Ill Wind Page 0,52

broke the surface in an empty meadow, where grass shivered and whispered and bent silver heads to the freshening wind.

I didn't have to climb out. The ground hardened under my feet, pushing me up, until I was standing barefoot on the grass, Venus born dusty from the ground.

David was still holding my hand. He had come up with me, and dust fell from the shoulders and sleeves of his coat in a thin dry stream. He shook his head and let loose a storm of it. Behind the dust-clouded glasses, I saw his eyes, and this time he didn't try to hide what they were. What they meant.

His eyes were deep, beautiful, and entirely alien. Copper-colored, with flecks of bright gold. They flared brighter as I watched, then faded into something that was nearly human-brown.

"You bastard!" I hissed.

"Just a thank-you would have been good enough," he said. "Want to call a cloud for us? I'm in desperate need of a bath."

"You're a Djinn!"

"Of course."

"Of course?" I repeated. "What do you mean of course? I was supposed to know? Hello, didn't hear the clue phone ringing!"

He just looked at me. He took off his glasses- glasses he could not possibly need-and began cleaning them on the edge of a dark blue T-shirt that advertised The X-Files. Mulder and Scully looked bad-ass and mysterious. His brown hair had coppery highlights, even under the coating of dust. Except for the eyes, he looked entirely human.

Which, I now knew, was entirely his choice.

I was so mad I was shaking. "Whose Djinn are you? Did Lewis send you?"

Chapter Thirteen

He put his glasses back on, grabbed me by the arms, and used some martial arts trick to sweep my feet out from under me. I fell backwards into the grass with a bone-rattling thud, and he caught himself with outstretched hands just above me. More dust sifted down on me. He muttered something in a language I couldn't catch, and the dust swirled into a compact little ball and dropped away from us.

Somehow, it just made me madder. I opened my mouth to yell at him, and he put his lips down very close to my ear and said, "If you scream, they'll hear you. I can't prevent that."

I caught the scream and held it in because I heard, just about two feet away, the crunch of footsteps in grass. A shadow blocked the light overhead, and I peered past David to see Shirl standing there, looking puzzled.

"Anything?" Marion's voice, coming from the left, coming fast in our direction. Above me, David's face was blank and still, and I could see he was doing something-whatever it was, it was blocking them from seeing us in either the physical or aetheric realms. Unless they stepped on us or I made some inappropriate noise, they wouldn't find us.

"Nothing," Shirl confirmed. Marion's shadow joined the other woman's. "Dammit, this isn't possible. She was down there, I swear she was. But Erik said she was gone when he went down."

"I saw dust here," Marion said. She paced slowly back and forth, too close to my head for comfort. "Right around here. But I don't know how she could possibly have done that. She's not an Earth power."

"Maybe somebody's helping her." Shirl was too perceptive for my taste. That and the nose ring were putting her on my bad side. "She got any Earth Warden friends?"

"A few, but I can't see them sticking their necks out like this, not when they know what she's accused of doing." Marion hesitated again, and I could see her looking down, looking right at me. I didn't even dare to breathe. David wasn't touching me, but I could feel the heat radiating off him-what if they could feel it, too?

"Maybe you should bring in your Djinn." A new voice-Erik. He came trudging up from the other side. "Just set him to tracking her."

"I have other things for my Djinn to attend to," Marion said in a way that convinced me Erik shouldn't have made the suggestion. It apparently convinced Erik, too. He shut up. After another few fast heartbeats, Marion said, "All right. We have her car. She's not going anywhere, at least not fast. We'll wait for her to come back to it."

"What if she doesn't?" he wanted to know.

Marion smiled. "You don't know much about Joanne, I see."

The