Gale Force

wished me well and departed, and Zenaya left without a backward glance.

Lewis stayed. He still wouldn’t look at me. Out of sheer stubbornness, I refused to speak first. I sipped water and tugged irritably at my drying hair, trying to get it to stop poodle-curling around my face. I used to have straight hair. I liked my old straight hair.

When I finally turned my attention back to my guest, Lewis was staring at me, and what was in his eyes wasn’t anger at all. Or even disappointment. It was something neither one of us could ever really acknowledge, and it was big and powerful and breathtaking.

He cleared his throat and looked down, and said, “You scared the shit out of me.”

“Yeah. Sorry, I had no idea it was going to be that dangerous, or I’d have done more, taken better precautions—”

He waved that aside. “Silverton was your expert; you were listening to him. So if there’s blame, it’s his, and he’s beyond all that now, poor bastard. Even if you’d pulled back as soon as you found the dead Djinn, it would have been too late to keep you from getting sick. This stuff is badly toxic. We couldn’t have left it there. As it is, we’ve had to inform NEST, and they’re following up with radiation treatments for anyone who reports in sick to the hospitals.” NEST was the Nuclear Emergency Support Team, out of Homeland Security. I didn’t want to imagine how that conversation had gone.

“But by taking it out of the Djinn’s body—”

“The Djinn’s body must have been containing it, to a certain extent. You exposed yourselves to a massive dose,” he said. “Silverton more than you, because he actually touched it, even with protective gloves.”

It could have just as easily been me. Maybe Silverton had known the risks when he’d reached into that cavity to grab the thing; maybe he’d just been unlucky. No way to know. I’d come close to dying lots of times—I’d actually gone over the edge, once or twice—but this felt different.

This left me shaky and deeply unsettled.

“Is it true? That the Djinn really can’t sense it at all?”

“The Djinn think we’re all suffering from some kind of mass hallucination,” Lewis said. “David’s being kind about it, but it’s a blind spot for them. A big one. I don’t know how we’re going to convince them.”

“If me lying in this hospital bed doesn’t—” I felt light-headed, short of breath. “David has to believe me. He has to.”

Lewis gazed at me, expressionless. “I hope he does,” he finally said. He leaned over and kissed me chastely on the forehead. “About your wedding—”

Oh, man. I’d known we’d have to have this conversation sometime, but I really wasn’t ready for it. “Lewis, I’m sorry—”

“Don’t,” he said. “Trust me. It won’t make things any better. I’m okay. And I’m happy for you. I’m just worried. This thing—the Sentinels. They already didn’t like you. I can’t imagine they’ll be sending any congratulations about the ultimate mixed marriage.”

He left before I could say anything else.

I closed my eyes and floated in a morphine cloud, trying to figure out who, outside of the Djinn, could create the black shard that I’d seen. Who was capable of that kind of lethal, subtle action?

I didn’t know.

I had dreams of distorted, screaming Djinn, of people being destroyed one by one, of the city in flames, of myself, walking through the rubble in a beautiful, perfect wedding gown.

Of David lying in the street, dead, with a black shard driven entirely through his body.

I woke up shaking.

Chapter Four

So . . . I healed.

David came to visit, of course, and he stayed as long as his duties would allow—longer than he should have, by the expressions of the Djinn sent to remind him of other duties at hand. But despite what I’d confidently said to Lewis, I could tell that David didn’t wholly believe me about the black shard, or the dead Djinn. He couldn’t. There was some kind of selective blindness that he couldn’t control, and that was weird and scary. It didn’t matter, though. The Wardens figured it out without the help of the Djinn.

Somehow—I don’t know how—Lewis and a few other top-level Wardens managed to remove the black shard and take it to a containment facility, where experts, brought in under high-level security clearances, agreed that in fact it was, as Silverton had said, antimatter. Antimatter in some kind of stabilizing matrix. When I asked where the stuff was, and how it was being contained, I was told it was need-to-know, and I didn’t. Frankly, I was a little bit relieved. I was busy recovering, trying to get my strength back. My muscles seemed loose and weak, and once the doctors let me out of bed I spent my time mostly in the physical therapy room, working hard to get myself back in shape again. The pain went away. After a few weeks of natural healing, they tried Earth Wardens on me again, and this time, it worked; burns and scars smoothed out and disappeared, and I was left with glossy skin badly in need of a tanning session.

Of course, I could always count on Cherise for that kind of therapy. She showed up one day toting a blue beach bag and told me to get dressed. Undressed was more to the point. She’d brought my favorite swimsuit, a skimpy little turquoise number that showed off as much skin as the law allowed. I changed, assuming we were going to the hydro pool for some swim therapy, but instead, she got me in the elevator, stripped off her white camp shirt and shorts, and revealed her own bathing suit choice: even less than I had on, though technically I supposed it could be considered clothing. It was a couple of scraps of tangerine orange, and she looked spectacular in it.

“Tell me we’re not going to the cafeteria,” I said. “They’re having meat loaf. Again.” Cherise winked at me and pressed the button for the roof. It was restricted access, but she had a key card, which she used with the kind of triumphant flourish usually reserved for magicians with hat-dwelling rabbits.

“I know you’re not up to a trip to the beach,” she said, “so we brought the beach to you.”

They really had. It wasn’t just Cherise; it was Kevin—her sometimes boyfriend, despite a five-year age difference—a Fire Warden with a deep-seated attitude problem. He was sitting in the shade of a beach umbrella, wearing camouflage baggy shorts and a death’s head muscle T-shirt. He was, at eighteen and change, growing into his height; he was looking less like the underfed, awkward teen I’d first met, and more like the tall, strong man he would become.

Across from him sat Lewis, wearing khaki shorts and a ratty T-shirt advertising that Virginia was the place for lovers. They were both wearing slick sunglasses,and I had to admit, they looked pleased with themselves.

“Hey,” Kevin said. Too cool for any kind of more enthusiastic greeting. I nodded back. We kept our dignity. “Heard you screwed up. Way to go.”

“Isn’t this great?” Cherise didn’t much care about things like dignity, if they got in the way of enthusiasm, but then, that was something I loved about her. Something I suspected Kevin loved, too. “Check it out, we’ve even got waves!”

They’d outdone themselves. God only knew how they’d managed it, but they’d cordoned off part of the roof and put up patio tables, beach umbrellas, spread sand several inches deep, and put in a pool. Not a big one—more of a landscaping kind of thing—but sure enough, Lewis obligingly generated some rolling miniature surf. It was very cute.

There were two lounge chairs. I settled myself on one, already relaxing in the warm glow of the afternoon sun, and stretched my long legs out as Cherise kissed Kevin and took the other lounger. We debated the merits of coconut-scented oils over banana sunscreens. I went with sunscreen, figuring that I’d had enough dangerous radiation for a lifetime.

As I rubbed it into my legs, a male hand reached over my shoulder and took the bottle away. I looked up, pulled down my sunglasses, and squinted.

David gave me a slow, wicked smile. “I’ll do it,” he said. “Lie still.”

I licked my lips, tasted sweat, and returned his smile. I settled back against the cushions. David came around to the side of the lounge chair, perched on the edge, and squeezed some sunscreen out into his palms.