Page 68 of The Whispering Night
On their head is a hound mask.
Winnie drops her phone.
She doesn’t mean to, but seeing that mask transports her straight into the forest. She is once more watching as golden arrows fly and phoenix fire ignites to roast two witches alive.
Canes: These are the lowest level in the Diana hierarchy, specialized in hunting nightmares for spells and spreading the Diana cause.
“Winnie,” the voice says. “Winnie, these are for you.” The hound offers something that smears the shadows with red.
Winnie’s eyes track down. And although her glasses slide, she manages to find what the witch is holding.
Red envelopes. One, two, three, four, fanned out just like Winnie fanned them out when she confronted Mom. Two have Winnie’s name. Two have Darian’s.
This person is not Dad, though. Whoever stands before Winnie is halfa head shorter and with robes that billow like a Sith Lord’s. They arenotWinnie’s dad.
“Who,” she begins, without taking the cards, “are—”
No.
Heat erupts from Winnie’s locket like a gunshot. A cry cuts loose from her lungs. Her knees wobble beneath her.
No,the voice that isn’t a voice repeats in Winnie’s brain. It has no gender, no shape, no weight. It’s just a word slicing through her mind like a guillotine. It’s just fire blazing on her chest like a poker.
Yet Winnie knows that voice belongs to the Crow. Her locket never responds to anyone else this way.
The hound stares down the gallery, their snout aimed at a distant window Winnie would have sworn was closed only a few moments ago. Then light spears through that open window, and the hound tackles Winnie.
Sagitta aurea: These spells are used to kill or maim a target. Just as the Dianas are named for the Roman goddess of the hunt, these spells are modeled after Diana’s preferred weapon of golden arrows.
Winnie and the hound crash against the closet door. Screams erupt across the room. Light flares, golden as a summer sun and overwhelming Winnie’s vision. Then smoke scores into her nose.
Because the golden arrow has hit a nearby wall, and now that wall is burning.
The hound grabs Winnie’s arms, frantically tugging her to her feet. “Run,” they say, shoving the red envelopes into Winnie’s hands. “Winnie, you have to run!”
CHAPTER
29
Hotspot: These extensions of the sleeping spirit’s domain can appear anywhere within several miles outside the spirits’ typical boundaries. Like mushrooms that have fungal connections extending and branching below the earth’s surface, the spirits also grow and reach and spread.
Mist rolls toward Winnie like the ash from a volcanic eruption. It comes from the gallery’s end—from the window where the golden arrow appeared. Hot and magicked and unstoppable. It engulfs the room so fast, she can do nothing but let it come for her.
The heat shears her skin. Her eyesight vanishes. And deep, deep inside her, a hysterical version of Winnie laughs like a hidebehind. Because the Sundays think their hot room is likethis? How adorable, how precious. They clearly know nothing about what the forest can really do.
Hidebehind,Winnie’s inner Compendium spurts.These thin daywalkers are native only to the northernmost spirit forest of the Americas. They stalk prey by hiding behind trees, and the only warning of an attack is the high-pitched laughter emitted when they pounce.
“Winnie!” she hears Jay roar from behind.“I’m coming!”
Then there he is, an inhuman blur morphing into a hunter beside her. His hand claps onto Winnie’s arm. “Move,” he commands. “We have to keep moving.”
Yes. This is the one lesson Winnie really should know by now after howmany times in the mist? After how many nightmares have formed around her?
Later, she will marvel that she had the physical capacity to not only hold on to the red envelopes when the mist thundered across her, but to shove them into her hoodie pocket. Her phone might be long gone, but these cards are prizes she refuses to give up.
With fingers latched like pliers, Jay hauls Winnie back toward the antechamber—or at least, she thinks that’s where they’re going. She can’t see; she no longer smells smoke from a burning wall; and she can hardly hear. Yet of course Jay makes it all seem so easy. This might not be the forest, but nightmares and mist are his natural habitat. And Winnie, Winnie, Winnie—oh, what do youthinkyou’re doing here? What do any of these silly little Luminaries in their silly little costumes think they’re doing here in this domain that the forest has suddenly claimed?
Those same silly little Luminaries scream. Winnie sees shadows forming in the mist. And uselessly, her brain emits:The only warning sign of a hotspot’s formation is the flight of local fauna.
