The Gift (25 page)

“What is
up
with this? I feel like I’m about ready to have a heart attack just from walking up this hill,” I pant when we get a few miles
outside the town where we liberated the books. “Don’t tell me I’m gonna be
this
out of shape at age sixty-five. When will this spell wear off?”

“You’re already sounding like a grumpy old fart, Whit. If you can’t hack it, we can try some more sp —” Wisty breaks off when
she’s interrupted by the world’s most terrifying screech.

And I do mean
screech.
A high-pitched, frenetic wail of something that I can describe only as murderous delight.

And they haven’t even
begun
the murdering part yet,
I realize as I turn my head and see a swarm of hunched shapes scampering madly after us at an incredible speed.
It’s pathetic that the millions of dollars spent on sports-car design seemingly can’t duplicate nature’s design for the insane
charge of starving animals eyeing their prey.

“Run!”
I grab Wisty’s arm, and we run—if you can call it running, that is.

You see, running just isn’t the same when you’re a senior citizen.
There’s no way we can outpace these things,
I’m thinking.
They’re like greyhounds from hell.

“Oh my God,
Whit!
” Wisty gasps as she realizes that our magic, which saved us in the last town, may actually end up being the death of us now.

The fearsome creatures let loose a terrifying group howl, and an electric shiver runs up my spine. I drag Wisty under an overpass
and duck off the road, out of sight behind the rampart, but I know the creatures will be able to smell us at any moment.

“Okay, Wisty, I’ve got an idea.” I actually don’t have one. But I’ve got to figure something out this time. My sister’s way
too freaked to focus her powers right now.

I peek around the rampart and see that the… strangely shaped humans? baboons?… are still a good quarter mile away. I also
spot a figure gliding along behind them on one of those two-wheeled electric scooter things.

I recognize the stiff-backed, pompous posture immediately, even at this distance. “Byron!”

“What?” Wisty spits out in disbelief. “You’ve got to be kidding me.”

“He’s behind this!” I hiss.

“Whit, you don’t know that. Last time we saw him, he saved us!”

“Correction: last time we saw him, he flushed us down the toilet.”

“But maybe he can help —”

“Wisty, we don’t have time to play guessing games. Okay?”

The howling is uncomfortably near, and I press Wisty hard against the wall of the overpass so we’re as flat and as far out
of sight as possible. “Listen to me. We’re going to turn ourselves into birds. That’s our only hope. I can’t do it alone,
but we can probably do it to —”

And that is as much as I get out of my mouth before the wall where we are hiding falls away. Wisty and I collapse with it,
and everything goes mostly dark.

Whit

NEVER IN OUR ENDLESS days of fighting in the Overworld have Wisty and I
accidentally
fallen through a portal. I mean, usually they come and go, and when you get in, sometimes it’s like being sucked into an
F5 tornado. And you can’t always be entirely sure where you’ll end up.

But this time, I know exactly where we are the second we get through the passageway. I know it from the cold. As if it’s coming
from my own bones. In the Shadowland, you feel the chill deep
inside
you even before you feel it on your skin. That’s just one of the place’s many charms.

The next thing I notice is that we’ve returned to our regular teenage bodies.
Maybe it’s hard for a spell to hold through different dimensions?

In
this
dimension, all we can see is gray, all we can feel is the glass-hard ground, all we can hear for a few minutes is our own
breathing.

“God, I’m soooo cold,” Wisty says when she realizes
where we are. “This is taking me right back to my death-row stint in The One’s cheery little snow globe at the BNW.”

“Better cold than getting dismembered by Lost Ones,” I say, looking around for any sign of the foul creatures.

“Oh, you can’t fool me for a second, Whitford Allgood,” Wisty says. “You’re
happy
to be here.” There she goes, reading my mind again. And, yeah, in case you’re wondering, I
have
already been thinking about Celia, and if she’s close by.

No. I’m not thinking about her… I’m
feeling
her.

She’s near. There’s a scent that gives me a strange kind of buzz, and a magnetic sort of pull that begins somewhere in my
solar plexus. I start breathing faster and take a few steps in the direction where I feel her drawing me to her.

“You swear you didn’t mean for us to end up here, Whit?” Wisty asks. “Be honest.”

I don’t answer her, because just then I hear a voice. The voice I dream of day and night. Not specific words, but the music
and rhythm of it, drifting from the fog like the sounds of harps and wind chimes.

“Celia?” I call out, turning in every direction. There it is again. I can find it. I know I can get to her if I move fast
enough and follow my instincts.…

But part of the Shadowland’s being an utterly featureless, cold, gray wasteland includes not having a whole lot of useful
landmarks—and so, after just a few paces in the direction of the sound, a hand clutches my arm hard
enough to crush bone. I whirl around, ready to fight a Lost One to the death, if that’s even possible.

