The Luminaries E-Book

Susan Dennard

• Herausgeber: Daphne Press
• Kategorie: Fantasy und Science-Fiction
• Sprache: Englisch
• Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2022

Seitenzahl: 455

Beschreibung

From NYT bestselling author comes a haunting, high-octane contemporary fantasy for fans of The Chilling Adventures of Sabrina. Winnie Wednesday fights to take the deadly Luminary hunter trials in Hemlock Falls' nightmare-filled forest. Hemlock Falls isn't like other towns. You won't find it on a map, your phone won't work here, and the forest outside town might just kill you… Winnie Wednesday wants nothing more than to join the Luminaries, the ancient order that protects Winnie's town—and the rest of humanity—from the monsters and nightmares that rise in the forest of Hemlock Falls every night. Ever since her father was exposed as a witch and a traitor, Winnie and her family have been shunned. But on her sixteenth birthday, she can take the deadly Luminary hunter trials and prove herself true and loyal—and restore her family's good name. Or die trying. But in order to survive, Winnie must enlist the help of the one person who can help her train: Jay Friday, resident bad boy and Winnie's ex-best friend. While Jay might be the most promising new hunter in Hemlock Falls, he also seems to know more about the nightmares of the forest than he should. Together, he and Winnie will discover a danger lurking in the forest no one in Hemlock Falls is prepared for. Not all monsters can be slain, and not all nightmares are confined to the dark.

Leseprobe

CONTENTS

Cover

Also by Susan Dennard

Title Page

Copyright

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

Acknowledgements

About the Author

ALSO BY SUSAN DENNARD

Truthwitch

Windwitch

Sightwitch

Bloodwitch

Witchshadow

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First published in the UK in 2022 by Daphne Press

www.daphnepress.com

Copyright © 2022 by Susan Dennard

Map art by Tim Paul © Susan Dennard

Crest designs by Jessica Khoury © Susan Dennard

Cover art by Micaela Alcaino

Illustrations by Kirby Rosanes

Typesetting by Laura Jones

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.

Paperback edition ISBN: 978-1-83784-000-7

eBook edition ISBN: 978-1-83784-001-4

Waterstones exclusive edition ISBN: 978-1-83784-006-9

For the LumiNerds,who brought this world to life even whenthey were trapped in a garage

THE NIGHTMARE

The forest comes for the boy on his thirteenth birthday. He is not the first to catch the forest’s notice. He will, however, be one of the last. Others have received bits of woven twine from a banshee or a shiny snail from a melusine, but he finds a wolf’s jawbone on his pillow when he opens his eyes at dawn.

He was having the nightmare again. The one where his father has a face and his mother is still alive. It always begins a happy dream, until the shadows arrive. First they claim his father. Then they claim him too while his mother weeps and screams and begs the forest to change its mind.

But the forest never changes its mind. Not in the dream and not in real life either. Which is why, when the forest calls for the boy, he enters. And when the forest is done with him, he leaves. No longer a boy. No longer entirely human, but rather a ticking time bomb waiting for the forest to one day spark his fuse.

CHAPTER

1

They say that spring never comes to the forest by Hemlock Falls.

It isn’t true, of course. Spring comes right after winter like it’s supposed to. What is true is how different the spring is in Hemlock Falls from the rest of the world. It’s quiet and lethal. Lonely and inevitable. It sneaks up on you, shaded by winter grey that doesn’t like to let go.

Even now, a month into the season, frost still clings to the north side of trees. And though the sun might rise momentarily, it won’t reach this dirt road. It won’t reach Winnie Wednesday as she muscles a clunky four-wheeler with no assisted steering toward the Wednesday clan meeting point.

Mist exhales from the forest like smoke from a censer. The four-wheeler lights flash and reflect, making shapes where Winnie knows there are none. It’s only the maple and fir saplings of last year’s spring, skeletal in the predawn darkness.

Her front teeth click together as she drives. Today is her sixteenth birthday. And today, everything is going to change.

When her headlights beam over six black SUVs, Winnie rumbles the four-wheeler to a hemlock—the tree, not the poisonous plant, although those grow here too and no one knows for which the town is named.

She flips off the lights, pulls up the hood of her sweatshirt, and waits. Fog coils around her, an octopus embrace. She imagines what tonight’s trial will be like. How it will feel to hunt a nightmare instead of just read about it.

Her mum won’t talk to her about hunting—at least not anymore. Not since the incident. But Winnie has read the Nightmare Compendium a thousand times. A thousand thousand times. She has sketched every creature in the forest, every nightmare the American Luminaries must face. And she has pretended to face them herself, stabbing a droll in the fleshy part at the base of its neck or a manticore where the cephalothorax and abdomen meet. She has jumped and rolled and jumped and rolled so many times her body does it without thinking.

She’ll be ready.

She has to be ready.

Minutes tick past. A wolf howls. A real one, she thinks, although she can’t be too sure. The Compendium does describe a few nightmares that look like wolves or sound like wolves or briefly become wolves entirely.

Winnie shoves her glasses up her nose and keeps waiting. And waiting. Her stomach grumbles; she wishes she’d eaten breakfast. She also wishes she’d slept more, although she ought to be used to the insomnia after three weeks of it. Ever since her birthday month began and the reality of what she has been planning these past four years settled in, sleep has been elusive.

The wolf howls again, though it’s farther away this time. It sounds lonely, lost. Winnie hates that she understands the feeling.

She hasn’t told anyone she’s going to attempt the first hunter trial tonight. If they find out, they won’t let her. Aunt Rachel will lose her mind; Mum will lose her mind; the Council will lose their collective minds; and they’ll find a way to intervene. But what they don’t know, they can’t stop. Plus, nowhere in the rules does it say an outcast can’t enter. Nons are forbidden, sure, but there’s definitely no mention of outcasts.

All Winnie has to do is show up with the other hunter applicants tonight, and the Thursdays in charge of the trial will let her in.

