Page 34 of The Luminaries
She thumbs from one page to the next. A solid half of the creatures aren’t in her edition because they only exist in other parts of the world. Since the spirit that sleeps by Hemlock Falls is so young, it hasn’t had time to evolve its own unique nightmares yet.
Mom always used to say it was like a Lego starter kit. When a newspirit is born, it comes with a standard set of monsters—vampira, hellions, harpies, melusine, and so on—but over the centuries, it starts to create its own. As its mind expands with age, its dreams in turn grow more vast.
Winnie is so absorbed reading about sylphids that she doesn’t notice when Mario has reached her side until suddenly he’s there and grinning. He clearly appreciates Winnie’s awe.
“All these,” he says, ruffling the Post-its that poke out the side, “are notes I hope I can add. The global Mondays will have to agree, of course, but…” A shrug, almost shy. “Twenty-six years I’ve been doing this. I’ve seen our nightmares evolve in real time. Like this”—he flips toward the back of the book, toW—“doesn’t apply to the were-creatures here. They don’t transfer their were-blood via bite.”
Winnie frowns at that, reading Mario’s sloping scrawl:No evidence of nightmare transmission.
“How do you know that? Was someone bitten seventeen years ago?” She’s never heard that before—she only knows of the six deaths: two women, three men, one child.
Mario pauses a beat, and she has the sense that he just shared something he shouldn’t have. When he speaks again, it’s unnaturally casual. “Yeah. Seventeen years ago.”
“I saw the new werewolf on Thursday night.” She twists toward Mario, who is hastily closing the Compendium. “You lost our bet pretty badly.”
“That I did.” He saunters—still too casual—toward his desk, and Winnie trails after. There’s nowhere for her to sit, so while he settles back into his swivel chair, she stands on the other side.
“But you still don’t think the wolf killed the halfer?”
Mario’s chair groans as he leans back. He smacks away at his gum. “Of course I do. Forget my email.”
“Liar.” Winnie glares at him. She plants her hands on the edge of his desk. “Here’s the thing, Mario: I don’t think the wolf killed that non either. I think it was something… big. Something… whispery.” She shivers.
And Mario’s whole body goes stone-still. Gone is the fake nonchalance, and in its place is sharp-eyed, scientific interest. “Explain.”
So Winnie does. She’s vague about the banshee, careful to sneak around the lies and hover on a curved tightrope of truth. “The bansheealmost had me until this whispering began. The wolf was yipping—like a warning sound—and running away from it. Then I saw the… thething.It was…” She gropes for words like she had with Jay. “It was like a warped glass got placed over my eyes then smashed with a hammer. The forest seemed to change shapes. To… to grow.” She opens her hands. “To shrink too, and to bend and to morph.” She squiggles her fingers.
At that demonstration, Mario snaps to his computer. A flurry of typing, and then he grips the monitor and spins it Winnie’s way. “Did it look like this?”
She gasps. “Yes, exactly like that.” An image fills his screen with the black-and-white glow of night vision, but there’s no mistaking what she sees. There is the fuzzy edge, there is the rounded warping, there is the shrinking and the stretching and the morphing. “That’s exactly it, Mario. Where did you get this?”
“Lizzy Friday,” he says, naming Jay’s aunt. Part tinkerer, part scientist, like many Luminaries, she was born to the wrong family. And like Winnie, she should have been born a Monday.
Winnie’s heart gives a little pang at that thought. She had loved Lizzy almost as much as her own family. But when Jay had ditched her, she’d lost Lizzy too.
“She has those surveillance cameras set up along the Friday estate boundaries,” Mario explains. “She captured this the night the halfer died. I thinkthisis what killed him.”
“Me too.” Winnie swallows. “What is it?”
Mario takes a beat before he answers, blowing a huge bubble.Pop!“I have no idea. I have gone over everything I can think of in the Compendium. Nightmares that distort vision, nightmares that bleed mist, nightmares that can become invisible… I even found a Pakistani nightmare that purportedly has its own gravitational field. But nothing”—he taps the monitor—“looks like this. Or makes the sound you’re describing. Which is new data, by the way.” He grabs for a note pad, the frown now replaced by wide, elated eyes. “Describe it to me again, Winnie. Every detail you can remember.”
Winnie’s teeth start clicking, an unconscious movement because even if Mario isn’t afraid of the creature,sheis. Whatever was in that woods scared a banshee. It scared a werewolf. It scaredher.
And twice now, she’s found its leftovers on the other side of a sensor.
When she doesn’t answer right away, Mario glances up, red pen hovering as he takes in her clicking teeth. He knows her well enough to understand what that movement means. “Hey.” He sets down the pen. “Don’t worry about this thing, okay? Lizzy and I are on it.”
“The Council isn’t, though, are they?”
Pop-pop!“Did you just hear Dryden scolding me?”
Winnie nods. “Sounded like he cares a lot more about his precious Nightmare Masquerade than a murderous daywalker outside the sensors.”
“You’re not wrong there.” Mario rubs tiredly at his eyes. “And it’s not just Dryden acting that way. Dignitaries from all over the world will be showing up soon, evaluating our little corner of the Luminaries. A werewolf is easy… easyishto stop. Just test everyone’s blood and remove the one that doesn’t look right. But a… what did you call it? Whisperer? No one has ever heard of that, so there’s no easy way to deal with it. As such, unfortunately”—he opens his arms in defeat—“until we have more proof than just a blurry image, no one is going to listen to us.”
“Even though Isawit?” Winnie waves toward her face. “With my own eyes?”
“Even though you saw it, Win. No one else has, and you wear glasses—I’m not saying that makes you unreliable,” he hastily adds. “I’m just sharing what the Council would probably say. But hey, don’t worry, okay?”
