Windfall

“Well, you know, I gave him my phone number and—”

“Did you tell Eamon where I live?”

She pulled her lovely, ripe lips into a stubborn line and started attacking the onion. “I live here, too,” she said defensively.

“Wrong. You’re staying here, and Jesus, Sarah, you barely unpacked and you’re already giving out my home address to guys you meet at the mall… !”

I felt warmth behind me, and Lewis’s hand fell on my shoulder. “Sorry. Just thought I’d say ‘hi,’ and sorry, I’m not Eamon… Who’s Eamon?”

“Sarah’s mall pickup.” I sighed. “Sarah, meet Lewis. Old friend from college.”

She’d stopped chopping, instantly, and I could see her snapshotting him. Cute, she was probably thinking. But way too flannel. And she was right. Lewis was all about the old blue jeans and worn checked shirts. His hair was getting too long again, curling halfway down his neck, and there were smile lines around his eyes and mouth. I knew for certain that he’d never in his life owned a suit, and never would. He’d never have a hefty bank balance, either. Not Sarah’s type.

She smiled impartially at him. Sarah’s version of Hi, how are you, now go away.

I could see she was disappointed that Eamon hadn’t come calling to whisk her off to an evening of prime rib and a selection of stout British ales.

“We’re making Mexican food,” I said. “You’re staying, right?”

“Sure.” Lewis looked around. “Nice place, Jo. Different.”

“Thrift store,” I said, straight-faced. “Kind of like my life right now.”

“Could be worse.” Didn’t I know it. His gaze brushed mine, warm and full of concern. “I need to talk to you for a few minutes. Somewhere private?”

Which made all of my warm fuzzies curl up and die. I nodded silently and led the way out into the living room, then hesitated and took him into the bedroom and closed the door. The bed was still unmade. In normal times, Lewis might have made a sly little joke out of it, but he just sat down on the edge of the bed, looking at me, hands clasped loosely between his knees. He was a lanky thing, all awkward angles that somehow always looked weirdly graceful.

It made me feel… well. I’d missed him.

“Where’s David?” he asked.

“Let’s change the subject,” I answered. Not angrily, just with finality. The last time we’d had dealings, he’d been in a scheme to separate me from David, and I wasn’t having any of that, ever again. Lewis was probably the only Warden who knew I still had him, and that made me a little bit wary of the whole reunion vibe.

“You don’t want to talk about it, fine. I respect that.” Lewis rubbed the pads of his thumbs together and looked down at the carpet. “I’m only asking because I want to be sure you have… protection. People are asking questions about you.”

“People?”

“The wrong people. There’s a big discussion going on, and a pretty sizeable number are yelling about how you shouldn’t have been let out of the Association without—” He didn’t say the words being neutered, but that was pretty much what we both knew he meant. “—making sure you don’t continue to use your powers. They’re pointing to some anomalies down here as proof you’re still playing Warden without a license.”

That… wasn’t good. And it explained my visit from the Three Amigos yesterday morning. “Have you told them I’m not? That I’m abiding by the agreement?”

“I’m not telling them anything.” Lewis shook his head slowly. “Look, I’m in the Wardens now, but I’m not really… in the Wardens. You know what I mean. Whatever I have to say, it’s not likely to help you. They respect me. They don’t like me, and trust doesn’t enter into it.”

I did know. Lewis had spent a lot of years on the outside, making himself thoroughly lost from the Wardens, including me. A substantial number of Wardens probably didn’t want him around at all, and an even greater number thought he was useful but didn’t trust a thing he had to say.

“Then what’s Paul saying?” Paul Giancarlo, current acting National Warden, was a friend, too. But Paul had a streak of ruthlessness about a mile wide, and friendship wasn’t going to alter that one bit. Our friendship had taken some pretty good hits in the past few months, too. I wasn’t sure I could ever really forgive him for what he’d done to me in Nevada.

It’s one thing to put me in danger. It was quite another to blackmail me with the life of my lover. Not a thing friends did.

“He’s been trying to keep things reasonable.” Lewis looked up at me with those warm, compassionate eyes. “I’m just guessing on some of this, but from the level of conversation going on, somebody has information, and it may not be in your favor. It might be smart for you to lose yourself for a while. Just take David and go someplace new.”

“Just pick up and go?”

He nodded. He’d abandoned the Wardens early, and it had taken them years to find him. Actually, it wasn’t so much them finding him as me finding him, and he’d let himself be talked into staying. More or less. I suspected some days a lot less. “I think it would be a good idea for you to not present them with such an easy target right now. There’s too much going wrong, and nobody to blame for it. Too few Djinn, the Wardens are falling apart after that screwup at the UN Building—it’s a mess. Paul’s doing everything he can to hold things together, but honestly, Jo, I think they’re starting to look for people to scapegoat. You’re an obvious choice.”

“I haven’t done a damn thing.”

“I know. I’ve been watching.”

“What?” I took a couple of steps toward him, then stopped. “Want to rephrase that in some way that doesn’t sound, oh, creepy and stalkerish?”

“I wish I could, but it is what it is. Paul sent me. He wanted to be sure there was no truth to what was being said about you.”

“I haven’t been manipulating the weather!”

He nodded. “I know that. But somebody around here has been. Subtle, mostly, but that Tropical Storm Walter thing was a big screwup. You must have noticed—” He gestured at the windows, where rain lashed and lightning flashed. “I’m just saying that in the absence of a suspect, you’re looking awfully tempting. Whatever I say.”

“But you’ll tell them—”

“Yes. And do you really think they’ll care, in the end? Jo, I’m not exactly the fair-haired boy around there anymore. Besides, we have… history. It’s not a secret.”

He had a point. A kind of scary one, actually. “So what do I do?”

“Like I said, leave,” he said. “Or join the Ma’at. They can protect you.” The Ma’at were his own creation, a kind of low-wattage version of the Wardens—there weren’t any true powers in it, except for Lewis himself, and one or two others. Its strength had to do with its ability to negate power, not generate it. It was designed to restore balances that the Wardens—wittingly or unwittingly—had knocked out of whack.

Useful suggestions. However, I wasn’t generally fond of them, either. Wardens, Ma’at… none of them had gone out of their way to make sure I was taken care of, in the end.

Everybody had their own agendas. I’d quit because I was sick of being at the mercy of everyone else’s priorities but my own.

Speaking of that, Lewis was right. I should just go my own way. I should toss stuff in a suitcase, leave Sarah the keys to the apartment, and head out of town, David in the passenger seat and the road in front of me. But God, how long had I been doing that? Since the night that Bad Bob and I had fought, and I’d started running, I hadn’t had a home or a place in the world, and I was tired. I wanted… I wanted to rest.

I wanted to belong again, and to be part of the world.

“I’m staying,” I said softly. “I’ll be careful, okay? But I’m staying. I don’t want to live like that for the rest of my life, looking over my shoulder.”

Lewis reached out and took my hand in his. Big hands, scarred and a little rough in places. Strong fingers and