"I'm very sorry. We're doing the best we can, but several of the first-class passengers have been... reluctant to leave their onboard possessions. Several of them have valuable items in the ship's safe, and the hold. They won't leave without them, and - "
"I don't give a goddamn about their stuff," Lewis interrupted tightly. "I've given you all morning to make this happen. Get them off the ship, right now, or they're sailing out with us and they can take their chances. Understand?"
The officer - I wasn't familiar enough with shipboard command structure to know what he was, but I guessed maybe Executive Officer - straightened his back to full Navy-style attention, clasped his hands behind his back, and gave Lewis a long, steady stare. "Sir, I recognize that this is a matter of urgency, but we cannot permit you to endanger innocent passengers. They must be offloaded before we can put to sea."
"If we're still in this harbor in thirty minutes, you'll be sailing this ship as a fucking submarine!" Lewis snapped. "They're already endangered. They get off the boat and run for their lives, or they come with us and we do whatever we can to protect them. Those are their choices, but we can't wait for them to call their lawyers to decide." He looked past the officer to Cherise. My best friend - endearingly human, not magically gifted at all -
gave us both a little half wave and kept checking off names. "Cherise! How many are we missing?"
"We're halfway in!" she shouted back. "Better tell the rest of your folks to get their beach thongs in gear!" She sounded incredibly cheerful. "Hey, I hope I get to be Cruise Director too, because this is going to be the best world-ending crisis ever !" Cherise was being only faintly ironic. That was the great thing about Cherise; she could find a silver lining in a coffin, six feet under, without a flashlight. She was possibly the only person I could count on who wasn't supernaturally gifted, unless good looks and a wicked sense of humor counted. Cherise was regular folks, and I loved that she could hold her own with the not-so-regular crowd I tended to attract.
Lewis skipped right over Cherise's attempt to lighten the mood. "Dammit, what's the holdup?"
"You're kidding, right?" Cherise pulled back her rain slicker hat, and her blond hair tumbled out like a flood of sunshine. She looked a little damp, but otherwise perfect, from her beach-approved tan to the hint of dark pink lipstick still kissing her lips. "Getting Wardens to do anything on cue is ridiculous. It's like trying to pull Shriners out of an open bar." Those who thought Cherise shallow - which, taking one quick glance at her perfect features, perfect hair, and dazzling smile, one might - were in for a major shock once they got past her defensive dumb-blonde routine. She was a ruthlessly competent person, and if she couldn't get the Wardens organized, then it couldn't be done by any nonmagical means.
I knew what was going on with the Wardens, and why they weren't on board. We're an egotistical, self-involved bunch - which is, sadly, not our worst feature. Each of us tends to think he or she knows better, no matter what situation we land in. You can call it absolute power corrupting, et cetera, but I think it's more that we all have to make life-and-death decisions daily, and that tends to make you confident, bordering on delusional. That's fine if you're operating autonomously, but in groups it can get in the way. It takes a strong personality, and a stronger grip on your temper, to bend Wardens to your will even in such a simple matter as please board the ship now or we are all going to die .
Lewis had trusted them too much.
"Fuck," Lewis said. He had a tendency to be very Zen, but his legendary calm was showing significant cracks. "Jo, I need David back here. Can you find him?"
"I can try." I was glad for the excuse, actually. I stepped back against the billowing canvas wall, feeling the thump of rain like tiny body blows, and concentrated on the magical link that led from me to David. Up on the aetheric plane, the level of reality above the physical, the link looked like a gleaming silver rope, and it felt warm to the touch. It couldn't be seen here in the real world, but using Oversight - focusing my awareness into the aetheric, without actually leaving my body to go there - I could access it just a little.
Time to go,I whispered down the line, a pulse of power that he'd know came from me.
You're needed, mister.
And the answer came spiraling back, a surge of meaning without the framework of actual words to define it. He was coming, but there was some kind of complication. What else was new? Seemed like neither of us could take a breath without causing, or suffering, some kind of complication.
