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.