Windfall

“Uh-huh,” she said, in a bright, almost normal tone, and slid off the trunk to go around to the driver’s side. Sometime during the hysteria, I noticed she’d remembered to put the top up on the convertible. Her hand was shaking uncontrollably as she fumbled for the door handle.

I gently guided her back around the car and opened the passenger side for her.

“My turn to drive,” I said. It took her three tries to get in the car, even with help.

The interior was wet enough to squish. I sighed and hated myself for wasting the energy, but the truth was I was tired and cold and shaking too. I banished the moisture from the car and our hair and clothes, leaving a sharp, fresh ozone smell and, unfortunately, frizzed hair. Cherise didn’t seem to notice. I turned on the car’s heater and pointed all available vents in her direction.

I had to reach over and fasten her seat belt for her. She wasn’t responding to suggestion.

The Mustang rumbled and growled as I backed it up and weaved it around the Jeep, catching Lewis and Kevin in the headlights. They looked fragile and bruised, far too small to go up against the fury of nature gathering out to sea. Lewis gave me a nod and a small, fu

I’d missed Mustangs.

Cherise said, “So you’re, like, a witch, right?”

“What?”

“A good witch?” She didn’t sound too sure of that.

I sighed. “Yeah, kind of. I hope.”

She nodded jerkily. “Okay, sure. That makes sense.” Hollow words, and an empty, scared look in her eyes.

I’d forgotten what it must be like, to have your certainty in life taken away, to find all the science and order and logic taken away. To find out humankind wasn’t the center of the universe, and things weren’t simple and controllable.

It hurt. I knew it hurt.

“Cherise,” I said. We rounded a curve and the headlights washed a riot of vegetation with color. I caught the glint of green eyes, quickly gone. “What you saw—that doesn’t happen all the time, okay? It’s not that the world is a lie you’ve been told. It’s that there are some truths you haven’t heard yet.”

She shrugged. “I’m okay.” The words were just as wrong as the movement, mechanical and dead. “So when you were working at the station, were you just—was it just some kind of game? Were you ever really—”

“This stuff doesn’t pay the bills,” I said gently. “Saving the world really isn’t all that profitable. You’d be surprised how little you get paid for that kind of thing.”

That won a smile of surprise.

“Not really,” she said. “Crime pays better than virtue.”

“You hear that on TV?”

“Read it,” she said, and leaned her head against the window glass. “Damn, I’m freaked.”

“Anybody would be. Take it easy, okay? Ask questions. I’ll do my best to answer you.”

She hesitated a second, then waved a hand out at the storm assembling over the ocean, like a million soldiers ready to attack. “Can’t you stop that?”

“No.”

“Just no?”

“When it’s that big and mean? Yeah. Just no. Maybe Lewis can do it—”

“The old one or the young one?”

“What?”

“You know, the old guy in the fla

Old guy? I threw her a look. “He’s my age!”

“In your dreams.”

“Not the young one, the—the—” I glared. “Lewis is my age. Kevin is the punk-ass kid.”

“Well, the punk-ass kid was nice to me,” she said, and shrugged. “What? It’s not my fault I’m twenty-two and you’re—not.”

Oh, I was so going to get my own car.

We drove in silence for another ten minutes before I said, because I couldn’t resist it, “I’m not old.”

“Yeah,” she agreed, and sighed, and put her head back against the upholstery. “You just keep telling yourself that.”

I gu

Surprisingly, we didn’t die in a fiery crash, but that was probably just God looking after fools and children, and as I blasted past the WELCOME TO FORT LAUDERDALE road sign and had to kill my speed to just under sixty, due to traffic, my cell phone rang. I fumbled for it and took the call.

“Eamon?”

“The same.” That lovely voice sounded as calm and deceptively friendly as ever.

“Got what I asked for?”

“Yes.”

“Good. I’d hate for Sarah to suffer.”

“Is she awake? I want to talk to her.”

“What you want really doesn’t concern me, love. As we seem to have a storm kicking up hell, I’d like to get this ended as soon as possible. No point in dying tonight, especially from something as stupid as fate.”

My hand was clenched tight around the cell. I forced it to relax. Ahead on the road, some grandpa in an ancient Ford Fiesta swerved into my lane doing thirty-five; I instantly checked perimeters and glided into the left-hand passing lane to whip around him. Tractor trailer ahoy, lumbering like a brachiosaur. I managed to slip around him and behind a white Lamborghini that wasn’t any more patient with the current traffic than I was. I drafted him as he negotiated his way to free airspace.

“Where?” I asked. Eamon’s warm chuckle was unpleasantly intimate.

“Well, why don’t you come to my place? Maybe we can enjoy a nice drink after we conclude our business. Possibly Sarah might be open-minded enough to…”

“Shut the hell up,” I snapped. “I have a Dji

“I know.” All of the needling humor dropped out of Eamon’s voice, replaced by something hard and as chilly as winter’s midnight. “But if you do that, you won’t get your sister back. It took a lot of research—which was accomplished with a lot of screaming on the part of my research subjects—but I know the rules. I know what the Dji

He was right. There were rules to the covenant with the Dji

No, I couldn’t take the chance. Not that I’d been willing to in the first place.

“Fine,” I said. “Give me the address.”

It was close to the beach, which wasn’t an advantage right now; I hung up and checked the progress of the storm. The streetlights were blowing nearly sideways, and signs were fluttering like stiff metal flags in the relentless wind. Hurricane-force winds, and it was just the leading edge of the storm.

As I took the exit from the freeway heading for the beach, I caught sight of the ocean, and it made my guts knot up in fear. Those smooth, greasy-looking swells out toward the ocean, exploding into gigantic sails of spray when they hit shallow water… blow on a small bowl of water and look at the way the waves form, heading toward the edge. Concentric rings, mounting higher as force increases.

The storm surge was going to be horribly high. Houses at or near the beach were already doomed. My apartment complex was probably toast, too—so much for the new furniture.

Life was so fragile, so easily blown apart.

“Look out!” Cherise yelled, and threw out a hand to the right.

I barely had time to register something big coming from that direction, hit the brakes, send the car into a spin across two lanes of traffic—thankfully, unoccupied—and manage to get us straightened around in a lane by the time we came to a lurching stop.

A boat bounced in from the right and landed keel-first on the road, oars flying off like birds into the wind. It splintered into fiberglass junk. I watched, open-mouthed, as it rolled off in a tangle.