Two seconds later, more or less, a shadow darkened the doorway, and Lewis edged in past the sagging, glassless metal frame. He looked first to David and nodded; David had turned to face him, which said something about how Lewis rated on the whole threat-level scale as compared to Rahel. Not that Lewis was a threat, except in the sense that David probably never forgot (or could forget) that Lewis and I had once been . . . close. Not for ages, but still. It hadn't been the kind of one-night stand you forget.
Even so, the two of them were friends, if cautious friends. And they respected one another.
"Everybody okay here?" Lewis asked. I gave him a silent thumbs-up, not quite daring myself to speak. He looked - well, like Lewis. Drop him in the middle of Manhattan or in a forest in the Great Northwest, and he basically remained unchanged. Blue jeans, hiking boots that had seen miles of hard use, brown hair that shagged a bit too much, a three-day growth of beard on a long, angular face. Almond-shaped, secretive dark eyes. "Jo. We're setting up a staging area. I'm on my way there now. If you're done here - "
"Yeah, I'll come with," I said. I'd had a purse at some point, and I went back into the changing room to hunt for it. Good thing it was a hobo bag. I felt as if I matched it nicely, what with the rumpled clothes, sweat, and plaster dust.
When I turned, David was right behind me. He steadied me with big strong hands, looking into my eyes, and I couldn't resist an audible gulp. He just had that effect on me.
"Be careful," he said, and kissed me. It was probably meant to be one of those gentle little pecks one partner gives another casually, but it turned into something else as our lips warmed and parted and made pledges to each other we couldn't really keep at the moment.
When we parted, I felt significantly more alone, and I could see he did, too. David tapped me on the end of my nose with one finger, an unexpectedly human sort of gesture, and gave me a heartbreaking smile.
"I almost lost you," he said. "I hate it when that happens."
He'd really, truly lost me a couple of times. Once, he'd broken the laws of the Djinn and the universe itself to bring me back. I was well aware how much he'd risked for me, and how much he'd risk again if he had to.
I had to be more careful. Losing myself was one thing. Losing David was an unacceptable something else.
Cherise was still in the main room, hanging up gowns and dusting them off, shaking them out. The clerk, who looked pissed now rather than shattered, was muttering under her breath as she checked each dress for damage. I gave Cherise the high call-me sign, and she flashed me a grin and mouthed, You owe me lunch, bitch!
Cherise was the fastest rebounding human I'd ever seen. And that was only part of the reason I loved her like a sister.
Considering my actual bitchy, whiny, double-crossy, drug-addicted sister . . . better than my sister.
Lewis had a Hummer. I hated Hummers, but I had to admit, it suited him - and he was probably one of the few Hummer drivers who actually used it as God and Jeep intended, to be driven over hard terrain. It looked it, too - muddy, dented, cheerfully well used.
I came to a halt, staring up at the passenger door. "I swear," I said, "if I split these jeans climbing into your damn truck - "
"Need a boost?" Lewis asked from behind me. And I had a terrifically tactile premonition of his big hands going around my waist and lifting me up. . . .
Bad for my discipline.
"As if," I said, and, with a mighty effort, levered myself up to the step and into the cab of the truck. It was like an eighteen-wheeler, only with better upholstery. As I got myself strapped in, Lewis swung in on the opposite side with the ease of long practice, and longer legs. I sniffed. The truck smelled like mud, leaves, wood smoke, and mildew. "You ever get this thing detailed?"
"What would be the point?" Lewis put it in gear, and the tank began to roll. He drove slowly, negotiating around stopped cars and people still standing in the middle of the street. Normal life was starting to reassert itself. As we got farther from the dress shop, I saw that the damage appeared limited to broken windows and overturned shelves in the stores. It looked like New Orleans after a really rocky night of Mardi Gras. "Okay," Lewis said, drawing my attention, "so give me the bullet points."
I ticked them off, a finger at a time. "One, I was minding my own damn business, trying on wedding dresses when it hit. Two, I worked with Luis Rocha to try to figure out what was causing it and lessen the damage. Three - " Number three was my middle finger, unaccompanied by the other two.
