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

from the burning pain of my injuries. But I was having trouble forming thoughts… other than self-torturing ones about juicy burgers and black-and-white milk shakes… and cheese fries. I’d never been so hungry in all my life.
    Then I noticed Wisty sitting on the mattress, moving her lips silently.
    “Talking to yourself already?” I asked.
    “Why not? We’re in an insane asylum.” She smiled, then looked a little bit sheepish. “Actually, if you need to know, I’m trying to come up with a spell. You know, to get us out of here. If I’m a witch, I ought to be able to go ‘
shazam
’ and blast the door open.”
    “They said we had no power here. You weren’t paying attention to The One With The Bullwhip.”
    “Really? Then tell me that my little radioactive moment was just a weird dream,” she said.
    “Okay, you win, glowgirl,” I said. “So, you think ‘shazam’ will do it? Go for it.”
    She waved her hands at the door.
“Shazam!”
she yelled.
    Snick!
It popped right open.

Whit
    “HERE. BOTH OF YOU!” The Matron’s bigfoot-size body filled our doorway. “Come with me, vermin. I suppose it’s time you learned how to get food and water.”
    In the woman’s massive hands were two beat-up plastic pails, which she flung out to us. Call it a hunch, but this already didn’t look good. I’d have done anything to get a drink of water, though. The sink in our bathroom didn’t work… and what was in the toilet wasn’t exactly, um, potable.
    We each took a pail and followed the Matron as she noisily clomped down the dark hall, her keys jangling with each lurching step and her preternaturally huge feet sausaged into chunky white shoes.
    I started to make out noises ahead, and they were vaguely… animalish. Snarls, growls, and high-pitched whines filled my ears.
    “What is this?” Wisty croaked. “Now what?”
    The Matron gestured toward the end of the hall. “There’s food way, way,
way
down there. And water. Use your pails.” She looked down at her enormous steel-banded watch. “You have four minutes. If you’re not back by then”—her black eyes shone and her mouth stretched in a horrible approximation of a smile—“then I’ll know you’ve passed to the other side. Violently.”
    Turning, she clomped her way back to the nurses’ station fifty yards behind us. “Take care,” she called.
    My palm was already sweaty where I held on to the thin metal handle of my pail. The hallway in front of us was lined on either side by… canine animals of some sort. Mad dogs? Wolves? Black-furred hyenas? Hungry, angry, hostile animals, chained to the walls up and down the hallway.
    Somehow we had to get past them—and back—in four minutes… but only if we wanted food and water.
    Only if we wanted to live.

Wisty
    ANYONE WHO’S EVER BEEN on the verge of a major disaster, possibly even death, will tell you that the most mundane things can go through your mind. Just before I was about to sacrifice my life to the animals, I thought about a really mean dog that used to live on our block. When I was little, my friends and I always rode our bikes on the other side of the street, because the dog looked wild and we were scared it would break free and bite our butts.
    Her name was Princess. She was a shih tzu. And she now seemed like a fuzzy teddy bear that I could have dressed up in doll clothes for a tea party.
    “Are those
dogs?
” Whit asked hoarsely as we started down the hallway. “Or wolves?”
    I shook my head. “I’m going with hellhounds.”
    “Do you think maybe you could burst into flames again?” Whit whispered.
    “I can’t do it on purpose,” I croaked, frustrated. “I’m trying. Not happening.”
    “Okay. Well, I’ll go,” Whit rasped back, then blew out a thin gust of air.
    “No,” I wheezed. “I’m small and fast.”
    Before Whit and I had a chance to finish the argument, we saw a small, indistinct figure appear at the end of the hall. Holding a pail.
    “Who’s