Page 87 of The Whispering Night
“Um, I have no idea what you’re talking about right now, Winnie. Is this the circling-words spell again?”
“No.” Winnie rocks back, laughing. A wheezy, pained thing fueled by too much terror, too little sleep, and days ofnothingmaking sense in Hemlock Falls.
Witch, Whisperer, werewolf, Wednesday.
Mom, Dad, Grayson, Jenna.
Four stars. Yew trees.And a rolling ball fountain that my dad built.
“The maze,” Winnie breathes. “Erica, Jenna’s source is in the hedge maze on the Saturday estate.”
CHAPTER
36
Winnie wants to leave now. Immediately. Fire the starter gun andgo.Because she knows—finally, finally—what Dad’s last message was:The source is in the yew trees.
“He must have assumed we’d stay friends.” Winnie is pacing. With her glasses off, the whole space feels like an orange-lit fever dream. “He must have assumed I would see Jenna’s locket on you.”
“Except Grayson had Jenna’s locket four years ago.”
“I know, but… he must have known Grayson would give it to you.” Winnie imagines the Hummer at the bottom of the Little Lake, surrounded by candy.Save the Fish. Save Grayson.
Too late.
“And Dad must have assumed we’d then figure out the four stars on your locket.”
Erica has taken off the locket, and she studies it on her palm, lips puckered to one side. With her hair askew and Winnie’s vision blurred, she looks like the cat version of herself again. A thoughtful, considering cat with a splash of gold upon her paw.
Winnie shakes her head.You’re delirious. You haven’t slept in a long time. Stay focused, Winnie.“We need to go get that source.”
“And then what?” Erica levels her gaze back to Winnie.
Who grinds to a halt. “What do you mean, ‘then what?’ The source is what you’ve wanted all along, isn’t it? And their feathers can be ground into gray powder that is a stimulant when consumed…grrrrrr.”
Erica doesn’t respond, and nothing in her posture suggests the samebreathy urgency that now rattles through Winnie like live wires strapped to her fingertips.
So Winnie tries a different tack: “You said finding Jenna’s source would help you figure out what happened the night she died. Isn’t that right?”
“Yes. Of course it is.” Erica swipes at her face, a movement Winnie has seen Antonio make a thousand times. Every instance when Marcia’s nagging became too much for him. And then, just like her father, Erica also mutters,“Ay, Dios mío.”
Her heart’s not in the words, though. And her posture is like the piglet’s straw house after the wolf blew it over.
“I don’t understand.” Winnie drops to her knees before Erica. The dampener remains open, although the folded spell covers the source below. “What’s wrong?”
“Nothing.” Erica shakes herself. Swipes at her face again, smearing ancient, flaked mascara in the process. “I’ve just been searching for so long, and… I don’t know, Winnie. You ever want something so bad, and then you finally get it, but it’s just…” She doesn’t finish.
One second passes. Two.
Then: “What if it isn’t what you think it will be?”
Winnie almost laughs at this, a guttural bark of air because that has been her literal life for the past month. Four years wanting to be a Luminary again, and yet nothing lived up to her daydreams.
But Winnie doesn’t laugh. Because again, she has the sense that there are two pitches coming out of Erica’s mouth. A harmonic chant she can’t tease apart. A double meaning she isn’t picking up on.
“Do you want to leave the source, then? Because we can pretend we never figured out where it is.” What Winnie can’t add is:But if the Whisperer really is bound to that source, then finding it will protect all of Hemlock Falls.
“No.” Erica’s posture chinks higher. “I want to find it. I can’t just walk away. Not after so long.”
