Sasha turned serious. “We’ve gotta get you to safety right away, guys.”
“Wait,” I said. “Whit and I need to look for our parents. We’ll go it alone. I mean, we’re thankful and everything.”
Celia’s and Sasha’s eyes met and, for once, Sasha’s face wasn’t so sunny and open. “Um,” he said, “we should talk about that, Red.”
I glared at Sasha, and my brother spoke up. “Not a nickname she likes. Just FYI.”
“The thing is,” said Sasha slowly, “it’s not safe, or very smart, for you to go off on your own.” He took off his ball cap and twisted it in his hands. His thick, jet-black hair fell forward over his eyes. “Sorry about that, Freckles.”
Chapter 59
Wisty
“NOT FRECKLES EITHER,” suggested Whit. “Or Carrottop.”
“Okay,” I said. “We have to find my mother and father. That’s our mission,” I stated very clearly. “Family first.”
Celia stepped closer to me and put out her hand. I felt a wispy breeze touch my hair and saw the sympathy in her eyes. “Wisty, just listen. Please.”
Sasha sighed, then gestured at everything around us. “Look at this screwed-up place. This is what most of the city looks like. The N.O. is taking over ‘worthy’ communities and shaping everything in its image. The rest, they’re just… razing. Like, totaling out of existence.”
“Yeah, I’m all sad about that too. It’s awful. I get it. But what’s that got to do with our mom and dad?”
“Read my lips, friend: things are bad all over,” he continued. “I don’t have any idea where your ’rents might be held, or if they’re even… alive.” The last word was a whisper.
I stared at him, feeling the blood drain from my face.
“Celia, you saved us. If you could get us out of prison, why can’t you help us find our parents? They’re alive. I’m sure of it.”
Whit stared at Celia, clearly agreeing that I was onto something. A pained expression came over her face, but she didn’t respond to what I’d said.
“Look,” said Sasha, glancing awkwardly at Celia. I couldn’t read his meaning. “Let’s just get to safety. We can figure out your next steps when we’re in Freeland.”
I’d had enough of the sympathy game. Folding my arms across my chest, I stomped my foot like that two-year-old in the shopping mall. “I am not moving one inch until someone gives me a satisfactory answer.”
“Wisty,” Celia hissed with urgency, “it’s really dangerous here. There’s stuff worse than bombs, if you can imagine something more terrible than being blown up. We don’t know where your parents are yet. And you can’t save them anyway… if you’re dead.”
Chapter 60
Whit
“STOP RIGHT WHERE YOU ARE, kids. Let me see some ID. Now!”
There were about a dozen of them—make that eleven—all males, probably late teens to midtwenties, big boys with big muscles.
I stepped forward. “Mind if I ask who you are, before we show you anything? This is a dangerous part of town, y’know.”
The spokesman for the muscled boys looked to be in his early twenties. He was standing on the balls of his feet, ready to start some trouble, I figured.
“You should know who we are. New Order. The Citizen Patrol. We’re looking for Strays and Wanteds. Need IDs from all of you. It’s the law, friend.”
Wisty had moved up alongside me. “Maybe we’d like to see your IDs,” she said. “Friend.”
Meanwhile, a crowd of maybe fifty or sixty “citizens” was forming. Not good.
“Let me take care of this,” I said. “Okay?”
Wisty shrugged. “Sure.”
“Why don’t we all just walk away and stay friends?” I said to the group leader. I was hoping to continue talking, but he already had a metal baton out. The crowd was still growing, and getting noisy.
“Citizen Patrol, my butt. More like the Aspiring Dictators’ After-School Club,” said Wisty, ever the diplomat. “Look at you overgrown goons. Pathetic.”
Well, that put them over the top, and they attacked—all eleven of them, batons flailing, the crowd of neighborhood creeps cheering them on.
“My turn.” I held Wisty off. “I can do this.”
“I can see that,” she said. “Wow, Whitford.”
