Ill Wind

"Third time's the charm, sunshine. You're not Paul's Dji

"Ask me no questions," she purred, "and I'll tell you no lies, Child of Demons. Go back the way you came."

She let the pressure ease enough for me to gulp in a breath and ask, "Why should I?"

Rahel let go of my throat and snapped her fingers. "You have two paths ahead of you. One lies down. One goes up. Choose."

"Which one gets rid of you?" I croaked, and rubbed my throat. "Look, enough with the Sphinx act. Just tell me what I'm supposed to do. Are you Marion's Dji

Rahel stopped and became utterly still. If I'd thought her eyes were u

"You are a fool," she said very softly. "I have done all I can. You have been set on the path, you have been given signs."

"Yeah? Like what? The radio in Westchester, telling me to come here?" Oh, boy. Her silence had the weight of a confession. I swallowed hard and kept going. "The salt shaker back at the diner? Why send me into a trap?"

This time, she shook her head. "If you can't see the yellow brick road, little Dorothy, then you are a fool, and there is no saving a fool. I only wish you weren't taking him with you."

Him? Too many persons of the male gender involved in this. I didn't know which one she was talking about.

Before I could ask, brush crackled behind me. Rahel's eyes jumped from me to the person coming through the trees. It was David, and he didn't look surprised to see her. Or happy. He said something to her in a language I didn't understand, liquid and warm and beautiful as stars; her reply was long and sparked with harsh accents.

They glared at each other, stiff with tension, and then Rahel just—vanished. No showy exit, this time. She just went.

David stared for so long at the place where she'd been, I wondered if she'd really gone. "Rahel," he said finally. "Here."

"I'm guessing that's bad? Look, who's Dji

He didn't answer me. Didn't look at me. "Hurry." He turned and walked away, back toward the truck.

I hurried.

After Star was burned, she lingered on in the hospital for weeks, fighting for her life. Every day her breath came a little bit shallower; her heart raced a little bit faster. Pseudomonas cruised her blood. Pumping her full of antibiotics didn't seem to be working, and the Earth Wardens who'd tried to repair the damage had been completely defeated.

Sitting there at her bedside, holding her undamaged right hand, a thought came to me. I knew someone who could save her.

If I could find him.

Like Star, I'm not big on debate and thinking things over; the minute Lewis's name popped into my head, I went up into Oversight, far up, far enough that the planet curved away beneath me and night settled its cloak of stars around my shoulders. From up there, I could see little jets of flame that represented Wardens using their powers… little flicks like sparks from a flywheel. I waited up there, watching. It was impossible to distinguish the signatures of most Wardens—they were too similar, too homogenous. A few had characteristics, though. Marion, for one; her powers glowed stronger and in a deep blue green. Martin Oliver, when he exercised his power—which was rarely—vibrated in a hot orange part of the spectrum.

I waited, and waited, and waited. The world turned, and I turned with it, watching.

Finally, I saw a soundless bloom of pearl-white. Not a jet, not a spark, but a bloom, like a fireworks blast expanding in all directions.

I fell toward it at top speed and stopped myself when I was close enough to determine where Lewis was at the moment.

I don't know why I didn't expect it, but I didn't, really.

He was in Yellowstone.

Six hours later, after enduring commercial air travel and two hours of jouncing around in a well-broken-in rental SUV, I came up on the area of Yellowstone that was blocked off to the public. The Warden on duty knew me. We exchanged the secret glowing-rune handshakes, and I went on in.

I smelled it before I came over the rise and saw it—a thick, ashen smell of death and bitter smoke. But nothing really prepared me for the devastation. Nothing could.

The valley stretched out as far as I could see, a black valley streaked with gray. No forest, nothing but ash and the skeletal black stubs of trees. There was a sense of… stillness. Of death so vast that no life could ever come there again, or would want to.

A sense of utter sadness.

Lewis was a dot of human color in the middle of it, sitting on the hood of an SUV that looked like the mate to the one I was driving, only gray. Mine was red, but as I crawled it slowly over the ruined landscape it turned ash-gray, flecked with black. By the time I parked next to him, they were both camouflaged.

He looked… good. Filled out, no longer starving and sick. There was a sense of peace around him, and power. He was still tall and gawky, but somehow that fit now. He'd grown into it, and the gawkiness had become grace.

He didn't look surprised to see me as I climbed down out of the SUV and came around to face him. In fact, he smiled like he'd been expecting me for a while.

"Jo." He nodded. I nodded back. "Been a while."

"You shouldn't be using all that power," I said. "You burn like a nuclear explosion in Oversight, you know."

He shrugged. "I knew you were watching. If I hadn't wanted you to find me, you wouldn't have found me." He patted the hood of the SUV next to him. It was filthy, but I climbed up anyway. We didn't touch. "Not too many people can see it, you know."

"Really?" That boggled me; he'd lit up like Vegas in my eyes. "Weird."

"A bit," he agreed. "I'm guessing you didn't come out here just to catch up on old times."

He was looking at me, but I felt the soft caress of power everywhere around me. Nothing I could understand, just a hint; I looked away from him at the burned, blackened crematory of the forest and didn't see anything.

"You're doing something," I said.

"Yes."

"What?"

He gave me a slow, very slightly wicked smile. "Seducing someone."

If I kept very still, I could actually see it now. It was a mist, very faint, glittering gold in the sun. It was moving over the ground as softly and slowly as a lover's hand, spreading out from the epicenter of Lewis. I slid off the hood of the Jeep and reached down to touch my fingers to it, and felt a slow stirring of… life.

Lewis was pouring out life, like seed, across the mourning graveyard of Yellowstone.

"She needs help," he said. "She wants to live, but it's too much for her. I'm just helping her along."

I felt the slow, warm tingle of it clinging to my fingers even after I climbed back up on the hood of the Jeep next to him. We sat in silence, watching the golden mist thicken and swirl and creep out across the land.

It was so beautiful, I wanted to weep.

"This is what you do," I whispered. "Oh, God, Lewis."

"Some of it. You guys do a good job with the weather, but I pitch in now and again with Earth and Fire. I should've been here earlier. It wouldn't have been so—" He shook his head.

"You wouldn't have stopped it?"