Free Ill Wind by Rachel Caine Page B

far up, flying without sound or pressure through the liquid we call air. No clouds in Oversight, either, but there was a low red band of energy over the ocean and a corresponding white one coming down from the mesosphere—clouds later, then, and rain in a day at most. Warming andcooling ocean air is the unimaginably powerful engine that drives the machine of life. Connecting to it like this, right on the coast, was a sensuous, dangerous experience.
    I soared. In Oversight, crossing huge distances takes a fraction of real time, but it still felt like a long trip by the time I saw the swirling entity we were calling Samuel. He was a big, growing boy, already well into rebellious adolescence and halfway to becoming a dangerous hooligan. Facing that kind of storm makes you feel small. No, not just small: nonexistent. The forces that formed him and drove him dwarfed anything I could summon out of myself.
    I shifted just enough of my consciousness back to my body to ask Tamara on the phone if she had a Djinn.
    â€œYes,” she said. “You don’t?”
    â€œGetting mine in about six months.”
    â€œSo you want me to source.”
    â€œYeah, please.”
    â€œNo problem.”
    Technically, I should have been sourcing the power out of a Djinn to do what we were supposed to do. . . . The Warden nearest the storm usually had the responsibility. Using a Djinn for a source was sort of like having a superconductor in the circuit—it augmented and amplified your power, and assisted in channeling it accurately. The fact that I’d been assigned to this storm without a Djinn to source me was, I realized, not an accident. It was a test.
    And Bad Bob was my proctor. Wow. No pressure.
    I fought off a cold shiver and got down to business. After about thirty seconds of real time, I saw ashape approaching in Oversight—Tamara. Tall, bright, unusually vivid in her aura colors, with a clear white line of energy linking her back to her home in Mauritania. As I watched, power surged along that link. Her Djinn was delivering the goods.
    I reached out to her, and our aetheric bodies touched. Energy jumped the barrier and shot into me, and I had trouble holding on to it; I was not used to Djinn-sourced power at such levels. It felt like being drunk and being dizzy and being in love, and connected to that kind of power I could feel every molecule in the swirling air, every slight variation of temperature between them. It was like . . .
    . . . like playing God.
    Somewhere, Bad Bob was watching. That thought shook me out of any sense of divinity and got me to work. There was, predictably, a ridge of high pressure riding in front of Samuel. Seen from Oversight, the whole thing looked remarkably like a freeze-framed explosion, with a pressure null in the center and force traveling out in all directions. You don’t stop a thing like that.
    You just weaken the forces that drive it your direction.
    Tamara and I worked quickly and—if I may say so—efficiently to smooth out the temperature variations at surface level to cut off the flow of energy up into the monster, and raise the temperature at the top end to create a shorter pressure wave. Small changes, followed by detailed analysis of the effects. One step at a time, always going back to the source . . . the ocean . . . for the next tiny change.
    The weatherworking took no more than thirty minutes, real time, and Tropical Storm Samuel was reduced to nothing more than a stern southeast wind with some fluffy, rain-heavy clouds. I let go of Tamara—reluctantly—and felt all that power drain away.
    I fell back into my body with a rushing suddenness that scared me and told me just how tired I really was. Normally I have more control than that. I’d had no idea how addictive that kind of power could feel, and how ridiculously pathetic I’d feel once it was gone.
    Tamara was saying nice things about working