What she was seeing was that the Citizen Patrol seemed to be moving in slow motion. But actually they weren’t. I was just moving very, very fast. I’d felt that I could do this, and I was right.
The lead guy’s baton was cocked back, and I snatched it right out of his hand, then kicked his legs out from under him and hit him with a roundhouse punch as he was falling to the sidewalk.
I was moving so fast that I was a blur. I took away all their batons and threw the sticks into a sewer, then knocked them down one by one—except for a beautiful twofer. Finally the gang members were sprawled on the ground, groaning and moaning.
“Now, let’s see those IDs!” I stood over them and roared, but Sasha was already pulling me away, hurrying all of us up the street and around the nearest corner.
“That was very cool,” he said.
“I needed the practice. And I think maybe I could actually get into this wizard thing.”
Meanwhile, Celia was on my arm, light as could be. “That was incredible, Whit. Loved it!”
“You definitely show potential,” Wisty said, and grinned.
And for that instant, that second, it was like everything was back to the way it was supposed to be, the kind of life I always thought I would have.
But just for that moment.
Chapter 61
Wisty
AFTER WHIT’S DEMONSTRATION of his latest skill set, Sasha led us down a mostly deserted street toward a building with a facade pockmarked by bullet holes and missile strikes. I couldn’t believe what I was seeing. Had all this happened while we were at the Hospital? Time felt so… distorted.
“Man, I was hoping I’d been gone long enough for this to stop. All the bombing.” Sasha shook his head.
“What do you mean?” I asked.
Sasha shrugged. “I was in the Shadowland for a couple of hours.”
Whit frowned. “Why would that be long enough for the, um, New Order to come to their senses and stop bombing?”
Sasha looked at me and Whit in surprise. “You don’t know? Celia…?”
“I didn’t get the chance to explain everything,” Celia said. “We were busy escaping, you know?”
“What don’t we know?” I asked. “What else?”
“Lots. For one thing, time is different in the Shadowland,” Sasha said, continuing to walk very fast. “In this case, it looks to me like I was probably gone about a month or so. It’s not always consistent. Depends on the portal you have to use. Once, I came back and it was earlier that same morning.”
Whit and I stared at each other. We had no way of knowing how much time had passed since we’d been captured. We had so many questions.
Apparently the Weasel did too. “So can we step back in time to a day when Wisty actually takes a bath? Her hair is practically turning to dreadlocks.”
“Get off me, you ingrate,” I said, peeling him away from my neck and plopping him on Feffer’s back instead. “Feffer, you’re a kinder soul than me. Meet your new best friend.”
Feffer barked good-naturedly and wagged her tail. Could she have ever been a hellhound?
Then Sasha stopped and pointed.
“Here we go! Home sweet rubble-strewn home! This is where a bunch of us are hanging. Kind of a mingus, but we’ve fixed it up pretty good.”
I looked up and read the broken fluorescent sign, dangling from some wires, for the most amazing luxury department store in the whole world. I’d never been able to afford to even walk through these doors.
“Garfunkel’s?” I said breathlessly. “We’re gonna live here?”
For a moment, I felt like a queen.
Chapter 62
Whit
IN SPITE OF
THE DEPRESSING UNCERTAINTY about our parents’ whereabouts, Wisty’s voice was full of excitement as she said the name of the familiar department store.
“I guess this is, like, your dream come true, huh?” I said to her.
She gave me an ironic smile as Sasha led us through the revolving doors, one of which had been shattered by a rocket, or maybe a runaway tank.
“Totally,” Wisty said. “On the one hand, we’ve been dragged away from our parents, imprisoned, starved, stun-gunned, denied all basic human rights and freedoms, yada yada yada. On the other hand, look! To my right! It’s, like, bra wonderland!”
I was about to make a joke about how it would be a wonder if she even needed one, but she raised her drumstick at me and I shut right up.
