Thin Air

"How are you?" he asked.



"Sore," I said. "Tired. Fine."



He looked at me, and I was sure he was examining me in more than the normal way. After a few seconds he gave me a grudging nod. "You look all right," he said. "But, Jo, understand: What happened with you yesterday, that wasn't natural. It wasn't right. You're a Weather and Fire Warden. You are not an Earth Warden. There's only one person alive right now with all three powers, and that's me."



"Is that what this is about? You're jealous?"



He barked out a laugh that hung white in the still air. "No. God, no. If you were truly a triple-threat Warden, I'd be completely relieved. But, Jo, I don't see it. I don't see it in you today, and I never saw it in you before. So what the hell happened? After...You seemed..." He looked honestly uncertain how to phrase it. I saved him the trouble.



"Orgasmic? Yeah. Kinda." He looked away. "Not normal, huh?"



"There's no normal when you talk about a thing like this, Jo. Did you access Cherise's memories?"



I nodded.



"Did they make sense to you?"



"At first. It got more confusing the further I went."



"Because your brain was overstimulated," he said. "Which in turn must have triggered the-"



"Big O," I supplied. "Honestly, Lewis, you're not twelve; you can say what you mean. Come on!"



He ignored that. "That means you were channeling power through neural paths that normally carry sexual energy," he said, half to himself. "Which would fit, because some of the Earth Wardens are wired that way, too. But why can't I see it now? Your aura is just showing normal strength, in the normal range for you. Weather and Fire, and the Fire's not that strong."



I shrugged. "Does it matter?"



"It might, yeah."



"Does it matter enough to freeze our asses off talking about it right now?" I demanded. "Because in case you hadn't noticed, you're shivering again."



"Am I?" He looked honestly surprised, and reached into the tent to grab his coat, which he draped around his shoulders. "There. Happy?"



"Thrilled, man."



Lewis quickly moved on to other, more practical things, like breaking camp, which Cherise and I didn't do all that efficiently, and then leading us on the second half of the Winter Wonderland Death March. Cherise asked questions, some of which I could answer and a lot of which I couldn't. Lewis rescued me on the biggest one, which had to do with what had happened to Cherise and Kevin.



"You remember being sent out by the Wardens," he said. "To fight the fire in California?"



"Yeah." Cherise was flushed and breathless, but on her it looked good. Lewis wasn't exactly immune to it, either, even if it wasn't conscious attraction on his part; he was simply lagging back, paying more attention to her than mercilessly slave-driving us through the snow like a pack of sled dogs. "He was showing me how he did some stuff. Like creating firebreaks. It was cool."



"Do you remember what happened then?"



She was silent for a few seconds, blue eyes far away, and then she nodded. "This woman came out of the trees. At least, I think it was a woman." She frowned. "Why can't I remember what she looked like?"



Lewis sent me a look that clearly said, Demon. I didn't disagree. Once you're already off the cliff, you might as well pretend you're flying.



"What happened after that?" Lewis asked as we puffed our way down another treacherous hillside, feeling for good footholds beneath a cruelly smooth blanket of snow. I nearly slipped on a rock that turned under my foot, and grabbed wildly. Lewis caught my arm and steadied me.



Cherise took her time answering. "Um...I remember falling, and there was-I don't know. Pain, maybe. I mostly remember passing out. And waking up out here, in the snow. Freezing."



Eerily similar to my experience, in fact, except that she'd managed to hang on to her clothes. Lewis and I traded another long look.



"Could I have been-"



"No," he said, definitely. "What happened to her was clear. What happened to you isn't."



He tested the featureless snow ahead of us with a long twisted branch, then nodded for us to come ahead. We trudged in silence for a while.



"I do remember something," Cherise said suddenly. "I remember-hey, did you shoot me?" She frowned and unzipped her coat to peer at her sweater. "Oh, man. You really did. But I'm not-"



"We'll talk later," Lewis promised. "Save your strength. We've got a ways to go."



