And had I said that out loud? Yes, I had. And he had been checking out my boobs all morning there at the Coral Gables office. So there. Let the charming old bastard chew on it.

He stared at me steadily, with those eyes like pale blue glass, and said, "Oh, it wouldn't be eight hours a day. Twelve, minimum. Possibly as much as eighteen. Though I will give you time off for good behavior, if you keep wearing that bikini."

"No." I settled back on the sand and closed my eyes. "If you're going to keep sexually harassing me, could you do it from about three feet to your left and quit blocking my sun?"

He didn't move, of course. He stayed solidly in my light. After a few dead moments, when I didn't open my eyes or try to fill the silence, he said, "You're still six months away from qualifying for a Djinn. I can make that happen in two weeks. Or I can make sure it never happens. Your choice, sweetness."

I threw an arm over my eyes and groaned in frustration. Of course, it would come to this. Blackmail. Perfect.

"Come on, Baldwin, you're an ambitious little ladder-climber. We both know you'll work for me just for the bragging rights. Quit playing coy. Here's the address."

He dropped a business card on the bare skin of my stomach. When I opened my eyes, he was walking away, a bandy-legged white-haired man still broad in the chest, muscular in his arms and legs.

An aging tough guy. A hero of the kind they don't make anymore.

On the back of the business card was his home address. On the front was his name, Robert G. Biringanine, and in very small letters below it, Miracles Provided.

I held the card in my hand for the next thirty minutes as I tried to empty my head and concentrate on sunshine, but the cold, pitiless blue of his eyes kept intruding. By four o'clock I'd had enough, and trudged back to my car, lugging beach bag and beach umbrella. Two hunks in Speedos-six-pack abs and all-tried to convince me to do some snorkeling in one of their beach houses, but I had things to think about. Big things.

At six, I called Bad Bob's, got his answering machine and left a message that I'd be at his house at 7 a.m.

See, I'd like to blame it on Bob's cynical little threat-and-reward strategy, but the fact of the matter was, I found him interesting. More than twice my age, white-haired, wrinkled, bad-tempered, notoriously difficult. . . and there was something intensely alive behind his eyes that I'd never seen before. Well, not since Lewis, anyway.

Power calls to power-always has, always will.

Two minutes before seven the next morning, I was standing on Bad Bob's porch, which had a stunning view of the blue-green ocean. It rippled like blown silk and flowed up on sand as white as snow. He had a private beach. It was a measure of who-and what-Bad Bob really was. As was the house, a postmodern sweeping dome with lines that reminded me of wind tunnels and race cars.

"No bikini?" Bob asked me when he opened the door. That was his version of good morning, apparently. He had a coffee cup in his hand as big as a soup bowl. His striped bathrobe that made him look like a disreputable version of Hugh Hefner, and he had the moist, red-rimmed eyes of a morning-after drunk.

I hesitated over choices of responses. "Do I have to be polite?"

"Polite isn't a word people often use to describe me," he answered. "I don't suppose I can expect it from you, either."

"Then no more cracks about the bikini, or I turn around and walk. Seriously."

He shrugged, swung the door wide, and turned away. I followed him into a short hall that opened up into a truly breathtaking room. It must have gone up thirty feet in a curve, with windows overlooking the ocean all along one side. Carpet so deep I wondered if he hired a lawn service to maintain it. Leather couch, chairs, furniture that combined style and comfort. All unmistakably masculine, but with a finer taste than I would have expected from somebody of Bad Bob's reputation.

"Nice," I said. People expect that kind of thing when you first see their home.

"Ought to be," he said. "I paid a fortune to some unspeakably horrible woman named Patsy to make it that way. Through here. Coffee?"

"Sure."

