Witch and Wizard - James Patterson [14]
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 in New 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.”
“I didn’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 a dangerous place,” she said. “For dangerous 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 there was 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 as you,” 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.