Page 96 of The Whispering Night
“Don’t shoot!” Winnie screams, which is a pointless endeavor because the Whisperer is a vortex too loud for any sound to bypass.
And now guns are pointed at Winnie.Guns.It’s so ridiculous she actually marvels at it—in a weird, slow-motion sort of way. The Tuesdays still thinkshe,Winnie Wednesday, is the problem? They still think shootingheris going to stop the god-awful acid trip that this night has become?
Muzzles flash, sparking like violent versions of the lanterns from the Saturday trail. Yet no pain bursts inside of Winnie. None of her limbs stop their forward drive. Instead, it reallyislike the Saturday trail, with lights to guide her on.Because the guns aren’t pointed at me,she realizes. In fact, the Tuesdaysdon’tstill think she is the problem at all; they have instead finally realized the true threat is the devastation chasing behind.
The stench of gunpowder sears over burning plastic. Scorpion masks glitter in the strobing light of their weapons. Winnie doesn’t know who these Luminaries are, but she is suddenly struck by the weight of their lives. They were the enemy half an hour ago; now, they are on the same side against an enemy no guns can ever defeat.
“Run,” she screams into the mask of one soldier. She grabs their shoulders, forcing them to stop their gunfire.“RUN.”
There is nothing else she can do. Nothing else she can say. Denial is ham-fisting its way to the top of her brain:They aren’t so stupid as to let this consume them. No way they will let the Whisperer just come. They will run any second now.
They don’t, though. None of them run, and Winnie will never know if that one scorpion heard her shouts or not. She will only ever know thatshekept running, and no… no. The Tuesdays did not.
The Tuesdays held the line.
And it is their strength that lets Winnie roll left into Dad’s secret exit through the same hidden slice of hedges she used a few days ago. A crooked slingshot tucked between the hard lines of Dryden’s maze. It will spit her out beside the front entrance to the mansion. Fifty steps from the awning where she was deposited last Saturday for a breakfast she didn’t want to attend.
Thebreakfast where she also let herself fall into the clutches of a Diana Crow.Unlike you, I’m an excellent liar.
Here comes the fury now. It’s a golden locket stamped with a moon and stars. So heavy it scratches at the lottery ticket of grief, straight through denial and into rage. Rage at the Crow in herstupidmask. Rage at Erica for lying. And above all, rage at herself. Winnie should have listened to Jay; she should have prodded more at those harmonic overtones in Erica’s voice. Erica might have changed her mind at the eleventh hour, but the eleventh hour could have been avoided altogether if Winnie had onlylooked pasther relentless loyalty.
Winnie runs on. This route is narrow. Her shoulders scrape on branches that have been tended, if crudely, to prevent the path from growing in—and whatever devoted gardener maintained Dad’s secret trail, Winnie owes them a thousand thank-yous that she isn’t sure she will survive long enough to ever relay.
Gunfire still erupts from behind.
Winnie bursts out of the darkness onto a driveway crawling with scorpions, backlit by headlights. A line of Hummers is parked against the curb, although there is one Hummer—only one—that doesn’t face the same direction. Its lights are aimed away, and its back door hangs open as if someone just climbed out of it.
That is when Winnie sees a small scorpion rushing toward her. The person’s arms sling out with expert precision to intercept Winnie.
Winnie tries to duck, but the arms leash around her. Yet, rather than try to stop her, arrest her, control her, detain her, the armspropelher right into that open Hummer door and a familiar voice bellows:“GET IN!”Then Winnie is pushed inside with all the force of a bulldozer.
And her captor?—savior?—climbs into the driver’s seat. Tires squeal, a sound that barely cuts through the Whisperer. Thefamesspell has eaten its way out of the maze now, and though Winnie can’t see it, shesmellsit. Shefeelsit.
The more I forget you, the deeper you sink in
Fangs at the neck and red paint on a lost cabin
The scorpion speeds the Hummer down the driveway. Wind jet-streams into the open back door, until the force is too strong. The door crashesshut, prompting Winnie to finally claw her way into sitting. To try toseewho the hell is driving her away from the Whisperer.
“Buckle up!” the person shouts. “Winnie, BUCKLE UP.”
Winnie buckles up. And just in time. They skid so hard onto the main street, aiming north, that only the seat belt keeps Winnie from slamming full power against the window.
And now her savior—and theyarea savior—finally removes their helmet, revealing a face so out of context,Winnie almost doesn’t recognize her. “Ms. Morgan?” Her voice is a mere squeak over the Hummer’s V-8 engine. “What are you doing here?”
“Saving you, obviously. And it’s about toreallysuck, Winnie.”
“What do you mean?”
“I mean you had it right when you jumped off the waterfall on your third trial. This spell ain’t stopping unless you drown it.”
Winnie gawps at the sweating, shadowed face of her homeroom teacher as the Hummer vibrates like an earthquake around them, as Ms. Morgan goes hell for leather through one intersection after another—the same intersections Winnie and Erica burned through hours ago, going the other direction…
Erica, who is now in the clutches of the Crow.Enough of this,Martedì said,we are out of time, Erica, and I don’t want to lose the night.
There’s no chance for Winnie to mull over those words. Or to mull over the Whisperer—did she really hear Jay singing in that pixelated, magicked maelstrom? Or was that just her desperation, her denial, her delusion? The reality is that the Whisperer hunts right now. Itwantsto kill Winnie. It wants toobliteratethis Hummer.
The dam bridge appears ahead like a dark blade to guillotine the night. And that’s when Winnie’s mind rockets to a different time, a different memory. Because oh god, it’s all soobviousnow—what happened four years ago, on the night Jenna died.
