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When the Wind Blows

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For Andrea Spooner, our hero

—J.P.

Oh, yes—what he said

—G.C.

Copyright

Copyright Š 2009 by James Patterson

All rights reserved. Except as permitted under the U.S. Copyright Act of 1976, no part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any means, or stored in a database or retrieval system, without the prior written permission of the publisher.

Little, Brown and Company

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Visit our website atwww.HachetteBookGroup.com

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Little, Brown and Company is a division of Hachette Book Group, Inc. The Little, Brown name and logo are trademarks of Hachette Book Group, Inc.

First eBook Edition: December 2009

The characters and events in this book are fictitious. Any similarity to real persons, living or dead, is coincidental and not intended by the author.

Excerpt from “What I Believe” inTwo Cheers for Democracy , copyright 1939 and renewed 1967 by E. M. Forster, reprinted by permission of Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company.

ISBN: 978-0-316-07220-5

Contents

Copyright

PROLOGUE: YOU'RE NOT IN KANSAS ANYMORE

Wisty

BOOK ONE: NO CRIME, JUST PUNISHMENT

Chapter 1: Whit

Chapter 2: Wisty

Chapter 3: Wisty

Chapter 4: Wisty

Chapter 5: Wisty

Chapter 6: Wisty

Chapter 7: Wisty

Chapter 8: Whit

Chapter 9: Whit

Chapter 10: Whit

Chapter 11: Wisty

Chapter 12: Wisty

Chapter 13: Whit

Chapter 14: Whit

Chapter 15: Wisty

Chapter 16: Whit

Chapter 17: Whit

Chapter 18: Whit

Chapter 19: Wisty

Chapter 20: Wisty

BOOK TWO: VERY DICKENSIAN

Chapter 21: Wisty

Chapter 22: Whit

Chapter 23: Wisty

Chapter 24: Whit

Chapter 25: Wisty

Chapter 26: Whit

Chapter 27: Whit

Chapter 28: Whit

Chapter 29: Wisty

Chapter 30: Whit

Chapter 31: Whit

Chapter 32: Wisty

Chapter 33: Wisty

Chapter 34: Wisty

Chapter 35: Wisty

Chapter 36: Whit

Chapter 37: Whit

Chapter 38: Whit

Chapter 39: Wisty

Chapter 40: Wisty

Chapter 41: Wisty

Chapter 42: Wisty

Chapter 43: Wisty

Chapter 44: Wisty

Chapter 45: Wisty

Chapter 46: Whit

Chapter 47: Whit

Chapter 48: Whit

Chapter 49: Wisty

Chapter 50: Wisty

Chapter 51: Whit

Chapter 52: Whit

Chapter 53: Whit

BOOK THREE: BRAVE NEW WORLDS

Chapter 54: Wisty

Chapter 55: Wisty

Chapter 56: Wisty

Chapter 57: Wisty

Chapter 58: Wisty

Chapter 59: Wisty

Chapter 60: Whit

Chapter 61: Wisty

Chapter 62: Whit

Chapter 63: Whit

Chapter 64: Wisty

Chapter 65: Wisty

Chapter 66: Wisty

Chapter 67: Wisty

Chapter 68: Wisty

Chapter 69: Wisty

Chapter 70: Wisty

Chapter 71: Wisty

Chapter 72: Whit

Chapter 73: Whit

Chapter 74: Whit

Chapter 75: Wisty

Chapter 76: Wisty

Chapter 77: Wisty

Chapter 78: Wisty

Chapter 79: Wisty

Chapter 80: Whit

Chapter 81: Whit

Chapter 82: Wisty

Chapter 83: Wisty

Chapter 84: Wisty

Chapter 85: Wisty

Chapter 86: Whit

Chapter 87: Wisty

Chapter 88: Whit

Chapter 89: Wisty

Chapter 90: Wisty

Chapter 91: Wisty

Chapter 92: Wisty

Chapter 93: Whit

Chapter 94: Wisty

Chapter 95: Whit

Chapter 96: Whit

Chapter 97: Whit

Chapter 98: Whit

Chapter 99: Wisty

Chapter 100: Wisty

EPILOGUE: THERE'S NO PLACE LIKE HOME

Chapter 101: Wisty

Chapter 102: Wisty

Chapter 103: Wisty

EPILOGUE THE LAST…

Chapter 104: Wisty

I believe in aristocracy…. Not an aristocracy of power, based upon rank and influence, but an aristocracy of the sensitive, the considerate and the plucky. Its members are to be found in all nations and classes, and all through the ages, and there is a secret understanding between them when they meet. They represent the true human tradition, the one permanent victory of our queer race over cruelty and chaos.

—E. M. Forster, fromTwo Cheers for Democracy

PROLOGUE

YOU'RE NOT IN KANSAS ANYMORE

Wisty

IT’S OVERWHELMING. A city’s worth of angry faces staring at me like I’m a wicked criminal—which, I promise you,I’m not. The stadium is filled to capacity—past capacity. People are standing in the aisles, the stairwells, on the concrete ramparts, and a few extra thousand are camped out on the playing field. There are no football teams here today. They wouldn’t be able to get out of the locker-room tunnels if they tried.

This total abomination is being broadcast on TV and the Internet too. All the useless magazines are here, and the useless newspapers. Yep, I see cameramen in elevated roosts at intervals around the stadium.

There’s even one of those remote-controlled cameras that runs around on wires above the field. There it is—hovering just in front of the stage, bobbing slightly in the breeze.

So there are undoubtedly millions more eyes watching than I can see. But it’s the ones here in the stadium that are breaking my heart. To be confronted with tens, maybe even hundreds of thousands, of curious, uncaring, or at least indifferent, faces… talk aboutfrightening .

And there are no moist eyes, never mind tears.

No words of protest.

No stomping feet.

No fists raised in solidarity.

No inkling that anybody’s even thinking of surging forward, breaking through the security cordon, and carrying my family to safety.

Clearly, this is not a good day for us Allgoods.

In fact, as the countdown ticker flashes on the giant video screens at either end of the stadium, it’s looking like this will be ourlast day.

It’s a point driven home by the very tall, bald man up in the tower they’ve erected midfield—he looks like a cross between a Supreme Court chief justice and Ming the Merciless. I know who he is. I’ve actually met him. He’s The One Who Is The One.

Directly behind his Oneness is a huge N.O. banner—THE NEW ORDER .

And then the crowd begins to chant, almost sing, “The One Who Is The One! The One Who Is The One!”

Imperiously, The One raises his hand, and his hooded lackeys on the stage push us forward, at least as far as the ropes around our necks will allow.

I see my brother, Whit, handsome and brave, looking down at the platform mechanism. Calculating if there’s any way to jam it, some means of keeping it from unlatching and dropping us to our neck-snapping deaths. Wondering if there’s a last-minute way out of this.

I see my mother crying quietly. Not for herself, of course, but for Whit and me.

I see my father, his tall frame stooped with resignation, smiling at me and my brother—trying to keep our spirits up, reminding us that there’s no point in being miserable in our last moments on this planet.

But I’m getting ahead of myself. I’m supposed to be providing anintroduction here, not the details of our publicexecution.

So let’s go back a bit….

BOOK ONE

NO CRIME, JUST PUNISHMENT

BY ORDER OF THE NEW ORDER,

and the Great Wind—The One Who Is

THE ONE—

let it be known that as of

NOW, THIS MOMENT,or

TWELVE O’CLOCK MIDNIGHT.

whichever shall arrive first, following the

SWIFT TRIUMPHof theORDER of the

ONES WHO PROTECT, who have obliterated the

BLIND AND DUMB FORCESof passivity and

complacencyPLAGUING this world,

ALL CITIZENSmust, shall,andwill abide by

THESE THREE ORDERS FOR ORDER:

1. All behaviors NOT in keeping with N.O. law, logic, order, and science (including but not limited to theology, philosophy, and IN PARTICULAR the creative and dark arts, et cetera) are hereby ABOLISHED.
2. ALL persons under eighteen years of age will be evaluated for ORDERLINESS and MUST COMPLY with the prescribed corrective actions.
3. The One Who Is THE ONE grants, appoints, decides, seizes, and executes at will. All NOT complying shall be SEIZED and/or EXECUTED.

—As declared to The One Who Writes Decrees

byTHE ONE WHO IS THE ONE

Chapter 1

Whit

SOMETIMES YOU WAKE UP and the world is just plain different.

The noise of a circling helicopter is what made me open my eyes. A cold, blue-white light forced its way through the blinds and flooded the living room. Almost like it was day.

But it wasn’t.

I peered at the clock on the DVD player through blurry eyes: 2:10 a.m.

I became aware of a steadydrub, drub, drub —like the sound of a heavy heartbeat. Throbbing. Pressing in. Getting closer.

What’s going on?

I staggered to the window, forcing my body back to life after two hours of being passed out on the sofa, and peeked through the slats.

And then I stepped back and rubbed my eyes. Hard.

Because there’s no way I had seen what I’d seen. And there was no way I had heard what I’d heard.

Was it really the steady, relentless footfall of hundreds of soldiers? Marching on my street in perfect unison?

The road wasn’t close enough to the center of town to be on any holiday parade routes, much less to have armed men in combat fatigues coursing down it in the dead of night.

I shook my head and bounced up and down a few times, kind of like I do in my warm-ups.Wake up, Whit. I slapped myself for good measure. And then I looked again.

There they were. Soldiers marching down our street.Hundreds of them as clear as day, made visible by a half-dozen truck-mounted spotlights.

Just one thought was running laps inside my head:This can’t be happening. This can’t be happening. This can’t be happening.

Then I remembered the elections, the new government, the ravings of my parents about the trouble the country was in, the special broadcasts on TV, the political petitions my classmates were circulating online, the heated debates between teachers at school. None of it meant anything to me until that second.

And before I could piece it all together, the vanguard of the formation stopped in front of my house.

Almost faster than I could comprehend, two armed squads detached themselves from the phalanx and sprinted across the lawn like commandos, one running around the back of the house, the other taking position in front.

I jumped away from the window. I could tell they weren’t here to protect me and my family. I had to warn Mom, Dad, Wisty—

But just as I started to yell, the front door was knocked off its hinges.

Chapter 2

Wisty

IT’S QUITE HIDEOUS to get kidnapped in the dead of night, right inside your own home. It went something like this.

I woke to the chaotic crashing of overturning furniture, quickly followed by the sounds of shattering glass, possibly some of Mom’s china.

Oh God, Whit,I thought, shaking my head sleepily. My older brother had grown four inches and gained thirty pounds of muscle in the past year. Which made him the biggest and fastest quarterback around, and, I must say, the most intimidating player on our regional high school’s undefeated football team.

Off the playing field, though, Whit could be about as clumsy as your average bear—if your average bear were hopped-up on a case of Red Bull and full of himself because he could bench-press 275 and every girl in school thought he was the hunk of all hunks.

I rolled over and pulled my pillow around my head. Even before the drinking started, Whit couldn’t walk through our house without knocking something over. Total bull-in-a-china-shop syndrome.

But that wasn’t the real problem tonight, I knew.

Because three months ago, his girlfriend, Celia, had literallyvanished without a trace. And by now everyone was thinking she probably would never come back. Her parents were totally messed up about it, and so was Whit. To be honest, so was I. Celia was—is—very pretty, smart, not conceited at all. She’s this totally cool girl, even though she has money. Celia’s father owns the luxury-car dealership in town, and her mom is a former beauty queen. I couldn’t believe something like that would happen to someone like Celia.

I heard my parents’ bedroom door open and snuggled back down into my cozy, flannel-sheeted bed.

Next came Dad’s booming voice, and he was as angry as I’ve ever heard him.

“This can’t be happening! You have no right to be here. Leave our housenow! ”

I bolted upright, wide awake. Then came more crashing sounds, and I thought I heard someone moan in pain. Had Whit fallen and cracked his head? Had my dad been hurt?

Jeez, Louise,I thought, scrambling out of bed. “I’m coming, Dad! Are you all right? Dad?”

And then the nightmare to start a lifetime of nightmares truly began.

I gasped as my bedroom door crashed open. Two hulking men in dark-gray uniforms burst into my room, glaring at me as if I were a fugitive terrorist-cell operative.

“It’s her! Wisteria Allgood!” one said, and a light bright enough to illuminate an airplane hangar obliterated the darkness.

I tried to shield my eyes as my heart kicked into overdrive. “Who areyou?! ” I asked. “What are you doing inmy freaking bedroom? ”

Chapter 3

Wisty

“BE EXTREMELY CAREFUL with her!” one of the humongous men cautioned. They looked like Special Forces operatives with giant white numbers on their uniforms. “You know she can—”

The other nodded, glancing around my room nervously. “You!” he snapped harshly. “Come with us! We’re from the New Order. Move one step out of line, and we will punish you severely!”

I stared at him, my head spinning.The New Order? These weren’t ordinary policemen or EMS personnel.

“Um—I—I—,” I stammered. “I need to put on some clothes. Can I… can I have a little privacy?”

“Shut up!” the first commando guy barked. “Grab her! And protect yourself. She’s dangerous—all of them are.”

“No! Stop! Don’t you dare!” I screamed. “Dad! Mom! Whit!”

Then it hit me like a runaway tractor trailer on ice. This was what had happened to Celia, wasn’t it?

Oh God!Cold sweat beaded on the back of my neck.I need to get out of here, I thought desperately.Somehow, some way.

I need to disappear.

Chapter 4

Wisty

THE SERIOUSLY MUSCLE-BOUND MEN in gray suddenly froze, their blocklike heads whipping back and forth like puppets on strings.

“Where is she? She’s gone! Vanished! Where’d she go?” one said, his voice hoarse and panicky.

They shone flashlights around the room. One of them dropped to his knees and searched under my bed; the other rushed over to look in my closet.

Where’dI go? Were these guys totallyinsane? I was right there. What was going on?

Maybe they were trying to trick me into running for it so they had an excuse to use force. Or maybe they were escapees from an asylum who had come to get me the way they’d come to get poor Celia—

“Wisty!” My mom’s anxious shout from the hallway pierced the fog that had invaded my brain. “Run away, sweetheart!”

“Mom!”I shrieked. The two guys blinked and stepped back in surprise.

“There she is! Grab her! She’s right there! Quick, before she disappears again!”

Big klutzy hands grabbed my arms and legs, then my head. “Let mego! ” I screamed, kicking and struggling.“Let. Me. Go.”

But their grip was like steel as they dragged me down the hall to the family room and dumped me on the floor like a sack of trash.

I quickly scrambled to my feet, more floodlights whiting out my vision. Then I heard Whit shouting as he was thrown onto the living room floor next to me.

“Whit, what’s going on? Who are these…monsters? ”

“Wisty!” he gasped, coherently enough. “You okay?”

“No.” I almost cried, but I couldn’t, wouldn’t, absolutelyrefused, to let them see me wuss out. Every awful true-crime movie I’d ever seen flashed through my head, and my stomach heaved. I nestled close to my brother, who took my hand in his and squeezed.

Suddenly the floodlights turned off, leaving us blinking and shaking.

“Mom?”Whit shouted.“Dad?” If my brother hadn’t been stone-cold sober already, he sure was now.

I gasped. My parents were standing there, still in their rumpled pajamas, but held from behind like they were dangerous criminals. Sure, we lived on the wrong side of the tracks, but no one in our family had ever been in trouble before.

Not that I knew of anyway.

Chapter 5

Wisty

ONE OF THE MOST TERRIFYING THINGS in the world you can never hope to see is your parents, wide-eyed, helpless, and truly scared out of their wits.

My parents. I thought they could protect us from anything. They were different from other parents… so smart, gentle, accepting, knowing… and I could tell at this moment that they knew something Whit and I didn’t.

They know what is going on. And they’re terrified of it, whatever it is.

“Mom… ?” I asked, staring hard into her eyes, trying to get any message I could, any signal about what I should do now.

As I looked at Mom, I had a flash, a collage of memories. She and Dad saying stuff like “You and Whit are special, honey.Really special. Sometimes people are afraid of those who are different. Being afraid makes them angry and unreasonable.” But all parents thought their kids were special, right? “I mean, you’rereally special, Wisty,” Mom had said once, taking my chin in her palm. “Pay attention, dear.”

Then three more figures stepped forward from the shadows. Two of them had guns on their belts. This was really getting out of hand. Guns? Soldiers? In our house? In a free country? In the middle of the night? Aschool night, even.

“Wisteria Allgood?” As they moved into the light, I saw two men and…

Byron Swain?

Byron was a kid from my high school, a year older than I, a year younger than Whit. As far as I knew, we both hated his guts.Everyone did.

“What areyou doing here, Swain?” Whit snarled. “Get out of our house.”

Byron.It was like his parents knew he’d turn out to be a snot, so they’d named him appropriately.

“Make me,” Byron said to Whit, then he gave a smarmy, oily smile, vividly bringing to life all the times I’d seen him in school and thought,What a total butt. He had slicked-back brown hair, perfectly combed, and cold hazel eyes. Like an iguana’s.

So this jerk extraordinaire was flanked by two commandos in dark uniforms, shiny black boots that came above their knees, and metal helmets. The entire world was turning upside down, with me in my ridiculous pink kitty jammies.

“What are youdoing here?” I echoed Whit.

“Wisteria Allgood,” Byron monotoned like a bailiff, and pulled out an actual scroll of official-looking paper. “The New Order is taking you into custody until your trial. You are hereby accused of being a witch.”

My jaw dropped. “A witch?Are younuts? ” I shrieked.

Chapter 6

Wisty

THE TWO GOONS IN GRAY marched toward me. Instinctively I held up both my hands. Amazingly the New Order soldiers stopped in their tracks, and I felt a surge of strength—if only for a moment.

“Did we just go back intime? ” I squealed. “Last I looked this was the twenty-first century, not theseventeenth! ”

I narrowed my eyes. Another glance at that smarmy Byron Swain in his shiny boots spurred me on further. “You can’t just come in here, grabbing us—”

“Whitford Allgood,” Byron Swain rudely interrupted, continuing to read in an official tone from his scroll, “you are hereby accused of being a wizard. You will be held in custody until your trial.”

