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  I pull her close to me and hold her tight. If I’m no longer magic, I won’t be a threat to our new government. I won’t be called a demon. I won’t be called on to wage epic battles against despotic sorcerers. My life with Janine will be quiet and sweet and ordinary—which is also extraordinary. And nothing will ever come between us.

  I take a deep breath. Then I rise and join the line.

  Chapter 16

  Whit

  TWO OVERSIZED AND vicious-looking orderlies wearing black scrubs watch me coldly as a nurse takes my blood pressure and listens to my thudding heart. When she’s pronounced me “fit to undergo the procedure,” Thug One grabs my right elbow; Thug Two takes my left.

  “You don’t need to drag me,” I point out as they propel me down the hall. “I came here of my own free will.”

  In the silence that follows—well, Thug One sort of grunts—I begin to wonder: are there some people who don’t come here by choice? Others who come willingly, but then change their minds? Are these goons here to make sure people go through with it?

  I’d ask, but they’re probably too dumb to understand the question, and anyway, I don’t have time, because they’re already shoving me through a set of swinging doors into an operating room.

  The walls, floor, and ceiling are a cold and spotless white. It feels like I’ve just stepped inside a king-sized refrigerator. There’s a huge, gleaming machine in the center of the room—it’s shaped kind of like a giant metal donut—and standing beside it is a kid I recognize from the last Council meeting. He was the short one in an argyle sweater, and he hung on Terrence’s every word. But now he’s in a white lab coat, and he’s smiling at me.

  It’s how I imagine a boa constrictor would smile, right before it squeezed you to death.

  “Good morning. Do you remember me, Mr. Allgood? I’m Dr. Starling,” he says. Then he gives a little shrug. “Well, I’m not really a doctor, but then neither are you, am I right? Funny how our lack of proper credentials hasn’t prevented us from working in health care.”

  “You can skip the pleasantries,” I say. “I’m not in the mood.”

  He laughs and motions for me to come closer until I’m towering over him. He has pale skin and squinty eyes. Now he seems less like a boa constrictor and more like a human toadstool. He taps me once on the sternum. Hard. “Strip to the waist, if you please, and lie down on the gurney.”

  My instant dislike of Starling sparks a flare of regret about my decision. The Whit Allgood of a few years ago would have wanted to sock the guy and head right back out the door, and no security thugs could have stopped me.

  But I’m a different person now. I remind myself that what I’m doing is important—and right. I’m doing it for the sake of the City. For the sake of peace. To get us all closer to the admittedly saner and more predictable world we used to live in, a world without magic.

  Slowly, I lift my shirt above my head and lie back on the table. The black-scrubbed goons strap me down with leather bands, one across my chest and two at my wrists.

  “Muscular, aren’t you?” Starling says. “Strong. Probably to compensate for a certain weakness in the cerebral region.” He giggles. “I’m only kidding. Isn’t this fun? Now, don’t move. I need to attach these electrodes.”

  He keeps up the chatter as he sticks cold suction cups on my hands, my chest, my head. There are even extra-small cups placed on my fingers. “Everyone asks if it’s going to hurt. Since you seem disinclined to make such a query, I will tell you: not usually. But sometimes!”

  That’s hardly a problem. My own powers have been hurting me enough lately. And I’ve made my choice. I’m not turning back.

  “Are you familiar with infrasound, Mr. Allgood?” Starling asks, attaching the last electrode and stepping back.

  I don’t look at him. “No.”

  “It’s a very low-frequency sound, which can travel great distances and easily penetrate structures, vehicles, and people, of course. Depending on the number of cycles per second, it has very interesting biophysical effects. Such as the elimination of… shall we say, unnatural talents.”

  The gurney begins to slide back, pulling me inside the donut. It’s dark and cramped inside—I wouldn’t be able to lift my arms even if they weren’t strapped down. I immediately feel claustrophobic. My breathing quickens. A low-frequency humming sound begins, then builds.

  Outside the machine, Starling’s still talking. He says something about possible side effects and complications, but I can’t really hear him anymore.

