Page 120 of The Whispering Night
“So do as you promised, or next time, I’m not towing you out again.”
Winnie’s teeth don’t move now. Her breath is held tight.Erica hasn’tfinished theIncantamentum. There is still time to keep the spirit from awakening.
“Finish the spell, Erica. You’ve done so well up until now. All that’s left are the final words. We’ll say them with you, won’t we?” Martedì opens her arms to the other Dianas, like a maestro ordering her choir to perform. As one, they all sing—except the hounds and the lynx:Sumus unus in somno et somniis.
A wave of power rocks outward, knocking Winnie onto her heels. It makes her locket sear so hot, she grabs for it. Sohotshe rips it out from under her armor without conscious thought.It hurts, it hurts, it hurts! Get it off me!
She makes noise. Way too much of it. But no one hears her because at that same moment, Erica makes noise too. A giddy, croaking howl. “You won’t hurt me. I’m the only one who can use Jenna’s source, I’m the only one who can finish—”
The vines rip Erica back underwater. In less than a second, she is submerged with only bubbles to show where she went down.
Winnie’s locket continues burning. It glows orange now—and she can smell the exo-scales under the gold melting. Heat claws upward, drawing more sweat from her face. The locket is going to roast through her armor. It’s going to brand her skin.
She bites her fist to keep from crying out, but as each second passes, the locket glows brighter. So even if she can keep her voice contained, she can’t hide this glow.
It’s like a beacon. Like a lantern.Or like fireworks.
Winnie’s lungs and spine soften at that thought, and suddenly, she sees a way to make her math add up: before she left the pontoon boat, she grabbed—on sheer instinct—a single capsule of fireworks plastered withDanger!labels.
Well, danger is exactly what Winnie wants right now.
She digs into a side pocket of her armor until she finds the paper filled with gunpowder and stars. It’s slightly damp from her run through the lake, but not soaked. As long as she can get the fuse hot enough…
Except no. When she tugs out her matches, they are fully sodden. Fully useless.Think, Winnie. You’re a scientist. You’re a problem solver. All you need is…
Heat.
She fights off the desire to laugh—a giddy, croaking howl just like Erica’s. Then she cants forward, her eyes never leaving the shoreline or the Dianas. Erica is still plunged underwater, and the wordsSumus unus in somno et somniisstill shiver through the air, lapping in time to the heartbeat waves against the beach.
The locket cooks Winnie’s face, heat rising off it like a candle. She lifts the fuse to the locket. The gold dangles and sways. But after sixteen Mississippis, the laws of thermodynamics finally take hold.
Fire sparks. The fuse catches. The fuse burns.
Winnie chucks the firework at the rowan tree.
CHAPTER
47
While Winnie’s new plan, crafted from a truly desperate assemblage of bullet points, won’t impress the Thursdays anytime soon, itdoesgive Winnie precisely the mathematical outcome she desires.
The fireworks detonate, spraying out green sparkles thatpop-crack-boom!around the rowan tree or across the half-moon stretch of shore. One hound gets it in the abdomen, another in the leg. And the lynx, meanwhile—well, they get a faceful of Winnie because as soon as the fireworks start going, she starts running. Bilaterally symmetric, her knives swing like she is a vampira with blade arms.
She aims one knife at the lynx’s face.Swipe.She slices off a pointed ear. Then her other knife she punches across the lynx’s abdomen. These aren’t killing blows so much as flourishes meant to stop thesilvaspell channeled from the rowan tree.
It works. Winnie knows it works because she sees the mist evaporate like a line of falling dominoes. Then a bellow fills the morning, so loud, it rattles into Winnie’s bones—a familiar sound that was directed at Winnie only fifteen days ago…
And that is now beautifully,viciouslydirected at the Dianas.
The sadhuzag charges this way.
Now Winnie does laugh with a full-throated cackle. She is a hunter. She is on the move. And although the Dianas are trying to launch attacks at her, only one actually connects with Winnie before the sadhuzag—and all its fellow nightmares—come pouring out of the forest.
The spell that hits Winnie is a bad one, though. The worst: a golden arrow that shafts right into her chest. Pain, heat,screams.They suffuse her body, all the way from her anterior fontanelle down to her distal phalanges. She becomes thesagitta aurea,her vision turning gold as molten sunlight.
Her locket burns like fresh magma. Fully red. Fully smoking. But, inexplicably, Winnie doesn’t die. The gold and the pain clear, and other than a melted depression on her armor, there is no wound.
So she runs onward. Her knives drip blood. Her focus, even with green fireworks to burst in her periphery, stays lasered on the Crow. Martedì has seen what is happening, so is tearing Erica out of the water again. This time, there is no struggle in the girl.
