Sure, the film shows Whit, too—there’re a few grainy images of him crouching in an alley, and there’s a long, slow pan as he sets off on the path toward the Mountain, Mama May weeping after him.
But mostly it’s me and Heath. Shattering windows, scaring children, and burning everything around us.
At the end, the film skips into a hazy slow motion of our passionate kiss inside the fire. It feels excruciatingly hot in the chamber now, too, and I clutch my collar, squirming in the audience as the scene drags on and on….
And then, it cuts, and my eyes fill up the screen.
My eyes… but not.
With fire reflected in them, they’re wild and red and hungry, consumed with power.
I want to turn away, but I can’t.
I’m a terror.
Chapter 67
Wisty
THE PROJECTOR CLICKS OFF, and I can still see the flames, like they’re singed inside my brain.
“Where do I start, Ms. Allgood?” Bloom cocks his head. “Illegal use of magical force? Arson?” He leans forward, and the microphone squeals. “Murder?”
“I… I…” I mumble, but I can’t find my voice, and I shrink in shame.
I don’t look at them, though—won’t look at them. Instead, I study my aching fingers and find them ragged, the nails bitten to the quick, and as I stare at the blood pricking, I feel a rising sense of panic.
How did I let it get so out of control?
“Conspiracy, espionage, kidnapping?” Bloom is already rattling off a list to Whit. “It disappoints us greatly that the magic makers have decided to betray their homeland and collaborate with the evil Wizard King.”
“That’s insane. I went up to negotiate!” Whit protests. “And to free the kids, not kidnap them.”
“And yet you returned without any of our lost children, to tell us we face imminent attack. Hmmm.” Bloom knits his eyebrows together as if he’s genuinely confused. “What do you make of this situation, Mr. Piper?”
“I would say that perhaps Mr. Allgood’s mission failed spectacularly,” says ol’ Droopy Eyes.
“Or else he had other motives?” another eager, mustachioed man suggests.
“The kids were brainwashed!” Whit explains impatiently. “They refused to leave the Mountain King’s side.”
“Ah!” Bloom purses his lips as if considering. “Please send out a press release,” he calls down to the scribe. “Mr. Allgood wishes the citizens to know that the missing children, ripped from their mothers’ arms, actually want to be among these savages.”
“That’s enough!” I command. I feel a spark of hot anger, feeling fiercely protective of my good-hearted brother, but then I see the image of my bloodshot eyes and drop my hands.
That’s not me, that’s not me, that’s not me.
Bloom leans into the mic again and his loud breathing echoes. “Based on the evidence we’ve seen here today, I believe it’s clear to the Inner Circle”—Bloom glances around for confirmation, and the dopey heads nod obediently—“that it is actually the City’s treacherous community of magicians who are working for the Mountain King.”
Of course he would bring our parents into this, somehow. This was a trap from the beginning.
That’s what pushes me over the edge, and the heat rushes to my fingers. Out of the corner of my eye, I see Whit reaching toward me.
But before our hands make contact, everything seems to pause, and the fire leaves me cold.
“Seize them!” Bloom booms, shaking his head in disappointment.
Chapter 68
Whit
I CLENCH MY FISTS in fury as Wisty and I struggle against the guards.
They can’t do this! But they can. They are.
I was the strongest foolball player in the City, undefeated for years and years. I possess a powerful magic that should make escape easy. But against these unimpressive men who are wrenching my arms behind my back, I am almost paralyzed.
How is that possible?
And then… I see.
A man stalks across the chamber floor toward us, and I stare in disbelief, feeling my insides turn to ice. The white-blond hair, the wicked eyes, the snakelike swagger—it’s unmistakable.
No.
I glance at Wisty desperately—am I going crazy? But all the color has drained from her face and she looks as horrified as I feel, and I know that she’s seeing exactly what I’m seeing.
A ghost.
