The Whispering Night (Luminaries #3)

Chapter 40

CHAPTER 40

Distantly, Winnie knows that bracing is bad. That if she can stay relaxed she’s more likely to reduce injury upon impact. But sure. Relax muscles when a hungry lake closes in.

Then the Hummer completes its high dive, and the front bumper slams so hard against the water that Winnie’s head snaps backward with a vicious, audible popping. The seat belt sucks in tight.

And the slowness of time somehow stretches more . Winnie has enough space to think, I was just here a few days ago, floating on this lake like a swan. Now I am sinking, like a whale carcass into that lightless bathypelagic.

I wonder if I’ll see any candy bars.

Chassis groans. Glass creaks. The water is rising so fast, and holy shit, why is Ms. Morgan rolling down the passenger window? She’s screaming too, over and over: “Get your seat belt off, Winnie! Get your seat belt off!”

Winnie’s fingers are smarter than her mind. They obey, releasing the buckle in a sharp click that will vibrate in her body for the rest of her life. A cosmic microwave background caused by a new Big Bang that will change the trajectory of her future forever.

Water gushes like a waterfall into the passenger window. Ms. Morgan is crawling toward it, her hands and lower legs already submerged. She screams new words that sound like, “Follow me! We have to swim!” But might also be, “This way to your death, Winnie!”

And it is death that way. The water is toppling onto Winnie, and it’s so fucking cold . There’s no melusine to save her. No Jay to haul her to shore and keep her warm. There is only hypothermia and darkness and silence.

Ms. Morgan’s hand lands on Winnie’s leg. She has crawled backward and is grabbing Winnie just as Jay grabbed Winnie in the conservatory. Just as Winnie grabbed Erica in the maze.

“EAT THE PIZZA!” she hears, although that voice must be in her head. A command summoned by a soul not ready to die. Because Winnie isn’t ready to die, and the ghosts of dead fishes and dead Hummers, of past trials and past pain cannot have her.

Winnie moves.

The water is to her waist now, icy and heavy and unwilling to let her go. But if the ghosts can’t have her, then the water sure as hell can’t either.

Ms. Morgan is withdrawing. Grappling toward the window and pulling herself through. She kicks into the Little Lake, vanishing like a kelpie into the waves.

Winnie is only a few seconds behind. Eat the pizza, eat the pizza. Move and swim and get away. She tugs off her glasses, stuffs them in her zipped-up hoodie, and finally launches into the lake.

The water is so cold, so heavy, she instantly loses dexterity. Worse, it is so dark, she cannot tell which way is up. What little light is in the sky cannot reach here, especially with the water so churned. It’s like cloud cover, like thunderstorms. And there are no lanterns from the Saturday woods to guide Winnie, no gunfire flashes from Tuesdays holding the line.

Until Mom’s voice tickles against her submerged brain.

To determine which way to swim, exhale into your hand and feel which way the bubbles move. Air will always rise up.

Winnie covers her mouth, her fingers numb and clumsy. She exhales, and yes. It’s hard to tell, but yes. The bubbles are at the top of her hand; she is facing the right way.

She swings out her arms, scissors her legs, and swims.

Swims and swims and swims until she no longer needs Mom’s voice to guide her—for new lights now glimmer. Blinking from the Floating Carnival.

Winnie breaks the surface. Freezing air steers over her. Then she hears Ms. Morgan nearby, “This way, Winnie. Come on, we’re near the dock.”

This is not the first time Winnie has been to the Floating Carnival at night. She came as a girl, of course, and then more recently when her Midnight Crown forced her to watch fireworks surrounded by Sundays.

This is, however, the first time Winnie has been here with absolutely no one else around. It’s eerie. Super eerie, like a continuation of the horror film she imagined in the hot room.

INT. HOT ROOM, the script read two hours ago. Winnie and Erica sneak through an empty hot room while unseen monsters shiver and hide in dark, concrete corners—and while Tuesday soldiers hunt.

Now it reads: EXT. FLOATING CARNIVAL. Winnie and her English teacher creep through the empty carnival. The full-moon Ferris wheel winks a golden glow across the booths and stands. Fairy lights glimmer, strung down aisles. In the distance, engines rev from Tuesday search boats launching on the other side of the Little Lake. Voices echo, the words inaudible but urgent.

Urgent is what Winnie feels too. She and Ms. Morgan haven’t died of hypothermia, but they will soon if they don’t get moving. If they don’t find dry clothes and heat.

Except that isn’t what Winnie is actually fixated on right now. Survival? Whatever. She’s a lot more worried about all the things she couldn’t process as she sprinted for her life. Like how the Crow has Erica—but why ? What is Erica to Martedì? And where is she taking Erica?

And then there is the Whisperer. There is Jay.

Winnie swivels her body on the dock. Cold air pierces all the frozen parts of her. She squints at the bridge. It’s lit by tens of headlights now, as well as an ambulance from the Monday hospital. Putting on her busted glasses doesn’t improve the view. “Is the Whisperer gone?” she croaks.

“For now,” Ms. Morgan replies, her voice just as waterlogged. “It’ll come back, though. They always come back.”