They have to. Winnie really doesn’t know what she’ll do if they don’t.

Eventually, she can’t hear the wolf anymore, and eventually, the sky begins to lighten. The night is over. The forest’s slumber is complete.

Wednesday hunters emerge from the trees on silent feet. A few hunters from other clans mingle within the ranks, replacements for anyone who’s hurt or sick or just has a kid in the Hemlock Falls drama troupe. Ever since a Saturday hunter died two months ago and a Tuesday hunter died three weeks ago, the Council has beefed up hunter numbers each night.

All around the world, the Luminaries live near fourteen sleeping spirits. Each night, when the spirits dream, their nightmares come to life. And each night, the Luminary hunters guard the world against those nightmares, one clan for every day of the week. Last night belonged to the Wednesdays—Winnie’s clan.

Or it was Winnie’s clan until the incident, when her family was sentenced to be outcasts.

There are forty-eight hunters right now, several of whom are second cousins or cousins of cousins. They’ve definitely forgotten it’s Winnie’s birthday and wouldn’t have cared even if they’d remembered. Dressed in matching black Kevlar and matching frowns, some are now bloodied, some have broken bows, a few limp.

Only Aunt Rachel speaks to Winnie, leaving the rest of the hunters to approach with a map in hand. SUV headlights beam over her like a stage light. She is gruff and perfunctory in her movements, as is Winnie’s mum. But where Mum’s hair is fully grey, Rachel’s is still glossy and black.

They have the same hooked nose, though. So does Winnie.

“Here.” Rachel holds out a map, a bad copy of a copy of a copy. “The nightmare bodies are marked, and we’ve got two nons this time too. Though fair warning: this one near the high school is just a halfer.”

Halfer. Half a human corpse. Not common, but not uncommon in the forest either. Rachel hands the map off to Winnie, already glancing toward the SUVs and forgetting her niece is standing there.

This is how it usually goes. Aunt Rachel says a handful of words and then, like every other Wednesday and every other Luminary, she goes back to pretending Winnie doesn’t exist. She even walks away before Winnie has fully grasped the map, leaving Winnie to swipe it from the air as it falls.

Once Rachel joins the other hunters, they all cram into their SUVs. Electric engines hum to life. A slurp of tires on fresh mud marks their exit.

Winnie doesn’t watch them go. She has been doing corpse duty for three years now and even if today is her birthday, even if her stomach is as knotted as a harpy’s braid, the familiarity of routine soothes her.

Corpse duty might be a job no one else likes—cleaning up the nightmare bodies left behind in the forest each morning, as well as any human bodies—but Winnie has always enjoyed it. Her brother calls her morbid; she calls him boring.

Sure, it’s a grim job, but someone has to do it. Otherwise, the corpses that don’t magically vanish at dawn will reawaken as revenants, and that’s always nasty. Besides, corpse duty is the only time Winnie gets to flex her knowledge of the Nightmare Compendium, and each new body is a riddle to be solved.

She studies the map, her front teeth clicking. There’s the halfer, not far from the Friday estate. And then a second human is marked about a mile away from the first, by the lake. Two is a lot for one night. There’s been a definite uptick lately.

Click, click, click. Click, click, click.

“Winnie?” comes a voice, and Marcus, Aunt Rachel’s son, steps out from under the hemlock. An eighth grader who has only just started corpse duty, he is nice to Winnie when no one else is around. But get him outside of the forest, and he—like everyone else in the Luminaries—delights in calling her witch spawn.

Winnie dreams often of punching out his front teeth. They’re just the perfect size for smashing and would add some much-needed colour to his olive-pale skin.

Behind him are two other teenagers: the pretty Wednesday twins, Black girls with rich umber skin and dark tourmaline eyes. The dimples in their cheeks are the envy of everyone in town.

Their family moved to Hemlock Falls the year before, transplants from the world outside because their parents are networkers—that special variety of Luminary who live in the non world, working to ensure no one ever learns of the Luminaries or the forest.

Like most people in the Wednesday clan of the American Luminaries, the twins have no blood connection to Winnie or Marcus, and as sophomores like Winnie, they’re easily the most popular girls at school. Which of course means that Marcus has it bad for them. Like, real bad. He doesn’t seem to understand that they’re only nice to him because they’re nice to everyone. Including Winnie, no matter how much she frowns.

She wants to be nice back—she really does. But if she lowers her guard for even one minute, there’s a risk someone might slip in. Witch spawn, witch spawn.

“Happy birthday!” they sing in unison.

“We got you a present.” Emma offers a box with perfectly wrapped edges and a perfectly curled bow.

“Uh, thanks.” Winnie takes the box; it’s heavy. “I’ll open it later.”

A flash of disappointment crosses their faces. Their smile dimples smooth away, and Bretta, who currently wears corkscrew curls (while Emma has long braids), says, “Oh, but we want to see your reaction.”

Winnie tenses at those words. Fear spikes up her arms, as if the box is made of banshee tears. They’ve pranked her. It’s probably dog poop inside, and when she opens the box, they’ll snap a video with their phones to show everyone at school.

Except no. Winnie shakes her head. The twins aren’t like that. Besides, contrary to the rest of Hemlock Falls, they have always been genuinely nice to Winnie. The Luminary rules are pretty clear on how to treat outcasts: ignore them. Yet the twins never have.

Winnie pushes her glasses up her nose, inhales a steeling breath, and finally tears into the wrapping paper. It rips loudly across the silent dawn, and in less than a second the name Falls’ Finest peers up at her in the same swirly gold lettering as the shop windows wear downtown.

She gulps, hating that she’s suddenly excited. Hating that the twins have probably gotten her something expensive, judging by the box’s heft, and that she’s probably going to like it. She almost prefers the dog poop.

But she can’t stop now. Emma and Bretta are bouncing with excitement.

