The Hunting Moon E-Book

Susan Dennard

• Herausgeber: Titan Books
• Kategorie: Fantasy und Science-Fiction
• Sprache: Englisch
• Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2023

Seitenzahl: 469

Beschreibung

In this heart-racing, jaw-dropping sequel to the New York Times instant bestseller The Luminaries, Winnie continues her fight against the monstrous nightmares of Hemlock Falls. Winnie Wednesday has gotten everything she thought she wanted. She passed the deadly hunter trials, her family has been welcomed back into the Luminaries, and overnight, she has become a local celebrity. The Girl Who Jumped. The Girl Who Got Bitten. Unfortunately, it all feels wrong. For one, nobody will believe her about the new nightmare called the Whisperer that's killing hunters each night. Everyone blames the werewolf, even though Winnie is certain the wolf is innocent. On top of that, following her dad's convoluted clues about the Dianas, their magic, and what happened in Hemlock Falls four years ago is leaving her with more questions than answers. Then to complicate it all, there is still only one person who can help her: Jay Friday, the boy with plenty of problems all his own. As bodies and secrets pile up around town, Winnie finds herself questioning what it means to be a true Wednesday and a true Luminary—and also where her fierce-hearted loyalties might ultimately have to lie.

Leseprobe

Contents

Cover

Title Page

Leave us a Review

Copyright

Dedication

Map

The Witch

The Nightmare

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Chapter 8

Chapter 9

Chapter 10

Chapter 11

Chapter 12

Chapter 13

Chapter 14

Chapter 15

Chapter 16

Chapter 17

Chapter 18

Chapter 19

Chapter 20

Chapter 21

Chapter 22

Chapter 23

Chapter 24

Chapter 25

Chapter 26

Chapter 27

Chapter 28

Chapter 29

Chapter 30

Chapter 31

Chapter 32

Chapter 33

Chapter 34

Chapter 35

Chapter 36

Chapter 37

Chapter 38

Chapter 39

Chapter 40

Chapter 41

Chapter 42

Chapter 43

Chapter 44

Chapter 45

Chapter 46

Chapter 47

Chapter 48

Chapter 49

The Crow

Acknowledgments

About the Author

AVAILABLE FROM SUSAN DENNARDAND DAPHNE PRESS

The LuminariesThe Hunting Moon

LEAVE US A REVIEW

We hope you enjoy this book – if you did we would really appreciate it if you can write a short review. Your ratings really make a difference for the authors, helping the books you love reach more people.

You can rate this book, or leave a short review here:

Amazon.co.uk,

Goodreads,

Waterstones,

or your preferred retailer.

First published in the UK in 2023 by Daphne Press

www.daphnepress.com

Copyright © 2023 by Susan Dennard

Map art by Tim Paul © Susan Dennard

Crest designs by Jessica Khoury © Susan Dennard

Cover art by Micaela Alcaino

Illustrations by Kerby Rosanes

The moral right of the author has been asserted.

All rights reserved.

No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, without the prior written permission of the publisher, nor be otherwise circulated in any form of binding or cover other than that which it is published and without a similar condition including this condition being imposed on the subsequent publisher.

All characters and events in this publication, other than those clearly in the public domain, are fictitious and any resemblance to real persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.

A CIP catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.

Illumicrate Hardback ISBN: 978-1-83784-012-0

Paperback ISBN: 978-1-83784-013-7

eBook ISBN: 978-1-83784-014-4

Waterstones Exclusive ISBN: 978-1-83784-043-4

1

For Erin,a nerdy Monday who has a caring Sunday heart

THE WITCH

On the girl’s twelfth birthday, the Dianas come for her.

They send the usual crow with a locket in its beak to her window because there is a chance that, like the girl’s sister, she will want to join them. The witches are about three weeks too late, though, and when the girl sees the crow outside, she doesn’t open her window. She doesn’t take the locket.

As much as she hungers for the flames of magic to burn through her fingertips, she has no interest in trading one controlling society for another.

Culture runs thicker than blood. Her best friend’s father used to say that, and the girl knows it’s all too true. Suffocatingly so, like coffin walls burying you alive.

She doesn’t need them, the witches or the Luminaries, because she has the spell her sister left behind before she was betrayed. And she has a plan. A careful, meticulous plan that will take her years to finish . . .

And that will finish anyone who dared hurt her sister.

One by one. Insects wriggling in a web.

One by one, payback for the pure heart of the forest.

THE NIGHTMARE

The boy awakens beside a hemlock tree in the forest. He doesn’t know how he got there or how long he has been lying there. He still wears his pajamas—the ones with Wolverine on them—and his feet are filthy and frozen.

His heart drops to his bowels. He yanks in his legs to stand, but terror stiffens his joints, his low back, his skull.

The forest, the forest, why is he in the forest? And what if someone finds him here?

His bare feet knock something as he grapples upward. It is a wolf’s jawbone. The wolf’s jawbone that first appeared in his bedroom four days ago and told him the forest would be coming for him.

The boy knows now exactly what it must mean, exactly how it came for him. He doesn’t understand why, he doesn’t understand the mechanics, and he can’t remember anything of what came the night before. Yet he feels the truth of what he has become dwelling deep inside of him.

He is no longer a sparrow, he is a wolf.

He is no longer a boy, he is a nightmare.

He snatches up the jaw. It is slick with something that might be blood or might just be mist mixed with the red clay beneath his toes. Then, with the curved bone clutched tight in his grasp, he runs east toward the rising sun.

He prays this is the right way home.

CHAPTER

1

This story begins with a funeral in a town where the locals don’t bury their dead. After all, the forest nearby has such a nasty habit of waking the bodies back up again. This particular corpse is a stranger to Winnie Wednesday. She knew of Grayson Friday, of course. He was the person who first busted into the old museum on the south side of town and turned it into The Place to Party. He also used to sneak into the clans to steal banner sigils just to show that he could. And then there was that one time when, according to local legend, he stole a Tuesday Hummer and drove it right off the dam—while he was still inside.

Yet for all that Winnie knows of Grayson, she never, not once in her life, actually talked to the guy, with his peat-brown hair and his bright green eyes.

Now, she never will.

“You okay?” Mom asks, squinting at Winnie’s face. She and Winnie are in the forest, walking toward the Big Lake’s western shore.