He led me into a vast kitchen that could have catered dinner for a hundred without breaking a sweat, poured me a cup, and handed it over. I sipped and found it had the rich, unmistakable taste of Jamaican Blue Mountain, fifty dollars a pound. Not the kind of thing I'd give away cups of to marginally welcome guests. I took as big a mouthful as I could get away with, savoring that smooth caramel aftertaste. I could get used to all of this . . . fancy house, ocean view, fine imported beverages. I had no doubt his collection of whiskey was first-rate, too. And he struck me as the kind of guy with a killer DVD collection.

"So," I said. Bad Bob leaned against a counter, sipping coffee, watching me. "Staying off the subject of the bikini, what exactly am I here to do?"

"You're here to work as my assistant. I need a good, solid hand in manipulating some small-scale weather patterns for an experiment. Nothing I couldn't do myself, but it would save time to have another pair of hands."

"Hands?"

"Metaphorically speaking. You've worked with Djinn before?"

"Sure. Well, not closely. But I've been linked to them." Man, the coffee was excellent. He'd poured a pretty generous cup; I wondered how open he'd be to the concept of refills. I was going through this mug pretty quickly. "I can handle it."

"I'm sure you can," he said. "You know, I have the feeling you're going to be absolutely essential to the success of this project. It's groundbreaking. I think you'll be truly impressed by the scope of what we can accomplish together, Joanne. By the way, how's the coffee?"

"Fabulous. It's-" My eyes blurred. I blinked, felt the world slip sideways, and reached out to brace myself against the counter. I could hear my heart beating, suddenly. "-it's Jamaican Blue-"

I must have dropped the cup, but I didn't hear it shatter on the ceramic tile. I remember my knees letting loose, I remember sliding down with my back to the cabinets, I remember Bad Bob taking another long drink from his cup and looking down at me with those pitiless blue eyes.

He smiled at me. His voice sounded slow and wrong and far too friendly. "We're going to do great things together, you and I."

I woke up on the edge of panic, fighting nausea, with no idea where I was or what the hell had happened to me. It took a full minute for my brain to start connecting chemical chains long enough to remember Bad Bob, the tainted coffee, the collapse. Jesus, what kind of a bastard ruins Jamaican Blue Mountain with knockout drops?

I was lying on the leather couch, and my hands were tied behind my back. I could barely feel them, but I knew it was going to be painful if-when-I worked my way free. I blinked shadows from my eyes, shook my head to get hair out of my way, and found Bad Bob sitting in the leather armchair just about five feet away. The bathrobe was gone, replaced by a pair of khaki pants and a loud Hawaiian print shirt. He was holding a half-empty glass of something on the rocks, which might have been apple juice but probably had a lot more punch.

"Don't struggle," he said. "You'll just dislocate a shoulder, and I'm not much on the medical stuff."

My tongue felt thick as a sausage, but I managed to fit it around words. "Fuck you, you bastard. Let me go."

His bushy white eyebrows rose. They curled up and out, and reminded me of a lynx. The eyes were predatory, too.

"Ah, ah, be nice," he said. "My offer to you was absolutely valid. We're going to do some great work together."

"What in the hell do you think you're doing? You think you can just abduct me and-" My brain caught up with my mouth and told it to shut up, because he had abducted me, and chances were he was going to get away with it, too. Nobody knew I'd come here. I had no close friends, no confidants. I hadn't spoken to my sister or my mother in a month. John Foster might wonder where I'd gotten off to, but like most Wardens, I wasn't a slave to the nine-to-five. Could take weeks for anybody to begin to worry.

"You'll be fine," he said. He took a long slug of his drink, made a face, and put the crystal tumbler on a glass table next to him. There was no sound of anybody else in the house, just the usual everyday hum of electrics and air circulation. The surf hitting the shore came as a dull, unceasing drum. "I have something important for you to take part in, and I want your word that you're going to take this responsibility seriously. You're going to change the world."

I had a lot of ambition, but changing the world was a little outside the scope. I tried the ropes again, felt sharp pain dig into my shoulder, and decided to work on things a little less directly. I couldn't go head-to-head with Bad Bob Biringanine . . . few people on the planet could. But maybe I could take him from behind.

