Page 85 of The Whispering Night
“Grayson came here,” Winnie says. “He must have come here.”
Erica blinks from her spot crouched beside the shelf and lamp. “Why do you say that?”
“Because Jay knew about the pump room,” Winnie explains. “And he learned about it from Grayson, who showed it to him a few years ago. That can’t just be coincidence.”
“Oh.” Erica frowns. Her cheeks are scarlet from the race to get here, and the slightly crazed glint that had filled her russet eyes now snuffs out beneath a grieving gust.
And Winnie understands that grief. She has been staring it in the face ever since the old museum. Ever since she watched Jay turn to face the Whisperer.I love you. I’m sorry.
“Jay,” she begins… but then nothing else comes.
“I know,” Erica replies. She carefully, thoughtfully eases her black duffel to the concrete floor. “I saw him transform. Other people did too. He… turned into a nightmare. And then the Whisperer was there.”
“Did you see what…” Winnie can’t finish that question.What happened next?
But Erica understands. “No. None of us did. We talked about it after—me, L.A., Trevor, Katie, and the twins. Everyone saw Jay turn into a wolf, but no one saw what came next.”
Winnie swallows. Shoves at her glasses, which have all sorts of red body paint smeared across them. “I don’t think he’s dead.”
“Okay.”
Winnie pretends she doesn’t hear the pity. “He’snotdead, Erica.”
“Okay,” Erica repeats, and this time, she turns away to crouch beside her bookcase. After pulling off binders with handwritten labels likeGuitar ChordsorOriginal Songs,she gets to a false back identical to the one on the bookcase in the old cabin. She pries it off…
To reveal a square, metal tin.
Winnie knows right away what it is. She knows because she has seen a dampener before. After all, it was the first item that Dad’s map led her to: Jenna’s dampener hidden in a stream in the forest. But that dampener had been underwater for many years. The cookie tin holding the moss was dented and dinged, and the moss itself immediately began to rot upon exposure to air.
The dampener that Erica holds is spotless and gleaming. It’s a simple silver tin—square, where Jenna’s had been round—and there’s no denting, no rusting, no damage.
Without thinking, Winnie reaches up and grips her locket. “That’s your source, isn’t it.”
“Yeah,” Erica replies, and there’s a familiar hardness glazing onto her posture. A lowering of the castle portcullis because—as Winnie is now starting to recognize—Erica is afraid of what Winnie might do next.
But Erica shouldn’t be afraid. If she thinks a source is going to scare Winnie off, then she really hasn’t been paying attention these past few days.
Winnie shuffles forward. Then sinks cross-legged onto the middle of the blanket. “So how does it work? Does it have magic inside?”
Erica thaws slightly. “Yeah, there’s magic. My source was charging up until the night… well, the night the Dianas went after Jay.”
Right.Thatnight, almost two weeks ago. The same night Winnie finallyrealized what Jay really was—and what Erica really was.Anyone could be a Diana. A Diana could be anyone.
“So how long can you keep it here?” Winnie asks because she’d rather think about magic than about Jay and all the ways she has failed him. “How long before all the stored power drains away?”
“A few months. Even a few years, if it’s preserved in the right way.” She strides toward Winnie and drops down before her. It’s the same pose they shared in the cabin, when they had a sheet hung over them and Winnie thought the Crow was the greatest threat before them.
T minus “I don’t know if I care anymore.”
Erica opens her dampener. Static undulates outward, plucking at the hairs on Winnie’s arms, neck, face. They feel tugged by a thousand tweezers. Then the sensation passes, and Winnie is left staring at a Diana source.
It’s the first source she has ever seen, yet not the first time she has seen this particular sphere of obsidian that once lived beside the Thursday family piano.
Part of Winnie wants to laugh.You took Marcia’s crystal after all. Amazing.Another part wants to recoil.A source. This is dangerous, run away.
But try as she might, she can’t quite reach the appropriate feelings. There is simply too much happening. Inside of her, outside of her, in concentric shock waves around Hemlock Falls. So Winnie stares at Erica instead and lets her fumble to find her own emotions.
“I was so… angry when Jenna died.” Erica slides her hands beneath the obsidian. It rests atop a nest of moss, but unlike Jenna’s dampener, there is no fish hook nearby to vent power.
