Witch & Wizard (2 page)

I shook my head and bounced up and down a few times, kind of like I do in my warm-ups.
Wake up, Whit.
I slapped myself for good measure. And then I looked again.

There they were. Soldiers marching down our street.
Hundreds of them as clear as day, made visible by a half-dozen truck-mounted spotlights.

Just one thought was running laps inside my head:
This can’t be happening. This can’t be happening. This can’t be happening.

Then I remembered the elections, the new government, the ravings of my parents about the trouble the country was in, the special broadcasts on TV, the political petitions my classmates were circulating online, the heated debates between teachers at school. None of it meant anything to me until that second.

And before I could piece it all together, the vanguard of the formation stopped in front of my house.

Almost faster than I could comprehend, two armed squads detached themselves from the phalanx and sprinted across the lawn like commandos, one running around the back of the house, the other taking position in front.

I jumped away from the window. I could tell they weren’t here to protect me and my family. I had to warn Mom, Dad, Wisty—

But just as I started to yell, the front door was knocked off its hinges.

IT’S QUITE HIDEOUS to get kidnapped in the dead of night, right inside your own home. It went something like this.

I woke to the chaotic crashing of overturning furniture, quickly followed by the sounds of shattering glass, possibly some of Mom’s china.

Oh God, Whit,
I thought, shaking my head sleepily. My older brother had grown four inches and gained thirty pounds of muscle in the past year. Which made him the biggest and fastest quarterback around, and, I must say, the most intimidating player on our regional high school’s undefeated football team.

Off the playing field, though, Whit could be about as clumsy as your average bear—if your average bear were hopped-up on a case of Red Bull and full of himself because he could bench-press 275 and every girl in school thought he was the hunk of all hunks.

I rolled over and pulled my pillow around my head. Even before the drinking started, Whit couldn’t walk through our house without knocking something over. Total bull-in-a-china-shop syndrome.

But that wasn’t the real problem tonight, I knew.

Because three months ago, his girlfriend, Celia, had literally
vanished
without a trace. And by now everyone was thinking she probably would never come back. Her parents were totally messed up about it, and so was Whit. To be honest, so was I. Celia was—
is
—very pretty, smart, not conceited at all. She’s this totally cool girl, even though she has money. Celia’s father owns the luxury-car dealership in town, and her mom is a former beauty queen. I couldn’t believe something like that would happen to someone like Celia.

I heard my parents’ bedroom door open and snuggled back down into my cozy, flannel-sheeted bed.

Next came Dad’s booming voice, and he was as angry as I’ve ever heard him.

“This can’t be happening! You have no right to be here. Leave our house
now!
”

I bolted upright, wide awake. Then came more crashing sounds, and I thought I heard someone moan in pain. Had Whit fallen and cracked his head? Had my dad been hurt?

Jeez, Louise,
I thought, scrambling out of bed. “I’m coming, Dad! Are you all right? Dad?”

And then the nightmare to start a lifetime of nightmares truly began.

I gasped as my bedroom door crashed open. Two hulking men in dark-gray uniforms burst into my room, glaring at me as if I were a fugitive terrorist-cell operative.

“It’s her! Wisteria Allgood!” one said, and a light bright enough to illuminate an airplane hangar obliterated the darkness.

I tried to shield my eyes as my heart kicked into overdrive. “Who are
you?!
” I asked. “What are you doing in
my freaking bedroom?
”

“BE EXTREMELY CAREFUL with her!” one of the humongous men cautioned. They looked like Special Forces operatives with giant white numbers on their uniforms. “You know she can—”

The other nodded, glancing around my room nervously. “You!” he snapped harshly. “Come with us! We’re from the New Order. Move one step out of line, and we will punish you severely!”

I stared at him, my head spinning.
The New Order?
These weren’t ordinary policemen or EMS personnel.

“Um—I—I—,” I stammered. “I need to put on some clothes. Can I… can I have a little privacy?”

“Shut up!” the first commando guy barked. “Grab her! And protect yourself. She’s dangerous—all of them are.”

