“Like what?” Jamilla said eagerly. Some other kids were starting to gather around us now.
“Well, like this,” said Wisty, and she burst into flames. Everyone started screaming and backing away, even the shaman.
“Show-off,” I said.
Chapter 73
Whit
MY SISTER JUST STOOD THERE, four-feet-long flames whipping out and away from her, her eyes blinking, unconcerned, in her fiery face. As you might imagine, everyone was shrieking like, well, kids watching somebody on fire. Before I even had a chance to figure out how to smother the flames, her fire went out.
“I did it!” Wisty punched the air with her fist. “I put myself out!”
“High five, sister!” I cheered. “You the witch!”
Jamilla looked a little sick. “Did you do that on purpose?” she asked hoarsely.
“Yeah, totally,” said Wisty. “Usually, though, it happens by accident, like if I’m really mad. But that was the first time I’ve been able to start and stop the fire on my own. Normally somebody has to get me really ticked off—and then get a fire extinguisher.”
Jamilla gave a low whistle of amazement. “What else can you do?”
“She floated,” said a boy who couldn’t have been more than five. He pointed at Wisty. “I saw her do it. She floated last night. Like a balloon over the bed.”
“Oh yeah,” said Wisty, embarrassed. “Sometimes I do that. Not intentionally.”
I heard gasping and murmuring from the crowd.
“Whit stuck his hand through a wall,” Wisty said. “And stopped a gavel in midair. And I threw a fork at myself—long story—and froze a bunch of guard dogs at the Hospital.”
“You… fro—,” said Jamilla faintly.
“I unfroze them too,” Wisty said defensively. “I didn’t leave them that way. I couldn’t do that to dogs. Ask Feffer. And I glow sometimes, kind of like that witch in town did right before she sent all those people flying in the diner. Don’t know what that’s about yet.”
Everyone might have been a lot more skeptical, but they’d just seen a human flamesicle.
“The leeches,” I remembered, nodding.
“Oh yeah,” said Wisty. “I made a bunch of horseflies, even though I was trying to make a giant cockroach.” She shuddered.
“And then there’s little ole me,” said a voice down by our feet.
“Your talking weasel?” said Janine.
“He wasn’t always a weasel,” Wisty admitted. “But this is his true form.”
“My true form was the lion,” he squeaked.
“That was probably your opposite form,” said Wisty, glaring menacingly at Byron, who glared right back.
“Oh my God,” Jamilla said, looking from us to Janine. Janine’s eyes widened.
“You think?” she said to the shaman.
“Janine, I think this is them!”
“Them who?” I asked. “Them what?” Did I really want to hear this?
“The Liberators,” Jamilla blurted, still staring at us. “The Rescuers. Check this out. There’s a prophecy—and it’s about the two of you.”
Chapter 74
Whit
JAMILLA TURNED AND RAN to a nearby wall on the way to the gift-wrap counter. Her puffy hair was bouncing around like a Slinky. The wall had velvet rope in front of it to keep people away, but Jamilla stepped right over it.
“This here is the Prophecy Wall. Sometimes messages appear on it. Usually it’s just store stuff, like Huge white sale in January. But sometimes it’s Go to Fifth Street. Rescue an orphan kid from house number twenty-four, things like that. A while ago, it predicted two Liberators who possessed magic would come to help overthrow the New Order. So, my friends, you must be the real deal, you know what I’m saying?”
She turned to the group of people who had followed us to the wall. “Does anyone here think this is just a coincidence? Anyone? Anyone?”
Suddenly everybody started clapping and cheering wildly.
Everybody but Wisty and me, that is.
“Huh,” I said. It was just a wall, a blank wall. Was that the latest and greatest prophecy? Nada? Nothing? Meaning either we were about to slip into a void or, almost as grim, nothing was going to change?
“No, really, the message was there,” said Jamilla. “Wait a few seconds. It doesn’t always do it.”