“Yep,” Winnie lies. “I’m fine.” It’s not a good lie, and Mom definitely doesn’t believe it.

“You don’t have to come.”

“I do.” Winnie avoids her gaze. For Jay, she needs to come. She is his friend again, so she should be here. Grayson Friday was his Lead Hunter, after all.

“You can go home,” Mom presses, “and I’ll get a ride with Rachel—”

“No.” Winnie snaps this harder than she intends. People are coming up the path from behind; she doesn’t want to deal with them. She’s as close to a local celebrity as Hemlock Falls gets these days thanks to Johnny Saturday calling her “the Girl Who Jumped” on a news segment five nights ago. Everyone wants some of her shine.

Because ten nights ago, Winnie completed her third trial; saved Emma Wednesday’s life with a banshee claw; jumped off the Big Lake’s waterfall; and got bitten by a werewolf while somehow not absorbing the werewolf’s nightmare mutation and turning into one too.

It’s exciting stuff, worthy of a penny dreadful (or a repeated slot on the nightly news) . . .

Except half the story is missing.

Emma wouldn’t have been in the forest if she knew how bad Winnie really was at hunting. Winnie only jumped off the waterfall because the Whisperer—a nightmare no one believes in—chased her there. And as for the werewolf bite . . . Well, Winnie can’t remember that part. Almost everything from after she’d plunged into the water is forgotten, erased, missing.

Which just makes this whole celebrity thing even worse. It’s a constant reminder of the gaping hole inside her brain.

“Take these,” Mom says, cutting into the spiral that consumes Winnie’s thoughts almost hourly these days. She slides the Volvo’s key from her pocket. “If it gets to be too much, just leave, okay?”

“It won’t be too much,” Winnie counters, although she does take the keys and push them into her own pocket. If for no other reason than to end this conversation.

Like Mom, Winnie wears all black underneath her jacket, although her black jeans have faded more to heather gray at this point. Her feet, bound in the combat boots she wore on her second trial, stomp out a steady and graceless rhythm down the path. Mom’s tread lands more lightly behind her.

Eventually, she and Mom clear the trees and the entirety of the Big Lake opens before them. The waters are dark at this morning hour, the surface rippling and writhing like basilisk scales—all moving south, toward the waterfall. Spindrift rises off the precipice like flies off a dead body.

“Hey,” Mom says, gripping at Winnie’s biceps. Winnie flinches. “Let’s go back.”

Winnie has stopped walking. She hadn’t realized it. Her feet just . . . aren’t moving. “No.” She wags her head. This is weird. She, Winnie, is being weird, and she needs to get a hold of herself.

It’s not like she’s never been to a hunter’s funeral before.

Twenty steps bring Winnie and Mom to the amorphous cloud of people clustered at the Big Lake’s silty edge, two bacteria sucked into a colony. It’s more Luminaries than Winnie would have expected at a funeral for the smallest clan, although Tuesday scorpions do inflate the numbers. They cluster around the edges in their camouflage fatigues, weapons strapped across their bodies.

Winnie can’t tell if they’re here for the ceremony or because this is where their daily route just happens to take them. Their faces are hidden in the glossy brown, carapace-like helmets they always wear.

Menacing helmets. Little shields meant to hide something.

These are the Alphas—a special branch of the martial Tuesday clan who deal with any nightmares that escape the forest. Or, as the Alphas have been deployed lately, to surveil the forest for daywalkers.

Conversation drones around Winnie. She hears someone mention the werewolf and how it must be brought to justice. Then someone else complains that the Council can’t get its shit together—and hey, did you see Johnny’s interview with Dryden last night? What a disaster. But at least the Masquerade hasn’t been canceled.

Winnie gets whiplash just from listening. Werewolf, werewolf . . . Masquerade! Werewolf, werewolf . . . Masquerade! Darkness, darkness, light!

She should be used to it by now.

It has been eight days since she told the truth to Aunt Rachel about the banshee head. Eight days since Aunt Rachel told Winnie not to tell anyone. And eight days since Winnie was forced to accept that no one—absolutelynoone—in this town cares that she and Emma Wednesday almost died.

People have even asked Winnie if it was fun jumping off the waterfall.

Fun jumping to her almost death. Darkness, darkness, light!

Winnie yanks off her glasses and frowns down at the lenses. They’re clean, but she scrubs at them anyway until Lizzy Friday clears her throat. Then Winnie shoves her glasses back on to watch the funeral. Her heart beats faster than it should.

Lizzy stands at the lakeshore, waves lapping gently a few steps behind her, tiny tentacles feeling for their next meal. She wears a simple black button-up tucked into functional black slacks, and she looks more like a traffic cop than leader of the Friday clan now mourning her lost. In one arm, she holds a ceramic urn.

“Thanks for coming,” Lizzy says, and the crowd goes silent. Now there is only the waterfall’s roar to fill the afternoon sky. “Grayson would have liked knowing he was this popular.” She smiles; a few people laugh.

“Grayson died doing what he loved,” Lizzy continues. “He died a hero protecting us from the forest. And although no one outside Hemlock Falls will ever know it, he died protecting them too.”

Grayson’s mother chokes at those words. She stands at the front of the crowd, her back ramrod straight like she’s still bracing for bad news. Like she hasn’t yet heard her only son is dead, but she knows the message is on the way.

Mom and Ms. Friday went to school together; Grayson is only a little older than Darian.

Was only a little older than Darian.

For two years, Grayson has been Lead Hunter for the Fridays. Now he will be one more name among the thousands hammered into a wall in city hall downtown, and on the next Friday night—just six days from now—the new Lead Hunter will take his place in the forest.

The new Lead Hunter stands near his aunt on the shore, his head bowed. He doesn’t move as Lizzy speaks. He is still as the forest. Still as a corpse preserved in the morgue.

His suit jacket is too short in the sleeves, suggesting he borrowed it, and Winnie doubts Jay has slept in over twenty-four hours. Grayson only died last night, his body so mangled Jay had to identify it by the ring on a nearby finger.

Winnie wonders who gathered up the pieces of Grayson for burning. Funerals have to happen fast in Hemlock Falls, before the forest can make a revenant.

She hopes no parts of Grayson got left behind.

“Integrity in all,” Lizzy says, ending her eulogy with the Friday clan’s motto. “Honesty to the end. May Grayson Alexander Friday find peace in his long sleep at the heart of the forest.”

