Witch & Wizard (11 page)

For a split second, nothing happened, and I gripped her hand, ready to boogie down the hellway. Then the dogs’ yelps and barks strangled to sudden silence.

The animals actually froze in place.

Paws were raised, jaws gaped hungrily—several of the beasts were actually in midlunge at us, standing on their hind legs.

“Yes!
I’m a witch!
” Wisty yelled. “Let’s go!”

“Perfect! You’re amazing, Wisty!” said Celia, right by my side. “There’s the portal!” She pointed near the end of the hallway, at a blank wall that showed no obvious signs of opening up or turning into foam or anything like that. “Run as fast as you can! Now!”

I couldn’t get out of my mind those videos we’d watched in driver’s-ed class. Crash-test dummies going
kablooey
in slow mo as the cars smashed into walls.

No,
I thought.
Think “victory, victory, victory.”

The Matron and the guards were right behind us, halfway through the frozen dogs. So I rushed at the wall like I was a quarterback again—and I went right through the portal to the other side.

But I lost my grip on Wisty’s hand. She just slipped away, screaming my name.

I lost Wisty!

MY FEET LANDED on something hard, maybe a stone floor, and I somersaulted to a stop.

I leaped up.
“Wisty!”
I yelled.
“Sis?”

From the Shadowland side of things, I could see her still standing in the Hospital hallway. It was like I was looking through a pane of thick, wavy glass. Celia was trying to grab hold of Wisty, but she couldn’t, of course. It’s a ghost thing, I guess.

Then I saw Wisty raise her drumstick again and shout, “Release!”

Instantly the mad dogs roared back to life, surging around the guards and the Matron like a gigantic pileup in the middle of a ball field. Not only were the dogs released from their spell but they were released from their chains. One guard made it through the animals and rushed toward Wisty, starting to level his stun gun.

A dog broke free from the pack and bounded after him, baying like a hound released from hell.

The guard and the crazed dog were right on Wisty’s and Celia’s heels as they rushed toward the… well, whatever it was.

“Watch out!” I screamed.
“Right behind you!”

Wisty closed her eyes and pitched herself through the portal, stumbling right into me. “Whit!” she screamed. “It actually worked!”

Celia was with her, and right behind Celia, the dog dived paws-first through the portal. It came at us in mid-air, hit the floor, and skidded to a stop. Suddenly it looked not so much fierce and deranged as totally confused.

We all glanced back just as the guard slammed into the wall face-first. Behind him, the Matron’s white-uniformed figure was still being attacked by the pack of ferocious animals. Her enormous arms flailed, her stun gun knocked from her hand, spinning away. Then she disappeared under the pile of snapping mouths.
Bye-bye.

“
There’s
someone who’s working out some serious karma,” said Wisty, but instead of relishing the sight, I reached out to try to hug Celia in a moment of relief that we’d made it through to the other side.

It didn’t matter how awkward and ridiculous it was, trying to hug a ghost. That’s the cool thing about love. In my opinion anyway.

Just then a whimper made me jerk my head around.

“The dog,”
said Wisty, staring at it, expecting the worst.

“No, it must be okay—it’s a Curve dog,” Celia marveled. “A Curve is anyone who has access to the Underworld, whether they know it or not. This dog didn’t know it. It must not have been fully brainwashed by the Straight and Narrows.”

Its lips curled up in an ingratiating grin as if to say,
“Sorry I tried to eat you.”
Then the dog lowered its head further and sort of slunk toward us, low to the ground.

“It looks deeply sorry,” Celia said. “I wish I could pet it. Go ahead, Wisty. Pet it.”

“Maybe some other time,” Wisty said reluctantly. “We have a lot of history to work out first.” But then the dog sat and gazed up at her longingly, with the saddest brown eyes, looking much less horrible and insane than it had in Hell’s Kennel.

Wisty looked at me, and I knew what she was going to ask.

“You’re crazy,” I said, sighing.

