Witch and Wizard - James Patterson [59]
By the time the last prisoner passed out the gate, the few guards who were left were ready for vengeance. They lumbered toward me, zombielike and charred, waving their billy clubs.
“Uh-uh!” I warned them. “Or I’ll burn you to cinders!”
Then I turned tail and raced out the exit myself, touching the walls and anything else I could reach as I went by. Streaks and handprints of fire marked my path. Cool—I mean, hot!
Then finally I saw streaks of moonlight, and the outer doors ahead of me, and then, at last, the final gates.
Please be there, Whit, I prayed. Please, wizard.
The inner courtyard was filling rapidly with more guards and New Order soldiers. But then I heard Feffer barking like the hellhound she’d been trained to be. I could see her scaring the bejesus out of some guards as Margo herded kids outside to safety.
I did a fast head count. Margo, Feffer, Emmet, Sasha… and yes, Whit! They were all there, helping the prisoners get away.
I was gasping for air, feeling completely burned out, like there was nothing left of me for the fire to consume. Whit was looking all around, searching for me. Am I so unrecognizable?
Then he saw me, and alarm flashed in his eyes. Fear—like I’d never seen on his face before, not even the time he fell out of our tree and broke his leg in two places.
I tried to run to him, but the last thing I remember was falling to my knees and hearing a most hateful voice.
“Wisteria Allgood, you are condemned to death!” it said.
Chapter 95
Whit
I GAGGED AND CHOKED ON the smell of smoke and burning paint as more and more kids, hundreds of them, flowed out the doors of the Overworld Prison. It was a beautiful sight, really.
Bless Wisty, I thought. She did it. Now I just had to make sure she was safe and had found our mom and dad. Where was she? Where were they?
It had seemed like forever since we’d first caught sight of the flames in the prison windows, but it had just been minutes. “Hurry!” Margo was shouting as we herded more kids through the gates in a kind of fireman’s line. “We’ve set up an escape route through the sewers!” Margo yelled.
I craned my neck, looking desperately for Wisty—as girl or mouse—but couldn’t see her anywhere.
Was she with our folks? Or was my sister trapped inside the burning building? Had she been caught?
The street outside was filled with kids who were gathered up by our second team, led by Sasha. Traffic had stopped, unable to move. Alarms everywhere were flashing and wailing. But still no Wisty.
Then the last kids burst through the doors, and I finally saw her—totally aflame.
It was different this time, worse—she was glowing more brightly, more white-hot than I had seen before. And her wild-eyed face, her newly gaunt frame, looked weaker, closer to terror and death than I ever could have imagined.
She saw me, and her face—even through the flames—sparkled with hope. But then her eyes rolled back in her head, and she dropped to the pavement like she’d been shot.
“Get the van!” I shouted over my shoulder to Margo as I made a break toward Wisty. “I’ll bring Wisty!”
“I don’t think so, wizard,” came a terrible, gravelly voice right behind me.
Chapter 96
Whit
IT WAS LIKE a recurring nightmare of the worst kind.
There loomed the foul Matron, swaddled in bandages and pale as chalk. Next to her was The One Who Judges, Ezekiel Unger—her brother, I remembered—still in his depressing black robes, looking like the Grim Reaper.
Security “specialists” armed with scatterguns backed them up.
Next to them stood… our Jonathan. Looking smug and complicit.
Despair descended on me like a funeral shroud. It had never occurred to me that anyone from Freeland could stoop to the traitorous level of Byron Swain, but apparently Jonathan had.
“Jon?” Margo gasped.
Jonathan just shrugged. “It’s too hard, and hopeless, living like you do. The New Order offers a better life,” he said. “It beats prison and death. I believe in The One.”
Margo’s eyes filled with angry tears. She’d made me feel stronger before, and I wanted to make her believe