No kidding. Hours of it, breathlessly scrambling over cold, slippery terrain. Not my best time ever. But I had to laugh when Cherise, clearly tiring, accepted Lewis's help across a narrow frozen stream. His big hands spanned her waist and he lifted her easily over. "Oooooh, nice hands. You know, I could get to like you, mister."



"Ditto." Lewis grinned briefly, and then turned his attention back to the trail.



"Hey, Lewis?" Cherise's cheer had faded almost instantly, and she grabbed his sleeve to drag him to a halt. "You haven't said, about Kevin. Do you think...Did whatever happened to me happen to him, too? Was he out there looking for help?"



Lewis glanced over at me, then focused on the snow. "Not likely," he said. "If what I think is true, Kevin would have lasted longer. Been of more use. For all I know, he could still be under her control."



"Her, who?" We reached the bottom of the long icy hillside and started the tiring trek up the next one, hauling ourselves by grabbing icy branches when the going got too tough. "Come on, you guys are like superheroes or something! There's got to be something we can do for him!"



Lewis looked at her for a second, and his eyes looked dark and cold. "If there was," he said, "I'd be damn well doing it. But I can't take chances. Not with the two of you."



Cherise's foothold broke loose, and she began to slide. I gripped a handy branch, reached down, and grabbed her by the coat sleeve, hauling her upright again. Lewis helped me get her to the top of the hill, where we paused for breath. The view might have been gorgeous, except for the low clouds obscuring the mountains and pressing down like dirty cotton on the treetops. Snow continued to fall in a steady, soft, relentless assault.



I wanted to ask how far we had left to go, but it wasn't worth wasting my breath. I didn't think it would help if I knew. My legs were burning, sore in the calf muscles, and I had scrapes and bruises and my headache hadn't gone away. My acquired memory of Cherise's experiences had settled into an uneasy, slippery state that felt like I could have imagined them or dreamed them. But at least I had a memory of me, of the television station, of Cherise, of Sarah, of...



Of the girl calling me Mom.



"Lewis," I said. He hesitated in the act of stabbing the branch through the snow, then took two or three more steps. "I saw Imara. In Cherise's memories."



He didn't answer. He took another step. I followed in his wake, puffing for breath. The air felt icy and wet around us, and sleet burned my face. The sky was an unbroken gray bowl, and it felt oppressive, as if it were slowly lowering down onto my head. Nature. Who needed it?



"You going to talk to me about her?" I demanded. It came out sharper than I intended.



"No," he said. "It's one complication you don't need right now. One thing at a time, Jo. Let's get ourselves safe before-"



"Before we talk about my dead kid?" I shot back. "Well, if you're worried about me breaking down, don't. I can't even remember her. All I have is a name and a face." That wasn't true, but I didn't want him to know how raw and bloody that simple vision had left me.



Cherise stopped in her tracks, puffing hard. "She's dead?" she blurted, and made a gesture as if she were going to reach out toward me, but then thought better of it. "Oh, my God. What happened?"



"I don't know," I snapped. "I don't know anything. That's the problem."



Lewis poked the stick into the snow with unnecessary violence.



"I want to know how she died," I said.



"If wishes were horses, you'd be doing one fifty in a cherry red Mustang on the autobahn." He sounded bleak and cool. "No."



"You son of a bitch."



"Probably." He gave me a smile that was equal parts apology and sadness. "But I've always been like that. You've just forgotten about-"



He stopped in his tracks, straightened, and held up a hand for silence. Cherise and I both froze, too. Wind swirled across the clearing, picking up snow crystals and peppering me in the face with them, but I didn't move.



In the distance I heard a faint chopping sound. "What is that?" I whispered, and then I recognized it. That was the sound of a helicopter. "Trouble?"



"No," Lewis said. "That's what I was hoping for. We just arrived here a little early, that's all."



"Here?" Cherise turned a slow circle. "Where's here, exactly?"



Lewis held up his GPS device, which had a blinking red light. "Rendezvous point. That's our ride out of here."



That suddenly. Wow. Except that even though that had to be good news-right?-Lewis didn't look any less tense. He shrugged out of his backpack and unzipped pockets, moving quickly and competently.



