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  Somewhere not too far away, dozens of people are completely freaking out. And as much as I’d like to believe it was a surprise concert by the Groaning Bones, the sound is distinctly distressed. In fact, it’s bone-chilling.

  It can mean only one thing: the Family has paid some people a very unwelcome visit.

  Five seconds and a major turbo boost later, I’m outside Roberts & Sons eyeing the shattered glass and plugging my ears against the noise. A police cruiser comes skidding up, lights flashing, and Byron Swain leaps out, his black police jacket only half on and his normally coiffed hair sticking out in all directions.

  “Wisty,” he barks. “Inside with me.”

  I’m still feeling shaken up by my near-death-causing experience, but Byron has already grabbed my hand and is pulling me into the store. The lights are off, and people are cowering on the floor, screaming and crying.

  Byron lifts his bullhorn. “Everyone, please calm down,” he calls firmly. “The police are here. We have the area secured.”

  I glance around the dim room doubtfully. There could be any number of criminals tucked away underneath the produce displays, and I don’t fancy a shiv to the Achilles tendon. “Are you sure about that?” I whisper.

  Byron nods curtly. “You think they want to stick around to get cuffed? They’re long gone, Wisty.” He picks up the bullhorn again. “Once again, the area is secure. You’re safe now.”

  The shoppers shakily begin to stand up. Some, though, still tremble on the floor in teary puddles.

  Byron gestures toward the door. “There’s a medical team outside for those who need it. My colleagues will take your statements by the blue van. Everyone to the exit, please.”

  Then Byron turns back to me, all business. “We need to locate the bodies,” he says.

  Even though I know the Family has no problem with killing, my stomach still lurches at the assumption of dead bodies lying around.

  “Reports say there’s one thief and one employee down. You take the front, I’ll take the back.”

  Reluctantly, I walk over to the cash registers, their drawers hanging open like giant mouths. I see a few loose coins scattered on the floor and a knife with a broken tip. And then I see the body of a girl.

  “Byron!” I yell, and he comes scurrying over.

  Together we look at the fallen figure, masked and dressed in black, with an oozing, gaping hole in her head, right through the eye. I notice the tattoos on the girl’s wrists—the entwined, calligraphic letter F s—and around her neck hang the dog tags I’ve lately seen on Family members. Cousin Clara, hers says.

  On the floor, not too far away, lies the gun that probably killed her.

  “So there’s the weapon,” Byron says. “But where’s the person who shot her?”

  I point to a small mound of ashes. “Right there,” I say grimly.

  “Wisty, that’s dirt,” he says dismissively.

  “That pile of ash,” I tell him, “is someone who tried to be a hero. I know magic when I see it, Swain. This is the work of a very powerful, very depraved wizard or witch.” I kneel down and touch the tip of my finger to the ashes. A wave of sadness washes over me. “You were brave,” I whisper. “But you had no idea who you were up against.”

  The fact is, none of us have any idea who—or what—we’re up against. And now that my brother’s a Normal, there’s one less good wizard to fight it.

  Chapter 21

  Wisty

  BYRON KNEELS BY THE THIEF, making sure that the slowly spreading pool of blood doesn’t stain his chinos. He puts his fingers against her neck to check for a pulse.

  “Like she could survive a shot like that,” I say grimly.

  “Gunshot to the eye and orbit, exit wound straight through the occipital lobe. Time of death, approximately eleven thirty a.m.,” he says, and writes this down in his pad.

  Then he reaches out and gently begins to untie the knots of her mask. I’m surprised by how respectful he is. Some would say she’s nothing but a dead outlaw, but Byron treats her like a person. Like somebody’s little girl.

  Meanwhile, I start gathering up the ashes. This was someone’s child, too.

  “Wisty?” Byron’s voice is strained.

  “What?” It comes out sharper than I intended. But I’m so tired of the senseless violence.

  “Come here. Is this…”

  When I look down, I nearly cry out. My hand flies to my mouth.

  “It’s Clara Starr, isn’t it?” Byron asks.

