But now even Kristoff had to stop midsentence.
Because Cordelia Walker was screaming at the ceiling in a painful, high-pitched wail.
“Leave her alone!” Kristoff yelled. “Don’t touch her! That’s not your sister! That’s my daughter Dahlia, who has been inside her body these last six weeks! You thought you could get rid of her with your childish wish, but she was stronger than you! The Kristoffs have always been stronger than the Walkers!”
Brendan shuddered. He couldn’t take his eyes off Cordelia and he couldn’t shake the growing horror in his heart. Cordelia was still screaming like a wild beast—but now something worse was happening—something that reminded Brendan of a thing he’d seen on TV. It was from a show called Deep Deadly Creatures, on the Discovery Channel.
She was doing what the sea slugs did.
Brendan had seen sea slugs on this show—and even though they were already gross-looking, the grossest thing about them was that they would push their stomachs out of their mouths to eat. Literally, they would turn inside out, and now . . . Brendan couldn’t believe it . . . Cordelia was doing the same thing, pushing something out of her mouth, but it wasn’t her stomach—
It was another person.
As it moved from inside her, Cordelia’s own mouth hinged back, like a snake dislocating its jaw to consume an egg. There was a tremendous crack.
“Stop!” Brendan cried. He surged forward—and heard a sizzling, zapping sound, followed by a burning sensation that shot through his chest. He looked down and saw that his T-shirt was blackened and smoking. Kristoff had blasted him with a bit of blue lightning to keep him away from Cordelia.
“Can’t you see she’s dying?” Brendan yelled, tears streaming down his face. “Please, let me help her!”
“You can’t help her,” Kristoff said coldly. He was looking at Cordelia as if she were a fascinating experiment.
Now Cordelia’s mouth was stretched unimaginably wide, nearly the size of a basketball hoop. She was facing the ceiling, her screams muffled by the size of the person coming out of her.
Kristoff recognized his daughter immediately. Brendan didn’t take much longer. The first thing he saw was an old crooked mouth with thin lips and gnarled, yellow teeth. A pinched nose, grayish skin, a mottled bald head . . .
The Wind Witch.
“No!” Eleanor yelled.
But there was no stopping her now. The Wind Witch pushed through Cordelia. There was no blood, only the sound of bones cracking. The Wind Witch slid out of Cordelia’s body as if she were wiggling out of a worn dress. Cordelia’s arms and legs lost all of their rigidity, becoming a sad, discarded pile of skin on the floor. The Cordelia Walker that Brendan loved was now something like an exoskeleton, with dead eyes.
“Ahhhhhh,” said the Wind Witch as she stretched out luxuriously, unfurling her wings. She wrapped them around her body and cracked her neck. She smiled as she stepped away from Cordelia’s husk.
“Did you miss me?”
UNCORRECTED E-PROOF—NOT FOR SALE
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Dahlia!”
Denver Kristoff smiled. Even the side of his mouth that curved down seemed to temporarily twist upward. It was a smile Brendan knew from his own father, when Bren would correctly spell a word or solve a math problem and Dr. Walker would say, “Your daddy’s proud of you.” Unfortunately, it had been a long time since Brendan’s father had given Brendan much praise. Or much attention at all.
“My darling daughter, I thought you were gone forever,” Kristoff said, holding his arms out to the Wind Witch. “How did you manage it?”
“I’ve inhabited several bodies in my time, but hers was the most difficult,” said the Wind Witch. “What a nightmare! Her palms were always wet. Her face was constantly breaking out in patches of acne. So many petty thoughts about student elections and what to wear!”
“How did you manage to get out?” asked Kristoff.
“Every day, I took gradual control of Cordelia’s body. Bit by bit, piece by piece. And I started to grow more powerful. Until finally—ahhhhh”—the Wind Witched stretched her back—“I could break free.”
Eleanor wasn’t listening. As she had seen Cordelia transform into the Wind Witch, she had become numb. It simply wasn’t something she could handle. Cordelia was the person she looked up to, almost more than her mother. Cordelia was who she wanted to be when she grew up. And now Cordelia was gone—except . . .