We stared at the plain wall, a slice of textured wallpaper curling down from one corner. Very unremarkable…
Wisty looked at me, and I shrugged big-time.
“Well, it comes and goes,” said Janine, pushing back her hair. “But we’ve all seen it.” Various heads in the crowd nodded.
Okeydoke. Maybe the wall was just out of prophecies today.
“Even if you’re right,” I said, “how are we supposed to overthrow a government powerful enough to destroy entire cities and build new ones? Besides, we’re still going to look for our mother and father.”
“We told you that from the beginning,” said Wisty.
“Look!” someone said, and I turned to the Prophecy Wall again. This time I saw letters forming. What the…?
ONE DAY SOON, KIDS WILL RUN THE WORLD…
A shiver ran through me. I had heard similar words before—from Celia. The message continued:
… AND DO A BETTER JOB THAN THE GROWN-UPS EVER DID.
“Whoa,” Wisty murmured. “Heavy.”
Suddenly Sasha came running up to Janine and whispered something in her ear. Janine listened, nodded, and seemed to get flustered—especially for her.
She looked at Wisty and me. “Sasha, tell them,” she said. “Go ahead.”
“We’ve just gotten a message from our spies monitoring the Overworld Prison. More exterminations are scheduled for tomorrow morning. Vaporization.”
There were gasps and horrified murmurs around the room, and after hearing Michael Clancy’s story, I had the same reaction. So did Wisty.
“But there’s something else,” Sasha said, and he looked directly at the two of us. “Your parents have been captured again.”
“What?” Wisty and I shouted.
“Where are they?” Wisty demanded to know.
“Wherever they are, we’re there,” I announced, “effective immediately. Sorry we can’t help you guys, Sasha.”
“No need to apologize,” he reassured me confidently. “In fact, your parents are being held at Overworld.”
I didn’t even need to look at Wisty to know what she was thinking. The word “vaporization” was pounding in our brains.
“That being the case—,” I began.
“We’re in,” Wisty said without missing a beat.
Chapter 75
Wisty
THE TEAM LEADER for the break-in at the Overworld Prison was a girl, which I loved. Her name was Margo, and although she was about my size, she was as tough as razor blades. She had to be—she’d already escaped from Over-world, and lost a couple of fingers. She was also homicidal when it came to The One Who Is The One.
And I have to admit I was starting to be too. He intended to vaporize my parents tomorrow, after all. We wouldn’t let that happen.
Margo led the way through an abandoned subway station that was dank and dark, but we had flashlights from the hardware section at Garfunkel’s.
“Once we get inside, we should let the kids out first, since we know where they are. Then we can go looking for your parents,” said Margo.
“Let’s wait and see, okay?” recommended Whit. “Once we get inside, we’ll make a final plan. But that raises the big question, doesn’t it: how do we break into Overworld?”
Margo looked at the two of us. “Magic would be good.”
Whit and I stopped walking, and then so did the rest of our band of nine.
“There’s no real plan to get inside, is there?” Whit asked.
“We can always get ourselves arrested,” Margo said. “That shouldn’t be a big problem.”
I’d been half listening to them, but mostly I wa
s thinking about seeing our mother and father again, and I couldn’t wait. Now it was time to get down to business.
“I have a plan,” I said. “I’ve been going over it a lot. First, we need disguises, of course, ones that allow us to blend with the prison environment. I was thinking that Whit could be a guard. I can try to make him look older and give him a guard’s uniform. Then he can just walk in. I don’t want to be arrested again, Margo.”
“So what about you?” Whit asked me. “How do you get in, Wisty?”
“It has to be magic that I can do. Consistently. So I tried some things before we left Garfunkel’s. I can do something fairly interesting that I think’ll work.”
“Do what?” Whit asked.
“You’re going to think it’s stupid. And crazy.”
“Wisty, what are you going to do? How do you get inside?”
“Well, I…” Wisty paused, then blurted out the rest. “Turnmyselfintoamouse.”