  I can only nod. Clara was a member of the Resistance during The One’s reign. I remember her reading bedtime stories to the orphaned kids in the abandoned department store we called home. I feel tears pricking at the corners of my eyes. “She was one of the good guys,” I finally manage.

  “Was,” Byron repeats bitterly. “Was good. Was alive. And now? She’s neither.”

  I touch one of the delicate Fs around her wrist. “Why, Clara?” I whisper, as if she were capable of answering me. “What did the Family promise you?”

  Byron rubs his eyes and sighs in sadness and exhaustion.

  “Didn’t know the job would be this hard, did you?” I ask him. “You thought it’d be all about flashing a cool badge and driving around in a fast car.”

  Before the Family’s crime spree, Byron would have nailed me with a misconduct report for an accusation like that. But now he just shakes his head. When he looks at me, his eyes are full of pain. “I didn’t think there’d be so much death,” he says softly. “It’s just so… unfair.”

  I take a sheet from a nearby aisle and drape it over Clara’s body. Byron’s right. This is a gruesome waste of life. And for what—the lure of a cult and the contents of a cash register? Suddenly furious, I kick a grocery cart. It falls over with a bang that makes Byron flinch. “This can’t keep happening!” I cry.

  Byron stares at me dully. “It can’t, but it does. And no one can stop it.”

  Then he stands up and walks out the door.

  I follow him out, my hands clenched in fists. “Don’t talk like that, Swain,” I yell. “You’ve played every side, seen every angle! You’re a survivor, and survivors don’t give up!”

  But I don’t even know if he hears me over the noise of the crowd outside the store. Reporters scurry around, badgering people for eyewitness accounts, and photographers cast about for a gruesome shot to put on the front page. It’s like they want to terrify people just as much as the Family does.

  “Enough is enough!” a woman yells, jabbing a finger at Byron. “The police—the government—you have to do something!”

  “We’re doing all that we can, ma’am,” he responds flatly. And then he starts walking toward his squad car.

  I watch him in disbelief. This is what he calls doing all he can? Spending five minutes at a crime scene and then hurrying away for a consultation with his fellow investigators?

  “Byron,” I shout. He doesn’t turn around. “Agent Swain!” I try, but he ignores me.

  And now I’m alone in a crowd of angry people. Justifiably angry people: everywhere they look, there’s another spray-painted threat from the Family. We are always watching, says the scrawl on the side of an elementary school. What’s yours is ours, reads the awning above a pharmacy.

  And every day, more blood is shed.

  If the police can’t figure out how to fix it, someone else is going to have to. Someone like me.

  I approach the woman who yelled at Byron. “You were inside, weren’t you? I need you to tell me everything you saw.”

  She narrows her eyes at me. I’m not wearing a badge; I could be anyone. But then she decides to trust me—or maybe she just can’t keep the horror to herself anymore. She reaches for my hand and starts squeezing the life out of it. “They came like a swarm of demons,” she says. “All of them in black, and their leader… Darrius…” She begins to shiver, as if simply saying his name has chilled her to the bone. “His eyes were inhuman. He killed without touching.”

  “Can you tel
l me—” I begin.

  But she barrels on. “He broke that poor clerk into pieces, and then he disappeared.” Her eyes are wild with fear.

  I keep my voice very soft and calm. “You mean Darrius ran away? Which way did he go?”

  She shakes her head violently. “I mean he was there, smiling this terrible smile—and then, poof, he was gone.” She drops my hand now, like it’s something dirty.

  I can’t pretend this is the news I was hoping for. But at least I know his name now. “Did Darrius say anything to you?” I ask.

  “No,” she says. “All he had to do was look at me, and I knew everything.”

  “What do you mean, everything?”

  “I saw what he wants,” she says. She motions me closer. “He wants unimaginable power,” she whispers. “Dominion over all things, living and dead.”

  Her words chill me. I wrap my arms tight around my body as the crowd surges, still protesting police incompetence and demanding justice.

  Dominion over all things, living and dead.

  You know how you can tell when it’s going to rain? There’s a new coolness to the air, a sudden change in barometric pressure. It’s like that now, but it’s not rain that I sense coming.