She pries off the box’s lid and discovers a leather jacket. The sort of item that Winnie will never be able to afford unless it’s very used. And the sort of style that will look good no matter its age, no matter the decade.

She gulps a second time. It’s the perfect shade of cinnamon brown to complement her auburn hair.

“Because you’re always cold on corpse duty,” Emma explains. “This will keep you warm!”

Though she doesn’t say it and definitely doesn’t mean it maliciously, the subtextual reality is inescapable: You’re always cold and will continue to be cold because while we will stop doing corpse duty soon, you, Winnie Wednesday, will keep doing it forever.

“Try it on!” Bretta urges, dimples returning. “We’ll exchange it if it doesn’t fit.”

Winnie obeys, and of course the jacket fits perfectly. Even over her green hoodie that says save the whales. She bends her elbows. The new leather squeaks. She tries the zip. It slides up and down like a scalpel through vampira viscera.

She should refuse this. Yes, she should refuse this. Thank the twins politely, but say it’s too nice a gift for her to ever accept.

Winnie doesn’t refuse it. She feels too badass, like a photo her mum has of Gran Winona, bow in hand, nightmare viscera splattered across her body, and a wide, vicious grin bright as the sun rising behind her.

Winnie summons a similar smile, one with actual teeth, and says: “Thanks. This is really … well, nice of you. Thanks.”

Emma beams, Bretta claps, and not for the first time Winnie wishes they were the stereotypical mean girls they’re supposed to be. She knows where she stands with the rest of the town—with brats like Marcus. With the twins, though, who are almost her friends, but not quite …

That uncertain “between” makes her gut twist uncomfortably.

She clears her throat, unzipping the jacket. Then zipping it again. And again and again, because for some reason her fingers won’t stop. It just moves so easily.

“When’s your birthday?” Marcus asks the twins with an eagerness that suggests there might be awkward flowers in their future.

“Next week,” Emma replies—at the exact same moment as Bretta. They laugh, a bubbly sound that erupts whenever they speak in unison.

Winnie’s fingers freeze on the zip. Next week doesn’t give her much time to find them a gift in return.

“We’re hoping to have a party,” Emma continues. “You’ll both be invited.” Marcus looks like he might swoon with joy. Winnie just feels faintly nauseated. Outcasts aren’t exactly welcome at the various Luminary parties.

So she changes the subject. As the oldest of their group, Winnie is in charge of corpse duty. “We’ve, uh,” she begins. Zip, zip, zip. “We’ve got a halfer near the Friday estate. Let’s start there?”

“Aye, aye, Captain.” Bretta pops a little salute. Then she, Emma, and Marcus pile into the flatbed. Winnie cranks the engine. Exhaust puffs, melting into the fog.

Dawn has arrived, pearly grey above the trees. Winnie flips on the headlights for good measure. Forest shadows scatter. The winter grey does not.

CHAPTER

2

Winnie’s plan is a simple one: pass the three hunter trials, restore her family’s status in the Luminaries, and become a nightmare hunter like she has always been destined to be.

Her mum was a hunter.

Gran Winona was a hunter.

Great-Gran Maria was a hunter.

And if not for the incident, Winnie would be fully trained and welcomed to the first trial tonight with open arms. But as she knows in all-too-intimate detail, it turns out that having your dad be a spy for the Dianas, the Luminaries’ ancient enemy, doesn’t go over well—even if you, your mum, and your brother had no idea what was going on.

You should have known, the Council said four years ago. A true Luminary would have known. A true Wednesday would have known. Then they laid down a punishment of ten years as outcasts for Winnie, Mum, and Darian.

And that had been that. Dad was gone, having fled as a spy, and the old life as respected Luminaries was finished. Ten years as outcasts. The end.

Winnie hadn’t thought it could possibly get any worse … until she realised that her sixteenth birthday would arrive during her ten-year sentence—the hunter trials would arrive, and she would miss her one shot at taking them.

Which meant that if Winnie wanted to do this—and oh god, she wanted it then and she wants it now—then she couldn’t let her sixteenth birthday slip by. She was going to have to attempt the first trial. She is going to have to attempt it.

It’s her only chance to make everything right again and her only chance to go after the thing Dad tried to take away.

She just prays this new leather jacket will bring her luck.

CHAPTER

3

Winnie parks the four-wheeler on a trail thirty feet from the halfer. The headlights beam through mist, turning the forest to a pixelated haze. In under a minute, Winnie has found the human remains. Three years of corpse duty, and she knows where nightmares usually deposit their prey. This particular clearing, surrounded by blue spruce and maples, is a regular feeding ground for vampira.

At the sight of the halfer’s exposed spine above the shredded remains of a waistline, Marcus gags. And at the sight of the exposed anklebones where the feet used to be, he turns and flees for the trees.

Which amuses Winnie. “Welcome to the forest,” she calls after him, and Bretta gratifies her with a giggle. Emma, however, takes pity on Marcus, and moments later her dulcet tones drift over a rebellious throat and the spray of vomit on pine needles.

Winnie and Bretta don’t wait for them. They pull on disposable gloves that are as blue as the cornflowers just appearing in Winnie’s front garden, and Bretta withdraws a body bag from the teal backpack she always carries. A bag of crisps rustles. Probably salt and vinegar, knowing her. Or maybe it’s Emma’s preferred sour cream and onion.

“Nothing on him,” Bretta says after checking for ID. Her gloves are already brown with blood. The guy’s jeans are even worse. “Should we search for the other half of his body?”

“Nah.” Winnie unfolds the body bag, which is really just an enormous ziplock. It’s even transparent like a ziplock too, with comparably poor seal quality that requires careful, patient unzipping. Nothing like Winnie’s new jacket.

Whenever a non is allowed into the Luminaries’ world, they’re always horrified that corpse duty goes to the thirteen-, fourteen-, and fifteen-year-olds. The children! they say. Their impressionable minds! To which Luminaries snort and reply, Exactly.

