Page 106 of The Whispering Night
Most nights, the will-o’-wispsknowJenna Thursday is no danger to them. They ignore her, just as she ignores them. But tonight… Tonightsheisa danger. An explosive, apocalyptic danger to herself and everything else inside this forest. Inside this world.
I don’t want to die,she thinks.I want to live.
Yes,the nightmare seems to say.But you know it’s too late for that.
It’s true. Even if Jenna doesn’t really understand where everything went wrong, even if all she wants to do is warn Grayson half a mile to the north—even if all she wants to do ishugher little sister one more time and say,I will always love you even if I can’t be there…
Well, this will have to be the way Jenna says it. This will have to be the way she shows how much she loves them all.
Not all nightmares deserve to die. Not all Luminaries or Dianas either. But sometimes, it’s the only way to fix a mistake made many years ago, when a much younger Jenna didn’t know what she was agreeing to.
No!she thinks she hears Bryant say. Though if he yells that at her or at the Crow or at the will-o’-wisp, Jenna will never know. Because she says the opposite.
“Yes,” she tells the will-o’-wisp, and it’s the first word in what feels like eons that isnotLatin, that isnotpart of theIncantamentum Purum Cor.She has stopped the spell. It will not finish.
The will-o’-wisps attack Jenna. They feast. They kill. Blood, blood, so much blood to stain the granite and that soft, damp carpet of a tree’s shed memories.
Piece by piece, drop by drop, note by note, the will-o’-wisps consume a vibrant, singing spirit that once belonged to Jenna Thursday. She becomes one more ghost sucked into the forest. One more dream fed to the spirit’s night.
And one more body for Luminaries to clean up tomorrow.
CHAPTER
42
“We have to get help.” Ms. Morgan is wheezing. This might be caused by panic or might be from the fact that she and Winnie are now running. “We’ll go to Teddy—she can help us. And… and your grandmother. We’ll send her a message.”
“My grandmother,” Winnie replies, her own breaths shallowing out, “isn’t here. Plus, Harriet didn’t exactly help my family when Dad vanished, even though she knew he was the good guy. So why would she help us now?”
“Because the world is ending?”
Winnie’s jog slows. Her ankle isn’t happy about this pace as she aims herself and Ms. Morgan for the striped tent. There’s a phone in there Ms. Morgan wants to use. “But we just dumped the Whisperer in the lake. Surely that bought us time?”
“When I thought the Whisperer was a run-of-the-millfamesspell, sure. I would have said we bought time. But”—pant, pant—“I have no idea anymore, Winnie. All bets are off. We have to assume the worst.”
“And the worst is the world is ending?”
“No one knows.” Ms. Morgan flips up her hands. “That’s kind of the whole point.”Pant, pant. “Dianas think waking the spirit will be good for the world; Luminaries… think… it will be bad.”
“And you?”
“I think we have a… good balance here, so why mess with it?”
Winnie thinks again of the words fromUnderstanding Sources—written by none other than Professor Funday.Both carnivores and herbivores areessential for healthy ecosystems,it reads,and this author posits that so too are our disparate organizations.
“What if the Dianas are right, though? What if waking the spiritisa good thing?”
“I mean, it’s possible.”Wheeze. “Dianas believe… Luminaries hoard and control the sleeping spirit’s power. And they’re not totally wrong. You have life-saving technology here, like… melusine blood—and you don’t share it with… the wider world.”
“Okay, but sharing all the magic will also share all the nightmares.” Winnie’s glasses are bouncing on her nose. It makes the stripes on the tent ahead look like an EKG.
“Again, we don’t know… Jesus, Winnie. Can we slow down?” Ms. Morgan’s footsteps drop to a trot. Then a shamble. She’s really breathing heavily. “I’m not… a hunter. I donotrun sprints. Like, ever.”
“You’re the one who said the world was ending!”
“Well, it won’t help if I go into cardiac arrest. Doyouknow how to stop the Pure Heart?”
“I thought you didn’t know either.”