I started slowly, slowly working the oxygen out of the mixture in the room. Nothing obvious, because obvious would get me swatted like a fly. At the fastest rate I dared to work, I needed to buy at least ten minutes for the O2 levels to drop far enough to put him to sleep. If he didn't realize what I was doing. The alcohol would help that, slow his perceptions and make him more susceptible to nodding off.

"I-I came here to work for you," I said. "Really. You didn't have to drug me. You could have just explained it to me."

"Sweetheart, I couldn't really take the chance you wouldn't agree. I need you. It's more of a draft than a volunteer army." His eyes skipped away from me, toward the windows, where the Atlantic rolled endlessly toward the Pacific. "Stop fucking with the air in here or I'll knock you out and do this while you're unconscious. It doesn't really matter, either way. I just thought you'd like to be a witness."

I swallowed hard and let my manipulations of the oxygen drop. "To what?"

"To your transformation. I'm about to transform you from some second-rate, arrogant little weatherworker to a world-class talent. And in return, you're going to save my life." He got up, stretched, and went to refill his glass from a crystal-stoppered decanter on the sideboard, near something that looked like an authentic Chinese terra-cotta solider, like the ones found in the emperor's tomb. It almost looked real enough to walk across the room.

"Sir, please, I have no idea what you're-"

"Shut up." He didn't raise his voice, but there was something dark and violent in it that made me instantly seal my lips. Liquor splashed ice in his glass, and he took a drink. "How do you think all this works, Baldwin? You think the Wardens Association is just some not-for-profit do-gooder fraternity, like the lions Club or the Shriners? We run the world. That takes power. More power than you can even imagine."

I had no idea what he was talking about, but so long as he was talking, I had breathing time. I worked on the knots with numbed fingers. It was all I could think of to do.

"When Hurricane Andrew hit the shore in '92, it was a killer of the worst kind. It was all set to destroy us, singly or in groups. Somebody had to take on the responsibility to stop it." He snorted and tossed back the rest of the liquor. "Some poor bastard like me. But humans aren't built that way, Baldwin. They're built to come apart under that kind of pressure."

He was talking. I decided I should be cooperating. "That's why we have the Djinn. To take the stress."

"What crap. You don't know dick about Djinn, girl. They have power, but they dole it out in little bits and pieces, always looking for ways to screw us- they hate us. They'd kill us if they could." He rattled the ice in his glass and tried to suck the last drops of his drink from between the cubes. "Rely on the goddamn Djinn, you get killed. No, to stop Andrew I needed something else. Something bigger."

He was insane. Bad Bob was literally insane. There wasn't anything bigger than the Djinn except . . .

I bit my lip and felt a fingernail rip off against rope, but that was nothing compared with what I was afraid he was about to do to me. It was all falling together now, and it made a hideous kind of sense.

"A Demon," I whispered. "You took on a Demon."

"Smart girl," he answered. "Too bad, really. I can't afford to put my Djinn out of commission with this thing-level of Demon this is, if d probably eat him alive, but it'd damn sure poison him past usefulness- so it has to go somewhere. My heart's going. Can't die with this bastard in me."

"Wait-"

"Sorry, time's up." Bad Bob put his drink down, walked over to me, and put his hand on my forehead. His skin felt ice cold. It might have been a compassionate gesture, but he put some strength into it and forced my head down, pinning me against the leather couch. I kicked out at him, writhed, wriggled like an eel regardless of how much pain tore at my arms and wrists. "Don't worry. This'll be quick. Demon goes in, and then I burn you. You probably won't feel much pain at all."

He tried to pry my mouth open. I fought back with every muscle in my body, desperate to get him off me, away, because I could feel it in him now, a black cold hunger devouring him from inside.

"Dammit!" He backed off, blue eyes glittering with rage, and reached out for a bottle of wine-very old, with a flaking, yellowed label and a cork that looked fossilized. He worked the cork out of it, set the bottle on the floor, and said, "I need you."

