Firestorm (17 page)

It was all over. I'd failed. I'd just…failed.

“Mom?” Imara sounded worried as she put the car in gear and scratched gears getting us out of town. “Mom, where do we go?”

I had no fucking idea. I turned my face away, toward the world outside. The world that was going to die because I'd been inadequate to the task of saving it.

“Find the nearest Warden,” I said. “Maybe there's something we can do to help.”

“With what?”

I shrugged, one-shouldered. The other one felt like ground glass had been driven into the joint. “Whatever.” I wasn't very interested.

Imara kept casting anxious looks my way, but I didn't say another word.

 

I had no idea how long the drive was, but it wasn't long enough for me to come up with a decent bright idea. So Imara just followed instructions and drove me to the nearest Warden.

That turned out to be Emily, the Earth and Fire Warden who'd given me crap back at the Headquarters building. She lived in a one-dog town in the middle of Nowhere County, Maine, and when Imara coasted the Camaro to a stop on the gravel driveway, she parked it next to a mud-spattered Jeep.

The Warden was home. She came to the door when Imara knocked, stared at my kid as if she was the Second Coming, then at me like the devil incarnate.

“Oh,” she said flatly. “They sent you. Great.”

She turned and walked into the house, not bothering to show us in. I was too sick and in too much pain, not to mention despair, to care about that. I followed her to a homey-looking living room, with one wall painted a somewhat unfortunate shade of cinnamon; Indian blankets and southwestern art lined the walls. The furniture was chunky wood, deliberately primitive. Knickknacks ran to kachina dolls and dreamcatchers.

I knew Emily vaguely. We'd never been friends, or even what I'd call acquaintances, but we'd worked on a couple of projects together, and shared a desk at the national Warden call center before, the one Wardens use to yell for help when things turn really bad. Emily hadn't exactly been a people person then, and I doubted she'd mended her ways. Earth Wardens in general tended to be either hippies or hermits; she definitely fell into the hermit category. Apparently, the Fire Warden tendencies hadn't done much to influence her basic character.

She was wearing what she'd had on the last time I'd seen her—baggy blue jeans and a nondescript tunic top, one that stretched. Bare feet, that was the only real change. Her short-cropped hair feathered around her blunt-featured face, and the scowl looked at home on her face, worn in deep.

I sank down in a chair and cradled my broken arm closer, trying not to scream.

“Huh,” Emily said, and jerked her chin at it. “Looks bad.”

“Thanks.”

“Wasn't a compliment. You want some help?”

“If it wouldn't put you out.”

Imara was standing indecisively a few feet away, clearly trying to get a signal from me as to what, if anything, to do. I didn't have time. Emily bent down, took my arm in her big, strong hands, and did a twist-yank thing that hurt so bad, I teetered on the edge of darkness.

“There,” she said in satisfaction. “Hold still.”

She put her hand around the break, and I tried to obey her order. Not easy. The throbbing agony was hard to ignore, and then the sense of burning, and then the deep itching. The burning just got worse, until it felt as if I were holding my arm over a Bunsen burner. I wanted to snatch it back, but I knew better.

I'd felt this before.

It took about fifteen minutes. Emily wasn't the world's most powerful Earth Warden, though she was competent enough; when she let go, the arm felt hot and sensitive, but more or less healed.

“You're going to want to go easy on it,” she said. “The mend's still green. Let it cure.”

“Sure,” I croaked. My throat felt horribly dry. “Water?”

Without a word, she went into the kitchen and came back with a glass, which I drained without stopping for breath. She refilled it. I managed another half a glass before I decided that too much might make me gag.

“We don't have time for this,” Emily said. “The fire's burning hot out there.”

“Fire?” I asked.

“You didn't come to fight the fire?”

“Not—exactly.”

Emily leaned back in her big leather chair, frowning at me. It was covered in what looked like the hide of a Holstein. A little too identifiable for me to be comfortable with it. I didn't like knowing the genetic heritage of my furniture.

“Then what the hell do you want, a
meeting
?” She made it sound like the filthiest curse she could imagine. It probably was, for her. Come to think of it, I didn't much approve of them, either.

