“Are you?” He peered at me like he wasn’t quite sure who I was. I wasn’t either.

I rose and went to the window. Something—other than me—was . . . different.

“Lizzy!” He was hoarse as an old man. I heard the scrape of the pistol as he dragged it to him, then his struggle to get up, wheezing in pain. “Away from the window!”

I waved him quiet so he could hear the cheering.

“What?” He made it to his feet, balancing against the wall. “Is it over?”

I ignored him. I needed to stand full in the opening to be sure. And . . . yes. Now my voice could work again, because it had to. I drew to one side, only to calm him. “It’s over, pretty much. But . . .”

“But what?”

“The wind’s changed.”

“So?” Hand over hand, he edged along the wall, ready to be stern with me about taking cover. When the light touched his face, I couldn’t help but wince. One eye swollen, jaw raw and bruised, blood staining the front of his shirt. He’d taken a bad beating. He squinted around the edge, saw Revs and Stormies swimming, climbing for their lives, and Tom Doyle directing the mop-up from the remaining rope bridge as it rocked madly in the wind.

The wind.

He watched me inhale it, nostrils flared like an animal, drinking it in, then turned his own face to it. “Oh.”

Coming from the northeast now. “When have you felt air that cold?”

“Not for years,” Daniel breathed. “It’s just like you said.”

I nodded.

I saw it in my mind’s eye, like the old satellite weather videos. The counterclockwise swirl of two mammoth storms hurtling toward each other, Leon from the south, the unnamed newcomer rolling in from farther east, out to sea, in the first steps of a vicious tandem dance that would bring them to an apocalyptic merger.

Category 6.

FORTY-ONE

Breakers came looking, found us wet and windblown at the open window frame. “Aces with the bridges, book guy! But stay back, will ya? Still some live ones out there!”

“I know.” Daniel was hovering. Had the storm image become visible, swirling in my eyes? No, my hands were shaking, my whole body, a deep, internal shudder that went on and on, like a volcano building pressure. He seemed to know the last thing he should do was lay a hand on me, even in comfort.

“Well, don’t listen to me.” Oblivious, Breakers roamed the room, nudging bodies with a toe. “Adders! Coming out of the woodwork! You got a few, I see.”

“Not me,” said Daniel.

“Not . . . ?” Breakers scanned the dim corners for other possible shooters, then squinted at me. “Really? Atta girl!” She scrounged a bullet out of the first Adder’s cartridge belt, sniffed it, tossed it down. “Too wet. Thought you’d done ’em in already.”

“Only the party animals. These must be the elite troops.”