Rachel Caine

Chapter One

Getting married was like planning a military invasion of a distant foreign country, only instead of moving soldiers and guns, you were organizing bridesmaids and bouquets.

Of course, my bridesmaids were bound to be pretty tough chicks. I couldn’t really be sure there wouldn’t be guns.

‘‘You know,’’ said my best friend, Cherise, staring thoughtfully into the mirror and smoothing her hands down the clinging lines of her dress, ‘‘there’s a math formula for wedding dresses.’’

I blinked at her. I was trying to figure out if the layer cake of tulle and lace I had on constituted romantic excess, or if it looked like I’d fought off a demented pastry chef and barely escaped with my life. ‘‘What?’’

‘‘The problem is, this dress looks totally fabulous on me. And the better the bridesmaid’s gown looks on her, the fuglier the bride’s. I’m just pointing it out because I’m a kindhearted person, you know.’’

She was right—she did look totally fabulous in the dress. The color was a dark rose, one that wildly complemented Cherise’s blond hair and beautiful skin. It was a simple sheath dress, clinging in all the right places, and it ended at the right length for her, just below the knee, to display her perfectly sculpted calves to full advantage. No dyed generic pumps for Cherise; she’d scoured the stores and come up with a pair of Jimmy Choo shoes that made me pray to the fashion gods for something half as great to appear in my closet.

The first time I’d ever met Cherise, she’d looked fantastic. Cherise could look delicious wearing an oversized foam-rubber sun—I know, I’ve seen her do it, back in the days we both worked for the local bottom-of-the-barrel TV station as weather girls.

I, on the other hand, did not look delicious. I looked like a wedding cake that hadn’t quite risen properly. And white really wasn’t my color.

‘‘You’re a true friend,’’ I said, and unzipped my dress to let it slide into a confusion of frippery on the dressing room floor. The waiting dress wrangler rescued it, fussily dusted it, and put it back on a hanger and in a garment bag, the better to protect its doubtful charms. ‘‘Right. Something in off-white? With less—’’ I made a vague, poofy gesture with my hands. The salesclerk, who must have seen brides make a thousand terrible decisions, looked relieved. She nodded and turned to Cherise.

‘‘Ma’am?’’ she asked. ‘‘Can I bring you some more selections?’’

Cherise turned, hands on hips. ‘‘You’re kidding, right? Look, I gave her fair warning. I am not giving up this dress. I’ll be maid of honor, but not matronly of honor.’’

‘‘Keep the dress,’’ I said hastily. ‘‘It really does look great on you. So you’re done. It’s just me we’re still working on.’’

Cherise, mollified, unzipped and shimmied out of the dress. She was the one who fussed with it, getting it hung just so, and zipped it into the garment bag before handing it to the salesclerk. ‘‘Be sure nothing happens to it,’’ she said. ‘‘Put my name on it in giant letters: Cherise. In fact, if you’ve got a vault—’’

‘‘Cher,’’ I said, ‘‘leave the poor lady alone. She’s dealing with enough as it is. Your dress is safe.’’

‘‘Maybe I should take it with me.’’

‘‘Maybe you should put your clothes on. I’m feeling kind of outclassed, here.’’

Cherise grinned, undermining her Playboy Bunny appeal but making herself real in a way most pretty women weren’t. She looked after herself with care, but she also didn’t put too much emphasis on it. Cherise liked to do things that the Genetically Chosen Few generally didn’t, like read, geek out on TV shows, indulge in online gaming. Her most prominent body decoration, which showed plainly as she turned to gather up her jeans and tank top from the bench, was a Gray—a little gray alien tattoo waving hello from the small of her back, where most beautiful women would have put a rose as a tramp stamp.

That was Cherise, cheerfully mowing down the barriers.

I sat down on the other bench, legs crossed, feeling exposed and vulnerable in my lacy underthings. I had a huge list of things still to do for the wedding, and I was running out of time, and the last thing I needed to be doing was obsessing about the dress. I mean, I had good taste in clothes, right? I could usually walk into a store, grab something right off the rack, and get it right.

Today, I’d gone through more dresses than I’d worn in the last year. Maybe I ought to try the designer line again. Or get married in a garbage bag. Add a couple of frills, a nice bow—couldn’t be worse than what I’d just seen myself in today. There was a fashion hell. I’d been there.

‘‘You okay?’’ Cherise finished buttoning up her jeans, skimmed her top down to street-legal levels, flipped her hair, and voilà, she was fantastic. She stepped out of the Jimmy Choo pumps and boxed them up with the care usually reserved for crown jewels or religious relics, and slid her perfectly pedicured toes into a pair of hot-pink flip-flops. ‘‘Because you look a little bit—’’

‘‘Spooked,’’ I supplied sourly. ‘‘Worried. Scared. Nuts. Insane. Completely, utterly—’’

‘‘I was going to say hungry. It’s already two hours after we should have had lunch.’’

Low blood sugar probably was impairing my impressive dress-choosing skills, and even though this was a full-service bridal store, I doubted that they catered. ‘‘Oh,’’ I said. ‘‘Right. Lunch.’’ Now that she mentioned it, my stomach growled impatiently, as if it had been trying to get my attention for a while and was ready to cannibalize another body part. I reached for my own jeans and top and began tugging them on. I wasn’t as perfectly body-balanced as Cherise, but I had legs for days, and even in flats I topped her by several inches.

The hardworking clerk came back, sweating under a forklift’s worth of alternate dress choices. I froze in the act of zipping up my pants. ‘‘Um—’’

Cherise, rightly identifying a moment when a maid of honor could take one for the bridal team, smiled winningly at the clerk and said, ‘‘Sorry, but I’ve got a nail appointment. We’ll have to come back later. Could you keep those out? I swear, it’ll be an hour, tops.’’ She caught my look. ‘‘Two, at the most.’’

The clerk looked around the dressing room, which had far fewer hooks than she had dresses, sighed, and nodded.

I had just finished fastening the top button on my pants when I felt the whole store distinctly shake, as if a giant hand had grabbed the place and yanked. I froze, bracing myself on the wall, and saw Cherise do the same. The clerk froze under her load of thousand-dollar frocks.

