Thin Air

“Including your quarter?” I asked her, looking her right in the eerie eyes.

It was very quiet. I could hear the whine of the rotors powering down on the helicopter, the hiss of blowing snow, the engines starting in various SUVs around the landing area. I could hear my own heartbeat pounding fast.

“For my part,” Rahel finally said, “I should think the world less interesting without you, sistah. Take that as you wish.”

And she turned and walked away, misted into nothing, and was gone.

Wow. Not sure how I felt about her, but I couldn’t dislike her. Fear her, sure. Dislike her…no.

I hurried over to the black van, which was starting its engine, and piled into the back with Lewis, Kevin, Cherise, and Marion. Lewis slid the door shut with a solid thump, and whoever was driving-just a black silhouette against the dim gray sky-turned the van in a tight circle and headed out, bumping over uneven ground.

Marion let out a slow sigh. “That was about as civil as we might have expected,” she said. “Lewis, be careful. They’re going to pull you aside and talk politics.”

“Politics? We’ve got time for politics?”

“There’s always time for politics,” she said. “Something you never could grasp, I’m afraid.”

“What a load of bullshit. How’s the rehab?” He gestured at the wheelchair.

“You know that Earth Wardens are always slower to heal themselves, and besides, there haven’t been any shortage of victims to tend.” She shrugged. “I’ll be all right. Another month, maybe two. I’d have been walking already if I’d had the time to devote to it, but we’ve been a little busy. As you’ve probably heard.”

“Guessed,” Lewis said. “Between the remnants of the California fire, the earthquake in Kansas City, and the hurricane in North Carolina-”

“We’ve been stretched thin,” Marion agreed. “Not just here in the U.S., of course. Latin America’s having a hell of a time. Even Canada’s being pummeled. Europe’s an icebox, Africa’s an out-of-season swamp, Asia’s got all of the above, and Australia and New Zealand keep flipping from summer to winter from one day to the next.”

“Great. Anybody not having a climate shift?”

“Middle East,” she said. “But they have other problems. So. You going to explain to me what I’m looking at here?”

“What do you think you’re looking at?” Lewis asked.

Marion gave him a hard look. “Save the rhetorical method; I’m not in the mood. Him-that’s Demon damage, obviously. Fixable, but we need to get him to a clinic for treatment.”

“No such things as Demons,” Lewis said. Which confused me, until she smiled.

“Indeed not. And so we’re still telling people. So, you believe this one has hatched out? Is an adult?”

“Yes.”

“Any idea where it could be?”

“Back where we came from, most likely, but specifically? No.”

Marion shook her head and frowned absently at the rolling forest scenery beyond the van’s windows. “Not good. We don’t have a way to detect or track it.”

“What about Garson?” Lewis asked. “He’s the best at-”

“Garson’s dead,” she interrupted. “Killed by his own Dji

“Specifically targeted?”

“Well, it’s worse than our usual rotten luck,” Marion said. “You can’t detect them, can you?”

Lewis shook his head. “If I’d been able to, maybe we wouldn’t be in this mess in the first place,” he said. “I’d have smelled it on Star when she first came after me two years ago.”

Marion’s dark almond-shaped eyes narrowed. “Estrella? I never got the full story from you about that.”

“And you won’t now,” he said easily. “Old news. Let’s talk about what we’re going to do about this.”

“Well, the Dji

“The Ma’at can help out with that,” Lewis said. “Their system is based on cooperation, not the coercion the Wardens used in dealing with the Dji

“Trust me, it sounds more high-minded than it is in practice,” Marion said. She seemed a

Lewis shrugged. “Doesn’t matter who formed it, or how. What matters is that it works.”

“Sometimes,” she shot back. “Guess what? The Wardens work sometimes, too.”

“Less and less often. You have to admit that.”

The van reached a freeway, and the ride turned smooth as glass. The van rocked slightly in wind gusts, but for the most part we sped along so easily we might have been flying. I began to feel just a little safer. Safer? some part of me mocked. You think a little thing like distance is going to matter? When are you going to mention that the Demon looks like you?

Later, apparently.

“I’ll talk to them,” Marion was reluctantly saying. “It’s possible the Ma’at have Demon trackers. I’ll see what we can horse-trade for the privilege.”

“One other thing,” Lewis said. “I want you to check Joa

Marion raised an eyebrow and glanced at me, as if she’d forgotten I was there, clinging to a handhold and swaying to the hiss of the van’s tires. “For?”

“Anything. Everything.” His face was closed and suddenly unreadable. “I found her in the forest, half-dead from the cold. Naked.”

“Naked,” Marion repeated. “Any injuries?”

“Nothing frostbite couldn’t explain.”

“You checked-”

“Of course I checked. But you’re better at that kind of thing.” He shrugged slightly, shoulders hunched. “Maybe I don’t know what to look for. Or I didn’t want to find it. I was under a little bit of pressure. And she’s displayed some…unusual effects.”

His voice was as dry as sand on that one, and I remembered David bouncing him like a basketball. Yeah, a little bit of pressure. And unusual effects didn’t much cover what I’d been able to do to bring Cherise back from the nearly dead.

“I’ll do a thorough scan,” Marion said. “Anything else?”

Lewis raised his head to lock eyes with me for a second, then said, “Yeah, actually. I’d like you to test her for the emergence of Earth abilities.”

“Thought you might,” Marion said, and leaned back in her wheelchair. Her smile was full and yet not very comforting. “I can feel some change in her latent abilities. One of you was bad enough. I have no idea what we’ll do with two of you.”

The clinic was a modest-sized place up a winding road in the hills, and I’d have frankly mistaken it for anything but a medical facility. It looked rustic, but industrial in its square shape. Couldn’t have been intended for long-term care, at least, not for many patients.

The faded, paint-chipped sign on the building said, WARDEN HEALTH INSTITUTE, EXTENSION 12. There were four cars in the small parking lot, and the van made it five as the still-unseen driver pulled in and parked under the whispering shade of a large pine. It was cold outside-my breath fogged on the window-but the overcast sky was breaking up, and the snow had stopped. I saw wisps of blue through the clouds.

“Need help?” Lewis asked Marion. She shook her head as the rear doors popped open, and the Handi-Lift’s operation was engaged to move her and the wheelchair safely out and down. The rest of us disembarked the old-fashioned way. The snow here was only a couple of inches deep, and melting fast on the parking lot’s warmth-hoarding surface. My face stung from the icy wind, and I thought wistfully about being warm again, really warm, but somehow the building that was ahead of us didn’t seem that inviting, centrally heated or not.