Witch & Wizard (17 page)

The conduit was completely dark, but I figured I’d be able to see better when my eyes adjusted. Or I could always set myself on fire. Almost snickering at the vision of a flaming rodent skittering through the prison, I stretched my neck in through the slats, then squeezed my body most of the way. One final heroic tug, and I was suddenly dropping down, down,
down,
into nothing.

THERE’S A GOOD REASON our worst nightmares are so often about falling. That deer-in-the-headlights awareness that something really,
really
bad’s coming, but not being able to
do
anything about it, is probably the world’s best (or should I say
worst?
) recipe for ultimate, deluxe, supersize terror.

I plunged headlong into the spinning, blurring darkness, bouncing off one dusty metal wall and then another, flailing in order to catch something—anything—to slow my descent.

But there was nothing. Just the wind blowing harder and harder as I fell faster and faster.

And faster.

And still there was no sign of the bottom. Although, in this pitch-dark shaft, I probably wouldn’t even see it coming.

“STOP!” I squealed mindlessly.
Think fast, Wisty.
I was a witch. A witch could use magic. Magic could stop a falling object. Whit stopped a gavel in midair. Why couldn’t I stop something as small and light as a mouse?

I gestured with my paws, I flicked my tail like a wand, I wished and raged the way I had in the past when I’d gone invisible or burst into flames… but nothing worked. I felt about as magical as a tomato. A tomato dropping from the roof of a very tall building.

About to go
splat!

I have to say, the old cliché about your life flashing before your very eyes is dead-on. I saw it all: Wisty, the feisty but loving daughter. Wisty, the high school truant. Wisty, the bad, scary witch. Wisty, the Liberator. Wisty, the Roadkill. Or something that was about to look a lot like it anyway.

Then it hit me. Literally stopped my panicked breath. Not the force of a hard surface. Instead, I was clobbered by a rank
smell
that was about a hundred times worse than Whit’s gym bag.

And I was falling right toward it.

A dim light began to fill the tube below me, and in an instant I saw where my free fall would come to an end: in the prison garbage pile.

Luckily, a mesh screen was fastened across the opening to the shaft. I hit it at what felt like sixty miles an hour. It’s a good thing the wire had some give to it, or I’m sure I would have been flattened on the spot. If the screen had been tighter or any thinner, it might have passed through me like an apple corer.

As it was, the thing worked like an overstretched trampoline and sent me rebounding back up into the vent before my final smackdown.

The force of the impact knocked the wind out of me, and I was instantly sure I’d broken some ribs and my left foreleg. Judging from how my head was throbbing and the fact that I couldn’t see straight, I probably had a concussion too.

Shaken, injured, disoriented, but alive, I forced myself to scan my surroundings. I’d made a serious dent in the screen, and the rusty old clasps that held the thing in place had nearly bent straight.

Then I recoiled at the sound of some squeaky chattering below me. I choked back my vertigo—I’m so bad about heights I usually turn around and face upward on down escalators—then rolled over and peered through the screen.

It wasn’t technically a trash pit but an open-topped steel container, filled with torn bedding, soiled inmate uniforms, and revolting scraps from the prison kitchen. And—wait—it was full of
eyes
staring right at me!

Rats.
Dozens of them. Filthy-furred, greasy-tailed, evil-looking.

I’m not especially squeamish about them normally. My science teacher even had one in the classroom last year. But these weren’t nice white pet-store rats like Mr. Nicolo’s. And I wasn’t a human girl here. I was a mouse—aka
prey.

Come on, magic. Come on.
A spell to let me climb or fly? A spell to let me banish rats to oblivion? A spell to turn me into a large cat? A spell to make this all into a dream I could wake up from?

But my mind, my energy, my spirit, were stone-cold frozen. All I could manage was to stare back at the rats—at their matted fur, their soulless black eyes, their wicked yellow teeth, their wormy pink tails.

I was safe for the moment. There was at least eight feet of space between me and them, and unless they were really good with cheerleader-squad pyramids, they wouldn’t be able to get anywhere near me.