And then all hell broke loose. The floor bucked, walls undulated, cracks ripped through plaster, and the air exploded with the sounds of glass crashing, things falling, and timbers snapping. The salesclerk screamed, dropped the gowns, and flung herself into the doorway, bracing herself with both hands.

I should have taken cover—Cherise sensibly did, curling instantly into a ball under the nearest cover, which was the bench on her side.

What did I do? I stood there. And I launched myself hard into the aetheric, rising out of the physical world and into a plane of existence where the lines of force were more clearly visible.

Not good. The entire area of Fort Lauderdale was a boiling confusion of forces, most erupting out of a fault line running directly under the store in which I stood. It looked as if somebody had dropped a bucket of red and black dye into a washing machine and set it on full churn.

We were so screwed.

I sensed other Wardens rising into the aetheric, responding to the crisis; there were two or three of them relatively close whose signatures I recognized—two were Weather, which wasn’t much help, but one was an Earth Warden, and a powerful one.

I flung my still-new Earth Warden powers deep into the foundations of the building in which my physical form was still trapped, and began shoring up the structure. It was taking a beating, but the wood responded to me, healing itself and binding into an at least temporarily unbreakable frame. The metal was tougher, but it also fell within my powers, so I braced it up as I went, creating a lightning-fast shell of stability in a world that wouldn’t hold together for long.

I reached out, in the aetheric, and connected with the other Earth Warden; together, we were able to blanket part of the rift with power, like pouring superglue on an open wound. Not a miracle, it was just a bandage, but enough. I didn’t know enough about how to balance the forces of the Earth; it was different from the flashing, volatile energy of Fire or the massive, ponderous fury of Weather. It had all kinds of slow, unstoppable momentum, and I felt very fragile standing in its way.

Help, I said to the other Earth Warden—not that talking was really talking on the aetheric. It was crude communication, at best, but he got the message. I watched as he spread himself thin, and his aura settled deep into the heart of the boiling red of the disturbance.

Oh, hell no. No way was I going there.

Then again, if I didn’t, I was leaving him alone to do the dirty work—the potentially fatal dirty work.

I took a deep metaphorical breath, steadied myself, and stepped off the cliff.

Sensations are different on the aetheric—properly, they’re not sensations at all, because all the nerve endings are still firmly planted down on terra firma. But the mind processes stimuli, no matter how unpleasant or strange, and so what it felt like to me on my way down, following my Earth Warden colleague, was . . . pressure—being squeezed, lightly at first, then more intensely. It was like diving in the ocean and swimming deeper and deeper, but this didn’t feel like liquid; it felt more like a metal vise, cranking inexorably tighter.

I faltered and nearly bugged out, but I caught a glimpse of the other Warden. He was below me, only a bit farther, and I decided that if he could do it, I had to. Down I went, and if I’d had an actual, physical mouth and lungs, I’d have been screaming and crying by the time I got there.

His aetheric form—which, I noticed, sported shadowy, shoulder-length hair and the ghost of a guitar slung across his back—was kneeling down, studying something. I joined him. He silently indicated what it was he was examining.

I’d never seen anything like it in the aetheric, but I didn’t need a college course to tell it was very, very bad. It looked like some kind of black icy knife, sharp on all edges, wickedly pointed at the end. It was plunged deep into the ground, or what represented the ground up here.

The Earth Warden reached out and touched it, and from the way he jerked back, it was a very painful experience.

Well, I hadn’t come all this way not to try.

The jolt that went through me when I tried to take hold of the thing felt like being on the receiving end of a live power cable, only not as much fun. I let go— couldn’t do anything else—and looked wordlessly at my colleague.

He shook his head and pointed up, indicating we should rise. I nodded. Up we went, slowly, letting the pressure bleed off. I didn’t suppose we’d get the bends in the aetheric, but it didn’t seem prudent to push it, and besides, I was still trembling from the jolt that piece of black ice had sent through me.

Far above, in the softer regions of air, he made a gesture that was clear even in the aetheric—thumb toward his ear, little finger toward his mouth. And then he pointed from himself to me.

He was going to call me. I nodded and waved, and dropped out of the aetheric, back into my body.

The earthquake had stopped . . . temporarily, at least. The dress shop was a mess—plaster cracked, mirrors broken, racks toppled. Disaster with a designer label. Somebody was shaking me. Cherise. She had her hands fisted in my shirt and was trying to haul me up, but I was bigger and she was shaking too much to really be effective on leverage.

I helped her out by lurching to my feet and checking on the store’s other occupants, including the clerk. Apart from being terrified, they were all miraculously unharmed, though hair, makeup, and wardrobe had been sacrificed to sweat, tears, and sifting plaster dust.

I made Cherise sit down on a bench and stood for a moment, letting my awareness spread through the structure, looking for major damage. A few cracked support beams, but nothing that couldn’t be braced, and nothing that would come down unexpectedly, unless there was another hard jolt like the first one, which I couldn’t guarantee wouldn’t happen.

I pulled my cell phone out as it began to ring, and walked to the front, where plate glass windows had once been. They were now a glitter of broken fragments inside and outside the store. People were gathering out in the street, which was a hazard in itself, as drivers tried to navigate their way through to check on their families, their homes, their businesses. Nobody looked badly hurt, but everybody looked shell-shocked. Earthquakes in California came with the territory, but in Florida?

I answered the call. ‘‘Joanne Baldwin.’’

‘‘Warden, it’s Luis Rocha. Earth Warden. We met up top.’’ Meaning, up in the aetheric. I didn’t know his voice, but I liked it—warm, brisk, efficient. No wasted words. ‘‘Everybody okay there?’’

‘‘Looks like.’’ No wasted words here, either, apparently. ‘‘Good work up there.’’

‘‘You too, but I’m worried. I don’t know what the hell that thing is we saw, but whatever it is, it needs looking into.’’

‘‘You think it’s the cause of what just happened?’’

‘‘Any place can have earthquakes, but not without some warning signs, and there weren’t any. External cause, has to be. That thing—it seems to be the epicenter, and no way is that supposed to be there.’’

I frowned. ‘‘You think it could do more damage?’’