He smirked tauntingly at Whit, even though under normal circumstances my brother could have picked him up and wrung his neck like a chicken’s. I guess confidence isn’t hard to come by when you have armed soldiers at your beck and call.

“Wisty is right. This is utterly crazy!” my brother snapped. His face was flushed, his blue eyes shining with anger. “There’s no such thing as witches or wizards! Fairy tales are a load of crap. Who do you think you are, you creepy little weasel? A character fromGary Blotter and the Guild of Rejects ?”

My parents looked horrified—but not actuallysurprised. So WTH?

I remembered slightly odd lessons my folks had given us throughout our childhood: about plants and herbs, and the weather—always the weather—and how to concentrate, how to focus. They also taught us a lot about artists we’d never study at school too, like Wiccan Trollack, De Glooming, and Frieda Halo. As I got older, I guess I thought my parents were maybe just being a little hippie-dippy or something. But I never really questioned this stuff. Was it all somehow related to tonight?

Byron looked at Whit calmly. “According to the New Order Code, you may each take one possession from the house. I don’t approve, but that’s the letter of the law, and I will abide by it, of course.”

Under the watchful eye of the gray-garbed soldiers, Mom quickly moved to the bookshelf. She hesitated a moment, glancing at Dad.

He nodded, and then she grabbed an old drumstick that had sat on the shelf for as long as I could remember. Family legend has it that my wild-man grandfather, back in the day, actually leaped onstage at a Groaning Bones concert and took it from the drummer. Mom held it out to me.

“Please,” she said with a sniffle, “just take it, Wisteria.Take the drumstick. I love you so much, sweetheart.”

Then my father reached for an unlabeled book I’d never seen before—a journal or something—on the shelf next to his reading chair. He thrust it into Whit’s hands. “I love you, Whit,” he said.

A drumstick and an old book? How about a drum to go with that stick? Couldn’t they give us a family heirloom or something vaguely personal to cheer us up? Or maybe Whit’s mammoth stash of nonperishable junk food for a handy-dandy sugar rush?

Not one part of this waking nightmare made any sense.

Byron snatched the tattered old book from Whit and flipped through it.

“It’s blank,” he said, surprised.

“Yeah, like your social calendar,” said Whit. The guy can be funny, I admit, but his timing sometimes leaves something to be desired.

Byron slammed the book against Whit’s face, snapping his head sideways as if it were on a swivel.

Whit’s eyes bulged and he sprang toward Byron, only to have the soldiers body-block him.

Byron stood behind the bigger men, smiling wickedly. “Take them to the van,” Byron said, and the soldiers grabbed me again.

“No! Mom! Dad! Help!” I shrieked and tried to pull away, but it was like wriggling in a steel trap. Rock-hard arms dragged me toward the door. I managed to twist my neck around for one last look back at my parents, searing my memory with the horror on their faces, the tears in their eyes.

And right then I felt this whooshing sensation, as if a stiff, hot wind were blowing up against me. In an instant, blood rushed to my head, my cheeks flooded with heat, and sweat seemed to leap from my skin and sizzle. There was a buzzing all around me, and then…

You won’t believe me, but it’s true. I swear.

I saw—and felt—foot-longflames burst out of every pore in my body.

Chapter 7

Wisty

I HEARD SCARED-SILLY SCREAMS everywhere, even from the commandos, as I stood gaping at the orange-yellow tongues of flame shooting off me.

If you think that’s weird, listen to this: after that first moment, I didn’t feel the least bit hot. And when I looked at my hands, they were still skin-colored, not red or blackened.

It was… far-out, actually.

Suddenly one of the soldiers swung Mom’s porcelain vase at me. I was drenched—and the flames were gone.

Byron Swain’s cronies were stamping out the drapes and some smoldering spots on the carpet where the soldiers had dropped me.

But then Byron himself—who’d apparently fled the house during my immolation—reappeared in the doorway, his face faintly green. He pointed a spindly, shaking finger at me. “See?! See?!See?! ” he shouted hoarsely. “Lock her up! Shoot her if you have to. Whatever it takes!”

I was suddenly overcome by this horrible, stomach-twisting feeling that this night had been inevitable—that it was always meant to be part of my life story.

But I had no idea why I thought that, or what it meant exactly.

Chapter 8

Whit

I HADN’T HALLUCINATED before, but when I saw Wisty burst into flame, that’s what I suspected it was—a stress-induced hallucination.

I mean, I expect even well-rested, grounded, grief-free people wouldn’t just go,Oh, look at that, my little sister just turned herself into a human torch. Am I right?

But pretty soon—what with the heat and the smoke and our living room drapes catching on fire—it started to dawn on me that this was really happening.

Then I thought the New Order thugs hadset her on fire. So I guess that’s how I manage to muster enough rage to break free of their grasp. And I swear I would’ve decked the creeps if I hadn’t had to scramble madly to help put her out first.

Then utter chaos broke loose in our house.

I’ve never been in a tornado before, but that’s immediately what I thought was happening. The windows suddenly exploded, and the wind poured in with the force of an angry mountain river, hurling things—broken glass, floor lamps, side tables—around the living room.

I couldn’t hear anything over the noise, and it was raining so hard that the water itself—to say nothing of the debris it was carrying—stung like a cloud of bees getting shot through a leaf blower.

And of course I couldn’t see anything either. To open your eyes would have been asking to be permanently blinded by wood splinters, glass shards, and plaster chunks.

So my breaking free from the thugs didn’t do me a bit of good. We were all clinging to the floor, to the walls, to anything that seemed more solid than ourselves, just trying not to get sucked out a window and flung to our deaths.

I tried yelling for Wisty, but I couldn’t even hear my own voice.

And then—in an instant—everything was still and quiet.

I moved my face out of the crook of my arm… and took in a sight I won’t forget for the rest of my life.

A tall, bald, extremely imposing man was standing there in the middle of our demolished living room. Not scary, you think? Think again.

This is the dude who turns out to be evil personified.

“Hello, Allgood family,” he said in a quiet, forceful tone that made me pay very close attention to every word. “I am The One Who Is The One. Perhaps you’ve heard of me?”

My father spoke up. “We know who you are. We’re not afraid of you, though, and we won’t bend to your ugly rules.”

“I wouldn’t expect you to bend to any rules, Benjamin. Or you, Eliza,” he said to my mother. “Aspiring deviants like you always value freedom above all else. But it doesn’t matter whether you accept this new reality or not. It’s the youngins I’m here to see. This is a command performance, you understand. Icommand, they obey.”

Now the bald dude looked at my little sister and me, and he smiled quite congenially, even warmly.

“I will make this simple for the two of you. All you have to do is renounce your former existence—your freedoms, your way of life, and your parents in particular—and you will be spared. You will not be harmed if you obey the rules. Not a hair on your heads will be touched. I promise. Renounce your former ways and your parents. That’s all. Simple as apple pie.”

“No way!” I yelled at the guy.

“Not going to happen. Ever,” Wisty said. “We renounceyou, Your Baldness, Your Terribleness!”

He actually chuckled at that, which totally caught me off guard.

“Whitford Allgood,” The One said, and looked deeply into my eyes. Something strange happened then—I couldn’t move or speak, only listen. It was the scariest thing yet that night.

“You’re a beautiful boy, I must say, Whitford. Tall and blond, slender yet well-muscled, perfectly proportioned. You have your mother’s eyes. I know that you were a very good boy until recently, ever since the sad andunfortunate disappearance of your girlfriend and soul mate, Celia.”

Frustrated rage boiled up inside me. What did he know about Celia? He’d smirked when he spoke of her disappearance. He knew something. He was taunting me.

“The question is,” he went on, “canyou be good again? Can you learn to obey the rules?”

He threw up his hands. “Don’t know?!” he exclaimed even as my paralyzed mouth prevented me from screaming the string of choice obscenities I was trying to fling at him. Then he turned to Wisty. “Wisteria Allgood, I know all about you too. Disobedient, recalcitrant, a truant, over two weeks of detention due to be served at your high school. The question is, can youever be good? Can you possibly learn to obey?”

He stared at Wisty, silent, waiting.

And in true Wisty fashion, she did the most adorable little curtsy, then proclaimed, “Of course, sir, your every waking wish is my command.”

Wisty stopped her sarcastic speech rather suddenly, and I realized that he’d paralyzed her too. Then The One Who Is The One turned to his guards. “Take them away! They shall never see their parents again. Nor shall you, Ben and Eliza, see your very special offspring until the day you all die.”

Chapter 9

Whit

WISTY AND I WERE in a big black van that had no windows. My heart was thumping like an epileptic rabbit’s, and my vision was nearly whited-out with adrenaline. It took every shred of sanity I had left not to throw myself at the van walls. I pictured myself smashing my head against the metal, kicking open the back doors, helping Wisty out, and escaping into the night…

Only none of that happened.

As far as I knew, I wasnot a wizard, and not a superhero either. I was just a high school kid who’d been ripped out of his home.

I looked over at poor Wisty, but I was barely able to make out her profile in the dark. Her wet hair dripped onto my arm, and I realized she was shivering badly. Maybe with cold, maybe with shock, maybe with cold and shock and total freaking disbelief.

I put my arms around her bony shoulders, awkwardly because I was now handcuffed. I had to slip her head between my arms. I couldn’t remember the last time I’d done that, except maybe to pin her down because she’d gotten into my stuff, or when I’d caught her spying on me and… Celia.

I couldn’t think about her right now or I might completely lose it.

“You okay?” I said. Wisty appeared to be totally uncharred—no roasting-hot-dog smell or anything.

“Of course I’m not okay,” she said, leaving the usual “you idiot” off the end of her sentence. “They must have dumped something flammable on me. I’m not burned, though.”

“I didn’t see them spray anything on you,” I said. “It was like, boom—flamesicle!” I mustered a weak smile. “’Course, I always knew your hair was dangerous.” Wisty is a real carrottop—with thick, wavy bright-red hair that she hates but that I think is kind of cool.

Wisty was too freaked to take the bait about her hair—at first. “Whit, what’s going on? What does schmucky-beyond-schmucky Byron Swain have to do with it? What’s happening to us? And to Mom and Dad?”

“It’s got to be some kind of terrible mistake. Mom and Dad never hurt a fly.” I remembered my parents then, held fast and helpless, and I had to swallow my rage.

Just then, the van came to a lurching halt. I tensed, staring hard at the doors, primed to barrel somebody down. Even in handcuffs. Even if it was a giant, steroid-enhanced soldier.

I wasn’t going to let them hurt my sister. I wasn’t going to be a goody-goody and obey their stupid rules.

Chapter 10

Whit

IT WAS LIKE WE’D WOKEN UP, and suddenly we were living in a totalitarian state.

The first thing I saw looming over me were dozens of flapping flags and the big black block letters N.O.

NO.It seemed totally appropriate, even a touch poetic.NO.

Wisty and I were outside a huge, windowless building, surrounded by a chain-link, concertina-wire-topped fence. Giant letters that readNEW ORDER REFORMATORY were engraved in a stone rising high above the steel entryway.

Then the doors creaked open, and I realized that barreling our way to safety probably wasn’t going to work out so great.Ten more guards—these in black uniforms—came out the front, joined the two drivers, and formed a semi-circle around the rear of the van.

“Okay, now watch ’em closely,” I heard one say. “You know, they’re—”

“Yeah, we know,” said another cranky voice, one of the drivers. “I got the burns to prove it.”

I didn’t even bother struggling as those brainless storm troopers hauled us forward, then dragged us through the tall barbed-wire gate.

I’m pretty big—six feet one, 190 pounds—but these guys acted like I was a sack of popcorn. Wisty and I tried to stay on our feet, but they kept yanking us off balance.

“We can walk!” Wisty yelled. “We’re still conscious!”

“We can change all that,” said one of the thug guards.

I tried, “Listen, listen, you’ve got the wrong—”

The guard next to me raised his billy club, and I shut up midsquawk. They pushed us up the concrete steps, through the heavy steel doors, and into a brightly lit foyer. It looked like a prison, with a burly guard behind a thick glass window, a locked gate, and another guard with a billy club at the ready.

I heard a loud buzz, and the gate opened.

“Don’t you guys feel kind of dumb?” I said. “I mean, a dozen giant men, just for us two kids—it’s kind of embarrassing. Wouldn’t you—ow!” A guard had jabbed my ribs, hard, with his wooden baton.

“Start thinking about your upcoming interrogation,” the guard said. “Talk, or die. Your choice, kiddies.”

Chapter 11

Wisty

IT WAS BEGINNING TO FEEL like this sickening nightmare was for real, and now I wasn’t even going to be allowed the small comfort of going through it in my old pink PJs. They made us change into gray-striped prison jumpsuits that looked like something out of World War II. Whit’s jumpsuit fit him—guess he was standard-prisoner size—but mine hung on me like a sail on a windless day.

My funky PJs had been my last connection to home. Without them, the only thing I had from my former life was the drumstick.

The drumstick.Why a drumstick, Mom? I missed her already and felt a deep anxiety creep in when I wondered what they’d done with her and Dad.

“Don’t pull her arm like that!” Whit snapped at my guard. He was right. It felt like my arm was about to pop out of its socket.

“Shut up, wizard,” growled the surly guard, dragging us through yet another electronic gate markedPROPERTY OF THE NEW ORDER . Then we were in an enormous hall, five stories high, surrounded on all sides by cages and barred cells.

For criminals.

And us. Me and my brother. Can you imagine? No—you probably can’t. How could anybody in their right mind imagine this?

One of the cell doors slid open, and the guards threw me inside. I fell, hitting my knees and hands hard on the cement floor.

“Wisty!”Whit shouted as they hauled him past my door, which immediately slid shut. I pressed my face against the bars, trying to see where they were taking Whit. They shoved him in the cell next to mine.

“Wisty, you okay?” Whit called over right away.

“Sort of,” I said, examining my scraped knees. “If I’m allowed to totally change what ‘okay’ means.”

“We’ll get out of here,” he said. I could hear the braveness and anger in his voice. “This is all just a stupid mistake.”

“Au contraire, my naive amigo,” said a voice from the cell on the other side of Whit.

“What? Who are you?”Whit asked.

I strained to hear his words.

“I’m prisoner number 450209A,” said the voice. “Trust me, there’s been no mistake. And they didn’t forget to read you your rights. And they aren’t going to give you a lawyer or a phone call. And your mama and papa aren’t coming to get you.Ever. And that’s a long, long time.”

“What do you know about it?” I shouted.

“Look, how old are you?” said the voice.

“I’m almost eighteen,” Whit said, “and my sister’s fifteen.”

“Well, I’m thirteen,” he offered, “so you’ll fit right in here.”

And then I looked across at all the cells on the other side of the block. I saw face after face, one scared kid after another. All wearing too-big prison jumpsuits.

It looked like this whole jail was full ofkids, nothing but kids.

Chapter 12

Wisty

“YUP, IT’S PRETTY much just us kids around here these days,” said the voice from the far cell. “I’ve been here nine days—I was one of the first. But in the last three days, this rat hole has really filled up.”

“Do you have any idea what’s going on?” Whit asked softly, so as not to attract a guard’s attention.

“Not a whole lot, jefe. But I heard some of the guards talking about a clean sweep,” the voice said quietly, close to the bars. “You remember hearing about the New Order?”

“Yeah,” I joined in, “but I wasn’t really paying attention.”

“Okay, so you’ve been living inside your head… somewhere dark and nasty,” said the voice. “But, if it’s any consolation, so was most of the rest of the country. See, the New Order is the political party that’s been winning all the elections. They’re in charge now. In just a few months they’ve gutted the old government and instituted the Council of Ones. Heard of them? The One In Command, The One Who Judges, The One Who Imprisons, The One Who Assigns Numbers, The One Who Is The One, blah, blah.”

“Okay, so, the New Order. Politics,” said Whit. “What’s that got to do with us?”

“They’re the Lawand they’re the Order, amigos. They’re The Ones who put us here, and they’re The Ones who decide what to do with us.”

“But why are they doing these unspeakable things tokids? ” I spoke up again.

“Because we talk back? Because we’re hard to control? Because we have animagination? Because we’re not brain-washed yet? Who knows? Why don’t you ask The One Who Judges…at your trial! ”

I squished myself against the bars as hard as I could, trying to see through to Whit. “Trial?What trial?” I asked. “We’re going to trial? For what?”

Wham!

A guard had sneaked up, grabbed my arm through the bars, and twisted it the wrong way. “If you keep talking to the other prisoners, I’ll put you all in solitary!” he growled.

He gave my arm another hard, agonizing twist and laughed like some crazy old cartoon villain. I was so mad I wanted to tear the bars down and kick him in the throat—and all of a sudden an electric rush traveled up my body.

Uh-oh.

The next thing I knew, I was watching the guard through a sheet of flames. Flames that were coming from… me.Again.

“Agh!” the guard shouted as the sleeve and pants leg of his uniform caught fire. He ran and grabbed an extinguisher, spraying himself as a team of his buddies converged on my cell.

“Wisty!” Whit yelled. “Duck!”

I threw my hands up to cover my face as I was drenched with flame-smothering foam. Correction:Wisty-smothering foam. Then suddenly the flames were out and I looked like a flocked Christmas tree, a lemon-meringue pie, a red-haired zombie snowman, risen from the dead.

“No more tricks,” said the guard hoarsely. “You’re coming with me.”

Four New Order guards with bats and stun guns stomped in and grabbed my arms, hauling me out to the walkway. Four more creeps were opening Whit’s cell.

By the time the guards shoved us into a room marked INTERROGATION, I was ready to show The One Who Interrogates just why I had two weeks of detention racked up at my school.

But when the door opened, it was just that spud, Byron Swain, followed by a pair of guards. “Miss me?” he asked with a sickening grin.

Chapter 13

Whit

BYRON’S INSURANCE-SALESMAN HAIRCUT, colorful polo shirts, and ironed chinos—but most of all his know-it-all attitude—had marked him as a major kiss-up back at school. This close, his face looked pinched and mean, like that of a pet ferret with hall-monitor aspirations.

