Page 27 of The Whispering Night
Within seconds, it’s clear where the signora is aiming: the famed Saturday maze. It’s a place Winnie hasn’t visited in years, but that she likely knows better than most Saturdays.
Because Dad designed it.
For months, Winnie would see the sketches of it on his desk by the family computer. A hundred different shapes and layouts he crafted for Dryden, none of which were up to muster. In fact, it was working with Dryden that pushed Dad into abandoning his passion for landscape architecture and shifting to just… well, landscaping. Gardening. Tending the plants someone else designed. Because although people might be the worst, plants never let him down.
Besides,he would say whenever Winnie would ask him about why he gave it all up,I didn’t move to Hemlock Falls for my degrees, Win-Ben.She always thought that was the most romantic thing she’d ever heard.
Now here Winnie is, walking into that maze with the woman who ruined Dadandruined the wife he came to Hemlock Falls for.
The yew hedges swallow them. The sun’s rays, vicious acute angles on the horizon, vanish. Shadows and cold lay claim. Brick pavers give way to tumbled gravel. The Saturdays have added purple streamers with heavy golden keys for the Masquerade. It gives the maze an almost circus-like feel, as if Winnie isn’t merely stepping into a hedge labyrinth, but a magician’s secret tent.Or a witch’s.
Winnie wishes she’d grabbed the espresso. Her mouth is dry. Her brain is scrambled.Team Petty has now become Team Thirst.She keeps sizing up the woman beside her. She’s so tiny without a crow mask. She’s so fragile. Winnie could take her, if it came down to it… right?
“You can’t,” the signora says, and suddenly her accent is gone. No more Italian flair, no more gracious smiles of a Luminary in power. She is a Diana again.TheDianacornixfrom the forest. “You’re wondering if you can beat me, aren’t you?” She glances at Winnie, her earlier smirk now spreading into a Cheshire cat smile. “It’s what I would be thinking, and the answer is no. You can’t.”
Winnie swallows. Her heart hurts because it skipped at least two beats while she frantically worried the woman had read her mind. But no. Of course not. There are limits even to what Diana magic can do. Or at least Winnie sure hopes there are.
They have taken four turns into the towering hedges. Noises from the breakfast have faded. There is only Winnie and the Diana and the designDad conjured almost a decade ago. He would be delighted to see how well it has grown, how dense the yew branches have become.
It is quiet as the forest when the mist rises.
A bench waits here for weary Luminaries, and beside it is a rolling ball water fountain that should be soothing, but is insteadreallyugly because Dryden insisted it be made from purple granite. Winnie keenly remembers Dad’s disgust.Purple granite? Is he serious?
“Where’s my dad?” These are the only words Winnie wants to make sure she gets out, and she’s pleased by how level her voice is. How calm her gaze.
Annoyingly, the Crow is just as calm and level back. “I don’t know, Winnie. If I knew that, then I wouldn’t be here right now trying to conduct a private conversation where no one will walk in.” She gives a flick of her wrist, and though Winnie doesn’t see it, she hears the wordobvolvocoast against her eardrums.
Somehow, the space around them becomes even quieter.
“You told me you ‘dealt with him.’” Winnie sets her jaw. “In the forest, you said those exact words to me. Now you’re telling me you don’t know where he is?”
“I don’t.” The signora shrugs, boredom hanging off her like her shawl. “He was clever four years ago. He got away before I could subdue him. And now, believe it or not, Winnie Wednesday, we want the same thing. You wish to stop the spell in the forest, right? Jeremiah told me you call it the Whisperer?”
“You don’t want to stop it.”
“Oh, but Ido. It’s only a matter of time before people realize what it is, and I can’t have that happening. It’s a nuisance, and I need it eliminated.”
Winnie’s head pitches back. “Youmadeit.”
“No, Jenna Thursday made it.”
Somehow Winnie pitches back even more. “You’re lying.”
“Unfortunately, I am not. And it gets more complicated, for you see, Jenna bound the spell to her source, so until I findthat,I can’t stop the… the Whisperer, was it?” She opens her hands in a ballet-smooth shrug. “And thus, Winnie, we are not enemies at all.”
Winnie forces herself to exhale through her nose. That was a lot of bombshells in the span of twenty seconds. “You… tried to kill me.”
“After you killed two of my witches, so I think we’re even.” The Crow smiles, but it doesn’t reach her eyes.
And Winniereallywishes she’d taken that espresso. “It was self-defense.” Her words sound weak. Like a lie, even though she knows they’re true. For some reason, a taste likeHi EnerG!cherry fills her mouth.
The Crow splays a hand to her chest. “And I was simply defending myself againstyou.”
Winnie’s first instinct is to snap,No, you were hunting Jay!But her jaw is smarter than her throat; her teeth grind together so no mention of Jay can break free. She doesn’t want to draw attention to him. She doesn’t want to remind this Diana of what her target was.
The woman remembers anyway. “I don’t care about your boyfriend—heisyour boyfriend, right?” She draws her shawl more tightly to her shoulders. “I can find other daywalkers to absorb magic from, Winnie.”
Surely it’s not that simple,Winnie thinks.Surely you didn’t go to all that trouble just to get Jay’s daywalking magic.But she has no time to call the Crow’s bluff—not before Martedì says: “What I want is the same thing Erica Thursday wants.”
