Witch & Wizard Read Free

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.
    And right then I felt this whooshing sensation, as if a stiff, hot wind were blowing up against me. In an instant, blood rushed to my head, my cheeks flooded with heat, and sweat seemed to leap from my skin and sizzle. There was a buzzing all around me, and then…
    You won’t believe me, but it’s true. I swear.
    I saw—and felt—foot-long
flames
burst out of every pore in my body.

Wisty
    I HEARD SCARED-SILLY SCREAMS everywhere, even from the commandos, as I stood gaping at the orange-yellow tongues of flame shooting off me.
    If you think that’s weird, listen to this: after that first moment, I didn’t feel the least bit hot. And when I looked at my hands, they were still skin-colored, not red or blackened.
    It was… far-out, actually.
    Suddenly one of the soldiers swung Mom’s porcelain vase at me. I was drenched—and the flames were gone.
    Byron Swain’s cronies were stamping out the drapes and some smoldering spots on the carpet where the soldiers had dropped me.
    But then Byron himself—who’d apparently fled the house during my immolation—reappeared in the doorway, his face faintly green. He pointed a spindly, shaking finger at me. “See?! See?!
See?!
” he shouted hoarsely. “Lock her up! Shoot her if you have to. Whatever it takes!”
    I was suddenly overcome by this horrible, stomach-twisting feeling that this night had been inevitable—that it was always meant to be part of my life story.
    But I had no idea why I thought that, or what it meant