Gale Force Page 0,74

WARDS HERE.

I systematically examined the house and its contents on the aetheric, looking for any telltale sparks, but nothing became obvious. David was unable to give me any pointers; the Earth Warden who'd created the wards had also done a damn fine job of erasing any tracks the Djinn could use to identify the control mechanism.

This left us at a standstill, ultimately. I couldn't break the wards. David couldn't enter.

"Okay, bad idea," I sighed, then shut the front door and sat down with David on the steps. A cool breeze was blowing in off the ocean, and we sat for a while watching the surf roll in. "Maybe it's a good thing we couldn't get you inside. I know there must be - echoes."

"Not as many as there were at Yvette's house, but yes, the history's very close to the surface here," David said. He sounded remote and cool, as if he'd withdrawn into himself for protection. "I'd rather not stay, if we can find somewhere else to go."

I'd always liked the beach house; it had been my favorite of the Warden properties in this part of the country. But that had been before I'd known the truth, and the depth of all the cruelty that the people I'd trusted were capable of inflicting on others. "That Earth Warden. Was he the only one Bad Bob made you . . . ?"

"No," David said, and got up. He looked down at me with dark, impenetrable eyes, and offered me his hand. "Still trust me?"

I took it and let him pull me to my feet. "I will always trust you," I said. "Thank you for trusting me."

He kissed me, just a gentle brush of lips. Something about this place turned him cautious, opened old wounds, and I could tell that even if I'd found a way to break the wards, it would have been hard for him to stay inside these walls. "Do you mind if I choose the next stop?" he asked.

"Hey, you're the guy with the black AmEx and unlimited credit line," I said. "Speaking of which, you know that humans pay their debts, right?"

He didn't look at me. He was staring at the beach house, with a shadow in his eyes that I'd never seen before. "So do Djinn," he said. "When they can."

Chapter Ten

David's choice for our temporary refuge was just outside of Miami: another beach house, but if the Warden retreat was one that would comfortably fit a B-movie lead actor, this was A-list all the way. A Mediterranean-style villa, probably large enough to hold twenty people in comfort on a long stay, it had a gracious, sweeping stretch of grounds, a sculptural waterscaped pool, and its own white-sand private beach, a near-impossibility in Miami. I shuddered to think what the place would cost to maintain, much less buy.

"You're kidding," I said. David came around to the driver's side and opened my door. "David, really. You've got to be kidding. Rich people don't find this kind of thing very amusing when they come home to find us performing Goldilocks and the Three Bears in their bajillion-dollar mansion."

"It's all right," he said. "It belongs to a friend."

"A friend?"

"A very good friend," he clarified, and flashed me a smile. "We'll stay in the guesthouse, if it makes you feel any better."

We made it only about three steps from the car when two huge, evil-looking Rottweilers came bounding out of the darkness, silent and intent on ripping our limbs off one at a time, but both dogs came to a fast, skidding halt when they came within five feet of us, or, more accurately, of David.

"Hello, boys," David said, went down on one knee, and petted the two ferocious attack beasts. They licked his face and rolled over to have their tummies patted. "See? It's fine."

"It would be fine if you'd let me know when you were going to show up. By the way, you're ruining my guard dogs," said a voice from the grand marble sweep of the stairs leading up to the house. Lights blazed on, bright enough to land aircraft, and I squinted against the glare. A man came down the steps, moving lightly despite the fact he was past his athletic days. In his fifties, with a pleasant, interesting face and secretive dark eyes, he was dressed in blue jeans and a comfortable old T-shirt that had DON'T PANIC, along with the little green guy from Douglas Adams's Hitchhiker series as a graphic.

The