Rachel Caine - Weather Warden 4 - Windfall

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RUNNING ON EMPTY

Leaving Las Vegas seemed like a great idea to Joanne Baldwin. But there’s no escaping her past

—and there’s no time to recharge. The former Weather Warden’s powers are at an all-time low

just as the clouds of war are gathering—and the biggest storm since Atlantis’s destruction is

heading for landfall.

Joanne is all-out exhausted. When not donning a rain slicker and camping it up for the camera as a TV

weather girl, she has to contend with a vengeful cop on her tail, her newly divorced sister moving

on—with a charming but mysterious British beau in tow—and getting caught in the middle of a

supernatural civil war. Worst of all, her boyfriend in a bottle can’t stop draining her powers and is fast

morphing from the Djinn of her dreams to the Ifrit of her nightmares.

As the agreement between the Wardens and the Djinn starts to self-destruct, Joanne finds herself forced

to choose between saving her lover, saving her Warden abilities…and saving humanity.

Praise for the Weather Warden Series

“You’ll never watch the Weather Channel the same way again.”

—Jim Butcher

“A rollicking good ride. Caine’s prose crackles with energy, as does her fierce and lovable

heroine.”

—Publishers Weekly

“Fans of fun, fast-paced urban fantasy will enjoy the ride.”

—SFRevu

A ROC BOOK

The following brave writers have made their National Novel Writing goal and wrote fifty thousand words

toward a book in November 2004. I salute their incredible dedication, and I was proud to sponsor the

NaNoNov community for 2004.

Jenny Griffee

Julie “GG” Sade

Donna Beltz

Silver_Ink

Darice Moore

Leah Wilson

Jennifer Matarese

Crystal Sarakas

Acknowledgments

The author wishes to thank:

The Stormchasers, who encourage me in this madness.

(Hi, guys!)

JoMadge, without whom neither this book nor ANY

Weather Warden books would have been possible.

The Time Turners: Kel, Katy, Becky, Laurie,

Claire (haka, baby!), and Marla.

Rachel Sheer and Ter Matthies. They know why,

and it has to do with werewolves.

The greatest band in the world: Joe Bonamassa,

Eric Czar and Kenny Kramme!

www.jbonamassa.com

(and everyone who supports them)

America’s Best Coffee in Arlington,

and whatever brilliant barista invented Caramel Mochas

that are served at 5:30 A.M.

… and, of course, Cat. Always.

Contents

PREVIOUSLY…

ONE

TWO

THREE

FOUR

FIVE

SIX

SEVEN

EIGHT

NINE

Track List

A Public Service Announcement

PREVIOUSLY…

My name is Joanne Baldwin. I used to control the weather, but I’ve given that up. See, I’ve

discovered that the Wardens—who are supposed to be protecting all of you from horrible deaths from

fires, floods, earthquakes, storms, and other fun rides cooked up by a hostile Mother Nature—haven’t

been entirely on the up and up, and besides that, there’s the whole question of the Djinn they use to help

them in their work. I used to think it was okay to keep a magical being locked up in a bottle and subject

to your will.

Not anymore, not since I fell in love with one.

Having given up my day job, I’ve found it necessary to put the tattered remnants of my normal life

back together again… no easy task for a girl without many marketable skills outside of the supernatural

realm. Plus, there’s the whole issue of having been dead, once upon a time. Kind of makes going home

difficult.

And that really fast car I love so much?

Could be getting me into trouble.

Or maybe that’s just my natural state of existence.

INTERLUDE

It doesn’t take much to destroy the world as humans know it.

Unseasonably hot sunshine beating down on a small patch of ocean off the coast of Africa.

The water warms up a few degrees. As it burns off into gray ghosts, rising up into the air, it

could be just another thing, another day, another balancing of wind and water.

But it’s not. The air is just a few degrees warmer than normal, and it rises faster, carrying the

moisture as a hostage. Ghosts turn to shadows as mist condenses and takes on weight. It spirals

up into the sky, where the air gets thin and cold. At this height, the water condenses from mist to

drops, too heavy for the process to contain them, and start a plunge back for safety of the ocean.

But the air’s too warm, and as the drops fall they hit another, stronger updraft that sends them

up again, dizzyingly high. Drops eat each other like cannibals and grow fatter. Heavier. Head for

the ocean again.

But they aren’t going anywhere; the updraft keeps short-circuiting gravity. The cycle

continues, driving moisture into the air and hoarding it, as thin white virga condense and form

clouds. You can feel energy building as hot sun and warm sea continue a mating dance.

It’s no different than what happens every day in the Cradle of Storms.

But it is, if you know what you’re looking for.

If I’d been paying attention, none of this would have happened.

ONE

I kept trying to tell myself, You’ve survived worse than this, but it didn’t seem to be working. Any

second now, I was going to scream and kill somebody, not necessarily in that order… You’ve been

through worse. Yep. I had. It just didn’t feel like it, right at the moment.

I stared blankly at the back wall of the studio and held my place under the hot, merciless lights. The

news anchors, seated at the desk about ten feet away from me, were still doing happychat. Morning

happychat, which is a whole yak-level higher than the annoying evening forced camaraderie. I was

sweating under a yellow rain slicker and matching hat and stupid-looking rain boots. I looked like the

Morton’s Salt girl, only not as adorable.

