“YUP, IT’S PRETTY much just us kids around here these days,” said the voice from the far cell. “I’ve been here nine days—I was one of the first. But in the last three days, this rat hole has really filled up.”
“Do you have any idea what’s going on?” Whit asked softly, so as not to attract a guard’s attention.
“Not a whole lot, jefe. But I heard some of the guards talking about a clean sweep,” the voice said quietly, close to the bars. “You remember hearing about the New Order?”
“Yeah,” I joined in, “but I wasn’t really paying attention.”
“Okay, so you’ve been living inside your head… somewhere dark and nasty,” said the voice. “But, if it’s any consolation, so was most of the rest of the country. See, the New Order is the political party that’s been winning all the elections. They’re in charge now. In just a few months they’ve gutted the old government and instituted the Council of Ones. Heard of them? The One In Command, The One Who Judges, The One Who Imprisons, The One Who Assigns Numbers, The One Who Is The One, blah, blah.”
“Okay, so, the New Order. Politics,” said Whit. “What’s that got to do with us?”
“They’re the Law
and
they’re the Order, amigos. They’re The Ones who put us here, and they’re The Ones who decide what to do with us.”
“But why are they doing these unspeakable things to
kids?
” I spoke up again.
“Because we talk back? Because we’re hard to control? Because we have an
imagination?
Because we’re not brain-washed yet? Who knows? Why don’t you ask The One Who Judges…
at your trial!
”
I squished myself against the bars as hard as I could, trying to see through to Whit. “
Trial?
What trial?” I asked. “We’re going to trial? For what?”
Wham!
A guard had sneaked up, grabbed my arm through the bars, and twisted it the wrong way. “If you keep talking to the other prisoners, I’ll put you all in solitary!” he growled.
He gave my arm another hard, agonizing twist and laughed like some crazy old cartoon villain. I was so mad I wanted to tear the bars down and kick him in the throat—and all of a sudden an electric rush traveled up my body.
Uh-oh.
The next thing I knew, I was watching the guard through a sheet of flames. Flames that were coming from… me.
Again.
“Agh!” the guard shouted as the sleeve and pants leg of his uniform caught fire. He ran and grabbed an extinguisher, spraying himself as a team of his buddies converged on my cell.
“Wisty!” Whit yelled. “Duck!”
I threw my hands up to cover my face as I was drenched with flame-smothering foam. Correction:
Wisty-smothering
foam. Then suddenly the flames were out and I looked like a flocked Christmas tree, a lemon-meringue pie, a red-haired zombie snowman, risen from the dead.
“No more tricks,” said the guard hoarsely. “You’re coming with me.”
Four New Order guards with bats and stun guns stomped in and grabbed my arms, hauling me out to the walkway. Four more creeps were opening Whit’s cell.
By the time the guards shoved us into a room marked INTERROGATION, I was ready to show The One Who Interrogates just why I had two weeks of detention racked up at my school.
But when the door opened, it was just that spud, Byron Swain, followed by a pair of guards. “Miss me?” he asked with a sickening grin.
BYRON’S INSURANCE-SALESMAN HAIRCUT, colorful polo shirts, and ironed chinos—but most of all his know-it-all attitude—had marked him as a major kiss-up back at school. This close, his face looked pinched and mean, like that of a pet ferret with hall-monitor aspirations.
Tossing a folder on the metal table, he nodded to the two guards, and they stepped back against the wall.
“Have you been working out, Swain?” I asked, clenching my fists. “I mean, it doesn’t look it, but don’t you need to have at least
six
guards backing you up?”
Swain’s face flushed bright red. “We both know why you’re here,” he said, pacing. “Hmmm?”
The little twerp was trying to sound authoritative and manly, but his naturally whiny, nasal voice cracked through at the end of every sentence. His cold eyes didn’t leave my face. “The sooner you admit your secrets and tell us what we want to know, the better it will be for you and your freaky fire-breathing sister.”
“Got no idea what you’re talking about, skippy,” I said.
His weaselly eyes narrowed. Suddenly he leaned on the table, getting nose-to-nose with me.
“You can back off the drama-queen performance, okay?” I told him.
