Ill Wind Page 0,33

of color and plastic-from hamburgers to Szechuan, curry to pork pies. David looked mildly impressed. I handed him a twenty-dollar bill. "Knock yourself out. See you back here in an hour. If I don't see you, I'll assume you've caught another ride, okay?"

He pocketed the twenty without protest and nodded without looking my way. "I'll be here," he said. "Don't forget me."

Not likely. I looked back over my shoulder when I got to the escalator and saw he was standing there, watching me. The round circles of his glasses caught neon fire as he turned his head, and he walked off into the crowd with his overcoat swinging gracefully around him.

He really was-something. I wasn't quite sure what. Why the hell had I picked him up? No, that wasn't the question. A girl could have the occasional weakness for a cute, mysterious stranger. The question was, why the hell was I still with him?

I made the decision that when I was done here, I'd slip out the side exit and leave him on his own. Hell, I'd given him a ride, contributed a twenty to the cause-I'd done more than my duty, right? And there was, well, me to consider. I had my own problems, dammit.

Yes. Definitely. That's what I would do.

The escalator delivered me to a whole different level of color, this one full of clothes. Trashy clothes, flashy clothes, trendy clothes, clothes even my grandmother would have found too dowdy to wear. I picked a place called Violent Velvet and decided that it deserved a once-over for the name alone.

The color of the season, I discovered, was purple- well, last season, because it was an outlet mall and they were unloading stock that hadn't sold, but that didn't matter. I liked purple. I liked purple velvet even better, and since the spring wasn't so warm, it constituted a comfort-versus-fashion challenge.

Half an hour later I emerged from the fitting room wearing purple hip-hugger pants, a stretch lace white shirt, and a flared purple jacket that harked back to Edwardian styles. Everything I was wearing, from underwear out, was new. It felt so good, it was almost sexual. I paid up, bagged two more outfits and a pair of purple satin pajamas, and reveled in the feel of flat-heeled, fashionably clunky shoes. My feet were shell-shocked but grateful. A quick fifteen-minute stop at the nearby convenience store netted me tampons, toothpaste, toothbrush, travel-size mouth-wash, makeup, and-because a good Girl Scout is always prepared-a discreet travel-size package of condoms. But, I reminded myself again, I was ditching David. So the condoms were more in the way of wishful thinking.

Anyway, it had nothing to do with him. In the outfit I was wearing, I might have a date before I even made it down the escalator.

I was basking in girl power when suddenly the hair along my scalp prickled, and I knew something was wrong. Weather? No, that was okay, a quick survey of Oversight told me all was well. Something else. I couldn't pin it down, but the feeling persisted. Something was wrong here, in the middle of all these busy people, all these stores chewing money at a Las Vegas rate. Something to do with air, I thought. But not weather-

I realized I was feeling faint, and I didn't understand why. I'd been feeling great just a few seconds ago, loving my violent velvet, ready to take on the world. Now I needed to sit down.

I found an unoccupied Victorian-style wrought-iron bench and sat down next to some squatty pine trees. They looked unconvinced by the skylight above, but a finch had somehow found its way in and was perched on one of the branches, watching me with beady finch-eyes. It made a sharp sound that sounded dull and smeared to me, as if I were hearing it underwater, and it snapped its wings and flew away.

Fainter. Sounds fading. I couldn't understand what was happening. I was breathing faster, but the part of my brain in charge of total freakout was shrieking that something was wrong, wrong, wrong.

I was still trying to figure it out when I slid sideways and fell over on the bench. Cool white-painted iron against my cheek. Felt good. So tired.

People gathered. Lips moved. No sound reached me. I was gasping now, panting fast, and because my hand was by my face, I could see that my fingernail beds were turning