The husk on the floor was moving.
Will didn’t see. He had closed his eyes. His heart was in a million pieces. But now he felt a hand tugging on his sleeve.
“Look!” Eleanor whispered.
Cordelia’s body was beginning to regain its shape.
It started with the tips of her feet, which still were attached to her shoes. The feet puffed outward to fill the shoes, sticking out straight, like the feet of a doll propped against a wall.
“Bloody hell—” Will said.
“Are we seeing things?” Eleanor asked.
“Deal!” Brendan yelled.
Now Cordelia’s waist and body were taking shape. It was as if someone had attached a blow-dryer to her deflated shell and were pumping it full of air—and of life. Cordelia’s fingers popped back up, one through ten, pop-pop-pop-pop-pop. Her arms inflated back to their normal size. Her neck returned. And then, like Dracula waking up from his casket, Cordelia’s face rose, her cheeks expanded, her nose snapped outward. Cordelia’s eyes rolled down from their sockets; her thin lips became full; her mouth returned to its normal size; and her teeth . . . her teeth grew back completely intact. Whiter than usual, in fact.
“Wuh . . . ?” she asked.
“Deal!” Eleanor yelled, bursting into tears as she rushed up to her sister. “You’re alive!”
Will was right behind Eleanor, hugging both sisters at once, whooping with glee. He didn’t care how it happened; he was just happy to have Cordelia back, happier than he could remember being in his entire life. Brendan was there too, happily squeezed in the middle.
The Wind Witch turned to her father. “What is this?” she asked, betrayed. “Is this one of your tricks?”
“Of course not,” Denver Kristoff said, as Aldrich Hayes craned his neck to look at the incredible sight of Cordelia, palming her clothes to make sure she was still alive, surrounded by her tearful siblings and Will. “I don’t know how that happened.”
“She was dead as a doornail! You brought her back to life!”
“Of course I didn’t, Dahlia! Why would I do that? I hate the Walkers as much as you!”
“Liar!”
The Wind Witch rose above the floor, flapping her wings, hovering over Kristoff and Hayes.
“You two are always up to your little tricks. You think I’m not aware what you’re capable of? You brought her back to life!”
“Dahlia, please,” said Denver Kristoff. “Just come down. We can talk about this—”
“My magic never fails me,” said the Wind Witch. “When I kill someone, they stay dead. Maybe I should test that out . . . on you!”
The Wind Witch swooped toward Kristoff. Brendan grabbed his sisters and Will, animated by opportunity. If Dahlia and Denver were going to have a father-daughter moment, it was time to escape. Brendan inched backward—
“Where do you think you’re going?!” the Wind Witch said, her body spinning toward the Walkers. “Stay put!”
The kids all froze.
“Excuse me,” Cordelia said. She had finally managed to gather her bearings. Now she knew it had been the Wind Witch—the Wind Witch all along, transforming her from the inside out. Cordelia wasn’t even sure which parts of her over the last few weeks had been her.
“I thought you actually liked me,” she told the Wind Witch. “I thought you respected my intelligence, Dahlia. Isn’t that why you helped me on Sangray’s ship? Why would you turn on me now?”
“Yeah
, in other words: What’s your problem?” asked Brendan.
“The four of you prevented me from getting the book,” Dahlia Kristoff said. Her one good arm had been lost in the Walkers’ last adventure, and her jeweled prosthetics had apparently not made the journey out of Cordelia’s body, so she had two ragged stumps where her wrists should be. “I’ll deal with you . . . just as soon as I deal with my lying father.”
Two columns of air spiraled out of the Wind Witch’s stumps and knocked Denver Kristoff off his feet. He hit the ground with a thud.
“I won’t fight you!” Kristoff said. He raised his hand, trying to shield himself from the intense wind being blasted at him.
“Kristoff, she means to kill you!” Aldrich Hayes said. He threw down his cane and raised his arms, chanting. Fire appeared between his fingertips—
But he was too slow. The Wind Witch shot a blast of wind at his face and threw him down the stairs.