Everyone murmurs those words back.

Everyone except Winnie.

Because Grayson Friday isn’t sleeping. He isn’t finding peace. And whatever he was two days ago, now he is nothing more than fish food floating in an aquarium.

CHAPTER

2

Winnie waits until all the eulogies are over and Grayson’s ashes have sunk into the unfeeling deep. Only then does she go to Jay. He has moved away from the lake and tucked himself into the shadows of an old hemlock. If Winnie hadn’t watched him shuffle from the shore, she might never have noticed him hiding there.

He looks like he often does, eyes bloodshot and face haggard. If Winnie didn’t know he’d just been on the hunt, she would assume he’d been out all night drinking. His hair is still damp—as if he only just left the shower, where he scrubbed off all the remains of forest and death.

“Thanks for coming,” he tells her. His eyes are misty gray today, rimmed with red. She suspects he has been crying.

Questions boil inside Winnie: Please, tell me you saw the Whisperer. Please, tell me it wasn’t the werewolf and I’m not crazy. A werewolf didn’t do this. Please, tell me it was the Whisperer.

Winnie swallows those words, greasy and hot. She can’t acknowledge them right now, not when Jay is simply trying to survive a day that weighs too heavy.

“I’m . . . really sorry,” Winnie says instead. “If you need anything, you, uh . . . you know where to find me.”

Jay nods, distracted, and fidgets with his dad’s watch. His gaze skates behind Winnie, to where a line is forming. Hunters and clan members wanting to offer their sympathies . . . but also to offer their congratulations. After all, when one Lead Hunter leaves, another must step in.

Jay’s shoulders sink half an inch. The boy who does nothing but shirk responsibility is now faced with a metric ton of it. He has to manage clan training; he has to coordinate schedules and gear and safety; he has to guide hunters into the forest every Friday night, knowing they could end up like Grayson.

And that he could end up like Grayson too.

“Jay,” says a new voice, creaking and thin. Winnie turns to find Jay’s great-aunt Linda pushing in and reaching for Jay’s hands. So Winnie offers him a tight smile and moves on.

A quick scan reveals Mom in conversation with an Alpha named Isaac Tuesday who graduated when Darian did. Mom’s eyes shine. She’s glad to be here, even if it’s for a funeral, because she believes in the long sleep and the balance and the death that’s a part of life.

And don’t I believe in that too?

“Hey, Winnie.”

Winnie twists around to find that Aunt Rachel has pushed through the crowd to stand beside her. She is dressed almost identically to Mom, and Winnie can’t help but wonder if maybe they bought their outfits at the same time—back when they not only had hunted together, but had also been best friends.

“Hi.” Winnie tries for a smile. It falls flat.

“Did you know Grayson?” Rachel cocks her head toward the lake, as if the ashes somehow still contain bits of him.

They don’t.

“No,” Winnie admits. “I just . . . thought I should support Jay.” And what a great job I’ve done at that. “I guess you knew Grayson?”

“Yeah. Lead Hunters—we consult pretty regularly.” Rachel sighs and stuffs her hands into her coat pockets. “He was good. Really good. It’s, uh, scary how fast things can turn on you.” As she says this, Winnie can practically see the nightmares in Rachel’s eyes. All the times when she—likeWinnie—really should not have made it out of the forest alive.

After a few seconds though, Rachel rolls her shoulders, curt efficiency taking hold of her posture. As if her very skeleton is saying, There is no time for the shadows. Compartmentalize and move back toward the sun.

“Listen,” Rachel begins, “it’s totally fine if you don’t want to join the Wednesday hunt right now—”

The way she says this does not make it sound totally fine.

“—but the clans need help with corpse duty. We’ve got so many dead nightmares to deal with these days, given the amped-up hunter numbers. Think you can join the crew on Thursday morning? You don’t have to be in charge again, but we could really use the help.”

Winnie has two thoughts in that moment. First, that she absolutely doesn’t want to spend any more time than she has to with Rachel’s son, Marcus, who will undoubtedly be there for corpse duty on Thursday morning.

Second, that she isn’t sure she wants to return to the forest if it’s going to keep making her feel this way. It won’t, though. You’re just being weird and this is just a one-off.

Except . . . was the waterfall always so loud?

Rachel clears her throat. Winnie realizes she has been staring into space. Possibly glaring into space too. She blinks. “Yeah. I can do that, Aunt Rachel.”

“Great.” Rachel rubs her hands together. “I appreciate that. And of course, whenever you’re ready to join me on the hunt, you just let me know. No pressure.”

But also definitely some pressure.

As Rachel strides away, Winnie is struck yet again by the utter polarity of it all. Rachel just nudged her niece to join in the exact activity that led to Grayson’s brutal death . . . at Grayson’s funeral. And right now, although Winnie is a whole thirty paces away from Jay, she can hear an unfamiliar voice booming out: “Congratulations, young man. Youngest Lead Hunter in Hemlock Falls. You must be so proud.”

No, Winnie thinks as she stomps away from it all to seek solitude in the parking lot. He’s not proud. And jumping wasn’t fun. And Grayson isn’t sleeping. And the Nightmare Masquerade should not be happening in two weeks.

Yet even as those thoughts slice through Winnie’s brain one after the other, bright, burning meteorites, she knows that the better thoughts—the better questions she really should be raising—are:What is wrong with me? Why can’t I compartmentalize like everybody else?

And why am I not acting like a Luminary?

*   *   *

Winnie isn’t at the Volvo for long before Mom joins her. One look at Winnie’s face with her front teeth clicking and her cheeks flushed from too many emotions, and Mom opts to preserve her silence.

Thank god. Winnie doesn’t know what she’ll say if she has to speak right now. She feels like a piece of Grayson Friday got stuck inside her. Like his ashes were grenade shrapnel and now they’re wedged in so deep, she’ll never dig them out again.

Or maybe it’s just the growing realization that she isn’t very good at being a Luminary.

Or maybe she’s just hungry and she shouldn’t have skipped breakfast.

“You’re driving,” Mom says, and though the last thing Winnie wants to do right now is concentrate on getting the Volvo into second gear without stalling halfway up the hill onto the dam, she also needs the distraction.

And to her surprise, it’s actually sort of soothing. In goes the clutch. Change gears. Out goes the clutch. There’s a rhythm to it that slows her heart. In. Change. Out.

