Page 60 of The Whispering Night
Or,another thought prods. A feathery, hopeful voice.What if the messenger is Dad?If three stars meanmessage,maybe he wanted Winnie to contact him with the locket all along.
Winnie is so distracted by her inner spiral and outward quiz bowl, she almost forgets the main draw for coming out here tonight: talking to Mario. And it’s only once they’re wrapping up the safari on the overlook beside the waterfall that she finally gets her chance.
Pop, pop, pop!
Far below the wooden decking, in a river churning with untamed waves and white chop, is where the melusine healed Winnie.Besidethe river is where Jay dragged her out after she should have died.
To the west, a thoughtful violet sky is shifting toward hungry gray. Forest branches fracture it, like a frightened kid peeking through theirfingers. The mist will rise soon. The forest and its monsters will awaken, and maybe the Whisperer too.
Winnie pivots away from the overlook. The ghosts are too loud; Jenna’s old song won’t stop playing in the back of her brain. She wishes she could seal up that song in bubble wrap. And the ghosts too. And all the endless,relentlessfeelings that go along with them. Then she could shove it in a box in the attic, right next to that box of photographs from when her family used to be whole.
Hope is the thing with feathers.
T minus thirty-five hours.
“Hey,” Mario says. He has followed Winnie away from the overlook, and now he offers her a stick of gum. She takes it, and for several seconds the sugar overwhelms her salivary glands. She chews. The intensity recedes, and the scent of forest detritus creeps back into her nasal cavity.
“Why is Jay getting worse?” Winnie’s voice floats out like a will-o’-wisp.
Mario glances behind them, but they’re alone here, twenty steps from the overlook.
“He told me he didn’t used to change this often,” she continues. “Maybe once a week. But lately, it’s almost every day.”
Mario shoves a fresh stick of gum into his own mouth. It mixes with old gum, and when he speaks, it’s around a mouthful of rubber. “No inspired theories of your own, Win? No wagers you want to make?” He tries for a grin.
But Winnie can’t grin back. The Winnie of a month ago, who justdesperatelywanted to feel relevant—to know someone was listening to her, no matter how unlikely her theories got…
That Winnie is gone, replaced by one who istoorelevant. Who is trapped in the center of a Venn diagram, with every circle dependent on her, whether or not they know she exists.
“I have a hypothesis,” Mario continues when Winnie doesn’t answer. He slides his hands into fleece pockets. “It’s possible the severity of Jay’s mutation is responding to increased inflammation.”
“But… why would there be increased inflammation?”
“Same reason there would be in a human.” Mario blows a bubble.Pop!“Stress, Winnie.”
“Stress?”
“Jay just became Lead Hunter, right? Plus, he, ah…” Another glance to verify they’re alone. “He almost died in his wolf form a week and a half ago, so it’s possible the mutation is responding to heightened cortisol.”
“But why does he evenhavethe mutation?” Winnie thinks back to all those Monday papers Grayson had gathered. Each one referenced werewolf mutation as only spreading through bite. Yet Jay was never bitten. On top of that, when he bit Winnie—only a hundred feet from this spot right here—the mutation didn’t spread to her.
The question hangs in the air while Mario’s jaw works. While a bubble inflates… then pops, and he slides his hands into his fleece pockets.
“Well?” she presses. “I can tell you have an answer, Mario. Want to share it with the rest of the class?”
Now Mario winces, and to her shock, rather than blow more bubbles or shove in more gum, he withdraws a shiny wrapper… then spits the pink wad from his mouth into it. “There have been records,” he answers as he wraps up the gum and returns it to his pocket, “of nightmare mutations that can spread genetically. It’s rare, since so few daywalkers have a human form—and even fewer live long enough to produce offspring. But… it has happened before. And you may recall that seventeen years ago there was a—”
“No.” Winnie doesn’t mean to say this. She doesn’t mean to say anything, but she also can’t let Mario finish his sentence. She can’t let him draw the line he’s about to draw.
“It’s just a theory,” he insists, but now Winnie lifts her hands. “No,” she repeats. The more she learns, the harder this will be to compartmentalize.
But it’s already too late, isn’t it?Her brain has drawn the line without Mario’s input, connecting the werewolf who was killed seventeen years ago to the boy Winnie loves today.Jay doesn’t know who his father was. His mother never shared the name before she died.
Winnie sways.
“It’s just a theory,” Mario repeats, more emphatically this time. “I have no actual evidence, Winnie. Not to mention, my theory doesn’t explain the jawbone Jay says he found under his pillow four years ago. So there’s a good chance the genetic connectionisn’tthe root cause of his mutation, but rather something we’ve never heard of—”
“Signore! Signore Mario, mi scusi!”