“C’mon,” Brendan said, pulling the others. There was a large tapestry on the far wall of the balcony. It extended from the second floor to the main room. If they could reach it, they’d be able to climb down.
“What have you done?” Kristoff yelled, rushing to Hayes, who had landed on his back and was rolling over, trying to cast a healing spell on his broken ankle.
The Wind Witch screeched, flying out over the main room, under the busted skylight. She seemed to relish having her body back; she dipped and twirled like a dolphin at play before she took up a position next to Richard Nixon’s portrait. She raised her arms as her wings flapped. Tiny updrafts lifted countless bits of the shattered skylight glass from the floor. The glass began to swirl around the Wind Witch, gaining speed, forming a very sharp and deadly ring.
Hayes was moaning. Kristoff saw that he was trying to heal his ankle, but his wrist was bent back the wrong way, and he couldn’t cast a spell with a broken wrist. He tried to reach for his cane, to remove a spell scroll from it, but his hand could barely function.
“Agh!” Hayes said. “Kristoff! Get . . . a spell scroll. It will destroy her. She’s better off . . . dead.”
“Please don’t say that,” Kristoff said. “She’s my daughter—”
“No,” said Hayes. “She’s something horrible, something evil—”
“I still love her—”
“Love!” the Wind Witch cackled in a mocking tone. “Father . . . do you remember why we fought last time?”
“Because you were mad,” Denver Kristoff said. “Crazy for The Book of Doom and Desire.”
“And you stopped me from getting it. Which makes you just as bad as the Walker brats!”
“No,” Denver Kristoff said. He stepped away from Hayes and spoke calmly, in a way that was somehow more powerful than Dahlia’s screeching. “I’m not like them. I’m your father. Now, please. Come down. We can leave this place. Together. Make a fresh start. Be a normal family.”
“Are you delusional? Look at yourself! You don’t even have a face!”
“I can start writing again,” pleaded Kristoff. “You can meet a nice fellow—”
“A nice fellow?!” said the Wind Witch. “Have you looked at me? The only thing that could make me attractive . . . is power! So tell me where the book is!”
“I have no idea,” said Kristoff.
“And you’re telling the truth?”
“With all my heart.”
“Then you’re no longer of use to me.”
The spinning glass that had been circling Dahlia Kristoff’s body formed a bullet-shaped cloud. It hovered in front of Dahlia for a moment, and then, with the speed of a subway train, shot toward her father.
Kristoff raised his arms. Blue lightning crackled in an arc over him—but the shower of glass slammed into him.
It hit Hayes as well. The shards entered the skin of the two men with such force that they were instantly turned into something resembling Swarovski porcupines. Kristoff tried to blink, but pieces of glass were lodged in the tops and bottoms of his eyelids, forcing them open.
Brendan was horrified. He knew the Wind Witch was capable of great evil, but he never knew she could be so cruel to her own father. Brendan would never forget the look of shock on Kristoff’s face, a look that said it wasn’t just his eyes, but his heart that had been broken. Brendan grabbed a section of the tapestry with Cordelia, Eleanor, and Will. “Hurry up,” he said, starting to climb down. The others followed. The Wind Witch turned.
“Trying to escape?!” she asked, lifting more glass from the floor and shooting it at the tapestry. The glass tore through the fabric like a million tiny razor blades. The tapestry ripped in half and fluttered to the ground with the kids still holding on to it. Fortunately the ancient decoration was thick; they landed on it safely, tangled in fabric.
The Wind Witch turned to Kristoff and Hayes, who were screaming in terrible pain. She raised one of her stumps and blew open the Bohemian Club’s double doors.
Brendan saw the streets of San Francisco outside. It was late at night, but the world was out there: a real world with red lights and supermarkets and cell phones, nothing like this insane nightmare he had been plunged into.
The Wind Witch snapped her wrists and flung Kristoff and Hayes out of the building.
The wind carried the men as if they were two firecrackers. They flew out of the doors and into the street—where they were hit by a passing Muni bus. They sailed off the front of the bus and through the window of a closed Chinese restaurant, smashing into tables and chairs before going still on the floor.
