Ill Wind by Rachel Caine Page A

say you can’t be trained, you go into Marion’s keeping, and she and her people try to take away your powers without killing you. Sometimes it works. Sometimes . . . not so well.”
    If he was hoping to scare me, he’d succeeded brilliantly. I wanted to say something, but I honestly had no idea what to try. Everything I’d done so far was wrong. Maybe keeping my mouth shut was the best thing I could do.
    He finally smiled. “Not going to beg, are you?”
    I shook my head.
    â€œThat’s something,” he said, and turned around to Martin Oliver. “I’ll take her on. She can’t cut it, it’s my responsibility. But I think she’s going to be a damn good Warden someday.”
    Martin winced. “Not quite yet, though.”
    â€œYeah, well. Who is, at eighteen?”
    â€œYou were,” Martin said. “I was.”
    Paul shrugged. “We’re fuckin’ prodigies, Marty. And neither one of us ever had half the power this girl does coming into it.”
    â€œThat’s what I’m afraid of,” Bad Bob said. “That’s exactly what I’m afraid of.”
    It was four to three to make me a Warden.
    Â 
    Two hours later, I made it to Albany. Not a bad town, Albany—nice, historic, a little run-down but still the kind of kid-and-dog place that people boast about. Probably smaller than the residents preferred it be, considering it was the state capital and all. I’d hit it in pretty season—tulips bloomed in shocking rows of red and yellow, like velvet rings of fire rippling in the wind around trees and home gardens. I passed through the industrial area near Erie Canal, past narrow brownstones with soot-dark stoops, and turned toward the southend—up Hamilton toward the part of town called—appropriately—the Mansions.
    Paul lived in a house that had to cost at least a cool quarter million . . . with spacious lawn, gracious styling, and a lacy white gazebo in the back overlooking a rose garden. I pulled into the drive and parked the Mustang, let the engine rumble to a stop, and took a little peek into Oversight.
    I almost wished I hadn’t. Paul’s house was a castle in the aetheric, I’m talking castle here, with battlements and flags and arrow slits. Not too surprising, since Paul had always been a knight—in the warlike sense, the old-fashioned, bloody, mace-and-swordkind. And his Sector was a fiefdom. Paul’s world was heavy on the black and white. Bad news for Team Me, whose colors these days were gray and grayer.
    I dropped back into tulips and Doric columns on the portico as the front door opened. Paul walked out to meet me. However knightly he might have looked in Oversight, in the real world, Paul was pure Italian Stallion . . . strong, muscular, with bone structure that bordered on godlike. He still had designer stubble, except I’d long ago learned it was really just a permanent five-o’clock shadow. Paul had turned forty a couple of years ago, but it hadn’t slowed him down any, and damn, he was still gorgeous.
    Also unfortunately mad as hell at me, at the moment.
    â€œOutta the car,” he said, and jerked a thumb at me.
    I rolled down the window with the hand crank. “Not yet.”
    He glowered. “Why the fuck not? You don’t trust me?”
    â€œCheck out the door,” I said. The marks of the lightning strike had certainly not done wonders for Delilah’s paint job. “C’mon, somebody tried to fry me in my Stuart Weitzmans the last time I got out. I’m not falling for it twice.”
    Some of Paul’s anger melted as he looked at the evidence. But, being Paul, he didn’t express any shock or sympathy or ask any touchy-feely questions, either. He said, “You’re scared.”
    â€œNo shit. You’d be scared, too.”
    â€œWhat? You don’t think I could defuse a little lightning bolt?”