Thin Air

I blinked. "You're bluffing."



"Am I? Can you really be completely sure of that? Because if you're not, love, I'd suggest you weigh your own moral values against the lives of the six hundred people who work in that building during the week. And the fourteen preschoolers who could end up tragic statistics."



It wasn't possible, was it? He wouldn't really be willing to bomb a building, especially when it was full of people. Especially with kids inside. My hands ached where I was gripping the dashboard, braced against the tense panic in my stomach. Eamon glanced over at me, but wisely said nothing. He just let me think about it in silence.



Oh, Christ. How was I supposed to know whether he'd do a thing like that or not? I didn't know him. I didn't remember him. The best I could do was go by my impressions, and my impression was that Eamon was nobody to screw around with. He might do it. And might, right now, was more than good enough, given the stakes.



"Pull over," I said.



"Why?"



"Pull over now."



He did, bumping onto the rough shoulder and activating emergency flashers. I opened the door and stepped out into the humid air, gasping for breath. If he thought I was about to barf all over his leather interior, fine. I just wanted to get away from him for a couple of minutes. His company was toxic.



The wind whipped around me, caressing and cloying. I looked around for the white van, but it hadn't slowed and it hadn't stopped; it blew right by us without a pause, and was receding in the distance.



So much for my paranoid tail theory. And Eamon's. Unless the driver was very, very good, and had overshot us to pick us up later on the road. It was a good strategy, if he had it in mind; the road was pretty straightforward, and we weren't likely to turn off quite yet.



I heard the crunch of gravel behind me. Eamon had gotten out of the car.



"Jo," he said quietly. I stiffened at the sound of my name on his lips. "Let's do this in a businesslike fashion. It doesn't have to be so ridiculously dramatic. Just do the job, and we're finished, the two of us. I think it would be best for us all."



He wasn't wrong about that. I fought back a powerful desire to turn and knee him in the balls.



"How much farther?" I asked. I managed to keep most of the fury out of my voice.



"Two hours," he said. "Give or take. If it'll make you feel any better I'll let you drive."



The target building Eamon wanted to destroy was in San Diego, within sight of the ocean. It was built in the shelter of a large ridge, but that wouldn't pose much of a problem. At least, I didn't think it would. Hard to know how difficult this was going to be, when I couldn't remember ever trying anything like it before.



I did some reconnaissance, taking my time, sipping a Mexican mocha from a coffee vendor and enjoying the warm, velvety evening. It was, the outdoor barista told me, unseasonably warm even for SoCal.



Eamon came with me. Not like I could really stop him.



We walked in silence the four square blocks around the building, which was at the outer edge of an industrial park. Its proximity to the beach would make things easy, I sensed. Two floors of it were still under construction, and that would help; any instability would work in my favor.



"Just tell me one thing. Why do you want it done?" I asked Eamon, as we came around the back side of the building. He shot me a glance. "Insurance money?" I asked.



He looked bored with my questions. "Can you do it or not?"



"Destroy the building?" I shrugged. "Probably. But weather's a funny thing. It's not exactly a precision instrument."



"I don't care about precision. I care about results." He stared for a second at the building. "It's a weekend, and I've already made inquiries-there's nobody working today, and the guard's been called away. Building's locked up and unattended for the next six hours. How long will it take?"



I had no earthly idea. I was winging it. "Two hours," I said.



"What do you need?"



I waggled the Mexican mocha. "Another one of these, and you out of my face."



He left. I wasn't stupid enough to assume he'd let me out of his sight, and, of course, there was Sarah holding me hostage for good behavior. I sat down on a boulder on the beach, watching the dark tide roll in. Point Loma Lighthouse glowed not far away, and from somewhere back toward town I heard bells tolling. The night air smelled of sea and rain.



I had an irresistible, self-pitying urge to weep.



"So, are you going to do it?"



Venna's voice. I turned. She was standing just a couple of feet away, perfectly turned out in a sky blue dress, white pinafore apron, white ankle socks, black patent-leather shoes. Straight blond hair, held back with a blue band. Huge cornflower eyes. Looking absolutely the same as she had back in Las Vegas, when she'd left me.



