Witch and Wizard - James Patterson [3]
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 are you?!” I asked. “What are you doing in my 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’d I go? Were these guys totally insane? 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 me go!” 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, absolutely refused, 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,