Fallen branches litter the side of the gravel road that leads south out of the forest. Then they’re passing the Tuesday estate, all bare-bones practicality—more bunker than fancy mansion.

“You want to talk?” Mom asks when they successfully make it past the Monday estate without any gear-shift problems, a morning fog weaving through the college campus–like grounds.

“Yeah,” Winnie answers eventually. “Everything’s okay. It was just . . . a lot.” She hopes Mom interprets this as the funeral in general; she really doesn’t want to talk about Jay’s misty eyes or the way the waterfall sounded too much like death.

Fortunately, Mom does misinterpret. “I would be lying if I didn’t say I’m relieved you’re not hunting yet, Winnebago. If your trial had gone just a little bit differently . . .”

Mom doesn’t finish the thought, and she doesn’t need to.

“Until this werewolf is killed,” Mom continues, “I’ll be grateful you’re not in the forest. You’re still not planning to hunt any time soon, right?” She fastens Winnie with a laser-eyed stare, and Winnie’s fingers tighten on the steering wheel until her knuckles turn white.

Because there it is, right there. One more piece of festering shrapnel: not even her own mother believes her about the Whisperer, and it’s thoughtless little comments like this one that keep giving her away.

God, I hope they catch this werewolf, she said last night after Dryden’s interview on the news.

To think, it’s just out there walking among us. That comment came last Thursday.

And: I am so, so glad the werewolf didn’t get you, Winnie. That was from last Sunday, Winnie’s third day home from the hospital.

Winnie doesn’t turn her head. She doesn’t meet Mom’s eyes. “No,” she says with as little inflection as possible. “I don’t plan to hunt any time soon.”

Winnie and Mom clear the last of the trees. To their left, the Little Lake is almost blue this morning. It is the opposite of the Big Lake. Cheerful instead of oppressive, welcoming instead of cruel. Winnie can’t help but wonder if Grayson Friday really did drive into the water there. If so, does that mean a Hummer is still sitting at the bottom of the lake right now?

Winnie kind of hopes it is. For some reason, that just feels right: a statue no one can see for a man no one will ever speak to again.

CHAPTER

3

Werewolf, were-creatures: Human by day and monster by night, these rare daywalkers blend in easily and are indistinguishable from other humans in their daytime form. Also, wrongfully accused of killing Grayson Friday.

Whisperer: This nightmare is a new creature native to the American forest. No one believes it is real except for Wednesday Winona Wednesday, despite ample evidence that the monster exists.

Since Mom is due for a shift at the grocery store, Winnie will be driving herself to Sunday training (alone, yikes). But first she is meeting her brother Darian. He has already canceled their usual Saturday dinner tonight—which he did last weekend too—so Winnie roped him into at least grabbing a coffee with her. Proof-of-life sort of thing.

Coffee-scented warmth whooshes against Winnie as she pushes through the front entrance into Joe Squared. A sign proclaims that the establishment was VOTED BEST COFFEE SHOP IN HEMLOCK FALLS!

Considering they are also the only coffee shop in Hemlock Falls, the distinction doesn’t mean much.

Never graceful on a good day, Winnie offers an especially spectacular display of awkward as she peels out of her leather jacket, knocks her glasses to the floor, and ends up getting her golden moon locket caught in her hair when she doubles over to retrieve said glasses. These are her newer pair, finally repaired so that they sit straight atop her nose—though not for long if she keeps dropping them.

Her face is aflame when she finally approaches the counter.

“What can I get you?” Jo, one of the the two owners, asks.

“Um . . .” Winnie wets her lips. She is overwhelmed by the menu, embarrassed by her failure to de-jacket, and still reeling from the weirdness of the funeral. “Just . . . a coffee? Black? I, uh, have a tab.”

“Oh?” This seems to surprise Jo, who’s eyes widen behind her cherry-red glasses. They are very cool glasses, which depresses Winnie because her thick black frames seem extremely uncool by comparison. “What’s the name?” Jo asks.

“Um, it’s probably under Wednesday.” Winnie swallows. “Winnie Wednesday. And if it’s not under that, then it’ll be Mario Monday—”

“Holy crow.” Jo slides her very cool glasses down her nose. “You’re Winnie Wednesday? I thought you looked familiar, but it’s been so many years since I really saw you. What with the, uh, you know.” She twirls a hand in the air, as if Winnie’s exile from the Luminaries was just a thing that happens now and again. Like heat waves or bad hair days.

“Oh.” Winnie hadn’t realized Jo had ever noticed her pre-exile.

“You’re all over the news,” Jo continues. “The Girl Who Jumped, they’re calling you. And a werewolf bite too. Incredible.” Jo’s focus drops to Winnie’s arms, and Winnie is glad she opted for long sleeves today. Otherwise the faint scars hatch-marking her right forearm would be visible, and she already feels enough like a lab specimen when she walks around Hemlock Falls.

Fortunately, Jo doesn’t seem to expect an answer. “You know what?” She rubs her hands together. “I’ll name a drink after you. What do you like? Whipped cream? Cinnamon? Soy milk? Whatever your palate prefers, we’ll sell it. The Girl Who Jumped! I can even add green food coloring on top, to match that dress you wore. It was green, right?”

Winnie doesn’t know how to answer this. This is like the funeral all over again, but worse. You almost died! Let’s commemorate that traumatic event with food coloring! Jo herself had to have her leg amputated after a droll encounter. So shouldn’t she, of all people, be less . . . well,impressed by all of this? And maybe a bit more horrified?

Apparently not, since as Jo twists away, grabbing for a box of almond milk, she says: “Maybe the Girl Who Got Bitten instead? Johnny used that one last night. Did you hear it?” She flings a backward glance at Winnie.

And Winnie is forced to shake her head. She had not heard it, and she hates that title even more than the first one. Because at least she remembers jumping. Getting bitten, though? That memory never recorded inside her brain, so every time someone brings it up, Winnie is forced to play a cruel version of that matching game where you flip over cards and try to recall where two identical ones are hiding . . .

Except Winnie can’t ever find a match, so she just keeps flipping over cards and losing, losing, losing.

“What about no drink instead?” Winnie suggests.

Jo snorts. “You can’t call a drink No Drink, Winnie. People will think they’re ordering air.”

