Windfall

I felt the skin tighten on the back of my neck. “You mean, collect from me?”

“You’re the visible link, Joa

I nodded slowly. “So this is good-bye?”

“You see me again, it’s because I found out you were lying to me, and believe me, that would be good-bye.”

He slid the van door shut. I stepped back. He slid into the driver’s side seat in the front, and the van started up with a shiver and a roar. He rolled down the window, gave me a little salute, and backed out of the parking spot.

I watched him drive away. Except for a small patch of oil on the asphalt where he’d been parked, my cop stalker was gone as if he’d never been there.

One problem down. About a million to go.

Overhead, the clouds piled thicker, darker, and more imminently threatening.

I wished I knew what to do next. If Lewis hadn’t bugged out, at least I could have mined him for information—I knew he had a lot more than he was saying—but of course holding on to Lewis was like trying to hold on to a wave in motion.

And without access to the aetheric, trying to find anyone was trouble. The Dji

Which was… what?

I was in the middle of dithering about it when my cell phone rang, and it was Paul Giancarlo, calling from the Warden offices at the U.N.Building in New York.

“Good morning,” I said. “Before you forget to ask, thanks, I’m fine.”

“I wasn’t going to,” he grunted. “Lewis was with you last night?”

He had good sources, but then, he was the Head Hon-cho. At least for now. “Yeah. He needed someplace to stay and recover. Look, you’ve got rogue Wardens ru

“Would if I could. I’ve got a problem. I need your help.”

“Does the word no ring any bells with you? Because I’ve said it before.”

“Joa

“Disaster,” I said briskly. “From what I’ve seen, there’s plenty of that going around, and I’m sorry about it, but I can’t help.”

“Yes, you can.”

“Seriously, I can’t.”

His voice went very quiet. Gravelly. “Did you hear me ask you a question? Short declarative statements, sweetheart. Not negotiable. This is serious business, and you’re going to get in line or I promise you, your powers get yanked. Clear?”

Fuck. Frankly, Paul sending Marion’s team after me to rip out my powers was far down my waiting list of panic attacks, but it wasn’t worth risking, either.

“Clear,” I said. “What do you need?”

“Get over to John Foster’s office. Nobody’s answering over there. I got nobody on the ground I can trust right now. Just make sure everything’s okay.”

That gave me a quiet moment of worry. “Paul? Is it that bad?”

His sigh rattled the speaker of my cell phone. “However bad you think it’s gotten, it’s worse than that. And I don’t think it’s anywhere near hitting bottom yet. Get over there, but watch your back. I’d send you cover if I could.”

“I know. Are you all right there?”

“So far. Nobody wants to uncork a Dji

I remembered Prada on the bridge, her defiant anger. “And once they’re free of their masters, they go after others to free them,” I said. “Packs of them.”

“Yeah. It’s a mess. Swear to God, Jo, I don’t know if we’re going to survive it. We’re warded halfway to hell around here, so I think this building’s secure, and I gave my Dji

“Yeah,” I agreed softly. “I know. Listen—be careful. I’ll call you when I know something.”

“Thanks. I can’t afford to leave the Florida stations unma

I knew. Key areas had seasonal posts of enormous responsibility. California was important all year long. Tornado-prone states like Kansas, Missouri, Oklahoma, and Texas got extra staffing for the spring and summer.

Florida, in hurricane season, was a key weather post, and if John was missing …

We were in big trouble.

I signed off and headed for my car.

The Warden Regional Office was located not far from the National Weather Service offices in Coral Gables, conveniently enough; we’d sometimes used them for conferences and research. But the Warden offices were unassuming, located in a seven-story building with standard-issue brown marble and sleek glass. There was no sign on the building itself, just a street number etched in brass. Security on the entrance. I didn’t have a card key, so I sat in the car and waited until someone else pulled into the parking lot and wheeled a laptop toward the front door. I didn’t recognize her—she probably didn’t work in the Warden offices, of course, because they only had a couple of small offices out of seven floors, and the others were all occupied.

I moved in behind the woman, smiled when she smiled, and she carded me into the building and took off for the stairs. I, feeling lazy, went for the elevator.

The lobby was quiet and dimly lit, going for soothing and achieving a state of restfulness usually reserved for dropping into a nap. The elevators were slow—it was a general rule of the universe that the shorter the building, the slower the elevators—and I killed time by trying to imagine what the hell I was going to do if I got up there and found a major fight in progress. I wasn’t going to be of any help, that much was sure.

I was hoping like hell that it was a downed-phone-line problem. Weak, but sometimes optimism is the only drug that works.

But it’s sadly temporary in its effects.

The front door of the Warden offices looked like somebody had taken a sledgehammer to it—splintered in half, raw wood shining naked under the sleek brown finish. The lock was shattered, pieces of it scattered for ten feet down the carpeted hallway. The windows on either side were gaping, glassless holes, and I felt the crunch of broken pieces under my shoes as I walked carefully toward the destruction.

I was half afraid I was going to find everybody dead, given the state of the door, but I heard voices almost immediately. I recognized the slow, Carolina-honey voice of my ex-boss.

The tension in me let go with a rush of relief. John Foster was still alive, and I was off the hook.

I knocked on the shell of a door and leaned over to look through the opening.

John—still in a shirt and tie, which was his version of business casual—was standing, arms folded. With him was Ella, his right-hand assistant; she was a dumpy, motherly Warden with moderately weak weather skills but a stellar ability to keep John’s stubborn, independent group working together.

Speaking of which, none of the others were anywhere in sight.

Ella looked exasperated. While John dressed like he’d been interrupted on his way to a board meeting, Ella might have been called out of giving her tile a good grouting: blue jeans, a sloppy T-shirt, a flowered Hawaiian-style shirt over that. She had graying, coarse hair that looked windblown.

They both turned toward me when I knocked, and Ella’s mouth fell open. “Jo!” she yelled at ear-bleeding volume, dashed for the door, and knocked it back with a nudge of her Nike-clad foot. Before I could say “El!” she had me in a warm, soft hug, and then was dragging me over the threshold into the office.