Ill Wind Page 0,24

. . The Warden nearest the storm usually had the responsibility. Using a Djinn for a source was sort of like having a superconductor in the circuit- it augmented and amplified your power, and assisted in channeling it accurately. The fact that I'd been assigned to this storm without a Djinn to source me was, I realized, not an accident. It was a test.

And Bad Bob was my proctor. Wow. No pressure.

I fought off a cold shiver and got down to business. After about thirty seconds of real time, I saw a shape approaching in Oversight-Tamara. Tall, bright, unusually vivid in her aura colors, with a clear white line of energy linking her back to her home in Mauritania. As I watched, power surged along that link. Her Djinn was delivering the goods.

I reached out to her, and our aetheric bodies touched. Energy jumped the barrier and shot into me, and I had trouble holding on to it; I was not used to Djinn-sourced power at such levels. It felt like being drunk and being dizzy and being in love, and connected to that kind of power I could feel every molecule in the swirling air, every slight variation of temperature between them. It was like . . . . . . like playing God.

Somewhere, Bad Bob was watching. That thought shook me out of any sense of divinity and got me to work. There was, predictably, a ridge of high pressure riding in front of Samuel. Seen from Oversight, the whole thing looked remarkably like a freeze-framed explosion, with a pressure null in the center and force traveling out in all directions. You don't stop a thing like that.

You just weaken the forces that drive it your direction.

Tamara and I worked quickly and-if I may say so-efficiently to smooth out the temperature variations at surface level to cut off the flow of energy up into the monster, and raise the temperature at the top end to create a shorter pressure wave. Small changes, followed by detailed analysis of the effects. One step at a time, always going back to the source ... the ocean ... for the next tiny change.

The weatherworking took no more than thirty minutes, real time, and Tropical Storm Samuel was reduced to nothing more than a stern southeast wind with some fluffy, rain-heavy clouds. I let go of Tamara- reluctantly-and felt all that power drain away.

I fell back into my body with a rushing suddenness that scared me and told me just how tired I really was. Normally I have more control than that. I'd had no idea how addictive that kind of power could feel, and how ridiculously pathetic I'd feel once it was gone.

Tamara was saying nice things about working with me, in the real world, on the real phone. I remembered how to move my lips and thanked her.

Bad Bob reached across to punch the button to hang up the line.

"Joanne Baldwin," he said. "Funny. I voted against you that day, you know. At your intake session."

Like I'd ever forget.

I was too tired to be scared of what he was about to say. I'd just have to eat whatever crap he dished out and try not to yearn for that feeling of being God, because it would be so nice to smack a nice lightning bolt down on his ass. To feel powerful, just once, in his presence.

He put a heavy hand on my shoulder, squeezed, and then patted twice.

"Well, maybe I was wrong," he said. "You're not half bad, Baldwin. Got a lot of raw power, that's for damn sure. More than I've ever seen, to be absolutely truthful. I figure with power like that, you might be able to do a lot of damage."

I wasn't entirely sure I'd heard that right. I blinked and tried to get my tired brain to follow what he was saying. "Damage? I didn't . . . ?"

"Oh, no, just the opposite. You really brought home the bacon today." Now he had both hands on my shoulders. I wondered, for a creeped-out, crazed moment, if he was trying to cop a quick feel. Sexual harassment wasn't limited to just the normal outside world, after all. If anything, men who held the power to destroy whole countries might have a greater tendency to it. I wondered exactly what to say to get myself out of it.

And then I