Winnie screws her eyes shut. This is getting worse by the second. She should have gone straight to the Sunday estate after the funeral. She should have told Darian she’d meet him another day, preferably at his place, where no one in Hemlock Falls can recognize her or complain about the werewolf or squee about the Nightmare Masquerade.

For several minutes, the only sound is the grinding of fresh beans, then the steaming of almond milk, and finally the high-pitched shhhhh of whipped cream. Until Jo is suddenly back before Winnie and shoving a mug her way.

The cream on top is very, very green.

“Give it a try.” Jo winks. “And let me know what you think of the Girl Who Jumped. Or . . . maybe I’ll call it the Jumping Girl? Because, you know, coffee hypes you up.”

Winnie nods. As much as she would like to say, I actually prefer black coffee please, she takes the mug with both hands. It’s warm against her numb fingers. “I’ll sip this . . . over there.” She dips her head toward a table.

“You do that.” Jo nods knowingly. Then taps her forehead. “And I’ll keep noodling drink names.”

*   *   *

Darian is late. This isn’t particularly surprising, given that his entire life is dictated by Dryden Saturday right now—and Dryden’s life is dictated by the furious town, the “dangerous werewolf” on the loose, and the Nightmare Masquerade he refuses to call off.

Old Darian, however, was never tardy, so when he finally does arrive, it’s clear he is distraught by the thirteen minutes that Winnie had to wait on him. “Oh my god,” he breathes, dropping into the chair across from Winnie. “I am so sorry I’m late. Everything is such a mess these days, Win.”

Darian himself is something of a mess too. His collar isn’t draped evenly over his sweater vest, and there’s a black smudge on the bottom of his glasses that might be ink or also might be the exhausted ether of his soul.

“Did you see last night’s interview?” he asks, combing a hand through his hair—and not helping the already lopsided application of his hair gel.

Winnie nods. “It was . . .”

“An epic shit show? A hurricane of hell? A massacre of misery?”

Winnie winces. Darian has clearly tipped onto the severely stressed side of the continuum if he’s using alliteration, and when he reaches for her coffee, she doesn’t interfere.

He gulps back green whipped cream. Then freezes, cheeks bulging as his face curdles to the same shade (which was actually quite close to the true emerald of Winnie’s dress). He swallows very slowly, very carefully. “What,” he says when his mouth is finally empty, “did you order?”

Winnie doesn’t answer. She simply rises in silence, fetches a glass of water from the cooler by the entrance, and offers it to him upon her return. Darian downs it in one swallow.

“That is disgusting,” he says, and Winnie nods her agreement. She only needed one sip to know she would never drink it again.

“More water?” she offers, but Darian shakes his head. And for the first time since arriving, he seems to notice that Winnie isn’t looking so great herself.

“Funeral,” he says, smacking his forehead. “I’m such a jerk. How did the funeral go?”

“Not great,” she admits, and she finds her fingers grabbing for her locket . . . then releasing because the locket brushes too closely to her own mental compartment marked DAD. It’s a box she has kept closed for eight days, ever since cracking his secret message: I was framed. She is absolutely not about to open it here.

“Did you know Grayson?” she asks, adding an extra padlock to the box.

“Yeah,” Darian replies, brow wrinkling with a frown. “Though only as much as person could know Grayson Friday.”

“What does that mean?”

“It means he was popular.”

“And you weren’t?”

“No.” Darian flashes a glare. “I mean, yes, I was quite popular, thank you . . . until . . . you know. The incident.”

Winnie does know; she also knows that Darian wasn’t popular. At least not like Grayson Friday was. Darian had friends and was generally liked, but he wasn’t the life of the party—and certainly not the one hosting the parties every night of the week.

“Grayson knew everyone,” Darian continues, “and everyone knew Grayson. Except no one really knew Grayson, if that makes sense. He joked a lot. Was nice to people unless they were a teacher. And he partied or pranked pretty much every night of the week. But I couldn’t tell you anything more about him. He was a hard person to describe, and at the end of the day, I don’t think anyone really knew him. And now . . .” A bob of one shoulder. “No one will.”

“No one will,” Winnie repeats, half sigh, half invocation, as if such words will somehow make his ashes sink faster inside the lake.

Darian reaches across the table to grab Winnie’s hands, and when Winnie meets his eyes, she sees the slightest gloss has gathered over them. “I’m glad you’re not hunting yet, Win. We almost lost you once, and that was more than enough.”

“Yeah,” Winnie says, praying he isn’t about to say what Mom said. That he isn’t about to add more grenade shrapnel to her heart . . .

But then it comes. Because of course it does. Darian has always been skeptical about the Whisperer’s existence, even if he has never directly declared this to her.

“I know it’s been chaos getting the tests coordinated, but I promise we’ll catch that monster soon. Tuesday Alphas are combing the forest constantly, we’ve got double the hunter numbers at night, and the testing site by the pier should be ready to go in the next day or two.”

Darian gives a reassuring squeeze before finally releasing Winnie’s hands and leaning back. He doesn’t seem to notice that his sister has turned as immobile as a statue before him.

“We’ll be coming to the Sunday estate to test you and all the other students directly, and honestly, it should only be a matter of days before we have this werewolf cornered. It can’t run forever. It is going to pay for what it did to you and Grayson and—”

Darian’s phone rings, interrupting him as his voice is rising and his face is flushing with uncharacteristic fury—fury Winnie knows is on her behalf because as far as he believes, this werewolf almost ended her life.

A small part of Winnie appreciates that fire. A larger part, though, just wants some blessed relief. A heart can’t survive with this much shrapnel in it.

“Crap,” Darian says once he finally has his phone fumbled free and can read the caller ID. “I have to take this. I’ll see you later, okay, Win? Be good.” He pushes to his feet, already swiping the phone to life. “Yes, Dryden, what is it?” He briefly crooks over to give Winnie a kiss on the top of her head. It’s a surprising and uncommon show of affection for their family.

He’s been doing a lot of that since she left the hospital, and Winnie wishes it made her feel better. She wishes the grenade’s blast radius hadn’t been quite so wide.

Darian leaves Joe Squared with a distracted wave. Winnie doesn’t wave back.

*   *   *

Several minutes after Darian’s departure, as Winnie is dropping her mug of now brownish-green slush into a bin near the counter, Jo steps up beside her. “What’d you think of it?”