  It’s chaos.

  And it’s going to be up to me to try to stop it.

  Chapter 22

  Whit

  IT’S OVER. DONE. Finito. I have the signed Certificate of Excision to prove it.

  And here’s the strange part: I feel… nothing.

  Not nothing as in, Oh, cool, that wasn’t such a big deal after all. No, I’m talking about nothing as in, I cut myself shaving and I felt no pain. I looked at my bowl of cereal and felt no hunger. And now, as Janine and I walk to the hospital under a bright morning sky, I can’t even feel the sun’s warmth.

  I feel nothing.

  Or maybe it’s more accurate to say: I feel nothingness.

  Janine, dressed in pink scrubs and her favorite combat boots, is trying her best to act like today’s no different from yesterday. She smiles and talks, and I pretend to listen.

  Right before we start our shifts, she stands on her tiptoes and kisses me deeply. “It’s going to be a good day,” she says, resting her hand against my cheek. “I promise.”

  I nod like I’m capable of believing her.

  We hurry down the hall to the ER, where we find a boy lying in bed with a tear-streaked face, cradling his swollen, purple arm.

  Janine takes a quick look at the X-rays and then nods. “It’s a transverse fracture of the radius,” she says to me. “In other words, a clean, simple break.” She smiles at the boy reassuringly. “You’re going to be just fine.”

  I breathe a sigh of relief. After days of major trauma cases, we finally have a mere accident—an injury I could have healed in my sleep.

  Janine gives the boy a shot of anesthetic and prepares to set the bone. The rolls of casting plaster are soaking in warm water behind her, ready to be wrapped around the boy’s small forearm.

  “Just let me try,” I whisper before I can stop myself. I didn’t even realize I’d been thinking about it.

  Janine shoots me a worried glance. “Whit—” she begins. But then she stops, unsure of what comes next.

  I shrug like it’s no big deal. Like I’m not dying to know if my M’s really gone. “I just want to check and make sure the Excision worked!” I try to say airily.

  Now that the boy’s not in pain, we’re not exactly in a desperate rush. Janine thinks about it for a second, then steps back. “Okay,” she says quietly. “Go for it.”

  I move next to the boy’s side and place my hand near the break. “How’d you do that, buddy?” I ask, smiling.

  He sniffles. “Fell out of a tree.”

  “I did that a few times myself when I was your age,” I tell him. “It happens to the best of us. Can you hold still for me now?”

  He nods, and I bring my hand closer to the injury and begin to concentrate. What I feel first is anticipation. Maybe even hope. I home in on the break, knowing without an X-ray exactly where it is. And after a moment, I sense the telltale prickling, the tiny electric shocks of M that walk the line between pleasure and pain.

  I can feel it—it’s still there—

  But try as I might, I can’t make the feeling build. The power doesn’t increase. And the bone doesn’t knit itself back together.

  My vision blurs and I have to reach out to steady myself against the table. I can’t heal.

  They say that amputees can still feel their missing limbs years after they’re gone. I can still feel my missing magic, tingling and buzzing inside me, like something caught in a cage.

  I bow my head low. Finito, I think.

  Then I look up to see Janine watching me intently.

  “Are you okay?” she asks.

  “Well, the Excision definitely worked,” I announce emphatically. I hold out my unmagic arms and flex my ordinary fingers. “No fuel in the tank, so to speak.”

  Janine nods slowly. Maybe even sadly, I can’t tell. “Why don’t you take a break, Whit,” she says. It’s not a question; it’s an order.

  I look at her, searching her face. Why does she look unhappy? Isn’t this what she wanted? “Whatever you say.” I stalk off.

  Outside, in the hospital’s decrepit little courtyard, the weight of my decision comes down on me. Hard.

  But not quite as hard as it does a couple of hours later, when I’m fired from my job as an assistant trauma nurse. Because, as Dr. Keller makes perfectly clear, without magic or medical knowledge, I’m not much help in the ER.

