Page 48 of The Whispering Night
No. Not the green dress. You’re in the hot room.
Her body doesn’t care. It’s trapped under the falls, while water roars. She is so cold. She is so numb.Whydid she trust the forest? The Whisperer is coming. The Pure Heart can’t save her. She didn’t find the source, and now everyone in Hemlock Falls will die like Grayson did—
“Winnie,” someone shouts at her. “Winnie, you’re okay. Winnie, Winnie.” They are shaking her, and she is no longer submerged. She’s not even in the water, but draped on the inclined exit at the pool’s other side. Someone has hauled her all the way here. They drip water onto her, their face backlit by a foggy light bulb. “Winnie, you’re okay. You’re okay. Hey, it’s me, Win. It’s just me.”
Bergamot and lime. It’s Jay.AlwaysJay.
“You’re here,” she chokes out, trying to sit up. But Jay is tugging her too tightly against him.
“I’m sorry I pushed you in,” he says into her wet hair. “I didn’t know it was you.”
“You’re here,” she repeats. And this time, she digs her forehead into his shoulder. He is so warm. “Is there… anyone else left?”
“I doubt it. You’re the first person I’ve run into in a while. And again,” he insists, “I didn’t know it was you.”
“I believe you.” She is shivering. “D-do you know what time it is?”
He shifts, as if to study his dad’s watch in the darkness. At this angle, he is a black-and-white sketch with shadow eyes and wet-dark hair. “It’s half past.”
Winnie groans. That means there’s still thirty minutes left in class. “I can’t do it, Jay. I can’t go back out there and deal with everyone.”
A zipper hisses. Then Jay’s hoodie—wet, but warm—drapes over her, followed by his arms again. Safe, certain. One part of the forest she can always trust.
“And you don’t have to go back out there. We can leave, Winnie. Justwalk out of here. There’s a door nearby. It leads to a pump room we can use to sneak out.”
“Spoken like someone who has used this tactic before.”
He doesn’t deny it. Just explains: “Grayson showed it to me a while ago. Probably because he… knew what I was. What I am.”
Winnie sighs. A sharp, cold thing. Grayson Friday continues to prove a mystery.He was a hard person to describe,Darian once said about him.And at the end of the day, I don’t think anyonereallyknew him.
As much as Winnie would like to use Grayson’s private escape right now, she knows she can’t abandon the blue schedule; sheknowsshe can’t skip all the tasks she has been set as the Midnight Crown. For all the secrets Mom might be hiding, she is still the most important person in Winnie’s life.
“I’ll just run out the clock in here,” she murmurs. “And you can explain to me why you missed your own show last night. You were at the Tuesday estate? Is that right?”
“Ah.” Jay hugs her more tightly against him—like he’s the one who’s afraid the forest will claim him. His nose presses into her wet hair. “It was a long night, Win. And as usual, I can’t remember a thing.”
Another cold, sharp sigh levers up from Winnie’s abdomen. “It’s happening more often, isn’t it, Jay?”
“Yeah.” A nod. Another squeeze. “Yeah, it is. And for longer times too. I barely made it out of the Tuesday estate before the mutation took hold. What happens if I change while other people are around me, Win? Then what? What do Ido?”
You die,she thinks. But she doesn’t say this out loud because Jay already knows this is the answer.Witches, werewolves, Wednesdays.Three petals, four petals, messages in honey ink, and nothing that Winnie can find to connect them all.
She shivers again. Then kisses Jay’s neck. Just a gentle pressure below his ear to remind herself that he is real, he is here, and that the shadows of the forest haven’t claimed either of them quite yet.
CHAPTER
22
After a day of confrontations, Winnie does not expect that the hardest one will be her mom. After all, it’sMom.Literally her favorite person in the whole world. Literally herhero.Not a Diana pretending to be a Tuesday, not a Saturday wanting to bully her in the locker room, and not ghosts from the forest wanting to drown her.
Yet here Winnie sits, at the kitchen table, her heart all stutter and no flow. She’s dressed in the green sweater and jeans from the morning, because after counting down the clock with Jay, she took a blessedly hot shower in the locker room and once more became the Face of Hemlock Falls.
Jay, who was still recovering from his lost night in the forest, left at Winnie’s insistence to visit Mario. Because if his transformation is happening more often, maybe the Monday scientist can help.
Pleaselet Mario help.
Classes blurred by, and Winnie felt like a child being carted along at the zoo, forced to eyeball exhibits she didn’t care about while all the critters shedidwant to see were behind crowds of people taller than her. By the time she reached Sunday dinner, she had vowed seventy-three times she would insist that L.A. should have the Midnight Crown instead. But every time her chance came with Dryden or Marcia, Winnie wussed out.