“No electricity in here,” Sasha said as we walked up a motionless escalator. “But do you have any idea how flammable perfume is? One of our guys rigged up a little combustion generator. Now we can run a laptop for two hours off a purse-size bottle.”
Then something hit me like a cheap shot to the jaw. Did none of these kids have any parents? We were just arriving at the main floor. I started to look around and think, Every single one of these kids, Half-light or not, has a story… maybe even a story worse than ours.
“So how many live here?”
“I guess around two hundred fifty,” Sasha mused, “not counting Half-lights, who drift in and out. They can’t stay very long, or—”
“We don’t need to go into that,” said Celia, looking anxious, so very different from the laid-back Celia I’d known before. All I wanted to do was hold her close, tell her everything would be all right. But I wouldn’t be able to really hold Celia ever again, would I? And I definitely couldn’t tell her that things would be all right.
“We’ve got our own little pukka society here,” said Sasha. “Including, ta da, this week’s leader!” He’d led us down a corridor to a small bank of offices.
There, sitting at a desk with a little brass-colored MANAGER sign on it, was a cute girl of no more than fifteen; she was busily punching keys on a laptop.
A thick cable ran from the back of the computer to what looked like a small metal garbage can about twenty feet away. I could smell smoke and something like burned lemons coming from the fragrance-fueled laptop. Ugh. I’d never look at perfume the same way again.
The cute girl looked up, brushing long, brown curls over her shoulder. She had a no-nonsense look on her face, no makeup, and was wearing denim overalls over a stained T-shirt.
“Sasha,” she said, “it’s been, what, forty-three days? We needed you here.”
“I’m not ducking responsibility, but Celia ran the operation,” Sasha said. “And, I should point out, it was a hugely successful one. But there’s no accounting for those portals into the Shadowland. Not to mention that we had a prison break to engineer.
“Whit and Wisty”—he turned to us—“meet my former basic-combat partner and this week’s leader—you can tell because she’s in the manager’s office, wearing a MANAGER lapel pin—Janine!”
“Hi,” said Janine, not smiling. Still sitting, she reached out and shook my hand like I’d just arrived for a job interview. “Welcome,” she said, and then targeted Celia. “Did you get any other kids out of the Hospital?”
Celia shook her head. “There was only one other on the floor, and he wasn’t… rescuable.”
Janine nodded. “Such a shame to find Straight and Narrows afflicting a child. Well, the fight goes on!”
“The fight goes on,” Celia echoed, then she turned to me. “I have to go, Whit,” she said. “But I’ll try to come back.”
The word “try” rang in my ears like a funeral bell.
Chapter 63
Whit
HAVE YOU EVER LOST anyone close to you? Then you can imagine my feelings. I loved Celia like crazy. To have her ripped out of my life, over and over again, was unbearable.
I motioned for Celia to come behind one of those mirrored department-store columns for some privacy.
I tried to hold her hands, grasping the shape of them in mine. “Please come back,” I told her, looking into her eyes. “I can’t stand to lose you again.”
She nodded and gave me one of her smiles. “I want to, Whit. I’m so glad… I’m so glad you’re alive. Out of everything I miss, I’ve missed you the most. Oh God, I’ve missed you.”
Then Celia did the most amazing thing.
She came very close to me. Then even closer, until I couldn’t see her anymore. I could only feel her, in a way that was more intense and intimate than ever before.
Then we merged. Really—we were like one person.
It was warmth, it was peace, it was pure beauty. I was part of Celia; she was part of me. It was only for a moment, but it seemed as if the feeling were big and powerful enough to last a lifetime. I knew I’d never forget this. Who could?
Finally Celia separated from me. She blew a kiss and ran to a nearby portal, apparently in the boys’ shoe department, where she disappeared.
Honestly, it was like I’d just lost half of myself. I lingered by the sneakers and high-tops and wiped tears away. I didn’t think I could tell the others what had just happened, not even Wisty.
I couldn’t begin to describe being one with Celia… and then watching her go away again.
