Windfall (30 page)

“I know. Are you all right there?”

“So far. Nobody wants to uncork a Djinn around here, though. Six Wardens reported dead in the Northeast, and word is their own Djinn stood by and let it happen.”

I remembered Prada on the bridge, her defiant anger. “And once they're free of their masters, they go after others to free them,” I said. “Packs of them.”

“Yeah. It's a mess. Swear to God, Jo, I don't know if we're going to survive it. We're warded halfway to hell around here, so I think this building's secure, and I gave my Djinn a preemptive that her job was to protect my life from all comers until I said otherwise. I passed that along to everybody in the system; don't know if it'll do any good. You know how expert they are in getting around orders when they want to.”

“Yeah,” I agreed softly. “I know. Listen—be careful. I'll call you when I know something.”

“Thanks. I can't afford to leave the Florida stations unmanned.”

I knew. Key areas had seasonal posts of enormous responsibility. California was important all year long. Tornado-prone states like Kansas, Missouri, Oklahoma, and Texas got extra staffing for the spring and summer.

Florida, in hurricane season, was a key weather post, and if John was missing . . .

We were in big trouble.

I signed off and headed for my car.

 

The Warden Regional Office was located not far from the National Weather Service offices in Coral Gables, conveniently enough; we'd sometimes used them for conferences and research. But the Warden offices were unassuming, located in a seven-story building with standard-issue brown marble and sleek glass. There was no sign on the building itself, just a street number etched in brass. Security on the entrance. I didn't have a card key, so I sat in the car and waited until someone else pulled into the parking lot and wheeled a laptop toward the front door. I didn't recognize her—she probably didn't work in the Warden offices, of course, because they only had a couple of small offices out of seven floors, and the others were all occupied.

I moved in behind the woman, smiled when she smiled, and she carded me into the building and took off for the stairs. I, feeling lazy, went for the elevator. The lobby was quiet and dimly lit, going for soothing and achieving a state of restfulness usually reserved for dropping into a nap. The elevators were slow—it was a general rule of the universe that the shorter the building, the slower the elevators—and I killed time by trying to imagine what the hell I was going to do if I got up there and found a major fight in progress. I wasn't going to be of any help, that much was sure.

I was hoping like hell that it was a downed-phone-line problem. Weak, but sometimes optimism is the only drug that works.

But it's sadly temporary in its effects.

The front door of the Warden offices looked like somebody had taken a sledgehammer to it—splintered in half, raw wood shining naked under the sleek brown finish. The lock was shattered, pieces of it scattered for ten feet down the carpeted hallway. The windows on either side were gaping, glassless holes, and I felt the crunch of broken pieces under my shoes as I walked carefully toward the destruction.

I was half afraid I was going to find everybody dead, given the state of the door, but I heard voices almost immediately. I recognized the slow, Carolina-honey voice of my ex-boss.

The tension in me let go with a rush of relief. John Foster was still alive, and I was off the hook.

I knocked on the shell of a door and leaned over to look through the opening.

John—still in a shirt and tie, which was his version of business casual—was standing, arms folded. With him was Ella, his right-hand assistant; she was a dumpy, motherly Warden with moderately weak weather skills but a stellar ability to keep John's stubborn, independent group working together.

Speaking of which, none of the others were anywhere in sight.

Ella looked exasperated. While John dressed like he'd been interrupted on his way to a board meeting, Ella might have been called out of giving her tile a good grouting: blue jeans, a sloppy T-shirt, a flowered Hawaiian-style shirt over that. She had graying, coarse hair that looked windblown.

They both turned toward me when I knocked, and Ella's mouth fell open. “Jo!” she yelled at ear-bleeding volume, dashed for the door, and knocked it back with a nudge of her Nike-clad foot. Before I could say “El!” she had me in a warm, soft hug, and then was dragging me over the threshold into the office.