The weather outside was clear, and there wasn’t even a hope in hell of rain from the nice, stable

system out there, but Marvelous Marvin McLarty, meteorologist extraordinaire, was about to pronounce

a seventy percent chance of downpours in the next twenty-four hours. And this wasn’t the first

out-of-the-blue (no pun intended) prediction Marvin had pulled out of his… Doppler. Two nights ago,

he’d been the only one to accurately predict landfall of a tropical storm up the coast, while everyone else

including the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration—NOAA to the weather buffs—had put

it two hundred miles to the south.

This should have made him good. It only made him even more obnoxious. Unlikely as that seemed.

Dear God in heaven, I never thought I’d miss being a Warden quite so much, but right now—and for

some time, actually—I wanted my old job back so bad that I’d have crawled on broken glass for it.

I held onto my big, toothy smile as the red light lit up on the camera in front of me and Marvin, who

was standing next to me. He was a big man, bulky, with implanted hair and big, overwhitened teeth,

laser-corrected blue eyes, and a face made unnaturally smooth by dermabrasion and Botox. Okay, the

Botox was just a guess, but he was holding on to his fleeing, screaming youth with both fists.

Camera Two lit up. Marvin sauntered around, quipped with the anchors, Janie and Kurt, and then

turned to the weather map. He started talking about a cold front approaching from the southeast… only

there wasn’t one; there was a front stalled at the Georgia border that didn’t have nearly enough zippity

doo dah to make it across the state line anytime in the next, oh, year. Behind him, the Chyron graphics

did all kinds of cool zooms and swoops, showing animations and time-lapsed satellite cloud movements,

which meant zero to about ninety-five percent of the population tuning in.

Marvin was a certified professional meteorologist. A degreed climatologist.

Marvin knew dick about the weather, but he was damn lucky. At least so far as I could tell, and

believe me, I could tell a lot.

He walked past the animated map, and the camera followed him and focused on me as he stopped in

frame. I turned the smile on Marvin, wishing it was a really big cannon.

“Good morning, Joanne!” he boomed cheerfully. He’d snarled at me earlier, while pushing past me in

the hallway on his way to makeup. “Ready to talk about what’s coming up?”

“Sure, Marvin!” I bubbled right back, perky as a cheerleader on speed. I used to have a real job. I

used to protect people. Save lives. How the hell did I get here?

He wasn’t listening to my internal whining. “Great! Well, we know how rough the weather’s been the

past few days, especially for our friends up the coast. We already know today’s going to be bright and

sunny, but let’s tell our viewers out there in the Sunshine State what it’s going to be like for them outside

tomorrow!”

The camera pulled focus. I was center stage.

I held on to my smile like it was a life preserver. “Well, Marvin, I’m sure tomorrow’s going to be a

beautiful day for going outside and soaking up some—”

Marvin had taken the required number of steps out of frame, and just as I said the word “soaking,”

the bored, cigar-chomping stagehand standing off-camera to my left yanked a rope.

About twenty gallons of water dumped from buckets directly over my head, right on target. It hurt.

The bastards had chilled it, or else it was a lot colder up in those rafters than down here on the stage; the

stuff felt ice-cold as it splashed off the plastic rain hat, straight down the back of my neck, to splash down

into the stupid yellow rain boots.

I was standing in a kiddie pool with yellow rubber duckies on it. Most of the water made it in. I

gasped and looked surprised, which wasn’t hard; even when you expect it, it’s tough not to be surprised

by the idea that someone will actually do a thing like this to you.

Or that you will not kill them for it.

The anchors and Marvin laughed like lunatics. I kept smiling, took my rain hat off, and said, “Well,

that’s the weather in Florida, folks, just when you least expect it…”

And they hit me with the last bucket. Which they hadn’t warned me about.

“Oh, boy, sorry about that, Weather Girl!” Marvin whooped, and came back into frame as I shoved

my dripping hair back and tried to keep on smiling. “Guess we’re in for a few showers tomorrow, eh?”

“Seventy percent chance,” I gritted out. It wasn’t quite so perky as I’d planned.

“So, moms, pack those umbrellas and raincoats for the kids in the morning! Joanne, it’s time for our

weather lesson of the day: Can you tell our viewers the difference between weather and climate?”

A climate is the weather in an area averaged over a long period of time, you moron. I thought it.

I didn’t say it. I kept smiling blankly at him as I asked, “I don’t know, Marvin, what is the difference?”

Because I was, after all, the straight woman, and this was penance for some horrible crime I’d committed

in a previous life. As Genghis Khan, apparently.

He looked straight into the camera with his most serious expression and said, “You can’t weather a

tree, but you can climate.”

I stared at him for about two seconds too long for television etiquette, then turned my smile back on

like a porch light and said to the camera, “We’ll be back tomorrow morning with more fun weather facts,

kids!”

Marvin waved. I waved. The red light went out. Kurt and Janie started doing more happychat; they

were about to interview a golden retriever, for some bizarre reason. I gave Marvin the kind of look that

would have gotten me fired if I’d given it on the air, and threw my wet hair over my shoulder to wring it

out like a mop into the ducky pool.

He leaned over to me and, in a whisper, said, “Hey, do you know this one? How is snow white?…

Pretty damn good, according to the seven dwarves. Ha!”

“Your mike is on,” I said, and watched him do the panic dance. His mike really wasn’t, but it was so

nice to see him make that face. The golden retriever, confused, woofed at him and lunged; panic ensued,

both on and off camera. I stepped out of the wading pool and squelched away, past the grinning

stagehands who knew exactly what I’d done and wished they’d thought of it first. I stripped off the wet

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