And then everything changed, completely, because Whitney was not an idiot, a compulsive thief, or a sociopath after all—or if she was those last two things, she certainly wasn’t the first. Because Whitney had been taking us somewhere, and we had just arrived.
I coasted the Viper to a stop behind the tire-less Bugatti—the shreds of rubber had fallen apart again—and David and I jumped out to check inside. No sign of Whitney. David turned in a circle, scanning, and then pointed off into the swamp. “There,” he said. “She’s there.”
It’s useful to have a Djinn along for a run through the Everglades … there’s no good footing, but plenty of stinging, biting, and eating things to take an interest in your passage. I was an Earth Warden in addition to my Weather and Fire powers, but Earth was definitely my weakest skill set, and I was relieved I didn’t have to manage it on the run. David simply created a firm, dry path out of the swamp, straight as an arrow, and made sure that any creatures with an eye to taking offense at our passage were kept otherwise occupied. I saw a couple of alligators eyeing us coldly from the water, but they stayed as motionless as floating logs. The hot, humid air felt like running a treadmill in a sauna, and I was soaked with sweat and gasping for breath in a humiliatingly short time.
We ran into Whitney about five seconds before I was sure I would drop of heat stroke and exhaustion, and I bent over, bracing myself on my knees, gasping and coughing. Whitney, of course, looked perfect. She was still wearing the diamond bikini, which just could not be comfortable on a cross-country trek; I was getting chafed, and nothing I was wearing came in measurements of carats.
Whitney put her hands on her barely clad sparkly hips, and gave me a superior look that made me want to throw up on her high-heeled shoes. “Sweetie, you’re gonna want to pace yourself,” she said. “We ain’t there yet.”
“Where?” It came out as a cross between a howl and a whine, which wasn’t very heroic, and I blamed it on the urge to vomit. I swallowed, straightened up, and clawed hair away from my damp face to try again. “Where are we going?”
“There.” Whitney nodded.
“I don’t see anything.”
“You will.”
David, who’d been about to say something that I was fairly sure would scorch Whitney’s exposed buttocks good, checked himself and spun around, staring upward. I didn’t know why, but then I heard it.
The abused whine of jet engines, getting louder.
David shouted something in a language that I didn’t recognize, but there was no mistaking the command in it, and Whitney lifted her hands to the sky along with him.
A four-engine jet burst out of the clouds, trailing smoke and fire from one wing. Way too low for where it was, which was miles from any decent airport capable of handling an emergency landing. It was an enormous plane, and as I launched myself up into Oversight I saw the black buzzing cloud surrounding it.
Impending death. Terror. The fear of more than three hundred souls, all preparing for the end.
The two Djinn were grabbing hold of the plane, straightening its flight, and I warmed air beneath its swept-back wings, trying to provide lift. It was a huge, ungainly weight without the right balance of physics to support it, and I could sense the terrified but determined pilots trying everything they could to keep it in the air.
“Clear a landing strip!” I yelled to David. “We can’t keep it up!”