“Good,” Winnie murmurs.

Ms. Morgan blinks. “Good?”

Winnie nods. Then says it again: “Good.”

“Winnie, that famēs spell just ate half the freaking bridge. And now you’re saying you want it to come back? Are you okay?”

But what if it’s not a fam ē s spell? Winnie wants to ask. What if it’s Jay and I can bring him home? She doesn’t offer this out loud. There’s a heat sparking to life inside her. Steel striking against flint at the word famēs .

“So you knew it was a Diana spell all along, Ms. Morgan? For this past month, you’ve known exactly what the Whisperer was, and you’ve done nothing to stop it? Nothing to help me? And when you called it the Rustler at school, you were just saying that to mess with me—”

“It’s not like that.” Ms. Morgan’s hands whip up.

“Then what is it like? Because I spent weeks with no one believing me—” Winnie breaks off as a massive searchlight carves down from the bridge. A circle of light that pendulums across the water, exactly where the Hummer went down. Then it skirts toward the western shore, suggesting it’s only a matter of time before it swings east too.

Winnie doesn’t care.

When she thought the Crow was the lesser of two evils compared to Jeremiah Tuesday and his scorpions, she was wrong. She was more wrong than she could ever have guessed.

You ever want something so bad, Erica asked her, and then you finally get it, but it’s just… What if it isn’t what you think it will be?

Winnie should have listened more closely to that question. She should have noticed that Erica was singing a second pitch.

“Erica,” she tries to tell Ms. Morgan. “She’s been taken by a Diana Crow, and we need to find her.” But of course, that isn’t what crawls off Winnie’s tongue. “The sadhuzag is a rare but massive stag with seventy-four antler prongs and razor-sharp hooves.”

Ms. Morgan stiffens. “Winnie—are you okay?” She slips a hand behind Winnie’s back. “Oh gosh, you’re so cold. Come on. We need to warm up.” She pushes unsteadily to her feet, hauling Winnie with her. Water pours off them.

They are both shaking.

Which is the only reason Winnie lets herself get carted into the Floating Carnival. Her sopping clothes leave a trail through the fairy-lit avenues. Her teeth chatter. Her lungs quake. And her left ankle hurts with each step. It’s the same one she twisted on her first trial a month ago.

As for her hands, they’re so cold, she can’t feel the small gashes scraped across them.

Next to her, Ms. Morgan’s scorpion armor squeaks and drips. “That’s Mason’s gear, isn’t it,” Winnie says. A statement, not a question.

And Ms. Morgan nods. “There are some perks to dating the Lead Tuesday Hunter.” She offers a weak laugh, but when Winnie doesn’t return it, she sighs. “Mason told me you were arrested, Winnie, and since then, I’ve been doing everything I could to find you.” She gives a full-body shudder now. Then tugs Winnie along faster. “I’m sorry I couldn’t help sooner.”

Winnie compresses her lips. None of this makes sense. No matter how hard Winnie glares at it, she can’t find a cipher to decrypt it all. “What about Erica? Were you trying to help her too, Ms. Morgan?”

“Leona.” Another nervous laugh. “Call me Leona. And no—I didn’t know about Erica. Was she arrested too?”

Winnie shakes her head. Both as an answer to Ms. Morgan’s question and as a refusal to call her Leona . Because right now, Winnie needs to cling to something familiar. This lady is named Ms. Morgan. She teaches me English at the high school. She moved here from outside Hemlock Falls because she met Mason Tuesday and fell in love. My own aunt vetted her…

Oh god.

“Wait a minute.” Now Winnie skids to a halt. Water drip-drips around her. “My aunt vetted you. I know she did because you told me that years ago. So how did Rachel not catch that you were a Diana?”

“Oh, she knew.” Ms. Morgan swats a seaweed-like tendril of hair from her face. “Your aunt definitely knew. But sometimes Luminaries are willing to look past a person’s origins. After all, it’s not only Dianas who recruit Luminaries. The conscription can go both ways. But look. We can find clothes over there.” She points at the Kelpie Carousel fifty paces away. Its wooden nightmares are wrapped in shadows; only a string of green lights runs in loops around the top.

Winnie can’t decide if the absence of calliope music makes it more creepy or less.

Beyond the carousel is what Ms. Morgan actually points to: a souvenir shop lit by blue bulbs, where—in addition to stuffed toy kelpies—you can also buy T-shirts.

Ms. Morgan grabs two shirts as soon as they scurry in. They’re both long-sleeve and navy blue, with the words Gone Fishing written over a swirly, vortex lake with a massive eye opening at the center.

Which wow, that’s some peak Luminaries humor, right there. Let’s joke about the sleeping spirit waking up! You know, the one thing we never want to happen in Hemlock Falls or anywhere else and the one thing Dianas do want!

A Diana like the one standing next to Winnie and stripping off her upper layers of stolen armor. Winnie’s fingers close into a fist around the shirt. “When you say ‘defected,’ what does that mean? That you don’t want this anymore?” She shakes the shirt at Ms. Morgan.