  I believe “as useless as a kickstand on a horse” was the phrase he used.

  I am, however, still very strong, which is why he lets me stay on as a porter.

  Yup, a porter.

  So now they’ve got me taking out the trash—huge, reeking bags of it, which I drag from the garbage chute to the incinerator. One after the other, I feed them into the machine’s fiery mouth.

  It’s sort of like looking into the pit of hell. Except it feels like I’m already deep down in it.

  Chapter 23

  Whit

  “NOT SO SPECIAL NOW, ARE YOU?” sneers an orderly as he pushes a cart full of medical supplies down the hall. He swerves toward me, and one of the wheels rolls right over my foot.

  I grit my teeth and don’t answer. I’m willing to do the work—whatever it takes to help. That’s what I keep telling myself.

  I haven’t seen Janine for hours. While she’s in the ER saving lives, I’m working my way down a seemingly endless list of new and humiliating tasks. Emptying bedpans. Swapping out the boxes of disease-contaminated needles. Bathing the raging, hydrophobic psychos from the mental ward, including the guy who believes his own hands are a pair of vampire bats.

  This isn’t what I bargained for.

  I’m scrubbing the bathroom floor on my hands and knees when the door flies open and Sula, the nurse who once called me an abomination, calls my name urgently. “There’s a Code Brown in room two-thirteen,” she cries.

  I drop my rag and rush after her. I don’t know what Code Brown means until I come skidding to a stop in the hospital room.

  It’s a bed absolutely full of shit.

  The smell makes me gag, and I almost quit right then and there. But I say it again, out loud this time. It’s become my mantra. “Whatever it takes to help.” And then I suppress my disgust and begin cleaning up the mess.

  To make matters worse, now lingering in the doorway and watching me with barely contained delight is Grant Volm, a sixteen-year-old wizard. He’s usually hanging out with a gang of younger kids, probably because they’re easier to impress with his silly light shows and magic card tricks.

  I never liked him.

  “Well, if it isn’t Whitford Allgood,” he laughs. “Ex–heroic wizard and current janitor. What’s that phrase? Oh, yeah: ‘The higher you rise, the harder you fall.’ ”

  “Oh, hey, Grant,” I say casually, tossing the foul
sheet on the floor, right next to his shoe. “You here for your chronic hemorrhoids?”

  His cheeks flush. He can’t think of a comeback, so he mutters a spell and turns my uniform hot pink. “Ha! The old Whit would have thrown me out the window with a flick of his pinkie for that,” he says. “But you couldn’t do it if you had a catapult.”

  I take a step closer to him. “I could still break you in half,” I growl. “Want me to try?”

  Grant backs away. “As fun as that sounds, I’ve got to be going. There’s a wizard meeting downtown. So sorry I won’t see you there.”

  I’d give just about anything for one more second of magic: I’d evaporate him.

  I’m still fuming when I trudge past the ER, pushing an enormous laundry cart. My heartbeat quickens as I hear the sound of Janine’s voice.

  “Cerebral contusions with subdural hematoma,” she’s yelling. “Patient unresponsive.”

  I muscle my way into the room. There are at least a dozen people in there, and I’m stuck at the back, straining to hear what’s going on. A girl fell from a window—or maybe she was pushed, no one knows for sure. She’s unconscious, and her entire left side is bruised and bleeding.

  “Intracranial pressure is growing,” someone shouts.

  “She’s got high blood pressure and respiratory depression,” calls someone else.

  Even I know that means the situation is critical. And I also know that yesterday I could have helped her. But today, I just watch as they try desperately to save her life. And then, horribly, I watch her draw her last breaths, convulse, and die.

  Numbly, I turn to go and almost run into the old man whose flail chest I healed. He’s hobbled up behind me and must have seen everything. Tears are streaming down his face. “Why didn’t you save her?” he demands, clutching my arm with clawlike fingers. “Why an old man, and not that beautiful little girl?”

  I don’t answer, because I can’t tell him the truth: that I have made a terrible, irrevocable mistake. In trying to do the right thing, I’ve betrayed everything that ever mattered to me.