Windfall

I shot Sarah a look that she accepted with raised eyebrows. “Yeah, apparently. Much to my surprise.” I looked significantly at the new plates. Eamon’s eyes darted from me to Sarah, then back again.

“I hope you don’t mind,” he said. “She said you were short on a few of the essentials, so I took her shopping. We got a few things.”

In my world, fancy black foo-foo plates and new wine glasses and silk table ru

“No need.” He shrugged it off. “As it happens, a freelance payment came through today. I don’t mind contributing a bit, since you’re being so kind as to invite me as your guest.”

“Most di

He smiled slowly. “I don’t know if it’s good news for everyone; money that comes to me does have to come out of someone else’s pocket, at someone else’s expense … ah, well. Life does turn in interesting ways.” His eyes flicked toward David’s bottle. I was still holding it in my left hand. “May I put that in the kitchen for you?”

I immediately flinched backward. “This? No, it’s—skin cream.” Which might have been the dumbest explanation I’d ever come up with, but I was rattled. Too much, happening too fast. And I obviously couldn’t let Eamon touch the bottle, or he’d have ownership of David. At least temporarily. “It’s empty.” I turned it upside down to demonstrate. “I’m just putting it back. To refill it.”

I slipped past him and went to my room. Stood there in the dark for a few moments, sliding my fingertips slowly over the glass, thinking about David, about how good he’d looked. Could he have been… cured? Maybe he was fine now. Maybe…

Yeah, I told myself. Maybe you could call up your Dji

After a hesitation, I zipped the case shut. If I needed to grab things in a hurry, seconds might count, and with Ashan on the warpath, flight might be the best defense.

Since Sarah and Eamon looked so nice, I threw on a blue dress—nothing too suggestive, since he wasn’t supposed to be looking at me, after all—and stepped into a decent pair of secondhand Jimmy Choo kitten-heeled pumps. Lipstick, some mascara—it was a fast makeover, but at the end I looked decent. The mirror showed a brightness in my eyes that hadn’t been there before, and a flush in my cheeks.

My hair was glossy and straight from the touch of David’s stroking hands.

I thought about the Dji

I thought all that for about thirty seconds, then sat down on the bed and picked up the telephone. Dialed a number from memory.

“Yo,” said a rough, Italian-spiced voice on the other end; I could tell he hadn’t yet looked at Caller ID. There was a short, fumbling pause, and then a much warmer, “Jo! Nice to know you still remember the number.”

“Paul, how could I forget?” I sat back and crossed my legs, and smiled; I knew he could hear it in my tone. “I just thought I’d better let you know that there’s something going on with the Dji

Sometimes, being proactive with your ex-boss is a good idea, especially when said ex-boss has the power to haul your ass into a special clinic and give you a lobotomy. Forcibly. For not much of any reason at all, actually. And I wanted Paul to hear things from me before he started getting the reports in from Florida of wacky things happening around me up on the aetheric.

He sighed. “What’s going on?”

“I personally witnessed a Warden get killed.” I wrapped a hand slowly in the bedsheets. “Paul… the Dji

Silence, for a long moment, and then I heard his chair creak as he readjusted his weight. “He’s not the first.”

I’d been afraid of it. “How many?”

“I can’t tell you that. But if I didn’t know better, I’d go join some cult and start preaching about the Apocalypse, because all this is… it’s bad, Jo. And it’s making no sense to me. You got any information I can use?”

I chewed my lip for a few seconds. “It looks like the Dji

“Great.”

“Look, I know it’s probably nothing at this point, considering everything that’s going on, but… I got taken for a ride by three Wardens the other day. They seemed to think I was still in the weather manipulation business. Is that coming from you?”

Silence.

“Paul?”

“I can’t discuss this, Jo.”

Dammit. It was coming from him. “I need to know. Look, I’m not ru

“Cards on the table?” he asked. “I’ve got a dozen senior Wardens yelling for your blood. Their point is that whatever’s going on, you’re in the middle of it, and besides, you haven’t been straight with us, not about much of anything. And I know that part’s true. So. Where does that leave us?”

“Standoff, I guess. Because if you send them back to take me in, there’s going to be a fight. And it won’t be pretty. You can’t afford the losses.”

“That I know. But babe, make no mistake. It can be done. There’ll be some collateral damage, and that would be on you, right? You can’t win. Too many of us, and even if we’re not at full strength, you’re all alone. So don’t start the fight. I got too many other fucking problems. If they want to take you in, you let them take you in.”

That was about what I’d expected. And from Paul Giancarlo, who really didn’t have a lot of latitude to work with, that was a gift.

“So where am I?” I asked. “In? Out? Under house arrest?”

A long, long silence, and then Paul said, “Don’t fuck up. That’s all I’m sayin’.”

“Okay.” I sucked in a breath and brought out the question I’d really called to ask. “Do you know how to get hold of Lewis these days?”

“Lewis? Yeah. Why?” He sounded guarded.

I tried for casual. “I wanted to tell him something, that’s all. Got a cell number?”

He did, and he read it off. I scribbled it down and committed it to memory at the same time. We chatted on some neutral topics, lied to each other some more, and hung up two minutes later.

I called Lewis, who answered on the first ring.

“I need you,” I said. “Where are you?”

“Up the coast.”

“Doing… ?”

“Disney World,” he said. Which might have been the truth. With Lewis you could never really tell. “What’s wrong?”

“Apart from the Dji

Stu

“Not yet, and not nearly enough, believe me. I need you. Get your ass down here as soon as you can. Get Rahel to fly you in express if you can.”

“No, I’ll drive. I’ll send Rahel to you. At least she can keep you out of trouble until I can get there.”

Curious, that Rahel evidently hadn’t informed Lewis about her conversation with me, and the ass-kicking she’d received from Ashan. But then he was a mere mortal, and she was a Dji