Chapter 76
Wisty
“A MOUSE?” Whit looked like he might explode. “A mouse? You’re going in there disguised as a rodent? To rescue Mom and Dad, and all those kids? And maybe tangle with The One Who Is The One?”
I nodded. “A mouse can go places without anyone seeing. A mouse can chew through wires or sneak through skinny pipes. A mouse can do things even an elephant can’t do,” I pointed out.
“A mouse can also get squashed by some guard’s boot. Or vaporized. No,” said Whit. “It’s too dangerous. And it’s nuts.”
I refused to back off my idea, because it was a good one. I was sure of it. “But it’ll also give me a chance to go places that no one else can go. I can do this, Whit. I tried snakes, roaches, bats—I can do a mouse. And,” I said with a half smile, “I have a good track record with small animals, right?”
There was a very uncomfortable silence for a few seconds while everyone digested my plan, such as it was. In the meantime, we’d made it out of the subway and were up on a street, though we stayed in the shadows.
“I don’t like it,” Whit said, but I could tell he was weakening.
“Trust me,” I said. “I’m a witch. Watch this. Watch very closely.”
Chapter 77
Wisty
I WHIPPED OUT my drumstick like it was a six-gun and—get this—it crackled. This time my magic worked like it was supposed to. I started by making Whit look older, and put him in a guard’s uniform that was perfect to the last detail, with the New Order logo and everything.
Next, I snapped the drumstick at myself, and everybody gasped. One of the kids almost fainted on the spot.
“I hope you’re right about this,” Whit said, pulling his guard’s cap down tight over his forehead. “I have my doubts at the moment.”
Margo, who was a logic-police kind of gal, just shook her head in dismay.
I had to admit, looking at my handiwork—Whit in his guard uniform, a dead ringer for a guy in his thirties—that I was getting much better at my craft.
Not to mention that I’d managed to turn myself into vermin.
I hadn’t realized how weeny mice were. I was now about the size of a large fig, covered everywhere with white-and-brown glossy fur. I had long white whiskers that tickled my face and ears that were hair-trigger twitchy.
I whipped my tail around my side and caught sight of it. Okay, that’s pretty cool! Makes up for the embarrassing ear-twitch tic.
Whit showed me my reflection in his regulation New Order silver belt buckle, and I had to admit, I made a cute enough mouse, as far as mice go. And a very promising witch.
But then I looked up and down the street where we were, and my confidence flagged. Imagine, if you will, a fast-moving car tire that seemed the size of an elephant on steroids, or a lumbering human being the size of a rocket-ship. I never realized how traumatized your average mouse must be. It may take me years of therapy to get over this….
“What time is it?” Emmet whispered.
“Five minutes to seven,” Margo answered. “We’ve got two blocks to go. Come on! This is it. Shift change.”
“Margo,” I said, “pick up my drumstick, and please, please, keep it safe.” She reached and grabbed the stick where it had fallen when I no longer had hands to hold it.
Next, I looked up at Whit. “Put me in your pocket,” I said.
Chapter 78
Wisty
I DIDN’T LIKE IT one bit inside Whit’s pocket, especially once he started to run. It was like being on a boat in a rough sea: up and down and up and down. Within a block I felt myself going green, and I half wondered if there was a spell I could mutter for mouse-size motion-sickness pills. It would not be cool to barf in my brother’s trousers.
“There’s the van with the new prisoners,” Whit said. “Same one we came in.”
“Hurry!” Margo urged.
We sped up, the horrible rocking motion of Whit’s powerful stride making me moan and close my eyes.
Then he reached into his pocket and plucked me out so I could see. We had gotten to the prison gates just as the van pulled up and honked.
“Go,” Emmet told Whit. My brother tossed something into a wire trash can near the street corner. With a soft floom, the contents of the can turned into a giant fire.
“What’s that? What happened?” Whit cried, pointing at the trash.