“Are you two miscreants protecting someone?!” he snapped, ignoring my taunts. “Well,
they’re
certainly not protecting you. Your good friends have already told us everything we need to know. We’re aware of your drinking problems,
Whitford.
And we hardly need corroboration of your sister’s pyromaniac tendencies. But those are just the license plates on the truckload of information your ‘friends’ delivered up. It was beautiful. I mean, a handful of marbles couldn’t have rolled any easier.”
“That right?” I said. “Like, they told you where I keep my stash of doughnut holes? My gaming cheat codes? The D on my last bio test that my folks don’t know about? Somehow, getting grounded isn’t the threat it used to be!”
“You almost flunked biology?” Wisty whispered as I watched a vein appear in Byron’s forehead. “Cool.”
“Shut up, freak!” he roared at Wisty, who just stuck out her tongue. “I saw what you did earlier! You burst into flames! And you weren’t even hurt afterward! If that’s not sick and wrong, I don’t know what is! You think it’s bad, being here in this wussy prison? It will get a lot worse! Trust me on that, you deviants—a
lot
worse.”
“You know, Byron,” Wisty said in her most insulting la-di-da voice, “
you’re
the freak, actually. We could put
you
on our secret voodoo witchcrafty to-do list.”
At that, Swain snapped. Lunging across the table, he grabbed Wisty’s arm so hard she yelped. And then, the weirdest thing—and that’s saying something—a flash of blinding light leaped between my sister’s free hand and Byron’s chest.
The creep squealed like a guinea pig and was thrown backward, falling on his butt near the astounded guards.
My eyes nearly falling out of my head in disbelief, I looked over at my sister and realized she had just hit Byron with a lightning bolt.
Lightning. A small bolt, sure, but
lightning!
From her
fingertips!
“More proof!” Byron squeaked, his voice sounding extracrispy and his face almost purple. He was rubbing his chest, obviously horrified by the burn mark on his shirt. “You
are
a witch! You’ll be locked up forever!” He got to his unsteady feet and staggered from the interrogation room.
“You’re throwing lightning at people now?” I asked Wisty. “I mean,
whoa.
”
I MUST HAVE FALLEN OFF to sleep soon after Spud Swain’s visit. Then I woke in my cell with hot tears rolling down my cheeks.
It’s not that I’m a total wuss, though I can be during sappy movies sometimes. I was crying because I’d just talked to Celia—in a dream, I guess it was a dream, but it felt so real to me. No, it
was
real. I remembered hugging Celia tight to my chest like we were on the most heart-breaking date of all time.
“Hi, Whit, missed you,” she said, like it was perfectly normal for me to be seeing her again after all these months with her missing. “I’m trying to act casual, and failing pretty bad,” she said with a gentle smile. “Sorry.”
“Celia, are you okay? What happened to you?” I blurted out. My heart was pounding like a bass drum.
“We’ll get to all that. I promise. The question is, are
you
okay? Is Wisty?”
“Sure—you know me, Celia, I can roll with it. And Wisty is tough as nails. She’s
smoking,
actually.” I chuckled weakly at my own joke. “I guess we’re a little weirded out, though.”
Celia smiled again, and I just about couldn’t stand it. I’d had no idea how much I’d missed that incredible grin of hers until right now. And she was prettier than ever—if that was even possible. Smooth skin, long dark curls, the brightest blue eyes that always told me the truth, even if I didn’t want to hear it.
“You look great, Whit—for somebody who’s been kidnapped, beaten up, and jailed illegally.” Now a half smile.
“Forget about me. I want to hear everything about you. Celia,
what
is going on? Where did you go?”
She winced, then her head slowly moved from side to side, and tears rolled from her eyes. “That’s a tough question. And I know I just got here, Whit, but I really have to go now. I just had to make sure you were okay. And Whit—it’s hard to believe
I’m
saying this to
you,
of all people—you really have to hang tough. You and Wisteria. Otherwise you’ll both be dead.”
Then Celia was gone—I was wide awake—and I’d been warned about what to do next.
Hang tough.
