Free Firestorm by Rachel Caine Page B

from Paul; he waved a hand vaguely. I turned to Emily. “You’re not going to give this guy any shit, right?”
    She was silent for a few seconds, looking at me, then shrugged. “Not right now. You’re right. We need to stop the bleeding, and save the surgery for later.”
    I was glad Emily let me push it through, because she’d be a tough opponent. Nothing weak about her, and we needed her on our side.
    There was only one side, right now. The side of survival.
    I faced a crowd of people, and everybody looked tired and harassed and worried. Not the faces of winners. They looked…lost.
    â€œAll right,” I said. “Everybody, listen up. We’ve taken some serious hits, and there’s no question, things are desperate. But we are Wardens. Wardens don’t run, and they don’t abandon their responsibilities. There are six billion people on this planet, and we stand up for them. We need to be strong, focused, and we need to be united. No more backbiting, politics, or ambition. Understood?”
    â€œOh, come on! Look around you. It’s impossible,” someone in the crowd complained. I fixed that area with a stare that, from the way those in its way quailed, might have been Djinn-strength.
    â€œI was just hanging in midair glowing like a UFO,” I said. “Don’t tell me about impossible. We’re Wardens.”
    A ripple of laughter. Some of the tension fled from their faces, and there were a few nods.
    â€œI need a volunteer to handle cleanup crew,” I continued. “Earth Wardens, probably, maybe a couple of Fire Wardens. Get this place back in operation. Everybody else, pick a conference room and get to work triaging the crisis information. Go.”
    And amazingly, after a scant second, Emily raised her hand and bellowed, “Right! I need two Earth and one Fire for cleanup!” and the rest of them began milling around and filtering into conference rooms.
    They were actually listening to me.
    I looked at Marion, who was sitting, hands folded in her lap. She inclined her head, very slightly. Under the bruises, she was smiling.
    I said, “Somebody had to.”
    â€œYou have a gift for it,” she countered. We both looked at Paul.
    He was gone. Sometime during my little speech, he’d walked away. I felt a little stab of regret and worry. I’d taken away Paul’s authority again, maybe for good this time, and that was not only unkind, but also deeply unwise.
    â€œExcuse me?” someone asked from behind me. “Warden Baldwin?”
    I turned to find a petite blond woman standing there. I didn’t know her, but she was different from the others in the hallway. There was no worry in her expression, and no exhaustion. Perky, which just seemed strange. There was something else, though, that sent a ripple of unease up my back that exploded in an ice-cold shudder on the back of my neck.
    The woman was just… wrong.
    â€œJo!” Marion’s warning shout came a second too late.
    The woman had a gun. Must have taken it off one of the guards. Nathan? Janet? One of the many who’d died? And now she raised it and pointed it straight at me. I froze, unbreathing. The muzzle of that damn pistol looked big enough to swallow the sun.
    And she fired.
    I felt it happening in slow motion—the hammer striking the cartridge, the blooming flare of explosion inside the metal jacket…
    I felt it. The same way I usually felt the flare of lightning bursting out of the sky, or the swirl of air and water.
    I not only felt it, but I could…touch it.
    It didn’t take much, just a whisper, and I killed the spark before it ignited the powder in the cartridge.
    Click.
    My would-be assassin looked baffled, then angry, and pulled the trigger again, with the same results. I smiled thinly at her, reached out, and took the pistol away. While I was doing that, Nathan, the tall security guard, pelted breathlessly around the