Immediately the gate guards leaped into action, racing down the street, leaving the van and its driver for a precious moment. The driver entered a code on a pad, and the high metal gates began to open. Whit slipped inside, staying just out of the man’s view.
Once we were within the gates, my nose twitched uncontrollably. The odor seemed like it was piped in from the Hospital.
For a moment, I couldn’t bear the idea of facing it again. And then I remembered my parents and knew there was no turning back.
The driver opened the van doors, and a lot of scared kids slowly climbed out, looking around with saucer-wide eyes. A guard stepped out of the inner gatehouse, ready to process the new prisoners, some of them no more than five or six. I felt sick at the thought of what horrors were in store for these innocent kids.
Whit and I locked eyes—and yes, I swear that a mouse and a human can actually do this—and we each whispered the identical words that we’d practiced:
Sleep now, little ones,
Rest your heads and sleep.
The night will hold you in its arms,
And safely you will keep.
Our mother and father had sung this lullaby to us when we were little, and I hadn’t been able to remember a single thing past the last word because I’d always dropped like a stone into sleep when they’d finished. Whit and I were banking on the fact that they’d actually been using magic to put their totally wired kids to bed at night.
Okay, so it was a stretch.
And, sure enough, nothing happened.
The guard and the driver talked nonchalantly and flipped papers on their clipboards, chatting, just another day incarcerating innocent children, la-di-da. Whit and I looked at each other, and I saw panic starting in his eyes.
Sleep, you goons, sleep! I thought desperately, wishing I had my drumstick and hoping I wasn’t going to end up as mouse paste in the next few seconds.
The gates slammed shut behind us, our friends locked outside the prison, and here we were, a fake guard who might turn back into a teenager at any second, a mouse who might turn back into a girl at any second, and two New Order goons who were going to notice that something strange was going on and sound the alarm.
Any second now.
Chapter 79
Wisty
PEERING OVER WHIT’S curled index finger, I saw the humongous men slowly turn to look at my brother. One of them wrinkled his brow.
“You’re new here, aren’t you?” he asked Whit. “Haven’t seen you around before. What’s your name, bub?”
You. Will. Sleep. Now! I thundered the words. Inside my head, of course. YOU. WILL. SLEEP. NOW!
(I fi
gured all CAPS and italics had to work.)
And then… the two men crumpled to the pavement at Whit’s feet. Dead asleep. Gonzo to the worldo.
The kid prisoners stared at the goons with alarm, as if maybe they were next to go la-la.
“It’s okay,” Whit told them. “We’re your friends. You have to trust us, okay? We’re kids.”
Then Whit held me up close to his face. “Are you sure about this?” he whispered. “This isn’t a game, Wisty.”
“Whit, there’s no turning back now. Mom and Dad, and all those kids who could be turned into smoke and ash, are inside. Get these new kids in the van and get them out of here. Pick up Margo and Emmet. Tell them to stay close by. If I can disarm the alarm or the gate, they’ll have to shuttle the escaping kids through the tunnels really fast.”
Whit frowned, and it was so weird—even the creases in his skin looked huge. Even his one zit. “If you see chunks of cheese or peanut butter, like, lying in the middle of a small wooden board, with wire all around it—”
“I got it,” I said. “Drag those sleeping guys into the gatehouse.”
Whit let out a breath, looking extremely unhappy with me. “We’ll all be standing by. I’ll be watching for you, Wisteria.” Which, he knew, was what Dad always called me in times of great stress.
“Okay,” I said. I stared down at the ground, which looked about ten stories away. I closed my eyes and jumped, quite pleasantly surprised when I landed neatly on all fours, ready to run. “See, I didn’t go splat!” I called to Whit.
“You be careful!” he called back.
“‘Careful’ is my middle name!” I looked ahead at the very large, gray prison building. Right away I saw a drain-pipe and headed over to it. Before I actually entered the pipe, I glanced back at my brother, trying not to think this might be the last time I’d ever see him.