‘‘Don’t know, but I wouldn’t leave it there. We need to figure out what this thing is, fast.’’

‘‘My job,’’ I said. ‘‘I’ll get the Djinn on it. You do your thing, Warden Rocha, and thank you. Excellent job.’’

I heard the grin in his voice. ‘‘Yeah, well, put it on my bonus schedule. Adios, señora.’’

‘‘Adios,’’ I said, and hung up. I slipped the phone into my pocket and wondered, for the first time, why David wasn’t—

‘‘I’m right here,’’ David said, appearing out of thin air in midstride. He was dressed for business, not pleasure—sturdy blue jeans, a plain shirt, thick boots, and his long olive-drab coat. Glasses, too. They glittered like ice in the reflected shine from the broken glass. He didn’t halt at a polite distance; he came right up and put his hands around my face, wordlessly smoothing away plaster dust, and placed a warm kiss on my forehead. I felt the various aches and pains melt away, and a mad jittering inside me go still and calm. I hadn’t even realized how tense I was.

‘‘What kept you?’’ My tone stayed dry, although I had a strange desire to burst into tears. ‘‘Next time, don’t stop for traffic lights, okay?’’

He sighed and put his arms around me. ‘‘Safe driving isn’t just a good idea; it’s the law,’’ he reminded me, in that mocking way that only Djinn can. He’d no more think of obeying traffic laws than I would that thing about not wearing white after Labor Day. ‘‘Sorry. We were busy.’’

‘‘Yeah, no kidding. Busy here, too. What’s—’’ My phone rang. I stepped back from him with an apologetic what-can-you-do lift of my hands, and answered, ‘‘Baldwin.’’

It was my friend and (technically) boss, Lewis, and he was uncharacteristically angry. ‘‘What the hell did you think you were doing?’’ he demanded. He was someplace close, or at least equally affected; I could hear the rising babble of confused voices and car alarms. ‘‘We’re going to be damn lucky if the whole eastern seaboard isn’t in chaos by the end of the day!’’

I stopped what I was about to say, frowned, and rewound what he’d said. I listened to it again in my head before saying, cautiously, ‘‘Hang on a second. You think it’s my fault?’’

I felt, rather than heard, him coming to a complete stop wherever he was, as if I’d gotten his undivided attention. I hoped he wasn’t standing in the middle of the street, like the idiots outside. And I thought he was replaying what I’d just said. ‘‘Are you saying it isn’t your fault?’’ he asked.

‘‘I’m about ninety-nine percent sure I had nothing to do with it.’’

‘‘You were seen in the middle of the—’’

‘‘Yeah, trying to fix it, which is sort of my job!’’ I snapped, and looked at David. He was watching me with warm brown eyes, looking almost completely human. I wondered what kind of effort that was taking. ‘‘If you don’t believe me, ask the other Warden. Luis Rocha. He was there. He saw what I saw.’’

‘‘Rocha,’’ Lewis repeated thoughtfully. ‘‘Yeah, I know him. Luis is solid. Okay, let me talk to him, but meanwhile—sorry. I just thought, with you new to your Earth powers—’’

‘‘You thought I’d go yank around at force lines in the ground, because they were there? What am I, four? Come on, man.’’

Ah, there was the Lewis I knew and loved, in that ironic lift in his voice. ‘‘Jo, you know damn well that if you’re standing at ground zero of trouble, I have to assume you’ve got something to do with it.’’

‘‘Convicted on prior bad acts?’’

‘‘Something like that.’’ He was moving again. I heard the shrilling call of a siren as it ripped by him and dopplered away, and then heard it coming into audio range on my end—same siren, or very similar. ‘‘Where are you?’’

‘‘Delvia’s Bridal. Um, it was Delvia’s Bridal, anyway. I think it’s Super Discount Gowns now. At the very least, there’s going to be a whole lot of discounting going on.’’

‘‘And you say you didn’t have a motive,’’ Lewis replied. ‘‘Right. I’m heading that way. Stay put.’’

He hung up before I could assure him I wasn’t going anywhere. I looked around. The clerk was making sad attempts to right sales racks and rehang gowns. Cherise exchanged a look with me, nodded, and went to help. David, of course, could have waved a magic hand and put it all back to rights, but that wasn’t the way things were done, at least not out here in the open, where it could be witnessed by the general public. We’d do most of our helping out later, when people weren’t looking.

At least, I hoped so. The old days of the Wardens leaving messes behind them were over—or so I’d been assured. This would, I thought, be a good test of their resolve to do the right thing, and if they didn’t . . . well, I could always take names, kick asses.

‘‘Not normal,’’ I said aloud. ‘‘This shouldn’t have happened.’’

I didn’t need confirmation, but David gave it to me anyway. ‘‘Someone caused it,’’ he said.

‘‘A Warden?’’

He was silent. When I glanced his way, I saw that his eyes were growing lighter in color and brighter in power . . . but then they cooled again, and he shook his head. ‘‘Unknown.’’

‘‘What? How can it be unknown? How can you not know?’’ Because David, after all, was sort of the running definition of omniscient these days. Imagine those surveillance cameras you see on every street corner, only for the Djinn, every single object in the world, living or inert, has a history and a path through time that they can follow. David was capable of unspooling that carpet back and following the threads to . . . nothing, apparently.

That was unsettling to me—to him, too, because he shot me a frown and said nothing in his own defense. He turned away to pace, head down, and I was reminded for all the world of a tracking dog trying to pick up a scent.

Vainly.

I felt a slight bump of power on the aetheric level— it took concentration to detect it—and knew that someone had arrived. Someone of the Djinn variety. Could be a good thing; could be a bad thing. . . . Either way, it would be unpredictable.

I turned, a determined smile on my face, and was relieved to see the Djinn Rahel lounging in the cracked doorway, arms folded, surveying the damage with amused, lambently glittering eyes. She was a tall creature, elegant as a heron, but her nature always put me in mind of a hunting hawk—predatory, alert, always on the verge of striking.