When I focused on the outside world again, things had not gotten better. In fact, they'd taken a significant turn for the worse, because Lewis's body language had moved from frustrated to outright furious, and he was fixed on the ship's Executive Officer like a cruise missile. "What?" he growled. "What did you say?" The officer cleared his throat. "I said that we'll need to have your attorneys draw up another set of papers to indemnify the cruise line if you sail with any - and I must stress any - persons who have not signed the appropriate waivers to - " Lewis had a wicked bad temper, which was something few people had ever had reason to know because he had such a long, patient fuse. Once it blew, though, it was catastrophic; I remembered that once upon a time, it had nearly killed someone. Granted, that someone hadn't been exactly innocent, but still - it had been like using a nuclear bomb to kill shower mold. Once you pull the pin from Mr. Grenade, he is no longer your friend.
I stepped up. "Lewis," I said, and drew his focus. Some of the rage calmed in his dark eyes, but it was more of a move from full boil to simmer; the heat was definitely on ."David's coming, but it'll take some time. Why don't we go round up the stragglers? Cherise can work on evicting the first-class stowaways. She'd love that." Cherise gave me a grin that assured me she would, very much. Give the girl a clipboard, and she became an unstoppable force. "Damn straight," she said. "You two crazy kids go have fun storming the castle. I'll go schmooze the stars. Damn, was I born for that or what ?" Lewis looked at her helplessly. He couldn't yell at Cherise, and he had no reason to yell at me. I motioned for the remaining target - Mr. Executive Officer Stick-Up-His-Ass - to back off, but if he saw the signal, he completely ignored it.
"The shipmaster is completely responsible for every soul on board," he continued, as if he wasn't facing imminent grievous bodily harm. "I can't permit this kind of violation of procedures to - "
"Procedures." Lewis's voice sounded almost calm, but I had a bad feeling. "Right. According to the papers I signed earlier today, you now work for me, not the cruise line. Are you aware of that?"
From the shock that flickered across the XO's face, he clearly hadn't been. He buried that quickly, though. "No, sir."
"Let me make this absolutely... perfectly... clear." I thought at first that I was imagining things, but then I realized that Lewis's skin had taken on an unearthly hot glow.
So had his eyes. He looked about five seconds from detonation. I'd never seen a human do that. I'd rarely even seen a Djinn do it. "That storm out there doesn't care about laws, or rules, or procedures. It cares about ripping apart everything in its path. And it's coming for us. So Get On. The. Fucking. Team. Now ."
The XO took a step back. Lewis's furious glow got brighter, and I saw it reflected in the man's wide eyes.
Then he saluted, spun on his heel, and marched back up the gangway without another word.
"Dude," Cherise said in a hushed voice. "That was hot. "
"Down, girl," I said.
"Hey, can I help it that I find radioactive guys sexy?" We both gazed at Lewis, who despite not having shaved, showered, combed his hair, or changed his clothes in an appallingly long time was undeniably hot, in a lanky, outdoorsy, glowy kind of way. He gave us both an exasperated look and stalked off to organize the Wardens on his own. The glow stayed on him for several seconds as he went out into the lashing rain.
"I'm surprised you didn't jump all over that," I said.
"Moi?"Cherise pressed a small, perfect hand against her breast and did a silent-movie face of astonishment. "I'd never."
"Since when?"
"I've got a sense of self-preservation. Okay, granted, it's still in the original shrink-wrap, but I've got one if I ever want to use it. Besides. Dude is scary serious right now." Cherise waggled her clipboard. "Want to go with me? Terrify some mundanes? C'mon, it'll be fun!
And I might need you to, you know, throw a lightning bolt or something." Well, I wasn't doing anything useful standing here worrying. I could follow Lewis out into the storm, but that didn't really have much appeal, his tension level being where it was. He was more than capable of scaring the Warden stragglers into line all by himself. I would only be collateral damage.