In the movies they always show Djinn coming out of the bottle in a puff of smoke, but that rarely happens, unless the Djinn is a traditionalist with a sense of humor. Bad Bob's Djinn just appeared-blip- without any dramatics at all. I've always wondered how Djinn decide how to look, and why they always seem to look so nearly human; this one was nearer than most. He looked like an accountant. Suit, straight black tie, pin-striped shirt. Young, but ancient around the eyes. The eyes, of course, gave him away: a kind of phosphorescent green that caught daylight the way a cat's eyes reflect at night.

"Sir?" he asked. He didn't even look at me.

"Hold her down," Bad Bob said. "Don't kill her like you did the last one. It's hard enough to find a match, you know."

The Djinn leaned over and put his hand on my forehead. Instantly, gravity tripled and pinned me down; made it an effort to drag in a breath, much less fight. I wanted to say something, but I knew it wouldn't do any good; Bad Bob wasn't listening, and his Djinn couldn't do anything against his orders. Don't kill her like you did the last one. His Djinn didn't want the Demon moved. Maybe, if I could think fast enough, I could get his help. . . .

"Open her mouth," Bad Bob said. The Djinn laid one fingertip on my lips, and even though I clenched my jaw muscles, I felt it all slipping away, felt my lips parting. Oh, God, no. Maybe I imagined it, but the Djinn's touch seemed to make it less painful, less horrific. Help me. Please stop this. But if he could, or if he even wanted to, there was no sign of it in those inhuman green eyes, clear as emeralds. I felt gray edging in around the knife-sharp spike of fear, the desperate desire to get away. Maybe I could pass out. I wanted to pass out. Anything not to feel this.

The Djinn's touch burned. My lips slid open, and cool air hit the back of my throat with drowning force.

Bad Bob bent over and touched his lips to mine. Not a deep kiss, just a touch. Just enough to create the bridge of flesh. He tasted of booze and stank of fear, and I tried to scream. . . .

Too late.

I felt it squirming in my mouth, shooting tendrils down my throat, invading me in a way that even the worst rape couldn't equal-it was inside me, ripping furiously through my flesh, looking for a place to hide. I tried to scream, tried to vomit, tried to die, but it just kept going, down my throat, burning in my chest, squirming and moving through me like a hand until it closed into a fist around my heart.

The pain was so bad, I left my body and escaped into Oversight, and that was when I saw the Demon Mark for the first time. A black nest of tendrils writhing around the core of my magic, my life, feeding. The last of it slid out of Bad Bob and left him shining and clear of taint.

And utterly devoid of power. He'd carried it for so long that it had eaten away the power he'd started with. He was an empty shell of a man whose heart continued to beat, but I felt the horrible hollow space where this thing had been.

And then his heart jumped, shuddered, and froze in his chest. His face took on a dull sheen of surprise.

Can't die with this thing inside me.

Oh, God, no. This couldn't be happening.

I felt the particles charging around me, and it reminded me suddenly of Lewis, turning his bloodied face to me, holding out his hand for power. Because it was power forming around me, funneling through me. Taking the last of the energy that kept Bad Bob alive. I could taste the drowning blackness of his despair, the wailing terror of his death. The Demon Mark sucked it down and began to taste what was inside me, too, and the sensation was so bitterly wrong that I couldn't help but fight back. It was as instinctive as gagging.

I reached for power, and it came, a rolling white wave through Oversight, circling me like a tornado. It would wreak havoc on the real world, but I didn't have a choice. Every cell in my body, real or aetheric, was screaming to get that thing out of me.

In the real world, the dome house literally exploded. Glass blew out from the windows in a pulverized mist. Wind tore through the room at speeds impossible to withstand and shredded wood to splinters, plastic to shards. The terra-cotta warrior exploded into dust. Charged particles glittered and flashed and rolled like crystal waves around me, storm-ready. So much potential energy, my hair lifted and crackled with it, on the verge of burning. Every circuit in the house blew, frying electronics, starting fires in the walls. In Oversight, the power draw flared photonegative, out of control, and ice crystals began to form around minute particles of dust in the swirling air of the living room.