"So what's the problem?" I asked. "Because there's a problem, right?" There was always a problem.



"I think we're being followed," he said. "Head for the tree line," he said. "Both of you. Move it." Cherise took off instantly, plunging through the snow as quickly as possible. When I didn't immediately snap to obey, Lewis yelled it at me, full throat: "Move!" A drill sergeant couldn't have put more menace into it. I galloped clumsily along, my feet sinking deep into the snow. I prayed I wouldn't hit a sinkhole, because a broken leg right now would be inconvenient.



When I looked back, Lewis was standing in the middle of the clearing, looking up at the gray sky. His backpack was at his side, and in his hand was a black, angular shape-the gun he'd fired at Cherise.



He scanned the far side of the clearing, but it was obvious it was a useless effort; he might have sensed trouble coming, but he wasn't sure which direction it was heading. He saw me hesitating, caught in the open, and motioned for me to keep running. Cherise had already made it to the trees; I saw a flash of pink as she found cover and stayed there.



And I would have followed her, really, but I caught sight of motion to Lewis's left, out in the deep forest shadows, and I sensed a blurring, as if someone were trying to avoid notice.



"Lewis!" I yelled it, but the increasingly loud churning of the rotors drowned me out. "Lewis! Over there!" I waved my arms frantically, trying to catch his eye, and just as I did something hot ignited in the tree line where the blur had been, incandescent and round, and it shot straight toward me.



I didn't even think; I just hit the snow face-first. The fireball sizzled over my head right where my midsection would have been had I been caught flat-footed, and rolled away, hissing into open snow, where it quickly melted drifts in a five-foot radius to the bare dirt.



That caught Lewis's attention. He whirled just as Kevin stepped out of the trees. The teen looked grimy and scraped, but there was a burning light in his eyes, and as I wondered what to do he held up his hand, palm up, and formed another ball of fire in it.



Apparently my dive-for-it tactic was Warden-Approved, because Lewis did the same thing; he waited until Kevin threw the fireball, and then threw himself flat in the snow. Kevin's fireball streaked through the air and exploded like a bottle of napalm against a tree on the far side of the clearing-he'd thrown that one with a lot more fury. Lewis rolled, brought up the gun, aimed...



And didn't pull the trigger. I held my breath, horrified, because Kevin was already reloading, forming fire in his hands and snarling in rage.



No. Dammit, why didn't Lewis shoot?



Kevin threw the plasma straight at Lewis, who was helpless and prone on the ground, and Lewis still didn't pull the trigger.



He also didn't try to avoid the impact of the flame.



It hit and erupted in white-hot fury, sizzling the snow around him into an instant spring thaw, and then Lewis was on fire. I screamed and started toward him, then stopped, because Lewis-burning all over, fire clinging to him like a second skin-calmly pushed himself up to his feet, brushed a hand over his chest like a man flicking away dust, and the flames just...died.



Not a mark on him.



Kevin's eyes went wider, but then he shut down, went hard and cold. "You cold-blooded son of a bitch," he spit at Lewis. "I'm going to kill you."



"Good luck with that," Lewis said. "I think the waiting list is into double digits by now."



"Where's Cherise? What did you do to her?"



Lewis took a step toward him. He was still holding the gun, but carefully, at his side. I doubted Kevin could even see it. "Kevin, relax. She's all right."



"No. No, she's not, or she'd be here. She'd be with me." Kevin's fingers, consciously or not, were dripping with fire. "You're lying. You hurt her."



"I've got no reason to lie to you," Lewis said. His voice was still and quiet, very gentle, and he continued moving toward the boy without seeming to be in any hurry at all. "She was hurt, Kevin, but she's better now. You're hurt, too. I need you to stop fighting me. Can you do that?"



"No!" Kevin screamed, and extended both hands toward Lewis. Fire erupted in a hot, incandescent wall that swept toward Lewis at a frightening rate, searing the snow into instant steam, leaving everything dead and smoking behind it...