Today she wore a bright lavender pantsuit in what looked like (and probably was) the softest of peach skin. It was tailored within an inch of its life, clinging to her long legs and her sculpted torso. Purple was a relaxed color for her, as it was for me. In a less conciliatory mood, she’d have been wearing neon yellow.

‘‘So,’’ she said, in a low voice as rich as spilled syrup, ‘‘does this mean the wedding is off?’’

‘‘You wish,’’ I said. ‘‘Thanks for the help. Oh, wait . . .’’

Her smile widened, revealing white, even teeth. My, she was in a good mood. She didn’t even bother with sharpening them to freak me out. ‘‘Did you need help, little sister? All you had to do was ask.’’

Like I’d had time to pretty-please. She tilted her head, still focused on me, and the hundreds of tiny, meticulous braids in her ebony hair shifted and hissed together, and the tiny beads clacked. Snakes and bones. I resisted the urge to shiver. I liked Rahel, and I thought she liked me, as much as that kind of thing could happen, but I was never really . . . sure. You never could be, with the Djinn.

And once again, she surprised me by saying, ‘‘What do you need?’’

Djinn didn’t offer. But she did, and I gaped at her for a long, unflattering few seconds before I got control and composed myself into a grateful expression. ‘‘If you could check and let me know if you find anybody wounded, anybody in trouble—’’

She flipped a negligent hand—perfectly manicured, with opal polish on the sharp nails—and misted away. I looked around. David hadn’t bothered to turn, and the humans in the store and on the street had been too preoccupied with their own trauma to recognize a truly strange thing when they saw it.

Two seconds later, more or less, a shadow darkened the doorway, and Lewis edged in past the sagging, glassless metal frame. He looked first to David and nodded; David had turned to face him, which said something about how Lewis rated on the whole threat-level scale as compared to Rahel. Not that Lewis was a threat, except in the sense that David probably never forgot (or could forget) that Lewis and I had once been . . . close. Not for ages, but still. It hadn’t been the kind of one-night stand you forget.

Even so, the two of them were friends, if cautious friends. And they respected one another.

‘‘Everybody okay here?’’ Lewis asked. I gave him a silent thumbs-up, not quite daring myself to speak. He looked—well, like Lewis. Drop him in the middle of Manhattan or in a forest in the Great Northwest, and he basically remained unchanged. Blue jeans, hiking boots that had seen miles of hard use, brown hair that shagged a bit too much, a three-day growth of beard on a long, angular face. Almond-shaped, secretive dark eyes. ‘‘Jo. We’re setting up a staging area. I’m on my way there now. If you’re done here—’’

‘‘Yeah, I’ll come with,’’ I said. I’d had a purse at some point, and I went back into the changing room to hunt for it. Good thing it was a hobo bag. I felt as if I matched it nicely, what with the rumpled clothes, sweat, and plaster dust.

When I turned, David was right behind me. He steadied me with big strong hands, looking into my eyes, and I couldn’t resist an audible gulp. He just had that effect on me.

‘‘Be careful,’’ he said, and kissed me. It was probably meant to be one of those gentle little pecks one partner gives another casually, but it turned into something else as our lips warmed and parted and made pledges to each other we couldn’t really keep at the moment.

When we parted, I felt significantly more alone, and I could see he did, too. David tapped me on the end of my nose with one finger, an unexpectedly human sort of gesture, and gave me a heartbreaking smile.

‘‘I almost lost you,’’ he said. ‘‘I hate it when that happens.’’

He’d really, truly lost me a couple of times. Once, he’d broken the laws of the Djinn and the universe itself to bring me back. I was well aware how much he’d risked for me, and how much he’d risk again if he had to.

I had to be more careful. Losing myself was one thing. Losing David was an unacceptable something else.

Cherise was still in the main room, hanging up gowns and dusting them off, shaking them out. The clerk, who looked pissed now rather than shattered, was muttering under her breath as she checked each dress for damage. I gave Cherise the high call-me sign, and she flashed me a grin and mouthed, You owe me lunch, bitch!

Cherise was the fastest rebounding human I’d ever seen. And that was only part of the reason I loved her like a sister.

Considering my actual bitchy, whiny, double-crossy, drug-addicted sister . . . better than my sister.

Lewis had a Hummer. I hated Hummers, but I had to admit, it suited him—and he was probably one of the few Hummer drivers who actually used it as God and Jeep intended, to be driven over hard terrain. It looked it, too—muddy, dented, cheerfully well used.

I came to a halt, staring up at the passenger door. ‘‘I swear,’’ I said, ‘‘if I split these jeans climbing into your damn truck—’’

‘‘Need a boost?’’ Lewis asked from behind me. And I had a terrifically tactile premonition of his big hands going around my waist and lifting me up. . . .

Bad for my discipline.

‘‘As if,’’ I said, and, with a mighty effort, levered myself up to the step and into the cab of the truck. It was like an eighteen-wheeler, only with better upholstery. As I got myself strapped in, Lewis swung in on the opposite side with the ease of long practice, and longer legs. I sniffed. The truck smelled like mud, leaves, wood smoke, and mildew. ‘‘You ever get this thing detailed?’’

‘‘What would be the point?’’ Lewis put it in gear, and the tank began to roll. He drove slowly, negotiating around stopped cars and people still standing in the middle of the street. Normal life was starting to reassert itself. As we got farther from the dress shop, I saw that the damage appeared limited to broken windows and overturned shelves in the stores. It looked like New Orleans after a really rocky night of Mardi Gras. ‘‘Okay,’’ Lewis said, drawing my attention, ‘‘so give me the bullet points.’’

I ticked them off, a finger at a time. ‘‘One, I was minding my own damn business, trying on wedding dresses when it hit. Two, I worked with Luis Rocha to try to figure out what was causing it and lessen the damage. Three—’’ Number three was my middle finger, unaccompanied by the other two.

‘‘Classy,’’ Lewis said. ‘‘I’m sure the Wardens Council would be impressed with the summary.’’

I repeated the gesture for the missing Wardens Council. Because I didn’t much like most of them, anyway.

‘‘When you and Rocha went up on the aetheric, what happened?’’

I described it for him—the red boil of forces out of control; Rocha diving down toward the source; me following; the ice black shard of—something—driven into the skin of the planet.