Which was a wreck, too. Not as much as the door, but definitely not in the best of shape. Computers tossed around, papers lying everywhere, chairs overturned. The filing cabinets had tipped over, and the big metal drawers were out, their contents spilling in waterfalls of folders to the floor. Everything looked thoroughly bashed and dented.

“Love what you've done with the place. Sort of
Extreme Makeover
meets
Robot Wars,
” I said. John—middle-aged, fit, graying at the temples in fine patriarchal style—smiled at me, but his heart wasn't in it. He looked strained and a little sick. “Okay, that was lame, I admit it. What happened?”

“We're trying to figure that out,” John said, and extended his hand. “Sorry, Joanne. Good to see you, but as you can see, we're having a little bit of a crisis.”

“Paul was trying to raise you on the phone and couldn't get an answer. He sent me to check up.” I looked around, eyebrows raised. “Robbery?”

“I doubt it,” Ella said, and kicked a destroyed flat-screen monitor moodily. “They didn't take the electronics, and there wasn't any cash here. Maybe it was kids, smashing things up.”

“You're not going to say
kids today,
are you? Because I never really thought of you as grandmotherly, despite the hair.”

That earned me a filthy look.

John sighed and put his hands in his trouser pockets, watching me. “We're fine, thanks. Tell Paul I'm sorry. My cell battery ran down hours ago. How are you?” He sounded guarded, which wasn't unexpected. I realized, from the wary light in his eyes, that my arrival was looking more and more suspicious. I mean, he'd taken me for a ride and practically accused me of corruption, and here we were, standing in his wrecked offices, and I was saying I'd been sent by the boss.

I could see how it could be misinterpreted.

“I didn't do this,” I said. “You know me better than that, John.”

John and Ella exchanged looks. “Yeah,” Ella agreed. “We do.” John didn't say anything. He kept his arms folded.

I took a deep breath and plunged in over my head. “Any trouble with the Djinn on your end?”

“What?” John frowned. “No. Of course not.” He had a Djinn, of course. Ella, so far as I knew, didn't. Only four Wardens in Florida were equipped with magical assistants and, by last count, only about two hundred in all of North and South America. It was an alarmingly low number, until you considered two hundred Djinn who might decide to kill off Wardens, in which case it was alarmingly high. “What are you talking about? What kind of trouble?”

“Some of the Djinn are breaking free of their masters. You haven't heard?”

Another look between the two of them. Silent communication, and me without my decoder ring. “No,” John finally said. “Not about that.”

“But you heard about some of the Wardens going rogue.”

He looked grimmer. “Yes. And that's a subject I don't think we should be discussing with you.”

A not-so-subtle reminder that I wasn't in the Warden business anymore, and therefore not privy to the fun, interesting politics. I changed the subject with a wave around the trashed office. “Think this is related?”

“I doubt it.”

“Yeah? You get this kind of thing often around here?”

“Never,” Ella put in. “I guess it
could
be kids, though the timing's odd. But Djinn wouldn't have a reason to do this, and if a Warden did it, well, there must have been a reason.”

“Were they out to steal records? Destroy them?” I asked.

Oh, boy. Another significant glance.

“Again,” John said, “I think we're on a subject that's off limits. Look, you did what Paul asked, you checked. We're fine. I think you should go now.”

It hurt. I'd worked for John for a long time, and we'd been friends. Not bosom-buddy friends, but strong acquaintances, good to get together for the occasional drink, chat about family and friends, exchange Christmas presents. I'd trusted him with my life. I couldn't believe that had changed overnight.

But maybe I should have known, considering how many things were changing overnight these days.

“Jo, don't take it personally. You did quit, you know,” Ella said. “And I'm still finding that hard to believe, sunshine. You're the most dedicated Warden I've ever met.”

“I
was
the most dedicated Warden you ever met,” I said. “Trust me, I had reasons.”

“Well, if you quit over some dumb disagreement, it's a bad time for it,” she said. “Bad Bob is gone and we've down three Wardens around here. From what I've heard, half the senior members of the organization are dead or disabled, and the other half can't decide what to do about it. We're barely holding together.”

