Gale Force Page 0,25

a Warden had paid with his life.

Guillard asked more questions about the black shard, things to which I had no real answers except to give a recitation of my conversation with Silverton in the basement. And then the whole thing was over; Jones and Guillard wished me well and departed, and Zenaya left without a backward glance.

Lewis stayed. He still wouldn't look at me. Out of sheer stubbornness, I refused to speak first. I sipped water and tugged irritably at my drying hair, trying to get it to stop poodle-curling around my face. I used to have straight hair. I liked my old straight hair.

When I finally turned my attention back to my guest, Lewis was staring at me, and what was in his eyes wasn't anger at all. Or even disappointment. It was something neither one of us could ever really acknowledge, and it was big and powerful and breathtaking.

He cleared his throat and looked down, and said, "You scared the shit out of me."

"Yeah. Sorry, I had no idea it was going to be that dangerous, or I'd have done more, taken better precautions - "

He waved that aside. "Silverton was your expert; you were listening to him. So if there's blame, it's his, and he's beyond all that now, poor bastard. Even if you'd pulled back as soon as you found the dead Djinn, it would have been too late to keep you from getting sick. This stuff is badly toxic. We couldn't have left it there. As it is, we've had to inform NEST, and they're following up with radiation treatments for anyone who reports in sick to the hospitals." NEST was the Nuclear Emergency Support Team, out of Homeland Security. I didn't want to imagine how that conversation had gone.

"But by taking it out of the Djinn's body - "

"The Djinn's body must have been containing it, to a certain extent. You exposed yourselves to a massive dose," he said. "Silverton more than you, because he actually touched it, even with protective gloves."

It could have just as easily been me. Maybe Silverton had known the risks when he'd reached into that cavity to grab the thing; maybe he'd just been unlucky. No way to know. I'd come close to dying lots of times - I'd actually gone over the edge, once or twice - but this felt different.

This left me shaky and deeply unsettled.

"Is it true? That the Djinn really can't sense it at all?"

"The Djinn think we're all suffering from some kind of mass hallucination," Lewis said. "David's being kind about it, but it's a blind spot for them. A big one. I don't know how we're going to convince them."

"If me lying in this hospital bed doesn't - " I felt light-headed, short of breath. "David has to believe me. He has to."

Lewis gazed at me, expressionless. "I hope he does," he finally said. He leaned over and kissed me chastely on the forehead. "About your wedding - "

Oh, man. I'd known we'd have to have this conversation sometime, but I really wasn't ready for it. "Lewis, I'm sorry - "

"Don't," he said. "Trust me. It won't make things any better. I'm okay. And I'm happy for you. I'm just worried. This thing - the Sentinels. They already didn't like you. I can't imagine they'll be sending any congratulations about the ultimate mixed marriage."

He left before I could say anything else.

I closed my eyes and floated in a morphine cloud, trying to figure out who, outside of the Djinn, could create the black shard that I'd seen. Who was capable of that kind of lethal, subtle action?

I didn't know.

I had dreams of distorted, screaming Djinn, of people being destroyed one by one, of the city in flames, of myself, walking through the rubble in a beautiful, perfect wedding gown.

Of David lying in the street, dead, with a black shard driven entirely through his body.

I woke up shaking.

Chapter Four

So . . . I healed.

David came to visit, of course, and he stayed as long as his duties would allow - longer than he should have, by the expressions of the Djinn sent to remind him of other duties at hand. But despite what I'd confidently said to Lewis, I could tell that David didn't wholly believe me about the black shard, or the dead Djinn. He couldn't. There was some kind of selective blindness that he couldn't control, and that was weird and scary. It didn't matter, though. The Wardens figured it out