Ill Wind by Rachel Caine

that knocked planes out of the sky. Hence, my warning to Rashid; it would be up to him to handle the devastating side effects.
    I watched the digital clock on the dashboard. It took forever to flick over one minute. I felt something happening overhead, a kind of power gathering, and I couldn’t tell if the storm was about to strike or if Paul was marshaling his forces. Either way, not a pleasant sensation seen from my perspective.
    The digital clock finally flickered a new number. I reached up, grabbed air, and poured in heat . . . heated it so rapidly, the molecules had to expand, no matter what the cost. The storm pushed back, but it couldn’t fight two fronts; I felt it being dragged upward by Paul’s cold air funnel, sucked up through the friction layer, the troposphere, the stratosphere. Slowing as it reached the arid, chilly spaces of the mesosphere.
    My enemy—whoever he or she was—would have to power that storm with the equivalent energy of fifteen or twenty nuclear reactors just to keep it together, and trying to bring it back down would be almost impossible, given the warm air column I’d created and was maintaining. Warm air beats cold air, given a short time frame. Elementary weather physics.
    I felt the moment its creator let go of it. It was impossible for a storm that big to fall apart, but it did—blown apart, just like a puffball. Without the magic that sustained it, it was just random water and gas. I could feel the pressure easing inside my head.
    Going, going . . . gone.
    My phone rang. I flipped it open.
    â€œNice,” Paul said.
    â€œYou, too.”
    â€œI can’t change my mind, kid. Don’t come back.”
    â€œI didn’t think you would,” I said. “Don’t worry. I’m not your problem anymore.”
    Paul chuckled, a sound that left me warm inside. “That’ll be the day.”
    I had just hung up the car phone when the first microburst slammed into the car with the speed of a bullet train and knocked me off the road. I fought the wheel, heard the Mustang scream as it grabbed for traction, but the road might as well have been ice and oil. I skidded. The world lurched. And oh, God, there was somebody in the way, somebody standing by the side of the road, I was going to hit him. . . .
    I spun out in a spray of dust, felt a dull thump of impact. My tires caught the grassy edge of the shoulder, and physics took over, giving the car a sickening tilt.
    Not the car, I thought in utter despair. Please, not the car.
    And then something caught me and steadied me, and Delilah thumped four tires back on the ground. I had the breath knocked out of me, but apart from some tread loss, neither one of us had been hurt much. Delilah was shaking all over. So was I.
    I turned off the engine and put my burning forehead on the steering wheel and gulped in air that tasted now as much of fear as of all the old ghosts of fast food, but it was still delicious.
    â€œSorry, baby,” I whispered to Delilah. “Thought we were both headed for the junkyard.”
    It took me a second to remember the rest of it. The dull thump of impact.
    Oh, Jesus, I’d hit somebody. . . .
    I fumbled with the seat belt, frantic. Oh, God, no—let him be okay. . . .
    Somebody tapped on the window. I gave myself whiplash coming around to stare, and saw a shadow . . . large, dark, and threatening. I sucked in breath to scream.
    I blinked, and the shadow resolved into just—a guy. A guy with brown hair that needed trimming and some silly-looking round glasses that reflected blazing sunlight. A nice face, with smile lines around the eyes that said he was older than first glance would take him for. He was wearing a patched olive-green trench coat that for some reason reminded me of World War I—a vintage clothing enthusiast, or somebody who could afford only Salvation Army couture.
    I rolled down the