I looked up into the shaft and spied a ridge, a seam in the metal where two sections had been welded together. It wasn’t much, but it might be enough to grip. And if there was another seam above that, and another above that…

I jumped desperately upward, my good foreleg out-stretched, and missed.

And that was too bad, because the clasps on the screen really weren’t ready for me to fall on them again, and they promptly gave way.

No, no,
no!

The screen swung open and I fell backward, helplessly airborne once again, plunging toward the trash and the nightmare scrum of rats.

I THINK WE ALL CAN recognize that rats are not the cutest animals in the world. But until you’re one-tenth their size, you don’t really have a good sense of just how unsavory they are. To be as up close to them as I was right then… well, personally I’d rather face a tiger or a grizzly bear.

At least tigers and bears don’t nest in trash heaps. These prison rodents smelled as if they’d give you an incurable disease just by brushing against you, to say nothing of what would happen if they sank their bone-splintering teeth into you.

They quickly circled around me as I landed on the heap and gasped for breath in the suffocating stink. There was no spark of mercy in their lightless eyes. And judging by the drool coming out of their crooked mouths, I was clearly
way
more appetizing than whatever moldy items they’d been finding in this revolting pile of rancid kitchen grease, soup bones, shredded uniforms, soaked mattress stuffing, rat droppings, and unidentifiable brown-and-black sludge.

Not wasting a moment to think about spells—or germs—I leaped at the largest gap in their circling pack and sprinted as fast as my aching body, and the slippery, treacherous sludge pile, would allow.

It was no use. Even beyond the first ring of rats, more were swarming. In a moment they had seized each of my legs and had pinned me down in the slimy pile.

A lean, fanged creature the size of a small wildcat loomed over me, snuffling my fur and drooling like I was a fresh-from-the-oven chocolate chip cookie… a treat for the Rat King.

I clenched my eyes shut and, well, screamed my fool head off.

And wouldn’t you know it—right then, without any warning, I was sprouting like a charmed beanstalk in a fairy tale.

I’d become my full-size human self again!

Good news: the mouse spell must have worn off at just the right moment! And my human self wasn’t all busted and broken. Bad news: maybe the last shred of magic I possessed had just evaporated. Good news:
Who freaking cares?
I just escaped death by dismemberment. And digestion.

And then more bad news: my transformation back into human form had not been accompanied by a new wardrobe. There I was, lying in garbage, rats all over me, not a shred of clothing between me and them. I was
stark naked.

A big pink rat chew toy.

But I’d suddenly become the largest creature in the trash, and the rats were pretty freaked out. They scurried up and over the top of the container.

I, in the meantime, quickly picked through the disgusting pile for an abandoned prisoner uniform to wear, and noticed the lettering on the back of each shirt:

NEW ORDER REFORMATORY

NO. 426

I finally found a uniform that fit and that wasn’t entirely soaked through with sludge. I numbly put it on, nearly oblivious to its smell and sickening dampness.

There was a set of steel rungs at the front wall of the container, and—having never wanted anything more dearly than to be away from this rat-infested garbage pile—I climbed them faster than a bionic squirrel… and vowed to never make another rodent-based metaphor ever again.

Next I lowered myself out of the container to the floor and squinted around in the dimly lit indoor loading bay. I spotted the outline of a regular door atop a nearby loading dock and hurried to it.

It was unlocked, and I slowly pulled it open, allowing my eyes to adjust to the bright fluorescent light beyond. It appeared to be a service corridor. Everything seemed quiet, so I cautiously stuck my head out into the hall.

I didn’t do it cautiously enough, though. The six prison guards who had just turned the corner saw me right away.

I DIDN’T EVEN HAVE a split second to suck in a rejuvenating breath of non-stench-filled air before I had to take off running blindly like my life depended on it.

Which it did.

“Escapee!” one of the guards yelled as another slammed a red button on the wall, setting off earsplitting sirens and eye-shattering strobe lights.

