The Whispering Night (Luminaries #3)

Chapter 33

CHAPTER 33

It’s not that Winnie intends to lie to Isaac. As she was telling him her plan, she really did believe she would give him time to exit before she snuck out. Unfortunately, logistics and sheer terror make a liar out of her.

Because while Isaac walks Winnie down “prison cliché” hallways to her cell, she glimpses nary a single guard. On top of that, the one guard who first answered the door at Winnie’s pounding is busy brewing herself a pot of coffee in the lounge area when Isaac marches Winnie by.

It’s mind-boggling. All these terrifying Tuesdays, and yet most of them are upstairs duking it out inside the boxing rings or sprinting across a soccer field. So for a single day, their security is so deeply lax, a sixteen-year-old can evade it. Or, at least, Winnie sure hopes she can.

And to be fair, if she didn’t have a newly assembled map imprinted on her brain of this subterranean lair, the odds of escape would be stacked against her. Plus, there’s the undeniable fact that once out of the Tuesday underground, any escaping prisoner would have an entire town of nightmare hunters to contend with. So really: only a fool would try to break out of this place.

Or a Wednesday bear with literally nothing left to lose and absolutely everything to gain. If L.A. was small fry to the Crow, well, the Crow has now become small fry to the great whites circling Winnie’s raft.

With a silent apology to Isaac, Winnie cracks open her door a mere minute after his departure. He’s gone. Which means it’s time for Winnie to get gone too, before her single guard finishes brewing coffee.

Here’s what Winnie knows about the layout: all halls are arranged like a grid. No space is wasted. Which, if she were going to be nitpicky, that makes it more like a beehive than a scorpion’s nest. But whatever. It makes busting out of here a whole helluva lot easier.

One left. Two straights. One right. One left. Three straights. And then on the right there will be a stairwell. Two flights up, and Winnie will reach Hangar D, where Isaac has told her assorted Tuesday vehicles are stored. Since the hangar is laid out like a mechanic’s shop, she will be ejected into the grease pit used to access car underbellies—which should be empty right now, since the hangar is currently open to the public. On the opposite side of where Winnie will enter, there will be one more staircase, which she can use to join the throngs of excited Luminaries.

From there, Winnie just needs to blend in long enough to get the hell off the Tuesday estate.

The first stretch of hall goes without hiccup. Although Winnie’s heart is pounding so hard, she’s shocked she doesn’t develop real hiccups. But by the time she reaches the end of the hall and makes her first left, her heart has settled into a more reliable rhythm. Her muscles have warmed up too. And while her full hunter senses haven’t switched on, she does at least feel competent.

She’s also desperate, and damned if Shakespeare wasn’t right about diseases desperate being relieved by desperate appliance. ( Aren’t you proud, Ms. Morgan? I remember my Dickinson and my Shakespeare! Now please don’t be mad if your boyfriend gets in trouble because I’m escaping on his watch. )

It’s during the long stretch of three straights that Winnie is finally forced into evasive action. The sound of voices sends her twirling down an unplanned intersection. Then into a darkened bathroom, where she mistakes her reflection for a person and almost faints.

But it’s just herself, and after puffing out a breathy, pained laugh, she forcefully looks away from the mirror. That shadowy reflection looks too much like the dead changeling from the forest.

And that dead changeling looked very, very much like peering ahead into a horrible future she can’t avoid.

With a little shake to rattle such visions loose, Winnie makes herself use the moment wisely. First, she zips off her leather jacket. It’s got a gnarly gash across the front pocket from the hellion. Then she wiggles out of her Save the Whales hoodie. That thing is familiar enough to be iconic at this point.

She turns the hoodie inside out, changing the faded green exterior into a dark, fleecy shade that melts into the bathroom’s shadows. Then she slides back into her leather jacket.

Next, Winnie braids her hair, tucks it inside her collar, and finally she tows up the hood. Since she is still dressed in her Nightmare Safari gear of dark jeans and boots, she actually looks like any old hunter or Luminary about to head out for a snack.

