The Whispering Night (Luminaries #3)

Chapter 30

CHAPTER 30

When Winnie steps into the conservatory, she can’t see anything. Not because the room is too dark—if anything, it’s brighter here, with the moon to shine through a glass ceiling and reflect on white tiles. Rather, Winnie sees nothing because there is nothing to see.

There is nothing to hear, either. No blenders eating xylophones, no engines dropped down a mineshaft. It’s as if a winter coat has been draped across the conservatory, and it reminds Winnie of the muffling spell the Crow cast in the maze.

The Whisperer is here, though. The static of its magic scours like a backward comet against Winnie. Her teeth feel as if they’re detaching from her gums, and the urge to retreat fires through her muscles in short bursts of SOS and Get the hell out of here .

Winnie holds her ground, fingers tightening on the broken bottle.

She winds her arm back. Then flings. If the Whisperer really is here, it will shatter into a glass hurricane. Instead, the bottle whistles in a perfect arch like a rainbow after a storm. It clatters to the ground and slides over three tiles.

But that is when the sound finally does arrive: the whispering Winnie knows so well. That she thought for days was from a nightmare, before she finally figured out it was from a spell.

Famēs: These spells are self-feeding and sustain themselves in the forest .

The sound—so quiet next to the battles from the rest of the museum—rustles louder, and Winnie finds she’s squinting. Staring hard at where the Whisperer should be, but where empty air still remains.

The whisper boils louder until she can no longer hear the rest of the museum. A cheese grater starts flaying across her skin. Vertigo takes root inside her cranium. But she doesn’t run, and she doesn’t look away. Because why, why, why is the famēs so still—so concentrated in this place, like a flower folded inward?

Winnie can’t pinpoint when the singing begins. Only that somewhere, in all that radioactive chaos, a melody assembles. It’s like one of those psychedelic pictures that look totally meaningless until you stare at it long enough for a 3D shape to emerge.

What emerges here is Jenna’s song. Still wordless, still only melody, but it’s the song that Winnie hears when she dreams. That she still thinks saved her while she was beneath the waterfall’s waves. She once thought Jenna wrote songs that could break you—but that always put you back together again.

This one, though, isn’t going to fix Winnie. This one seeks only to destroy.

“Jenna?” The name drips off Winnie’s tongue, wholly silent because the Whisperer can’t help but consume it. “Jenna, is that you?”

A hand claps onto Winnie’s shoulder. She heard no footsteps, felt no shifting in the air to herald a person’s approach, but now there is a hand on her and it is gripping so hard she can do nothing but be towed away on a riptide of unseen muscles.

PURE HEART, the Whisperer says in a voice that is not a voice at all, but a melody shattered by space-time and regret. THERE YOU ARE.

The Whisperer launches into full power. No music. Only hunger and violence and death.

And finally, Winnie listens to the hands—finally she twists into them and lets herself fall into a frantic run beside Jay. Just in time too, because behind them, the conservatory shatters. It is an explosion of glass and iron and lawnmower-flavored bloodlust. The stink of burning plastic keens so hard into Winnie’s nose, her eyes water. She almost trips over the remains of a couch cushion.

She can see, through tears and filthy glasses, that Jay is shouting something. But she can’t hear him. All that fills her ears are the whispers. Haunting, relentless whispers.

They reach the nightmare gallery, where only two spidrin remain, fighting against costumed Luminaries. Now though, the spidrin are fleeing too, scurrying on their knobbed legs at a speed no hunter can match.

“RUN!” Jay roars, and Winnie realizes she can hear him once more. They must have gained enough ground, so the famēs can no longer eat their words. But it’s not enough ground, and worse, Jay is stumbling. Stopping. Bending over.

Oh god, no.

He is changing. Before Winnie’s eyes and with mist to pour off him, his nightmare mutation is taking hold. His clothes absorb into his body as if they never existed. His muscles ripple and shift.

Jay has just enough time to lift his face. To find Winnie with eyes that glow like the moon. There is so much pain there, so much fear. “I love you,” he tells her. “I’m sorry.”

Then the mist spews wide. Jay vanishes entirely within its grasp. And worse—somehow worse—a chemical smell is acidifying Winnie’s nose hairs again. Sound is once more vacuuming away. And there, there are the helicopter blades of fury to thunder against her skin.

The Whisperer has caught up to them.

Mist retreats from Jay as fast as it erupted, sucking inward until only a massive white wolf remains. He looks at Winnie with silver eyes. “Run,” she screams at him. “Run!” But the Whisperer eats everything, even her voice.

So Winnie shoves at Jay, her skin so electrified she can’t feel his shining fur or canine muscles. She shoves, and then she uses that momentum to carry herself forward too. They will follow the spidrin. She and Jay will get out of this gallery before the Whisperer can destroy them.

Jay isn’t following, though. He has turned away from Winnie to face the smeared distortion of the famēs spell. His hackles are raised as if he’s growling, as if he plans to fight this thing that cannot be defeated.

Winnie skitters to a halt, ready to surge back after him, except now L.A. Saturday has arrived. Her zombie nurse costume is torn and tangled, while her face is reddened with exertion and her eyes are hollowed out by fear. Winnie sees her mouth move, shaping words that might be Come on, Midnight Crown!

Now here is Bretta too, lurching in. Each girl grabs one of Winnie’s arms, and Winnie has no choice but to be towed along, just as Jay towed her earlier. Except she let Jay pull her, and she does not let Bretta or L.A. They don’t understand what is happening; Winnie can’t let the Whisperer have Jay.

She screams and fights, but now there are more Luminaries grabbing her. Trevor. Emma. Katie with a gash across her brow. And there’s Erica too. Erica will understand, Erica will listen .

“Jay!” Winnie screams, still fighting. “Jay is back there!”

They are halfway through the rotunda when she feels it.

The quiet sating of the Whisperer.

And the silencing of the wolf that filled its belly.