Witch and Wizard - James Patterson [29]
“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.
“This is 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 just hate 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, but yes 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 exactly our 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?