notoriously difficult. . . and there was something intensely alive behind his eyes that I'd never seen before. Well, not since Lewis, anyway.
Power calls to power-always has, always will.
Two minutes before seven the next morning, I was standing on Bad Bob's porch, which had a stunning view of the blue-green ocean. It rippled like blown silk and flowed up on sand as white as snow. He had a private beach. It was a measure of who-and what-Bad Bob really was. As was the house, a postmodern sweeping dome with lines that reminded me of wind tunnels and race cars.
"No bikini?" Bob asked me when he opened the door. That was his version of good morning, apparently. He had a coffee cup in his hand as big as a soup bowl. His striped bathrobe that made him look like a disreputable version of Hugh Hefner, and he had the moist, red-rimmed eyes of a morning-after drunk.
I hesitated over choices of responses. "Do I have to be polite?"
"Polite isn't a word people often use to describe me," he answered. "I don't suppose I can expect it from you, either."
"Then no more cracks about the bikini, or I turn around and walk. Seriously."
He shrugged, swung the door wide, and turned away. I followed him into a short hall that opened up into a truly breathtaking room. It must have gone up thirty feet in a curve, with windows overlooking the ocean all along one side. Carpet so deep I wondered if he hired a lawn service to maintain it. Leather couch, chairs, furniture that combined style and comfort. All unmistakably masculine, but with a finer taste than I would have expected from somebody of Bad Bob's reputation.
"Nice," I said. People expect that kind of thing when you first see their home.
"Ought to be," he said. "I paid a fortune to some unspeakably horrible woman named Patsy to make it that way. Through here. Coffee?"
"Sure."
He led me into a vast kitchen that could have catered dinner for a hundred without breaking a sweat, poured me a cup, and handed it over. I sipped and found it had the rich, unmistakable taste of Jamaican Blue Mountain, fifty dollars a pound. Not the kind of thing I'd give away cups of to marginally welcome guests. I took as big a mouthful as I could get away with, savoring that smooth caramel aftertaste. I could get used to all of this . . . fancy house, ocean view, fine imported beverages. I had no doubt his collection of whiskey was first-rate, too. And he struck me as the kind of guy with a killer DVD collection.
"So," I said. Bad Bob leaned against a counter, sipping coffee, watching me. "Staying off the subject of the bikini, what exactly am I here to do?"
"You're here to work as my assistant. I need a good, solid hand in manipulating some small-scale weather patterns for an experiment. Nothing I couldn't do myself, but it would save time to have another pair of hands."
"Hands?"
"Metaphorically speaking. You've worked with Djinn before?"
"Sure. Well, not closely. But I've been linked to them." Man, the coffee was excellent. He'd poured a pretty generous cup; I wondered how open he'd be to the concept of refills. I was going through this mug pretty quickly. "I can handle it."
"I'm sure you can," he said. "You know, I have the feeling you're going to be absolutely essential to the success of this project. It's groundbreaking. I think you'll be truly impressed by the scope of what we can accomplish together, Joanne. By the way, how's the coffee?"
"Fabulous. It's-" My eyes blurred. I blinked, felt the world slip sideways, and reached out to brace myself against the counter. I could hear my heart beating, suddenly. "-it's Jamaican Blue-"
I must have dropped the cup, but I didn't hear it shatter on the ceramic tile. I remember my knees letting loose, I remember sliding down with my back to the cabinets, I remember Bad Bob taking another long drink from his cup and looking down at me with those pitiless blue eyes.
He smiled at me. His voice sounded slow and wrong and far too friendly. "We're going to do great things together, you and I."
I woke up on the edge of panic, fighting nausea, with no idea where I was or what the hell had happened to me. It took a