“Yes,” Ms. Morgan replies, her head stuck halfway inside the shirt as she tries to find the neck hole. “It means that I don’t want to wake up the sleeping spirit and free all its magic into the world. Though to be honest”—her head finally pokes through—“that’s not really what Dianas want either. Or at least they don’t want it because they’re wicked and power-hungry.”

Winnie blinks, an old quote coming to mind from Understanding Sources by Theodosia Monday: Both carnivores and herbivores are essential for a healthy ecosystem, and this author posits that so too are our disparate societies of Dianas and Luminaries. The question however is: Which society is the predator? And which society is the prey?

Winnie peels off her soaked hoodie, then her soaked T-shirt too. She forgets to remove her glasses; they clatter to the floor—overloud in this horror film.

And Winnie swears she can hear Erica as if she’s right there. Oh Jesus, you look so much worse now, Winona. You need a shower.

Winnie swallows. Then sticks her tongue between her teeth so they won’t start clicking. She’s still freezing, even after she tows on the Gone Fishing T-shirt. Ms. Morgan, meanwhile, crooks down and retrieves Winnie’s glasses. She offers them to Winnie, pasting on a smile that can only be described as Concerned Adult.

Winnie takes her glasses, but doesn’t smile back.

Ms. Morgan sighs again. Then shivers. “I… think Archie sells sweatshirts, so let’s go there next.”

And then what? Winnie wants to ask. Then where the hell are we going to go? Where am I going to go? Dad’s trail has ended in nothing. No pot at the end of the rainbow; no missing father to jump out of a shadow and say, You did it, Winnie! You won the prize and you found me!

She doesn’t know where the Crow went. She doesn’t know where Erica is. She doesn’t know where the Whisperer will reappear next, or if Jay will again be inside that supermassive black hole that feasts on galaxies.

So Winnie follows Ms. Morgan out of the gift shop. One wet foot in front of the other. Her cracked glasses distort the carnival. They turn the full-moon Ferris wheel into a Wheel of Fortune. Pick your nightmare, spin the wheel! Or you’ll end up as your boyfriend’s meal!

The wheel doesn’t turn at this hour, but it does glow. Carts drift and wobble on the breeze. It is beautiful—which only makes Winnie want to laugh. To clap her hands and say, Oh boy, you sure had me fooled, you liars!

How could she ever believe the lights of downtown were honest? That it was bioluminescence creating photons in the depths?

“Why are you helping me?” Winnie asks. “If you’re a defected Diana, then why do you care what happens to me?”

“Of course I care about you, Winnie.” Ms. Morgan shivers, her arms hugged to her chest. “I mean it every time I say I’m on your side.”

“That’s not an answer.”

“It’s a long story.”

“Well, do you have something better to do?” Winnie flings out her arms. The spirit on her shirt looks like it’s winking.

“We need to keep moving—and get more clothes.”

“No.” Winnie stops now. The Ferris wheel rocks and sways. “Explain to me why you’re here. Too many people have kept secrets from me lately, and I’m not moving until you tell me exactly what’s going on.”

Ms. Morgan grimaces. Then rubs at her eyes. Then finally mumbles, “Okay. It’s… well.” She waves toward Winnie’s neck. “When you put a message in your locket a few days ago, your grandmother Harriet received it. She contacted Professor Funday, who then found me. I gathered up the rest of the birthday cards and met you at the old museum—where I was shocked to discover another Diana in Hemlock Falls who cast that hotspot spell. Now, here we are.”

Winnie stares at Ms. Morgan. Her jaw sags. “Here… we are? You just went from A to Z without any of the alphabet in between. What does Professor Funday have to do with anything? How does my grandma Harriet have a locket? And why the hell do you have birthday cards from my dad?”

Ms. Morgan’s grimace deepens. Because Winnie is almost yelling now. Which is foolish, since sound carries over water—and the Tuesdays will hear if she isn’t quieter. But she can’t make herself care. The flint sparks have turned into a bonfire.

“There were three of us originally,” Ms. Morgan answers, her voice appeasing and gentle. “Defected Dianas, I mean, living in Hemlock Falls. One was Theodosia Monday.”

“The lady who wrote all those books on Dianas?”

“Yes. She goes by Funday now because that’s just the sort of person she is. Then, I was the second Diana. And the third…” Here Ms. Morgan dithers, as if she really doesn’t want to finish this sentence. As if she hates to be the bringer of bad tidings.

But Winnie already knows what’s coming next. The alphabet is filling in, and she can see where at least half the letters are headed. B = Grandma Harriet had a locket. C = Dad had a locket too. That means D is…

Her spine gives way, so fast she barely staggers to a bench beside the Ferris wheel. She slumps over. Her glasses slip down her nose. And her brain starts blasting out: I NEED AN ADULT!

Ms. Morgan eases beside Winnie. But where Winnie is a spineless lump, Ms. Morgan is all stiff bones and stiffer muscles to hold them.

And at last, the letter D arrives. Two circles on Winnie’s Venn diagram. On her three-petaled trilliums, drawn and redrawn a thousand times.

“Your dad,” Ms. Morgan says, her voice scarcely louder than the boat engines in the distance. “The third Diana was your dad, Winnie.”

D for Dad.

D for Diana.