  My ears start to pop, and pressure begins to build in my head, as if there’s a rising tide inside my skull. Then my heart begins palpitating, and I feel like I’m going to be sick.

  The humming gets more intense. If you’ve ever wondered if you could feel sound instead of hearing it, the answer is, yes, you can.

  And it hurts. A lot.

  I try to clench my fists, but the tight straps at my wrists won’t let me. The pressure in my head keeps growing. I will myself not to cry out as the pain moves deeper into my body.

  It feels like I’m being stripped from the inside. As if there’s a vacuum inside me—a kind of spinning, sucking vortex—and everything that’s ever made me me is disappearing down into it.

  I can’t help it: I scream.

  And then I lose consciousness.

  When I wake up, however many minutes or hours later, I’m dry-heaving. Starling’s standing over me, an oily, smug look on his face. He takes the belts off my wrists and chest.

  “See, that wasn’t so bad, was it?” he asks. He pats my arm, and I’m too weak to shake him off. “Now you’re just like us!”

  Then he drops his hand and steps away. His eyes glitter in cruel satisfaction. “Although, as we already discussed, perhaps not as clever.” He sighs dramatically. “I wonder if your pretty girlfriend will still find you so special. Do let me know how that works out, will you? In the interest of science, of course.”

  I’d slug him if I could. But I can’t lift my arms.

  “Oh well, nothing we can do about that,” Starling continues. “Now, if you please, I have more operations to perform.” And he motions me toward the door.

  I can’t get out of here fast enough. I stand up—but then I fall to my knees. I don’t have the strength to walk.

  “Poor thing,” Starling says sarcastically.

  He gives a wave of his hand, and Thugs One and Two step forward again. Then they take me by the armpits and drag me out the door, with Starling’s harsh cackle still ringing in my ears.

  They leave me outside the rear entrance, pathetically crumpled on the pavement.

  Chapter 17

  Wisty

  WHERE IS MY BROTHER?

  I rode to Whit’s apartment this morning: empty. I checked his favorite greasy-spoon breakfast joint: no Whit. And now I’ve scanned the face of every person in line outside the Government Lab: nada.

  But the dull throb of dread in my guts tells me he’s nearby, and that he’s about to do something stupid.

  Something we’re both going to regret.

  I’m a jumpy, jittery jangle of nerves. I pace up and down the street talking to myself like a crazy person. Don’t do it, Whit. Don’t submit.

  At the corner, I see the Family’s latest graffiti tag, spray-painted blood red on the side of a building. It’s a series of intertwining Fs, and next to that, a picture of a stick figure holding a gun to another stick figure’s head. The drawing is crude, and for some reason that makes it even more chilling.

  Below it is a simple, scrawled question: Are you next?

  I shiver involuntarily. Walking on, I see more pictures: a hanging man, a headless woman, a person with a knife sticking out of his ribs.

  Apparently the Family has developed a real artistic streak—although the subject matter totally sucks.

  “Why doesn’t that person have a head?” pipes a small voice.

  I turn to see a boy in mismatched sneakers, looking worriedly at the savage pictur
es.

  I smile reassuringly. “Someone just forgot to draw it, I think! Here, let’s fix it.” With a wave of my fingers (and a quick jolt of M), I doctor the drawings. First I turn the gun into a huge bouquet of roses. Then I add a head to the headless woman, giving her cross-eyes and a goofy, bucktoothed smile.

  “All better?” I ask the kid.

  He nods happily, and we give each other a high five before he goes skipping off down the street.

  It makes me feel better—but only for about ten seconds. Then the anxiety’s back again, nagging at me like an itch I can’t scratch.

  Whit, where are you?

  I need an outlet for my energy or I’m going to blow a fuse. I figure some more magic will help, so, summoning my powers again, I turn a crow into a brilliant-green hummingbird. Better, right? I make a dying day lily open in bloom. Cool. I shoot a little jet of flame at a wasp and fry it to a blackened crisp. Well, nobody’s perfect.

