Ill Wind Page 0,11
hand in front of my face and saw a tracery of crystal, my aura cool blue edged with flashes of green and-most unsettlingly-streaks of red. Red was bad. Red was trouble. No wonder the Djinn had smelled the Mark on me.
Nothing I could do about it now. I stepped out in my astral form and admired the crystalline perfection of the Mustang, which was even more beautiful in Oversight than in the mundane world. A real magical beauty of a car. One look at the Kountry Kafe convinced me I didn't want to eat there; it pulsed with bad vibes, like a quaking mass of rancid Jell-O.
I spread my weightless arms and went up. There was no sense of speed-not in this reality-and no sense of resistance, either. I glided up, and up, and up, until the earth curved off beneath me. From that dizzying height, I studied the deforming spiral of the storm. In Oversight it looked almost the same as in the real world, only instead of lightning, the energy displayed in colors-brilliant, vibrant colors that a trained Warden could interpret. I'd done enough with it, I thought. Its overall rotation had been disrupted, and the lightning flickers were showing in golds and greens, sheets of positive and negative charges in scattered glitter. If I'd missed the mark, I would've seen reds and a steady photonegative undertone.
I let go, and the planet rushed back at me. The first time I'd traveled in Oversight, I'd absolutely freaked, and no wonder: the sensation of falling back into your body is one of the most terrifying feelings in the world. These days, I enjoyed it like a thrill ride. Few enough thrills in my life recently. Not to mention fewer dates.
I filled my body again, and the world took on weight and form and dimension. Delilah the Mustang assumed her familiar glossy midnight-blue paint job.
My stomach rumbled again. With one last, regretful glance at the Kountry Kafe, I eased on down the road.
The diner where I finally stopped looked outwardly a lot like the last one, but its Oversight characteristics were more encouraging. It was called Vera's Place. Vera, it turned out, was long gone, but the owner and operator was a perky thirty-year-old named Molly with hair that showed several indecisive home dye jobs and the kind of creamy milkmaid skin that every Hollywood actress wants.
"Pie?" she asked me expectantly as I polished off the last of my open-faced turkey sandwich and mashed potatoes. There wasn't a lot of commerce going on inside Vera's Diner; I counted about six old coots and a yuppie couple dressed from the L.L. Bean catalog who sneered at the menu selections and would never even have considered eating something as middle-American as pie. Which decided me.
"What, you think I'm hungry or something?" I asked, and scraped up the last of the delicious pan gravy with the edge of my fork. I got a dimpled smile in response.
"Last one we had in here didn't eat pie was some hot-shot defense lawyer from L.A.," she confided. I passed over the turkeyless, gravy-free plate.
"Wouldn't want to be included in that company," I agreed. "What kind of pie you got?"
She raised an eyebrow. "You really want the whole list?"
"Just the high points."
The high points could have filled a couple of pages, single spaced. I decided on chocolate.
"German, cream, or meringue?"
"I'm sorry, is that a choice? Meringue, of course. Definitely."
The meringue was taller than most three-layer cakes, a hugely delicious confection that went down perfectly cool with the rich, creamy chocolate beneath. The crust was to die for, crisp and delicious. Best pie I ever had. Honest. The Oversight never lies about the quality of food, especially pies.
While I was savoring the last few bites, I took out a road map and looked over the route. Long. Long and boring. I asked Molly about good places to stay and got two recommendations, visited the little Wardens' room, and went back to my car full of chocolatey satisfaction, with the full intention of finding a Holiday Inn with adult channels and a minibar. One gets fun where one can.
Just as I reached for the car's door latch, a feeling swept over me, pins and needles, unmistakable and terrifying. I snatched the door open and dived. My feet had just left the ground when lightning hissed up from the dirt where I'd stood,