“No,” Winnie says. It’s a little breathy. She wags her head. “No.”

Jo cringes. “More noodling?”

“No.” Winnie shoves her glasses up her nose. “No more noodling, please. I don’t like fancy drinks or whipped cream. I just wanted a black coffee.”

Jo nods thoughtfully. “Okay, okay. I think I hear what you’re laying down.” She snaps her fingers. “I’ve got it! How about we name a cup of drip coffee the Winnie and it can be half off on Wednesdays?”

Winnie’s posture slumps. She sighs. At this point, everyone in Hemlock Falls might as well have cotton stuffed in their ears for all they listen to her. And after her encounter with Darian just now, Winnie is too defeated to keep fighting. “Sure,” she says. “Let’s call it the Winnie. Half off on Wednesdays.”

“Excellent.” Jo grins. “Oh, and hey,” she adds at Winnie’s now-departing back. “You can have all Winnies for free! Your mom and your brother too!”

CHAPTER

4

The last thing Winnie wants to do right now, while green whipped cream sloshes inside her organs alongside Grayson’s eulogy, is go to the Sunday estate for training. But she has also worked so hard to become a Luminary again that she has no plans to mess that up by skipping the required weekend classes. So despite still wearing her funeral clothes, Winnie parks the Volvo on the Sunday estate and lumbers into the red brick building, her backpack feeling heavy despite its near emptiness.

She has missed first period—a fact over which she will shed precisely zero tears. Luminary history with Professor Samuel and a bunch of younger Luminaries (including her cousin Marcus) is her least favorite part of the day.

Her favorite part, meanwhile, is the class she now slinks into: nightmare anatomy with Professor Il-Hwa. She arrives with a few minutes to spare before the tardy bell will ring, and a quick scan of the room finds the twins and Fatima near the windows; Erica Thursday sits at the back.

Winnie accidentally makes eye contact with Erica, earning a cool nod—which is basically the only interaction Erica ever offers. Winnie can’t lie that she had hoped for more since she cornered Erica at the Thursday estate six days ago. She isn’t sure what she’d hoped for exactly, but definitely more.

Then again, cool nods of acknowledgment are a million times better than the liquid-nitrogen glares Erica bestowed on her for the four years previously.

“Hey,” Winnie says as she drops into her usual desk beside Emma and behind Bretta. Fatima sits in front of Emma, so they form a little square.

“Hey,” Emma replies, which prompts Bretta and Fatima to twist Winnie’s way too. “How was the funeral?”

Emma’s left leg is wrapped in a silicon webbing that acts as a breathable and waterproof cast. A set of crutches lean against her desk. She wraps the rubber tops in different scarves every day to match her outfit, and today’s is cobalt blue to complement her blue-and-green baby doll dress.

The color brings out the cool undertones in her umber skin, and she has wrapped a similar scarf around her braids.

“The funeral wasn’t great,” Winnie answers honestly. She digs her fingers under her glasses to rub at her eyes. “Jay is pretty devastated.”

Winnie was the only student to attend the funeral. For Jay, she told herself when she asked Mom to let her go. Now, though, she has to wonder if it wasn’t For me. Some morbid need to learn more about the werewolf, the Whisperer, the death that so easily could have been her own . . .

And it’s not like she did much good supporting Jay in the end, did she? She was just the Girl Who Jumped, clinging to the funeral’s edge like a parasite before fleeing back to the parking area when it all got too hard.

“Of course Jay is devastated.” Fatima wags her head, and her turquoise hijab flutters against her gray polka-dot sweater. “He’s now the youngest Lead Hunter in Hemlock Falls. Like, ever.”

“Poor Jay.” Bretta offers a genuinely sympathetic sigh. Her corkscrew curls bounce as she hugs her arms to her chest. She wears a pair of faded jeans and a hot-pink T-shirt, while her sneakers are so white, they have to be brand new. “Should we do something for him? Flowers don’t really seem like his sort of thing.”

“No.” Winnie huffs a sigh. “Honestly, I don’t think there’s anything we can do. It’s kind of the worst situation possible, but—”

“Heeeeeeey, Girl Who Jumped.” Casey Tuesday plops on top of Winnie’s desk like a spidrin dropping from a tree branch. Winnie has no idea where he came from. All that’s missing is the web. “We’re having a party tonight at the old museum, and you’ve got to be there.”

“Please,” chimes Peter Sunday, who materializes behind Winnie with the same nightmarish speed and silence—as well as a cologne that is laid on just a little too thickly. “All of you gotta come.”

Fatima glares at Peter, then at Casey. Bretta rolls her eyes while Emma, always the nicest of the friend group, says, “I don’t know. Your parties always go so late.”

“But this is for that guy who died,” Casey insists.

And Winnie stiffens in her seat. “You mean Grayson Friday?”

“Yeah, him.” He grins at Winnie as if they’re friends. As if they have always been friends and he didn’t spend the past four years tormenting her.

Peter wears the same expression—one that can only be described as smarmy—and Winnie wants to shred the puckered lips right off his freckled face. It was only two weeks ago that he sang Happy birthday, Diana spawn at her in homeroom and then laughed when Dante Lunedì told her not to steal his finger bones. Now Peter looks like he’d gladly give her his finger bones and some toe bones too.

“Did you actually know Grayson?” Winnie asks.

“No.” Casey shrugs one shoulder. “But we always have a party to honor fallen hunters. Plus, this guy is the one who made the old museum into the old museum. So we’ve gotta have a party for him, you know? It’s just the right thing to do.”

The way he says that with such moral superiority—as if he knows anything about honoring anyone—makes Winnie’s fingers curl into fists.

Although her fingers straighten right back out when Emma says, “Maybe we’ll go.” Then Bretta sighs and says, “We’ll think about it, okay?”

Fatima chimes in a heartbeat later with a voice that is very like her mother’s councilor voice: “Now go away please, boys, because the adults are talking and we don’t want you near us.”

Casey and Peter obey—Casey with a flip of his shaggy hair and a “Cool, we’ll see you tonight,” Peter with a mock salute. They remove themselves as quickly as they’d arrived.

“Oh no, please don’t say you actually want to go, Emma.” Fatima shakes her head at Emma.