Chapter 64
Wisty
“WHAT DO PEOPLE MEAN by ‘this week’s leader’?” I asked Janine. It was one of many questions I would be asking in the next few days. Right now, while Whit was talking—or whatever—with Celia, I was trying to find out more about life at Garfunkel’s.
“The grown-ups have amply demonstrated that power corrupts,” Janine said, sounding like somebody who was running for office but was actually worthy of the job. “But you do need one person in charge, a final decision-maker, or else everything gets crazy. So we have a leader, but it changes every week. This is my week.”
Sasha explained, “The incoming leader spends a day learning the ropes from the previous leader.” He leaned against Janine’s desk. “And then during the last day they’ll train the next person. It works pretty well, actually. The week of September twenty-second was incredible.”
Janine rolled her eyes.
“You were the leader,” I said to Sasha. “I got it.”
He grinned. “It was a glorious time for the revolution. My decree about voluntary toilet flushing is still talked about in intellectual circles.”
Janine looked at him for a second, then turned to me. “We’re very lucky you and Whit are here with us,” she said. “We’re in need of your skills.”
“Skills? Like changing creeps into weasels?” I said.
“In a sense, yes,” Janine said matter-of-factly. “It sounds like you’re much stronger than the other witches and wizards we’ve discovered.”
“You’ve got others?” I asked, stunned.
“Sort of. But it sounds to me like you’re in a totally different category. Not garden-variety cantrip stuff. Of course,” she said, ignoring my puzzled look, “I guess we’ll see for sure during tomorrow night’s raid. We’re breaking a bunch of kids out of the Overworld Prison.”
I shook my head. “Sorry, Janine. We already told Sasha. We’re going to look for our parents.”
Janine suddenly grabbed my arm. “You have to help us, Wisty. This is the New Order Reformatory, the same place you were taken after you were kidnapped. In Freeland, we call it the Overworld Prison because it’s an evil place. You know that kids’ lives depend on it, don’t you?”
“Look, I’ve been there. I know how bad it is. But you have to understand what comes first for us. We’ve got to find our parents. Period.”
Janine was still holding my arm. “You say you do, but you don’t know how bad Overworld really is. You have no idea.” She looked over at Sasha. “Take them to see Michael Clancy.”
Chapter 65
Wisty
WHIT HAD COME BACK from seeing Celia off, and he didn’t look too good
. No, actually, he looked terrible—for him anyway. Frazzled and scuffed up.
“Who’s Michael Clancy?” he wanted to know.
“No idea. Somebody they want us to see about a prison break.” I raised my voice for Sasha to hear. He was leading the way. “Who’s Michael Clancy?” I called.
“He’s right in here,” Sasha said, and opened the door to a small, dark room. There was a single mattress on the floor.
“I’m Michael,” a soft voice said. “What do you want with me?”
“Tell them your story,” said Sasha. He turned to us. “Sit down with Michael, and listen. You can sit there on his mattress. There’s plenty of room.”
There was room, because Michael was one of the skinniest kids I’d ever met. He reminded me of pictures of famine victims and people in refugee camps I’d seen… and that brought back images of Overworld Prison and the time we’d spent there.
“Hello, Michael,” I said.
“Hey, Mike,” said Whit.
Not only was the boy nearly wasted away but his eyes looked dead to me. Still, there was something intense about him.
He never asked our names, just went right into his story.
“Memory is a liar, you know that, don’t you?” he began. “But I’m sure what I’m going to tell you captures the truth anyway, even if all the details are wrong, which I don’t think they are. But maybe so.”
“Sure, Michael,” I said, just to let him know we were listening closely. He sounded so much older than he looked. I was almost afraid to hear what had happened to him.
“The soldiers, all in black, their boots spit-shined, came for us that morning at the prison, and I believe the sun was already up. There were forty or more of us in this particular cell block. Ages, I’d say, between five and sixteen. Males and females. Many different hues, in terms of skin color, I mean. All ‘Extremely Dangerous.’