The Wind Witch inhaled deeply. The doors to the Bohemian Club slammed shut. She turned to the pile of kids in the fallen tapestry. “Now I can deal with you.”
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HarperCollins Publishers
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The Wind Witch eased down slowly. When she landed, she beckoned with her stump, and the half of the tapestry that she had cut loose slid away from the Walkers and Will. Like a devoted pet, it crawled across the floor to her. She turned her hands in small spirals and the fabric wound around her until she was wearing it as a sleeveless dress.
“How do I look?”
“Like an old bag wearing an old bag,” said Brendan.
Cordelia knew that Dahlia Kristoff was vain; a little compliment might go a long way. She said, “Brendan’s a boy. He doesn’t know anything. You look great.”
The Wind Witch moved toward the kids like an animal approaching dead meat. Her eyes seared into Cordelia’s. “Don’t mock me. You don’t want to end up like my late father.”
“You’re more twisted than we even thought,” Brendan said. “What kind of screwed-up person kills their dad?”
Eleanor glared at her brother: Don’t you know anything? If he kept mouthing off they wouldn’t stand a chance.
The Wind Witch patted Eleanor’s head. “Don’t worry. Follow me.”
Eleanor was shocked, but she had no choice but to follow the Wind Witch as the gaunt figure strode through the great hall, which was now filled with overturned, broken chairs. Eleanor beckoned c’mon! to Brendan, Cordelia, and Will. Outside, they could hear ambulance sirens arriving. Someone must have reported Denver Kristoff and Aldrich Hayes flying through the restaurant window.
“Cordelia,” the Wind Witch said, “you mentioned how I complimented your intelligence once.” She was leading them all up to the balcony. “I do respect you. And I have to admit: All of you Walker children are more resilient than I ever imagined. Cordelia, I am still trying to figure out how you came back to life.”
They stood over the place where Cordelia’s lifeless husk had lain on the floor. The only sign that it had been there were the drops of spittle that had come out of Cordelia’s mouth when she released the Wind Witch.
“Maybe I’m a witch,” Cordelia said. “Like you.”
“Possibly. But it would take a very experienced witch to reanimate themselves, someone much older and wiser than
you. I still suspect it was a trick of my father’s. But no matter. Now that he’s gone, we can have a civilized conversation. And I’d like to make it clear to all of you . . . that I never meant to hurt you.”
“No,” said Brendan, “you just used Cordelia’s body like an incubation tank. And then there was that time when you threatened to cut off Eleanor’s fingers, fry them, and eat them.”
“I was only trying to get the book,” said the Wind Witch. “It wasn’t personal. In many ways, you all remind me of myself.”
“Yeah, right! On what planet?” asked Brendan.
“You have a father who says he loves you but truly doesn’t.”
“No,” said Eleanor. “No matter what, our dad still loves us.”
“Really?” asked the Wind Witch. “Is that why he continues to gamble away your fortune?”
“He’s trying to change.”
“He won’t change. Fathers never do. My father was power-mad when I was a little girl, and he stayed that way for the rest of his life.”
“But he was asking you to love him,” Eleanor said. “He just wanted you guys to be a family again.”
“That’s what he wanted you to think,” said the Wind Witch. “That could never be possible as long as he kept The Book of Doom and Desire hidden from me.”
She raised her stumps in front of the children.
“Now, my father said he didn’t know where the book was. And you three were the last ones to possess it. And because of the curse he put on the book, you’re the only ones who can open it. So can you please just tell me where it is? And I won’t have to hurt you.”
“Are you serious?!” shouted Brendan. “You just said you never meant to hurt us! Now, like thirty seconds later, you’re threatening us! Lady, you need to seriously think about getting some therapy!”
The Wind Witch smiled. “Have you finished?”
“No, I haven’t! I—”
“I think you have,” the Wind Witch said. Brendan suddenly shrank back; he had momentarily forgotten who he was screaming at. “I think you’ve run your mouth enough for an entire lifetime.”
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