Gale Force Page 0,13

name was Janette de Winter. Good at her job, but my God, didn't she know it. We exchanged narrow smiles. She was eating a delicate little fruit cocktail thingy. Even now, in the midst of crisis, she was perfectly put together - a tailored white suit, long tanned legs, open-toed pumps showing a perfect pedicure. Her makeup had that airbrushed quality of having been put on in layers, until she looked more like an animated magazine cover than a human being.

Maybe I was just feeling catty because I was sweaty, bruised, and covered in dust.

She raised an eyebrow at my appearance, looking coolly amused. Nope. It wasn't because I looked like crap. I felt catty because I just plain disliked the woman.

Lewis and I took seats at the table. He slid in next to the Weather Wardens, leaving me stuck next to de Winter, but also next to Rocha, who winked at me as he shoveled syrup-drenched waffles into his mouth.

The server appeared, and Lewis and I gave our orders - I went for waffles, after seeing Rocha's evident happiness with his. Also, just so I could see de Winter look pained. Waffles were clearly declasse. Hooray for waffles.

"First of all," I said as the waitress closed our doors, "and just to get it out in the open, this is not my fault. Ask Lewis."

All eyes turned to him, if they weren't already there. He sipped coffee and nodded. "She's in the clear," he said. "Whatever's going on, I don't think any Warden is behind it."

Luis Rocha put down his fork. "It wasn't natural. No way in hell. Did you see it?"

"We saw," Lewis said. "And I agree. It wasn't natural. But it's nothing a Warden could be powerful enough to do alone, either."

There was a moment of silence. Brewer said, softly, "Djinn?" It was the question we were all dreading and the reason, on some level, that Lewis and I hadn't wanted to go to David about what we'd found. Because either he knew, which was bad, or he didn't know, which was worse.

Either way, it put him, as the leader of the New Djinn, in an impossible position.

"That's certainly a possibility," Lewis said. I knew what he was thinking: Ashan, and the other half of the Djinn. The old, arrogant half. But the truth was, I didn't believe even for a second that Ashan would have driven that evil black thorn into the skin of Mother Earth. In a curious sort of way, he cared more for her than for himself, his people, and certainly humanity. He wouldn't have done it, and he wouldn't have allowed it to be done, not by any of his people. Or David's, I thought suddenly. There'd have been war first.

Nothing scarier than a war between the Djinn.

Been there. Had scars.

"Did you try to get it out?" Rocha asked Lewis. Lewis nodded and held up his hands. They were blistered. "Madre de Dios. That happened on the aetheric?"

"Yeah." Lewis studied his palms with a frown. "Shouldn't have." I knew that self-healing was one of the toughest things for Earth Wardens, and so did Luis Rocha; he gestured to Lewis, and the two of them went off to a side table to sit close together, backs to us. Healing was, sometimes, kind of a private thing. Intimate. I sipped coffee and tried to ignore the fact that I'd been left on my other side with Janette de Winter, who was shooting me looks that could kill.

"Any report on injuries?" I asked the table at large. They all glanced at each other, and then Sheryl Brewer took on the job.

"Minor stuff so far," she said. "We've got some superficial cuts and a couple of broken bones, but nobody dead or seriously injured. The damage was contained pretty quickly. Whatever you guys did - "

"Wasn't much," I said, "at least on my part. Rocha deserves the credit for containment, definitely."

Credit for more than containing the earthquake, apparently, because when he and Lewis rejoined us - coincidentally, the same time my waffles arrived, all fluffy and begging to be drowned in syrup - Lewis's palms were smooth and blister-free again. "Surface damage," he said to our questioning looks. "Looks like the thing's hot."

"Hot hot, or radioactive hot?" Brewer asked. It was an excellent question, and not the one Lewis had been hoping to answer.

"Radioactive," he said reluctantly. "We need to find this thing in the real world and contain it. Fast. Jo, I want you to