“No,” I said, and sighed. “I just…You need help. I was in the area. Let's leave it at that.”

Her frown grooved deeper, and she tilted her head to one side, considering the problem of me. “Yeah, you're going to be real useful, the shape you're in.” She shook her head. “Not that beggars can be choosers. How do you feel?” She didn't sound like she much cared, but she was forced to ask the question.

“Better,” I said. It wasn't a lie, really. I'd been at rock-bottom earlier, now I was a quarter-inch above the ground. Everything's relative. “Thanks for this.”

“What, the arm? Part of the job.” Emily cocked a thumb at Imara, who had settled back in a corner, watching us. “Thought you said we weren't supposed to trust them anymore. What, you don't have to obey your own rules?”

I decided not to engage on that one. “You don't have a Djinn, right?”

“Never needed one.” She sounded as if those who did were clearly lacking some important feature, like guts. “She going to go nuts and kill us?”

“Well, wouldn't that be exciting?” I sighed. “Imara? You going to go nuts and kill us?”

She thought about it. Gravely. “Not quite yet.”

“Right. Keep us informed.”

I thought for sure that Emily would bring up the resemblance between me and Imara, but she wasn't that observant. Her eyes darted between us for a few seconds, bright but not registering any connections, and then she decided to shift the conversational ground. “What do you know about fighting fires?”

“Pretty much what every Weather Warden knows.” From the flash in her eyes, that wasn't something that met with her approval. “Maybe I can wing it.”

Emily was old school. She fixed me with a narrow stare. “No, you won't wing it. I'll call up Paul and get a real Fire Warden up here.”

“I thought Lewis was—”

“I don't take orders from Lewis Orwell.” Didn't like him much, either, from the unpleasant twist of her mouth around his name. A lot of Earth Wardens didn't care for him, for some reason. I think it was because he kept showing them up. That would especially bother Emily, Miss I-don't-have-a-Djinn-because-I'm-too-badass-to-need-one. “Look, this is my territory. There's a chain of command. Lewis isn't even part of the Wardens, as far as I'm concerned; he turned his back on us long ago. If he's what we've got for leadership these days, we're in trouble.”

“Lewis—”

She cut me off with a sharp gesture. “And the last I heard,
you
were out of the Wardens completely. Anyway, it doesn't matter. I'm working too hard to keep things together around here to worry about politics. So don't bother with the campaign speeches. What are my chances of getting somebody who knows firefighting from a hole in the ground out here?”

“Chances?” If I kept repeating things, she had every right to stick me in a cage and call me a parrot. “Not too good. I think I'm what you're going to get.”

She sniffed. “In other words, not much.”

I kept my mouth shut and shook my head. She let out a long, slow breath and sat back in her slaughtered-cow chair. I wondered if she'd killed it herself. Well, that wasn't exactly fair. She was an Earth Warden. The cow had probably died of natural causes.

“I heard a rumor there was some other organization out there. Other than the Wardens,” Emily said. “Any idea how to contact them?”

“Lewis was handling that. I don't know how far he got with it. How bad is this?”

“Bad,” she said. “Real bad.”

“Then we should get moving,” I said, and levered myself to my feet. The world swam. I sat down again, and leaned my head back against the couch cushions and moaned. When I tried to adjust myself to a more comfortable position, the arm stabbed a protest into my shoulder. Some Earth Warden she was. Hadn't been trying very hard, had she?

Imara was next to me, down on one knee, one long, graceful hand on my shoulder. Sending waves of warmth through me. She wasn't a full Djinn, she couldn't really heal me, just take away the pain temporarily. Still felt nice, though. Nobody turns down magic morphine.

“You can't do this,” she said. “You need rest.”

“I'm good.”

“No.” She gave me a long, significant look from those breathtaking Djinn eyes. “I won't allow it.”

I started to say,
Who made you the mommy?
but I wasn't about to let this degenerate into a mother—daughter squabble in front of Emily. Who was looking far too interested, anyway.

“Your Djinn there's probably right,” Emily said. “Fact is, the shape you're in, I wouldn't recommend you take on a campfire, much less a forest fire,” she said. “You took some pretty good knocks. A good hard impact, and you'll break those bones loose again. No help for it; it's going to hurt while it's healing.”