“No! Stop! Don’t you dare!” I screamed. “Dad! Mom! Whit!”

Then it hit me like a runaway tractor trailer on ice. This was what had happened to Celia, wasn’t it?

Oh God!
Cold sweat beaded on the back of my neck.
I need to get out of here,
I thought desperately.
Somehow, some way.

I need to disappear.

THE SERIOUSLY MUSCLE-BOUND MEN in gray suddenly froze, their blocklike heads whipping back and forth like puppets on strings.

“Where is she? She’s gone! Vanished! Where’d she go?” one said, his voice hoarse and panicky.

They shone flashlights around the room. One of them dropped to his knees and searched under my bed; the other rushed over to look in my closet.

Where’d
I
go? Were these guys totally
insane?
I was right there. What was going on?

Maybe they were trying to trick me into running for it so they had an excuse to use force. Or maybe they were escapees from an asylum who had come to get me the way they’d come to get poor Celia—

“Wisty!” My mom’s anxious shout from the hallway pierced the fog that had invaded my brain. “Run away, sweetheart!”

“Mom!”
I shrieked. The two guys blinked and stepped back in surprise.

“There she is! Grab her! She’s right there! Quick, before she disappears again!”

Big klutzy hands grabbed my arms and legs, then my head. “Let me
go!
” I screamed, kicking and struggling.
“Let. Me. Go.”

But their grip was like steel as they dragged me down the hall to the family room and dumped me on the floor like a sack of trash.

I quickly scrambled to my feet, more floodlights whiting out my vision. Then I heard Whit shouting as he was thrown onto the living room floor next to me.

“Whit, what’s going on? Who are these…
monsters?
”

“Wisty!” he gasped, coherently enough. “You okay?”

“No.” I almost cried, but I couldn’t, wouldn’t, absolutely
refused,
to let them see me wuss out. Every awful true-crime movie I’d ever seen flashed through my head, and my stomach heaved. I nestled close to my brother, who took my hand in his and squeezed.

Suddenly the floodlights turned off, leaving us blinking and shaking.

“Mom?”
Whit shouted.
“Dad?”
If my brother hadn’t been stone-cold sober already, he sure was now.

I gasped. My parents were standing there, still in their rumpled pajamas, but held from behind like they were dangerous criminals. Sure, we lived on the wrong side of the tracks, but no one in our family had ever been in trouble before.

Not that I knew of anyway.

ONE OF THE MOST TERRIFYING THINGS in the world you can never hope to see is your parents, wide-eyed, helpless, and truly scared out of their wits.

My parents. I thought they could protect us from anything. They were different from other parents… so smart, gentle, accepting, knowing… and I could tell at this moment that they knew something Whit and I didn’t.

They know what is going on. And they’re terrified of it, whatever it is.

“Mom… ?” I asked, staring hard into her eyes, trying to get any message I could, any signal about what I should do now.

As I looked at Mom, I had a flash, a collage of memories. She and Dad saying stuff like “You and Whit are special, honey.
Really
special. Sometimes people are afraid of those who are different. Being afraid makes them angry and unreasonable.” But all parents thought their kids were special, right? “I mean, you’re
really
special, Wisty,” Mom had said once, taking my chin in her palm. “Pay attention, dear.”

Then three more figures stepped forward from the shadows. Two of them had guns on their belts. This was really getting out of hand. Guns? Soldiers? In our house? In a free country? In the middle of the night? A
school
night, even.

“Wisteria Allgood?” As they moved into the light, I saw two men and…

Byron Swain?

Byron was a kid from my high school, a year older than I, a year younger than Whit. As far as I knew, we both hated his guts.
Everyone
did.

“What are
you
doing here, Swain?” Whit snarled. “Get out of our house.”

Byron.
It was like his parents knew he’d turn out to be a snot, so they’d named him appropriately.

“Make me,” Byron said to Whit, then he gave a smarmy, oily smile, vividly bringing to life all the times I’d seen him in school and thought,
What a total butt.
He had slicked-back brown hair, perfectly combed, and cold hazel eyes. Like an iguana’s.

