Ya think?

"Very funny. I have to get condiments with a sense of humor. Salt was, technically, of the earth…. Lewis would be able to control it. In fact, in a place as generally unnatural as this, it might very well be the only thing he could control enough to get his point across. I was just happy he hadn't tried to spell out things in runny egg yolks.

Got your attention? the salt asked. Not only arrogant, but pushy, too.

"South twenty-five miles, left on Iron Road," I repeated. "Got it." I took in a deep breath and blew it out, scattering the words into tiny white random grains.

It didn't seem to like that, and sucked itself up into a pile, then flattened out again. A moving finger wrote one word: Good.

It then made a little white smiley-face that immediately blew into randomized scatter as a waitress marched up, tsked the mess, and wiped the spill up with a damp cloth.

"You okay?" I must have had a bizarre look; she was staring at me.

"I'm talking to salt," I said numbly. "What do you think?"

She shrugged and kept on wiping up. "Missy, I think you should've probably gone with the decaf."

Twenty-five miles down the road, there was a battered, shotgun-riddled sign for Iron Road. I slowed down and coasted to a stop at the side of the road, looking down the turn-off and wondering what exactly a smarter, saner person than me would do.

I inspected the place while my blinker clicked. Iron Road was a small two-lane affair that disappeared into some dense, overhanging trees, dappled with sunlight and shadow. Picturesque, which was another word for isolated. Why would Lewis want me off the beaten path? Why wouldn't he just show up in the diner and, say, order an eggs Benedict and chat about the good old days? Well, of course, he had reason to be careful, too. Lewis was, in many ways, the most wanted Warden in the world. In comparison, I hadn't even made the top ten.

"What the fuck," I said to Delilah, and eased her back into gear as I turned the wheel. She purred effortlessly down the hill onto Iron Road, into green shadow and smooth, deserted blacktop. I kept the speed down. On a rural road like this, anything was likely to jump out and present a road hazard, especially wildlife and farm animals. The last thing I needed was to end up picking cow out of my grille while a storm rolled up on me.

Fields stretched beyond the trees, sundrenched and extravagantly green. I rolled down the window and breathed in cool, clear air spiced with earth and new leaves. Lewis hadn't said how far to proceed down Iron Road; I could only guess there'd be another sign.

At the crest of the next hill, I saw a neat red farmhouse with a matching barn behind, the kind of thing people paint for craft fairs; I'd never really seen one that, well, perfect before. It even had a windmill and some paintworthy Hereford cows chewing cud in the fields, ringed with a tumbledown rock fence and a riot of new wildflowers in neon purple and buttercup yellow. Perfect Thomas Kinkade. Wind rippled the grass in long velvet waves, and I remembered one of my instructors—who knows which one—remarking how similar the seas of water and air were to each other. We swim in an ocean of air. Come to think of it, that probably wasn't a weather class. It sounded like English lit to me now.

Iron Road didn't change names, but it should have; after the pretty little farm, it turned into Dirt Road, rutted and uneven. I slowed Delilah to a crawl and fretted about the state of her suspension. Nothing up ahead that I could see except a hill looming green and tan, more trees stretching out their arms over the road.

Delilah slowed down more, without my foot pressing the brake.

It's funny how you can just know these things, if you're true partners with your car. I could feel, as if it were my feet instead of Delilah's tires on the road, that something had gone wrong. Badly. It felt as if we were driving through deep mud, but the road was dry, the ruts hard-caked and laced with brittle tire treads. What was slowing us down?

I heard something hissing against the undercarriage of the car. I knew that sound. It sounded like…

Delilah shuddered, and I heard her engine take on a plaintive, unhappy tone. She was struggling to move, but it was getting harder, and harder, with every rotation of the wheels.

It sounded like loose sand.

The road was turning to sand, and we were sinking into it.

"Shit!" I yelped, and went up into Oversight. As soon as I soared out of body and above the car, I could see it; the earth was dull red, moving, churning like a living thing. The rough dry soil was being crushed into tiny, slippery grains. No, not sand… the road was turning to dust, finer than sand, and not just on the surface—this went deep, ten feet at least.

I yanked the wheel, trying to get Delilah off the road and into the trees, where roots and plants would slow the progress of liquefying earth, but it was already too late, the wheel turned loosely in my hands, the tires spun without traction. Dust geysered into the dry air and puffed away on the waves of the ocean of air. The car settled about a foot, and I knew that there was nothing keeping it up now except an even distribution of weight over a large, flat undercarriage. That and possibly someone's goodwill.

We floated, me and Delilah, unable to escape.

In Oversight, I spotted my enemy before she ever pushed through the underbrush—a blue-green aura, laced through with pure white for power, gold for tenacity, cold silver for ruthlessness.

Marion Bearheart had found me.

I dropped back into my skin and saw her coming out of the trees to my left. She was just about as I remembered her from my intake meeting—middle-aged, dignified, skin like burnished copper and hair of black and silver hanging loose over her shoulders. Marion still had kind, gentle eyes, but there was nothing weak about her.

"Joanne," she said, and her low voice seemed welcoming somehow. "There's no point in trying to run. Wherever you go, I can dissolve the ground under your feet, tie you down with roots and grasses. Let's make this easy."

Of course. I'd forgotten. Marion was an Earth Warden.

A rustle of underbrush on the other side of the car drew my attention to someone else—younger than Marion, male. I didn't know him, but he had Scandinavian white-blond hair, fair skin, and summer-blue eyes. Like Marion, he had on a plaid shirt and blue jeans, practical hiking boots. Another Earth Warden. Their fashion sense—or lack of it—was unmistakable.

The third one, standing next to him, was so small I almost didn't see her—small, dark, delicate. Nothing delicate about her clothes, though, which featured a lot of leather and attitude. Her hair was cut pixie-short, streaked with unnatural greenish highlights, and she had face jewelry—a nose ring, to be exact, with a stud to match in the other nostril.

"You brought friends," I said, turning back to Marion. She smiled faintly.

"Against you? Naturally." She nodded toward them. "Erik and Shirl. If you're thinking of calling a storm, I'd advise you not to try it; Shirl is a damn fine practitioner, but she has a tendency to be a little heavy-handed."

Pieces of the puzzle started to drop together. "Oh. The salt?"