Witch and Wizard - James Patterson [48]
“What time is it?” Emmet whispered.
“Five minutes to seven,” Margo answered. “We’ve got two blocks to go. Come on! This is it. Shift change.”
“Margo,” I said, “pick up my drumstick, and please, please, keep it safe.” She reached and grabbed the stick where it had fallen when I no longer had hands to hold it.
Next, I looked up at Whit. “Put me in your pocket,” I said.
Chapter 78
Wisty
I DIDN’T LIKE IT one bit inside Whit’s pocket, especially once he started to run. It was like being on a boat in a rough sea: up and down and up and down. Within a block I felt myself going green, and I half wondered if there was a spell I could mutter for mouse-size motion-sickness pills. It would not be cool to barf in my brother’s trousers.
“There’s the van with the new prisoners,” Whit said. “Same one we came in.”
“Hurry!” Margo urged.
We sped up, the horrible rocking motion of Whit’s powerful stride making me moan and close my eyes.
Then he reached into his pocket and plucked me out so I could see. We had gotten to the prison gates just as the van pulled up and honked.
“Go,” Emmet told Whit. My brother tossed something into a wire trash can near the street corner. With a soft floom, the contents of the can turned into a giant fire.
“What’s that? What happened?” Whit cried, pointing at the trash.
Immediately the gate guards leaped into action, racing down the street, leaving the van and its driver for a precious moment. The driver entered a code on a pad, and the high metal gates began to open. Whit slipped inside, staying just out of the man’s view.
Once we were within the gates, my nose twitched uncontrollably. The odor seemed like it was piped in from the Hospital.
For a moment, I couldn’t bear the idea of facing it again. And then I remembered my parents and knew there was no turning back.
The driver opened the van doors, and a lot of scared kids slowly climbed out, looking around with saucer-wide eyes. A guard stepped out of the inner gatehouse, ready to process the new prisoners, some of them no more than five or six. I felt sick at the thought of what horrors were in store for these innocent kids.
Whit and I locked eyes—and yes, I swear that a mouse and a human can actually do this—and we each whispered the identical words that we’d practiced:
Sleep now, little ones,
Rest your heads and sleep.
The night will hold you in its arms,
And safely you will keep.
Our mother and father had sung this lullaby to us when we were little, and I hadn’t been able to remember a single thing past the last word because I’d always dropped like a stone into sleep when they’d finished. Whit and I were banking on the fact that they’d actually been using magic to put their totally wired kids to bed at night.
Okay, so it was a stretch.
And, sure enough, nothing happened.
The guard and the driver talked nonchalantly and flipped papers on their clipboards, chatting, just another day incarcerating innocent children, la-di-da. Whit and I looked at each other, and I saw panic starting in his eyes.
Sleep, you goons, sleep! I thought desperately, wishing I had my drumstick and hoping I wasn’t going to end up as mouse paste in the next few seconds.
The gates slammed shut behind us, our friends locked outside the prison, and here we were, a fake guard who might turn back into a teenager at any second, a mouse who might turn back into a girl at any second, and two New Order goons who were going to notice that something strange was going on and sound the alarm.
Any second now.
Chapter 79
Wisty
PEERING OVER WHIT’S curled index finger, I saw the humongous men slowly turn to look at my brother. One of them wrinkled his brow.
“You’re new here, aren’t you?” he asked Whit. “Haven’t seen you around before. What’s your name, bub?”
You. Will. Sleep. Now! I thundered the words. Inside my head, of course. YOU. WILL. SLEEP. NOW!
(I figured all CAPS and italics had to work.)
And then… the two men crumpled to the pavement at Whit’s feet. Dead asleep. Gonzo to the worldo.
The kid prisoners