The Lost

This novel in the Witch & Wizard series follows teenage siblings Whit and Wisty Allgood, a wizard and a witch, as they confront a new wave of tyranny in a City still recovering from prior dictatorships. In earlier books, the siblings defeated two despotic rulers, The One Who Is The One and General Matthias Bloom, and helped establish a youth-led Council government.

The story opens with Whit attempting to heal Pearl Marie Neederman, a young girl once allied with the Allgoods, who has been stabbed multiple times. His magic malfunctions, causing blood to pour from his ears, and Pearl dies. Hospital staff denounce Whit and demand both siblings surrender their powers. Outside, Wisty reveals that Pearl was not a victim of the Family, a violent cult terrorizing the City, but one of its members, killed during a robbery. As a police consultant, Wisty investigates another Family crime at the Academy Theater alongside Byron Swain, a police investigator and former romantic interest. Meanwhile, the Family's hidden leader is introduced: Darrius Z, a shape-shifting young man with golden eyes and immense magical power who rules his followers through terror.

At a special Council session, 17-year-old Speaker Terrence Rino announces Excision, a scientific process using infrasound to permanently strip magical abilities from their users. Wisty erupts in protest, turning everyone in the room into kittens. But Whit, burdened by guilt over Pearl's death and exhaustion from being called a demon, stuns the room by declaring he will consider the procedure. His girlfriend Janine, a trauma nurse without magic, subtly encourages his thinking by suggesting that ordinary life has its own value.

After the hospital chief, Dr. Amos Keller, threatens him and demands he sign an Excision form, Whit undergoes the procedure at the Government Lab. The experience is agonizing; he emerges barely able to walk, hollowed out. When Wisty spots him afterward, she explodes fire hydrants down the street in fury. Whit discovers his magic is truly gone when he fails to heal a boy's broken arm. Dr. Keller demotes him to a hospital porter. When his parents learn what he has done, his father banishes him from the family home, and Whit ends up living in a concrete drainpipe.

Darrius escalates the violence, orchestrating a supermarket robbery in which he kills a clerk and incinerates the remains. He invites Wisty to his headquarters; when she refuses to join the Family, her apartment is attacked that night. The Council arms an untrained police force while mandating Excision for all police consultants, and Wisty quits in protest.

Celia, the ghost of Whit's dead first love who visits from Shadowland (the land of the dead), warns in a dream of "an army of horses" approaching. Her prophecy proves accurate: Hundreds of riderless horses stampede through the streets, and their riders, enormous warriors called Horsemen, materialize onto their backs. Armed with glowing cudgels that fire beams of energy, they annihilate the City's defenses in minutes. By morning, Darrius appears on every television declaring himself ruler, with General Bloom restored as his second-in-command. The City becomes a police state: Movement requires papers, schools close, and citizens are enslaved.

Wisty brings Whit to the Resistance, which has regrouped in a museum basement. Whit voluntarily enters Work Site #1, a massive pit where enslaved citizens dig tunnels for an unknown purpose. Metal bracelets block every worker's magic and deliver shocks. Whit secretly organizes the laborers, overhearing guards mention the words "open," "deep," and "gate." Wisty enters the pit disguised as an elderly woman but is captured and forced to dig alongside him.

Aunt Bea, the Allgoods' eccentric aunt, reveals a prophecy from a tattered addendum to The Book of Truths, a sacred text: "Not one but two / The fire splits through / Heal the rift / Cleave the gift." She interprets the poem as a ritual through which Wisty can split her powers and restore Whit's magic, though the process might destroy them both. Wisty resists but relents when her mother begs. The siblings clasp hands while Bea chants and their parents join the circle. The process is excruciating, but Whit's magic returns. Wisty also discovers, through a petrified bone taken from a dead Horseman, that the Horsemen possess no magic; they are ordinary desert mercenaries whose materialization was a one-time illusion cast by Darrius.

Before Whit can launch his planned uprising, gray smoke pours from the tunnels. The slaves realize what they have been digging toward: portals to Shadowland. Creatures called Lost Ones, the Undead with decaying flesh and yellow eyes, crawl out and devour workers. Darrius captures both siblings and imprisons them. Celia's ghost warns Whit that in the Overworld, the world of the living, Lost Ones can now consume human souls, making them immortal.

Wisty melts their cell locks, and the siblings escape disguised as Lost Ones. On the streets, a Lost One begins devouring Wisty's soul. In desperation, she summons memories of love and embraces the creature; it bursts into flames. She shouts to Whit the discovery: Love destroys the Undead.

Horsemen recapture them and drag them to the Old Palace, where their parents and Janine are caged as hostages. Darrius then reveals his true identity: Pearce, the pale, icy-eyed son of The One Who Is The One, who once deceived Wisty by disguising himself as a boy named Heath. Pearce explains he survived a near-fatal wound by sharing his soul with a Lost One, gaining deathless strength. He incinerates Bloom on the spot, declaring he no longer needs a second-in-command.

Whit and Wisty battle Pearce with fire and transformed talons. When Pearce appears to reduce them to ash, it is their own trick: They voluntarily shape-shift into cinders and reconstitute before his eyes. Enraged, Pearce orders the Undead to devour his own Horsemen. The One Who Is The One's spirit erupts from Pearce's chest, revealing he was the Lost One sharing Pearce's soul all along, a parasitic presence controlling his son from within.

Byron charges in with a sword and severs Pearce's hand, breaking The One's assault. Wisty calls her parents, Janine, and Byron to join hands, forming a circuit of love and magic that creates a protective force field. A young girl who witnessed their method of destroying the Undead leads an army of children into the square to embrace the Lost Ones, destroying them.

Pearce turns against his father and crawls toward the open portal to Shadowland in the courtyard. He tells Wisty the only way to seal all the City's portals is to close this central one from the inside. Wisty steps toward the void, but Byron shoves her aside, tells her he has always loved her, and leaps in. A brilliant blue light erupts, and the faint outlines of The One, his wife Izbella, Pearce, and Byron are briefly visible before the portal seals. The sky clears and the sun returns.

One week later, Whit and Wisty stand on the palace balcony as the City's new leaders. Whit, reunited with Janine, declares that all people are magic "because we are alive." Wisty honors Byron's sacrifice, conjures a rainbow over the square, and the siblings announce they are finally ready to lead.