Tossing a folder on the metal table, he nodded to the two guards, and they stepped back against the wall.

“Have you been working out, Swain?” I asked, clenching my fists. “I mean, it doesn’t look it, but don’t you need to have at leastsix guards backing you up?”

Swain’s face flushed bright red. “We both know why you’re here,” he said, pacing. “Hmmm?”

The little twerp was trying to sound authoritative and manly, but his naturally whiny, nasal voice cracked through at the end of every sentence. His cold eyes didn’t leave my face. “The sooner you admit your secrets and tell us what we want to know, the better it will be for you and your freaky fire-breathing sister.”

“Got no idea what you’re talking about, skippy,” I said.

His weaselly eyes narrowed. Suddenly he leaned on the table, getting nose-to-nose with me.

“You can back off the drama-queen performance, okay?” I told him.

“Are you two miscreants protecting someone?!” he snapped, ignoring my taunts. “Well,they’re certainly not protecting you. Your good friends have already told us everything we need to know. We’re aware of your drinking problems,Whitford. And we hardly need corroboration of your sister’s pyromaniac tendencies. But those are just the license plates on the truckload of information your ‘friends’ delivered up. It was beautiful. I mean, a handful of marbles couldn’t have rolled any easier.”

“That right?” I said. “Like, they told you where I keep my stash of doughnut holes? My gaming cheat codes? The D on my last bio test that my folks don’t know about? Somehow, getting grounded isn’t the threat it used to be!”

“You almost flunked biology?” Wisty whispered as I watched a vein appear in Byron’s forehead. “Cool.”

“Shut up, freak!” he roared at Wisty, who just stuck out her tongue. “I saw what you did earlier! You burst into flames! And you weren’t even hurt afterward! If that’s not sick and wrong, I don’t know what is! You think it’s bad, being here in this wussy prison? It will get a lot worse! Trust me on that, you deviants—alot worse.”

“You know, Byron,” Wisty said in her most insulting la-di-da voice, “you’rethe freak, actually. We could putyou on our secret voodoo witchcrafty to-do list.”

At that, Swain snapped. Lunging across the table, he grabbed Wisty’s arm so hard she yelped. And then, the weirdest thing—and that’s saying something—a flash of blinding light leaped between my sister’s free hand and Byron’s chest.

The creep squealed like a guinea pig and was thrown backward, falling on his butt near the astounded guards.

My eyes nearly falling out of my head in disbelief, I looked over at my sister and realized she had just hit Byron with a lightning bolt.

Lightning. A small bolt, sure, butlightning! From herfingertips!

“More proof!” Byron squeaked, his voice sounding extracrispy and his face almost purple. He was rubbing his chest, obviously horrified by the burn mark on his shirt. “Youare a witch! You’ll be locked up forever!” He got to his unsteady feet and staggered from the interrogation room.

“You’re throwing lightning at people now?” I asked Wisty. “I mean,whoa. ”

Chapter 14

Whit

I MUST HAVE FALLEN OFF to sleep soon after Spud Swain’s visit. Then I woke in my cell with hot tears rolling down my cheeks.

It’s not that I’m a total wuss, though I can be during sappy movies sometimes. I was crying because I’d just talked to Celia—in a dream, I guess it was a dream, but it felt so real to me. No, itwas real. I remembered hugging Celia tight to my chest like we were on the most heart-breaking date of all time.

“Hi, Whit, missed you,” she said, like it was perfectly normal for me to be seeing her again after all these months with her missing. “I’m trying to act casual, and failing pretty bad,” she said with a gentle smile. “Sorry.”

“Celia, are you okay? What happened to you?” I blurted out. My heart was pounding like a bass drum.

“We’ll get to all that. I promise. The question is, areyou okay? Is Wisty?”

“Sure—you know me, Celia, I can roll with it. And Wisty is tough as nails. She’ssmoking, actually.” I chuckled weakly at my own joke. “I guess we’re a little weirded out, though.”

Celia smiled again, and I just about couldn’t stand it. I’d had no idea how much I’d missed that incredible grin of hers until right now. And she was prettier than ever—if that was even possible. Smooth skin, long dark curls, the brightest blue eyes that always told me the truth, even if I didn’t want to hear it.

“You look great, Whit—for somebody who’s been kidnapped, beaten up, and jailed illegally.” Now a half smile.

“Forget about me. I want to hear everything about you. Celia,what is going on? Where did you go?”

She winced, then her head slowly moved from side to side, and tears rolled from her eyes. “That’s a tough question. And I know I just got here, Whit, but I really have to go now. I just had to make sure you were okay. And Whit—it’s hard to believeI’m saying this toyou, of all people—you really have to hang tough. You and Wisteria. Otherwise you’ll both be dead.”

Then Celia was gone—I was wide awake—and I’d been warned about what to do next.

Hang tough.

Chapter 15

Wisty

I USED TO THINK detention was kinda fun. A badge of honor, almost. Man, how quickly things can change.

This was the real thing.

My old life, and the days of recklessly skipping class, felt like a million worlds away now. I missed it, and our house, and especially our mom and dad, so badly that I felt like I was going to lose it.

I stared at the ceiling and daydreamed, remembering… How Mom used to lie in bed with Whit and me when we were really little, and she’d laugh and laugh, and tell us that she was teaching us how to love laughter, because it was one of the very best things in life, maybe the best.

And…

How Dad always said he had to be our father, not our friend—and that there was an important distinction between the two—but somehow he ended up being our best friend anyway.

And…

How we went on all of those great family trips to art museums such as the Betelheim and the Britney. And then those potentially corny family camping trips, one every season—no matter how cold or rainy it was—and we learned how to survive in the world, but more than that, to love what was out there, just waiting to be discovered.

Like this great oak tree that was in our yard—the one that Whit and I learned to climb almost as soon as we could walk… andfall .

And then… there were two guards at my door.

With handcuffs.

And leg shackles.

“For me?” I beamed at the two creeps. “Aw, you shouldn’t have.”

Amazingly, neither of them thought that was the least bit funny.

“Come on, witch!” one guard snapped. “It’s your day in court. Now you get to meet The One Who Judges… and you’re definitely not going to like him.”

“Of course,” said the other guard, “that’s only fair—he’s definitely not going to like you either.”

The guards thoughtthat was hysterical.

Chapter 16

Whit

SUNLIGHT—the first we’d seen in what seemed like ages—came streaming through thirty-feet-high windows in the courtroom, almost blinding us. I squinted and tried to shield my eyes, only to whack my forehead with my handcuffs.Klutz much?

I had thought by now I’d be hard to shock, but I couldn’t believe the scene in front of me.

A mammoth portrait of The One Who Is The One hung at the center of the room, like he was a conquering general or the emperor. There was a huge metal cage in front of the judge’s desk—yes, a cage, like for shark diving. One guard held the door open, and the other one pushed us into it.

Into acage.

In a courtroom.

“I’m almost getting used to looking through bars,” Wisty said, sounding resigned. Not like Wisty at all.

“Don’t say that,” I whispered sharply. “We’re getting out of this madhouse. I promise.”

But how? I scanned the courtroom. Surrounding us was an impenetrable wall of indifference, even hatred. Plus at least a dozen armed guards.

A judge—The One Who Judges, I assumed—glowered from a high platform right in front of us, his thin, greasy gray hair stuck down to his scalp.

On the right-hand side of the courtroom, behind a low wall, a jury stared vacantly at us. They were all grown-ups, all men, and apparently they seemed to think two innocent kids appearing on trial in a cage was nothing unusual.

So it was official now: the world had gone totally crazy.

Chapter 17

Whit

THE ONE WHO JUDGES put tiny glasses on his long, beaked nose and scowled down at us. I read his gold plaque:JUDGE EZEKIEL UNGER .

He picked up a piece of paper. “Whitford Allgood!” he read in a stinging voice. “Wisteria Allgood! This trial is convened because you are accused of the most serious crimes against the New Order!” He glared at us.

There was a standing-room-only audience of grown-ups behind us. I turned to see the crowd better. The few of them who looked at me were cold-eyed and full of hatred.

I rubbed my forehead against my arm as the judge angrily read a bunch of legal-sounding gibberish.

I peered at the jury—surely some of them had to feel sorry for two kids who looked hungry and dirty? Kids in handcuffs, in a cage, with no lawyer? But their faces were frozen in expressions of condemnation. It was as if they were being paid to dislike us. Was there some neon sign above our heads that read SCOWL instead of APPLAUSE, like on the live TV shows?

“What have we done?” Wisty suddenly yelled at the judge. “Just tell us that. What are we accused of?”

“Silence!” the judge shouted. “Listen, you contemptuous girl! You are a most dangerous threat to everything that is proper and right and good. We know this from police witnesses to your recent perpetrations of the dark arts. We know this from innumerable investigations undertaken by the New Order’s Investigative Security Agency, and we know this, most fundamentally, because of the Prophecy.”

My mouth dropped open as I saw the jury nodding.

“Prophecy?” I scoffed. “I promise you—my sister and I are nowhere in the Good Book. Get real, Ezekiel.”

The courtroom gasped. “Blasphemer!” a woman cried out, and shook her fist at us.

The bailiff rushed toward me with his billy club raised, and I lifted my eyebrows in mock fear.Uh, I’m in a cage, stupid. The bars work both ways.

Judge Unger continued, “Therefore, based on the preponderance of evidence—”

“Look, whatever the charges, we pleadnot guilty! ” I yelled, grabbing the bars of the cage despite my handcuffs and shaking them with all my strength. Which I guess wasn’t the smartest thing.

Smack!The bailiff raked his nightstick across my knuckles. Wisty gasped, and I barely managed to swallow a scream of pain.

The One Who Judges literally leaped out of his chair and leaned over his desk, practically within spitting distance. “That’s showing those vermin! Well done, bailiff! That’s the only way to deal with this kind of filth! If you spare the rod, you spoil the deviants!”

His face was mottled purple and white, his eyes bugging out of his head.

“How say you to these charges?” he yelled at us.

Dumbfounded, Wisty and I replied,“Not guilty!”

The judge turned away from us. “Gentlemen of the jury, with that statement, the defendants stand in clear contempt of your will and this court’s mission. They mock us. They flout the standards of the glorious New Order! I ask you,what is your verdict? ”

“That’s it?” I yelled from the cage. “That’s our trial?”

“You’ve got to be kidding!” screamed Wisty. “That’s not fair.”

Smack!went the bailiff’s nightstick.Smack! Smack! Smack!

Chapter 18

Whit

THIS WHOLE CRAZY THING was happening so fast.

In ordinary,lawful trials, one juror stands and reads the verdict from a sheet of paper that often shakes in his or her hand. But this was a travesty of justice. This jury simply held their fists out. We watched as the men, one by one, turned their hands thumbs-down. All of them. Unanimous.

Of course, in ordinary trials, there are also lawyers and due process and principles such as innocent until proven guilty, and things like that. Welcome to the New World Order, I guess.

Judge Unger banged his gavel so hard that Wisty and I jumped. “Guilty as charged!” he roared, and my breath froze in my chest.

“You, Wisteria Allgood, are hereby determined by the New Order to be a witch! You, Whitford Allgood, are determined to be a wizard!”

Wisty and I could only stare up at him in shock and disbelief. But he had saved his best line for last.

“Both of which are punishable by hanging… untildead. ”

Chapter 19

Wisty

HANGING UNTIL DEAD?

This isn’t real.

My ears started to buzz.

This can’t be real. This doesn’t happen. This has to be a nightmare.

My chest tightened up. The room started to go green. And fuzzy.

And then I heard Whit’s voice. Like it was coming to me down a long tunnel. Finally, he shook my shoulder.

“Hang in there, Wisty,” he said quietly. I blinked and focused on his face. “Love you.”

I nodded. Whit didn’t think he was special, but his words and his touch were like a magic bullet of strength. I could breathe now. “Love you too,” I whispered. “More than I ever knew before.”

I inhaled deeply and braced myself for what Judge Unger had to say next.

“Unfortunately, executions are not allowed until said criminal is eighteen years of age.”

The buzzing returned to my ears, the fuzziness to my sight.

Whit would be eighteen in less than a month!

I wondered why I wasn’t feeling a littleflameish orlightningy right about now. I wanted to lash out at this judge so much that it hurt.

“Therefore, both of you will be held in the state penitentiary”—he continued gravely, and then smiled—“for the time being.” He nodded at the bailiff in the courtroom and said, “Take them out of my sight.”

The guards removed us from the cage—sort of clumsily, I might add, since Whit was thrashing like a rabid animal. “You’re making a terrible mistake!” he yelled. “This is insane! You’ll be disbarred! This isn’t legal!”

“Shut up, wizard!” the judge screamed, and suddenly hurled his gavel at Whit.

Whit held up his cuffed hands, and then—

The gavel just hung there in midair for a good five seconds—maybe six inches from Whit’s face—then dropped heavily to the floor.

The courtroom was completely silent for a moment. Then chaos took over. Angry voices howled, “Witch! Wizard! Put them to death! Execute them both!”

And they really did meanus, didn’t they? Wisty and Whit. The witch and wizard.

Chapter 20

Wisty

THE ANGRY CHANTING and taunting of the courtroom crowd filled our ears as Whit and I were dragged and shoved down a long, narrow hallway and through throngs of perfect strangers, all thirsty for blood—ourblood.

Talk about a way to kill your faith in humanity.

A few days ago, it seemed like the worst thing that could happen to me was waking up with a giant zit during school-picture day. How could life as I’d known it change so quickly and bizarrely? My brother and I had just beensentenced to death.

The horrid word “execution” kept bouncing around inside my head, sending me into a daze as Whit and I were shoved into another van.

I thought of all the people I’d learned about in school who’d been executed or assassinated. I came up with almost a dozen. But they were all political or religious leaders. And I was just Wisteria Allgood. I wasn’t powerful enough to scare people. Was I? I was not a hero, a prophet, a saint, or a leader of any kind.It made no sense.

And then, another horrible thing. Stunning. Something that changed my mind about the worst thing that could ever happen to me.

As we rode through the city, we kept our faces pressed against a tiny window in the foul-smelling van—desperate for sunlight, if nothing else—watching the city streets go by, watching soldiers, soldiers everywhere.

Until we saw a new sign being constructed by workmen.

WANTED FOR TREASON

AND CRIMINAL PRACTICE OF FOUL ARTS

Underneath the words were black-and-white photographs of Mom and Dad.

And then the kicker:

DEAD OR ALIVE!

“They got away,” Whit whispered. “They’re out there somewhere. Somehow, we’ll find them.”

BOOK TWO

VERY DICKENSIAN

Chapter 21

Wisty

WHEN THE UGLY BLACK NEW ORDER VAN finally stopped, it was raining hard outside and the wind howled. We were parked in front of another large building, this one with high stone walls that looked charred, kind of like an old factory. Stains over the doorway revealed where foot-high letters used to be. They had readGENERAL BOWEN STATE PSYCHIATRIC HOSPITAL .

For a moment, I got the idea this nightmare might actually make sense.That’s it! I thought with a breath of hope.I’m psychotic! Everything that’s just happened has been a clever collection of my own delusions.

That would explain the fire… the strange and random appearance of Byron Swain… the death sentence for being a witch.

The good doctors’ll treat me here, Mom and Dad will come get me when I’m well, and everything will be fine again. I’m just psychotic, is all. No biggie.

I smiled involuntarily at the thought. Whit looked over at me like I was—not surprisingly—certifiably insane. I sure hoped so.

“What’s with you? You’re half smiling. Why? This looks like a hellhouse.” He grimaced.

“Well, what were you expecting?” I said with a titter. “Warm and fuzzy?”

We were whisked out of the van and past the stone walls. “Move it!” The guard jabbed me in the back with his baton, pushing me into a wide, dark hallway. One faint fluorescent light flickered at its distant end. A light at the end of the tunnel? I doubtedthat.

“Will I be treated here?” I took the chance of asking. “When can I meet with the doctor?”

Whit twisted his head around and gave me another confused look.

“This is a jail of the New Order, girlie,” one of the guards said, sounding both brusque and nervous. “Fordangerous criminals. Like you two.”

We were pushed into a very dim stairwell, lit by only the faintest light seeping under the doorways at each landing. My legs were shivery, probably because we hadn’t had anything real to eat since oh-nightmare-thirty. The guards marched us up higher and higher until I surrendered to fatigue and quit counting the landings.

Finally we entered yet another dark hallway with what looked to be an ancient nurses’ station front and center. A woman inside was slouched over her desk, engrossed inNew Order Administrator magazine. She must have been enormously tall, because even though she was sitting, she was able to look down at me.

“Yes?” she croaked like a frog who’d smoked too many cigarettes. “Why are you bothering me?”

Dark eyes, without any whites, bored into mine. She had a crooked nose and a pointy chin with a huge mole that had wiry black hairs growing out of it. Heck, if the New Order was really looking to arrest witches…

“Two more despicable degenerates for you, Matron,” announced one of the guards. “A witch and a wizard.”

My stomach sank down into my socks. My short-lived fantasy of psychosis was officially over.

You know life really sucks when you’re desperately wishing to be institutionalized, drugged, or shocked back to reality. I’d gladly take a lobotomy at this point. I guess that’s what you’re faced with when freedom isn’t even a pipe dream any longer.

Give me lobotomy or give me death!

Chapter 22

Whit

“POLICE MUST BE DREDGING every rancid trash pile in the country,” the Matron snarled, “finding all these…maggots for me to look after.”

And with that cheerful introduction, our situation might have hit a new low. At the moment, I was actually more concerned about Wisty, whose eyes were scarily glazing over.

The Matron swiveled her chair away from us to grab a couple of thick files off the desk behind her. A greasy, heavy ponytail hung down the back of her white nurse’s uniform like some enormous piece of seaweed or a dead lake eel.

“Yes, ma’am,” said the guard. “‘Maggots’ is exactly right, only maybe a little too kind, if you ask me.”