Death is a part of life in Hemlock Falls. It’s a part of life beside the forest. You lose your family, you lose your friends, you lose yourself. The sooner “the children” learn what the forest can do to them, the safer and happier they’ll be.

Winnie learned that the hard way.

“This is a vampira kill,” she tells Bretta, draping the bag beside the corpse. “You can tell from what’s left behind. See how all the parts with organs are missing? The torso and head have the most nutrients, and vampira hordes need those to survive. They like pieces with high-iron content.”

“Oh.” Bretta frowns at the body while Winnie hangs her leather jacket on a black walnut branch. Then, with a grunt, they grab the body, lift it, deposit it. Plastic squishes. Congealed blood squirts like toothpaste. The girls each grab a corner of the ziplocking mechanism and start sealing.

“Why are the feet missing too, then?” Bretta asks.

“Well, the story goes that vampira like feet because they don’t have any. But then again, melusine and harpies don’t have feet either.” Winnie shrugs. She once asked Professor Anders about that, back when she was still allowed at the Luminary school, but he’d only glared at her and said in his Swedish accent, If it’s not in the Compendium, it’s not important.

So Winnie had checked the Nightmare Compendium—and not the short field guide that hunters use, but the full, massive tome as big as her torso that resides in the Monday library. She hadn’t found an answer, though.

“So why do you think they take the feet?” Bretta asks.

And Winnie flushes.

It’s a weird heat. Part delight that Bretta would ask about her theories. Part shame, because she knows what will happen when she shares them. Even if Bretta won’t laugh, she’ll probably tell someone else who will tell someone else, and soon enough the Luminaries will TP Winnie’s house again. Or spray-paint her mum’s ancient Volvo, on which the last smear of red still hasn’t fully faded. Then Winnie will hate her dad even more than she already does, and she’ll hate her mum for ever loving her dad …

And yeah, she just doesn’t want to go there. Not on her birthday.

So she shrugs and mumbles, “Dunno.”

Footsteps clomp through underbrush. She twists, expecting Emma to reappear with Marcus on her arm. Instead, a boy with flaxen hair that blends into ashen skin emerges from between two saplings.

“Ugh.” Winnie scowls at him. “Jay.”

He draws up short at the sight of her. For once, he doesn’t look stoned so much as tired, like he was out all night with a beer in one hand and a joint in the other. His broad shoulders hunch inside buffalo flannel, his hands are stuffed into faded jean pockets, and his black motorcycle boots are streaked with red soil.

He is a burst of colour in this forest made of grey, and Winnie suddenly wishes she still had on her leather jacket. Something about Jay requires armor.

Beside her, Bretta has gone very still. Like a ghost-deer spotting a human.

“Why are you here?” Winnie asks, but Jay ignores her, scrubbing a hand over his already mussed hair and taking in the scene before him. Not the people, not the body, but the forest. Its leaves and moss and mud. The subtle markings left behind by monsters in the night.

Winnie can’t help but wonder what he sees. He passed the three hunter trials over a year ago.

“I was getting ready for school,” Jay says eventually. His voice, like everything else about him, is threadbare and tired. “I saw tracks and wanted to make sure nothing had escaped the boundaries.” The Friday clan estate, where Jay lives, is one of only two estates that directly abut the forest—the other being the martial Tuesday clan’s. “Vampira?” he asks.

“Yes,” Bretta rushes to say. “We know from the missing torso.”

Winnie side-eyes her. While she supposes she ought to be annoyed that Bretta has just claimed knowledge Winnie gave her, she’s more startled by the breathlessness in Bretta’s voice. And the intensity of her smile.

Not that Jay notices, and when he speaks again, it’s directed at Winnie. “Any ID?”

“No,” Bretta answers.

“Huh.” Jay shoves his fists deeper into his pockets, spine stooping as if the forest canopy is too low. And though Winnie hates to admit it, there is something strangely small about the clearing now that he’s in it.

“I can ask if my aunt saw anything,” he offers. “She might have had her cameras set up—”

“Don’t,” Winnie interrupts at the same time Bretta sighs, “Yes, please.” Winnie glares at her. Then at Jay. “I don’t need your help, Jay. I know exactly what happened here. Vampira.” She points at the body. “Horde.”

His pewter eyes thin at this declaration, but he doesn’t contradict her.

Notably, he doesn’t confirm her assessment either, and Winnie finds her ire rising. She used to know everything Jay was thinking. Now she can’t tell a thing. “I don’t need your help,” she repeats. “I can handle corpse duty on my own.”

“I know,” he says, and Winnie hates that he actually sounds like he does. “I was just trying to help, Win.” He turns to go. At the tree line, though, he pauses long enough to call back, “Happy birthday,” before the forest swallows him whole.

“See you at school!” Bretta shrieks into the pines, but no answer returns.

She deflates; Winnie’s front teeth start clicking. She’s glad Jay is gone and annoyed he remembered her birthday. Most of all, though, she’s annoyed that in the five seconds he was here, he managed to poke a hole in her vampira theory. He said he had followed tracks to the body, but vampira don’t leave tracks. Their stilt-like legs end in needle-sharp points that barely graze the ground.

She scans the forest floor, eyes squinting behind her glasses. What did Jay see that she missed? Did a sylphid do this? Or maybe a kelpie? She supposes she could chase after him and ask. She supposes she should chase after him and ask. After all, it would be the responsible thing to do as corpse-duty leader—and what a future hunter would do too.

But she isn’t going to. Not in a million years.

“He never notices me,” Bretta says mournfully. Then almost as an afterthought, she adds, “Or anyone else, really.”

“Huh?” Winnie shoves her glasses up her nose and blinks at the other girl.

“Jay Friday,” Bretta explains. “Me and Emma might as well be invisible whenever he’s around. He’s, like, so in his own head.” The way she says this makes it sound like an appealing trait. “We go to every one of his shows at Joe Squared, you know, but he always leaves right after performing.”