‘‘You touched it,’’ Lewis said, ‘‘and it knocked you away.’’

‘‘Like it was Sammy Sosa and I was the baseball.’’

‘‘Nice sports reference. You do that because I’m a guy?’’

‘‘No, I do it because I like baseball. Back to the subject. I couldn’t hold on to it, and if I couldn’t—’’ The only Warden walking around who was stronger than me was currently driving the Hummer. ‘‘You want to give it a shot?’’

‘‘I’d like to see it,’’ he said. We came to a stoplight; he turned right, found a deserted parking lot, and parked. ‘‘Show me.’’

I took his hand. It wasn’t strictly necessary, but it made me feel better. We launched up together, out of our bodies and into the aetheric, and I was as always interested to see that Lewis didn’t really look all that different on the astral planes than he did back home. Most people tended to reflect the person they wanted to be—prettier, fancier, stronger, taller, skinnier. Hell, our friend Paul manifested as a kind of King Arthur- era knight, although I was pretty sure he didn’t know that.

I had no idea how I looked up top. Did I want to ask? Yeah. But it just Wasn’t Done. Warden protocol.

The aetheric was abuzz with Warden activity. Lewis and I stayed out of it, floating high and looking down on the teeming, busy swirl of light that was the city of Fort Lauderdale. I pointed to a cluster of Warden activity, and tugged on his hand. Down we went, hurtling fast, flashing past startled colleagues I didn’t even vaguely recognize.

We headed down into the disturbance, which, though still roiling, was contained in a tight, glassy shell of power. It looked fragile—the shell, not the disturbance.

Lewis touched the surface, and it took on a milky swirl; then his hand passed through it. He went inside, pulling me after, and when I looked back I saw the bubble sealing itself behind us. Pressure closed in on me, real and intense, and I was glad I didn’t have blood vessels to rupture, because there would definitely be rupturing going on, followed by copious hemorrhaging.

Down we went, sliding through what felt like molten glass, and then I saw the black otherworldly glitter below and pulled on Lewis’s hand to let him know. He nodded, and we touched down on something that wasn’t ground, wasn’t surface, wasn’t anything really except a shadow of reality.

And there it was: the black thorn of glass, driven deep.

Lewis mimed that he was going to grab it. I shook my head. He mimed again. I shook my head again.

Fat lot of good that did. He grabbed it anyway.

Lewis held on for longer than I had—long enough that I began to think he was actually going to manage to yank the damn thing out—but then was thrown back, just as I’d been. Well, more violently. And he hit and bounced and drifted, seemingly unaware of anything until I grabbed on and began hauling him upward, away from that . . . thing. I couldn’t explain why, but it gave me the serious creeps. It glittered. It looked deadly sharp, no matter what angle you looked at it; there was a sense of purpose to it that made my skin crawl.

It meant to be there. And it meant to defend itself.

Lewis came awake again, thrashing, and broke free of my hold. I fumbled for him, but he was already swimming away from me, heading back down.

Crap. This wasn’t going well.

I couldn’t yell on the aetheric, but I damn well felt like shouting. I pushed after him, feeling sick from the pressure, and grabbed hold of his ankle. He shook free of my grip and kept going, arriving back in front of the black shard. He didn’t touch it this time; he just drifted slowly around it, taking in every detail.

And then he went up, into another aetheric plane higher than this one. I tried to follow, but I slammed into a glass ceiling that no amount of trying would get me past. I was anchored in the real world, and that line stretched only so far.

I had no idea how Lewis was able to do it, but then that was why he was at the top of the Warden food chain, and I wasn’t.

I waited impatiently, and in a matter of minutes he was back, falling back down. He grabbed my hand and we plunged through the aetheric levels, back down to the real world . . . into our bodies.

I coughed, gasped, and felt my head pound in time with my rapid heartbeat. I was covered in sticky, cold sweat. In fact, I felt downright sick.

So did Lewis, clearly. He looked just as bad as I felt, if not worse, and when I touched him, his skin was ice-cold.

Worse, his hands looked . . . burned, flushed bright red on the palms. He wiped them on his jeans in a convulsive movement, as if there were something horrible on them that he wanted to get off, but it was clear from the way he was shaking that it went deeper than surface slime.

‘‘Christ,’’ he said, and leaned his head back against the whiplash rest. ‘‘What the hell?’’

‘‘And here I was hoping you’d have some bright, easy answer,’’ I said. ‘‘Because I’ve got no clue, man. I’ve never seen anything like it before.’’

‘‘Have you shown it to David?’’

I hadn’t, and as he mentioned it, I wondered why I hadn’t. And why he hadn’t immediately sensed it. Strange.

‘‘No,’’ I said slowly. ‘‘And I—don’t think I should. Don’t you think?’’

Lewis nodded, not looking at me. His face had gone the color of old newspaper, and his lips looked gray. ‘‘I don’t, either,’’ he said softly. ‘‘Why is that?’’

‘‘What?’’

‘‘Why do we think that? Wouldn’t we usually ask the Djinn to take a look?’’

Usually, but this time . . . it just didn’t feel . . .

I had no answer. I just stared at him, then shrugged. Lewis took a deep breath, started the Hummer’s engine, and pulled back out onto the road.

The rest of the trip was spent in silence.

‘‘You’re kidding,’’ I said as Lewis negotiated the Hummer into a parking space built for a Hyundai. ‘‘We’re meeting at Denny’s? Was Chuck E. Cheese already booked for the president?’’

‘‘Emergency meeting,’’ he said. ‘‘This was the closest place we could find where we could have some privacy. Besides, I could use some food—how about you?’’

Well, I supposed I could use a Grand Slam or a Moon Over My Hammy or something.

Getting out of the truck in the narrow space between two other vehicles proved to require moves illegal in some Southern states. I managed not to scratch the other car, which was good, because it was a Ferrari. Bright red.

Denny’s had suffered little or no damage, as far as I could tell. Maybe they’d been outside of the shake zone. Plate glass windows were intact; diners still sat at tables; waitstaff circulated with trays and plates. Lewis and I walked in, out of the cloying humidity and into the frigid embrace of air-conditioning. I shivered a little—still fighting off the chill I’d gotten on the aetheric, I guessed.