“Ididn’t! ” snapped the Matron. The guard cowered and did his impression of a dashboard-mounted bobblehead in a dune buggy.

Then she heaved herself to her massive feet with a weary grunt. “You know why you’re here, instead of some namby-pamby jail?” she asked.

“No, sir,” I said, clearing my throat.

“Funny boy.” Her eyes narrowed to gleaming slits. “This is adangerous place,” she said. “Fordangerous criminals. But keep in mind that your cheap tricks won’t work in here, my pretties!”

Did she actually just call us “my pretties”? Did I hear her right?Maybe therewas a reason I was in a psychiatric hospital.

“The New Order’s had this place spellproofed.” She gloated, and then her expression changed and she began muttering to herself. “I don’t know what they think I’m going to do with any more of this filth, though.”

The Matron led us down the hallway to a thick wooden door with a wire-glassed window. She unlocked it, and the guards very roughly pushed us inside. They removed our chains and tossed our meager belongings—one drumstick and one empty book—on the floor behind us.

“Welcome to death row,” she said as she slammed the door shut and locked us inside.

Chapter 23

Wisty

“A LITTLE CREEPY, huh?” I said, trying to make it sound like this place wasn’t much worse than a haunted mansion at a kiddie theme park.

“Uh, not as creepy asyou, ” said Whit. “I hate to break this to you, sis, but… um, you’re glowing.”

Glowing?Does not compute.Does not compute.

“Huh?” I said, deadpan. “What do you mean?”

“What part of ‘you’re glowing’ do you not understand?” he asked.

“The part where I’m glowing,” I said. “How could—”

I looked down and saw that my skin, my clothes, the air about an inch around my body, were suffused with a thin, faint, greenish light—enough to see by.

“Have you been playing in toxic waste lately?” Whit made an unfunny.

I held my shaking hand out and examined it. It started to get so bright I had to turn away. The whole room lit up—the dark, grime-filled crevices, the piles of medical waste, the bedpans, the holes in the baseboard that could easily accommodate rats.

“Ugh.” Whit winced. “Do me a favor and hit the dimmer switch.”

“I don’t know if I can,” I said, my voice cracking a little.

Except for my flighty flower-power first name, I’d mostly escaped freakishness in my life. Didn’t have to wear hideous hand-me-down clothes from an older sister. Never the last one picked for a team in gym class. Never called four eyes, metal mouth, or fatty. Now I was an official freak, three times over. A witchy flamethrowing radio-active freak.

That’s not great news for a fifteen-year-old, let me tell you.

I suddenly welled up with tears, desperately needing my parents. “Mom? Dad?” I whimpered. The echo of their names hit my ears cruelly.

Whit got that annoyingly worried look on his face again. “Wisty…”

“Shh,” I hissed, crying now. “Mom… told me abouteverything, Whit. She told me about the birds and the bees, like, way before any of my other friends’ parents did. How she and Dad fell in love—very romantic. And Dad—he told me about his most embarrassing moments in school. And how proud he was of you, and me, and… and he was never afraid to say ‘I love you’ like the other dads.” I sucked in a tortured breath. “Butwhy didn’t they tell me about all ofthis? ”

Whit came close and hugged me, glow and all.

“The worst thing is, Whit, maybe theydid tell me about it. And maybe I just wasn’t paying enough attention.”

Then I really started sobbing. My tears soaked into Whit’s jumpsuit, and he held me until we both sank into sleep, and my glow faded, faded away.

Chapter 24

Whit

WHOA!

Celia came to visit me again that night, or sometime during those first harried hours in the new jail. I wasn’t so sure about the passage of time anymore. I wasn’t sure about anything.

“Hi, Whit, missed you,” Celia said, same as before, only now she said it with a wink. “I was thinking about you. The way it was. Happy days. Our first date. You wore that wrinkly bowling shirt you love.Alley Cat. Remember?”

Of course I remembered.

Oh man, oh man, oh Celia. What is happening? Am I totally insane? Is that why I’m in a nuthouse?“Celes, listen, I need to ask you a question. Why did you stay away for so long? Please, if you don’t want me to go completely crazy, tell me what happened to you.”

Amazingly—especially if this was a dream—Celia reached out and touched me. I could feel her. It made me calm. Calmer. She felt like the old Celia, looked like the old Celia… and had the same sweet smile.

“Iwill tell you what happened to me, Whit. I want to so badly.”

“Thank you.” I let out a sigh from the bottom of my sneakers. “Thank you.”

“Not now, though. When I see you for real. In person. Not in a dream. We have to be careful, though—The One Who Is The One is watching us.”

I couldn’t let Celia go again. I held her close—very close—and I asked her once more for some kind of rational explanation.

Then Celia pulled away, but just far enough for her to stare into my eyes. I loved being able to look into her eyes again. We had the same baby blues. Her friends used to joke about the kids we’d have one day.

“Here’s all I can tell you for now, Whit. There’s a prophecy. It’s written on a wall in your future. Learn about it. Never forget it. You’re a part of it, of running the world. That’s why the New Order’s so afraid of you and Wisteria.”

I couldn’t evenabsorb that major information drop before she took a quick breath and continued. “Whit, I can’t be here any longer than this. I love you. Please miss me.”

“Don’t go,” I pleaded. “I can’t take this again.Celia? ”

She was gone, but somehow I could still hear her voice: “We’ll be together again, Whit. I miss you already. Miss me. Please miss me.”

Chapter 25

Wisty

THAT MORNING, Whit and I were startled awake by a tapping sound, like a stick or maybe somebody’s cane. My heart immediately started racing full blast, but Whit still seemed groggy and disoriented.

“Celia,” he mumbled. I shoved myself away from him. I loved my brother, but this was no time for hopeless romanticism.

“No, it’s your sister, and as a reminder, we’re at home sweet hellhouse,” I said, and gave him a gentle slap. “Wake up! I need you here, dude!”

I held my breath as the knob slowly turned. By the time Whit showed any recognition of where he was, the door had opened several inches, but all I could see was the dimly lit hall through the crack.

A cold voice finally came from behind the door. “Thank you, Matron.” Its evil chill made my heart practically stop. “I’ll take it from here, if I may.”

“Watch yourself, now,” said the Matron. “These are dangerous fiends.”

“Thank you for your concern, but I think I’ll be just fine.” The door opened wider, and a towering skeletal figure—almost inhumanly tall—stepped into our room.

He was like Death itself, but in modern garb. A charcoal suit hung on him as if he were made of clothes hangers. His skin had a ghastly pallor, unhealthy as a plant left in a closet. For years.

Instinctively I moved back. Then, like a snake striking, a black leather riding crop whipped through the air with a hiss and smacked me hard. “Hey!”

The sting was icy cold, then burning, and I gasped and clutched my hand to my chest.

“No, you don’t, witch,” the Death figure commanded. “Your days of controlling people and objects with your evil powers are over.I am here now. I am yourVisitor. ”

Chapter 26

Whit

WHEN THAT BULLYING, cowardly freak smacked Wisty’s hand with his snake whip, I almost lunged for him. I was ready to fight to the death, whatever it took. Nobody hits my sister.

Wisty bravely cradled her hand and watched him, her jaw set.

I glared at this Visitor creep, trying to distract him. “Let me guess. No one loved you as a child. Or as an adult. Well, tough noogies!”

Then,smack! I gasped as the riding crop whipped across my face, opening up my skin with a white-hot sting. Blood started running down my cheek.

“This is your first full day at the Hospital, wizard,” said the Visitor. “So I’m going to be especially gentle with you. But you won’t ever speak to the Matron or me that way again. We’re the only things standing between you and a fate far worse than death.”

“So there’s somethingworse than being kidnapped in the middle of the night, kept in prison, sentenced to death in a laughable trial, and then locked up in a condemned hospital with two sadists? It’s going to getworse?! ”

“Are you done?” he asked calmly.

I shrugged and was just deciding what to say next when the crop zapped out of nowhere and hit me on the left ear, then the right ear, then the tip of my chin.

“Yessss. Much worse,” said the Visitor. “Your file indicated you weren’t the brightest bulb in the chandelier. At any rate, you would do well to learn this much:this ”—he sighed and gestured around our dank and disgusting cell—“is your new home.

“We have armed guards, security cameras, electronic perimeters, and multiple lethal safeguards that I’m not at liberty to discuss. Also, you’ll have no luck circumventing any of these systems with your trickery. This entire building has been altered to dampen your energies, and you will find you have no powers here. In short, once you walked in the door, you effectively becamenormal. ”

Wisty and I exchanged a glance meaning “except for glowing.” I swear we could read each other’s mind sometimes, especially lately.

“As to this room’s amenities, please note that your one external window has a western exposure, through which you can see the blackness of a ten-story-deep ventilation shaft, the bottom of which is fitted with a turbine that could grind a blue whale into mush in less than ten seconds. Feel free to throw yourselves down it at any time.”

He continued like a hotel bellman describing an executive suite. “You also have your own semiprivate bathroom, complete with our special-issue toilet paper that feels so airy, you’ll swear it’s not even there.”

I looked into our doorless bathroom nook, which contained a seatless toilet surrounded by dust and chunks of fallen plaster, and I confirmed that, yes, in fact,there was no toilet paper.

The Visitor looked down his long, hooked nose at us. “I will be back periodically to check on you,” he said in his deep zombielike voice. “If you misbehave in any way, well”—he paused and gave a smile that would have made a crocodile look cheerful—“I will mete out punishment.”

Sssst!The riding crop slashed through the air, missing my eye by a whisker. “I’ll see you soon….Promise. ”

Then he was gone, and the lock turned behind him.

“I don’t much care for him,” said Wisty. “You?”

Chapter 27

Whit

WISTY THEN SUMMED UP our situation with typical offhanded precision.

“This totally sucks,” she said.

I considered that. Between our various bruises, bumps, cuts, welts, and torn clothes, it looked like we’d been in a cage match with a wolverine.

I also had less than a month to live.

“Much too optimistic,” I said. “You always see the bright side, don’t you?”

I wandered around the room, trying to distract myself from the burning pain of my injuries. But I was having trouble forming thoughts… other than self-torturing ones about juicy burgers and black-and-white milk shakes… and cheese fries. I’d never been so hungry in all my life.

Then I noticed Wisty sitting on the mattress, moving her lips silently.

“Talking to yourself already?” I asked.

“Why not? We’re in an insane asylum.” She smiled, then looked a little bit sheepish. “Actually, if you need to know, I’m trying to come up with a spell. You know, to get us out of here. If I’m a witch, I ought to be able to go ‘shazam’ and blast the door open.”

“They said we had no power here. You weren’t paying attention to The One With The Bullwhip.”

“Really? Then tell me that my little radioactive moment was just a weird dream,” she said.

“Okay, you win, glowgirl,” I said. “So, you think ‘shazam’ will do it? Go for it.”

She waved her hands at the door.“Shazam!” she yelled.

Snick!It popped right open.

Chapter 28

Whit

“HERE. BOTH OF YOU!” The Matron’s bigfoot-size body filled our doorway. “Come with me, vermin. I suppose it’s time you learned how to get food and water.”

In the woman’s massive hands were two beat-up plastic pails, which she flung out to us. Call it a hunch, but this already didn’t look good. I’d have done anything to get a drink of water, though. The sink in our bathroom didn’t work… and what was in the toilet wasn’t exactly, um, potable.

We each took a pail and followed the Matron as she noisily clomped down the dark hall, her keys jangling with each lurching step and her preternaturally huge feet sausaged into chunky white shoes.

I started to make out noises ahead, and they were vaguely… animalish. Snarls, growls, and high-pitched whines filled my ears.

“What is this?” Wisty croaked. “Now what?”

The Matron gestured toward the end of the hall. “There’s food way, way,way down there. And water. Use your pails.” She looked down at her enormous steel-banded watch. “You have four minutes. If you’re not back by then”—her black eyes shone and her mouth stretched in a horrible approximation of a smile—“then I’ll know you’ve passed to the other side. Violently.”

Turning, she clomped her way back to the nurses’ station fifty yards behind us. “Take care,” she called.

My palm was already sweaty where I held on to the thin metal handle of my pail. The hallway in front of us was lined on either side by… canine animals of some sort. Mad dogs? Wolves? Black-furred hyenas? Hungry, angry, hostile animals, chained to the walls up and down the hallway.

Somehow we had to get past them—and back—in four minutes… but only if we wanted food and water.

Only if we wanted to live.

Chapter 29

Wisty

ANYONE WHO’S EVER BEEN on the verge of a major disaster, possibly even death, will tell you that the most mundane things can go through your mind. Just before I was about to sacrifice my life to the animals, I thought about a really mean dog that used to live on our block. When I was little, my friends and I always rode our bikes on the other side of the street, because the dog looked wild and we were scared it would break free and bite our butts.

Her name was Princess. She was a shih tzu. And she now seemed like a fuzzy teddy bear that I could have dressed up in doll clothes for a tea party.

“Are thosedogs? ” Whit asked hoarsely as we started down the hallway. “Or wolves?”

I shook my head. “I’m going with hellhounds.”

“Do you think maybe you could burst into flames again?” Whit whispered.

“I can’t do it on purpose,” I croaked, frustrated. “I’m trying. Not happening.”

“Okay. Well, I’ll go,” Whit rasped back, then blew out a thin gust of air.

“No,” I wheezed. “I’m small and fast.”

Before Whit and I had a chance to finish the argument, we saw a small, indistinct figure appear at the end of the hall. Holding a pail.

“Who’s that?” I muttered.

Whoever it was suddenly darted forward, leaping and dodging and almost crashing against the wall, hurtling toward us at a furious pace. “It” was about thirty feet away when it suddenly tripped and fell.

Instantly several hounds fell on it, snarling and snapping. Just watching the awful scene took my breath away.

“I have to help,” Whit said, making a move toward the hapless soul.

But then the little figure bounced up, pail in hand, and hustled straight toward us again. I couldn’t tell if it was a boy or a girl, but it was definitely a little kid, maybe five or six years younger than me. Blood streaked the poor tyke’s hair and ragged T-shirt. We stood to one side as he or she dashed past, then collapsed on the dirty floor, huddling against the wall, head and shoulders shaking.

The pail, which had fallen over when the child had tripped, was now completely empty. The hellhounds had eaten or drunk everything the kid had risked life and limb for.

Crying silently, the huddled figure grabbed the empty pail, skittered away on hands and knees to a couple of doors down the hall, and disappeared inside.

Whit and I looked on in shocked silence.

The Matron merely peered at her watch. “Seventy seconds,” she told us.“Ticktock.”

Chapter 30

Whit

HAVE YOU EVER TRIED tothink loudly? It seems like a contradiction in terms. But you do what you gotta do when you have to pretend you can’t hear the sounds of vicious snarling and snapping jaws and teeth all around you.

I had to shout in my head over and over as I bolted down the hall with both our pails,Make like you’re doing the hundred-yard dash—at the regional championship .Run, run, run!

Argh!I felt my feet stumble but caught myself and kept sprinting.Not the regional championship, I thought.The world championship.

“Victory, victory, victory!” I yelled senselessly, hoping I never had to explain to Wisty that this was what I occasionally chanted to myself when I was in competition, to psych myself up, to help me pretend to be the all-American boy I thought everybody wanted me to be.

It sounded pretty lame in the middle of an obstacle course of mad dogs, but it was working. Somehow I made it to the end of the hall with only a nip or two. I turned, gave Wisty a psychotic thumbs-up, then plowed through a doorway.

And stopped dead in my tracks.

It was pretty dark. And the room seemed empty. Was this the Matron’s idea of a trap? Good one, if it was. Way to go, Matron.

For a second I felt more vulnerable than ever before. I half expected a mad dog or wolf to shoot out of the dark and tear into my face.

It seemed like an eternity before my eyes adjusted, but I finally detected two troughlike shapes against a wall. The Matron hadn’t lied after all—amazing! I dashed over to them, sloppily filling my pails with sludgelike gruel and tepid water.

I was feeling so good, I dunked my face in the brackish liquid for a hearty slurp. The sensation of my head underwater gave me a rush of energy.

Clutching the pails to my chest, I sprinted out of the room, then down the hall toward my sister, who was jumping up and down like a manic cheerleader.

“Good hellhounds!” I heard her yell through the din of the barking devil dogs. “Sweet little hellhounds, let him through. Go, Whit, go!”

At that very moment, I felt the clamp of an animal’s jaws on my pants.

I crashed against a wall, but I kept my focus—Victory, victory, victory!—and surged forward through the growls and snarls.

Seeing Wisty’s face ahead supercharged me for the last few paces. I practically flew into her arms, and she hugged me hard.

“You’re awesome!” she gushed. “You did great, Whit.”

The Matron was striding toward us, holding her stun gun at eye level. “Foul!” she called out.Foul? Without warning, she hit me with a jolt.

I barely knew what had happened as I collapsed and the pails tumbled and rolled.

“Four minutes, six seconds!” the Matron shrieked. “No food. No water!”

She snatched the pails away as I drooled on the floor.

Chapter 31

Whit

AS THE DAYS PASSED, my sister and I managed to stave off death by dehydration by locating a drip of what we hoped was rainwater or condensation just outside our ventilation-shaft window. By snaking a piece of wire for it to run along and then planting at the other end a crumpled paper cup we’d found, we got a few mouthfuls every three or four hours. It tasted like drywall dust, but it was a total lifesaver.

The whole thing was so backward. Last week a bad day was getting busted for exercising my right not to do trigonometry homework and having to face two hours after school with some of my best friends in detention.

This week, if only from the sheer boredom and depression of this place, I would have faced my trig textbook like it wasThe Ultimate Book of Hot Cars.

Then one afternoon, I was lying on our mattress and thinking about Celia, hoping she would come back, even in another dream, when my sister exclaimed, “Whit! Whit! WHIT! Will you look at me, please? WHITFORD!”

Wisty’s voice brought me back to the totally screwed-up here and now. I kept my eyes closed, wanting to sink right back into my Celia thoughts.

“Whit!”Her stupid drumstick whacked my leg. “Open your eyes right now!”

