Page 30 of The Luminaries
She will just have to go tomorrow after training and talk to Mario. It’s as simple as that. If anyone in Hemlock Falls can ID the whispery nightmare, it’s him. He has always listened to Winnie before; she has absolute faith he’ll listen now.
CHAPTER18
The next morning, Winnie is halfway through crossing her neighborhood on foot (fortunately, her ankle is doing much better) when a sound like a dragon trapped inside an old tugboat hits her ears.
Mathilda.
She whips around just as Jay pulls over beside her, right blinker flashing. At the sight of his tired face through the eighties glass, Winnie’s temper shoots straight into her skull. She propels herself to the passenger door and swings it wide.
“You stole my bike.”
He has the decency to flush. “Sorry.”
“I was stuck at home because you stole my bike.”
“It was an accident.”
“I don’t care.” She slings herself into the front and yanks on the seat belt. Then she crosses her arms and scowls out the windshield. “Drive.”
Jay obeys, shifting Mathilda forward. Sheblub-blub-blubs toward downtown. Winnie peeks at Jay from the corner of her glasses. As usual, he looks like utter crap.
“You bailed on me,” she says as Mathilda whines to a stop at an intersection. “What happened to tutoring?”
The flush returns, brighter this time. And laced with something else. Something… empty. “Sorry,” he repeats, and he actually sounds like he means it.
Which surprises Winnie. She expected him to come back withI’m not going to train you,or at the very leastI’m the one doing you a favor here.And for some reason, the fact that he isn’t arguing makes her insides scoop out uncomfortably. Or maybe that’s just her nerves, twanging higher the nearer they get to the Sundays.
Jay maintains silence the entire drive, through downtown with its local shops and perfectly manicured hedges, then over the dam to the west side of Hemlock Falls. The river wears white chop from yesterday’s rain. It plays tricks on Winnie’s tired eyes. She thinks she sees fins where there are none. She thinks she sees scales.
It makes her think of the Whisperer—that’s what she has started calling the mystery nightmare. It also makes her wish she’d slept more last night, so she’d be prepared to face the Luminaries and professors. But her mind had gotten stuck in ayou are a liarandyou will fail the next trialcycle all night.
Normally, when she can’t sleep, she draws. Droll hands are especially soothing, since there are so many little bones to get just right. Last night, though, she hadn’t even looked in her desk’s direction, much less crawled out of bed to grab a pad or pen. She’d just stared into darkness and stewed.
Mathilda hiccups over the dam, bringing Jay and Winnie into the Monday and Tuesday neighborhoods, then onward to the sprawling grounds of the Sunday clan, where a morning sun gleams halfheartedly over a soccer field, a football field, and a wide running track. Tucked beyond is the stately Sunday mansion with its brick face, wood-shingled roof, and neat, square windows perfectly spaced throughout.
For the past four years, Winnie has avoided staring too closely at the Sunday estate when she passes by (or on the rare occasion she drives herself by without stalling between first and second gear). Why look at what she can’t have? Why remind herself of the days when she used to be happy? Even now, her first instinct is to avoid the way those multipaned windows wink at her. To instead gawp with vacant eyes at the grass streaming by in a perfect buzz cut.
Winnie pushes at her glasses, teeth clicking, while Jay parks in the student lot. They are early, which should be a relief, except her thundering heart doesn’t seem to have gotten the memo. As on the Monday estate, there are multiple annexes around the main mansion, but here each one is devoted to the training of a Luminary.
There’s the library, a vastly truncated version of the two libraries on the Monday estate. There’s the massive glass-roofed indoor pool and, beside it, a pond made to mimic the lake above the river’s falls where aquatic nightmares thrive. Beyond that is a small building that leads into the underground hot room. Finally, circling around all of it is the obstacle course—which has grown more intense since Winnie was last here. More columns to dive around, more ladders to scramble up, more tires and mud and marshy pools to race through.
Winnie spots Coach Rosa Domingo, the professor in charge of physical training, out checking a particularly daunting stretch of tightropes. She’s originally from the Brazilian Luminaries, and her green, almost ocher eyes glow beneath a brief burst of morning sun. She keeps her dark curls and coppery highlights forever in a ponytail, which bounces now against her muscled back.
It has been years since Winnie has spoken to any of the Sunday professors beyond the occasional awkward encounter at the Revenant’s Daughter.This is what you want,she tells herself, rubbing her clammy palms on her corduroys as Jay cuts the ignition.This is what you want.She and Coach Rosa always got along well enough; maybe Rosa will be glad to see her.
After several moments of watching professors leave their vehicles and aim for the double doors at the back of the estate, Winnie realizes she hasn’t moved since Mathilda’s engine quieted. Nor has Jay. Instead, he studies her with that flinty arrowhead gaze of his.
“Do you want me to walk in with you?” he asks eventually.
Winnie feels her face warm. For half a stuttering heartbeat, she wants to blurt out,Yes.Instead, she says, “You’re not going in?”
“I had the hunt last night. I’m tired.”
“Oh.” She cringes. She’s really out of practice with Luminary life if she forgot he had the hunt. “Did you wake up just to give me a ride?”
“Yep.”
“Oh,” she repeats, annoyed that that’s the only word she can find. And annoyed that Jay is still looking at her. “Well, that was silly,” she finds herself saying, even though she actually wants to thank him. “You should have slept in.”
