Gale Force Page 0,8

need to figure out what this thing is, fast."

"My job," I said. "I'll get the Djinn on it. You do your thing, Warden Rocha, and thank you. Excellent job."

I heard the grin in his voice. "Yeah, well, put it on my bonus schedule. Adios, señora."

"Adios," I said, and hung up. I slipped the phone into my pocket and wondered, for the first time, why David wasn't -

"I'm right here," David said, appearing out of thin air in midstride. He was dressed for business, not pleasure - sturdy blue jeans, a plain shirt, thick boots, and his long olive-drab coat. Glasses, too. They glittered like ice in the reflected shine from the broken glass. He didn't halt at a polite distance; he came right up and put his hands around my face, wordlessly smoothing away plaster dust, and placed a warm kiss on my forehead. I felt the various aches and pains melt away, and a mad jittering inside me go still and calm. I hadn't even realized how tense I was.

"What kept you?" My tone stayed dry, although I had a strange desire to burst into tears. "Next time, don't stop for traffic lights, okay?"

He sighed and put his arms around me. "Safe driving isn't just a good idea; it's the law," he reminded me, in that mocking way that only Djinn can. He'd no more think of obeying traffic laws than I would that thing about not wearing white after Labor Day. "Sorry. We were busy."

"Yeah, no kidding. Busy here, too. What's - " My phone rang. I stepped back from him with an apologetic what-can-you-do lift of my hands, and answered, "Baldwin."

It was my friend and (technically) boss, Lewis, and he was uncharacteristically angry. "What the hell did you think you were doing?" he demanded. He was someplace close, or at least equally affected; I could hear the rising babble of confused voices and car alarms. "We're going to be damn lucky if the whole eastern seaboard isn't in chaos by the end of the day!"

I stopped what I was about to say, frowned, and rewound what he'd said. I listened to it again in my head before saying, cautiously, "Hang on a second. You think it's my fault?"

I felt, rather than heard, him coming to a complete stop wherever he was, as if I'd gotten his undivided attention. I hoped he wasn't standing in the middle of the street, like the idiots outside. And I thought he was replaying what I'd just said. "Are you saying it isn't your fault?" he asked.

"I'm about ninety-nine percent sure I had nothing to do with it."

"You were seen in the middle of the - "

"Yeah, trying to fix it, which is sort of my job!" I snapped, and looked at David. He was watching me with warm brown eyes, looking almost completely human. I wondered what kind of effort that was taking. "If you don't believe me, ask the other Warden. Luis Rocha. He was there. He saw what I saw."

"Rocha," Lewis repeated thoughtfully. "Yeah, I know him. Luis is solid. Okay, let me talk to him, but meanwhile - sorry. I just thought, with you new to your Earth powers - "

"You thought I'd go yank around at force lines in the ground, because they were there? What am I, four? Come on, man."

Ah, there was the Lewis I knew and loved, in that ironic lift in his voice. "Jo, you know damn well that if you're standing at ground zero of trouble, I have to assume you've got something to do with it."

"Convicted on prior bad acts?"

"Something like that." He was moving again. I heard the shrilling call of a siren as it ripped by him and dopplered away, and then heard it coming into audio range on my end - same siren, or very similar. "Where are you?"

"Delvia's Bridal. Um, it was Delvia's Bridal, anyway. I think it's Super Discount Gowns now. At the very least, there's going to be a whole lot of discounting going on."

"And you say you didn't have a motive," Lewis replied. "Right. I'm heading that way. Stay put."

He hung up before I could assure him I wasn't going anywhere. I looked around. The clerk was making sad attempts to right sales racks and rehang gowns. Cherise exchanged a look with me, nodded, and went to help. David, of course, could have waved a magic hand and put it all back to rights, but that wasn't the way things were done, at