Heat Stroke Read Online Free PDF

decibels lower than normal. Big floral display at thepolished mahogany doors at the end of the room, chrysanthemums and lilies and roses. A guest book next to them. Lots of people standing in line to sign.
    David steered me expertly out of the path of a tall, thin woman in black I barely recognized—Earth Warden, Maria something, from the West Coast. She was talking to Ravi Subranavan, the Fire Warden who controlled the territory around Chicago.
    Everywhere I looked, people I knew. Not many were what I’d call friends, but they’d been coworkers, at least. The cynical part of me noted that they’d shown up for free booze, but the truth was most of them had needed to make arrangements to be here—naming replacements, handing over power, enduring long drives or longer plane rides. A lot of hassle for a free glass or two of champagne, even if it was offered at the Drake.
    I kept looking for the people I was hoping to see, but there was no sign of Paul Giancarlo or Lewis Orwell. I spotted Marion Bearheart sipping champagne with Shirl, one of her enforcement agents. Marion was a warm, kind, incredibly dangerous woman with the mandate to hunt down and kill rogue Wardens. Well, killing was a last resort, but she was not only prepared to do it, she was pretty damn good at it. Hell, she’d almost gotten me. And even with that bad memory, I still felt a little lift of spirits seeing her. She just had that kind of aura.
    She looked recovered—well rested, neatly turned out in a black leather suede jacket, fringed and beaded. Blue jeans, boots. A turquoise squash blossom necklace big enough to be traditional in design, small enough to be elegant. She’d gotten some of theburned ends trimmed off her long, straight, graying hair.
    Shirl had cleaned up some of her punk makeup and gone for an almost sober outfit, but the piercings had stayed intact. Ah well. You can take the girl out of the mosh pit . . . No sign of Erik, the third member of the team who’d chased me halfway across the country. Maybe he wasn’t feeling overly respectful to my memory. I’d been a little hard on him, now that I thought about it.
    David reversed course in time to avoid a collision with an elegantly suited gray-haired man, and I realized with a jolt that my little shindig had drawn the big guns. Martin Oliver, Weather Warden for all of the continental U.S. Not a minor player on the world stage. He was talking to a who’s who: the Earth Warden for Brazil, the Weather Warden for Africa, and a guy I vaguely recognized as being from somewhere in Russia.
    My memorial had become the in place to be, if you were among the magical elite.
    David tugged me to the right to avoid a gaggle of giggling young women eyeing a trying-to-be-cool group of young men—did I know these people? Weren’t they too young to have the fate of the world in their hands?—and we ended up walking through the mahogany doors into a larger room, set up with rows of burgundy chairs.
    My knees threatened to go weak. All the place needed was my coffin to complete the scene, but instead they had a huge blown-up picture of me, something relatively flattering, thank God, on an expensive-lookinggold easel. In the photo I looked . . . wistful. A little sad.
    She’s dead, I thought. That person is dead. I’m not her anymore.
    There were so many arrangements it looked like a flower shop had exploded—lilies were a theme, and roses, but it being spring I got the rainbow assortment. Purple irises, birds of paradise, daisies of every shape and size.
    It hurt and healed me, thinking of all those people laying out time and money for this incredible display.
    We weren’t alone in the room. Two people were sitting at the front, heads bowed, and I squeezed David’s hand and let go. I walked up the long aisle toward the eerie black and white photo of myself, and the two men I’d come to see who were seated in front of