Clearly, she wasn't Lewis in the healing department, which I couldn't really resent. She'd helped me out when I needed it.

And then she spoiled my attempt at charity by saying, “And besides, I really don't want to babysit you out there.”

Imara oriented on Emily like a cruise missile. “She can do as she pleases.” Typical kid. Whatever the adult's position was, take the opposing view. Hell, two seconds ago she'd been trying to talk me out of going.

Emily barely spared Imara a glance, which was pretty gutsy, considering. “Sure. She can please shut up while I borrow her Djinn for the duration.”

Oh, crap. I remembered Emily back at Warden HQ, arguing for the release of more Djinn from the reserves. Of course she'd be all about co-opting Imara. I should have seen it coming. Would have, if I hadn't been half-crazy with pain.

Imara growled low in her throat. “I won't leave her,” she said.

“Not your choice,” I said sternly. “Look, Emily, I'm low on patience, I'm in pain, and no way are you using her to fight a forest fire. I appreciate what you've done for me, but—”

“I said, I'm taking your Djinn,” Emily said bluntly. “You don't want to make me take it to a full-on fight. You'd lose, the condition you're in.”

Imara moved, unasked, and came right up in Emily's space, close and—I was sure—burning up with menace. Emily went rigid with fear. As well she should. “Keep a leash on her,” Emily said.

“Imara?” I asked. “Relax. We're just talking. Aren't we?”

Emily nodded jerkily. Angry. “Yes.”

“Then I think I'm ready to leave,” I said. “Imara, go get the car revved up, would you?”

“I don't like leaving you with her.”

“Emily's a Warden,” I said. “We understand each other.”

Imara didn't like it, but she threw me a warning look, and vanished.

“You can't,” Emily said flatly. “You're not strong enough to leave.”

“Funny how that is. Your threat to steal Imara put all that in perspective.” I proved it by getting to my feet. The world did that liquid-shimmy thing, but I stayed upright and reasonably stable. “You said you didn't have time for this, and neither do I. Good luck, Emily, whatever your crisis is right now. I'll find somebody who appreciates my help.”

“Wait.”

I didn't. I headed for the door. But when I got there, I found the handle wouldn't turn. Not at all. It wasn't the dead bolt…. The metal was simply frozen in place.

I didn't bother to look behind me. “Emily,” I said, “let's not do this. I'm tired, I'm cranky, I'm dirty, and my arm hurts like hell. I am
not
in the mood to play. Just let me get out of here, and I'll pretend that you're not begging for a fight, because by God if you want one, you're threatening the right girl.”

Earth Wardens have power over growing things, living things, and also over metals and woods. The door wasn't going to open if Emily didn't want it to do so, not unless an Earth Warden with greater abilities stepped in. And it was unlikely I'd be able to blow it open, either, not without bringing the whole house down with it. Our powers weren't necessarily the kind that canceled each other out. Imara was an ace in the hole, of course, but I hesitated to put her to use. I wasn't really interested in damaging one of the few surviving Wardens, given the current state of the world.

“Sorry,” Emily said. “I've got some real problems here. You can be of use.”

I sighed and turned around to face her. “Okay, then, let me ask you this: How am I supposed to trust a Warden who holds back on the healing just to bogart my Djinn? Because you could have at least fixed the arm, Emily. That was a low blow.”

She went just a shade paler, but held her ground. She'd never lacked in guts…just brains. “They say you're behind all this.”

“All of what?”

“Bad Bob. The rips in the aetheric. The Djinn going crazy. Is it true?”

That hit me with a cold, hard shock…. Definitely, I'd been responsible for Bad Bob getting his comeuppance, not that many people were ever going to believe he'd actually deserved it. And David and I together had been responsible for the poisoning of the aetheric, when he'd created me as a Djinn. And as for the Djinn going nuts—well, I wasn't sure I had sole responsibility for all that, but I probably couldn't sidestep it altogether, either. If it hadn't been for my actions, and David's actions, Jonathan wouldn't be dead right now, the Djinn agreement would still be peacefully in place, and the Earth would be sleeping quietly.