I hadn't come to listen to the we-need-you-back speech, but something Ella had said stopped me. “Three team members?” I asked. “Me, Bad Bob . . . who else?”

“Ella,” John warned. She ignored him and kept talking.

“We lost another Weather Warden two nights ago,” Ella said. “Carol Shearer. Car accident.”

Another Djinn casualty, probably. They used natural forces to do the dirty work, not their own hands. They hit hard and fast, before a Warden could react to give their Djinn commands, and if the Djinn wasn't commanded to be proactive, or wasn't in the mood, then Ashan was the winner. Maybe he was systematically working his way through the ranks, testing.

Maybe John had already been targeted for death, but his Djinn had protected him without orders. The two of them had always seemed to enjoy a good professional relationship.

“I'm sorry to hear about Carol,” I said. “But I can't come back right now even if you'd have me. And frankly, I wouldn't be any good to you if I did. I've got some, ah, issues.”

John gave me the unfocused, faraway look of someone using Oversight. Whatever he saw, he went a shade graver and nodded. No comments. He'd seen the damage that had been done to me.

“Thanks for the offer, anyway,” he said. Not that I'd really made one.

“Let me help you clean up. Least I can do, after all the chaos I've caused over the years.”

John hesitated, but hell, he was shorthanded. I called Paul and reassured him all was well. While I was doing that, John called up his Djinn—who was a sweet-faced young man with glittering white-diamond eyes—and got the worst of the big damage repaired with a few murmured commands. I kept an eagle eye on
that,
believe me . . . but I didn't see any indication of an impending rebellion. He and his Djinn got on well. Always had. I sensed a certain restrained fondness between them—not love, and not even friendship, but a good partnership. In many ways, John Foster was the poster child for what a Warden ought to be.

It depressed me. It reminded me of just how much I wasn't, even when I was at my best. I was a messy, sloppy, emotional maverick. I couldn't color inside the lines even when I wanted to.

I helped Ella with the grunt work of restoring files to the cabinets, and as I did, I realized that most of the folders had to do with personnel. Detailed records of everything that we'd done, throughout our tenure with the Wardens. Ah, so
this
was where all those reports went to die . . . nice to know that all those hours spent typing on a keyboard actually had some kind of effect. I'd half suspected all my hard work just disappeared into the aetheric, where it got eaten by hungry demons. Or malicious Free Djinn.

About the fifteenth folder I picked up—and it was huge, papers spilling everywhere—had my name on it. I paused, startled, and flipped it open. The clips that held reports in the file were missing, and everything was crammed in at odd angles, as if it had been gone through fast.

The memo on top was signed by Paul Giancarlo, National Warden Pro Tem. It was an order to keep me under close surveillance for any suspicious activities related to fraud, blackmail, and illegal trading in weather control.

I felt a wave of cold rush over me, and in its backwash came another one of heat, burning down from the top of my head and taking up residence somewhere in my gullet. In the memo, Paul practically accused me of collusion with two other Wardens—one of them Bad Bob—in carrying out a scheme to steer tropical storms, hurricanes, and tornadoes toward certain areas of the coastline, where an outfit named Paradise Kingdom seemed to be making a business of building expensive resorts and condominiums, only to have them destroyed before opening by bad weather.

For the insurance money.

The score so far: storms four, Paradise Kingdom zero. They'd never actually opened a single property.

Paradise Kingdom.
I remembered that name, and it came back with a jolt . . . the drive out along the coast. A dead dad and kids. Tornadoes twisting the under-construction hotel to wreckage.

I flipped pages. The photos showed shoddy construction, with detailed notes. Substandard parts. Bad wiring. Reused materials. If the buildings had ever actually opened, they'd have been deathtraps—but the insurance records showed payouts as if the construction had been to the finest possible standards.

I'd never even
heard
of Paradise Kingdom, but I was starting to shake with fury and a little bit of fear.

The folder was snatched out of my hands and slapped shut. John frowned at me, handed it to Ella, who mutely began straightening up the papers inside it.