“Ow!What is so important?” I griped, sitting up and snatching away the drumstick with irritation. “The pizza’s here?”

My sister stood in front of me, holding out the journal. “Lookat this!” she said, shaking the dusty book in my face.

I took the tome and examined the cover. Seemed the same to me.

“So what? It’s old, it’s musty, it’s useless.”

“Flip through the pages. Do it, Whit. Humor me.”

Then I saw the impossible. Suddenly the journal was filled with words, pictures, illustrations. And handwriting that looked like my father’s.

“Holy—” I stood up. “It’s the next book in the Percival Johnson series. That’s not supposed to come out until next year,” I said. “That’s interesting.The Thunder Stealer was one of my all-time favorite books.”

“What?”Wisty said. “Are you seeing the same thing I am?”

I turned pages. “Holy crap.” I thumbed forward.“The Ultimate Book of Hot Cars!”

“Hold on. I didn’t see that!” Wisty snatched the book back. “No, no, it’s got theHistory of World Art ! And prints by my favorite artists, Pepe Pompano and Margie O’Greeffe. And it’s got all my favorite novels too!” She quickly riffled through the pages. “See?” She held the journal under my nose, its pages open. “Look, everything by my favorite writer, K. J. Meyers. And it’s gotThe Blueprints of Bruno Genet . AndThe Firegirl Saga . Right here!”

I looked. This time I sawThe Swimsuit Issue Deluxe Compendium.

“Whit… I think I get it,” Wisty said with a hushed kind of awe. “The book shows each of us what we want to see.” Then her eyes got huge and she stared at me. “It’s magic. That’s why Dad gave it to you.”

I took the journal back from Wisty. “Show me where Celia is,” I tried halfheartedly, but then actually held my breath like I was expecting something.

Nothing. UnlessThe Ultimate Book of Hot Cars was supposed to somehow take me to Celia.

“We have to figure out how all this works,” Wisty said tensely. “I know you think I’m crazy, but I’m starting to really believe in us. Our magic. We just have to practice, Whit. We have to work harder. Maybe youare a wizard. Maybe Iam a witch.”

Chapter 32

Wisty

I HAD A REALLY GREAT TEACHER ONCE, Mrs. Solie, who told us she had the one true secret to happiness. She said it was all about seeing life as half full instead of half empty, no matter what happened to you. Actually, I was pretty okay with that. But what about when it’s .000001 full?

The days passed—and there were tests, tests, TESTS. Medical tests, physical-strength tests, intelligence tests, “normality” tests, patriotism tests, more medical tests.

One particular night, when I was barely awake and suffering absolutely horrendous hunger pains, they grabbed Whit from our cell and took him away.

“You can’t!” I screamed. “It’s not his time yet! I’ve been counting! It’s not time! He’s not eighteen!”

But the next thing I knew, the Matron was dragging me out of the room too, then pushing me down a long hall to a lone window.

She pointed outside, to a cement courtyard below. She was singsonging under her foul breath, “Happy birthday to you, happy birthday to you, happy birthday, dear Whit… happydeath day to you.”

My blood froze and my heart nearly stopped beating. In the courtyard was an old-fashioned gallows.

She continued into the second verse: “How dead are you now? How dead are you now?” and then broke into a hideous donkey bray.

A few seconds later, a troop of guards pushed Whit ahead of them out into the courtyard. His hands and feet were in cuffs, which made him stumble-walk.

I tried to swallow but couldn’t as I watched a guard put a black hood over Whit’s head.

“No!”I shouted, pounding my fists against the glass. “No!” I pounded again, and blinked, and then suddenly…

I was falling.

Chapter 33

Wisty

THUNK!GASPING AND BLINKING, I looked around the claustrophobic jail cell, adrenaline already zapping my brain awake.

I saw Whit blinking in sleepy surprise. Then he sat up and stared hard at me. At that moment I realized my butt and back were aching, and it all came together.

I had been floating in my sleep. The nightmare about the gallows had woken me up, and I had woken… inmidair.

Unfortunately, my bony little butt was not designed for crashing into a hard floor from a height of, oh, maybe four feet?

“Uh, Wisty,” Whit said, “you were floating. Up in the air.”

I just looked at him, so, so happy that he was alive, andhere, not hanged.

Still shaken from the horrible dream, I felt cold sweat drying on the back of my neck. I looked above me as if I might see the wires and pulleys that had made it possible for me to float. There was nothing.

“Floating,” repeated Whit, sounding amazed, “in your sleep. And they think we don’t have any special powers in here.”

I wanted to deny it, but here I was, with a sore backside, and I had definitely felt myself dropping through the air. I got to my feet, standing in the space I’d been, um, floating in.

Experimentally, I waved my useless drumstick around. Nothing happened.

“My sister, the witch.” Whit laughed. “Why can’t you conjure up a double cheeseburger or something useful? A jumbo ice-cream sundae? Astun gun? ”

I sighed and went to sit next to him on the mattress. “You’re laughing, Whit, but… this whole witch-and-wizard thing. The flames. The glowing. The gavel-stopping. Now the floating. I think we really are… magic.”

It felt like I was saying, “I guess I reallyam a supermodel.”

“That’s right, Detective Allgood,” Whit said. “And now we have to figure out how to focus our inner sorcerers to get us out of this dump.”

“Okay,” I said, tapping my drumstick gently on the floor. It was only a stupid drumstick, but I’d found that I felt better with it in my hand—maybe it helped me think, or something spirity like that.

“I could flame out and set the Matron on fire,” I suggested. “If I could figure out how to do it on purpose.”

“Great. And then we’ll have a burned-up giantess on our hands, plus a bunch of angry guards,” said Whit.

“Right. Maybe I could float out the air shaft,” I said, looking at the tiny, dark window above my head, then picturing myself dropping down it, many floors to the bottom, and getting pulverized by the turbine below.

“Maybe we can snap our fingers and a golden staircase will appear out of nowhere with angels singing and pointing the way to escape,” Whit said glumly. “Or maybe we’ll just grow wings and fly out of here.”

I snorted. “Yeah. Kids with wings. That’s likely.”

Wham!

Whit and I jumped about a foot in the air, then whirled toward the door. It had swung open and smacked the wall like a hard kick. We waited, both of us as tight as coiled springs.

One thing we’d learned: anything that came through that door wasn’t good.

Chapter 34

Wisty

“BREAKFAST IS SERVED! Poached eggs with bacon, fresh fruit, waffles, and syrup. Justkidding, kiddies.”

The Visitor appeared, dressed in black again, his icy green eyes glittering as if he had a fever. I thought that if he looked at me long enough, the blood would start to freeze in my veins.

He stepped farther into the room, examining everything like he was some anal-retentive crime-scene investigator, tapping on the walls, testing the strength of the wire-glassed window in the door.

“Keeping you here is a waste of time, space, and money,” he muttered, not bothering to look at us. “Waiting until you’re eighteen is arbitrary. You’re a drain on the taxpayers’ money… feeding you, housing you.”

“Um, I’m no economics expert, sir,” Whit said with a smile so fake it mademy teeth hurt, “but even I know that it’s not costing the taxpayers more than a dime a day to keep us here.”

The Visitor glared at us from the entryway to the bathroom. “I thought that you’d learned not to talk back to me, idiot.” He reached into his suit pocket and pulled out an ancient toothbrush. “As punishment, you will scrub your bathroom with this cleaning utensil. When I return, it better be operating-room hygienic.” The Visitor wrote something down on a clipboard. “There’s no place in the New Order for your kind,” he muttered.

“Excuse me, sir”—I finally spoke up—“but what exactlyis the New Order?”

The Visitor wheeled and stared at me. His black riding crop dangled menacingly from one arm.

Then he began to speak—all singsongy: “The New Order is a bright new future. It is a future that replaces the corrupting and illusory freedoms of so-called democracies and replaces them with a higher discipline. It has taken many, many years of planning, strategic political postings, scientific polling, demographic research, precise messaging, and carefully monitored elections.

“For this rare moment in human history, those who have values and principles are in a position to do what is best. And part of what is best, of course, is taking steps to eliminate the deviants, the criminals, and all those who threaten prosperity and the New Order way.”

He smoothed a hand over his slicked-back hair. “Like you two.”

“But… what’swrong with us, sir?” I asked like I was the resident classroom dunce.

The Visitor’s icy eyes narrowed, and he stepped closer until I could faintly smell mothballs and hair syrup.

“Youknow what’s wrong with you. You’re a virus,” he hissed. “You two are the worst kind of deviants. Performance artists. Illusionists.”

My jaw almost dropped. “But we’re just kids!”

“Kids,” he spat, as if he were saying “pus-filled blister.” “Many, many,many children are unacceptable in the New Order.”

Right then I should have shut up, wiped my face clear of any expression, and stood quietly till he was gone.

Instead, I stamped my foot. “We. Are. Just.Kids! ”

The last word was practically a shriek, and as the Visitor raised his riding crop over his head, a maniacal look of delight on his face…

Whoosh!I was aflame for the first time since we’d gotten to Camp Alcatraz. Big flames. Impressive, even to a fire starter like me.

Whit cheered. “Thatagirl!”

Through the veil of dancing flames, I saw the Visitor staring at me in horror, backing away hurriedly toward the door. I opened my arms and stalked him like a zombie. “How ’bout a hug, big fella?”

“Freak!” the Visitor yelled just before he slammed the door to our cell.

“Way to prove we’re just kids, inferno girl,” Whit said. “But very cool anyway.”

Chapter 35

Wisty

I DIPPED THE TOOTHBRUSH in the gray-watered toilet and scrubbed another inch of floor. I was singing as if I had lost my mind, and probably I had.

“I’ve been working on the railroad, all the livelong day.”

By this time I’d been through every singlegood song I could remember the lyrics to—and believe me, there are alot —and now I was at the very bottom of the barrel, reaching back to preschool days. I used to be the ultimate karaoke queen, because I grew up with my parents always playing all kinds of music at our house: old stuff, new stuff, classical, blues, jazz, rock, pop, and, yeah, even hiphop. I’m talking everything from Toasterface to Ron Sayer to Lay-Z.

That’s how freaking cool my parents were. I mean,are.

That fleeting bittersweet thought of my mom and dad got me out of the scrubbing groove, and I had to belt out the song even louder to reboot. Clearly, Whit wasn’t interested in listening.

“So, the Visitor seems afraid of fire,” Whit said, leaning against the wall for a work break.

“Yeah, Whitford,most people don’t freak out when somebody suddenly bursts into flames,” I said, rolling my eyes. “What a wuss that Visitor is.”

“We’re a witch and a wizard. What does that evenmean? ” Whit continued. “It’s been a long time since I’ve read any fairy tales. I couldn’t even tell you what witches and wizards are supposed to do… except—shouldn’t we at least be able to do thingson purpose, instead of all this stuff we have no control over?”

“I know. If I had a dime for every ‘alakazam’ I’ve done where nothing happened, I’d be able to buy a brand-new wardrobe. With a cute purse-size dog to match every outfit.” I paused, my arm aching. “Wait. I take that back. I don’t evenwant that. I want—”

Whit interrupted my reverie. “There has to be a point—”

His voice was clipped by a strangled gulp. I jumped to my feet. Whit was staring at his arm.

So was I.

His hand had sunk right into the wall.

Not “sunk” like he’d busted his fist right through the cement. More “sunk” like, I don’t know, the molecules that made up the wall had rearranged themselves around his hand.

“Um, can you take your handout? ” I asked. “Please try.”

A concerned look crossed my brother’s face, but he removed his hand without any obvious pain or resistance. We both examined it: same old hand. Then he put it against the wall and gently pushed again. The hand sank in several inches, its outline blurring beneath the wall molecules.

“I can only go in up to my elbow,” he reported. “After that, the wall sort of firms up again.”

I shook my head. “Totally bizarre. But useful? Not so much. Not unless you can go all the way through. For God’s sake, don’t put your head in there,” I said.

Whit’s muffled voice came next.

He had stuck his head in the wall.

“You won’t believe this!” His words were garbled. “Total mindblower.”

Chapter 36

Whit

I BLINKED—YOU KNOW, like, whoever blinks first loses.

I could see… a total shadow world. It looked like a whole other dimension, another reality. Everything was black, or gray, or tinged with glowy green. I could make out fuzzy shapes moving and staticky snippets of distorted conversation.

It was kind of like watching a horror movie on an old TV with incredibly bad reception.

Wisty had started pulling on my shirt from the other side of the wall. I could barely hear her voice, which freaked me out in itself.

Some of the shadows were getting clearer—because they were coming closer, which I didn’t particularly appreciate so much.

“Just stay where you are,” I tried to say, but my voice was lost. Then one of the shadow people turned toward me anyway, like it could hear.

It sure looked like a human form. Then the mouth opened—nothing but a shapeless splotch in a dark shadow world. If the figure was saying something, I couldn’t understand.

Slowly, it approached—cautiously. Then I distinctly heard the words “Is someone there?”

As I watched in awed silence, the shadow’s face became clearer, more detailed—until I screamed.

It was Celia.

And this time it wasn’t a dream.

Chapter 37

Whit

“CELIA!” I CALLED OUT, but my throat felt raw and my voice seemed to get snatched away from me again, not to mention that my knees had begun to knock.

Celia froze, looking all around, like she didn’t see me standing right there a few feet away from her.

“Celia! It’s me, Whit. I can see you. I’m here.Wherever this is. ”

Suddenly her eyes locked on mine. She blinked. Blinked a second time. Then she stepped back in surprise.

“It’s me. I’m really here. You said we’d meet again. For real.”

On the other side, Wisty was still calling my name, yelling for me to come back. But I couldn’t tear my eyes away from Celia. Her skin seemed even paler than in my dreams. But her eyes still shone, spoke the truth to me, and she was as beautiful as ever, maybe even more beautiful. She had this inner light.

“Whit?” She licked her lips—a familiar nervous habit of hers—and finally came closer. “Whit, I can see you now. How did you—where are you?”

“Believe it or not, I’m in the bathroom of a cell in a mental hospital,” I said, my words spinning away from me. I felt like I had to reach out to her. Maybe I could pull Celia back with me. “But where are you?”

Celia gave me the oddest look, and a cold hand grabbed at my heart.

“Whit,” she whispered urgently, “you have to go right now. You shouldn’t be here. It’s dangerous!”

“Why?!” I burst out.

“I’m sorry,” Celia began, “but I have to tell you what really happened to me.” Then her voice broke, and she started to cry. “They murdered me. They said… it was because of you and your sister. It happened at the Hospital, Whit. The New Order and The One Who Is The One—he’s behind this. He’s so awful, so powerful.”

I was crying now too. My body was shaking and numb at the extremities. “I see you. You said we’d meet. And you’re here with me.You’re not dead, Celia. ”

“Don’t come here again, Whit,” she warned. “This is the Shadowland. It’s a place for spirits. That’s what I am now. I’m a ghost.”

Chapter 38

Whit

“WHIT, COME BACK here this second!Whitford! ”

Suddenly I felt Wisty’s wiry arms loop really tight around my waist. “Wisty, no!” I tried to push her off, but she’d always been like a limpet, able to cling, and strong. I could feel her brace her feet against the wall, and then she pulled as hard as she could, even as I fought against her.

Either I wasn’t as strong as I used to be, or Wisty was stronger than ever. She yanked me out of the wall, away from Celia, and we both flew across the room. We hit hard against the opposite wall.

We got ourselves untangled, but I rushed back to the wall like somebody possessed.

“Whit, no!” Wisty yelled.“NO! No, Whit. Please.”

“Celia!” I screamed, my lips pressed against the cool surface. “Come back!” I pushed at the wall. Pounded it. Tried to put my fist through it. I couldn’t get inside again. Finally I gave up and broke down.

Wisty just stared at me, with both hands clasped on top of her head. She had every reason to believe that I’d gone over the edge for good.

“Wisty, I saw Celia.”

“What?”She stared blankly. “In thewall? ”

I told her everything that I’d seen, everything Celia said. How she’d been killed because of us. How she was a ghost now.

Wisty was speechless as she tried to process the next unbelievable twist in our lives:I had seen and talked to a ghost.

Then I heard the sound of the door to our cell being unlocked.

Chapter 39

Wisty

THE MATRON BARGED IN and informed us we were going back to see Judge Ezekiel Unger, of all people. Maybe there had been a mistake, and we weren’t the witch and wizard? Or our parents had interceded somehow? Whatever it was, something major had happened. Maybe we were going to get a sliver of our humanity back.

After a not-so-tender good-bye from the Matron came a fast ride in a grungy van that had the coppery smell of blood, and maybe the scent of something that very scared animals do.

“You’re shivering,” said Whit. He gently kissed the top of my head. The fact is that we had always loved each other, but we’d quarreled over the most petty and ridiculous things. No more.Life, as the wiser-than-you-might-think saying goes,is too short. Plus, it seemed so obvious to me now: Whit was a great brother. I wished that it wouldn’t have taken a New Order hellhole to prove that one to me.

The van screeched to a stop, and we were yanked outside. We entered a tall building and were suddenly surrounded by stark, monochromatic New Order normalcy: bright lights, a court hallway, regular-looking New Order people wearing neat, boring New Order clothes, cell phones ringing with the same preprogrammed, single-note tones. Pictures of The One Who Is The One were everywhere. And black-on-red N.O. signs were on all the walls. It made our prison days and nights seem just a little more bearable. At least we’d been missingthis crap.

Whit put his face close to mine, and he whispered, “If we get a chance, we run! We join hands and run. And don’t look back, no matter what.”

A guard threw open an ornately carved door, and…

We were back in that awful courtroom. And there was Judge Ezekiel Unger, looking like Death’s first and favorite cousin.

“The One Who Judges!” announced a simpering New Order lackey.

As if maybe we’d forgotten what the big creep looked like.

This time there was no hating jury, no mocking audience. Just The One Who Judges, the armed guards, and…the Visitor. I groaned to myself when I saw him. He’d probably brought us up on charges for improper toilet cleaning, or pail spilling in the Hallway of Mad Dogs.

