Page 67 of The Whispering Night
Nothing except her locket vibrating against her chest. She jolts against the window. Then hastily checks the locket, where a new message reads:Closet by bathroom. Now.
Winnie doesn’t move. Her body hums with music and movement, but it’s not the work of her muscles. Not fibers contracting and stretching atthe command of her brain.Closet by bathroom. Now.She’s pretty sure she knows where that is. There are bathrooms on this floor, and between the men’s and women’s is a door. The sort of door you expect to hold mops and toilet cleaner and extra paper towels. She can reach that door in mere moments if she aims east and into a darker, emptier gallery of the museum.
Winnie isn’t stupid though. Yes, she tromped into the forest on her first trial completely unprepared and nearly got killed by a banshee. And yes, she followed Emma into the forest when she had literally no weapons or proper footwear. And oh yeah, she did go after Jay after he was shot by Wednesdays and all she had for protection was nightmare contraband.
Still, she isn’t stupid. Each of those instances had high risk, but much higher reward. She got her family back into the Luminaries; she saved Emma’s life; she saved Jay’s life; and now,right nowinside the shadowy, forgotten part of the museum…
Winnie thinks of Dad’s face, so much like Darian’s. Of his auburn hair that she inherited from him. She thinks of the sketches he drew in the birthday cards. She thinks of Mom, sitting at the kitchen table, trapped by the same spell that controls Winnie. She thinks of fireworks and Ferris wheels and the honest lights of downtown. Then she thinks of blue paper and stiff pencils and a don’t-know list that isn’t shrinking.
All she has to do is walk a hundred feet and see what’s there. She doesn’t have toapproach,she doesn’t have totalkto anyone, and she certainly doesn’t have to remain if the whole thing feels wrong.
Winnie pulls out her phone.And sweetest in the gale is heard; And sore must be the storm; That could abash the little bird; That kept so many warm.She texts Jay, then Erica:2 floor bathroom now. And finally, Winnie rocks away from the window. Her decision is made; the photons are guiding her this way.
Unfortunately, she doesn’t sense the night air trying to hold her back. Because it has no substance. It has no voice. It has only a whisper scratching to life nearby.
The party rumbles on.
CHAPTER
28
There’s no one there.
That’s what Winnie sees when she reaches the long gallery that once held Luminary historical portraits. There are dark spots on the gray wall that mark where frames used to hang. There are couples in discreet shadows. And there’s a small group at the farthest end of the room sitting round robin and playing cards.
As for the bathrooms—both of which Winnie can see from here, along with the closet between them… Well, there’s no one there. Absolutelyno one.
She hovers at the edge of the wide archway into the room. The party pulsates behind her; lights flash stochastically against music she can’t quite hear. It’s just bass and boom and bodies.
She checks her phone again. Nothing.
She checks the locket again. It’s unchanged.Closet by the bathroom. Now.Winnie’s face screws up. Is there another bathroom on the second floor? Or could this message mean thefirst-floor bathrooms? Dotheyhave a closet nearby too?
She propels herself onward.Step, step, step.A rhythm that doesn’t match the party. She adjusts her glasses three times.Step, step, step.
Nothing happens.
There’s still no one there.
Winnie gets all the way to the ladies’ restroom with its doorless entry into darkness and a stick figure in a dress (that someone has modified tobe gender neutral by removing half the dress). And there, right next to it, is the closet door.
It’s about as innocuous as a door can get. Rectangular. Wooden. A brass knob on the right. It’s the sort of door you’re not supposed to notice, and there’s not even a sign on it to indicate what, once upon a time, it might have been for. Storage? Cleaning supplies? Secret portal to Narnia?
Winnie stops walking now. By her estimation, she is ten steps from the closet—and there is still no one. She doesn’t hear water running or toilets flushing. (Although, to be fair, she’s not sure the pumps are operational.)
Her phone quakes.
Her heart blasts into the stratosphere.
And with clownish fingers that have forgotten how to mobilize, she bumbles her phone from her pocket. It’s Erica.Where are you? Did you leave the roof window?
Crap. Winnie’s previous text to her didn’t go through.
She looks again at the closet. Again at each bathroom door. Then again at the round-robin crew twenty yards away. Someone just got a full house; they’re howling their joy into the gallery.
No,she types out.2 floor bathr—
She doesn’t get a chance to finish. Not before a figure oozes from the bathroom like an oil spill. They are small, yet shapeless in a gray robe.
