Witch & Wizard Read Free Page A

exactly.

Whit
    I HADN’T HALLUCINATED before, but when I saw Wisty burst into flame, that’s what I suspected it was—a stress-induced hallucination.
    I mean, I expect even well-rested, grounded, grief-free people wouldn’t just go,
Oh, look at that, my little sister just turned herself into a human torch.
Am I right?
    But pretty soon—what with the heat and the smoke and our living room drapes catching on fire—it started to dawn on me that this was really happening.
    Then I thought the New Order thugs had
set
her on fire. So I guess that’s how I manage to muster enough rage to break free of their grasp. And I swear I would’ve decked the creeps if I hadn’t had to scramble madly to help put her out first.
    Then utter chaos broke loose in our house.
    I’ve never been in a tornado before, but that’s immediately what I thought was happening. The windows suddenly exploded, and the wind poured in with the force of an angry mountain river, hurling things—broken glass, floor lamps, side tables—around the living room.
    I couldn’t hear anything over the noise, and it was raining so hard that the water itself—to say nothing of the debris it was carrying—stung like a cloud of bees getting shot through a leaf blower.
    And of course I couldn’t see anything either. To open your eyes would have been asking to be permanently blinded by wood splinters, glass shards, and plaster chunks.
    So my breaking free from the thugs didn’t do me a bit of good. We were all clinging to the floor, to the walls, to anything that seemed more solid than ourselves, just trying not to get sucked out a window and flung to our deaths.
    I tried yelling for Wisty, but I couldn’t even hear my own voice.
    And then—in an instant—everything was still and quiet.
    I moved my face out of the crook of my arm… and took in a sight I won’t forget for the rest of my life.
    A tall, bald, extremely imposing man was standing there in the middle of our demolished living room. Not scary, you think? Think again.
    This is the dude who turns out to be evil personified.
    “Hello, Allgood family,” he said in a quiet, forceful tone that made me pay very close attention to every word. “I am The One Who Is The One. Perhaps you’ve heard of me?”
    My father spoke up. “We know who you are. We’re not afraid of you, though, and we won’t bend to your ugly rules.”
    “I wouldn’t expect you to bend to any rules, Benjamin. Or you, Eliza,” he said to my mother. “Aspiring deviants like you always value freedom above all else. But it doesn’t matter whether you accept this new reality or not. It’s the youngins I’m here to see. This is a command performance, you understand. I
command,
they obey.”
    Now the bald dude looked at my little sister and me, and he smiled quite congenially, even warmly.
    “I will make this simple for the two of you. All you have to do is renounce your former existence—your freedoms, your way of life, and your parents in particular—and you will be spared. You will not be harmed if you obey the rules. Not a hair on your heads will be touched. I promise. Renounce your former ways and your parents. That’s all. Simple as apple pie.”
    “No way!” I yelled at the guy.
    “Not going to happen. Ever,” Wisty said. “We renounce
you,
Your Baldness, Your Terribleness!”
    He actually chuckled at that, which totally caught me off guard.
    “Whitford Allgood,” The One said, and looked deeply into my eyes. Something strange happened then—I couldn’t move or speak, only listen. It was the scariest thing yet that night.
    “You’re a beautiful boy, I must say, Whitford. Tall and blond, slender yet well-muscled, perfectly proportioned. You have your mother’s eyes. I know that you were a very good boy until recently, ever since the sad and
unfortunate
disappearance of your girlfriend and soul mate, Celia.”
    Frustrated rage boiled up inside me. What did he know about Celia? He’d smirked when he spoke of