  Then I snap my fingers, and a fire hydrant spews out water like a fountain. Out of nowhere, a dozen street kids appear and start splashing around in the cold stream, squealing with delight.

  There’s a little girl from the Lab line watching me. She’s on her way to be Excised, and she probably doesn’t even know what that means. I hope she’s too young to remember the day she gave up her powers. Her beautiful, chaotic uniqueness.

  I conjure a bright-red balloon and send it floating toward her. She reaches out for it. “Look, Mommy!”

  The mother glares at me. “That’s a renegade witch,” she says angrily. “Don’t touch that devil balloon.”

  The girl starts to cry, and immediately I feel terrible.

  But not nearly as terrible as when I spot Whit walking up behind the girl and her mother. For a split second, I don’t believe that the hunched figure could be my brother. He looks so… diminished. Like he’s been completely hollowed out.

  He’s holding Janine’s hand, and she’s whispering something in his ear. He’s walking so slowly, he could be a hundred years old.

  Oh, Whit, what have you done?

  A tidal wave of boiling anger and deep sorrow swallows up my heart. I don’t know whether to run to my brother and take him into my arms or haul off and punch him in the face.

  I’m leaning toward the latter, but instead I thrust my arms in the air. And immediately all the fire hydrants on the street explode, sending streams of water shooting into the sky.

  Then the bright cold droplets fall back down, like the million tears I’m too mad to cry.

  Chapter 18

  Wisty

  RAGE CLOUDS MY VISION, but that doesn’t stop me from leaping onto my bike and gunning it down the street, racing away from my broken shell of a brother.

  I feel furious—and abandoned. We discovered our magic together. We used it together. We strengthened it together. And then Whit went and gave it up—like it was a childhood toy he’d outgrown. Without even talking to me first.

  I lean forward, willing the motorcycle to go faster as the wind whistles past my ears. The world flashes by in a multicolored blur. Seventy miles an hour, now eighty and rising.…

  Even over the roar of the engine, it’s as if I can still hear what he said to me after the last Council meeting. You can’t keep running, Wisty. One of these days you’re going to have to slow down and grow up.

  I lean in as I take a roundabout at twice the posted speed limit. Slow down? Fat chance. And if he thinks giving up my powers is what it’s going to take to get me to grow up, then I guess I’m going to be immature forever. Because I’ll never, ever do it.

  What’s Whit going to do now that he’s grown up and normal? Learn how to cook? Take up knitting?

  Furious as I am, I almost laugh as I picture him with a ball of yarn, a couple of needles, and the beginning of some ugly afghan. Maybe he could make a pair of fuzzy slippers for our mom, potholders for my dad, and matching sweaters for my cats.

  The sharp blare of a horn jolts me back to the present.

  Oh, holy M, I’m about to smash into the side of a van.

  Time itself seems to slow down, but I can’t. The only way out of this is up. Good thing I’ve got lightning-fast reflexes and a motorcycle engine so badass it could power a jet. I lean back, yank hard on the throttle, and with a big burst of M, shoot myself straight up into the air.

  As I arc over the van, I glance down and see the terrified faces of three little kids. The big one screams like she’s just looked death in the face.

  Which, in a way, she has.

  My tire clips the roof rack and tears a piece off. I land a second after it and screech to a stop.

  I hastily reattach the piece with a quick hit of M—no harm, no foul, right? But then the man who was driving the van gets out and starts yelling and cursing at me. “What is wrong with you? You almost killed us!”

  I’m about to yell right back when I see that tears are coursing down his face. His kids, too, are weeping and clutching at each other.

  And then it hits me.

  I really did almost kill them.

  Guilt twists my stomach and takes my breath away. “I’m so sorry,” I manage.

  The man wipes his eyes and then spits on the ground. “Get out of here,” he growls.

  I turn to go, shocked at my own actions. I’m dangerous. Just like the Council said I was.

  And though I tell myself that a lot of things in life are dangerous—killer whales, for example, and zombie wolves, and sharp kitchen knives (just ask Whit about the Carrot Incident)—I don’t feel too good about earning a top slot on that list.