Winnie doesn’t know. She avoids the local coffee shop like a nightmare avoids running water. She has heard that Jay’s band plays there on Saturday nights, though. And she has noticed that half of Hemlock Falls seems to be in love with him.

It makes no sense, really, since Jay seems to have absolutely no interest in—or even awareness of—anyone in town.

Then again, maybe that’s part of the appeal.

Against her better judgment, Winnie takes pity on Bretta. “He doesn’t perform for attention, so I’m not surprised he leaves after the show. If you want to talk to him, try going to Gunther’s after school.”

“The non petrol station? Outside Hemlock Falls?”

Winnie nods. “He’s there pretty much every day working on his motorcycle.” Or his aunt’s motorcycle, but Winnie doesn’t see the point in specifying.

Bretta’s eyes widen, her dimples crease inward, and Winnie can practically see her connecting thoughts one by one. Gunther’s petrol station leads to motorcycle leads to Jay leads to time with Jay leads to getting noticed …

She claps her bloodied cornflower hands. “Oh, thank you, Winnie! I … we will definitely do that today. But how do you know so much about him? Are you two friends or something?”

“No.” Winnie tugs off her gloves. They thwack! like gunshots across the forest. “Jay is not my friend.”

CHAPTER

4

He used to be, though.

That’s why Winnie knows about him. That’s why Winnie hates him. Because the truth about Jay Friday is that he and Winnie used to be friends, along with Erica Thursday. They were an inseparable trio. A triad. A triangle. Anything with “tri” in it, they had declared themselves to be at some point or another over their seven years of friendship.

Wednesday, Thursday, Friday. A perfect arrangement of clans that made the initials WTF, which never failed to make them laugh.

Jay was a year older when they all met, but their respective parents (or in Jay’s case, his aunt) were all buddies, so a carpool had been born. Every afternoon, they had ridden together to the sprawling Sunday estate, where all the Luminary classrooms and training halls are housed. After enough time spent debating Pokémon, then debating nightmares, and finally debating which professors were the scariest, they forged a bond that they truly believed could never be broken.

But that’s the thing about the forest: it can break just about anything.

And it did. When Winnie’s family became toxic because of her dad, Jay and Erica ditched her like everyone else in Hemlock Falls. Hard. Jay fell in with a bad crowd; Erica fell in with the most popular.

Just like that, the inseparable trio, triad, triangle was split in two: A right angle on one side, still welcome in the world of the Luminaries. A lost hypotenuse on the other, cast adrift, floating and alone.

CHAPTER

5

As the eldest on corpse duty and the driver of the four-wheeler, Winnie delivers the bodies to the Monday estate after everyone else has gone home to prep for school. There’s a trail through the forest that will spit her out onto the Monday lands. It’s covered in tire tracks from the Tuesday clan the day before. Winnie always tries to drive in their grooves when she sees them. As if by following what they do, she’ll be like them.

Everyone loves the Tuesdays.

This part of corpse duty—the drive to deliver bodies—is Winnie’s favorite part of the day: the time when she’s all alone and can sketch out new nightmares in her mind.

Today, they retrieved an intact earth sylphid. Winnie has never seen one before; she hadn’t realised quite how … human they are. Like miniature people with bark for skin and stone for teeth and horns. She’ll need to redraw it in her Compendium. She can already see how she’ll do it too, small hatch marks for the texture on their faces, a thicker pen to capture the full blackness of their eyes.

The other two nightmare bodies they retrieved are manticore hatchlings, which look like dog-sized scorpions. Winnie picks them up basically every other week, and they’re easy to draw. All carapace and legs. Simple, clean lines.

Maybe it’s because Winnie’s attention is so focused inward, her gaze so locked on Tuesday tire marks, or maybe it’s simply because the forest has a plan, but when Winnie reaches a familiar hill with a familiar red stake in the ground, she notices something out of place beyond.

Two feet.

Or rather, what’s left of two feet. These are bloodied, pale, and missing toes.

She hits the brakes. The four-wheeler stops, mud splattering over the red stake that marks the farthest spot that nightmares might appear. Each night, when the mist rises, the nightmares form. Most stay within the heart of the forest, near the sleeping spirit, but some try to walk outside. Some leave in search of humans for their nightly meal.

Which is why the Tuesdays have sensors to detect when a nightmare crosses into the wider world. In theory. But clearly a nightmare crossed the boundary and left feet here—which Winnie definitely needs to tell someone about. She also needs to get those feet.

She hops off the four-wheeler and grabs an old grocery bag from under the seat. It presumably held someone’s snacks, but for months now it has served as nothing more than a crinkly annoyance she’s been too lazy to remove. Now it will serve as a crude body bag. Or … foot bag.

With her hand in the bag, she picks up the two corpse remains like she used to pick up Erica’s dog’s poop. Crinkle, crinkle. One foot. Two. They’re surprisingly heavy, and there’s hair on the bridges surrounded by deep, bloodied gashes, almost like they got caught in a lawn mower.

A wave of nausea hits Winnie. She hastily closes the bag. She’d mocked Marcus only an hour ago, and now she’s on the verge of puking herself. It doesn’t bode well for tonight’s trial.

You’re hungry, she tells herself. And sleep-deprived. Even Mum and Gran Winona must have felt woozy from time to time, and they were both Lead Hunters for the Wednesday clan.

Winnie shoves a stick into the spot where the feet were. Red clay crunches up. The stick breaks at the tip, but it’s a good enough marker. Mario at the Monday lab will be able to find it.

After depositing the feet beside the nightmares and nons in the four-wheeler’s flatbed, she sets off once more. This time, she doesn’t pay attention to the Tuesday tread. She just drives. Fast. Until at last she reaches the edge of the Monday estate.

Cold blusters against her without the forest to protect. The grounds are quiet, the grass crispy with frost. Two crows take flight as Winnie thunders by.