Judge Unger was reading a thick report, sparing only a quick, disgusted glance at us before turning another page and reading on.

“Wisteria Allgood,” the judge said at last, raising his lifeless eyes to me. “Whitford Allgood.” Somehow, he managed to make the word “good” in our names sound like evil itself. “I trust you’re enjoying your stay at the Hospital?”

“Fantastic!” I said—couldn’t resist. “Five stars.”

“I have here your medical reports,” he went on, ignoring me completely, waving the thick document as if it weighed nothing at all. His eyes were lasered on us. “Your tests have come back…normal. Every single test!”

My heart gave a little leap. Thank God! This had all been a terrible, terrible mistake. Now we would be returned to our parents and go home. The nightmare was finally over.

“I want to know right this instant,” the judge continued, “whom you bribed. Was it him? Was it the Visitor? I suspect it was him.”

Chapter 40

Wisty

“BRIBED?”WHIT CHOKED OUT, and I thought the top of his head might blow off and start spinning around. At this point I could say honestly,stranger things have happened.

“The Visitor?!” I said. “You’ve got nothing to fear there—trust me, he’s a loyal and worthy sadist.”

“Of course you bribed someone!” the judge yelled. “Normal?You’re the farthest thing from normal there is! Depraved is not normal. Deceitful is not normal. Dangerous to society is not normal.”

Whit was very close to the edge. “And completelyinsane is not normal either! What could we bribe anyonewith? Gruel? Mice droppings? Beauty tips from that freaky Matron?”

Judge Unger’s face flushed almost purple with fury. “You don’t ask the questions, pretty boy,” he said, spewing wrath the way Italian fountains spurt water. “You answer the questions! Now, for the last time,who was it? I know it wasn’t the Matron. She’s my beloved sister.”

There’s a shocker,I thought wearily, and made a mental note not to make any more Matron jokes today.

“And,” he continued, “if you say another word against her, I will hold you in contempt of court. The penalty for which will make all the rest of this look like kindergarten.”

You’re a lowly, miserable cock-a-roach,I thought.

Meanwhile, Whit retorted, “I’m sorry. Maybe your little lackeys’ test machines weren’t working properly that day?”

“Shut up!” screamed the judge. “You obviously did something to the testing apparatuses. You used your wizardry on them! You fixed the results!”

Roach! You’re a roach!I shouted inside my head.If only I could turn Judge Unger into a roach, I thought.I’m a witch, right? Why can’t I do this? Why, why, why?

Turn into a roach,I murmured silently.Turn into a roach!

My brain began to ache with the effort. Witches cast spells. I didn’t know any spells. I remembered only a few rhymes from when I was a kid. Did I know any rhymes about roaches?

The only chant thingy I could think of was

Flies in the kitchen, lawsy, mawsy,

Flies in the night, lawsy may

Flies on the river, lawsy, mawsy

Flies at first light, lawsy may.

And who knew what the heckthat meant?

The judge was still screaming at Whit, and Whit’s face was stiff—he was trying so hard not to lose his temper. A sister recognizes the signs.

Suddenly a loud buzzing distracted me, and I looked away from Whit to the air above me.

Could it be possible?

The sound became louder, and then one of the guards said, “What the—? Hey! My God, my Lord, my Good God!”

The courtroom was suddenly full of enormous biting horseflies.

I’d brought on a plague.

Chapter 41

Wisty

HORSEFLIES. They were dive-bombing everywhere I looked—crazed rogues, intent on sucking our blood. I had created them.Total, total oops.

If someone had tossed a sackful of stink bombs and some M-80s into the courtroom right then, it couldn’t have caused a bigger commotion. Tough-guy guards were frantically waving their arms over their heads and screaming like little boys who’d stumbled into a hornet’s nest.

Judge Unger’s jaw dropped in stunned horror. He quickly shut it when several humongous flies attempted kamikaze missions down his throat.

Whit and I ducked under a table. “What’s going on?!” he said. “Did you—”

“Um,” I began guiltily, “sort of. Maybe. Yes.”

“Wisty, what did you do?” Whit whispered against my ear.

“I don’t know exactly what I did,” I answered. “There was a song about flies, and flies on the river, and lawsy, mawsy.”

The buzzing quieted suddenly.That’s it? I thought.That’s the whole plague?

Chapter 42

Wisty

I PEERED OUT from beneath the table and saw the Visitor whirling this way and that, helplessly swatting at the air with his sticklike arms. Judge Unger was peeking out from beneath his tent of robes, his eyes the size of baseballs.

Then, “Oh God!” one of the guards screamed.

“God, no!” yelled another. “This is worse!Much worse!”

I couldn’t believe what I saw now. All the flies were gone. But stuck to everybody’s arms and faces—to any bare skin at all—were… small, dark splotches.

Thatmoved!

“Oh man,” Whit breathed. “The flies all turned intoleeches! ”

“I didn’t say anything about leeches,” I said in a defensive whisper.

Apparently those nasty little suckers were elastic as all get-out. One guard tried to pull a bug off his lip, and it stretched and stretched until it broke in a disgusting yellowish mess. More leeches clung to walls, desks, and chairs—thousands of them, moving around like giant blood-seeking clingworms. Some were dropping from the ceiling.

“This is probably the most repulsive thing I’ve ever seen,” Whit said. “Even given what we’ve been through at the Hospital. I kind of like it.”

“Hey,” I said, “in case you haven’t noticed, they don’t seem to be crawling all overus. ”

Then a booming voice took over the courtroom.

“Stop! Stop this kindergarten nonsense!No more flies, no more leeches, no more uncivil disturbances of any kind.”

Suddenly I felt weak in the knees, numb—paralyzed, actually. I remembered the feeling—how could I forget?

He was there, he’d just appeared, and he’d already ruined everything. The stuffy decorum, the New Order, the boring sameness… it was all back in place.

“I am The One Who Is The One. Just in case you forgot or possibly repressed the memory.”

He strode forward until he was right on top of Whit and me.

“I have been observing you: here in the court, back at the Hospital. You see, youngins, I am everywhere, and obviously I am all-powerful, and you are not!”

He looked at Whit and actually gave a wink. “I can even shutyour sister up. So who can doubt my power? Now… there will be more tests, tests, tests,tests. Until we find the answer I’m looking for, until we solve the puzzle of the Allgoods. I want to know about their power! Antigravity? Healing? Immortality? Physical transformation? Telekinesis?

“Take the prisoners back to the Hospital! And no more Mister Nice Guy tactics. Double their workload, double the tests, double the discomfort. I wantanswers! ”

Finally his Oneness bent toward me, stopping just inches from my chin.

“Witcheria,is there anything you would like to say? Anything at all? Perhaps you’re offended by the phrase ‘kindergarten nonsense,’ which I used to describe your paltry tricks here today? Well, you know the famous saying—of course you do—‘TRICKS’ ARE FOR KIDS! Get them both out of my sight!”

And then, I swear this is true, it was like a category-five hurricane was in that courtroom—and then The One Who Is The One was gone.

With the wind?

Chapter 43

Wisty

WHAT IS THAT dumb saying?What doesn’t kill you only makes you stronger. Well, maybe there was some truth there. I definitely felt stronger, and angrier. I was burning up inside.

When we were returned to our cell in the Hospital, I was expecting the Matron to rush in and stun-gun us till we screamed for mercy. I was expecting the Visitor to come whip us to shreds with his riding crop. I was expecting them to throw us to the hellhounds fortheir supper.

Instead, it got a little worse than that.

They sent… Byron Swain.

Byron Snotty Traitor Suck-up Quisling Hall Monitor Swain. I wished we were back at our school, so Whit could have pounded him into the dust.

“Hail, prisoners,” Byron said in that snide, nasal voice that could make a statue of Jesus roll its eyes in disgust.

“What do you want? Just couldn’t stay away?” I asked. “Or are you a little Visitor-in-training?”

“So, we meet again,” said Byron. Like before, he looked freshly dipped in antiseptic. His brown hair was just so, his eyes cold, perfect marbles. His chinos had a sharp crease down each leg.

My eyebrows rose. “That’s the best you could come up with? ‘We meet again’? I mean, cliché much?”

When I’d first arrived at the Hospital for the Supposedly Deranged, I’d been a scared, freaked-out kid. Now I felt like the freak-out bar had been raised pretty high. I wasn’t going to let Ferret Face get me down.

Byron flushed and pressed his lips tightly together. “Shut up, witch!” he snapped. “Or I’ll tell the Matron to stun-gun you till you have no more attitude than a head of lettuce.”

Byron gave me a sardonic smile that I was sure he had practiced in a mirror, probably right after one of his sterile baths. “Now hear this. You have both been designatedExtremely Dangerous, which is how the New Order characterizes the most severe threats and worst enemies.”

“Extremely Dangerous,” Whit said. “We’re honored. We’d like to thank our parents, of course. And Coach Schwietzer at the high school.”

Byron, or the Tattling Weasel, as I decided he should henceforth be known, went on. “As it happens, it turns out to be both good news and bad news for you. The good news is that you get a pass on all of those tests you heard about at trial. And the bad news? Well, a rating of Extremely Dangerous lowers the age for execution from eighteen down to… zero. Which means, let me see… both of you can now be executed…tomorrow. ”

He smirked and smoothed his presmoothed hair. “What’s that you say? Black cat got your tongue? No wizardly wisecracks? Honestly, I’d love to know—what do you think of that hot pooping scoop?”

Chapter 44

Wisty

WELL, AT LEASTSOMEBODY on this lockstep planet was happy and excited.

But the Tattling Weasel’s snotty smile had pushed me over the edge. And Whit was right there with me.

“You think that’s funny?” my bro said in a low voice, his fists clenched. “What if Wisty wereyour sister, and she was going to be executed tomorrow?”

The Tattling Weasel looked at us smugly. “My sister was a traitor to the New Order.” He spoke slowly to drive home the point. “And… I… turned her…in. ”

I couldn’t believe it. Even back when Whit had drawn mustaches on every doll I had, and I had truly wished he’d never been born, at least I knew I wouldn’t want him condemned to death. Torture, sure—but not death.

“So you think we’re Extremely Dangerous?” I said, tapping my drumstick against my side.

“Yes,” said the TW. “The world will be a far better place without either of you.”

“Because I’m a scary witch?” I sneered. “Abad, scary witch?”

“That is correct,” said the TW. “You probably sold your soul for your demonic powers.”

I waved the drumstick at him. I saw fear and pride have a wrestling match on his little pointy face. He glared back at me. “Put that down. I command it!”

“Ooh, I’m a bad, scary witch,” I said in a psycho kind of voice. “I’m going to turn you into a pumpkin! Bibbidi-Bobbidi-Boo!”

Then I brandished my drumstick as if it were actually a magic wand.

To my complete and utter astonishment, we heard a real livecrack of electricity, and actual sparks flew out of the end of the stick. The TW gave a startled cry, and then there was aboom like a jet had just broken the sound barrier.

When the smoke in the room cleared, Whit and I were standing there, looking at… well, an honest mistake.

But a very bad mistake all the same.

Chapter 45

Wisty

I COULD HAVE SWORN I said “pumpkin.” Didn’t I say “pumpkin”?

“Um, I think I just turned the Tattling Weasel into a lion,” I said weakly.

“That seems fairly obvious” was all Whit could say.

The lion coughed, putting one paw on its chest. “Ahem,” itspoke in a scratchy voice. Then the very large cat opened its mouth wider and tried a practice roar.

“Change him back,” Whit said as he pulled us up against the nearest wall. “Do it now! Quick, quick, quick! Before the weasel realizes he’s changed into a man-eating carnivore! Try saying something other than ‘pumpkin’!”

The lion roared again—even louder. It seemed to be warming up to the idea of being a lion. Then it sort of smiled at me. Mostly what I saw, though, were really long, sharp teeth.

“Change himback, ” Whit repeated, not taking his eyes off the king of beasts.

The lion opened its mouth again and let out a huge roar. It blew my hair back, filling the room and reverberating off the walls.

I raised my drumstick. “Bibbidi-Bobbidi-Boo!” I said firmly.

Nothing happened. Of course, right?

I concentrated. Funny thing about concentration—you don’t realize how little you do it until you finally do it. Fact is, I don’t think I’d evertruly concentrated on anything until that moment with the very big lion in the very small room.

“Turn intoyour natural form! ” I wielded the drumstick again. “Do it! DO IT—I’M SERIOUS!”

Boom!Lightning, sparks, acrid smell, et cetera, and lots of smoke.

I waved my hand in front of my face so I could see, and it became clear that there was no more lion. But there was no Byron, Disgrace to Kids Everywhere, either.

Whit and I looked at each other in amazement but also utter confusion.

Then I heard low-volume scuffling and squeaking sounds over by the door.

“Hmm,” I said.

“Hmm,” said Whit.

I don’t know if my saying “natural form” translated into magicspeak the way “pumpkin” had translated into “lion,” but clearly this was closer to the mark.

Because Byron “Tattling Weasel” Swain was now an actualweasel.

Chapter 46

Whit

“MY SISTER—WOW! Dang, you’re good,” I told her.

“Yep,” she agreed. “I’m a bad, scary witch, all right.”

“I’m so glad you didn’t discover these powers earlier, like when you were a little kid and I used to tease you about your hair,” I said, and she grinned like she’d just won the lottery.

As we peered down, the Little Beastie Formerly Known as Byron reared up on its hind feet and hissed angrily.

“He liked being a lion better,” I guessed.

Just then the door to our cell crashed open, and the Matron stood there with two of her nastiest, beefiest armed guards. Call ’em Joe and Schmo. We did.

“What was that awful, terrible noise?” she shouted, raking the room with her eyes.

“Uh… what noise?” I asked with the innocence of a Scout at jamboree.

“It sounded like… a lion roaring,” she said, her corpse-white skin turning self-consciously pink.

“Okay…,” I said, frowning slightly and arching my eyebrows. “A lion? Here? In our cell?”

The two guards looked at each other. Out of the corner of my eye, I saw the weasel slink through the open door, keeping to the shadows.

“Where is Junior Informant Swain?” the Matron demanded.

“I’m sorry, but he left, Matron,” I said, forcing myself to sound respectful. “He only stayed a minute. Read us the abridged riot act, though. He’s tough.”

“You’re lying!” Her cavernous nostrils flared wide, making white lines on either side of her formidable nose. The next thing I knew, she lunged forward, jabbing the stun gun against the small of my back.

Chapter 47

Whit

I FROZE—fully expecting to drop with excruciating pain as I had before, maybe pass out—but all I felt was a little… tickling sensation.

At first I thought maybe she hadn’t charged the stun gun properly, but I looked down and saw the evil blue sparks and smelled the ozone, just like before, yet there was no terrible pain. Nada.

The Matron glared, waiting for me to fall down, so I obligingly groaned and sank to my knees, dragging my hands along the wall as if I didn’t have the strength to keep upright. I flashed a quick wink at Wisty so she’d know I was faking.

In the meantime, the guards took their posts just outside the door while the Matron scrutinized the tiny air-shaft window. It was clearly too small for us to have thrown Byron out of, at least in his former shape.

She investigated the bathroom for what seemed like an eternity, like maybe we had flushed him down the john and she’d find his hair gel for evidence.

Then it hit me that the Matron and her lackeys had left the door to the hallway open. I glanced at Wisty and saw she’d noticed too. We started to slink toward it, but we could see the guards’ arms outside, holding stun guns at the ready. Was there any way we could take them? Maybe Wisty could turn them into toads?

I saw something dart into the room then. A shadow. It instantly blended with the deep gloom along the far wall. Wisty’s eyes widened—she’d seen it too. We exchanged puzzled, worried glances.

The Matron glared at us suspiciously. “I’ll be back.” Then she stomped out.

As she was passing one of the guards, she had a last-minute idea and tapped her stun gun against his chest. Instantly “Joe” screamed and dropped like a sack of hot potatoes. We all stared at his muscular body, twitching on the ground like a monster eel.

The Matron looked at him, looked at the stun gun, then slammed our door, locking it.

“So,” Wisty asked, “stun guns not so effective on you any longer?”

I couldn’t help chuckling. “Apparently not,” I said, peering into the shadows again. I was sure I had seen something moving….

“Either I’ve developed some serious tolerance, or our powers are growing—”

I broke off as I saw one shadow separating from another. A person-shaped shadow. It moved toward us.

“Oh my God, Whit,” Wisty said. “Now I’m seeing fairies.”

Chapter 48

Whit

“NOT EXACTLY,” it said in a voice that just about stopped me from breathing.

As the shadow moved closer to the meager light, it became more three-dimensional. Right before our eyes, the shape… filled in, until it—she—looked incredibly real. And beautiful.

“Celia,” I whispered. “You came.”

“Celia!” confirmed Wisty. “You came fromwhere? ”

She smiled at us both, what little light there was raking across her face. She didn’t seem as pale now, and I took that as a good sign. Hopeful.

“Hi, Wisty,” said Celia, giving her sweetest smile. She’d always been supernice to Wisty. And everybody else, for that matter—geeks, jocks, Goths, little kids—it made no difference to Celia. She found the best in people—especially me.

“B-but…how? ” Wisty stammered as Celia moved toward us without a sound. And suddenly I noticed that something else was different—she had no scent. She’d always worn this wild-rose perfume, and every time I smelled it, my heart thudded a little and my blood seemed to pump faster. But now when I breathed deep, all I could smell was the dank Hospital.

“Can I… hold you?” I asked.

“I don’t think so, but we can try,” Celia said, getting more emotional. “Oh, Whit… please try. I need you to hold me.”

“I’d leave you two alone,” said Wisty, “but there’s nowhere for me to go. Sorry. I’ll just… close my eyes.”

Very gently I tried to put my arms around Celia. And I could actually feel her again. She definitely wasn’t smoke or an illusion, but she wasn’t exactly solid either. I tried to push aside her hair, to nuzzle her neck—something that had gotten me to many happy places. But I couldn’t move her hair.