Cherise shed her rain slicker, revealing a tight baby-doll T-shirt with, weirdly, a cartoon drawing of a toaster on it, complete with toast. The toaster had some kind of bar on the side with a red glow that looked like an eye.
"Let me guess," I said, and struggled out of my slicker as well. "Star Trek?" She rolled her eyes. "Do you not own a television? No. Not any flavor of Trek, and oh my God, what are you wearing? Oh honey. No."
"Shut up. It's borrowed."
"From who, a homeless person?"
"No, from the Jean Paul Gaultier fall collection."
She accepted that with a straight face. "Oh, that explains it. Homeless color-blind skank is so hot right now."
We were jabbering because we were afraid. Because the world was coming to an end, again, and sometimes whistling past the graveyard is literally the only thing that gets you safely through the experience.
And I'm just talking about Fashion Week.
I looked down at my outfit, though, and acknowledged that Cherise did have a point. The white miniskirt was too tight and too short, even by incredibly lax South Beach standards.
The top would have been rejected by Frederick's of Hollywood as too trampy, and by Wal-Mart as too cheap. The shoes were plain battered deck shoes, which at least were a safe choice, if not styling.
"They have shops on board," Cherise assured me, and patted me kindly on the back.
"Cherise, do you really think they'll be opening the mall when we're running for our lives?"
"Why not? People got to shop. It's like breathing." It was to Cherise, anyway. "Okay, fine.
I'll tell myself that it's a costume party and you came as a drowned rat." I smacked her. She pretended it hurt. "Cher," I said, and put an arm around her shoulders.
"I really love you, you know. I don't know what I'd be right now if I didn't have you around to keep me sane."
We weren't in the serious-talk business, me and Cher, but it seemed like this might be a good moment to make an attempt. She could have laughed it off; I wouldn't have been upset if she did, because I just needed to say it.
Instead, she fixed those deep blue eyes on me and said, "I don't know what I'd be without you, either. Probably nothing half as good as I am." She smiled faintly, and for just a moment, the storm lessened. Her smile was just that powerful. "Love you, too, you skanky, no-style tramp."
I smacked her again. Moment over.
We went to try to solve the first-class problem.
Chapter Two
The very rich are like everyone else, provided you classify "everyone else" as "spoiled rotten brats with vast incomes and little sense of responsibility." There are exceptions, of course, but money gets you excused from all kinds of social constraints, just as fame does, and that never does a body good.
We had a whole cadre of spoiled rotten brats holed up, refusing to leave their stash of gold bars, drugs, or folding money - whatever they had stored in the ship's hold and safe. I wondered how they'd feel using it as life preservers.
The harassed Chief Steward pointed me toward the first-class lounge area, where apparently a lot of our troublemakers had forsaken their magnificently opulent cabins and gathered to jointly declare their displeasure at being inconvenienced. You'd think that anyone could see it wasn't a good idea to be riding out a storm on a boat, but then again, people do dumb crap all the time, and they always seem astonished that it turns out to be dangerous. Seriously. Look at YouTube.
My first brush with the Richie Riches came in the form of a very famous singer, with aspirations of being an equally famous starlet. She was actually obeying orders, believe it or not, and she was on her way out, practically clawing the expensively paneled walls with frustration. She was surrounded by a milling entourage who scrambled to juggle her coffee, BlackBerry, bags, appointment diaries, and small yappy dogs. She was scowling as much as Botox would allow, and had her Swarovski crystal- encrusted cell phone at her ear.
"I'm telling you, it's outrageous !" she was saying. "I want a lawsuit in place before I hit the limo, do you hear me? I want to own this stupid ship, and then I want to use it for target practice. Just do it, Steve. And make sure that wherever I'm going, it's five star. I am not going to some shelter with cots! - What? I don't care what category the storm is, you find me a suite! What do I pay you for, idiot?"
I suddenly had a great deal more sympathy for the business-suited corporate drones who had no choice but to smile and take it for the paycheck. Once the flood of minions was past, I approached an immaculately white-uniformed steward who stood helplessly at the entrance to the first-class lounge, looking in.