It’s like a university campus. Or at least what Winnie imagines a university campus might look like, based on what she’s seen on TV. Ahead is the main building, with its brownstone and crawling ivy that’s more like rattly spaghetti without its green coat. Then surrounding the original estate are all the annexes, seven in total: three laboratories, two libraries (historical and scientific), a hospital, and an office building for all the Mondays working to expand Luminary knowledge.

Intellect at the fore. Knowledge is the path. That’s their motto, and not for the first time, as Winnie passes the two library buildings, she kind of wishes she had been born a Monday. It wouldn’t have changed what had happened with her dad, but at least then she, her mum, and her brother wouldn’t be quite so hated. The Mondays are always polite to her; the Wednesdays never are.

After all, the Wednesday motto is The cause above all else. Loyalty through and through. What could be more disloyal than living with a Diana? Those witches who steal magic from the sleeping spirits around the world? Who want to wake up the spirits and unleash nightmares on humankind?

As far as the Wednesdays are concerned, ten years as outcasts isn’t severe enough for Winnie’s, Mum’s, and Darian’s crimes. And frustrating as it is, Winnie can’t even blame them for that. The Dianas are bad. Her dad is bad. End of story.

Used to be, back in the early days of the American Luminaries when the spirit here had only just awoken, the Dianas fought to gain a foothold in the forest. They would bury their sources all around—the crystals, metal spheres, wooden talismans, animal bones—hoping to absorb magic from the spirit into them. Then they would use their devices to craft spells.

It seemed like sources were everywhere in those days, tucked under roots or into stone crannies, draining the forest bit by bit. Often it was the kids on corpse duty who found them—and often the sources were booby-trapped.

Winnie’s own great-grandfather lost his thumb that way.

In the end, though, the Luminaries of Hemlock Falls had been stronger than the Dianas. The witches hadn’t been able to claim the spirit’s magic, and so they’d gone back into hiding around the globe while the old siren installed downtown to warn of Dianas had stopped its frequent howling.

They’re still out there, though. The Dianas. They still want to take control of the spirits and overrun the world. They still sneak in sources and steal magic whenever, wherever they can. Winnie’s dad is living proof of that, and her family is living proof of what can happen when vigilance slips.

Winnie drives past the main Monday estate, and though she waves at two people in lab coats, they ignore her. Once she reaches the hospital, she circles behind to the morgue entrance. The lead nightmare researcher, Mario, meets her.

He nods at Winnie, his always-in-the-lab pale skin alight in the morning sun. A pink bubble pops from his lips. “Ugh,” Winnie groans. “I thought we’d agreed no gum while I’m around.”

“And I thought we’d agreed you would be on time.” He taps his watch. “A guy’s gotta fill his life somehow.” He blows another bubble. Pop!

Winnie cracks a smile. She likes Mario. He never acts like she shouldn’t be here, never rolls his eyes at her or ignores her wave. Maybe it’s because his nephew Andrew and Winnie’s brother Darian are boyfriends, or maybe it’s because he was tight with Winnie’s dad before the incident, but either way, she appreciates having an ally—even if she’s never allowed to follow him into the morgue or exam rooms.

And even if he is like a walking piece of bubble wrap, always pop-pop-popping to the great annoyance of literally everyone. Even his mother, when she visits from the Italian branch of the Luminaries, scolds him.

“I found something.” Winnie cuts the engine, hops to the pavement, and holds up the grocery bag. Blood is visible through the plastic.

Mario squints. “Are those … feet?”

“Yes.” She hurries toward him, waving with her free hand toward the flatbed. “And I found them outside the boundary. I’m pretty sure they belong to the halfer. No,” she amends once she reaches him, “I’m positive they do. You know what this means, right?”

He sighs, and his face scrunches with a grimace that can only be described as long-suffering. “I certainly have a theory, but I suspect you have a different one. One that’s highly improbable.”

That’s rich coming from Mario, who is somewhat infamous for his own off-the-wall ideas. “A werewolf did it,” Winnie declares.

Mario blows another bubble. Pop!

“I’m serious.” Winnie thrusts the feet at him. The plastic rustles. “What else can leave the boundary unnoticed, Mario? It’s either a changeling or a werewolf, and changelings don’t mutilate bodies.”

“They’re also extremely rare. We haven’t had one in seventeen years. And it was …” He shakes his head. “It was bad, remember?”

Winnie doesn’t remember, since she hadn’t been born yet. But she certainly knows the stories about how a non-turned-werewolf killed six people in as many days, and the entirety of Hemlock Falls was on lockdown until the Tuesdays finally shot him. Ever since then, that siren downtown that had been built to warn of Diana attacks has also been used for any daywalkers on the loose.

Winnie chews her lip. She doesn’t want to make light of what happened seventeen years ago … but she also thinks she’s on to something. “Just imagine it, Mario. This werewolf is in the middle of eating when the night ends. He still has the feet in his mouth as his body begins to change back into human form—”

“Now the werewolf is a he?”

“—and he just …” She mimics walking with her fingers. “Marches right out of the forest. Then he drops the feet and enters our world.”

Mario does not look moved by this theory. If anything, he looks mildly agitated. Like he has somewhere to be and Winnie’s tall tales are keeping him from it. He does, at least, accept the bag from her grasp. “Interesting story, as per usual, Winnie. But imagine this instead: It was the same vampira horde the hunters have been tracking for the past three nights. The hunters finally killed the horde—presumably mid-meal—and the feet got flung over the boundary.” He shuffles toward a rolling table nearby. The stainless steel gleams in the rising sun.

“That was my first thought too.” Winnie follows him, and when he grabs the table, she grabs the other end. They roll it to the four-wheeler. “But the marks on these feet aren’t consistent with vampira. Just open the bag and you’ll see!”

Mario doesn’t answer, but Winnie can see he’s mulling her words. He always chews louder and blows more bubbles when his scientist mind is whirring. Pop-pop-pop!