Just like Celia in the forest. And Margo and Sasha. Only this time, it’s not a friend. It’s not someone I’d ever hoped to see in this world again.
It’s Pearce!
Pearce, The One Who Is The One’s enforcer, high-ranking officer of the former New Order. Pearce, a teenager with serious magic power just like us, except he gets a weird kick out of torturing and murdering people.
“Did you miss me?” he asks.
“We… we killed you,” I whisper.
But we didn’t, did we? We left him for dead in the bone forest of Shadowland, but we didn’t make sure he was dead—I couldn’t stomach it.
Pearce shrugs. “Unfortunately, the idea of being dead didn’t appeal to me all that much. I like to stay busy, and General Bloom, here, keeps me entertained.”
Bloom, who has climbed down from his glorified step stool, puts an arm on Pearce’s shoulder in a show of solidarity.
I gape at him. So that’s how they did it. We knew Bloom must’ve had help from someone in the magic community. That’s why that fence around the barracks is so strong, and why I can’t easily fight these guards.
Pearce is doing it.
“You accuse us of being traitors?” I yell furiously at Bloom. “This slug worked by the side of The One Who Is The One. You think he’s not a traitor?”
“We’ve pardoned the former New Order affiliates, you’ll recall,” Bloom says.
An action I never supported, I think bitterly. I look at my sister but bite my tongue—she already feels bad enough about Heath.
“This officer has proven himself to be a loyal ally in our City’s time of turmoil. He’s been invaluable in securing the cooperation of the magic community, neutralizing difficult situations, as you can see.”
I sigh and Wisty rolls her eyes. Ever the politician, Bloom prattles on with his sugarcoated explanation, but this means absolutely nothing to us.
“Pearce, kindly escort the Allgoods to their cells.”
I surge forward again, focusing every ounce of energy I have into violently striking out at Pearce and getting out of the guards’ grasp. Pearce almost killed me when I fought him in Shadowland, but in the end, I was able to overtake him.
He’s stronger now, though, I realize with horror. Instead of building, my magic feels like it’s draining out of me. I don’t know where he’s getting his power from, but it’s debilitating.
This is so much worse than we thought.
Chapter 69
Wisty
I WATCH PEARCE carefully as we’re bound in chains and taken from the chamber.
My mind is racing, and my head is a fuzz of building heat. With my magic defused, the energy has nowhere to go.
I know we’ll get out of this. We’ve been in prison before, and as livid as I am about so many things gone terribly wrong, what concerns me the most is Pearce, alive. I’ve seen what he’s capable of, and I’m positive he’s so much more of a threat to the safety of this City than Bloom or some stupid ice wizard.
What is he plotting?
Seeing me looking at him, Pearce moves closer to me, and I tense, the old fear returning. I am stronger than this.
“How great was that movie, by the way?” he asks conversationally. He drops his voice to a whisper. “My favorite part was that last scene.”
My face starts to flush.
He means the part when Heath and I were making out on the porch. The thought of Heath is painful already, and having our intimate moment broadcast to a group of dirty old men was humiliating, for sure.
But
bile still rises in my mouth when I remember the time Pearce freaking assaulted me, shoving his tongue in my mouth. I grind my teeth in disgust but refuse to give Pearce the satisfaction of a response.
“Young lovers embracing, such hungry hands and mouths…” Pearce licks his lips suggestively, and my skin crawls. “A little tongue…”
I totally lose it then, insane with rage.
“I’ll destroy you!” I shriek, gnashing my teeth as I try to strike out at him.
I still can’t move, though, and Pearce just chuckles as the guards haul us down the chamber steps toward the waiting police vans.
“I always did love your passion, Wisty.”
Outside in the Square, citizens are gathering in groups to watch the spectacle.
“Don’t worry,” I jeer at the onlookers, who look both disgusted and nervous. “He’s here to neutralize us….”
