Page 91 of The Whispering Night
Their aim goes wide. They fall, shriek, collapse.
And Erica is now sprinting toward Winnie while accidental gunshots reverberate into the night.
“I thought you only prepared one spell!” Winnie doesn’t mean to shout this, but it’s like the volume dial on her throat got spun up to max. “Did youkillthem?”
“It wasn’t me.” Erica rushes to Winnie’s side and grips her arm with iron, panicked strength. “I didn’tdothat.”
“But it was your source—”
“It wasn’t me!” Her dial is turned up to high too, and it’s clear from the terrorized bulge in her eyes that she’s telling the truth: that spell wasnothers. Yet either way—no matter who cast it—the consequences are now dominoing around them.
A radio crackles on a fallen Tuesday.“COME IN, LINDSAY. WHAT WAS THAT?”
Shouts ricochet off tree trunks.“THEY’RE THIS WAY!”
In the timeless, hunter corner of Winnie’s brain—right at the nape of the neck, where instinct spouts louder than logic—Winnie suddenly realizes they will never reach the Saturday estate on foot. Straight ahead is the obstacle course and the main building, where shapes are now charging with precise, organized force. To the left, the north, is the Sunday library, but that too is out of reach. Scorpions, scorpions, their masks glinting in the moon.
Then there it is: an answer. A way out provided by Winnie’s brainstem, where reflexes exist unfiltered. “The garage,” she says, and an early morning from two weeks ago jets across her prefrontal cortex, providing context for her instincts. “There are corpse-duty four-wheelers in the garage.”
“Can we get to them?”
“Only one way to find out.” Now Winnie is the one to grab Erica, hauling her to the right, toward a garage shereallyhopes isn’t guarded. Or locked. Or burned to the ground by golden arrows that apparentlyEricadidn’t cast.
Their feet thunder on hard earth and pine needles. There is no underbrush here; there are only trees and soldiers closing in from behind.
“It wasn’t me,” Erica says over gasping breaths. “It wasn’t me. I didn’t cast that.”
“I believe you,” Winnie says. “But is there any way youcancast your hiding spell again? Because…” She points ahead, to where lines of light are visible, outlining four wide doors on the brick garage. A single window reveals a backlit soldier, and something about the stance—casual, but square—clues Winnie in to who it is.
So we meet again, Jeremiah.
“Yeah. I can try to hide us again.” Erica digs her heels to a stop. They are only ten more steps from the tree line, and only thirty more steps to that silhouette skulking in the garage. She cups her hands to her abdomen, to where the source swells out like some messed-up baby. “Focus,” she hisses at herself. “Focus, Erica Antonia.”
She sounds like Marcia. She sounds cruel and controlling.
“Latate.”
Nothing happens. Nothing except shouts pinging this way. Then a garage door groans, and the shadow in the window moves.
Erica tries again.“Latate.”
Still nothing.
“Fuck,Erica,” she half screams at herself. “You’re useless, useless—”
Winnie grabs her friend by the shoulders. “Shut up. Now.” She squeezes and stares with all her bear might into Erica’s eyes. “Erica Antonia Thursday, I have missed yousomuch these last four years. More than I missed Jay. Because youaren’tuseless. You are necessary—especially to me—and right now, you’re going to cast that spell and get us into that garage door that’s rolling open on the left. So look at me.Lookat me.”
Erica looks at Winnie. Her posture softens, away from angry wolf, away from frightened pig or straw house, until she is simply Erica. The bell to Winnie’s bear. The T to Winnie’s W. And thewitchto Winnie’sWednesday.
“Say it,” Winnie commands. “Say the spell.”
Erica nods.“Latate.”
Then together, just as they did all those years ago in the old cabin, they whisper,“Sumus unus in somno et somniis.”
And there it is: the spark to fire between them. Then comes the static, the mist, the heat on Winnie’s sternum. Until she is no longer visible, and Erica isn’t either. They both turn, just in time to see Jeremiah Tuesday march out of the glaringly bright open door along with four faceless scorpions.
Winnie slides her hand down until she finds Erica’s. She squeezes. Erica squeezes back. They set off toward the garage.