Celia understood instantly. She smiled and tossed her hair back. That familiar gesture… I never thought I’d see it again. It was probably my imagination, but it felt like a breeze of fresh air washed through the cell as she did it. Tears welled in my eyes. I couldn’t help it.

“Thisis why I love you,” she whispered. “You’re something else, Whit. I don’t understand everything that’s happening, but I know more than you do. After I saw you, I couldn’t find you right away, and none of the Curves could help me get back here to the Hospital. The Shadowland is a dark, complicated place… very easy to get lost in… for a very long time.

“Then your weasel came racing through one of the portals into the Shadowland. He was the one who showed me how to get here.

“So I’ve come to bust you out of this wretched Hospital. Before they execute you both. The only problem is, to get out of here we have to travel through the Shadowland. Whit—and Wisty, you can open your eyes now—I’m not sure we’ll be able to get back out. You could be there forever.”

Chapter 49

Wisty

SO FAR THE ONLY THING that completely made sense to me was the word “weasel.” I didn’t know what the heck a Curve was, or anything at all about portals or the Shadowland. And I was still too overwhelmed with this bitter-sweet sadness—seeing Whit and Celia together again, the way they were looking at each other—to process too many more details about our twisted new reality.

Celia was by far my favorite of Whit’s girlfriends and admirers. For one thing, she always had time to talk to me. And even listen to me. For another, Celia was everything I wasn’t, and secretly wanted to be. I used to stare at myself in the mirror—with my too-fair skin, my too-many freckles, and this awful splotch of red hair—and think that nature, genetics, and karma had really shafted me.

“Um,” I said, not even knowing where to begin, “you found our weasel? Didn’t you justhate it?”

Celia smiled again, looking like a supermodel, and not the stuck-up or shallow kind. “No, I didn’t hate it. It was a live weasel, not a Half-light, like me. So I knew it was important somehow.”

“What’s a Half-light?” I couldn’t help asking.

“I’m a Half-light. Because… well… I’m dead, Wisty.”

I shook my head. “Don’t say that, Celia. Listen, Whit and I—well, you probably know the deal—we kind of turned out to have, um,powers. Maybe we can save you.”

“It’s not simple like that, Wisty,” Celia continued patiently. “Let me explain some more. The Half-lights, or spirits, live in the Shadowland.”

I couldn’t keep the questions from coming. “The Shadowland? Is that anything like… purgatory? Limbo? Isn’t that where dead babies go?”

Celia winced. “Well, um,no to dead babies, butyes to purgatory and limbo, only the Shadowland is, well, kind of its own dimension of reality. There’s more than just the present, the here and now that you’re used to. Anyway, Half-lights can sometimes come and go through portals into your world. Portals are holes between the two realms. They develop over time but can disappear just as randomly. While the openings are there, Half-lights and certain people and animals—called Curves—can go through them. Like your weasel did.”

“He’s not exactlyour weasel,” Whit said. “He’s our enemy, actually. A vicious little scumbag.”

“Well, he knew you,” said Celia. “He told us all about you. He told us you’re scheduled to be executed tomorrow.”

“I can’t believe he just blurted that stuff out,” I said. “He’s not exactly a cooperative weasel.”

Celia rolled her eyes. “He didn’t want to tell us anything,” she said. “We tortured him. Then he told us.”

That sounded interesting. “Tortured?”

Celia nodded. “We held him down and tickled his little weasel belly until tears came out of his eyes. In the end he was begging to tell us everything he knew. I don’t think he wants to come back here now.”

“I don’t blame him,” said Whit. “If I could get out of here, I wouldn’t come back either. Not in a million years.”

“Speaking of which, baby,” said Celia to Whit, “it’s about time for us to go. We have to risk it… the Shadowland.”

I nodded, but my mind was somewhere else. If Whit and Celia could be together now, why couldn’t they be together forever? Somehow, some way, I wanted to bring Celia back from the dead for Whit.

Could a witch do that?

Chapter 50

Wisty

“WE’VE GOT TO HURRY,” said Celia. “I can’t stay in your world much longer. We have to get you two out of this god-forsaken place.”

“Oh, why didn’twe think of that?” Whit cracked, and Celia just smiled.

I don’t know how she does it. Things Whit says that make me almost scream in frustration just make Celia laugh. Did I mention how much I like her?

“As soon as we get the door open,” Celia went on, touching Whit’s cheek with her hand, “you have to jet out of this cell and run like crazy for the nearest portal to get to the Underworld.”

“The Underworld?” Whit asked.“Celia?”

“Sorry. I keep forgetting—you’re new to all this. The Underworld is everything that isn’t the Overworld,” Celia said, as if it were as obvious a concept as, say, peanut butter and jelly. “Or at least it was till the New Order started messing with things.”

Celia was faced with our two blank stares.

“Sorry. Let me be clearer. The New Order now controls almost all of the Overworld—that’s the, uh, regular world that you’re used to. The Underworld contains the rest of the known universe—the Shadowland and other dimensions. For the moment, the N.O. doesn’t run the show in all those places. But they’re trying. The One Who Is The One is after total control.

“Somehow, the two of you are in his way. That’s a puzzleyou have to solve.”

“Okay,” said Whit, looking determined. “Where’s the portal? Is it in the bathroom?”

“No, that one’s gone already,” Celia said. “It took me a while to find another.”

“And so the portal you used is,” I prompted, “like, where exactly?”

“End of the hall,” Celia said. “Past the dogs, unfortunately. Then you just rush toward the wall and throw yourself into it. You’ll go through.”

“You’re kidding me,” Whit said. “C’mon, Celia. Get real.”

“No fair,” I whined. “Isn’t thedefinition of a portal, like, anopening? In fact, I’m pretty sure my fourth-grade teacher would’ve called a brick wall an ‘antonym’ of the word ‘portal.’ ”

“Wisty, please trust me on this. I know you won’t want to run into a wall at full speed, but it’s the only way you’ll escape. You’ve got to do what I tell you.”

I looked at Celia, hoping this wasn’t an elaborate hoax. Was she really the Celia that Whit and I had known? What if this was a trap?

“We can run through the wall,” Whit said, sounding grim but very determined. The old QB was back. “When is all this supposed to happen?”

Celia looked at us. “In about a minute.”

Chapter 51

Whit

OKAY, IN TERMS OF emergency preparedness, “in about a minute” never, ever falls under the category “enough time.”

What choice did we have, though? It was either run through a wall or get executed.

I looked at Wisty. “Got your drumstick?”

She held it up. “Check. Drumstick.”

I picked up my journal, stuffing it into my jumpsuit. “You think you can do anything about the devil dogs?” I asked lightning girl.

Wisty shrugged doubtfully. “I’ll try, Whit. But I’m still learning this stuff.”

“Okay, here’s what we can do,” I said. “Once we get out of here, we’ll run like mad to that hallway. You’ll have a couple of seconds to try something with the dogs. If you can’t pull it off, then I’ll just tear through like I usually do to get food. I’ll hold your hand. You run as fast as you can, even if we get bitten. It’s okay to scream but not to stop!”

Wisty swallowed, looking a little freaked but resolute. “Gotcha. Scream. Don’t stop.”

Celia nodded. “I’ll be right there behind you. Of course, I’m biteproof.”

I had a really bad thought: “What if the Matron and the horror-show guards throw themselves through the portal too?”

“They won’t,” said Celia. “Unless they’re secretly Curves. If they’re Straight and Narrows, they’ll just hit the wall. It could be kind of funny, actually.”

Oh good. So we had that to look forward to. I added “Straight and Narrows” to the growing list of terms I had to ask Celia about.

I wiped my damp palms on my jumpsuit. We were going to, like, “cross over” to the other side now, right? Wasn’t that sort of likedying?

Chapter 52

Whit

“QUICK! RAP THREE TIMES on your door. Hard!” Celia urged. “Now! I really can’t be here much longer, Whit. My spirit could die.”

“What doesthat mean?” I said.

“Just hit that door, Whit—three times!”

I pounded as if my life depended on it—which it did. The next second, we heard the lock goclick.

I turned to Celia. “What just happened?”

“Whit,go! ” she said. “The door’s unlocked.”

Celia grabbed for the knob… and kind of went through the door completely.

“I always forget,” she muttered. “I can’t grab things anymore.”

I yanked it open for Celia, took Wisty’s hand, and poked my head out into the hallway.

The Matron was away from her desk, talking with some guards about thirty yards down the hall to the right. So far, at least, they seemed unaware of us. I couldn’t see whoever—whatever—had unlocked our door. Was it my magic? Celia’s? Wisty’s?

“Go!” Celia said in my ear, so Wisty and I leaped out of our cell and raced toward the dreaded nurses’ station.

We skidded around the corner just as we heard the Matron screaming bloody murder from behind. “Stop them! They’re trying to escape! Sound the alarm! Shoot to kill! Take no prisoners!”

Another six or seven strides, and we were at Wolf Row. The floor was literally shaking with guards, and the Matron was thundering after us.

“Hurry, hurry,” I told Wisty. “Do your stuff. Make ’em into puppies. Stuffed dogs.”

Wisty stood just out of reach of the snarling, barking animals. She held up her drumstick like it was a conductor’s baton and the hounds were her orchestra. Nice image, but would it work?

Out of the corner of my eye, I saw the guards and the Matron round the bend.

“Freeze!”commanded Wisty loudly, and waved her stick at the dogs.

For a split second, nothing happened, and I gripped her hand, ready to boogie down the hellway. Then the dogs’ yelps and barks strangled to sudden silence.

The animals actually froze in place.

Paws were raised, jaws gaped hungrily—several of the beasts were actually in midlunge at us, standing on their hind legs.

“Yes!I’m a witch! ” Wisty yelled. “Let’s go!”

“Perfect! You’re amazing, Wisty!” said Celia, right by my side. “There’s the portal!” She pointed near the end of the hallway, at a blank wall that showed no obvious signs of opening up or turning into foam or anything like that. “Run as fast as you can! Now!”

I couldn’t get out of my mind those videos we’d watched in driver’s-ed class. Crash-test dummies goingkablooey in slow mo as the cars smashed into walls.

No,I thought.Think “victory, victory, victory.”

The Matron and the guards were right behind us, halfway through the frozen dogs. So I rushed at the wall like I was a quarterback again—and I went right through the portal to the other side.

But I lost my grip on Wisty’s hand. She just slipped away, screaming my name.

I lost Wisty!

Chapter 53

Whit

MY FEET LANDED on something hard, maybe a stone floor, and I somersaulted to a stop.

I leaped up.“Wisty!” I yelled.“Sis?”

From the Shadowland side of things, I could see her still standing in the Hospital hallway. It was like I was looking through a pane of thick, wavy glass. Celia was trying to grab hold of Wisty, but she couldn’t, of course. It’s a ghost thing, I guess.

Then I saw Wisty raise her drumstick again and shout, “Release!”

Instantly the mad dogs roared back to life, surging around the guards and the Matron like a gigantic pileup in the middle of a ball field. Not only were the dogs released from their spell but they were released from their chains. One guard made it through the animals and rushed toward Wisty, starting to level his stun gun.

A dog broke free from the pack and bounded after him, baying like a hound released from hell.

The guard and the crazed dog were right on Wisty’s and Celia’s heels as they rushed toward the… well, whatever it was.

“Watch out!” I screamed.“Right behind you!”

Wisty closed her eyes and pitched herself through the portal, stumbling right into me. “Whit!” she screamed. “It actually worked!”

Celia was with her, and right behind Celia, the dog dived paws-first through the portal. It came at us in mid-air, hit the floor, and skidded to a stop. Suddenly it looked not so much fierce and deranged as totally confused.

We all glanced back just as the guard slammed into the wall face-first. Behind him, the Matron’s white-uniformed figure was still being attacked by the pack of ferocious animals. Her enormous arms flailed, her stun gun knocked from her hand, spinning away. Then she disappeared under the pile of snapping mouths.Bye-bye.

“There’ssomeone who’s working out some serious karma,” said Wisty, but instead of relishing the sight, I reached out to try to hug Celia in a moment of relief that we’d made it through to the other side.

It didn’t matter how awkward and ridiculous it was, trying to hug a ghost. That’s the cool thing about love. In my opinion anyway.

Just then a whimper made me jerk my head around.

“The dog,”said Wisty, staring at it, expecting the worst.

“No, it must be okay—it’s a Curve dog,” Celia marveled. “A Curve is anyone who has access to the Underworld, whether they know it or not. This dog didn’t know it. It must not have been fully brainwashed by the Straight and Narrows.”

Its lips curled up in an ingratiating grin as if to say,“Sorry I tried to eat you.” Then the dog lowered its head further and sort of slunk toward us, low to the ground.

“It looks deeply sorry,” Celia said. “I wish I could pet it. Go ahead, Wisty. Pet it.”

“Maybe some other time,” Wisty said reluctantly. “We have a lot of history to work out first.” But then the dog sat and gazed up at her longingly, with the saddest brown eyes, looking much less horrible and insane than it had in Hell’s Kennel.

Wisty looked at me, and I knew what she was going to ask.

“You’re crazy,” I said, sighing.

“I’m nothing if not forgiving,” she said earnestly.

“Well, okay,” I grumbled. “Maybe it’ll be a watchdog or something useful in the Shadowland.”

Wisty winked at me, then looked at the dog and patted one knee. The animal stood up cautiously.

“You can come,” she told it, then added, “It’s a she. I’m going to call her Feffer.”

“Okay. Feffer it is,” I conceded. “Now let’s go meet some Curves and Half-lights and locate some new portals.”

Then there was a terrible crash—and we looked and saw the Matron’s face smashed up against the wall to the portal.

“Not a Curve,” said Wisty with a broad smile. “Didn’t think so.”

BOOK THREE

BRAVE NEW WORLDS

Chapter 54

Wisty

WHIT GRABBED ME in a bear hug that felt extraordinarily reassuring. “We’re outta there! We’re safe from her now.”

Safe from the Matron, maybe. But in the grand scheme of things, I wasn’t so sure we hadn’t just leaped out of the frying pan and into someplace a lot worse.

As I tried to get my bearings, it became apparent that this “other side” wasn’t at all what I had expected. For one thing, it was cold. Not freezing cold, but a sort of damp, penetrating cold that hurt your lungs. For another,there wasn’t anything there .

“Um… Celia… where are we again?” I asked.

“This is the Shadowland.”

I looked around. It wasn’t quite right to call the Shadowland a “land” at all. There were no trees, grass, buildings, water, sun—or, for that matter, anything but fog and haze.

“This is your… home?” I whispered, hugging myself for warmth and turning completely around. The portal, which I thought had just been at my back, was gone now.

“I would never call the Shadowland home,” Celia said with a head shake. “And I hope neither of you do either.”

I couldn’t see…anything, really, beyond Whit, Celia, and Feffer. It was like we were standing in a room with a gray backdrop, and everything beyond about ten or fifteen feet in any direction seemed to fade into hazy nothingness. It was unnerving, not having anything to focus my eyes on. A wave of claustrophobic panic washed over me.

“Celia…” Whit looked around uneasily. “We have to get you out of this place. You got us out of the Hospital. We can—”

“Whit, let it go,” Celia interrupted gently. “You may be a wizard, but no one can bring dead people back to life. Not even The One Who Is The One. Remember that. It’s a fact of life and death. It’s how you get past grief.”

Feffer started trotting off to explore, or maybe to find a Half-light squirrel to chase. The dog seemed to be the only one of us that had a sense of direction here, so I followed her lead. “What’s out here, Feffer?”

“Wisty,no! ” Celia shouted.

I almost got mad at being yelled at like a two-year-old wandering away from Mommy at the mall—but I knew Celia wasn’t exactly the nervous type. And she sounded seriously freaked.

“This can be a very dangerous place for humans. Your senses don’t work here like they do in your world… and if you get any farther away from me and Whit, we could be entirely lost to one another. Especially because it’s possible to take a path that will lead you into a subdimension completely different from ours.”

I didn’t understand the dimension part, but I whirled around in a panic nonetheless.

I couldn’t see Feffer anymore.

“Feffer! Here, girl!” I whistled. “Come back, girl!” Strangely, I already felt an attachment to the reformed hellhound.

Feffer came trotting right back to me, and I knelt down to hug her. The warm scent of her fur seemed very real and comforting in this hollow place.

“Well, Feffer apparently didn’t have a problem,” I said, puzzled, as the dog, sniffing the ground, wandered off again.

“I said, dangerous forhumans, ” Celia clarified. “Feffer’s an animal, and she has animal instincts. We don’t use sight to get around in here. Half-lights and others who are tuned in to extrasensory forces have a much easier time navigating the Shadowland. Humans who’ve found the portals have usually gotten lost here.Forever. ”

As if to punctuate the horror of this thought, we heard a distant moaning sound. Whit involuntarily grabbed my hand.

“Lost Ones,” said Celia. “They’re not close yet, and that’s the way we want to keep it. Believe me.”

“What would they do to us?” I asked.

“They’d…” Calm-and-collected Celia looked as if she might lose it. “Forget it, Wisty. It’s way too grim to talk about right now. Let’s just get you somewhere safe.”

Chapter 55

Wisty

“CELIA! YOU’RE ALL RIGHT!” we heard someone call out, and a tall blond girl, maybe Whit’s age, came bounding into view. She was a Half-light, I assumed, even though I’d never pictured dead girls wearing tank tops and pleated skirts… and chewing bubble gum.And do dead girls really need glasses? Maybe it was a fashion statement.

“You got your friends out!” the girl said, then hugged Celia, the way Half-lights hug. Hard to describe.

“This is Susan,” said Celia. “Susan, this is Whit Allgood and his sister, Wisty. Remember me telling you about Whit?”

Susan rolled her eyes. “Yes. Mr. Wonderful. Mr. Sensitive. Mr. Washboard Tummy. I think you mentioned Whit once or twice. Total pukka kind of guy. You said he was a work of art.”

I blinked. “Pukka” sounded a little pukey to me. Celia wasn’t the least embarrassed, though Whit got a tad pink in the cheeks.

“Welcome,” said Susan, who seemed funny and nice. “Glad you got out of the Hospital. That place is a total mingus. It’s where I was executed. For chewing gum on the street. I think.”