Lastly, Winnie removes her glasses. It’s not ideal, but she’s also not so vision-impaired that she can’t see where she’s going. No, she won’t recognize faces on the street, but given that she doesn’t want to be recognized either…

This is safest.

Plus, if she could go almost her whole third trial without glasses in the nightmare forest. At night . Then navigating the scorpions’ hive and the Tuesday Olympics will be easy-peasy.

Winnie gives herself a quick, blurred once-over in the dark mirror. She doesn’t look like the changeling; she doesn’t look like herself.

She resumes her march through the halls, getting back on track in mere seconds. At one point, a person requires her to stop and “tie” her shoe while they stride past. “Morning,” they say.

Winnie only grunts in return. A second person sends her retreating deep, deep into her hoodie. But they’re so focused on their phone, they don’t look up. And a third person almost does corner Winnie when she hurries into the stairwell to Hangar D. They’re coming downstairs dressed in full scorpion gear with their helmet hiding all features. “Hey, Asteria. Aren’t you supposed to be suited up?”

Winnie coughs. Then, still coughing as if she choked on her own spit, ekes out: “Yep”— cough, cough —“I’m about to.” She explodes up the stairs, passing the suited scorpion before they can wonder, Wait a second, was that really Asteria?

The two flights blur past, and then there it is: a long stretch of room that sings of Almost Freedom . Light cuts down at strange angles, carried in from the hangar above and shaped by vehicles parked over inspection pits. Noise simmers in, following the same odd lines. Everything smells like grease and oil, but actual grease or oil—or gasoline or tools or even a single forgotten screw—are nowhere to be seen. The Tuesdays would never allow mess inside one of their facilities.

Stairs lead out of each inspection pit, and shelves line the walls with tool boxes, tires, and countless bottles of various liquids.

A voice shouts behind Winnie. It is not a nice voice, and if she had to guess, it’s the scorpion now realizing it wasn’t Asteria they met and that a prisoner has gone missing from her cell.

Winnie pitches herself into a sprint. Zero to sixty miles per hour in less than 0.4 seconds. Her combat boots squeak on the spotless floor. Her weak eyes scour for the quickest path to an exit. She just needs to get out of here. She just needs to lose herself in the crowds above.

Except when she is halfway across the space, rounding a shelf of barrels, she hears another shout—this one from ahead. And there’s a staticky, clicking sound too, as if radios are turning on. Turning off. As if scorpions are being sent after an escaping Wednesday in a grease pit.

Winnie is not going to make it to the exit.

But that’s not the only way out of here .

She changes course, leaping onto the nearest set of stairs out of an inspection pit. There is a vehicle in the way. A Hummer, by the looks of it, but Winnie puts her odds of freedom at 50 percent going this way… and 0 percent if she keeps running down below.

She slithers her body sideways, spins twice like a crocodile on a riverbank, and then she’s out. She’s no longer under the vehicle (yes, a Hummer) but instead beside it and scrabbling to her feet. Two middle-aged Luminaries and a child ogle her, clearly wondering if Winnie is part of the exhibit or a visitor who ignored the No Touching signs slammed everywhere.

“All good here,” Winnie declares as she slings herself over an exhibit guardrail. “I got the check engine light turned off, and you won’t need another oil change till next year. If you feel so inclined there’s a tip jar on the other side.”

She smiles at the kid, who wears her hair in what are honestly the cutest pigtails. Then Winnie pulls her hood low, low, hunches her shoulders, and grapevines into the crowd.

The Tuesday estate is more army base than fancy mansion. As a clan who prioritizes strength above all else, they have approximately zero interest in flowery grounds or elegant miniature palaces. In fact, there’s not much aboveground worth seeing. Just the big hangars, and a long brick building that looks like it could be a high school, a prison, or a warehouse.

This means that converting the estate into a huge sporting event, complete with fields and tracks and bleachers, is easily done every year. And always, always, on the south side of the field, a long, brightly lit, lushly appointed VIP section stands—which is where Winnie now aims.