  Chapter 19

  Darrius

  AT ROBERTS & SONS, a bustling supermarket that stretches along an entire City block, a middle-aged man sniffs at a cantaloupe, trying to determine if it’s ripe. A woman in a too-tight dress compares the price of crackers. Twin boys doze in a double stroller.

  Darrius, lingering casually in the store’s doorway, savors the moment: the innocent calm of a room, right before all hell breaks loose. He loves times like this. But not as much as what comes next.

  Pandemonium.

  He gives the signal, and his black-clad minions burst into the store, streaming through doors and windows alike, armed with everything from sticks and rocks to axes and switchblades.

  The screaming is instantaneous and deafening. Everyone’s doing it, even—or maybe especially—the robbers. They howl like barbarians as they knock over displays, chase shoppers down the aisles, and plunder the shelves for food and drink.

  The woman in the tight dress has fainted. Jake, a makeshift mask covering his eyes, holds a knife to the throat of the cantaloupe man. The twin boys scream themselves purple.

  Amazing, really, how shoddy the security is, Darrius thinks. Two old, fat guards who were half-asleep at their posts are quickly dragged off to the meat locker. The Family’s second-in-command, Sean, is already emptying out the safe.

  Darrius disables the silent alarm system with a wave of his hand and then kills the lights, just for fun, savoring how the screaming gets even louder. People are going to start bursting their eardrums, he thinks. Not that he cares.

  He makes sure that a Family member is stationed at each of the cash registers, emptying the contents of the drawers into sacks and pillowcases. He stops to admire the nimble efficiency of the kid named Sam, who darts around the store taking people’s wallets and jewelry.

  Everything’s going perfectly according to plan, until a clerk comes leaping out of the shadows, a gun gripped in his hands. He’s so fast that not even Darrius can stop him. He aims and shoots. There’s a sharp popping sound, and Ellie, Darrius’s third-in-command, falls to the floor.

  Dead.

  The clerk tries to keep shooting, but Darrius is upon him like a fiend. He flings the gun away and knocks the clerk to his knees.

  The clerk bows his head, then looks up with desperate, imploring eyes. “Please—” he gasps. “Whoever you are…”

  “My name is Darrius,” the wizard sh
outs. “Please? Are you asking me to spare you? You have the nerve to ask that after you just put a bullet through the eye of a member of my Family?”

  The clerk has begun to weep, and he’s trembling so hard he’s barely able to keep his balance.

  “No, I don’t think I will spare you,” Darrius says, walking in a slow circle around the shaking clerk.

  But he can’t concentrate with all this noise. He makes a violent, slashing motion with his arm, and silence descends immediately. People can try to scream all they want, but considering their vocal cords have just been frozen, they’re not going to have much luck.

  Now Darrius can practically hear the idiot’s bones rattling. He picks up a pencil from a cup near the cash register and holds it in front of the clerk’s tear-streaked face. “See this?” he asks. “This is your femur.”

  And then he snaps the pencil in two.

  The clerk shrieks in pain, doubling over his broken leg. (Naturally Darrius didn’t freeze his vocal cords.)

  Darrius breaks the pencil again. “Oops. There goes your other femur. That one was probably a compound fracture.”

  The clerk’s screams are blood-curdling.

  And Darrius enjoys them. He plays them like an instrument, making them rise and fall with each brief pause in the agony and each new broken bone.

  The clerk is dead long before Darrius breaks every one of the 206 bones in his body. He incinerates the mess that’s left, leaving nothing behind but a little gray hill of ash.

  Then Darrius gives the shoppers back their voices, and the screams rise again in an earsplitting symphony of terror. He lifts his arms like a conductor, and when he brings them down again, he and his Family simply vanish.

  Chapter 20

  Wisty

  AFTER NEARLY KILLING an innocent family, I decide to stick to second gear for a little while longer—you know, defensive driving and all that garbage. But when I turn down Garden Avenue, I hear the screaming and rev the engine.