Keeping her eyes locked on me, she casually pulled the napkins from her mouth. Her friends continued to calmly munch their sandwiches and sip tea. Then it was the weirdest thing—she pointed with her right hand, but only the gnarled index finger and pinkie, like she was flashing me a sign.
Or maybe putting a curse on me? What was
that
all about?
And then she and her antique girlfriends
disappeared.
Poof, gone.
“A coven,” I whispered to Whit. “That was a coven of witches.”
THE NIGHT OF the Mrs. Highsmith incident, we all slept in the Bed and Bath Department at Garfunkel’s, hoping we hadn’t been cursed and wouldn’t wake up as toads. Bet you didn’t know you could fit two teenagers, a large dog, and a traitorous weasel into one double bed. Of course, it helps if one of the kids floats a couple of feet above the mattress during her dream cycles.
Still, some of the king-size beds near us had as many as six or seven kids sleeping on them. There were hundreds of us in the store. On mattresses, in sleeping bags, on piles of couch cushions, rolled up in bedding and bath towels. It was like a counselor-free, postapocalyptic summer camp. The relief at being out of the Hospital and away from the Matron, the Visitor, Judge Ezekiel Unger, and the New Order’s nightmare regime made it all seem positively homey.
The next morning, I was looking at myself in a mirror outside the men’s dressing rooms. I’d found a set of free weights down in Sporting Goods and seen how much of a feeb I’d gotten to be in jail. I began working out again, building my strength, knowing I would need it eventually.
“Ahem.”
A cough behind me made me jump. “Wizard Allgood.” It was Janine. “I have someone I’d like you to meet.”
As usual, cute as Janine was, she was as solemn-faced as a vice principal. The girl next to her, however, was grinning. She was maybe sixteen or seventeen, dark-skinned, on the short side, but probably weighed two hundred pounds.
“Hi,” she said, sticking out her hand. “I’m Jamilla. I’m the shaman.”
“The huh?” I said, shaking her hand anyway. I noticed how her brown eyes shone and her wild corkscrew hair made a fluffy wedge up and away from her face.
“The shaman,” Jamilla repeated. “In other words, another oddball. Kind of like you and your sister, only I don’t do magic myself. I just help
other people
do cantrips. Been working with a few witches and wizards, helping them hone their powers.”
“Hi,” said Wisty, joining us. “We know we have special powers—but sometimes they’re hard to control. Most of the time, actually.”
“It’s hard to master one’s magical endowments,” Jamilla reassured us. “We’re finding there’s a range, from people who know who’s calling on the phone to a few who can actually make small objects float in the air. Some can even say what’s in your pockets or purse.”
Jamilla smiled and raised her eyebrows to show how impressed she was with that.
Wisty and I exchanged glances. “We hear you.”
“But I’m curious to find out what you two can do. We’ve never seen the New Order spend such resources and time on anybody before. I mean, our sources tell us that they fitted that entire crazy-house mingus with magic-dampening materials just for you two.”
“I guess we should be flattered,” I said dryly. “But it’s like Wisty said—we can do some magic, but it’s hard to control.”
“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.
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
un
froze 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.
”
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.
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 was 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.”
“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.”
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.”