Because the great thing about Marcia Thursday is that she is predictable. It’s why Erica always had such an easy time playing games and manipulating her mom. The Marcian theorem, Winnie liked to call it, because if you input x, then you will always get y .

Which means that—despite the fact Erica was nearly killed at a party last night—Marcia will still expect her daughter to attend the Tuesday Olympics. And that means, if Winnie wants to find Erica, she just has to go where her own blue-papered schedule had directed her: the VIP section.

Somehow, it is early evening when Winnie exits Hangar D. The sun didn’t rise today, so much as carve the sky in half like a magician with a new trick blade.

T minus fourteen hours until the Crow makes good on her threats.

The light burns low enough on the horizon to confuse Winnie’s cones and rods. Every face she passes is an unrecognizable, backlit smear.

And there are so many unrecognizable, backlit smears. She can’t believe it. Surely, surely the news must be out about what happened the night before. There were so many people at that party; many weren’t locals.

Of course, the longer Winnie dives and weaves through the crowds, the more she realizes the wolf is truly out of the bag—although perhaps not the actual wolf part. Everywhere she sidles, she hears the excited tales from someone who knew someone who knew someone who had a cousin at the party. Or someone simply discussing the hotspot they heard about from Johnny Saturday on the news.

Darkness, darkness, light, Winnie thinks as she tries to row her dinghy ever closer to the VIP area of the sports field. There is no greater display of that Luminaries juxtaposition than right now: many of the society’s youths almost died, so let’s savor the fact that they didn’t by sprinting for trophies.

And now that Winnie is really honed in, there’s no missing the over brightness of it all that isn’t simply caused by a brutal sunset. People are dressed in their clan colors, laughing and clapping and cheering and shovel ing in hot dogs or funnel cakes like they might never eat again. Because… well, here in the Luminaries’ world, they might not.

Winnie thinks of photons.

She thinks of the bathypelagic zone.

She also thinks of scorpions, since there are several, fully armored, floating through the crowds in search of Winnie. Given that she stands out almost as much as they do, she makes it her first order of business to sneak into the 10K All-Terrain Race registration tent—now closed, of course, since the run finished hours ago—and steal a new shirt. She then uses a rubber band holding bibs together to pull her hair into a tight, borderline painful bun over which she places a stolen All-Terrain Race baseball cap. Lastly, she finds a tub of red body paint ( scorpion pride! ) and slathers it all over her face and hands.

For almost thirty seconds, once her new disguise is in place, she stands there pinned down by indecision. Keep the hoodie and jacket? Or leave them? Keep or leave? Keep or leave?

She decides to leave—although it causes her actual pain to do so. She has had that hoodie for six years, and the leather jacket is one of the most special birthday gifts she has ever received. But Winnie can’t be stupid. She can’t let sentimentality get in her way. So she shoves the clothes under a table, sets her jaw, and once more braves the Olympics.

Cheers from the current event (soccer, she thinks) are loud enough to smash out all others. The people are so tightly packed too, that Winnie eventually does have to put on her glasses just to locate gaps for wriggling through.

At last, though, she reaches the edge of the cordoned-off VIP seating area.

The first thing Winnie notices is that Darian isn’t here. This startles her. Then terrifies her. It makes the four-year-old hug branded on her bones physically sear. As if her skeleton wants to crawl out of her body and search for the brother that should be at Dryden’s side.

She will never forgive herself if Darian is underground right now. If Mom is too, and Winnie just escaped without finding them. Without even searching .

The next thing Winnie notices is that Jeremiah Tuesday is here, clean and dressed in his usual fatigues. No sign of the morning All-Terrain Race on his body—or of the interrogation in his nest from before that. He smiles and laughs, chatting with a Vtornik Winnie vaguely recognizes from the Nightmare Safari.

The Crow, however, is as absent as Darian. Which doesn’t make any sense. That woman is pulling Jeremiah’s strings, right? So she should be here, twirling her mustache and laughing evilly. Or maybe even actively searching for Winnie with her magic…

Except now that Winnie considers it, now that she gnaws at her lip and gazes at Jeremiah’s oblivious, chuckling face, what was it Signora Martedì said on the Ferris wheel? When Winnie asked for records of when her dad disappeared?