Lewis led me back to a private room, one with sliding doors. Inside were four of the most powerful people in the Southeast, never mind Florida, and they were all digging in to breakfast.

I half recognized Luis Rocha from his signature on the aetheric; he was medium height, medium build, a bit broad in the shoulders. His skin was a dark, warm bronze color, and his eyes and hair were black. The hair was long, trailing down around his face and past his collar. His sleeveless gray muscle T-shirt revealed strong, defined arms inked up with flames and intimidation, but his smile was warm and rather sweet.

He was the only Earth Warden in the room. Two of the others—Sheryl Brewer and Nicholas Mancini— were both Weather Wardens, solid technicians, if not spectacular. Usually, trouble in Florida came from weather, after all—it wasn’t known as Hurricane Central for nothing.

The fourth was, of course, a Fire Warden. Nobody I wanted to see. She no doubt went with the red Ferrari out front, and her name was Janette de Winter. Good at her job, but my God, didn’t she know it. We exchanged narrow smiles. She was eating a delicate little fruit cocktail thingy. Even now, in the midst of crisis, she was perfectly put together—a tailored white suit, long tanned legs, open-toed pumps showing a perfect pedicure. Her makeup had that airbrushed quality of having been put on in layers, until she looked more like an animated magazine cover than a human being.

Maybe I was just feeling catty because I was sweaty, bruised, and covered in dust.

She raised an eyebrow at my appearance, looking coolly amused. Nope. It wasn’t because I looked like crap. I felt catty because I just plain disliked the woman.

Lewis and I took seats at the table. He slid in next to the Weather Wardens, leaving me stuck next to de Winter, but also next to Rocha, who winked at me as he shoveled syrup-drenched waffles into his mouth.

The server appeared, and Lewis and I gave our orders—I went for waffles, after seeing Rocha’s evident happiness with his. Also, just so I could see de Winter look pained. Waffles were clearly déclassé. Hooray for waffles.

‘‘First of all,’’ I said as the waitress closed our doors, ‘‘and just to get it out in the open, this is not my fault. Ask Lewis.’’

All eyes turned to him, if they weren’t already there. He sipped coffee and nodded. ‘‘She’s in the clear,’’ he said. ‘‘Whatever’s going on, I don’t think any Warden is behind it.’’

Luis Rocha put down his fork. ‘‘It wasn’t natural. No way in hell. Did you see it?’’

‘‘We saw,’’ Lewis said. ‘‘And I agree. It wasn’t natural. But it’s nothing a Warden could be powerful enough to do alone, either.’’

There was a moment of silence. Brewer said, softly, ‘‘Djinn?’’ It was the question we were all dreading and the reason, on some level, that Lewis and I hadn’t wanted to go to David about what we’d found. Because either he knew, which was bad, or he didn’t know, which was worse.

Either way, it put him, as the leader of the New Djinn, in an impossible position.

‘‘That’s certainly a possibility,’’ Lewis said. I knew what he was thinking: Ashan, and the other half of the Djinn. The old, arrogant half. But the truth was, I didn’t believe even for a second that Ashan would have driven that evil black thorn into the skin of Mother Earth. In a curious sort of way, he cared more for her than for himself, his people, and certainly humanity. He wouldn’t have done it, and he wouldn’t have allowed it to be done, not by any of his people. Or David’s, I thought suddenly. There’d have been war first.

Nothing scarier than a war between the Djinn.

Been there. Had scars.

‘‘Did you try to get it out?’’ Rocha asked Lewis. Lewis nodded and held up his hands. They were blistered. ‘‘Madre de Dios. That happened on the aetheric?’’

‘‘Yeah.’’ Lewis studied his palms with a frown. ‘‘Shouldn’t have.’’ I knew that self-healing was one of the toughest things for Earth Wardens, and so did Luis Rocha; he gestured to Lewis, and the two of them went off to a side table to sit close together, backs to us. Healing was, sometimes, kind of a private thing. Intimate. I sipped coffee and tried to ignore the fact that I’d been left on my other side with Janette de Winter, who was shooting me looks that could kill.

‘‘Any report on injuries?’’ I asked the table at large. They all glanced at each other, and then Sheryl Brewer took on the job.

‘‘Minor stuff so far,’’ she said. ‘‘We’ve got some superficial cuts and a couple of broken bones, but nobody dead or seriously injured. The damage was contained pretty quickly. Whatever you guys did—’’

‘‘Wasn’t much,’’ I said, ‘‘at least on my part. Rocha deserves the credit for containment, definitely.’’

Credit for more than containing the earthquake, apparently, because when he and Lewis rejoined us— coincidentally, the same time my waffles arrived, all fluffy and begging to be drowned in syrup—Lewis’s palms were smooth and blister-free again. ‘‘Surface damage,’’ he said to our questioning looks. ‘‘Looks like the thing’s hot.’’

‘‘Hot hot, or radioactive hot?’’ Brewer asked. It was an excellent question, and not the one Lewis had been hoping to answer.

‘‘Radioactive,’’ he said reluctantly. ‘‘We need to find this thing in the real world and contain it. Fast. Jo, I want you to talk to Paul, figure out if we’ve got anybody who specializes in radioactivity. We’re going to need somebody who knows what they’re getting into.’’

I nodded and dipped my first bite of waffle into syrup. It never made it to my mouth, because my phone rang. I stepped away from the table to answer it—it was a number that didn’t pop up with a name, but it was a New York City area code.

‘‘Ms. Baldwin? Phil Garrett here, New York Times. I hope you weren’t injured in the disturbance down there?’’

I was surprised first of all that he’d gotten a cell signal through; the Wardens had priority on connections in a crisis, along with various emergency services and governmental agencies, and I was pretty sure reporters weren’t on that list. After that surprise wore off, though, a big, ugly ball of black stress formed in my stomach where my waffle was going to go, and my knees went a little weak. I felt light in the head for a second, and braced myself against the wall. So not cut out for this.

‘‘No, Mr. Garrett, I’m fine,’’ I lied, and was pleased that my voice sounded steady and almost welcoming. ‘‘What can I do for you?’’

