Thin Air

"Bet I can," I said. "Bet you can't stop me, Stanley. In fact, I'll bet you don't even want to try."



"What about Jamie Rae?" he challenged, and got in my way. Venna looked like she might be tempted to say or do something; I squeezed her hand in warning. "What am I supposed to tell the Wardens?"



"Tell them you were overmatched," Venna said sweetly. "They'll believe that." She smiled. I was glad I wasn't on the receiving end of that particular expression. "Your friend is waking up," she said. "You'd better go get her and leave now."



"But...the sinkhole..."



"You stopped it from growing," she said. "Someone else will fix it. We have to go now."



"But...the newspeople-they'll have tape!"



"Then I suppose the Wardens will have to handle that," Venna said serenely. "I can't be bothered. Move."



He did, skipping out of her way as she advanced. I trailed along, shrugging to indicate that I didn't have much choice, either; I was pretty sure Stan believed it. There was a hill beyond him, and we trudged up, avoiding the scrub brush and sharp-edged grasses. Stan didn't follow. He stood there, hands on his hips, looking lost, and then he turned and went back to get Jamie Rae and, I presumed, make a full report to the Wardens.



Venna was right: We needed to get the hell out of here.



"I hope you have a bus schedule in your bag of tricks," I said, and glanced back down the hill. Some of the news crews had spotted us, and a couple of athletic Emmy-seeking types were pounding sand next to the road, curving around the cordoned-off area and heading our way. "Oh, boy."



She tugged my hand harder, and we climbed faster. The poststorm air felt clean and soft, the sand under our feet damp and firm. It would have been a nice day, except for all the chaos and mayhem.



"Eamon?" I asked, as we achieved the top of the hill. "He's alive?"



"Oh, yes," Venna said. "You saved him. I suppose that makes you happy." She sounded mystified about it. Well, I was a little mystified about it, too. "It was good you told them he was crazy. That'll take time for him to convince them he's not, but then they'll be looking for you."



"So, bus?" I asked. A well-dressed anchorwoman-well dressed from the waist up, anyway, wearing blue jeans and sneakers below-was sprinting up the road, with her heavyset cameraman puffing behind her. "Anytime would be good."



"You don't need a bus." She pointed. "That's your car."



Parked next to the side of the road sat...a gleaming, midnight blue dream of a car. I blinked. "What the hell is that?"



"It's a Camaro," she said. "Nineteen sixty-nine. V-eight with an all-aluminum ZL-one four twenty-seven." She said it as if she were reciting it out of a book. "Lewis gave it to you."



I turned to stare at her. "Lewis gave me this. Lewis gave me a car." She nodded. "And...I took it?" She nodded again. "Oh, boy."



"You needed a car," she said. "He just thought you should have a nice one."



"When did this happen?"



"Just before-" She stopped herself, frowned, and edited. "Before you lost your memory. You drove it on the East Coast. You took a plane from there to Arizona, so it's been sitting in a parking lot, waiting for you."



"And you...had it driven here?" We were at the car now, and I ran my hand lightly over the immaculate, polished finish. Not so much as a bug splatter on its surface anywhere. "You get it detailed, too?"



Venna shrugged and opened the passenger-side door to climb in. She looked more little-girl than ever once she was inside, with her feet dangling off the floor. Somebody had installed after-market seat belts; she gravely hooked hers, although I figured there was little chance of a Djinn being injured in a collision. Still playing the daughter role, evidently.



I wondered if my real daughter had ever been in this car. I could almost imagine her sitting there...



"Better hurry," Venna said. I blinked, looked back, and saw that the newsanchor was hauling ass toward the car, already shouting breathless questions.



I got in and turned the key that was already in the ignition.



Peeling out and spraying gravel wasn't a skill I'd lost with my memory.



It didn't give me much comfort when I looked in my rearview mirror and found a white van pulling out of a parking lot and quietly, tenaciously following.



