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First class, of course It’s not all about the free cha all that into consideration, co the Grand Paradise was still over the top, even for us The ship mostly cruised the Caribbean, but it was still enor boys soh as hell It was the size of a ten-story building, ridiculously set afloat The cheery paint colors on the decks and hull made it seem even more surreal

The proble for its normal, tame cruise business Granted, the storm had reversed that process, but even so, it took tiers, not to mention the thousand or so crewthe confused, angry, terrified tourists out of the boarding area and off to waiting buses to take the rain and wind, and I expected it only to get worse

I’d been watching the steady stream of humanity with a kind of stunned, detached disbelief As a Warden, I would never pack o out to tempt fate - not recreationally, anyway It’s a fact of life: Wardens draw storht start out as forces of nature, but they develop their own personalities once they reach a certain level of power

And they develop intelligence The one thing that seein, they seem to really hate Weather Wardens

Lucky us

It see a ship under the present circuht that the storh concentration of Wardens, and that was partly true, although I thought it was y created by our presence

If we ood for theat a worst-case-disaster scenario

A year ago, ould never have dared try to snatch a ship like this in broad (if stor The Wardens had been around since the last spire of Atlantis slipped under the waves, but they’d existed in secret, a kind of paranormal FEMA that was noticed only when it failed Governments rose and fell, but they all worked with us They all funded us

They really had no choice

Now, though, it wasn’t all hush-hush and top secret We’d come out to the public We’d had to; we’d pushed the secrecy as far as it could reasonably go, and in an age when every person had a cell phone and a video caone We were tired of exerting energy to keep people quiet

The new strategy - of which I’d been a part - was to just let the chips fall where they ood, because our ranks had been thinned recently

The upside of co out in public was that e said we needed the Grand Paradise to save the city of Miaovernment really had to ht be later on Even if a good percentage of the population of the world thought ere a bunch of hoodoo con artists out to defraud them

So - there had been a whole lot of orders issued froovernment, and cash passed both under and over the table by the Wardens to ht in All that had taken time, and lawyers, and paperwork, and we’d burned up our safetyto make this happen in an expeditious fashion that didn’t involve just stor it away

Hence the blackdisaster Soo

Lewis took ered down the harbor’s spacious ay - noith confusion - toward the gangway It still burped out passengers, though in uneven groups now rather than as a steady flow The Wardens were clustered and ready to board Standing at the as ht yellow hurricane-wear She had a cute little clipboard, and she was checking off Wardens as they ns

There were a total of one hundred seventeen Wardens gathered in Mia with us on the Grand Paradise - Leay too strategic to put all his eggs in one fragile, oceangoing basket - but we’d have a bigger force with us than I’d ever seen gathered in one place Which - when you’re talking about a group of people who have the ability to control the basic elements around us - is scarily i incalculable destruction, although of course ere sworn to try to avoid that Our job was to s better for humanity, not worse Despite the wildfires and earthquakes and hurricanes, without us the human race would have been scoured off the face of the earth a long, long tio, by our records, hu that annoyed Mother Nature Nobody re for her to get over it

With enough of us aboard the ship, ere a huge, juicy target, but we could probably defusethat came at us

Probably

I hate qualifiers

Leas about to lead a whole team of Wardens (and supernatural Djinn) into the jaws of death I was really hoping that this plan worked out better than most of ered a sudden burst of anxiety in uilt "Have you seen David?" I asked Lewis, pulling him to a halt

My lover, David - leader of at least half the Djinn, the way Leas the head of the Wardens - had gone away soent business, which probably involved so pressed into helping huos to els, or a or the other

Even the best of the wildly fro on circumstances

As he’d left, David had told me that meant he’d be back No ti to one for a couple of hours

The dark part ofdestruction, was glad he was gone David could help me control the black tattoo - and of course it didn’t want that

Lewis shook his head, spraying rain in a thick silver spiral "Haven’t seen him!" he said "Jo, we can’t wait He can reach you wherever you are, you know that Get on the da canvas toward the stor the sky open with vicious glee My enee, and a whole lot of raer in a form that was both invisible and fatal to the Djinn

Bad Bob had bragged that he could kill the planet if he wanted to

I was afraid he was right

I was afraid he’d already started

This was not the way I’d planned to take a honeys couldn’t get any worse, a white-uniforold braid on his sleeves caers and arriving Wardens, to skid to a halt in front of Lewis "Sir," he said, and nodded uncertainly to me on the off chance that I was equally ied way and pushed back the hood of his slicker

"Of course we do," he said, resigned "What now?"