Heat Stroke(88)
Balance was great in theory. Not so great when you were having to make choices that would inevitably cost lives. I wasn’t feeling up to godhood. “What about California? Or are you just calling it a loss and hoping Disneyland will set up an undersea kingdom park off the. west coast of Nevada?”
“Atlantis once had the best beaches.” He shrugged. “Coastline changes are a matter of perspective. But no, actually. Lewis took care of that one. The earthquake’s off.”
One crisis down. And speaking of Lewis… I turned back to the building and studied it again, reading energy signatures. Ah. Of course.
“They’ve got him,” I said. “The Wardens. Lewis is in there.”
“Yeah, I know.” Jonathan crumpled the cup and tried for a three-pointer in a trash can at least twenty feet away. Naturally, he made it. “Considering that he’s the only person who ever successfully stole from the Wardens’ vault before, I was considering that a point in our favor. That is, if we can trust him.”
“Yes.” I didn’t hesitate. “Look, in all the time I’ve known him, Lewis has always been about the greater good. It’s one of the reasons the Wardens want him so badly. First, he’s so damn powerful that he can make things happen on a massive scale; second, they’d just like it a whole lot better if he was somewhere they could control him. Because they can’t count on him doing things the way they want him to all the time.”
Lewis had never been ambitious, but if he’d wanted to, he could have snapped his fingers and made things happen in the ranks of the Wardens. For one thing, he could do the work of about a hundred of them, all by himself, and do it with compassion and control. Power like that, he didn’t need the approval of the Senior Wardens, or the Council, or any damn body. He was of the live-and-let-live school of thought. Too bad the Wardens didn’t feel the same way. They’d been afraid of him since the first day they’d realized what he was, and they couldn’t be any less worried about him now.
Especially since he was bad-ass enough that he’d voluntarily given up three Djinn, just to make a point.
Something about the pulse and color shift of that brilliant aura I was watching made me remember how I’d last seen him, at Patrick’s apartment. “I think he might be hurt,” I said. I remembered Kevin kicking him in the head. “Maybe badly hurt.” Paul had said as much. Lewis had shown up at his house looking for information about Yvette—he’d remembered enough to know who had me, apparently. That still didn’t mean he’d been functioning at peak efficiency. If he’d tangled with Yvette…
“Hurt I can fix.” Jonathan stretched, working out the kinks, and pulled a dull green baseball cap from his back pocket. He tugged it in place, one hand on the bill, one on the back. “Ready?”
I looked down at myself and changed into business-ready mode. A black peachskin pantsuit was appropriate anywhere, even inside the UN Building. “Do we have a plan?”
“You distract ‘em, I get Lewis to open the vault, we boost David’s bottle. Outta there.”
“Hell of a plan,” I commented dryly. It scared the hell out of me, actually.
His eyes were as hard as frozen flint, and the soft evening light did nothing to make him look any less frightening. He looked serious. “It’ll do. Move.”
We strolled right past security. I was reminded of the Empire State Building, and surprised myself by missing Rahel intensely; I had liked her. A lot. And it’s my fault she’s… What? Gone? Dead? Discorporated? The Djinn Formerly Known As…? I remembered her skin sloughing away, and couldn’t control a sick tremor. The coldlight was intense now, up in the aetheric. Like a constant blizzard. Any Djinn— except, presumably, me or David—who went up there was doomed. Even Jonathan.
The Wardens Association floor required a card key for the elevator, which I didn’t have, but it didn’t seem to be any big deal for Jonathan; he just put his finger over the slot and got the green light and a lit-up button. The elevator was showing its age, and the trip was slower than usual. We didn’t talk, just waited in that pocket-universe silence that people inhabit in elevators, until the door chimed and rolled back on a long, straight hallway lit with featureless pale squares of indirect lighting.
The Hall of Fame. Important-looking heavy plaques recognizing Wardens for achievement above and beyond. They stretched in a row all the way to the end, most of them black-bordered to indicate posthumous awards. The place smelled of artificial vanilla, wood, and the faintest hint of flop sweat; it was a bad day at the office for everyone there. Except the Earth Wardens, presumably, who at least had the comfort of knowing Hollywood wasn’t going to become a new coral reef.