‘‘Well, I don’t know if you remember, but a couple of days ago I tried to reach you when you were on vacation. . . . I wanted to talk about the Wardens organization that you’re part of.’’

My heart trip-hammered, thanks to a sudden dump of adrenaline into my bloodstream. I supposed as an Earth Warden I ought to be able to take care of that stuff, but no, not happening. I struggled to keep my voice calm and light. ‘‘Mr. Garrett, I’m ashamed of you. A journalist, ending a sentence in a preposition?’’

He laughed. He sounded at ease. I supposed this was fun for him. All in a day’s work, terrifying the people on the other end of the phone. ‘‘Ms. Baldwin, if dozens of English teachers and journalism professors couldn’t beat it out of me, I think you’ve got a lost cause on your hands.’’ The amusement fell away like a discarded carnival mask. ‘‘Let’s talk about the Wardens. What would you say if I told you I had a credible source telling me that not only are the Wardens real, and acknowledged by every government on Earth, at least in secret, but they also function as a kind of shadow governmental agency? One that fundamentally affects and controls the lives of ordinary people?’’

‘‘I’d say you need to call Spielberg,’’ I said. ‘‘Bet it would make a great movie. Your source is a mental case, Mr. Garrett. If you actually have one. Which I notice you didn’t actually say. So, in theory, I didn’t actually answer the question, either.’’

He ignored that, although it at least deserved a chuckle, I thought. ‘‘This is serious stuff,’’ he said. ‘‘I take it seriously. I’m not convinced about all this talk of paranormal events and controlling the weather, but there’s got to be something behind it. Maybe you guys have technology we’re not aware of, something classified; we can get into the details later. What I want to know is the structure of your organization. I understand it’s worldwide. Do you report up through the U.S. government?’’

‘‘I’m not having this conversation.’’ I kept it simple this time. Garrett waited for me to blurt out something else; silence was pressure. I held on to my tongue and turned to see the entire table of Wardens watching me. Lewis put down his fork and got up, walking toward me. Whatever he saw in my expression, it couldn’t have been reassuring.

‘‘So the organization is independent of national interests? A shadow government of its own?’’

‘‘No!’’ One-word answers were going to land me in trouble; he’d box me neatly in. ‘‘I’m afraid I can’t confirm any information for you, Mr. Garrett. I really have no idea what kind of fiction you’ve been fed by your source, but—’’

‘‘I have videotape,’’ he said. ‘‘Television footage of a woman stopping a tornado in the Midwest last week. The more I searched, the more I came up with— strange events caught on tape here, surveillance camera video there. Put it all together, and it confirms everything my source has told me.’’

I took a deep breath, covered the speaker of the phone, and whispered to Lewis, ‘‘We’re screwed. The New York Times has the scent on the Wardens. I don’t think he’s going away. He sounds serious.’’

‘‘He’s looking for independent confirmation,’’ Lewis said. ‘‘Print reporters have to prove a story before publication. He’s fishing.’’

‘‘He’s got really big bait. Whale-sized.’’

Lewis shook his head. ‘‘Then we’d better handle it. If we don’t, he’ll catch us at a weak moment and get somebody to admit to something. Tell him we’ll meet with him.’’

‘‘We will?’’

‘‘Both of us,’’ he said, and grinned. ‘‘Tell him to pick a dark, smoky bar. They love that kind of spy shit. Besides, we need anonymity.’’

‘‘And scotch,’’ I muttered. ‘‘Lots of scotch.’’

Due to the excuse of the emergency, our appointment with Mr. Garrett was in a week, in New York City. He’d offered to come to Florida, but the last thing I wanted was for him to run into some busy, annoyed Warden who blurted out the truth just to get him off their backs. We were working here.

A week. I had a week, in conjunction with the other Wardens, to come up with a good fiction to feed the hungry reporter—one that would induce him to back off. Alternatively, we could go for the big hammer— get someone in the UN or the U.S. government to tell him to back off, but that would pretty much prove his whole case for him. I felt an itch between my shoulder blades, as though somebody had drawn target crosshairs right below my neck.

As it happened, there wasn’t a lot for the Wardens to do about the earthquake; on the surface, it quickly became one of those weird leading-this-hour stories on the major news networks for half a day, then slipped into obscurity. It was all over but for the insurance claims, which were going to be considerable. No fatalities, only light casualties.

We’d been damned lucky.

I never finished my breakfast. By the time I felt composed enough to eat, the waffles were cold, tasteless hunks of dough, and I needed to lose a couple of pounds, anyway. Considering how nervous I already felt about facing Phil Garrett in a week, that wasn’t going to be a challenge.

In the interest of having a comfortable place to work, I went home. Well . . . comfortable was a stretch right now, since half the complex had burned to the ground, and the half left standing had sustained smoke and water damage.

Curiously, my apartment was perfectly fine. Not a water stain, not a smoke smudge. It even smelled newly cleaned.

David had done me a favor. Again.

I had a secure phone setup in my office area, and VPN access to the Warden’s database systems back in New York; I logged in and began reviewing files. Earth Wardens who specialized in detecting and handling radioactivity were few and far between, and a lot of them were dead, missing, or had quit over the last few years. It had been tough on everybody. First we’d had internal strife within the organization, and then the Djinn had found a way to destroy the rule book that bound them to servitude, and launched their own high-body-count conflict.

We were lucky to have as many Wardens as we did, but we weren’t exactly spoiled for choice these days.

My best bet was a naval officer named Peterson, but he was on a carrier in the Persian Gulf. Second best choice was an ex-army guy named Silverton. No address listed, just a cell phone. He was shown as NFA—no fixed address. In other words, Ex-Sergeant Silverton was either homeless or liked living out of a suitcase and hotels. Since he could afford a cell phone, I supposed it was the latter.

The phone call with Silverton revealed nothing much, other than he was available and could be on the ground in Fort Lauderdale in eighteen hours. I authorized his travel—paperwork was going to survive the nuclear winter, along with cockroaches—and set about typing up my incident reports on the earthquake. When that got old—which I admit, it did quickly—I began surfing the Net for bridal information. I had a wedding to plan, after all. These things don’t run themselves, unless you’re so famous you can not only get your wedding services for free, but have people pay for the exclusive coverage.

