Witch and Wizard_ The Fire - James Patterson [9]
I’m stunned. After days of feeling my power slipping away from me, I can’t believe it freaking worked! Who’s got the mojo? Wizard’s got the mojo!
Meanwhile, Pearl’s doubled over with laughter.
“Brandon Michael Hatfield?” she snorts. “Are you serious?”
“What?” I reply, incredulous. “You know him?”
“Brandon. Michael. Hatfield!” Pearl’s voice goes up a full octave. “Of course I know him!” she shrieks. “He was the biggest dreamboat in the former Freeland! I just didn’t realize you had the mind of a preteen girl!”
Celebrities have mostly been wiped out in the N.O. regime for representing idols other than The One, so what’s the harm in making use of likenesses of long-gone pop stars? Besides, I’ve been the poster boy for public scorn long enough. Maybe I wouldn’t mind having a face everyone likes for a change. So sue me.
“My girlfriend used to be into his music,” I say, shrugging, pretending that the mention of Celia doesn’t still hurt somewhere deep inside. Pearl nods skeptically. “Hey, it’s actually pretty tough to just come up with a new identity out of thin air! Sometimes you have to, you know, borrow one. Brendan What’s-His-Face seemed like as good an option as anyone else.”
“Brandon Michael Hatfield,” she corrects, as if I’ve committed sacrilege.
“Got it.” I roll my eyes. “Anyway, it works, doesn’t it?”
Pearl nods, still giggling, then hustles me toward the door. “You better get goin’.”
“But my sister …” I glimpse Wisty’s frail body across the room, her red hair matted with fever. If anything, she looks worse today.
“I’ll tend to her for you. I’ll talk to her and dab at her forehead. Trust me. I’ll look after her.” Pearl pats my hand and peers up at me with her big silver eyes, all scout’s honor. I start to smile gratefully, but then Pearl finishes, “At least until she dies.”
Chapter 8
Whit
I’M TEARING THROUGH the streets, madly searching for an escape from this sad and tragic world. And it does seem mad that I’m trying to get to a place where the dead still walk. To the Underworld. To the Shadowland. To Celia the love of my life, trapped among the Lost Ones.
I can’t get Pearl’s words —“until she dies” — out of my head. If I could just get back to Celia, I know she could tell me what to do. She’d been brutally murdered by the New Order, but she sometimes still came to visit me. As a spirit. And she had helped Wisty and me so many times before.
She’d know what to say. Wouldn’t she?
I don’t care. I need her now, no matter what. Her sweet smell, her comforting arms, her voice whispering encouragement. I can’t be alone now.
Like I’d done so many times before, I head for a concrete wall at the end of an alleyway and smash my shoulder into it at full force, hoping for some vulnerability I can’t see, a bend in the fabric of this dimension giving way to the next. We’d used this pathway before, in the days when it seemed portals to the Shadowland were everywhere. But The One’s influence is growing, and many portals have disappeared or have been blocked.
Like this one.
I’m met with only a bright flash of pain, and I crumple to the ground, utterly defeated, yearning for Celia, for my parents, for the kids who gave their lives for the Resistance. I’ve lost nearly everything, and now I’m going to lose my sister, too.
The words lap at my ears like an echo in a seashell. “Until she dies …”
No. Not yet. I drag myself out of the garbage on the street.
I will not let my sister die.
Chapter 9
Whit
I PULL MYSELF up, new energy coursing through me.
I’m thinking of the Resistance fighters, of Janine and Margo and Emmet — kids who had lost everything but who would never give up on one another, and never gave up on us. Kids who are long gone now but whose determination I can still feel.
I’m also thinking of Byron, whom Wisty zapped into a weasel on more than one occasion. As screwed up as a lot of his theories were, Byron seemed to be right