Witch & Wizard by James Patterson, Gabrielle Charbonnet Read Free Book Online

then burning, and I gasped and clutched my hand to my chest.
    “No, you don’t, witch,” the Death figure commanded. “Your days of controlling people and objects with your evil powers are over.
I
am here now. I am your
Visitor.
”

Whit
    WHEN THAT BULLYING, cowardly freak smacked Wisty’s hand with his snake whip, I almost lunged for him. I was ready to fight to the death, whatever it took. Nobody hits my sister.
    Wisty bravely cradled her hand and watched him, her jaw set.
    I glared at this Visitor creep, trying to distract him. “Let me guess. No one loved you as a child. Or as an adult. Well, tough noogies!”
    Then,
smack!
I gasped as the riding crop whipped across my face, opening up my skin with a white-hot sting. Blood started running down my cheek.
    “This is your first full day at the Hospital, wizard,” said the Visitor. “So I’m going to be especially gentle with you. But you won’t ever speak to the Matron or me that way again. We’re the only things standing between you and a fate far worse than death.”
    “So there’s something
worse
than being kidnapped in the middle of the night, kept in prison, sentenced to death in a laughable trial, and then locked up in a condemned hospital with two sadists? It’s going to get
worse?!
”
    “Are you done?” he asked calmly.
    I shrugged and was just deciding what to say next when the crop zapped out of nowhere and hit me on the left ear, then the right ear, then the tip of my chin.
    “Yessss. Much worse,” said the Visitor. “Your file indicated you weren’t the brightest bulb in the chandelier. At any rate, you would do well to learn this much:
this
”—he sighed and gestured around our dank and disgusting cell—“is your new home.
    “We have armed guards, security cameras, electronic perimeters, and multiple lethal safeguards that I’m not at liberty to discuss. Also, you’ll have no luck circumventing any of these systems with your trickery. This entire building has been altered to dampen your energies, and you will find you have no powers here. In short, once you walked in the door, you effectively became
normal.
”
    Wisty and I exchanged a glance meaning “except for glowing.” I swear we could read each other’s mind sometimes, especially lately.
    “As to this room’s amenities, please note that your one external window has a western exposure, through which you can see the blackness of a ten-story-deep ventilation shaft, the bottom of which is fitted with a turbine that could grind a blue whale into mush in less than ten seconds. Feel free to throw yourselves down it at any time.”
    He continued like a hotel bellman describing an executive suite. “You also have your own semiprivate bathroom, complete with our special-issue toilet paper that feels so airy, you’ll swear it’s not even there.”
    I looked into our doorless bathroom nook, which contained a seatless toilet surrounded by dust and chunks of fallen plaster, and I confirmed that, yes, in fact,
there was no toilet paper.
    The Visitor looked down his long, hooked nose at us. “I will be back periodically to check on you,” he said in his deep zombielike voice. “If you misbehave in any way, well”—he paused and gave a smile that would have made a crocodile look cheerful—“I will mete out punishment.”
    Sssst!
The riding crop slashed through the air, missing my eye by a whisker. “I’ll see you soon….
Promise.
”
    Then he was gone, and the lock turned behind him.
    “I don’t much care for him,” said Wisty. “You?”

Whit
    WISTY THEN SUMMED UP our situation with typical offhanded precision.
    “This totally sucks,” she said.
    I considered that. Between our various bruises, bumps, cuts, welts, and torn clothes, it looked like we’d been in a cage match with a wolverine.
    I also had less than a month to live.
    “Much too optimistic,” I said. “You always see the bright side, don’t you?”
    I wandered around the room, trying to distract myself