"Classy," Lewis said. "I'm sure the Wardens Council would be impressed with the summary."
I repeated the gesture for the missing Wardens Council. Because I didn't much like most of them, anyway.
"When you and Rocha went up on the aetheric, what happened?"
I described it for him - the red boil of forces out of control; Rocha diving down toward the source; me following; the ice black shard of - something - driven into the skin of the planet.
"You touched it," Lewis said, "and it knocked you away."
"Like it was Sammy Sosa and I was the baseball."
"Nice sports reference. You do that because I'm a guy?"
"No, I do it because I like baseball. Back to the subject. I couldn't hold on to it, and if I couldn't - " The only Warden walking around who was stronger than me was currently driving the Hummer. "You want to give it a shot?"
"I'd like to see it," he said. We came to a stoplight; he turned right, found a deserted parking lot, and parked. "Show me."
I took his hand. It wasn't strictly necessary, but it made me feel better. We launched up together, out of our bodies and into the aetheric, and I was as always interested to see that Lewis didn't really look all that different on the astral planes than he did back home. Most people tended to reflect the person they wanted to be - prettier, fancier, stronger, taller, skinnier. Hell, our friend Paul manifested as a kind of King Arthur- era knight, although I was pretty sure he didn't know that.
I had no idea how I looked up top. Did I want to ask? Yeah. But it just Wasn't Done. Warden protocol.
The aetheric was abuzz with Warden activity. Lewis and I stayed out of it, floating high and looking down on the teeming, busy swirl of light that was the city of Fort Lauderdale. I pointed to a cluster of Warden activity, and tugged on his hand. Down we went, hurtling fast, flashing past startled colleagues I didn't even vaguely recognize.
We headed down into the disturbance, which, though still roiling, was contained in a tight, glassy shell of power. It looked fragile - the shell, not the disturbance.
Lewis touched the surface, and it took on a milky swirl; then his hand passed through it. He went inside, pulling me after, and when I looked back I saw the bubble sealing itself behind us. Pressure closed in on me, real and intense, and I was glad I didn't have blood vessels to rupture, because there would definitely be rupturing going on, followed by copious hemorrhaging.
Down we went, sliding through what felt like molten glass, and then I saw the black otherworldly glitter below and pulled on Lewis's hand to let him know. He nodded, and we touched down on something that wasn't ground, wasn't surface, wasn't anything really except a shadow of reality.
And there it was: the black thorn of glass, driven deep.
Lewis mimed that he was going to grab it. I shook my head. He mimed again. I shook my head again.
Fat lot of good that did. He grabbed it anyway.
Lewis held on for longer than I had - long enough that I began to think he was actually going to manage to yank the damn thing out - but then was thrown back, just as I'd been. Well, more violently. And he hit and bounced and drifted, seemingly unaware of anything until I grabbed on and began hauling him upward, away from that . . . thing. I couldn't explain why, but it gave me the serious creeps. It glittered. It looked deadly sharp, no matter what angle you looked at it; there was a sense of purpose to it that made my skin crawl.
It meant to be there. And it meant to defend itself.
Lewis came awake again, thrashing, and broke free of my hold. I fumbled for him, but he was already swimming away from me, heading back down.
Crap. This wasn't going well.
I couldn't yell on the aetheric, but I damn well felt like shouting. I pushed after him, feeling sick from the pressure, and grabbed hold of his ankle. He shook free of my grip and kept going, arriving back in front of the black shard. He didn't touch it this time; he just drifted slowly around it, taking in every detail.
And then he went up, into another aetheric plane higher than this one. I tried to follow, but I slammed into a glass ceiling that no amount of trying would get me past. I was anchored in the real world, and that line stretched only so far.
I had no idea how Lewis was able to do it, but then that was why he was at the top of the Warden food chain, and I wasn't.
I waited impatiently, and in a matter of minutes he was back, falling back down. He grabbed my hand and we plunged through the aetheric levels, back down to the real world . . . into our bodies.
I coughed, gasped, and felt my head pound in time with my rapid heartbeat. I was covered in sticky, cold sweat. In fact, I felt downright sick.