I USED TO THINK detention was kinda fun. A badge of honor, almost. Man, how quickly things can change.
This was the real thing.
My old life, and the days of recklessly skipping class, felt like a million worlds away now. I missed it, and our house, and especially our mom and dad, so badly that I felt like I was going to lose it.
I stared at the ceiling and daydreamed, remembering… How Mom used to lie in bed with Whit and me when we were really little, and she’d laugh and laugh, and tell us that she was teaching us how to love laughter, because it was one of the very best things in life, maybe the best.
And…
How Dad always said he had to be our father, not our friend—and that there was an important distinction between the two—but somehow he ended up being our best friend anyway.
And…
How we went on all of those great family trips to art museums such as the Betelheim and the Britney. And then those potentially corny family camping trips, one every season—no matter how cold or rainy it was—and we learned how to survive in the world, but more than that, to love what was out there, just waiting to be discovered.
Like this great oak tree that was in our yard—the one that Whit and I learned to climb almost as soon as we could walk… and
fall
.
And then… there were two guards at my door.
With handcuffs.
And leg shackles.
“For me?” I beamed at the two creeps. “Aw, you shouldn’t have.”
Amazingly, neither of them thought that was the least bit funny.
“Come on, witch!” one guard snapped. “It’s your day in court. Now you get to meet The One Who Judges… and you’re definitely not going to like him.”
“Of course,” said the other guard, “that’s only fair—he’s definitely not going to like you either.”
The guards thought
that
was hysterical.
SUNLIGHT—the first we’d seen in what seemed like ages—came streaming through thirty-feet-high windows in the courtroom, almost blinding us. I squinted and tried to shield my eyes, only to whack my forehead with my handcuffs.
Klutz much?
I had thought by now I’d be hard to shock, but I couldn’t believe the scene in front of me.
A mammoth portrait of The One Who Is The One hung at the center of the room, like he was a conquering general or the emperor. There was a huge metal cage in front of the judge’s desk—yes, a cage, like for shark diving. One guard held the door open, and the other one pushed us into it.
Into a
cage.
In a courtroom.
“I’m almost getting used to looking through bars,” Wisty said, sounding resigned. Not like Wisty at all.
“Don’t say that,” I whispered sharply. “We’re getting out of this madhouse. I promise.”
But how? I scanned the courtroom. Surrounding us was an impenetrable wall of indifference, even hatred. Plus at least a dozen armed guards.
A judge—The One Who Judges, I assumed—glowered from a high platform right in front of us, his thin, greasy gray hair stuck down to his scalp.
On the right-hand side of the courtroom, behind a low wall, a jury stared vacantly at us. They were all grown-ups, all men, and apparently they seemed to think two innocent kids appearing on trial in a cage was nothing unusual.
So it was official now: the world had gone totally crazy.
THE ONE WHO JUDGES put tiny glasses on his long, beaked nose and scowled down at us. I read his gold plaque:
JUDGE EZEKIEL UNGER
.
He picked up a piece of paper. “Whitford Allgood!” he read in a stinging voice. “Wisteria Allgood! This trial is convened because you are accused of the most serious crimes against the New Order!” He glared at us.
There was a standing-room-only audience of grown-ups behind us. I turned to see the crowd better. The few of them who looked at me were cold-eyed and full of hatred.
I rubbed my forehead against my arm as the judge angrily read a bunch of legal-sounding gibberish.
I peered at the jury—surely some of them had to feel sorry for two kids who looked hungry and dirty? Kids in handcuffs, in a cage, with no lawyer? But their faces were frozen in expressions of condemnation. It was as if they were being paid to dislike us. Was there some neon sign above our heads that read SCOWL instead of APPLAUSE, like on the live TV shows?
“What have we done?” Wisty suddenly yelled at the judge. “Just tell us that. What are we accused of?”
“Silence!” the judge shouted. “Listen, you contemptuous girl! You are a most dangerous threat to everything that is proper and right and good. We know this from police witnesses to your recent perpetrations of the dark arts. We know this from innumerable investigations undertaken by the New Order’s Investigative Security Agency, and we know this, most fundamentally, because of the Prophecy.”