Firestorm

for the supposedly simple solution.

Paul had given up, evidently. He was sitting whey-faced in a chair in the North America conference room, eyes shut. Marion was vainly shouting for order, but since she was in a wheelchair, it was hard for her to make an impression.

I went for the floor show.

I levitated myself four feet up off the stained carpet, dangerously close to the ceiling, reached deep for power, and felt it respond to me with an ease and warmth I hadn't felt in… a very long time. Since before my battle with Bad Bob Biringanine, in fact.

I let the power crackle around me, building up in potential energy in the air, and most of those around me noticed and backed off.

Making light—cold light, light without heat—is the biggest trick in the book when it comes to my variety of powers. Light has heat as a natural by-product of the energy release that creates it, so I had to balance the radiation with rapid dispersal throughout a complicated matrix of atoms.

I got brighter, and still brighter, until I was glowing like a girl-shaped chandelier, hovering in the hallway. Conversation stopped. In the brilliant white light, they all looked stark and surprised, and to a Warden they flinched when I released a pulse of energy that flared out in a circle like a strobe going off.

I let the glow die down slowly and touched my feet back on the carpet.

'Right,' I said. 'Let's quit freaking and start working, all right?'

Nobody spoke. Dozens of faces, and they were all turned to me—young Wardens barely out of college, old gray-haired ones who'd been handling the business of earth and fire and weather for three-quarters of their long lives. They were tough, or they were damn lucky, every single one of them.

And most important, they were what we had.

I pointed to the Warden who'd been arguing against opening the bottles—a slender little African American guy, about thirty, with a receding hairline and bookish wire-rimmed spectacles. 'What's your name?' I asked. He didn't look at all familiar.

'Will,' he said. 'William Sebhatu.'

'Will, I'm putting you in charge of the Djinn issue,' I said. 'You need to get every single Djinn bottle, empty or sealed, make an inventory, and put everything in the vault. And then you seal the vault and you make damn sure that nobody, and I mean nobody, opens up any bottles. Got it?'

'Wait a minute!' That was Will's debating opponent, a big-boned woman with a horse face and bitter-almond eyes. 'You can't just make a decision like that! Who the hell do you think you are? You're not even a Warden anymore!' I remembered her. Emily, a double threat—an Earth and Fire Warden out of Canada. She was blunt, but she was good at her job; she also had a reputation for being pushy.

'Back off,' Paul said wearily from his chair in the conference room. His voice echoed through the silence. 'She's one of us. Hell, she may be the only one who knows enough to get us through the day.' He sounded defeated. I didn't care for that. I hadn't meant to take away his authority—at least, not permanently—but Paul wasn't acting like a guy who could shoulder the burden anymore. 'Jo, do your stuff.'

'Okay,' I said. I turned back to the woman, who was still giving me the fish eye. 'Emily, you think you can make this work because you think you're smarter than the Djinn, or faster, or more powerful. You can't. You all need to unlearn what you know about the Djinn. They're not subservient. They're not stupid. And they're not ours, not anymore.'

The assembled Wardens were whispering to each other. Emily was staring at me. So was Will. I heard my name being passed around, in varying degrees of incredulity. I thought she was dead, someone said, just a little too loudly for comfort.

'This is stupid,' Emily finally said. 'Paul, I thought she was out of the Wardens. How does she know anything?'

'She knows because she was with the Djinn when it happened,' Marion said, and rolled closer with a brisk snap of her wrists. 'Right?'

I nodded. 'I saw it happen. We've lost control, and as far as I know, we've lost it for good. We need to face that and figure out how to go forward.'

'Forward?' somebody in the crowd yelped. 'You've got to be kidding. We need the Djinn!'

'No, we don't,' another person countered sharply. 'I barely escaped, and only because mine got distracted. Whatever's happening, we can't risk involvement with the Djinn.'

'Exactly,' I said. 'We have to rely on ourselves, and each other. Will? You up for the job?'

He swallowed hard and nodded. 'I'll get started.'

'Get some people to help you. Draft them if you have to, and don't be afraid to use Paul's name as a big stick.' I waited for some confirmation from Paul; he waved a hand vaguely. I turned to Emily. 'You're not going to give this guy any shit, right?'

She was silent for a few seconds, looking at me, then shrugged. 'Not right now. You're right. We need to stop the bleeding, and save the surgery for later.'

I was glad Emily let me push it through, because she'd be a tough opponent. Nothing weak about her, and we needed her on our side.

There was only one side, right now. The side of survival.

I faced a crowd of people, and everybody looked tired and harassed and worried. Not the faces of winners. They looked… lost.

'All right,' I said. 'Everybody, listen up. We've taken some serious hits, and there's no question, things are desperate. But we are Wardens. Wardens don't run, and they don't abandon their responsibilities. There are six billion people on this planet, and we stand up for them. We need to be strong, focused, and we need to be united. No more backbiting, politics, or ambition. Understood?'

'Oh, come on! Look around you. It's impossible,' someone in the crowd complained. I fixed that area with a stare that, from the way those in its way quailed, might have been Djinn-strength.

'I was just hanging in midair glowing like a UFO,' I said. 'Don't tell me about impossible. We're Wardens.'

A ripple of laughter. Some of the tension fled from their faces, and there were a few nods.

'I need a volunteer to handle cleanup crew,' I continued. 'Earth Wardens, probably, maybe a couple of Fire Wardens. Get this place back in operation. Everybody else, pick a conference room and get to work triaging the crisis information. Go.'

And amazingly, after a scant second, Emily raised her hand and bellowed, 'Right! I need two Earth and one Fire for cleanup!' and the rest of them began milling around and filtering into conference rooms.

They were actually listening to me.

I looked at Marion, who was sitting, hands folded in her lap. She inclined her head, very slightly. Under the bruises, she was smiling.

I said, 'Somebody had to.'

'You have a gift for it,' she countered. We both looked at Paul.

He was gone. Sometime during my little speech, he'd walked away. I felt a little stab of regret and worry. I'd taken away Paul's authority again, maybe for good this time, and that was not only unkind, but also deeply unwise.

'Excuse me?' someone asked from behind me. 'Warden Baldwin?'

I turned to find a petite blond woman standing there. I didn't know her, but she was different from the others in the hallway. There was no worry in her expression, and no exhaustion. Perky, which just seemed strange. There was something else, though, that sent a ripple of unease up my back that exploded in an ice-cold shudder on the back of my neck.

The woman was just… wrong.

'Jo!' Marion's warning shout came a second too late.

The woman had a gun. Must have taken it off one of the guards. Nathan? Janet? One of the many who'd died? And now she raised it and pointed it straight at me. I froze, unbreathing. The muzzle of that damn pistol looked big enough to swallow the sun.

And she fired.