I glided
the last four hundred miles to the Pacific coast, not because I enjoyed the
free fall—It’s okay, I guess—but
because there were no clouds. That’s the kind of condition that almost never
occurred in the Pacific Northwest. Hell, they even had a condition, Seasonal
Affective Disorder, to describe how depressing it was not to see the sun.
I had
expected some kind of cloud so I could cloud surf my way down, but now I had to
fall and use some windwalking to slow my descent.
I spotted
Kate in the secluded cove. She had made a signal of a micro-funnel over the
water. It did nothing on its own but alert me that a Storm Rider was down
there. I had only met Kate a couple of times before, at the meetups in Austin
when I was starting out. She seemed nice, but she always seemed to have this
secretive smile, like a private joke she was enjoying. It usually wasn’t a nice
smile, either.
Reminds me of Jack playing jokes. Bet she
plays them, too.
“Hey,
Reilly, thanks for coming out.”
“No sweat,
it’s calm in Tornado Alley for the next day or so. What do you need?”
“There’s a
storm in the Pacific, but it should peter out before it gets here.”
“Yeah, so?”
“I need it
here.”
“Why?”
“Some
assholes in Belport have been fucking with the weather. There’s a heatwave
centralized over the city, and it’s been radiating out. If it keeps going, it’s
going to get intense enough to open a rift.”
“Right, so
we bring in a storm to blow it out, whatever it is. Know what’s causing it?”
She
shrugged. “Some kind of magic is in there. Whenever I tried to stir up the
weather, I could do it, but then it would just revert back.”
“So now we
bring in a big gun and blow the motherfucker away,” I grinned.
“I knew I
liked you.”