"Are you going to do it?" she asked me again. "You know he only wants it done for the money. I didn't think you approved of that."



"Now you show up?"



"Well, I was busy," she replied. She came and sat down next to me, neat and tidy, hands folded in her lap. The sea air blew her fine blond hair back over her shoulders, and her black shoes dangled several inches off the sand. "Why did you leave?"



"Leave?"



"Where I put you," she said patiently. "It was a perfectly nice place. I even checked with other people to be sure it was all right."



"Did you actually rent the room?"



She looked at me like I'd grown a second head. "Why would I do that?"



"Because hotels have a funny habit of renting them out if they're empty? Like, I got arrested for being a trespasser?"



"Oh." She contemplated that with a slight frown. "I can never keep you people's rules straight."



I gave up. "Why didn't you just find me and poof me away again?"



"It's dangerous," she said. "It could kill you."



I stared at her, struck dumb for a few seconds. Lewis had told me something about this, but honestly, I'd thought he'd been exaggerating. "You mean teleporting me out of the hospital could have killed me? And you were going to tell me this when, exactly?"



She seemed offended. "Most Djinn kill people every time they try it. I do a lot better."



"Well, that makes all the difference."



Another largely indifferent shrug. "You're all right, aren't you? I didn't remember the police would want you, too. It's hard to remember things like that." She shook her head as if it was amazing anyone would bother with something as trivial as arrests for murder. "You were supposed to stay. I didn't know you'd leave."



"I didn't leave. I was arrested!"



"If you say so." Alice-Venna-sat there looking for all the world like a surly ten-year-old girl. Maybe twelve. Not a well-developed twelve. "Are you going to do what he wants? Bring down the building?"



"Not a clue," I said. "I guess I'll have to try. He's going to hurt my sister if I don't. Unless-"



"I could kill him." She meant it. And seriously-I considered it, too.



"No," I said, reluctantly. "I don't think so. Besides-and don't take this the wrong way-how do I know you wouldn't just skip off and leave me with a dead guy and no explanation?"



Alice considered that very gravely. "I suppose you don't really have any reason to trust me," she acknowledged. "That's a problem, isn't it? I'm sorry. I'm not used to being mistrusted. It's inconvenient." Her eyes suddenly focused back on the ocean. "There's a low pressure system pushing in from Mexico. You can use that. Do you remember how?"



"No."



She shrugged. "I can show you. Oh, and I've thought of a reason you should trust me."



"Do tell."



"I could kill you anytime I wanted." It was a cool, measured observation. Creepy in the extreme. "I'm Djinn. You're really not very important to me. If that's true, why would I lie to you? What would be the point?"



I swallowed hard. "Maybe you're having fun lying to me."



"Maybe I am. But I'd have more fun doing something else." She sighed. "I can help you with this, though."



"You can help me destroy the building. Like Eamon wants."



"Of course," she said, as though it were about as easy as scuffing over an anthill. Which, for her, might very well be true. "And then we can kill him."



Creep. Eeeeee. "No," I said. "No, we won't be killing anybody."



"Why not?" She looked surprised. "Don't you want him to go away? He scares you, you know." Yeah, like that was news to me. She must have read that in my expression, because she looked contrite. "I'm sorry. I don't do this very often. Talk to people. I'm not doing it very well."



This was turning into pretty much the ultimate in surrealism, I thought. I was having a conversation with Alice in Wonderland about destroying buildings and killing people, and she was worried about her communication skills. We sat in silence for a few seconds, watching people strolling the beach in the distance. It was getting late, so the place was more or less deserted.



I wondered if Eamon was watching us. Probably. I could almost feel the oily slime of his regard.



Venna turned her attention to the dark, rolling ocean, and I felt a stronger puff of breeze. "I can show you what to do," she said. "But we need to make the rest of these people go away first." She was talking about the few hardy souls out strolling the beach in the moonlight. I was going to ask how she planned to do that, but I didn't have to.