As long as I didn’t have control over my magic and was stuck in my enemy-friendly, easy-to-catch-and-destroy human form, I had about a 1 percent chance of survival. But I hung on to that 1 percent. Like crazy. It fueled me like a cheap sugar high. I wasn’t going to do my parents any good if I got caught and killed.

I reached a stairwell and sprinted up two, three steps at a time. Made me wonder if I’d accidentally come back with longer legs in my mouse-to-Wisty morph. One flight, two flights, three flights, the boot steps behind me getting closer with every passing second. But I was still ahead.

Adrenaline rocks.

When I got to the last landing and the door to the roof, I heaved against the exit bar—and then I was out on top of the gravel-covered building. I bolted in the only direction that wasn’t blocked by concertina wire.

“Stop right there! There’s no escape!” I heard a meat-head guard shout as he burst through the door behind me.

I skidded to a painful stop at the edge of a precipice that overlooked the central cell block’s courtyard, a concrete parade area five stories below.

The guards knew they had me trapped. My only chance was to cross the courtyard gap on a two-foot-wide conduit—a metal round-backed pipe that stretched across the massive opening in the roof.

Anyone would be insane to try it. But
me?
Aside from the heights thing, balance and I don’t have a good history. I’m serious. Ask Whit sometime about my one attempt at snowboarding.

Without turning to look at my pursuers, I carefully stepped out on the pipe and, arms pinwheeling, started across the pit.

“Stop and come back. You’ll kill yourself!” yelled one of the guards, his tone not exactly overflowing with concern.

But I was already a quarter of the way across. I was making it!

It seemed like as long as I continued to move quickly, my momentum kind of kept me steady. And it probably helped that I was barefoot and the pipe was pitted with rust and not very slippery. I just kept my eyes focused on the far side of the pipe and made sure not to look down.

Which ended up being sort of a mistake, because a rope was fastened around the pipe at the halfway point. I failed to notice it.

I stubbed my toe, lost my balance, and fell into space.

“THAT TRAIN IS COMING!” Emmet howled, swiveling nervously in his seat.
“Straight for us!
Fast,
really
fast!

“Get out of here, kids!” he shouted, grabbing for the door. “Leave the van! Immediately! Now, now, now!”

“No!”
Margo yelled. “Drive, Whit! Stay put, everybody! Nobody moves! We have to outrun it. There’s nowhere else for us to go!”

The van was actually starting to vibrate with the train’s approach. I cranked the key and got a dull sputtering sound.

Attention, passengers: the train bound for Instantaneous Death is now approaching the platform on track one.

“I want to go back to prison!” I heard one of the kids cry out from the din of screaming and sobbing.

I cranked the engine again. Nothing happened.

Cold sweat broke out on my forehead—small, very distinct worry beads. The train’s whistle swelled to a wail as the ground trembled. I tried to block out the screams.

I touched my hand to the key again.

Concentrate,
I thought.
I have life in my hands. This energy must pass through me…. This van MUST go. THESE KIDS… MUST… LIVE!

And then I did feel something coursing through me, unpleasant and weird, as if I’d stuck a wet finger in a light socket. My hands felt as if they were aflame as a physical force flew through my fingers and into the van’s key.

I had to admit: I felt like… I was a wizard. Like I had superpowers. Like I was guilty as charged by The One Who Judges.

Suddenly the engine roared to life like it was the Lazarus of minivans.

Everyone went silent. A hopeful silence. Of course, we were still on the subway tracks with a train barreling down on us.

I slammed my foot down on the gas pedal. The wheels spun, spitting rocks and garbage out behind us. The train’s headlight flooded our van, its horn so loud that it filled every inch of space inside my head.

And the van’s wheels continued to churn in place. Hope, crushed.

Good-bye, Wisty,
I thought.
So long, Mom and Dad.

Then there was a lurching, the bottom of the vehicle screeching against the metal tracks. We surged forward.

Margo was shouting, “Go! Go! Go!”

“Thanks for the tip!” I shouted back.