Ill Wind

David must have thought I was waiting for divine inspiration about the lack of car keys. He reached over and touched the ignition with one finger. A blue spark jumped, and the engine purred.

"You're handy if I ever want to get in the grand theft auto business," I said. "Any other neat tricks you can do I should know about?"

It was a loaded question, and he was right not to answer it. He sat back in the seat and fastened his safety belt. I attached mine, slipped the Land Rover in gear, and bumped gently out of the meadow and back up onto the blacktop of Iron Road, where I hit the accelerator hard. There were a few tense moments for me, watching the rearview mirror, but I didn't see the Wrath of Marion pursuing, and there wasn't a lot she could have done to affect us at this distance, in a car, on a paved road. Earthquake, maybe, but that would put others in danger, and Marion had scruples.

Hopefully.

Even so, I felt tightness ease in my shoulders as I made the left turn from Iron Road onto the highway again.

I turned right, heading north. David stirred, but I beat him to the comment.

"They're expecting me to head south," I said. "And I will, but not this way. I need to get lost before they think about using the mundane cops to track us—this tanker truck isn't exactly inconspicuous."

"And a vintage Mustang was?"

Well, he had a point. I sped north to the next farm-to-market intersection, took a random turn to the west, and followed some roads that didn't have signs and probably didn't need them; if you didn't know where you were going, local theory was, you didn't belong there anyway. I studied the dashboard. Marion had popped for the addition of a global positioning system. I activated it and looked the map over while I was driving. So did David, intensely interested; he traced routes in silence with his fingertip, showing me alternatives, until we locked in one that took us through midsize cities in Kansas, heading for Oklahoma City.

"There's a shorter route," he pointed out.

"I'm starting to worry about the shorter routes. Anyway, I have a good friend who lives near Oklahoma City, so we'll go there first."

"And—?"

"And I'll figure it out from there."

"Well, that's a hell of a long-range plan."

"You're shutting up, now, right?"

He did. It was kind of a shame, because I had a lot of questions. One of them was, of course, what would happen to Delilah, my sweet midnight-blue baby. The idea that Erik or—perish the thought— Shirl might end up driving her made me almost turn the Land Rover around and go back.

We must have gone about thirty minutes in silence before I asked him, "So you really don't have a master?" Because I still couldn't believe it. Well, sure, in the stories… there were always old copper lamps lying around waiting to be rubbed for three wishes. But real Dji

David was looking out the window at the rolling pastoral countryside, sparsely dotted with cows and neat-rowed fields. He didn't turn his head. "You know that's one of the few questions I had to answer honestly, since you asked it three times. No. I don't have a master."

Dji

He turned his head then, and he wasn't troubling to disguise his eyes anymore; they were bright copper, beautiful beyond words, scary beyond measure. His human disguise, I saw now, had been pretty minimal; just a muting of his eyes and hair, an inward turning of his powerful aura.

"You hid in Oversight," I said, instead of what I was really thinking. Dji

"It's different when we're free. We come into the full range of our abilities only when we're working for a master. Outside of that, we just have camouflage and some small talents, hardly more than what you have yourself." This from a guy who could start cars with his finger and swim through solid earth like water. But then, I realized, those were things a properly trained Fire Warden or Earth Warden could do. So maybe he wasn't dishing crap after all. "I appear as your subconscious shapes me."

"Human?"

"Mostly. I can be hurt."

"Killed?"

He shook his head. "Maybe. It's been a long time since I've been free. I don't know. But hurt, yes."

"And if I go into Oversight now—"

"You'll see me as human." He shrugged. "Not for your benefit, though. That's just how we look when we're free."

It made sense, actually. Dji

I wrenched myself away from temptation. Again.

"You've been following me," I accused. I took my foot off the gas and let the Ranger coast for a while, because we were coming up on one of those smalltown speed-trap zones. Not a big town, Eliza Springs. Not much of a town at all. A speed limit of thirty miles an hour smelled like the ubiquitous traveler tax.

David didn't bother to answer.

"Somebody sent you," I continued. "Maybe not your master, okay, maybe that's true. But somebody."

More silence. Then again, I wasn't asking a direct question. If I were magically compelled to answer questions, I'd resent it like hell, so I kept it conversational and declamatory. "You caused that spinout."

His shoulders tensed, just a bit. He relaxed them. No answer.

"I felt the car tip. I was going to roll over."

"Yes."

"And you stopped it." No answer. It was time for a little force. "Why?"

"Seemed like a good idea at the time." His warm-metal eyes flicked toward me, then away.

I reminded myself that even though he had to answer questions, he wasn't under any obligation to tell the truth, not unless I asked him the same question a ritual three times, and even then only if it fell within certain guidelines. I didn't want to do that, because he also wasn't under any obligation not to disappear at the next blink of an eye. This was a little bit like dealing with a skittish, beautiful wild thing… too much heavy-handed crashing around and he'd run.

"You were going to let me crash and burn." I made it a statement. "Why save me?"

"I liked the way you looked," he said. "I saw you at the diner, when the lightning came for you. You could have run back inside. Why'd you get in the car?"

"You're kidding, right? There were all those—"

"People," he finished for me. "You didn't want to put them in danger. I told you. I liked the way you looked."

"In Oversight." He didn't confirm or deny. "I didn't see you in Oversight, and I was looking."