Page 9 of The Whispering Night
Winnie gulps. Then tries tonotfrantically yank the two pages from Ms. Morgan.HOW DID THESE FALL OUT OF MY POCKET?!she screams inwardly. Outwardly, she muscles a smile onto her lips. “Oh, ha! Thanks for finding those. Don’t want to litter.”
“Oh, are they trash?” Ms. Morgan’s fingers tighten on the pages. “I can toss them for you.”
The harpy laugh this pulls from Winnie’s chest is so shrill, it actually hurts. Like, ithurtsWinnie’s lungs and it visibly hurts Ms. Morgan’s ears. The teacher winces.
“Nope!” Winnie half shrieks. “I’ll toss them myself. Thanks so much.”Tug.
Still no release.
“Actually, Winnie, now that I’ve got you here, there’s something I’ve been meaning to say.”
Oh god, there goes Winnie’s stomach again. And her brain too, filling the milliseconds of silence with a thousand worst-case scenarios.Why are you sending secret messages in honey, Winnie? Why are you sneaking around Hemlock Falls and the Thursday estate? Is Jay a werewolf? Is Erica a witch?
“I… feel I need to apologize.”
“Oh.” This is so far removed from what Winnie was bracing for, she has to replay the words twice in her head. “For what?”
Ms. Morgan releases the pages. Winnie snatches them to her chest.Play it cool, play it cool.
Fortunately, Ms. Morgan isn’t paying attention to the papers anymore. Her attention has slid sideways, following a pensive pucker on her lips. “Because I pushed you to apply to that art program at Heritage University a month ago. I had no idea you were going to attempt the hunter trials, and I thought… well, I’m sorry. I hope it didn’t feel like I was saying you didn’t belong in the Luminaries.”
“Oh,” Winnie says again, breathier this time. “I totally forgot all about that application. There’s been a lot going on.”
“Understatement of the year.” Ms. Morgan sniffs. “It’s not like Hemlock Falls is ever uneventful, but things have been especially bananas in recent weeks.”
You have no idea. Winnie tries again to exit—shedoeshave Algebra 2 to get to, after all. But Ms. Morgan lifts a hand.
“But,”she continues, dragging out that word, “I do have another application to give you before you go. This is one I think you’re really going to like.” She pauses to dig through a large pocket in her skirt. “Where are you, where are you… Lip balm, pharmacy receipt, aha! Here we go.” She offers a wrinkled paper to Winnie.
Nightmare Compendium Illustrations Contest,it reads along the top, below which is a detailed drawing of a vampira heart (recognizable by the five chambers).Submit your drawings to be included in the newest edition of the Nightmare Compendium.
Winnie’s heart skips a beat. Like, literally: it stops for the entire span of a usual heartbeat. “Holy crap,” she breathes, and for a few seconds, she forgets about the honey-laced pages or that she’s supposed to hate the Masquerade.
“Holy crap indeed,” Ms. Morgan agrees. “This doesn’t circulate until Monday at the Science Fair.”
“Um, thank you?” Winnie ogles the flyer. Then flings her gaze up. “Wait—how did you even get this if it’s not public yet?”
Ms. Morgan preens. “There are some perks to dating the Lead TuesdayHunter. One being that I get first dibs on dessert at clan dinner. Another being that I get sneak peeks and early access to competitions like this one.”
“Wow.” Winnie shakes her head. Then starts grinning… and grinning. “Thank you for showing it to me, Ms. Morgan. I’m really honored.”
“Of course.” Ms. Morgan grins right back. “All I ask is that you win, okay? So pick somethingreallycomplicated to illustrate.”
“I will.” Winnie’s mind is already leaping from one possibility to another.Kelpie vascular systems are pretty incredible—oh, but spidrin spinnerets have microscopic spigots to create silk filaments.Winnie slings her backpack around to stuff in the application.And then there’s the banshee claw, which I’ve studied firsthand!But as she starts unzipping her bag, a thought erupts in her frontal lobe. If Ms. Morgan hears things before other people, then maybe…
“Hey, Ms. Morgan, um…” Winnie pauses, fighting the urge to click her teeth. This is a perfectly normal question; she has no reason to be nervous at all. “Has Mason ever seen anything weird in the forest?”
“I’m pretty sureeverythingin the forest is considered weird.” Ms. Morgan snorts. “But you’re talking about that thing that chased you, right? The Rustler?”
“The Whisperer,” Winnie corrects, even though that isn’t what she was talking about at all. Whatshewas talking about were Dianas—including the two very dead corpses she left melted in the forest and whom absolutely no one has mentioned since.
It defies the third law of motion: for every action in nature, there is an equal and opposite reaction. In the Luminaries, that means when witches show up, Tuesdays assemble. Yet an entire week has passed since the forest burned and Jay nearly got taken by witches. Since Aunt Rachelshouldhave died, but got saved by Jay while Winnie faced off to a powerful Diana leader. Yet there have been no broadcasts on the nightly news about witches, no warnings around town to be on the lookout for magical activity, and no sudden wails from the siren that stands next to city hall.
It defies basic physics.
Every day, Winnie has waited for an announcement to come. For the town to erupt with a droll-sized panic that would make their werewolf fears look unicellular in comparison. But every day, there’s nothing.
And right now, Ms. Morgan doesn’t seem to know about it either.