“It’s for Grayson Friday.” Emma looks both sheepish and defensive, scratching ferociously at her calf through a gap in the cast’s webbing. “We’ve always gone to the hunter parties before. And yes, I realize Casey and Peter suck”—she flashes Winnie a commiserating eye roll—“but I think this is the right thing to do. He died, and we should respect that.”

“Is this because of Jay?” Fatima asks suspiciously. “Because I’m pretty sure he and Winnie are a thing—”

“We are not a thing,” Winnie spurts. Heat sears onto her face and she dips over the aisle toward everyone. “I already told you that.”

“I know, but . . .” Fatima shrugs as if to say, I do not believe you, Winnie Winona Wednesday. And judging by the sideways smirks on Bretta’s and Emma’s faces, they don’t believe her either.

And Winnie finds her fists re-forming. Not because of the girls’ knowing grins or the substance of Fatima’s words, but because Winnie feels like she did at the funeral all over again. Like she’s back beside the thunderous falls while people fume about the wrong nightmare and congratulate a Lead Hunter who doesn’t want to be one.

Stop being weird, she shouts at herself. This isn’t the way a Luminary reacts! In fact, having a party for a dead hunter is peak Luminary. As is having a coffee named after her. It’s like Grandpa Frank once told her, That’s why we’re called the Luminaries, Winnie: we are lanterns the forest can never snuff out.

“Let’s go,” Emma begs as Professor Il-Hwa steps into the classroom. “Please? Like Casey said, it’s the right thing to do.”

Bretta nods as if this explanation is fully acceptable, and Fatima sighs in defeat. “Fine, but if my mom catches me sneaking out, I’m blaming the three of you.”

“Wait,” Winnie hisses—right as Professor Il-Hwa clears her throat at the front of the room. “We have to sneak out? What time is this party?”

“Oh, sweet Winnie.” Bretta pats her arm gently. “We’ll pick you up at midnight.”

*   *   *

Winnie finds it hard to focus on Professor Il-Hwa’s lecture. Not even a thorough breakdown of the circulatory systems of kelpies can hasten the two-hour period along.

Kelpie: A shaggy water creature, it is horselike in shape, but close examination reveals algal hair and a bulbous body best suited to high-pressure depths.

She takes occasional notes—similarto tuna, moves blood warmed by muscles toheart—but her pencil more often slides to the margins of her ruled paper. She draws droll hands first. Just the bones, so many, each perfectly in its place. Winnie has always found it soothing to sketch them.

It doesn’t soothe today.

So she shifts to the lesson’s subject. She saw a kelpie up close only ten days ago. She hacked right through its two bilateral tentacles. Its face, waterlogged and humanoid, had a single row of fangs glistening in the night.

Winnie will never forget that glisten.

She’ll also never forget how the kelpie bellowed, a sound that felt fathoms deep and centuries ancient.

Most of all, though, Winnie won’t forget how the Whisperer came out of the trees only a few hundred steps later. She’d been so preoccupied by the manticore also bearing down—and then the werewolf knocking her out of the way . . .

Winnie scratches through her drawing of the kelpie. A vicious silver line to hack away its agonized face. Then she scratches through the droll hand, and finally, she scratches through the date scribbled at the top of the page.

April 6.

Grayson’s funeral, she scrawls instead. RIP.

When the bell finally rings, the twins and Fatima confirm that they’ll see her at midnight—which,wow, seems so far away—before they all separate. Emma, Bretta, and Fatima all head for history class. Winnie, meanwhile, aims for the locker room. She is still four years behind; she still has to endure her cousin’s smug, entirely too punchable face every single day.

Like a watered-down Beetlejuice, simply thinking Marcus’s name three times seems to summon him. As soon as Winnie steps from the locker room in her black tracksuit, a cool spring breeze sweeps over her, carrying an arrangement of birdsong . . . and Marcus is right there.

“Hey, cuz.”

“Oh my god,” Winnie replies, letting loose all her exasperation from the day. She won’t be rude to Casey or Peter—at least not before she, Mom, and Darian are officially back in the Luminaries—but Marcus? He’s family. Horrible, obnoxious family.

“What do you want?” She picks up her pace down the stone path that leads to the elaborate obstacle course.

“I hear there’s a party tonight at the old museum. Can I come?”

“No.” Winnie glowers at him. It has no effect. “You’re fourteen. You cannot come to a party.”

“You’re only sixteen.”

“That’s a pretty big difference.” To demonstrate this, Winnie drags her hand from the top of her forehead down to the top of his. Her hand has to drop several inches. “Your voice hasn’t even changed yet.”

His cheeks brighten to a satisfyingly arterial red. “So? Doesn’t mean I can’t party.”

“It absolutely means you can’t party.”

“Why are you such a jerk?”

“Why are you so annoying?”

“I’ll tell my mom if you don’t let me go.”

“Thereby proving my point.” Winnie snorts. The beginning of the obstacle course is visible now, a long stretch of muddy track zigzagging into a high-walled maze, beyond which are a series of platforms connected by ropes and swinging tires. “I don’t care if you tell your mom,” Winnie continues. “I really doubt she’ll do anything. She probably partied at my age too.”

Marcus’s blush turns into something fiery. His eyes—dark brown like Winnie’s—sink into a scowl. “Just because you’re the Girl Who Jumped doesn’t mean you can treat people badly. I liked you more before.” He sticks out his tongue, behaving like the absolute child he still is, and strides away to join two of his cronies at the starting line.

Winnie gapes after him, a combination of righteous anger and genuine hurt mingling in her stomach. Part of her wants to chase after him and demand he take the words back. But most of her knows that would only amount to immature fire fighting immature fire. So instead, she tows off her glasses and cleans them.

Scrub, scrub, scrub. Her training tee’s cotton rubs against polycarbonate.

“He’s a prick.”

Winnie’s attention snaps sideways. Coach Rosa has appeared beside her, moving silently like the hunter she is each Sunday night.

“He’s a prick,” Rosa repeats. “He’ll grow out of it though.” She pauses. Then adds, “I mean, I think he will. Probably.”

Winnie laughs and shoves her glasses back on.

“In the meantime, Winnie”—Rosa pats her shoulder—“let him eat your dust on the obstacle course. That’ll teach him not to mess with you.” She squeezes once before releasing Winnie and striding away. In mere moments, a whistle is at Rosa’s lips and she’s hollering for everyone to get in rows at the starting line!