“I’m nothing if not forgiving,” she said earnestly.

“Well, okay,” I grumbled. “Maybe it’ll be a watchdog or something useful in the Shadowland.”

Wisty winked at me, then looked at the dog and patted one knee. The animal stood up cautiously.

“You can come,” she told it, then added, “It’s a she. I’m going to call her Feffer.”

“Okay. Feffer it is,” I conceded. “Now let’s go meet some Curves and Half-lights and locate some new portals.”

Then there was a terrible crash—and we looked and saw the Matron’s face smashed up against the wall to the portal.

“Not a Curve,” said Wisty with a broad smile. “Didn’t think so.”

BRAVE NEW WORLDS

WHIT GRABBED ME in a bear hug that felt extraordinarily reassuring. “We’re outta there! We’re safe from her now.”

Safe from the Matron, maybe. But in the grand scheme of things, I wasn’t so sure we hadn’t just leaped out of the frying pan and into someplace a lot worse.

As I tried to get my bearings, it became apparent that this “other side” wasn’t at all what I had expected. For one thing, it was cold. Not freezing cold, but a sort of damp, penetrating cold that hurt your lungs. For another,
there wasn’t anything there
.

“Um… Celia… where are we again?” I asked.

“This is the Shadowland.”

I looked around. It wasn’t quite right to call the Shadowland a “land” at all. There were no trees, grass, buildings, water, sun—or, for that matter, anything but fog and haze.

“This is your… home?” I whispered, hugging myself for warmth and turning completely around. The portal, which I thought had just been at my back, was gone now.

“I would never call the Shadowland home,” Celia said with a head shake. “And I hope neither of you do either.”

I couldn’t see…
anything,
really, beyond Whit, Celia, and Feffer. It was like we were standing in a room with a gray backdrop, and everything beyond about ten or fifteen feet in any direction seemed to fade into hazy nothingness. It was unnerving, not having anything to focus my eyes on. A wave of claustrophobic panic washed over me.

“Celia…” Whit looked around uneasily. “We have to get you out of this place. You got us out of the Hospital. We can—”

“Whit, let it go,” Celia interrupted gently. “You may be a wizard, but no one can bring dead people back to life. Not even The One Who Is The One. Remember that. It’s a fact of life and death. It’s how you get past grief.”

Feffer started trotting off to explore, or maybe to find a Half-light squirrel to chase. The dog seemed to be the only one of us that had a sense of direction here, so I followed her lead. “What’s out here, Feffer?”

“Wisty,
no!
” Celia shouted.

I almost got mad at being yelled at like a two-year-old wandering away from Mommy at the mall—but I knew Celia wasn’t exactly the nervous type. And she sounded seriously freaked.

“This can be a very dangerous place for humans. Your senses don’t work here like they do in your world… and if you get any farther away from me and Whit, we could be entirely lost to one another. Especially because it’s possible to take a path that will lead you into a subdimension completely different from ours.”

I didn’t understand the dimension part, but I whirled around in a panic nonetheless.

I couldn’t see Feffer anymore.

“Feffer! Here, girl!” I whistled. “Come back, girl!” Strangely, I already felt an attachment to the reformed hellhound.

Feffer came trotting right back to me, and I knelt down to hug her. The warm scent of her fur seemed very real and comforting in this hollow place.

“Well, Feffer apparently didn’t have a problem,” I said, puzzled, as the dog, sniffing the ground, wandered off again.

“I said, dangerous for
humans,
” Celia clarified. “Feffer’s an animal, and she has animal instincts. We don’t use sight to get around in here. Half-lights and others who are tuned in to extrasensory forces have a much easier time navigating the Shadowland. Humans who’ve found the portals have usually gotten lost here.
Forever.
”

As if to punctuate the horror of this thought, we heard a distant moaning sound. Whit involuntarily grabbed my hand.

“Lost Ones,” said Celia. “They’re not close yet, and that’s the way we want to keep it. Believe me.”

“What would they do to us?” I asked.