“I have to get these two to Freeland before any Lost Ones spot them,” said Celia.

“I agree,” said Susan. “I saw a small pack of them only a few minutes from here. They’ve probably sensed there are living humans around.”

“Well, let’s reunite these guys with their erlenmeyer weasel and get them out of here.”

Susan and Celia had started to lose me with all of their weird lingo until Celia mentioned Byron Traitor Suck-up. I’d forgotten all about him.

“He’s not exactlyour weasel,” repeated Whit.

Just then we heard another distant chorus of spine-chilling moans.

“We don’t need to wait for him,really, ” I said, cold sweat breaking out all over me.

“It’s no bother,” said Susan. “And we have to meet somebody else here anyway. In fact, here he comes. Yo, Sasha!” she yelled as a boy came running into view. I was starting to get used topartially solid people, so his opaqueness seemed out of place in the Shadowland. Then I realized he was probably a regular kid like us.

“You’re safe, Celia,” Sasha said with relief as she introduced us. He seemed older than me but maybe younger than Whit, and he had longish black hair and dark-blue eyes. He wore a Navy SEALS ball cap on backward, and his T-shirt readFREEDOMSHOULD BE FREE . I also noticed he was carrying a spool that trailed string into the gray haze behind him.

“So you find your way around here usingstring? ” I asked him.

“Yeah,” he said. “I have some portal-sensing abilities, but it’s best to have backup. And bread crumbs are useless. But let’s talk about all that later. I heard a pack of Lost Ones on my way over here.” He was serious but wore an expression of easy confidence—which, in a split second, disappeared.

“Look out!” he yelled, and leaped in front of us to block the shape emerging from the fog. But it was just Feffer.

“Oh,” he said, embarrassed. “I’m guessing you brought a dog.”

“This is Feffer,” I said. “She came through the portal with us.”

“Cool, a Curve dog,” said Sasha, getting down on his knees to pet her. “You sure it’s gonna like your weasel?”

“He’s notour weasel,” Whit repeated. “Actually, that little rodent, thatvarmint, wanted to execute us.”

Just then another moan—sounding closer this time—cut through the gloaming. Celia’s beautiful eyes became a little sad. “Sasha, you need to lead them to the Freeland portalright now. ”

Whit turned to her. “Can’t you come with us? You have to.”

Celia nodded. “Of course I will. But I can’t stay long, Whit. Or I’ll… cease to be. That’s another fact of life and death.”

“Let’s get out of here!” said a voice at my feet. I looked down and almost screamed.

“You’re taking the weasel,” Susan said firmly. “Incidentally, he needs a bath. And to be taught some manners. And some social skills.”

I glared down at him. “No. You can’t come. I hate your guts.”

He sat up on his haunches, beady black eyes boring into mine. “You did this to me.”

Sasha looked impressed. “You taught a weasel to speak?!”

“I was human,” said Byron. “Andshe is a witch.”

Sasha looked even more impressed.

“And don’t you forget it,” I said proudly. “Feffer? Meet Byron Traitor Suck-up. You may eat him.”

Chapter 56

Wisty

BUT FEFFER DIDN’T HAVE A CHANCE to find out what weasel tasted like. Because just then we all spotted the first thing other than ourselves that we’d ever seen in the Shadowland, and it was, in fact, a bunch of shadows.

They were distant and flickered out of sight as soon as we looked directly at them, but there was no question we didn’t want to get any closer.

Celia, Susan, and Sasha immediately put their fingers to their mouths, telling us to be quiet, and then—as Susan and Celia just kind of faded into the gray—Sasha did that little commando gesture indicating we should follow him.

With the weasel clinging to my pants leg and shaking like one of those toys that vibrate when you pull their tails, we fell into line behind him and jogged along his string toward what I prayed would be our escape.

“Sasha,” I panted after we’d been running for a minute or so, “did it just get really cold in here or what?”

“It’s the Lost Ones. Among other things, they absorb the heat of the living.”

“So,” I said, an uncomfortable realization dawning on me, “does that mean… they’re close?”

“No more talking” was all he said.

But then he stopped. He was holding the end of the string. And there was no portal there.

“Something broke the string,” he said, fear flickering in his brilliant eyes.

From behind us, a chorus of moans added an ugly exclamation point to his statement.

Then Sasha shook his head like a swimmer trying to get water out of his ears and took off into the fog.

Byron, scared past coherent speech, chattered nonsense as we followed. I felt the cold on my back getting more and more intense.

And then I did something incredibly stupid: I looked back over my shoulder.

Twenty or more shadows—crooked, tall, short, bent, hobbling, but all supernaturally fast—were chasing after us. Just yards behind us now.

They were indistinct, flickering, inconstant, but one of them loomed up and, with the most horrible, ravenous, yellow eyes, seemed tosee me.

And then I did something even more stupid: I stopped and screamed.

Whit immediately scooped me up and raced after Sasha. I couldn’t stop myself from yelling, and the boys seemed to know it. They didn’t even try to shush me. I guess they knew the game was up—either Sasha would guide us to the portal in time or he wouldn’t.

And then we’d find out exactly what it was the Lost Ones did to people.

Chapter 57

Wisty

“OKAY,” SASHA SAID, stopping suddenly. “Brace yourselves.”

My heart leaped. Bracing, I could handle. Getting mauled by soul-eating shadow creatures, not so much.

But where was the portal? All I saw was more fog. Was the portal here? Where?

Just then Feffer—who was, sweet dog, running tail guard several yards behind us—whimpered piteously.

“Feffer!” I stopped my own whimpering and yelled as the dog, unable to control herself, raced past toward a patch of fog that, I suddenly noticed, seemed to be rotating like a sideways whirlpool. She was bleeding. Badly. It looked as if something had gashed her left side with a garden rake. And the fright in her eyes—she looked more like a terrified puppy than a former New Order hellhound.

But before I could even think to reach out to comfort her, she was past me and leaping into the swirling vapor. And she was gone.

“That’s our portal,” said Sasha. “You two next. And be careful,” he said. “Freeland can be pretty wild.”

Wild, I could also handle—I’d have happily signed up for a deep-jungle camping trip with a pack of hungry jaguars. Anything but this nightmare scene. But I couldn’t joke about it to Sasha. For one thing, my teeth were chattering too hard to talk.

We were suddenly confronted with a cold so intense it burned—and it was coming fromin front of us.

One of the Lost Ones had somehow gotten in between us and the portal.

Maybe if pain, hatred, and suffering were mixed in equal parts, somehow given shape, and dipped in black paint, you’d come close to what we saw now. Although there was something disturbingly, hauntingly human about its shadow-filled face. There was no skin, just sort of a flickering, shadowy surface where you would expect to see a forehead, cheeks, nose… and then there were the eyes. No pupils. Just slits, yellow-orange, flickering like torches you’d see on the walls of hell.

I wanted nothing more than to scream, but I was now officially paralyzed by the frozen air and my terror.

I squinted my eyes against the cold and watched helplessly as other Lost Ones moved in around us. We were surrounded.

Then—and I don’t know where he got the strength or courage—Sasha stepped toward the one directly in front of the portal, ignoring its clicking finger-claws and looking into its deathly yellow eyes.

“You got us,” he said. “But you’ll want me to explain this to you.” He reached into his pants pocket and pulled out a piece of paper. “It’s a map. With it, I can show you where to find a portal—not like this one, which won’t work for your kind—that can take you out of the Shadowland. A way back home.”

Somehow the horrible creature seemed to understand and appreciate what Sasha was saying.

And then, with a masterful flourish, Sasha crumpled the paper and threw it to the ground, causing the creature to leap after it with an earsplitting shriek of anger.

And then Sasha fairly tackled Whit and me into the portal, and the three of us plunged through, Byron Hateful Suck-up Weasel clinging to my pants leg with all four paws, the insufferable little creep.

There was an electric, tingly feeling that got stronger and stronger until my body began to shake like I was being tossed around in the back of a horse-drawn cart barreling down a cobblestone road at fifty miles an hour.

And then, suddenly, we were through—andoutside, it seemed. The initial sensation was of wind—and it felt amazing, as if it were the first fresh air that had touched my skin in years.

I got my balance, then stopped in shock and looked around. “Oh. My. God.”

Chapter 58

Wisty

WE STOOD ON A DRY, rubble-covered hillside. There wasn’t much to it, but the sun was up and the sky was blue. After those horrifying minutes in the Shadowland, I was quite simply shocked by how beautiful the real world was.

“Those Lost-One things are looking to get out of the Shadowland, huh?” Whit asked Sasha as we dusted ourselves off.

“Yeah, they say that’s why they glom on to humans so hard. They want us to help them find a way out. And when that doesn’t work—which it never does—they settle for stealing your warmth and eating your flesh.”

“But you gave them the map. Does that mean they can now find their own way into the real world?” asked Whit.

“Well, (A) I don’t think they can read, (B) I’m not sure they could survive in the real world—I sure hope not—and (C) it wasn’t a map, it was just a list of things I had to do once I got back to base.”

“So you just made all that up on the spot, and fooled those things so we could escape?”

He shrugged and was going to say something, but just then there was a high-pitched whine in the air.

“Incoming!” yelled Sasha, and slammed into me, knocking me down. I hit the ground hard, the air whooshing out of me.

I gasped like a fish on land as a piercing, whistling sound filled my ears, impossibly loud.

Then,boom! Make thatBOOM! I squeezed my eyes shut as the ground shook like an earthquake. Sasha tightened his hold on me, covering my head with his hands. I kind of liked him already.

BOOM!More earthshaking explosions, more trembling, more dust and mud and rubble raining down on our heads.

“Wisty!” Whit yelled.

I wheezed and gasped. “Whit! Feffer!” I choked out. I couldn’t see very much because of the smoke and dust everywhere.

It felt like ages, but the trembling finally calmed, and Sasha’s weight slowly moved off me. A minute later, it was over. Whatever it was.

“Whew!” Sasha said, grinning. His face was covered with thick dust, except for his mouth and eyes. He reminded me of a freaky circus clown. I guessed I probably looked the same. “Sorry,” he told me cheerfully. “Didn’t mean to squish you like that.”

“It’s okay,” I said. “I’ve been squished by worse.”

I struggled to sit up, feeling Byron Hateful Suck-up coiled around my neck like a traitorous mink stole. Blinking grit out of my eyes, coughing, shaking off the dust, I looked around.

“What just happened?” I asked, finally seeing Whit. And then Feffer. And Celia.

“Bomb,” Sasha said, standing up and slapping off the dirt. “Everyone okay? I guess we must have stepped out into a war zone. Easy to do.” It sounded like this was about as ordinary as making a wrong turn en route to the nearest doughnut shop.

Looking around, I saw half-destroyed buildings on what once must have been a normal city block. Craters in the street were big enough to hold trucks. Rubble and dust were everywhere. Twisted metal, broken glass, electric wires, and chunks of cement made a dangerous carpet under our feet.

“Who’s bombing us?” I asked, trembling all over. So was Byron—the varmint was now riding on my shoulder, clinging to my hair. “Getoff, ” I told him.

“The New Order does bombings every day,” Sasha explained. “They know some of us kids are squatting here, so they run air strikes. Then they come looking for us.” He shook the hair out of his eyes. “Keeps you on your toes, right?”

“Yeah, nothing like a little shock and awe,” Whit said in disbelief.

Sasha turned serious. “We’ve gotta get you to safety right away, guys.”

“Wait,” I said. “Whit and I need to look for our parents. We’ll go it alone. I mean, we’re thankful and everything.”

Celia’s and Sasha’s eyes met and, for once, Sasha’s face wasn’t so sunny and open. “Um,” he said, “we should talk about that, Red.”

I glared at Sasha, and my brother spoke up. “Not a nickname she likes. Just FYI.”

“The thing is,” said Sasha slowly, “it’s not safe, or very smart, for you to go off on your own.” He took off his ball cap and twisted it in his hands. His thick, jet-black hair fell forward over his eyes. “Sorry about that, Freckles.”

Chapter 59

Wisty

“NOT FRECKLES EITHER,” suggested Whit. “Or Carrottop.”

“Okay,” I said. “We have to find my mother and father.That’s our mission,” I stated very clearly. “Family first.”

Celia stepped closer to me and put out her hand. I felt a wispy breeze touch my hair and saw the sympathy in her eyes. “Wisty, just listen. Please.”

Sasha sighed, then gestured at everything around us. “Look at this screwed-up place. This is what most of the city looks like. The N.O. is taking over ‘worthy’ communities and shaping everything in its image. The rest, they’re just… razing. Like, totaling out of existence.”

“Yeah, I’m all sad about that too. It’s awful. I get it. But what’s that got to do with our mom and dad?”

“Read my lips, friend: things arebad all over,” he continued. “I don’t have any idea where your ’rents might be held, or if they’re even… alive.” The last word was a whisper.

I stared at him, feeling the blood drain from my face.

“Celia, you saved us. If you could get us out of prison, why can’t you help us find our parents? They’re alive. I’m sure of it.”

Whit stared at Celia, clearly agreeing that I was onto something. A pained expression came over her face, but she didn’t respond to what I’d said.

“Look,” said Sasha, glancing awkwardly at Celia. I couldn’t read his meaning. “Let’s just get to safety. We can figure out your next steps when we’re in Freeland.”

I’d had enough of the sympathy game. Folding my arms across my chest, I stomped my foot like that two-year-old in the shopping mall. “I am not moving one inch until someone gives me a satisfactory answer.”

“Wisty,” Celia hissed with urgency, “it’s really dangerous here. There’s stuff worse than bombs, if you can imagine something more terrible than being blown up. We don’t know where your parents are yet. And you can’t save them anyway…if you’re dead. ”

Chapter 60

Whit

“STOP RIGHT WHERE YOU ARE, kids. Let me see some ID.Now! ”

There were about a dozen of them—make that eleven—all males, probably late teens to midtwenties, big boys with big muscles.

I stepped forward. “Mind if I ask whoyou are, before we show you anything? This is a dangerous part of town, y’know.”

The spokesman for the muscled boys looked to be in his early twenties. He was standing on the balls of his feet, ready to start some trouble, I figured.

“You should know who we are. New Order. The Citizen Patrol. We’re looking for Strays and Wanteds. Need IDs from all of you. It’s the law, friend.”

Wisty had moved up alongside me. “Maybe we’d like to seeyour IDs,” she said. “Friend.”

Meanwhile, a crowd of maybe fifty or sixty “citizens” was forming. Not good.

“Let me take care of this,” I said. “Okay?”

Wisty shrugged. “Sure.”

“Why don’t we all just walk away andstay friends?” I said to the group leader. I was hoping to continue talking, but he already had a metal baton out. The crowd was still growing, and getting noisy.

“Citizen Patrol, my butt. More like the Aspiring Dictators’ After-School Club,” said Wisty, ever the diplomat. “Look at you overgrown goons. Pathetic.”

Well, that put them over the top, and they attacked—all eleven of them, batons flailing, the crowd of neighborhood creeps cheering them on.

“My turn.” I held Wisty off. “I can do this.”

“I can see that,” she said. “Wow,Whitford.”

What she was seeing was that the Citizen Patrol seemed to be moving in slow motion. But actually they weren’t. I was just moving very, very fast. I’d felt that I could do this, and I was right.

The lead guy’s baton was cocked back, and I snatched it right out of his hand, then kicked his legs out from under him and hit him with a roundhouse punch as he was falling to the sidewalk.

I was moving so fast that I was a blur. I took away all their batons and threw the sticks into a sewer, then knocked them down one by one—except for a beautiful twofer. Finally the gang members were sprawled on the ground, groaning and moaning.

“Now, let’s see those IDs!” I stood over them and roared, but Sasha was already pulling me away, hurrying all of us up the street and around the nearest corner.

“That was very cool,” he said.

“I needed the practice. And I think maybe I could actually get into this wizard thing.”

Meanwhile, Celia was on my arm, light as could be. “That was incredible, Whit. Loved it!”

“You definitely show potential,” Wisty said, and grinned.

And for that instant, that second, it was like everything was back to the way it was supposed to be, the kind of life I always thought I would have.

But just for that moment.

Chapter 61

Wisty

AFTER WHIT’S DEMONSTRATION of his latest skill set, Sasha led us down a mostly deserted street toward a building with a facade pockmarked by bullet holes and missile strikes. I couldn’t believe what I was seeing. Had all this happened while we were at the Hospital? Time felt so… distorted.

“Man, I was hoping I’d been gone long enough for this to stop. All the bombing.” Sasha shook his head.

“What do you mean?” I asked.

Sasha shrugged. “I was in the Shadowland for a couple of hours.”

Whit frowned. “Why would that be long enough for the, um, New Order to come to their senses and stop bombing?”

Sasha looked at me and Whit in surprise. “You don’t know? Celia…?”

“I didn’t get the chance to explain everything,” Celia said. “We were busy escaping, you know?”

“What don’t we know?” I asked. “What else?”

“Lots. For one thing, time is different in the Shadowland,” Sasha said, continuing to walk very fast. “In this case, it looks to me like I was probably gone about a month or so. It’s not always consistent. Depends on the portal you have to use. Once, I came back and it was earlier that same morning.”

Whit and I stared at each other. We had no way of knowing how much time had passed since we’d been captured. We had so many questions.

Apparently the Weasel did too. “So can we step back in time to a day when Wisty actually takes a bath? Her hair is practically turning to dreadlocks.”

“Get off me, you ingrate,” I said, peeling him away from my neck and plopping him on Feffer’s back instead. “Feffer, you’re a kinder soul than me. Meet your new best friend.”

Feffer barked good-naturedly and wagged her tail. Could she haveever been a hellhound?

Then Sasha stopped and pointed.

“Here we go! Home sweet rubble-strewn home! This is where a bunch of us are hanging. Kind of a mingus, but we’ve fixed it up pretty good.”

I looked up and read the broken fluorescent sign, dangling from some wires, for the most amazing luxury department store in the whole world. I’d never been able to afford to even walk through these doors.