Witch & Wizard Read Online Free PDF

like Wisty at all.
    “Don’t say that,” I whispered sharply. “We’re getting out of this madhouse. I promise.”
    But how? I scanned the courtroom. Surrounding us was an impenetrable wall of indifference, even hatred. Plus at least a dozen armed guards.
    A judge—The One Who Judges, I assumed—glowered from a high platform right in front of us, his thin, greasy gray hair stuck down to his scalp.
    On the right-hand side of the courtroom, behind a low wall, a jury stared vacantly at us. They were all grown-ups, all men, and apparently they seemed to think two innocent kids appearing on trial in a cage was nothing unusual.
    So it was official now: the world had gone totally crazy.

Whit
    THE ONE WHO JUDGES put tiny glasses on his long, beaked nose and scowled down at us. I read his gold plaque: JUDGE EZEKIEL UNGER .
    He picked up a piece of paper. “Whitford Allgood!” he read in a stinging voice. “Wisteria Allgood! This trial is convened because you are accused of the most serious crimes against the New Order!” He glared at us.
    There was a standing-room-only audience of grown-ups behind us. I turned to see the crowd better. The few of them who looked at me were cold-eyed and full of hatred.
    I rubbed my forehead against my arm as the judge angrily read a bunch of legal-sounding gibberish.
    I peered at the jury—surely some of them had to feel sorry for two kids who looked hungry and dirty? Kids in handcuffs, in a cage, with no lawyer? But their faces were frozen in expressions of condemnation. It was as if they were being paid to dislike us. Was there some neon sign above our heads that read SCOWL instead of APPLAUSE, like on the live TV shows?
    “What have we done?” Wisty suddenly yelled at the judge. “Just tell us that. What are we accused of?”
    “Silence!” the judge shouted. “Listen, you contemptuous girl! You are a most dangerous threat to everything that is proper and right and good. We know this from police witnesses to your recent perpetrations of the dark arts. We know this from innumerable investigations undertaken by the New Order’s Investigative Security Agency, and we know this, most fundamentally, because of the Prophecy.”
    My mouth dropped open as I saw the jury nodding.
    “Prophecy?” I scoffed. “I promise you—my sister and I are nowhere in the Good Book. Get real, Ezekiel.”
    The courtroom gasped. “Blasphemer!” a woman cried out, and shook her fist at us.
    The bailiff rushed toward me with his billy club raised, and I lifted my eyebrows in mock fear.
Uh, I’m in a cage, stupid. The bars work both ways.
    Judge Unger continued, “Therefore, based on the preponderance of evidence—”
    “Look, whatever the charges, we plead
not guilty!
” I yelled, grabbing the bars of the cage despite my handcuffs and shaking them with all my strength. Which I guess wasn’t the smartest thing.
    Smack!
The bailiff raked his nightstick across my knuckles. Wisty gasped, and I barely managed to swallow a scream of pain.
    The One Who Judges literally leaped out of his chair and leaned over his desk, practically within spitting distance. “That’s showing those vermin! Well done, bailiff! That’s the only way to deal with this kind of filth! If you spare the rod, you spoil the deviants!”
    His face was mottled purple and white, his eyes bugging out of his head.
    “How say you to these charges?” he yelled at us.
    Dumbfounded, Wisty and I replied,
“Not guilty!”
    The judge turned away from us. “Gentlemen of the jury, with that statement, the defendants stand in clear contempt of your will and this court’s mission. They mock us. They flout the standards of the glorious New Order! I ask you,
what is your verdict?
”
    “That’s it?” I yelled from the cage. “That’s our trial?”
    “You’ve got to be kidding!” screamed Wisty. “That’s not fair.”
    Smack!
went the bailiff’s nightstick.
Smack! Smack! Smack!

Whit
    THIS WHOLE CRAZY THING was happening so fast.
    In