Outside, steaming hail the size of baseballs, soccer balls, hit the beach; I heard the hard, brittle impacts all over the house. Temperatures soared, then dropped, as pressure rose. Outside, over the sea, clouds massed with incredible speed, darkened, began a lowering rotation.

Bad Bob fell to the floor, a lifeless lump of flesh, already being torn apart by the forces in the room. By my own power, out of control.

His Djinn disappeared into the maelstrom, and I saw the wine bottle picked up by the wind and hurtled against the far wall with so much force, it literally vanished into crystals no larger than sand.

The leather couch I was still lying on was blown back with a tidal force of wind, and I rolled over debris. Shards of glass everywhere; I barely noticed the cuts, but I managed to get my fingers around a sharp needle-edged piece and slashed at the ropes that held my hands until they parted with a moist snap. It hurt, but my standards of pain had changed; a little flesh-and-blood agony was nothing to worry about.

I scrambled until I found a wall at my back. Lightning flashed, and I could feel the thing feeding inside me, out of control; greedy little bastard sucking down every mote of energy. It fed off storms. It fed off the power burning inside me.

I had to shut it off. Somehow, I had to reach down into that-thing-and force it to obey. It was growing inside me, growing angles and cutting edges; it would burst out of me like some evil child and then . . . and then . . .

Something warm and gentle touched the back of my neck. Breathe, a voice whispered inside me. Under my skin. Child of air, breathe in your strength.

I gasped in a breath. Another. The air felt warm, smelled faintly of ozone.

The Demon is of the darkness. Use your light.

I opened my eyes and there, in front of me, was the Djinn. Bad Bob's Djinn. He was a column of living fire, a pair of golden eyes, something wonderful and terrible at the same time.

Breathe in your strength, it said again, and when I inhaled, I felt the fire go into me, burning like raw lava down my throat, into the darkness.

Now go.

I was outside in the rain, in the cold, with my arms wrapped around my body, shivering. The surf pounded the dome house, sucked at it like a tasty treat. Overhead, the eye of the storm whirled and stared down on me.

Inside me, the Demon Mark shuddered and went quiet.

I breathed out mist and steam, and around me the energy levels faded. Lightning flashed, hit close, and I felt the burn of ozone on my flesh like the heat of a distant cold sun.

And then I slammed back down, hard, into reality. Cold, wet, windy reality, the storm screaming over tortured waves, the stench of burning and dead things and my sweat. There was something inside me, stuck inside me. I ripped open my shirt, expecting to find-something-some horrible black tangle under the skin. There was only a faint, intricate black scorch mark. I touched it, trembling, and felt the thing underneath stretch and murmur in its sleep.

I went to my knees, hard, and threw up.

I don't know how long I was there, huddled near the ruins of Bad Bob's house, but I felt the Wardens when they arrived-Janice Langstrom, Bad Bob's exec, and Ulrike Kohl. Ulrike concentrated on the storm raging out at sea, but I could have told her it was useless; the storm was mine, keyed to me, born of my fury. All she could do was tame it down to a sullen retreat.

It was Janice who found me. "Joanne?" We knew each other. Not well, but enough for nodding acquaintance. I let her help me up to my feet and pulled the tattered halves of my blouse together, more out of an instinctive desire for her not to see the Mark than any impulse to modesty. "Oh, my God! What happened here?"

I opened my mouth to tell her . . . and then didn't. I couldn't even begin. Something in me-that wily, scared-to-death primitive part of my brain-told me that if I said anything about the Demon Mark, I could kiss my ass good-bye.

I just shivered.

She searched my face, her frown deepening; she was an older woman, younger than Bad Bob but not by much. Moderately powerful. Extremely perceptive.

"That storm has your smell all over it," she said, and her grip on my arm tightened. "Where is he? Where's Bob?"

P/S: Copyright -->www_novelfreereadonline_Com

***