which Delilah floated— quickly becoming mud as the deluge mounted—and swallowed my fear. Cold rain down the back of my neck, soaking my hair flat, drawing a full-body shiver. I had to bet that she wouldn't let me die.
I jumped for the car door.
A leafy vine tangled my foot and tugged me off balance. My fingers brushed the cold wet metal, and then I was falling, falling—
Falling into the soft quicksand.
"No!" Marion screamed.
It wasn't like falling into mud; mud has resistance and weight. This was like falling into feathers.
My instinct was to gasp, but I conquered it, damped my mouth shut and tried not to breathe, because sucking a lungful of this stuff would be an ugly death. I squeezed my eyes shut against dust abrasion. No sound down here, no sensation except falling, falling, falling. How deep would I go? Marion couldn't possible have softened the earth deeper than ten feet; there wouldn't have been any point. Didn't matter. Ten feet would be more than enough to bury me.
The important thing was that Marion was just as handicapped as I was. She could harden the earth again, but that would kill me just as quickly. This wasn't exactly science; it was art. This was her ocean, her solid ocean, and I was drowning in it. She'd try to save me; there was no percentage in killing me, at least not yet, and she'd have to think of something fast. Maybe she'd be trying to harden the earth in an upward path, like a ramp to the surface; I'd just have to find it.
Find it how? God, I wanted to take a breath. Needed to.
That, at least, I could fix. I pulled at the air trapped in the fine dust and formed it into a cocoon around me. It made a shell a few inches thick all around me, not enough to keep me alive for long, but enough for me to take a couple of quick, clean breaths. I needed to get up, but I didn't know how to do that. There wasn't enough volume in the air to create any kind of warming and cooling effect that might serve as an engine. Flailing around in the dark, I couldn't feel anything solid.
I was stuck.
Something touched the back of my neck, warm and solid, and I reached desperately for it.
Skin. Human skin. It was too dark to see anything, but I was touching a living person. Not female, I discovered—even the most flat-chested woman has some softness to her in that region. I extended my bubble of air to fit around the newcomer and spared a precious breath to whisper, "Erik?" Because at least the blond-haired Earth Warden would have been a lifeline, even if it was a lifeline into a cell.
But it wasn't Erik.
Lips touched mine, gentle and warm and entirely tasty, and I knew him in deep places where his touch still lingered.
"David?"
He didn't answer, and I felt his lips fit back over mine. Fresh air puffed into my mouth, and I opened myself to it, to him.
Both of us floating together in the dark, close as lovers.
He grabbed the hand not still clutching shoes, and swam sideways. Which was wrong in so many ways… First, there was nothing to swim against—this stuff had no resistance, hence, no propulsion. But he was propelling just fine. Second, sideways should have taken us right into the solid walls of the channel where Marion hadn't softened the earth, but we just kept right on moving, going and going and going. My lungs burned for air. As if he sensed that, he turned and breathed into my mouth again. That shouldn't have worked; his lungs should have already scrubbed the oxygen out, given him back only waste products to share with me.
I breathed in pure sweet air, or as near as made no difference. It was like a shot from a diver's tank, and I felt energy shoot through me like white light.
After who knows how long, David began to swim up at an angle. I felt things brush my reaching free hand and arms—tendrils—grass roots.
We broke the surface in an empty meadow, where grass shivered and whispered and bent silver heads to the freshening wind.
I didn't have to climb out. The ground hardened under my feet, pushing me up, until I was standing barefoot on the grass, Venus born dusty from the ground.
David was still holding my hand. He had come up with me, and dust fell from the shoulders and sleeves of his coat in a thin dry stre
am. He shook his head and let loose a storm of it. Behind the dust-clouded glasses, I saw his eyes, and this time he didn't try to hide what they were. What they meant.
His eyes were deep, beautiful, and entirely alien. Copper-colored, with flecks of bright gold. They flared brighter as I watched, then faded into something that was nearly human-brown.
"You bastard!" I hissed.
"Just a thank-you would have been good enough," he said. "Want to call a cloud for us? I'm in desperate need of a bath."
"You're a Djinn!"
"Of course."
"Of course?" I repeated. "What do you mean of course? I was supposed to know? Hello, didn't hear the clue phone ringing!"
He just looked at me. He took off his glasses— glasses he could not possibly need—and began cleaning them on the edge of a dark blue T-shirt that advertised The X-Files. Mulder and Scully looked bad-ass and mysterious. His brown hair had coppery highlights, even under the coating of dust. Except for the eyes, he looked entirely human.
Which, I now knew, was entirely his choice.
I was so mad I was shaking. "Whose Djinn are you? Did Lewis send you?"
He put his glasses back on, grabbed me by the arms, and used some martial arts trick to sweep my feet out from under me. I fell backwards into the grass with a bone-rattling thud, and he caught himself with outstretched hands just above me. More dust sifted down on me. He muttered something in a language I couldn't catch, and the dust swirled into a compact little ball and dropped away from us.
Somehow, it just made me madder. I opened my mouth to yell at him, and he put his lips down very close to my ear and said, "If you scream, they'll hear you. I can't prevent that."
I caught the scream and held it in because I heard, just about two feet away, the crunch of footsteps in grass. A shadow blocked the light overhead, and I peered past David to see Shirl standing there, looking puzzled.
"Anything?" Marion's voice, coming from the left, coming fast in our direction. Above me, David's face was blank and still, and I could see he was doing something—whatever it was, it was blocking them from seeing us in either the physical or aetheric realms. Unless they stepped on us or I made some inappropriate noise, they wouldn't find us.