all these years, running for his life. I'd have been catatonic, if I'd known what was waiting for me back here among my so-called peers.
Just as I was starting to wonder whether to seduce Ron or knock him out, the elevator jerked again and started sliding down. Fast. A red light on the panel read security lockdown.
"They're sending us to the ground floor," Ron said. "Looks like they'll be searching everybody."
"Fun." I rocked back and forth on my low-heeled shoes, ready for fight or flight, but when the elevator doors opened a navy sports coat type with the UN emblem over his vest pocket waved me impatiently out, along with Ron. I followed his pointing finger. It looked like a mob scene, which was great for fading away. You're never more alone than in a crowd of strangers. All Wardens, even better.
"Hey!" Ron was trying to keep up with me as I slipped between people, heading for the sealed and guarded exits. "Um, Gidget! Wait up!"
I stepped behind two particularly bulky women who looked like they might have been part of a Russian delegation, and disappeared.
Jonathan? I sent silently. No answer. Earth to Jonathan! Dammit, you'd better be there!
Crap. Getting Lewis out of here without taking him through the aetheric was going to be next to impossible, but we had to find a way. We couldn't chance leaving him here.
I waved my hand through the air and watched it collect an insubstantial weight of blue fairy dust. I crushed it into nothing, but that didn't matter; it was a constant blizzard even here. The aetheric would be choked with it. No. We couldn't leave that way.
I caught sight of a familiar face in the crowd, and went cold. Marion Bearheart was here-had just made it in before the lockdown, by the look of it. Her brown suede jacket was spattered with dark drops, and water caught the light in tiny glints in her gray-and-black hair. She looked grim and haunted, arms folded over her chest. She was listening to an earnest stream of dialogue from Martin Oliver, who even now looked like the nattiest, most in-control man on the face of the world. He wasn't in control of much, today, but I still wouldn't have wanted to cross him. He reminded me of somebody ... Ashan, Jonathan's chief rival back in the Djinn bubble. The same kind of severe, uncompromising confidence, and a kind of elegant, almost sexual grace.
I remembered, out of nowhere, a conversation I'd had back in college about a man I'd been thinking of dating. Describe him, my best friend had said. I'd giggled and said, He's sweet. And she'd looked at me very seriously, taken my hands, and said, Corazon, sweet men are only sexy until you realize that they're too weak to hurt you. I hadn't agreed with her-still didn't, in some ways-but there was no denying that dangerous men had a visceral attraction.
The woman who'd said that was on the Wardens' wall of the dead. Like me. I hadn't even had time to mourn her. I didn't even really know if I should, and that was the worst of it.
Marion's cool, strong gaze swept my direction. I quickly put out the don't-notice-me vibe. She scanned right past me, frowned, and turned to someone at her elbow. I focused on her lips. She was asking if he sensed anything strange. He shook his head, but she didn't look convinced.
Man, we needed to get the hell out of here. And I needed to get down to the vault.
A huge, rolling crash of thunder like the world's largest pane of glass dropped from ten thousand feet made everybody in the room flinch and duck. Most clapped hands over their ears. Some, like Marion, turned toward the big picture windows, and the sharp white crack of lightning lit up their strained faces.
I heard the dull thump of the first of the hail hitting the street outside. Ice exploded like a bomb, scattering frozen white shrapnel for twenty feet. Before the debris had rolled to a stop, another piece of football-sized hail crashed down onto the roof of a yellow cab speeding by. It ripped a hole right through the steel.
The storm had shaken loose of any semblance of control, and now it had a target: the only people who had a hope in hell of stopping it.
Us.
I felt it drawing