"I need a plan," I said to Venna. She stared out the window, kicking her feet, and didn't respond. "Venna, I need to get my memory back. No more screwing around. Tell me how I can do that."



"You can't," she said simply. "Your memory belongs to her now. And you don't want to try to get it back. She'll kill you. The only way to make this right is to get Ashan to go back to the Oracle."



We were about fifteen minutes out from the beach, and I was just driving, with no clear idea of where we were heading. The steady rumble of the car gave me a feeling of being in control at last, and I thought that I might be happy if I could just drive forever. Or at least, until my problems went away.



The white van, for instance. It didn't seem inclined to vanish on my say-so, however. It kept a steady three-car distance from me, not really hiding, but not really making itself known, either. Too far back for me to catch sight of the driver.



"Ashan has my memories."



"No. He..." Venna searched for words for a second. "He tore them from you. Threw them away, made them excess energy. It put you adrift in the universe, and when the Demon found your memories, it knocked things out of balance. I think only Ashan can fix that."



"But Ashan...he's not a Djinn, right?"



"No," she said. "Not anymore." For a brief second Venna's expression revealed something that physically hurt, a kind of anguish that I could barely comprehend. "He was one of the first, you know. One of the oldest. But he just couldn't understand that the Mother loves you, too."



"Me?" I asked, startled.



"Humans. Maybe not as much as she loves us, because she understands us a little better. But she's fond of you, too, in a way." She shrugged. "He blames you. You made her understand that humans weren't intending to hurt her."



"I did."



"Yes. You."



"And by Mother, you mean..."



"Earth," she said. "Mother Earth, of course."



I decided to stick to driving. "Where am I going?" I asked. "If we're heading for Ashan?"



"I have him safe." Venna took a map out of the glove compartment, unfolded it, and traced a line with her fingertip. Where she touched it, a route lit up. I glanced over. We were going to take I-8 to Arizona, apparently. "It's about eight hours. Well, the way you drive, six."



"Was that a joke?"



Venna shook her head. Apparently it was an expectation.



"What do we do when we get there?" I asked. "I'm not killing anybody, Venna."



"I wouldn't let you," she said. "Although if you knew Ashan, you'd probably want to... What do you want me to do about the man following us?"



"You noticed." She gave a little snort of agreement. I supposed it wasn't exactly beyond her capabilities. "Do you know who it is?"



"Yes," she said. I waited. She waited right back.



I gave her a hard look. Which was just a little bit hilarious, admittedly; I was giving her a hard look? As far as I could tell, Venna could pretty much destroy me any day of the week, and twice at matinees. "Just tell me!"



"I don't have to," she said. "You'll have to stop soon. When you do, you'll find out."



She seemed smug about it. I gave her another completely ineffective glare, and checked my gas gauge. Still nearly full. Why in the world would I have to stop...?



The back left tire blew out with a jolt and a sound like a brick slapping the undercarriage of the car, and I cursed, fought the wheel, and limped the Camaro over to the shoulder of the road. The uneven thump thump thump made it clear that we weren't going to do any quick getaways.



"Fix it," I said to Venna. She smoothed her palms over her blue jeans. Was there a way to be beyond smug? "Come on, Venna. Be a pal."



"You have a spare tire," she said. "I'll wait here."



I cursed under my breath, opened the door, popped the trunk, and unloaded the jack, spare tire, and other various roadside disaster tools. I was evidently no stranger to mechanical work, but I wasn't in the mood, dammit. I had the lug nuts loosened in record time, but as I was jacking up the car with vicious jerks of the handle, I saw a sparkle of glass behind us, and the white van glided over the hill...slowing down.



Shit.



"Hey, Venna?" I said. She looked out of the window at me. "Little help?"



She rolled up the window.



"Perfect." I sighed. "Just perfect." I went back to cranking the jack, grimly focused on the job at hand but keeping at least half of my attention-the paranoid half-on the van as it crawled and crunched its way slowly toward me. The brakes squealed slightly as it stopped.



