Witch and Wizard_ The Fire - James Patterson [65]
“And is it always like this?” I can’t believe that this frenzied mass of people is always so immense and confused. This can’t be how it’s supposed to go.
Celia’s brow creases. “I don’t know, Whit. You expect me to know everything about this place, and I just don’t!” I’m momentarily stunned by her anger. Celia never snaps — at me or anyone.
I try to squeeze her hand, wanting reassurance that it’s fine; we’re fine. I forgot I wouldn’t be able to feel it. It’s like grasping at air. It seems like now that we’re physically the closest we’ve been since she disappeared from the Overworld, strangely she feels farthest away. How can we truly understand each other when we’ve had such intense experiences on our own?
She sighs. “I’m sorry, okay? It’s just that I’ve been trying to get across that river just like everyone else for as long as I’ve been here. You can feel it pulling, can’t you?”
I nod. It’s an effort to keep myself on solid ground.
“I feel that pull every second, all the time.”
“I’m sorry,” I say quietly. “It must be hard.”
She presses her lips together and looks out at the gray waves. “I don’t think this is the way it’s supposed to be, but this is all I know: Some of the other Half-lights have heard rumors that The One’s power has leaked into the Shadowland and it’s just screwing with everything, but we’re all guessing. The only thing I know for sure is that until balance is restored, we’re stuck on this side, and the dead just keep coming.”
“Maybe that means that it’s not final, then,” Janine suggests. “That … the dead aren’t really dead yet.”
“But they are,” Celia says testily. “Just look at them.”
I peer at the bewildered faces of those around us. In their frightened, yearning eyes, the spark has unmistakably been extinguished. There is no light here, no life. Which means that if my parents are here, they really are just like these people. …
Dead.
The thought takes my breath away, and the ground whirls under me. I sit down abruptly, head in my hands.
“Whit!” Celia crouches next to me, alarmed. She probably wants to see me as the guy I used to be, too — this big-shot quarterback, invulnerable and easygoing. But I can’t be that guy for her right now. Not anymore.
Not in this world.
“I just …” I search her face, my head swimming. “I never believed it. I always held out the hope that they’d be alive somewhere, somehow. But if my parents are here, then they’re …”
Celia nods, rubbing my back, though I can’t feel it. “Then they’re like me.”
I stand up. Whatever the outcome, whatever the state of my parents, I’ve come this far and I have to find them. I look around at the mob, eager for a familiar face.
And I see one — but not the one I expect.
He’s a bit younger than I am, slightly built, with bushy dark hair standing out from his head in all directions. Half of his face is missing.
Daniel Anderson. I knew him in high school — he was in Wisty’s class, I think.
I went to his funeral.
The whole school was there, the girls all sobbing, the guys stone-faced but some of them crying a little, too. His girlfriend — a pinch-faced sophomore cheerleader, a girl Celia never got along with — talked about how much he liked video games and his car. As she said it, his mother got hysterical.
It was the car that killed him.
He was the first person I ever really knew who’d died. They called it a tragedy. That was before the New Order, before any of us understood what tragedy was.
“Daniel.” I put my hand on his shoulder, and he whirls around, jumpy, scared.
“I don’t understand,” he murmurs. “Is it time?” he asks, and I try not to stare at the crater in the left side of his head. His eyes widen as if he’s seen the future in my face. He’s looking at me like the Lost Ones did, with desperation and crushing hope.
“Save me,” he pleads. “Please.