Firestorm

'Shit! What the hell are you doing?' I yelled, and without even thinking about it, felt blindly for the structure of the fire. Delicate as glass, strong as steel, but fragile.

I put it out. Not even a wisp of smoke to show it ever existed.

I rounded on Lewis, shocked and furious; he had his arms crossed, leaning back against the desk, and he was… grinning.

'What the hell was that?' I demanded.

For answer, he extended his hand again and called another tongue of flame. 'Put it out,' he said.

'You put it out! This is a nonsmoking building!'

'You're missing my point.'

'No, I'm not! You're trying to make me—' I stuttered to a stop, because I realized what he was trying to do. Or, more accurately, trying to demonstrate. Hey, I never said I wasn't a little thick. 'Oh.'

I extended my hand, cupped it over his, and felt the fire's warmth spill over me. Fire is a kind of fluid, when all is said and done: plasma dynamics. It flowed over my skin, persistent and gentle, and when I opened my palm, it was burning there. A steady tongue of flame like a pilot light, red and gold and blue.

I closed my fist around it and put it out, then opened my fingers again and called fire.

It came without even a hesitation, a flutter and a sense of pleasant warmth on my skin. I stared at it, fascinated, letting it drip from one finger to another, then rolling it back up to my palm.

'See?' he asked. He sounded smug about it. 'You're Water and Fire. Interesting combination. Pretty rare, too, there's been, what? Six or seven in recent history?'

I looked up at him. 'But I never had any power over fire. Never. They tested me.'

'Was that before you died and got yourself reborn?'

I'd died in a fire, and David had brought me back, as a Djinn. Then Patrick and his lover Sara had given their immortal lives to make me human again, and in his youth, Patrick had been… a Fire Warden.

I could feel it coursing through me now, a kind of awareness that I'd never noticed before—a sense of the electricity inside the walls, like bright glittering lines. Of static hovering like glitter in the air. Of the aura surrounding Lewis himself, glorious as a rainbow.

I blinked, and it was gone. Good. I wasn't sure I wanted to live in a world that distracting full-time. 'But—why now? I didn't feel this before—?'

'Maybe it took some time to build the power channels.' He said. 'Or maybe something else has shifted. Hell, Jo, you just gave birth to a Djinn. Who knows what's changed inside you?'

Queasy thought. 'Um, one little problem. I don't have any formal instruction for fire powers.'

'Consider it on-the-job training. And don't get cocky. You still need a third black belt to land yourself a shot at my title.'

I laughed, and in the next blink, the glitter was back in the world. I stared, mesmerized by his glow, by the revealed glory of the world around me. Beautiful and complex as a machine made of crystal. Was this how Fire Wardens saw everything? No wonder they always looked spaced out…

'Jo,' he said, and drew my eyes back into focus. 'We're running out of time.'

I sobered up quickly. 'We are,' I agreed. 'Not to mention manpower. We've lost who-knows-how-many Wardens, and effectively all the Djinn. I hope you're right that we're getting stronger, because we need it—'

'Damn straight,' said a weary voice from the doorway. I turned to see Paul standing there. He walked in and slumped with a sigh in the nearest unsplintered chair, visibly gathering strength to speak. Dirty pale. 'Lewis.'

Lewis nodded silently, clearly worried at Paul's state. 'Do you want me to—?'

Paul waved it aside irritably. 'I'll live, and you've got better things to do with your power than heal my boo- boos. Listen, kids, we need to decide some things.'

Lewis glanced at me, then at Paul. 'Maybe this isn't the best time.'

'It's the only time,' Paul sighed.

'You need rest—'

'No. I need to retire,' Paul said bluntly. 'The thing is, I can't handle this anymore. It's out of control, and I'm not the guy for the job. I couldn't get their attention out there earlier, Jo, and you know it. You did.'

'Not me,' I replied, and held up my hands to push the implied offer back his direction. 'I can't stay. David gave me some ideas on how we might be able to solve this without a lot of further bloodshed, but I need to do it alone.'

'Yeah? How do you know you can trust him?' Paul demanded.

I met his eyes and held them. 'I know. And I have a plan, which is more than anybody else has right now.' Well, more or less. At least, I had a place to start. Didn't seem to be the moment to worry him with details, frankly.

Paul sighed and turned his gaze to Lewis, who straightened up fast. 'Oh, no,' Lewis said. 'I'm not going to take command. That's your job.'

'Hell, kid, I inherited the damn job, and I never wanted it in the first place. I'm a field guy. Now I'm a field guy treading water. I want you to take it, Lewis. I need you to take it. You're the one guy everybody trusts around here, because you're the one guy who walked away from all this rather than play the games.'

'He's right,' I said quietly. 'It should be you.' I bit my lip, because it felt like being a traitor to say so—a traitor to Paul, who deserved my support even if he didn't want it, and a traitor to Lewis, who patently didn't want the responsibility. Especially not now. 'This is what you were born to do, Lewis. We all knew it, right from the start. And—there might be something else.'

'What?' That had both of them looking at me. Paul looked as if he really couldn't stand another dangerous surprise.

'David once told me that Jonathan used to be like you, Lewis. He had all three powers. And in some way, he was more… connected. To the Earth. So maybe you can work on that angle.'

Paul nodded. 'The sooner the better. If the Earth wakes up, takes a good hard look at what we've been doing to her this last ten thousand years without anybody to do some explaining, there won't be enough left of us to form a decent fossil record.'

'Who says she won't like us?' Lewis murmured.

Paul raised his eyebrows. 'Do you like us?'

'Some of us are pretty winsome.' I could have sworn Lewis looked toward me, under those long lashes.

'Wow, thanks for the compliment,' I shot back, largely sarcastically. He gave me a look that meant he was getting a particularly interesting mental picture, probably nothing suitable for public consumption. He shook it off with a rueful smile.

'Where are you going?' Lewis asked, back on track again.

'Seacasket.'

'Where the fuck is Seacasket?' Paul cut in, eyes closed. 'Sounds depressing.'

'It was someplace I was sent when I was a Djinn.'

'When Yvette and Kevin had you?' That had caught Lewis off guard. 'That business with Yvette wasn't my finest hour, sorry. I got a little distracted—'

'Distracted?' I let out a laugh that really wasn't much amused. 'The way I remember it, you were pretty focused, Lewis. Somewhere south of your belt buckle.'

'Yeah, thanks for the memories.' He had the grace to look embarrassed. 'Anyway, I was pretty much out of commission for most of that. You want to tell us about Seacasket?'

Not really. I sat and crossed my legs, then my arms. Defensive body language. Remembering Yvette gave me a seriously sick feeling in the pit of my stomach, because I couldn't think about her slinky, skanky sexiness without also remembering how she'd looked at the end, when Jonathan had remorselessly carried out her stepson's orders and crushed her skull.

'Okay.' I sucked in a deep breath. 'Kevin, Yvette's stepson, was my master while I was a Djinn. She didn't want me. She wanted David. She had a whole kinky-sex-and-bondage thing going for him.'

'And?'

'And what?'

'Seacasket,' Lewis prompted.