“They’d…” Calm-and-collected Celia looked as if she might lose it. “Forget it, Wisty. It’s way too grim to talk about right now. Let’s just get you somewhere safe.”

“CELIA! YOU’RE ALL RIGHT!” we heard someone call out, and a tall blond girl, maybe Whit’s age, came bounding into view. She was a Half-light, I assumed, even though I’d never pictured dead girls wearing tank tops and pleated skirts… and chewing bubble gum.
And do dead girls really need glasses?
Maybe it was a fashion statement.

“You got your friends out!” the girl said, then hugged Celia, the way Half-lights hug. Hard to describe.

“This is Susan,” said Celia. “Susan, this is Whit Allgood and his sister, Wisty. Remember me telling you about Whit?”

Susan rolled her eyes. “Yes. Mr. Wonderful. Mr. Sensitive. Mr. Washboard Tummy. I think you mentioned Whit once or twice. Total pukka kind of guy. You said he was a work of art.”

I blinked. “Pukka” sounded a little pukey to me. Celia wasn’t the least embarrassed, though Whit got a tad pink in the cheeks.

“Welcome,” said Susan, who seemed funny and nice. “Glad you got out of the Hospital. That place is a total mingus. It’s where I was executed. For chewing gum on the street. I think.”

“I have to get these two to Freeland before any Lost Ones spot them,” said Celia.

“I agree,” said Susan. “I saw a small pack of them only a few minutes from here. They’ve probably sensed there are living humans around.”

“Well, let’s reunite these guys with their erlenmeyer weasel and get them out of here.”

Susan and Celia had started to lose me with all of their weird lingo until Celia mentioned Byron Traitor Suck-up. I’d forgotten all about him.

“He’s not exactly
our
weasel,” repeated Whit.

Just then we heard another distant chorus of spine-chilling moans.

“We don’t need to wait for him,
really,
” I said, cold sweat breaking out all over me.

“It’s no bother,” said Susan. “And we have to meet somebody else here anyway. In fact, here he comes. Yo, Sasha!” she yelled as a boy came running into view. I was starting to get used to
partially
solid people, so his opaqueness seemed out of place in the Shadowland. Then I realized he was probably a regular kid like us.

“You’re safe, Celia,” Sasha said with relief as she introduced us. He seemed older than me but maybe younger than Whit, and he had longish black hair and dark-blue eyes. He wore a Navy SEALS ball cap on backward, and his T-shirt read
FREEDOM
SHOULD
BE FREE
. I also noticed he was carrying a spool that trailed string into the gray haze behind him.

“So you find your way around here using
string?
” I asked him.

“Yeah,” he said. “I have some portal-sensing abilities, but it’s best to have backup. And bread crumbs are useless. But let’s talk about all that later. I heard a pack of Lost Ones on my way over here.” He was serious but wore an expression of easy confidence—which, in a split second, disappeared.

“Look out!” he yelled, and leaped in front of us to block the shape emerging from the fog. But it was just Feffer.

“Oh,” he said, embarrassed. “I’m guessing you brought a dog.”

“This is Feffer,” I said. “She came through the portal with us.”

“Cool, a Curve dog,” said Sasha, getting down on his knees to pet her. “You sure it’s gonna like your weasel?”

“He’s not
our
weasel,” Whit repeated. “Actually, that little rodent, that
varmint,
wanted to execute us.”

Just then another moan—sounding closer this time—cut through the gloaming. Celia’s beautiful eyes became a little sad. “Sasha, you need to lead them to the Freeland portal
right now.
”

Whit turned to her. “Can’t you come with us? You have to.”

Celia nodded. “Of course I will. But I can’t stay long, Whit. Or I’ll… cease to be. That’s another fact of life and death.”

“Let’s get out of here!” said a voice at my feet. I looked down and almost screamed.

“You’re taking the weasel,” Susan said firmly. “Incidentally, he needs a bath. And to be taught some manners. And some social skills.”