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She transferred her gaze to me The look was too wise, too compassionate, and it made me feel cheap
"Not yet, maybe," she said "Give it time I do speak fro I’d never seen Marion ’s Djinn; I didn’t know of anyone who ever had She had one, of course; at her level, it would be impossible for her not to And yet she was extremely private about that relationship Those short sentences were, fro overbehind ah I knew there was only so much he could do in this situation
Only so much either of us could do, actually
"Thanks for the advice," I said My chilly tone was a little under my black knit shirt over my head at the tiift from David I stepped into them and headed for the bathroom
Marion, who’d taken a step farther into the rooot in the way I stopped and frowned "Look, no ent that I can’t pee and swig soht?"
She looked doubtful That scared me
"I’ll be thirty seconds," I said, and ducked around her
Just to be rebellious, I took a full -the-world confab took place downstairs in the Holiday Inn lobby, next to the tinkling artificial fountain where I’d firstthe furniture, pulling sofas and chairs into a tight little group Circling the wagons The desk clerks looked oblivious; I guessed that Paul had used his Djinn to put a glamour around us, make us unnoticeable (It was, as David constantly re us invisible) I clopped down the lobby stairs, following Marion; David was no longer visible I never could tell when David was gone, or just pretending to be gone That was a sense I’d lost along with ood When Paul paced, itserious I could see that responsibilities were already wearing on hio, Paul had been content to be a Sector Warden, overseeing a big chunk of the East Coast, reporting directly to the National Big Cheese But the events that had taken a hand in ed the landscape of the association So far as seniority, Paul was one of the few left standing who could take on the additional work And there was, God knew, a hell of a lot to do The stress had already given his under his eyes, and I didn’t remember the fine tension lines at the corners of hisafter me The situation with Kevin was bad, no doubt about it, but he had a national organization to run, and it wouldn’t run itself I hoped he wasn’t putting personal feelings ahead of business
I took a seat on the couch, next to Marion, and Paul stopped prowling long enough to say, "Joanne Baldwin, you know Marion Meet Jesus Farias and Robert West Brazil and Canada"
Two heads nodded at me I nodded back Neither looked happy to be here
"The kid you’re after-" Paul continued
"Kevin," I said Paul’s eyes fastened on me for a second, then ot wards up around Las Vegas Great big ones He’s been fucking eather systems across half the country to play keep-aith you, and that can’t go on We’re killing ourselves trying to keep the peace out there"
"Sorry," I said I was "There’s not a lot of choices to this, Paul Either we leave hioing to be good news, and I thought we agreed-"
"We did," Paul interrupted "We agreed that you should come out here and stop hiotten close Your Djinn doesn’t have the power to go up against this punk nose-to-nose, and all that can come out of this is disaster if you cowboy around out here any more"
The Canadian, West, put in, "Your boy Kevin is destabilizing e pressure buildup along the Cascadia Subduction Zone If we can’t stop it, your probleht He wasn’t Weather; he was Earth "How bad?"
"At current levels, we think we can expect athe Cascadia line That’s offshore, around Vancouver and Oregon It could potentially be as soing to be worse A lot worse"
As small as a nine-point quake? The one that had just killed 25,000 in Iran had been a 65 "How y increases by a multiplier of forty tioing to register higher than the scale counts Hypothetically, perhaps an eleven Using the Mercalli intensity scale, it’s a twelve, total dah to scare the holy shit out of the Wardens, in other words "I don’tsy? Useless That a the devastation farther" His eyes were chilly "And you’re right You shouldn’t tell hed in His English was excellent, spiced with a slight musical intonation "Also, we estiion has been raised by a an his attacks; he has no conception of how to bleed off energy and balance the system If it continues to rise, on’t be able to hold the network Things will shift And with the equations already so far off scale"
Paul stopped pacing and looked directly aticecaps, Jo Floods Climatic devastation Earthquakes worse than we can possibly control, even with Djinn Which we have too few of, by the way I don’t know if you’re aware of it, but things are getting critical on that front We lost Djinn we couldn’t afford to lose, back there in the vaults We barely have enough to keep things together as it is, and we keep on losing the"
Marion shot hie I covered a flash of surprise The Wardens were losing Djinn? I knew they were in short supply-they always had been-but I’d been under the clear impression that they knew exactly where their Djinn were, all the time Of course, it made sense that there would be attrition Once a Djinn’s bottle was shattered, it disappeared For all the Wardens had ever known, they left our plane of existence for someplace more exotic and safe they’d never knohat I knew, that e, unclaiht
I wasn’t about to tell thee," Farias continued soh trained personnel to stop We’ve lost too many, both hue kid raised the tee But weather’s funny like that The point wasn’t the amount the temperature was raised; it was that it caused chain reactions Altered rainfall Shifted wind patterns
El Niсo on a global scale
The last time a serious, out-of-pattern weather shift had happened, the Mayan Empire died of thirst, and crop failures in Europe sparked chaos that killed es It had taken the Wardens generations to control things again, put the systems back in balance Or some semblance of it, at least When the entire world system wobbled, it was the work of several human lifetimes to correct it
I sucked in a deep breath "So if you don’t wantafter him, what do you want me to do?"
Paul sank into a chair, leaned forward, and clasped his hands together The gold chain around his neck swung free It was a Saint Eurosia ainst bad weather I was reminded that when his relatives had sit-downs like this, it was sometimes to talk about whom to whack
"The kid’s scared," Paul said "He knows things are out of control, but he won’t talk to us I’ to kill hiht "So what’s the plan?"
"I’ the full power of the Wardens down on hio to war here It’s too dangerous People are going to die if we do it the hard way"
"So you want to make a deal with him"
"Yes"
"And you ant me to be yourthe last three weeks trying to keep as"