And Winnie finds a warmth is surging up from her chest. A phoenix emerging from the burning ashes of her morning.

For four years, Marcus has been nice to Winnie in private and then an utter prick to her the instant someone else was around. She let it slide off her like water off cockatrice feathers—just like she did with all her bullies. The Casey Tuesdays and the Dante Lunedìs and the Peter Sundays and even the cryo-freezing ice queens like Erica. After all, there was nothing Winnie could do; she just had to endure her outcast punishment and serve her time.

But like Marcus said, she’s the Girl Who Jumped. She gets invited to parties now; she has a coffee named after her and gets featured on the local news. She might not officially be a Luminary again as deemed by the Council, but everyone in town is welcoming her back as if she already is. There are avenues open to her that haven’t existed in four years—places she’s welcome to go and people who will not only talk to her, but actively want to.

Winnie isn’t a helpless outcast anymore.

She can use that. She should use that.

One of the key defense mechanisms of a phoenix is to shine so brightly, their predators are temporarily stunned and unable to pursue.

At that thought—at a line from her ever-reliable Nightmare Compendium—the last of Winnie’s ashes clear away. She suddenly finds herself looking forward to the party at the old museum, because from now on things are going to be different. All the Marcuses and Caseys and Peters will eat her dust as she pulverizes them on the obstacle course.

She can compartmentalize. She is a Luminary, burning bright and stunning people so they cannot see what hides within her flames.

CHAPTER

5

Winnie is so nervous that even though she knows she should try to sleep an hour or two before the twins arrive—because otherwise, tomorrow is going to suck—she just can’t seem to.

She has snuck out before. She did it barely two weeks ago for her first trial. It’s not hard, thanks to the position of Darian’s window over the roof. But that escape was for forest-related excursions; it felt virtuous, in other words. All she had to do was point to the bear banner on the back of her bedroom door and say, “I was doing it for the cause, Mom! Loyalty!”

Sneaking out to go to a party, however . . .

That’ll be a lot harder to explain if she gets caught.

If Mom notices Winnie’s zipped-up, stiff-backed version of herself that night, she gives no indication. She’s too excited about news she got this afternoon: “Rachel really thinks it’ll happen on Wednesday,” she says over their pizza dinner. “She really thinks we’re going to officially be back in the Luminaries on Wednesday.”

“Voes vee?” Winnie asks through a mouthful of cheese and pepperoni. “Vat’s villy exciting, Ma.” She means it too, and her excitement over the party ticks up another notch.

When Mom finally goes to sleep, Winnie crawls into bed, where she stares silently at her shadowy popcorn ceiling and listens to a crow occasionally caw outside. It sounds grumpy.

At eleven thirty, Winnie creeps from her freshly washed covers to get dressed. She has no idea what to wear to an event like this, so she decides her usual daily fashion is sufficient: jeans, a T-shirt, sneakers. She does at least forgo her Save the Whales hoodie for her still-so-new-it-smells-like-heaven leather jacket that Emma and Bretta gifted her on her birthday.

At ten to midnight, Winnie slips through Darian’s room, squeezes from his window, climbs down the roof onto the shed, and finally descends to solid earth. The same crow cackles at her; it sounds like it’s on the front porch. Careful, human, or I’ll wake your mama!

Winnie keeps glancing toward the window that belongs to Mom . . . but no face ever appears and no lights ever wink on. She reaches the sidewalk undetected, her heart pounding far harder than the exertion calls for. It doesn’t slow when she hunkers to a seat on the curb either, to await the twins.

Cold air twines over her.

She is shivering by the time the twins do arrive a few minutes later in their dad’s minivan. A window rolls down, and Bretta’s curls gleam; she has added blue streaks. “Hey,” she whisper-shouts. “Get in!”

Winnie shoots a furtive glance at Mom’s window. Nothing. Silence and shadow and that darn crow over the window’s eave. So Winnie slings into the back seat. It’s delightfully cozy inside; it smells like the lilac perfume Emma usually wears.

Winnie yanks on her seat belt. “Your parents just let you take the van and go?”

“Nah,” Bretta says as she accelerates with the buttery smoothness of an automatic vehicle. “Mom is out of town training a new networker, and Dad sleeps like a droll.”

Winnie laughs at that. She has met the twins’ dad, Kevin, once before, and she can easily imagine him draped over his bed, snoring like a droll—not that Winnie has ever actually heard a droll snoring. But it’s a detail noteworthy enough to make it into the Compendium: Vibrations from droll sleep exhalations can be felt up to two hundred feet away.

As Bretta guides the car through neighborhoods and intersections, past stop signs and darkened houses, Winnie’s heart doesn’t calm like she thought it would once she’d finally Houdini’ed from her bedroom. Instead, it beats harder. Faster. A little fist that wants to punch right through her throat.

Bretta talks about when her third trial might be—how much it sucks that she and Fatima can’t do it now because of the werewolf. Emma tells her to be patient; Bretta retorts she isn’t a Sunday, thank goodness.

“If I could be any other clan, though,” she adds, “I would one hundred percent choose Saturday. They have all the fanciest stuff.”

“Not me,” declares Emma. “I like being a Wednesday. We’ve always got each other’s backs. Winnie—what about you?”

“Huh?” Winnie grunts from the back seat. She was only half listening.

“Winnie would choose Friday,” Bretta says with a mischievous giggle. “To be with her man.”

“Oh stop.” Emma pokes her sister in the biceps before twisting around toward Winnie. “Unless . . . is he your man, Winnie? That was a very insistent ‘no’ you gave us in anatomy today.”

“I plead the Fifth,” Winnie replies because she has no idea what else to say. It is physically impossible to insist any more strongly than she did a few hours ago. “Now if I had to choose a clan, I would go for Monday—”

“I knew it,” Bretta cries. She bangs the steering wheel. “I knew it! Didn’t I say ‘Backlit’ was about her, Em?” Bang! “Also ‘pleading the Fifth’ is a non thing, Winnie, so it won’t work here. More details, please!”

Winnie’s seat belt suddenly feels tight. The heat suddenly feels less cozy, more cloying. Because here it is again—that juxtaposition of darkness grating up against the light. The three of them are literally on their way to a party honoring a guy Jay watched get ripped apart by . . . well, probably the Whisperer.

Yet right now, Bretta is more fixated on the possibility that Winnie and Jay are hooking up.