Winnie helps him load the first non body onto the table’s lowest shelf. It’s an older woman, her eyes turned to stone in what was clearly an unfortunate basilisk encounter. Then they load the manticores onto the middle shelf. Next, the sylphid (which Mario excitedly “oohs” over), and lastly, the halfer onto the top shelf.

“Definitely vampira,” Mario says after a cursory examination. “But I do like your theory, Winnie. It’s very …” He pauses as he does every week when Winnie offers her latest out-there idea.

“Inspired,” she finishes for him. She can’t keep the disappointment out of her voice. She really thought she’d gotten it right this time. A werewolf would have explained Jay’s weird assessment of the clearing, and she had even heard all that howling at dawn.

Mario gives her an apologetic grin. “We make quite the pair, don’t we? But I do like how your mind works.”

Winnie shoves at her glasses. Her thumb smushes a fingerprint onto the left lens. “Did Aunt Rachel tell you they took down a vampira horde?”

“No,” he admits. “The Wednesdays haven’t turned in their kill coordinates yet, but I will bet you a week’s supply of coffee that it wasn’t a werewolf.”

This is also what Mario does every week: he bets a week’s worth of coffee that her hypothesis is wrong. And of course, whenever he’s the one with the kooky theories, Winnie wagers the same.

Winnie studies the halfer again. Sunlight glares on the plastic. The grocery bag with the feet now rests below the shredded ankles. Yes, it does look like a vampira horde did this … but then why were they eating the feet? According to the Compendium, the vampira don’t eat feet. They just remove them.

Winnie sets her jaw. There’s more to this than what she’s seeing. Even Jay noticed that.

“Okay.” She shoots her gaze to Mario. He’s writing on a clipboard that swings from the table’s edge. “A week’s supply of coffee.”

He pauses his scribbling. “Huh?”

“A week’s supply,” she repeats, and she thrusts out a hand. Then she remembers she hasn’t washed it yet and hastily withdraws. “I accept your wager. Shall we say coffee from Joe Squared?”

“You’re that confident?” Mario squints at the bag of feet. Pop-pop-pop! Neither of them has ever actually gone through with a wager before. “You’re even willing to pay for the expensive stuff? All right.” He shrugs. “It’s your funeral. If that turns out to be a werewolf kill, I’ll buy you a week’s supply of coffee from Joe Squared—or if you prefer, I’ll make it a meal for you and a friend at the Revenant’s Daughter.”

You and a friend. As if Winnie has any of those. “I’ll take the coffee,” she replies.

He doffs an invisible hat. “And I’ll email you when I hear from the Wednesdays.”

“Excellent.” She doffs a hat right back, then hops once more onto the four-wheeler. Spring wind bites against her. The smudge on her glasses distorts the day. Downtown, the bells in the Council building toll eight o’clock, meaning she has an hour until school begins.

School always starts late in Hemlock Falls, to accommodate corpse duty or last night’s hunters.

“Get ready to lose, Mario!” Winnie hollers as she drives away. Mario’s popping bubbles chase after her.

CHAPTER

6

The Revenant’s Daughter is part bar, part diner, all grease. Winnie doesn’t normally stop by the restaurant before school, but her mum made her pinkie-swear the night before. “It’s your birthday. I want to see you on your birthday morning.” So now Winnie is here.

She parks the four-wheeler beside the dumpster out back, in the alley between Falls’ Finest, Joe Squared, and the Wednesday-owned grocers that price-gouges everything because it’s the only one around, so they can do that.

The smell of hot oil melts over Winnie. Both disgusting and mouthwatering. Nothing at the Revenant’s Daughter is particularly good or gourmet, but it’s battered and fried so deeply, you don’t really notice. Plus, ketchup. The restaurant goes through a lot of ketchup.

Winnie clicks her front teeth in triple time as she marches toward the heavy back door propped open with a rock. Greasy heat billows into the morning. She wishes she had time for some breakfast.

“What’s wrong?” Francesca Wednesday asks the instant Winnie steps into the steamy kitchen. Her mum is in the middle of sliding two plates of hash browns onto a tray that’s already overloaded with eggs and toast and coffee. Archie Friday, meanwhile, cooks more of those hash browns and doesn’t look up from the griddle. He’s a man of few words and mostly grunts.

“You look like something is wrong.” Mum frowns, the lines between her eyebrows slicing deep. The yellow undertones of her skin look almost sickly in the kitchen’s light. “Did corpse duty not go well?”

Winnie gulps. She’s not a very good liar. Even the simplest of white lies is impossible for her to conjure. For example, she has never successfully convinced her brother Darian that she really did like the mustache he had last year. And when it comes to the big stuff … Well, she has only managed to hide her plans for the hunter trials by avoiding her mum.

Fortunately, as she stretches her brain for an answer, she zips up … and zips down the leather jacket. Mum’s dark eyes laser onto it. “Where did you get that?” She strides over to Winnie, her tray balanced on one shoulder, and scrutinises the leather with a hunter’s trained eye. “Did you steal it?”

Winnie laughs. A feeble sound that only makes her mum look that much more suspicious.

“No, Mum. Emma and Bretta Wednesday gave it to me.”

“Oh.” Mum blinks. “Wow.” Her cheeks flush. She glances toward the back of the kitchen, to where a yellow gift bag waits beside the industrial coffee machines. “Well, you’re, uh … you’re going to be disappointed by my gift, then. But go ahead.” She dips her head toward it. “Open it, and I’ll be right back.”

Mum shoves into the dining room, handling the tray with a lot more grace than she had four years ago, when the Luminaries first cast her out and she had to pick up two jobs to pay the bills. Winnie had never appreciated how comfortably they’d lived with Mum’s hunter salary—until it was gone.

While the swinging door pauses at the height of its opening, the already buzzing drone of voices hyped up on cholesterol and caffeine crashes over Winnie. She catches a glimpse of the nearest booth, which houses Imran and Xavier Saturday (seniors, popular, not related), Marisol Sunday (junior, popular), Casey Tuesday (sophomore, popular), and Erica Thursday.