I squint at the two police vans, trying to direct the hot fuzz in my head into some sort of release. Pearce’s block is powerfully strong, and the pressure in my head is excruciating. Still, I’m putting everything I have into this, and I can feel my magic weakening the barrier, just for a moment.
“… So that something like this doesn’t happen!” I yell, hurling the energy forward with one final, exhausting push.
It’s not much—certainly not anything like the strength of the forest fire—but it’s enough.
The vans flip into the air, careening toward the middle of the Square. They smash upside down into the ugly fountain, and their windows shatter satisfyingly. The crowds scatter in terror and I can’t help but smirk.
Try to take all my power from me. Just try!
Unfortunately, two new vans pull up almost immediately, and I’m so weak from the ridiculous effort of that last display that I can barely stand as they drag us toward them.
“Why don’t you make an example of the evil magicians?” Whit challenges the tubby politician angrily. “Why don’t you just kill us now, Bloom?”
“Whit!” I hiss. I’m as guilty of letting my temper get away from me as anyone, but this situation is already bad enough without taunting Bloom into killing us.
“You really think they’re just going to neutralize us?” He looks at me meaningfully, and with sick realization, I get what he’s driving at.
We know what Pearce does, and it doesn’t usually end in a cushy cell. I’ve watched him melt off enough children’s faces to know that “neutralize” really means “nuke.”
We’re no longer beloved by the people, but our deaths might still cause an uproar, and Bloom doesn’t want that. Instead, they’re going to cart us off to some dark room and quietly murder us. It won’t even make the news. Our parents probably won’t even know we’re dead.
At least if he did it in the open, we might have a chance of escape, or at least an uprising.
“Yeah, kill us right here in the Square, so these honorable citizens can see what kind of justice your corrupt Council delivers!” I goad.
“That won’t be necessary,” Bloom answers in a bored tone from the top of the steps as the guards throw us roughly into the back of the police vans. “If we killed all the magicians, who would we sacrifice on the front lines of the war?”
Chapter 70
Whit
“ISN’T THERE ANYTHING TO EAT?” I plead at the door of our dank underground cell.
“Get back from the bars!” a guard orders. He smashes my fingers with a long, metal pole, and the crack of pain is so sharp I see black spots.
I’m still weak from the Mountain journey, with wounds half-healed and magic zapped, but mostly it’s the ache in my stomach that is keeping me up.
“And can you please turn on the heat, already, for the last time?!” Wisty bellows at the dim-witted oafs.
Oh, yeah, and I’m also really, really cold.
“Why don’t you heat up the room yourself, witch?” comes the consistently clever reply.
Wisty keeps taking the bait, though, because she just can’t believe her power really isn’t working.
She scowls, pressing her fingertips together for the hundredth time since we were thrown into this tiny prison. When, for the hundredth time, nothing happens, she shakes out her hand and goes back to pacing feverishly.
Can I tell you how much we are both regretting the power she wasted on those vans?
“Whatsa matter? Lost your spark?” the second guard cackles and flings a cup of ice water through the bars.
The glass doesn’t soak Wisty—it just smashes all over the floor where we’ll have to sleep—but it does make both of us erupt in anger, which then makes the guards almost pee themselves with enjoyment.
It’s a regular party in here—we always seem to attract really high-quality professionals during our jail stays.
“This feels familiar, eh?” I say, trying to get Wisty to talk. She’s been pacing for hours, and I can tell she’s getting more and more anxious.
“Of course it feels familiar. What goes around comes around, and every single government is the same,” she answers in a flat tone.
“Come on, Wisty. You don’t believe that.” I laugh, because the pessimism is so totally unlike her, but I see right away that was the wrong call.
“Don’t I?” she says hopelessly.
“Hey,” I say, rubbing her back. “We’re going to get out of this, okay?”
But it’s not the prison cell she’s obsessing about.
“Did you see me in the video, Whit? Did you see my eyes?”
I knew this was going to come up, but I nod, keeping my cool. “I saw.”
The panic heightens in her voice. “And what did you see?”