Hmmm, now that was an idea. . . .

I was looking at wedding cakes when the phone rang—the secured line. Paul Giancarlo’s raspy, Jersey-spiced voice said, ‘‘We’ve got a fuckin’ note taking responsibility for the earthquake down there.’’

‘‘You’ve what?’’

‘‘Let me read it to you.’’

To the Wardens,

Your time is up. You’ve been given warnings, but you’ve ignored them. Either cut off contact with the Djinn, or face the consequences. Today’s earthquake in Fort Lauderdale is proof that we can do what we say. The Djinn must be stopped.

Paul paused and cleared his throat. ‘‘It’s signed, ‘the Sentinels.’ ’’

‘‘The Sentinels? You’re kidding me. Aren’t they some football team?’’ It was almost laughable. Almost. ‘‘Seriously, man, I’ve heard rumors, but—wasn’t it just talk?’’

‘‘Not according to this. Not according to what I’ve been hearing. Look, we’ve got ourselves a real, live splinter group,’’ he said. ‘‘One not afraid of using terror tactics.’’

‘‘And they sent a note? How . . . 1980s of them.’’

‘‘E-mail, actually. And yes, we tried tracing it. No luck. We put the NSA on it, but nobody seems real positive about the prospects. This thing in the ground you and Rocha saw, you think it’s some kind of device?’’

‘‘Maybe,’’ I said. ‘‘But . . . it didn’t seem man-made. Didn’t register like that on the aetheric at all. I don’t know. This is deeply weird, Paul.’’

‘‘Yeah, but what worries me a hell of a lot more is that what I’ve been hearing about the Sentinels makes sense.’’

‘‘I—what?’’

‘‘We all know the Djinn are unpredictable,’’ he said. ‘‘We’ve seen it, all right? So is it all that surprising that the ones who got hurt the most—the Wardens who survived that whole bloody mess of a civil war— want to see the Djinn stay out of the way?’’

I didn’t know quite what to say. ‘‘You sound like you agree with them.’’

‘‘Not entirely,’’ he said, which wasn’t, I noticed, exactly a denial. ‘‘But I don’t like the idea of putting our people at risk for no good reason, either. Maybe the Sentinels have the right idea, wrong tactics.’’

‘‘You’re telling me you don’t trust David?’’

‘‘Kid—,’’ Paul sighed. ‘‘I can’t have this conversation with you. You’re not exactly rational on the subject. But I was in the New York offices that day. I saw what happens when the Djinn go off the leash. I fought for my life; I saw friends ripped apart in front of me. You got any idea what kind of impression that makes?’’

I couldn’t think of any way to respond to that. He’d caught me off guard. I knew that Paul still had bitterness about the Djinn revolt, and he was right; bad things had happened, mostly to Wardens. But he was discounting—or ignoring—all the thousands of years of suffering the Djinn had endured on their side.

Most Wardens wanted to ignore that.

‘‘Right, moving on,’’ Paul said into the silence. ‘‘I’m getting the team together here for analysis. We’re going to count heads, see who’s not answering the pings for roll call. I want a line on anybody who’s missing, just in case. I don’t suspect my own, but it’s useful knowing if somebody’s in trouble.’’

That, I thought, would be a full-time job. Following the Djinn problems of the past year, a lot of Wardens had simply . . . vanished. Most of them were dead, killed in the fighting, but some had slipped away, knowing that we didn’t have time to track down every name on the list. It’d take years to round up any rogue agents out there.

‘‘I’m pulling in Silverton,’’ I said. ‘‘He’s our best option for handling this thing, if it’s radioactive. If I need anybody else, I’ll let you know.’’

‘‘Yeah, you do that. And kid?’’

‘‘Yeah, Paul?’’

‘‘You sure about this wedding thing? Really sure?’’

I knew that Paul, once upon a time, had harbored ambitions in the direction of me in his bed, and I’d been kind of willing to contemplate it. But all that had changed, and he was gentleman enough to acknowledge it. Under the exterior of a badass Mafia scion beat the heart of a very sweet man—if you could overlook all the cursing.

‘‘I’m sure,’’ I said softly. ‘‘I love him, Paul.’’

He didn’t sound impressed. ‘‘You know what he is.’’

There it was again, that thread of darkness, that almost-prejudice. ‘‘Yes, I know what he is. He’s someone who’s saved my life more times than I can count. He’s someone who’s put his own life on the line not just for me but for the Wardens and all of humanity. I know exactly what he is. And who he is.’’

Awkward silence, and then, ‘‘Fuck, babe, I’ve gotta run. We’re good, right?’’

‘‘We’re good,’’ I said. ‘‘Kisses.’’

I said it to a humming disconnected signal. Paul was already gone, off to the next crisis. I finished up at my desk, closed the laptop, and sat back to think.

The Sentinels. That had an amateurish ring to it, but who was I to judge? Lewis had started the Ma’at, a separate Warden-like organization, when he’d been just out of college, and that had turned out to be a useful thing—the Ma’at took in people without enough talent to be Wardens, but more than the average human, and paired them up with Djinn volunteers. They worked on the theory of additive power— forming chains of people and Djinn in order to amplify and direct power that otherwise wouldn’t be strong enough to make a difference.

The Sentinels didn’t sound like they had a new idea, just a difference of political opinion. They were anti-Djinn. Well, that shouldn’t have come as a shock; enough Wardens had been hurt or killed in the troubles with the Djinn to make some kind of backlash inevitable. I just hadn’t thought it would be so fast, or so decisive. I’d never thought that it would come down to reasonable, responsible people doing something like causing unnecessary loss of life.

One thing was certain: Whether it was a good idea or not for David to be involved in this investigation about the black knife, it was going to have to happen. I needed him to know about the anti-Djinn movement, and I needed a Djinn to try to analyze the history of the black knife and tell me where it came from, who made it, who planted it, and how to remove it.

It was logical, all right.

I just had a sinking feeling that it was exactly the wrong thing to do.

Gale Force