I couldn't see a damn thing through the tinted windows, and I was suddenly very glad of the tire iron in my hand.



And then the doors on both sides of the van opened at once, and people got out. The woman was young, toned, and well coiffed. She had a microphone. Behind her, in a flying wedge, came a fat guy with a camera and a skinny guy with a boom microphone.



"You've got to be kidding me," I said, and stared, paralyzed, while they moved purposefully in my direction. "Holy crap."



"Joanne Baldwin?" The reporter got out in front, framed the two-shot, and made sure her best side was to the camera. "My name is Sylvia Simons, and I'm an investigative reporter for-"



My paralysis snapped, replaced by a quivering all-over tremor. She knew my name.



"I don't care who you're with," I interrupted, and started pumping the jack again. The tire crept upward, cleared the asphalt, and I repurposed the jack to start removing the lugs. "Get lost."



"Ma'am, do you have any comment about what happened back there on the beach?"



"I don't know what you're talking about," I said. "And I don't know any Joanne Baldwin. You've got the wrong-"



"I interviewed your sister a few weeks ago. She gave us a photo," Sylvia Simons interrupted, and held out a picture of me and Sarah, which had been removed from its frame. We looked happy and stupid. I still felt stupid, but I certainly wasn't very happy. "She told us that you're a member of an organization called the Wardens. Can you tell me something about that?"



"No," I said. Four lug nuts off. I kept moving, careless of the grease and grime on my hands or what was getting on my clothes.



"My understanding is that you have some kind of responsibility for protecting the general public from natural disasters," Simons continued. Lug nut five came off, then six, and I slid the tire free with a screech of metal and let it thump down on the road between us. I wiped sweat from my forehead and ignored her as she leaned closer. "She claimed it was magic. Care to tell us exactly what that means? We'll get the information some other way if you don't, but this is your chance to tell your side of the story..."



Crap. I put the other tire on and began replacing lug nuts. "I don't have a side," I said, "and there isn't any story. Leave me alone."



I could tell they weren't going to. They'd been digging, and struck gold. Sarah had dropped the dime and taken the money after ensuring that the white van and the reporters knew to keep on my trail. And maybe she'd called somebody else, too. Somebody who'd dispatched a killer to silence me before I could talk. That way she'd have the money from the reporters free and clear, and no Wardens after her.



"Tell you what," I said, spinning lug nuts down with both hands. I didn't look at the reporter directly, wary of being even more on-camera. "If you turn around and leave now, nothing's going to happen to your nice digital equipment."



Simons made a surprised face, and looked at the camera as if she wanted to be sure it caught her amazement. "Are you threatening us, Ms. Baldwin?"



"Nope." I finished finger-tightening the nuts, and released the jack to let the car settle back on four tires. I began applying the tire iron to finish the job of making the wheel road ready. "But things do happen."



And right then, things did happen. The camera guy said, "What the...?" and a whisper of smoke suddenly oozed out of three or four places in his equipment. I heard a cooking sound from inside the electronics.



Nice. I sure did enjoy some things about being a Fire Warden.



"What's wrong?" Simons asked, and moved toward him. Together, with the sound guy craning in for a look, they reviewed the damage. Which, I could have told them, was catastrophic. Yay, me.



I shoved the old flat tire and all the equipment in the trunk, slammed it, and said, "I think the phrase I'm searching for here is 'no comment.'"



Simons stared at me with a grim, set expression as I got in the Camaro and headed off down the road.



When the van tried to follow, its engine blew in a spectacular white cloud of steam.



"I should be ashamed. That," I said to Venna, "was really low. Then again, blowing out my tire was pretty low in the first place, Venna. Shame on you."



"Perhaps," she said. "But you needed to know. So you won't trust your sister again."



"No," I said grimly. "I don't think I will."