Witch and Wizard_ The Fire - James Patterson [12]
The big-eyed girl definitely doesn’t appear threatened. She prattles on for what seems like forever, relating the list of everything she knows about me and my brother — like how our faces are plastered on every wall in the capital — but I can’t seem to focus on her words.
My heart constricts when she gets to the part about how our parents really are dead, but I’m too numb with cold to process much else, and her animated descriptions of deadly Holiday ornaments, the poetry cure, and blood in the streets have my head spinning.
I feel totally drained, like all the blood, energy, power … all the magic, has been sucked right out of me. My hands are blue is the only thing I keep thinking. If I could just get warm, work up a little magic, I could figure all of this out.
“Come here for a sec,” I croak, interrupting the girl’s tirade.
I must sound utterly crazy, because the kid looks like there’s absolutely no way she’s getting any closer to me right now.
“Come on. Want me to cough some blood your way? Just get over here and help me sit up,” I prod.
She reluctantly moves closer and tries to push up the rags behind me with the very tips of her fingers so she can avoid actually touching me. Whatever. If I’m going to die, maybe I can at least warm up a bit first.
I point a finger at the fireplace and catch my companion’s skeptical look. I feel a twinge of anger, that familiar heat. That does it. A terrific fire crackles in the hearth, the three-foot flames instantly warming up this damp room.
“Yes!” I give a little uncontrollable squeak of victory. I may not be totally well, but my magic is coming back.
The girl is evidently impressed. “Whoa!” she says with a twinge of awe that makes me way more proud than I should be for just a little fire. “You really are a witch.”
“And a scary witch, little girl,” I bite back with a self-satisfied smirk, though I’m already collapsing into the rags, exhausted. “Lucky for you, you didn’t try to use that knife.”
The kid smiles. “It’s for cutting kindling. I wasn’t going to slice and dice you.” Her fingers dance tauntingly over the handle of the weapon. “It’s the Holiday, after all.”
Chapter 12
Whit
I SET OUT this morning looking like Brandon Michael Hatfield again, still elated with the miracle of Wisty’s recovery and confident I could coax the rich, wasteful citizens of the New Order capital to throw me at least enough change to show the Needermans my appreciation. But after three hours on a busy corner in the business district with only a meager handful of beans to show for it, I’m losing faith.
It dawns on me that I haven’t really seen much traffic in a while. This morning, herds of businessmen filed by (never mind that their vacant eyes looked right through me), but now, around lunchtime, when my little corner should be jumpin’, there’s hardly anyone.
Glancing around, I notice that, save for the bored-looking lunch-cart man, I am actually the only person on this block. A newspaper blows across the street like tumbleweed. There might as well be crickets, the road is so quiet.
I stand up, uneasy. This is the middle of the most frenzied, commercial place in the entire capital. Was I so swept up in self-pity I didn’t notice things getting seriously weird around here?
Then I hear a laugh down the block, and out of the corner of my eye I notice two smartly dressed, cheery men slipping onto a side street. Curiosity piqued, I amble after them, leaving my cardboard sign in the dust.
Rounding the corner of the alley, I’m totally unprepared for what I find.
The smell hits me first.
That smell. The nauseating stench of burning flesh and singed hair hangs in the air with the plume of black smoke.
I cough, eyes watering. It’s almost unbearable.
At first I don’t understand where it’s coming from. All I see is a large group of New Order citizens, mostly businesspeople, impeccably dressed in sharp suits and mile-high heels, shouting gleefully, apparently enjoying some