“Whitford Allgood!” It’s Wisty, and her eyes are bulging with alarm. “You were just about to run off without me! What in God’s
name are you
thinking?
”

“I’m thinking that Celia can help us. She helped us before.” I remind her of our first big prison break ages ago. But Wisty
rolls her eyes and looks at me like an annoyed parent.

“Whit, can you just focus on
us
for a second and forget about your
totally dead
girlfriend?” Not too long ago, I would have yelled at her for a comment like that. “And, like, maybe how we’re going to get
out of here without becoming Lost Ones ourselves?”

And, right then, as if to put an exclamation point on her sentence, we hear something horrific coming through the fog behind
us. It’s different than the pathetic moan of Lost Ones. This time, it’s the unmistakable sound of murderous hunger.

Byron’s creepy animals!

“They’re
Curves?
” shouts Wisty.

“And they’ve found our portal!”

Whit

SPRINTING THROUGH THE SHADOWLAND is like skiing downhill with your eyes closed. Pure terror. Our hungry and relentless pursuers might be equally screwed by
how easy it is to get lost in this formless landscape, but we’re doubly doomed by their sense of smell, which I have no doubt
can slice right through fog. Which means…

My sister and I are about to be torn apart and devoured on the cold ground of the Shadowland.

A low moaning cuts through the mist a stone’s throw ahead. For a second I’m confused and think that somehow we’ve gone in
a circle and the weird creatures are in front of us now, ready to pounce and start devouring.

But I’m wrong.

“Lost Ones!”
yells Wisty.

And then there they are—their ragged shadows, the glinting light of their eye slits. And there are
so many
of them—dozens of the ghouls converging on us.

“This way,” I tell Wisty. “As soon as we see the yellows of their eyes, we’re going to the left—
hard
left.”

“I just hope it doesn’t put us right back into the mouths of those
other
killers!”

“Me, too. Left, then right. Stay on my back.”

The Lost Ones are looming up and fanning out as we get close, but we’re not yet close enough. “Not yet, not yet, not yet,”
I tell Wisty.

And I brace myself for their cold. Fifteen yards, ten yards, five yards—there it is! The cold hits us like a ton of ice.

“Now!” I yell, and wheel left, my hand holding Wisty’s behind me.
She’s
got
to keep up. One, two, three, four, five, six, seven
—“Back right!”

And then, behind us, the moaning suddenly meets the howling and it’s as if there’s a battle royal going on between all the
mummies and werewolves ever conceived.

“It worked!” I yell. “So far anyway. Keep watching for them—
everywhere.
”

And then more happens in the next five seconds than has happened in any other moment of my life, or probably anyone else’s.

We hear Byron scream out, “Call them off, you idiot!”

“You call off yours!” replies a female voice, one that makes my heart race and then go cold in the next beat.

“There’s a portal!” yells Wisty, pointing at the telltale fog swirl ahead.

“That was
Celia’s
voice!” I gasp, stopping in my tracks.

“Don’t you
dare,
” my sister snaps.

And then, though I have ninety pounds on her and a whole lot more muscle and sports experience than she does, my little sister
hits me with a flying tackle that takes me out at the knees and drives me straight through the portal.

Okay… it’s not
quite
that simple. It never is.

Whit

I DON’T KNOW
where
I am exactly, but somehow I’m not too worried about it. I’m with
Celia,
and that’s all that matters for the moment.

“I had the weirdest dream about you,” I tell her. “I was running from dozens of Lost Ones —”

“We only have a short time together,” interrupts Celia. “Let’s not waste it.”

She presses her head against my chest, and I’m sure she can hear my heart beating. I’ve missed her so much, so badly, constantly.
The only weird thing is, for some reason she put on too much of her perfume. I mean, I love the smell of it, but it’s so strong
right now I keep fighting back sneezes and my eyes are stinging.

“I love you,” I whisper urgently. “I missed you so much.”

“We only have a short time together,” she says. “Let’s not waste it.”

Didn’t she just say that? Ah, who cares?
We hug, and it feels as if we’re merging into one again. I love that—it’s incredible. Her presence and mine joining together
like two clouds intermingling in a sunny sky.

“Have you ever felt this amazing?” I ask. “I haven’t.”

“We only have a short time together,” she says. “Let’s not waste it.”

What the —? Hey, wait a second, is this a dream? Oh no, there’s something wrong with her face! Is that —? Oh God… oh no!