Page 57 of The Luminaries
As she continues on, describing the vampira horde and eventually the mist, Lizzy’s face morphs from happy surprise to a stony shade of pale.
“And Mario wasn’t in his lab,” Winnie eventually finishes, “so I came here. You have to do something.”
“Yeah,” Lizzy says, her gaze unfocused—her mind already blazing ahead. She absently unzips the top of her coveralls to peel them down to her waist. As in Jay’s usual wardrobe, a white T-shirt waits beneath. They must buy a family value pack or something.
“Mario told me you’d seen it,” Lizzy says, beckoning Winnie to follow her across the room to the computers. When she reaches the newest of the desktops, she taps a key to wake it up. The computer hums. “And I have that security footage…” She clicks through a few menus before bringing up the video Winnie has already seen. “This is it, right?”
Winnie swallows, watching the footage play again. “Yeah.”Drip, drip, drip.Water splatters from her pants. “That’s it.”
“All right. I’ll alert the Tuesdays right away.” The video ends; Lizzy hits replay.
And Winnie finds herself looking away. She is shivering, and it’s not merely from the cold. She thinks of the vampira sketch she’d just made. She thinks of the real nightmare that had inspired it.
“You say it… it shrank?” Lizzy asks. She opens a notes app and starts hammering away at the keys. The beat stutters against the stochastic rainfall outside. “When the dawn mist rose?”
“That’s what it looked like.”
“Fascinating, fascinating.” Lizzy flashes Winnie a wide-eyed grin. “Maybe now they’ll actually let me put my cameras in the forest.”
“But…” Winnie glances at the various half-made inventions across the room. “The mist breaks cameras.”
“Not these.” Lizzy’s grin slips from excited to sly. “My nephew has kindly taken a few items in the forest with him, on Friday nights, and every one of them has survived.” She types more quickly, gaze fastened once more on the screen. “Well, they’ve survived at least one night… ormostof a night.”
In the background, the footage of the Whisperer has paused on a moment when the forest looks like a fish eye trapped in a solar flare.
Drip, drip, drip.A pool is accumulating around Winnie’s feet, and the longer she stands here, the colder she’s getting.
“Speaking of Jay.” Lizzy doesn’t look away from the screen. Her fingers don’t stop flying. “Are you two friends again?”
“No.” The word blurts out. Harder than Winnie intends.
And Lizzy’s eyebrows bounce, like she’s not quite sure what to make of that. “Well, uh, I’m glad you’re here.” A shrug of one shoulder. “It’s nice to see your face.”
“You could have seen my face any time over the past four years.”
Lizzy’s fingers still on the keyboard. She clearly wasn’t anticipating a response that harsh—and frankly, neither was Winnie. But she doesn’t retract her words. After all, they’re true.
“Listen.” Lizzy straightens. “It was against the rules to talk to you all.”
“So?” Winnie finds that she’s glaring. “When have you ever cared about rules?”
“Fair point, but as a councilor, you have to understand—”
“What, Lizzy? What do I have to understand? We were here all along, you know. My mom, my brother,me.We were here in Hemlock Falls where everyone could see us, but no one did because of some bullshit rules on outcasts. You… you just ditched us, Lizzy. Without any explanation, you justditchedus.”
“I—” Lizzy tries, but Winnie doesn’t want to hear it. She is glad she came here, but she doesn’t want tohearit. Not right now, when she hasn’t slept in days and she’s soaked by icy rain. When a nightmare is on the loose and it took her hours to find anyone who would listen.
And she doesn’t want to hear it from Lizzy because Lizzy isn’t the one she’s actually mad at.
She rounds away from the computer and toward the lab door. Her feet carry her with surprising speed. It isn’t like her to be so openly angry—she’s not even sure why this is catching firenow.But it’s as if the adrenaline of last night has stoked flames that have been smoldering inside her for three days.
She knows exactly how Mom felt on Saturday.
She finds Jay in the hall. He holds a flannel shirt in one hand. It’s clearly meant for her, but Winnie doesn’t want it, just as she doesn’t want that look in his eyes either. The intense one that doesn’t say he’s sorry.
“Let me give you a ride,” he offers as she practically runs down the hall. Distantly, she notices he’s clean now, his hair damp and his clothes fresh. “It’s pouring outside, Win, and you’re already soaked.”
“Yeah.” She pauses at the top of the stairs. Rain slashes against the windows. “I am, but you’ve never cared before. Tell me honestly, Jay: Why are you helping me? Is it because I passed the first trial?”