I know I have to be careful here. Avoid saying Glowing red orbs of need, for example.
“I saw someone who I know is a good person and a brilliant witch get a little… carried away,” I tell my sister, which is also the truth.
Wisty stops pacing and hugs her arms around herself. “I saw The One,” she says, and suddenly I feel even colder. “Or a glimpse of him. I saw his lust for power. I saw that it could grow. That it could take me over. That it could be something to live for.”
“So don’t let it!” I blurt out, and she looks away.
This might be the first time my sister has scared me—I mean really scared me—in my life.
“Wisty.” I squeeze her shoulders and look into her eyes, making sure she knows how serious I am. “Don’t. Let. It,” I repeat.
“It’s not that easy,” Wisty says, and slides down the wall of the cell to the concrete floor. “It’s Heath. You have no idea, Whit. When we combine our power, a part of it just… takes over my brain. It feels like nothing else in the world to be with him.”
“But if the magic you make with him is toxic…”
“I don’t know how to stop,” Wisty says in despair. “But Bloom’s video…” She meets my eyes, and I know what she’s thinking.
All those awful scenes are imprinted on my memory, too, and my stomach starts to twist. I shake my head slowly.
“I need to stop,” she agrees.
“Just give yourself a break. Remember how it first felt to use the magic? How it was better than anything, but you could feel the goodness, too?”
Wisty looks a little skeptical, but she nods.
“Maybe you just need to start over, to get it back to good. We can try tomorrow.”
Wisty kicks away the shards of glass and lies down on the floor.
“No, tomorrow we need to get out of this prison,” she says, yawning. “And then we need to deal with Bloom, and the Mountain King, and especially Pearce. Tomorrow’s booked.”
I ball my jacket up into a pillow and lie down next to her on the crude floor.
“And find food,” I add as my stomach growls. “Okay, so maybe we’ll work on good, happy magic the day after tomorrow.”
“Deal.”
Chapter 71
Wisty
WORST NIGHT OF SLEEP EVER.
I’m already having a
seriously rough time on the hard floor of our prison cell when I groggily make out the hollow sound of something tapping against metal. Then a tug on the chain at my foot jerks me fully awake, and I open my eyes, annoyed now.
I look around for whoever thought it would be hilarious to make life just a little worse by depriving me of sleep, but I don’t see any guards outside our cell.
No. I see someone else. Someone I wasn’t expecting at all.
I see Heath.
“What are you doing here?” I gasp, too loud, and Whit shifts in his sleep.
I step carefully over my brother and face Heath on the other side of the bars. He looks as haggard as I feel—like he hasn’t slept in days. Good.
“Heard you got some fancy new digs, and I wanted to check it out,” Heath answers, peering in. When I don’t laugh at the lame joke, he runs a hand nervously through his lush hair. “And I just wanted to see you. I had to see you.”
A tiny, pathetic part of my heart sings when he says that…. Fortunately, the rest of me remembers that I should hate him.
“I told you,” I whisper coldly. “I have no desire to talk to the spawn of evil.”
Heath rolls his eyes. “Come on, Wisty. You don’t really believe that. You think I’m evil? After everything we’ve been through together?”
I shift uncomfortably and he must see me falter, because he gives me one of those looks that, even in the dark, is bright and intense.
“After all the sparks? The flames?” he purrs in his sexy voice, and puts his hand on top of mine.
“Don’t!” I snatch it away and cross my arms. “You betrayed me,” I hiss. “Please just go.”
“Will you at least let me explain?”
I groan, but I can’t deny that it’s been killing me, not being able to understand his story. I deserve that much, right?
I’m looking at him, debating, when Whit sits up. When he sees Heath, he throws himself at the door, more ferocious-looking than I’ve ever seen him. “Get away from my sister!” he shouts angrily. “Guards!”
“Shhh!” I hiss, trying to cover Whit’s mouth. “We’re just talking.”
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