Erica’s eyes, almost russet against her warm, amber skin, catch on Winnie’s. Then they lurch away as quickly as Winnie’s do. The door swings shut. Archie barks, “Order up!” And Winnie makes a beeline for the coffee machines. Her heart is thundering. Her teeth are clicking.

That is another reason why she doesn’t come to the Daughter in the mornings. It’s where the popular kids eat breakfast before school.

It’s where Erica eats breakfast before school. They haven’t spoken in four years, and though Erica doesn’t call Winnie witch spawn or Diana scat, she also doesn’t interfere when everyone else does. She just watches, expression inscrutable on her cold, perfectly made-up face. She’d just been getting into eyeliner and contouring when she and Winnie had still been friends. Now she is never without it, and her clothes are always designer, always new.

Erica’s dad, who hails from the Mexican Luminaries originally, is always one of the best dressed in Hemlock Falls, so it’s no surprise Erica is too. And though Erica’s dad still uses the last name Jueves, Erica was born in the American Luminaries. As such, she has the last name Thursday like her mum—who also happens to be head of the Thursday clan.

Everyone expects Erica to follow in Marcia’s perfectly placed three-inch heels. The way Erica looks and speaks and moves these days, she’s already most of the way there.

Winnie reaches the yellow gift bag and recognises the unicorn tissue paper from last year’s birthday. New pens, she thinks, since that’s what Mum always gives her. Except when she dives in, she finds a fancy plaid glasses case instead.

Excitement wells inside her. She’d been saying she wanted new glasses, but she hadn’t realised Mum had been listening.

Winnie pops open the case, and while the glasses winking up at her aren’t smudged like her current pair, they are kind of scuffed around the edges. And they’re also at least three years out of style, the frames thick when the style is thin.

Winnie swallows.

“I got the wrong kind, didn’t I?”

Winnie jolts. She hadn’t sensed her Mum approaching. Even still, Fran moves with the stealth of a Lead Hunter.

“Are they knockoffs? Crap.” Mum swipes the case from Winnie’s grasp. “I really thought they looked fancy.”

“They’re not knockoffs.” Winnie grabs for the case.

Mum easily scoots out of the way. She is scowling at the glasses. “I knew I should have waited until after your birthday, when I could make the trip to Chicago, but I was just so pleased to find these cheap. Dammit, Fran.”

“No.” Winnie grabs her mum’s biceps. Then she squeezes. “They’re great, Mum. Exactly what I wanted. See?” She grabs the case and hastily changes pairs. No more smudge over the left eye, only crisp clarity as Archie shouts in their direction, “Order up!”

Winnie smiles, and Mum flushes all the way to the edge of her greying roots. Winnie hates how desperate it makes her look. Mum wants to believe Winnie, and Winnie wants Mum to believe too. Like, never in her life has she more fiercely wished she were good at this whole lying business.

But alas, Winnie just isn’t convincing enough, and Mum sighs. It is a sound of such dejection and self-loathing that Winnie is struck, for the eight millionth time, by how much she hates her dad. He did this to Francesca Wednesday. He broke her heart—broke all their hearts—and made the toughest hunter in the Wednesday clan into …

Into this.

Not that Mum is broken. Anything but. She is Winnie’s hero and always will be. But before Dad betrayed them, Mum never had any doubts. She was Lead Hunter for the Wednesday clan, and she lived by the Wednesday motto. She hammered loyalty into her kids; she hammered loyalty into Winnie.

Then Mum caught Dad in the middle of a spying spell that would have fed Luminary secrets directly to the Dianas. She’d tried to turn him in. He’d knocked her out. And the rest is shitty history.

“How do I look?” Winnie offers her goofiest smile for Mum, tongue out and teeth bared, and to her relief, Mum grins back.

“Order up!” Archie barks, louder now.

“You look fantastic, Win.” Mum pulls Winnie in for an awkward hug (they’ve never been one for touching) and kisses her hair. “Happy birthday to my most favorite daughter in all the universe—”

“Order.”

“—I hope it’s a good day, and don’t forget: we need to practice your driving—”

“Up.”

“Hellions and banshees, Archie, I freaking heard you!” Mum scowls, looking much more like the hard-ass Lead Hunter Winnie grew up with. A pat on the head for Winnie, then she’s already stalking away to grab more breakfast.

And to serve all the Luminaries who will no longer let her in.

CHAPTER

7

It isn’t that most Luminaries are cruel to Winnie or her family directly. After the spray-painting incident of freshman year had yielded actual punishment from the Council, most of the local Luminaries shifted to ignoring Winnie, Darian, and their mum.

At least to their faces. Behind their backs, however, they do love a good snicker. Or a good whisper. Or even the occasional Oops, I spilled my chai latte all over you. So sorry!

And when Winnie says “behind their backs,” she means it literally. In homeroom, she is forced to sit in the second row because of Ms. Morgan’s inane seat assignments that arrange everyone by grade, which means that today she gets to hear Dante Lunedì whisper-sing “Happy Birthday” at her with slightly modified lyrics and a nice accent.

He and his family might have moved here only two years ago from the Italian branch of the Luminaries, but outcasts like Winnie are despised in all fourteen branches around the world. So even though newcomers regularly join the American Luminaries, they all know exactly how they’re supposed to treat Winnie, Darian, and Mum.

“Happy birthday to you,” Dante sings, “happy birthday to you, happy birthday, witch traitor, happy birthday to you.”

Well, at least someone remembered her birthday. Winnie supposes that must count for something, right?

She doesn’t turn around, because she never turns around. She just drags her No. 2 pencil over a corner of maths homework. Here are the sylphid’s horns. Its teeth. Its bark-textured skin. Winnie isn’t in homeroom at all, but back in the forest while the hemlocks and spruce trees breathe. While humidity beads on her skin and the cold sharpens her senses.