So did Lewis, clearly. He looked just as bad as I felt, if not worse, and when I touched him, his skin was ice-cold.
Worse, his hands looked . . . burned, flushed bright red on the palms. He wiped them on his jeans in a convulsive movement, as if there were something horrible on them that he wanted to get off, but it was clear from the way he was shaking that it went deeper than surface slime.
"Christ," he said, and leaned his head back against the whiplash rest. "What the hell?"
"And here I was hoping you'd have some bright, easy answer," I said. "Because I've got no clue, man. I've never seen anything like it before."
"Have you shown it to David?"
I hadn't, and as he mentioned it, I wondered why I hadn't. And why he hadn't immediately sensed it. Strange.
"No," I said slowly. "And I - don't think I should. Don't you think?"
Lewis nodded, not looking at me. His face had gone the color of old newspaper, and his lips looked gray. "I don't, either," he said softly. "Why is that?"
"What?"
"Why do we think that? Wouldn't we usually ask the Djinn to take a look?"
Usually, but this time . . . it just didn't feel . . .
I had no answer. I just stared at him, then shrugged. Lewis took a deep breath, started the Hummer's engine, and pulled back out onto the road.
The rest of the trip was spent in silence.
"You're kidding," I said as Lewis negotiated the Hummer into a parking space built for a Hyundai. "We're meeting at Denny's? Was Chuck E. Cheese already booked for the president?"
"Emergency meeting," he said. "This was the closest place we could find where we could have some privacy. Besides, I could use some food - how about you?"
Well, I supposed I could use a Grand Slam or a Moon Over My Hammy or something.
Getting out of the truck in the narrow space between two other vehicles proved to require moves illegal in some Southern states. I managed not to scratch the other car, which was good, because it was a Ferrari. Bright red.
Denny's had suffered little or no damage, as far as I could tell. Maybe they'd been outside of the shake zone. Plate glass windows were intact; diners still sat at tables; waitstaff circulated with trays and plates. Lewis and I walked in, out of the cloying humidity and into the frigid embrace of air-conditioning. I shivered a little - still fighting off the chill I'd gotten on the aetheric, I guessed.
Lewis led me back to a private room, one with sliding doors. Inside were four of the most powerful people in the Southeast, never mind Florida, and they were all digging in to breakfast.
I half recognized Luis Rocha from his signature on the aetheric; he was medium height, medium build, a bit broad in the shoulders. His skin was a dark, warm bronze color, and his eyes and hair were black. The hair was long, trailing down around his face and past his collar. His sleeveless gray muscle T-shirt revealed strong, defined arms inked up with flames and intimidation, but his smile was warm and rather sweet.
He was the only Earth Warden in the room. Two of the others - Sheryl Brewer and Nicholas Mancini - were both Weather Wardens, solid technicians, if not spectacular. Usually, trouble in Florida came from weather, after all - it wasn't known as Hurricane Central for nothing.
The fourth was, of course, a Fire Warden. Nobody I wanted to see. She no doubt went with the red Ferrari out front, and her name was Janette de Winter. Good at her job, but my God, didn't she know it. We exchanged narrow smiles. She was eating a delicate little fruit cocktail thingy. Even now, in the midst of crisis, she was perfectly put together - a tailored white suit, long tanned legs, open-toed pumps showing a perfect pedicure. Her makeup had that airbrushed quality of having been put on in layers, until she looked more like an animated magazine cover than a human being.
Maybe I was just feeling catty because I was sweaty, bruised, and covered in dust.
She raised an eyebrow at my appearance, looking coolly amused. Nope. It wasn't because I looked like crap. I felt catty because I just plain disliked the woman.
Lewis and I took seats at the table. He slid in next to the Weather Wardens, leaving me stuck next to de Winter, but also next to Rocha, who winked at me as he shoveled syrup-drenched waffles into his mouth.
The server appeared, and Lewis and I gave our orders - I went for waffles, after seeing Rocha's evident happiness with his. Also, just so I could see de Winter look pained. Waffles were clearly declasse. Hooray for waffles.
"First of all," I said as the waitress closed our doors, "and just to get it out in the open, this is not my fault. Ask Lewis."
