A Reckless Witch - By Debora Geary Page 0,61
house, parked, and tucked away her helmet, never taking her eyes off the hulking guy waiting for her. She’d never gotten a really good look at him in the chopper—she’d spent the whole time staring at Devin’s forehead and trying desperately not to puke. Nell had told her Govin’s partner was really smart at math and really messy. She’d forgotten to mention he was huge and looked like a biker.
He waved her inside. “C’mon in. I’m still having breakfast. You want Doritos or a bagel?”
Okay, even she drew the line at Doritos for breakfast. “It’s okay. I ate already.” Nell made seriously awesome waffles, and there was always enough for three helpings if you wanted. Her belly hadn’t had that awful gnawing feeling once since she’d arrived.
Mountain man just grunted and led her back to a room with papers and dirty dishes everywhere—and a bad-ass wall of huge computer monitors. She beelined for the monitors. “What are these for?” One of the screens had like fifteen flashing warnings.
“Monitoring weather. That one’s tracking really local air currents, in case we need to put the chopper in the air. You set off every alarm I have—what were you doing out there?” He held out a hand. “I’m TJ, by the way. Not much time for introductions on that wild chopper ride.”
“I’m Sierra.” She blushed. “But I guess you know that already.”
“Yeah. Govin called. He’s running a little late. Said to tell you he’s bringing Devin out in about half an hour and you’re going to do pond magic.”
She blinked. “What’s that?”
TJ shrugged and snagged a Dorito. “No idea—I’m not a witch.” He nodded his head toward the monitors. “Wanna see how my toys work?”
She was already staring at the monitor with all the warnings, trying to figure out what it meant.
TJ sat down and clicked a few keys, and all the flashing lights disappeared. “This shows air currents in a one-mile radius in 3D. Line thickness shows speed, and color shows temperature.”
“So all the lines are blue because it’s winter?” She followed the thickest blue swirl for a minute. “And the air’s faster up high—that’s weird. Does it always do that here?”
He looked at her in surprise. “You’ve worked with weather models before?”
“Nuh, uh.” High school wasn’t nearly this cool. “And the air’s getting warmer where it blows over the ocean. How come it’s all tangly over here, though?”
He grinned. “This isn’t live. It’s playing back the last five minutes. That’s you out there, doing whatever you were doing.”
She watched in total fascination as the tangled lines spun and then threaded the needle. “That is so cool.”
The rest of the big bank of monitors suddenly shifted and showed the same kind of air lines—but laid over a global map. “This is the same basic thing, but bigger.” TJ hit a few more keys. “And we can layer in cloud cover, temperature, precipitation...”
Her brain was ready to explode. “Can you go back to just the air stuff?”
“Sure.” He clicked a few times, then crunched on another chip. “See anything interesting?”
She was looking, following the air currents in places she knew best. “What’s going on here, beside Maui?” It was over the whale winter nesting grounds—not a good place for trouble to be brewing. Swimming with the baby whales was one of her favorite memories ever.
“Small storm depression. See where the little, fast, warm-air current is smacking into the bigger, slower, cold one?” TJ crunched. “Sometimes it works itself out, sometimes you get storms. I’ve sent a big-waves alert to the surfers on that shore. They’re pretty good about keeping people off the beaches when it’s not safe.”
Sierra stared at the map a minute longer. “There’s warmer water south of Maui. If we pulled some of that up, it would warm up the cold air and stop the storm, I think.” So the surfers and the baby whales would all be safe.
“Might.” TJ nodded, contemplating. “If we had that kind of reach, it’s the kind of thing we would try.”
Not a problem. This she could do. TJ thought it would be okay, and they all trusted him, so she could too. “I need to be outside to do it.” Sierra got up, heading for the door.
“Wait.” He grabbed her arm. “Are you serious? You can move the water from here?”
“Sure.” And she needed to do it soon, before the storm picked up speed.
“No, wait.” Mountain man wasn’t letting her go. “Tell me exactly what you’d do. We need to model it, see if it