So this jerk extraordinaire was flanked by two commandos in dark uniforms, shiny black boots that came above their knees, and metal helmets. The entire world was turning upside down, with me in my ridiculous pink kitty jammies.

“What are you
doing
here?” I echoed Whit.

“Wisteria Allgood,” Byron monotoned like a bailiff, and pulled out an actual scroll of official-looking paper. “The New Order is taking you into custody until your trial. You are hereby accused of being a witch.”

My jaw dropped. “
A witch?
Are you
nuts?
” I shrieked.

THE TWO GOONS IN GRAY marched toward me. Instinctively I held up both my hands. Amazingly the New Order soldiers stopped in their tracks, and I felt a surge of strength—if only for a moment.

“Did we just go back in
time?
” I squealed. “Last I looked this was the twenty-first century, not the
seventeenth!
”

I narrowed my eyes. Another glance at that smarmy Byron Swain in his shiny boots spurred me on further. “You can’t just come in here, grabbing us—”

“Whitford Allgood,” Byron Swain rudely interrupted, continuing to read in an official tone from his scroll, “you are hereby accused of being a wizard. You will be held in custody until your trial.”

He smirked tauntingly at Whit, even though under normal circumstances my brother could have picked him up and wrung his neck like a chicken’s. I guess confidence isn’t hard to come by when you have armed soldiers at your beck and call.

“Wisty is right. This is utterly crazy!” my brother snapped. His face was flushed, his blue eyes shining with anger. “There’s no such thing as witches or wizards! Fairy tales are a load of crap. Who do you think you are, you creepy little weasel? A character from
Gary Blotter and the Guild of Rejects
?”

My parents looked horrified—but not actually
surprised.
So WTH?

I remembered slightly odd lessons my folks had given us throughout our childhood: about plants and herbs, and the weather—always the weather—and how to concentrate, how to focus. They also taught us a lot about artists we’d never study at school too, like Wiccan Trollack, De Glooming, and Frieda Halo. As I got older, I guess I thought my parents were maybe just being a little hippie-dippy or something. But I never really questioned this stuff. Was it all somehow related to tonight?

Byron looked at Whit calmly. “According to the New Order Code, you may each take one possession from the house. I don’t approve, but that’s the letter of the law, and I will abide by it, of course.”

Under the watchful eye of the gray-garbed soldiers, Mom quickly moved to the bookshelf. She hesitated a moment, glancing at Dad.

He nodded, and then she grabbed an old drumstick that had sat on the shelf for as long as I could remember. Family legend has it that my wild-man grandfather, back in the day, actually leaped onstage at a Groaning Bones concert and took it from the drummer. Mom held it out to me.

“Please,” she said with a sniffle, “just take it, Wisteria.
Take
the drumstick. I love you so much, sweetheart.”

Then my father reached for an unlabeled book I’d never seen before—a journal or something—on the shelf next to his reading chair. He thrust it into Whit’s hands. “I love you, Whit,” he said.

A drumstick and an old book? How about a drum to go with that stick? Couldn’t they give us a family heirloom or something vaguely personal to cheer us up? Or maybe Whit’s mammoth stash of nonperishable junk food for a handy-dandy sugar rush?

Not one part of this waking nightmare made any sense.

Byron snatched the tattered old book from Whit and flipped through it.

“It’s blank,” he said, surprised.

“Yeah, like your social calendar,” said Whit. The guy can be funny, I admit, but his timing sometimes leaves something to be desired.

Byron slammed the book against Whit’s face, snapping his head sideways as if it were on a swivel.

Whit’s eyes bulged and he sprang toward Byron, only to have the soldiers body-block him.

Byron stood behind the bigger men, smiling wickedly. “Take them to the van,” Byron said, and the soldiers grabbed me again.

“No! Mom! Dad! Help!” I shrieked and tried to pull away, but it was like wriggling in a steel trap. Rock-hard arms dragged me toward the door. I managed to twist my neck around for one last look back at my parents, searing my memory with the horror on their faces, the tears in their eyes.