Cannot or will not? Winnie replied.

The Crow never answered, but what if… what if the answer was cannot because Jeremiah doesn’t know what Martedì is? He said in the interrogation, There’s obviously a network of Dianas here in Hemlock Falls, and I intend to find out who they are. Each and every one of them.

If Jeremiah really doesn’t know, if the scorpions really aren’t the tools of Signora Martedì… then that changes things, doesn’t it? Winnie isn’t sure what it changes, but something.

As Winnie scans more faces, searching for Erica, her gaze finds L.A. Saturday instead, dressed in a gorgeous purple gown. On her head is the Midnight Crown, but rather than look happy that she finally has what she wants, she looks trapped in that nightmare gallery of the old museum.

She looks, in fact, like Winnie must have in the Tuesday cell, when last night’s events looped and re-looped across her brain.

L.A. saw what Jay turned into.

She saw, yet all she could say to Winnie before the Tuesdays took Winnie away was: “How did I never realize what he was going through?”

Yeah, Louisa Anne. Winnie can totally relate; she too wonders how for four years, she never saw what Jay was going through.

Right now, though, Winnie’s focus is on Erica, whom she finally finds slumped in a chair beside her mom. Marcia, hilariously, looks less like a sports fan and more like a person cosplaying one, complete with a foam finger on one hand, a foam bell on the other, and so much maroon-and-silver gear, her skin looks that color. Actually no, her skin is maroon because she has put on body paint too.

Wow, Marcia. Way to take it to eleven.

Erica, meanwhile, is dressed in a black outfit not so different from yesterday’s. Minus the cat ears and tail. Actually, maybe it is the same outfit—and maybe Erica hasn’t slept any more than Winnie has.

Yet x always leads to y, and here Erica is anyway. Her dad too, mingling with less blatant Thursday spirit in a group of Jueves visitors from Mexico—or at least, Winnie thinks that’s who they are because she’s pretty sure she recognizes Erica’s uncle in the group.

With very little finesse, Winnie scoots right up to her friend—opposite side of Marcia, of course—and says, “Hey.”

Erica glares at her, clearly planning to laser-beam whomever would dare disturb her. But when she takes in Winnie’s getup, then fastens on Winnie’s face, her eyebrows rocket skyward.

“We can’t talk here,” Winnie adds before Erica can say something loud or dangerous or conspicuous.

But of course, she’s not giving her friend enough credit. “Duh,” Erica replies. “Meet me at the bathrooms.” A dip of her head toward an array of fancy portable toilets nearby. Then she swivels away as if Winnie really is beneath her notice.

Winnie follows the command, and in seconds, she and Erica are ensconced behind a toilet. The crowds, meanwhile, are absolutely losing their minds because—based on the especially loud cheers for Friday—the Friday clan must be dominating the Tuesdays on the pitch.

“They let you out?” Erica has to yell to be heard.

And Winnie’s snort definitely isn’t audible. She points at her face paint. “Does this look like someone who got let out?”

Now Erica’s jaw sags. “You’re on the lam ? Holy crap, Winnie. How did you break free?”

“Long story.” Winnie shakes her head. “And you’re the only person I know who can help me.”

Erica rears back—and Winnie cringes. Not because of Erica but because her whole body is vibrating with a growing roar of Friday, Friday, Friday!

It makes her think of Jay.

It makes her think of the Whisperer.

“I’m sorry, E,” she continues. “Things are bad—”

“No shit.”

“And I need a ride out of here. Is your car here and can I have the keys? If anyone asks, just say I stole it.”

“My car isn’t here—” Erica breaks off as a cheer erupts that could literally puncture eardrums. The toilets sway, and Erica leans close enough to shout right into Winnie’s ear: “My car isn’t here. But meet me at my mom’s car. It’s in the VIP lot, black Lexus with the bell on the windshield. I’ll get us out of here.”

“Us?” Winnie shouts back.

And Erica smiles.