The skies opened up, and the rain began to fall like silver knives.



"There," Venna said, and smiled. "That's better."



I should have known that we wouldn't go unnoticed, but somehow I just wasn't prepared for the cops to show up.



Not the actual cops, the handcuffs-and-truncheon patrol; these were the other kind. The kind who radiated competence and power, and they showed up after Venna had been demonstrating how to curl the strands of storm one on top of another, building the tightly controlled fury of a tornado.



Two of them. I didn't know them, but they clearly knew me. The smaller one, female and prone to piercings, circled around to face me, while her partner, the tall, dark, and silent type, shadowed Venna. Not that Venna was paying the slightest bit of attention to him.



"Warden Baldwin?" the woman shouted over the wind and pounding surf, and held out her hand, palm out. Lightning flashed, hard and white, and illuminated something like a stylized sun on her palm. "I need you to cease what you're doing!"



"Hi," I said. "I can't do that."



"Warden, I'm not messing around with you. I know who you are, and there's a warrant out for your detention and return to the headquarters in New York. So, please, let's not make this hard, okay? Nobody has to get hurt!"



I sighed. I felt grimy, tired, and angry. Too much had been taken away from me, and if Venna was right, I was in real jeopardy of losing whatever was left. To a Demon, wearing my face. "What's your name?" I asked.



"Jamie," she yelled. "Jamie Rae King."



"Weather?"



"Yes, ma'am." She looked cautious, and she kept flicking looks at her partner. "That's Stan. He's Earth."



"Hey, Stan," I said.



"Hey." He nodded, and the wet sand suddenly went soft under my feet and dragged me down to my knees, trapping me. "Sorry, ma'am. But we've got orders."



Venna, who'd been oblivious to that point, turned to face him, and I saw Stan gulp. I was busy trying to pull my legs out of the sand, but it was no good; the stuff was like cement, set around my feet to hold me in place. He was good at this kind of thing, obviously. "Stan," Venna purred. Not a drop of rain had touched her, of course; it just slid off in a silvery curtain about four inches from her body. "You don't want to do that."



"No," he panted. "Probably don't. But I don't have a lot of choices. You're Djinn, right?"



She didn't answer, but then again, she didn't really have to. She walked up to him, a force of nature packaged in a pinafore, and put her small hand flat on his chest.



She blew him twenty feet. Stan impacted the wet beach, rolled, and flopped to a limp stop. He groaned and tried to get up, but she held up a finger.



One finger.



And he shuddered and went flat.



"Hey!" I yelled at her over the boom of thunder. I was soaked to the skin, shivering, and more than a little scared by the fact that Jamie Rae was standing there looking from me to Venna as if trying to decide which of us to put the smackdown on first. "Leave him alone!"



"Oh, relax; he's not dead," Venna said impatiently. "I didn't break him." She turned to Jamie Rae. "You want to stop trying to do that."



Whatever Jamie was doing-and in the chaos of the storm that was quickly getting worse, I couldn't tell-she kept doing it, because Venna looked frustrated and annoyed, and flicked her fingers in Jamie Rae's direction.



Bang. She went down, coldcocked. I felt bad about that. She and Stan didn't seem like bad types, comparatively speaking.



At least they weren't trying to bring down a building.



"We should hurry," Venna said, and glanced at the sand where I was buried knee-deep. It let loose, spilling me to my hands and knees, and I climbed out of the resulting hole. "Focus now. You know what to do?"



I nodded, and followed her into the aetheric. In Oversight the storm was a glittering layered network of tight-spinning forces. I couldn't see Venna clearly, but I could see what she was doing, and it was amazing. My attempts to help were clumsy by comparison; I could see her reaching to slightly alter the magnetic force of one part of the storm, and what that did to the direction and speed of the wind. See it...not necessarily do it. Or even control it. But I could feel it coursing through me like a continuous warm pulse, pounding harder and louder with every beat.