Page 16 of The Luminaries
They smell like a floral perfume. Lilacs, maybe. It’s actually quite nice.
“You were right,” Emma says breathlessly.
“Hewasthere,” Bretta chimes.
“Who?” Winnie asks as she peels herself free from the embrace.
“Jay.” Emma fiddles with her braids. “We didn’t know what to say to him, but we did at least get him to promise to talk to us after his performance on Saturday.”
“Us, and like four other people,” Bretta says with a giggle. “In the spirit of sportsmanship, we had to tell Angélica, Katie, Marisol, andXavier. Butoh,thank you for telling us, Winnie. And gosh, the jacket looks amazing on you.” She pinches the leather with gloved hands.
Emma, meanwhile, hesitates. Then cocks her head. “But why are you here, Winnie? Are you taking the trial?”
Heat scorches up Winnie’s neck. She shoves at her glasses. “Yeah. I’m sixteen today, so I’m allowed.” She sounds a lot more defensive than she wants to; the twins have absolutely no accusation in their tones, stances, or expressions.
Bretta grins, and her curls, pulled back into a ponytail, bounce. “You didn’t say a word this morning at corpse duty!” She punches Winnie playfully.
Winnie cringes. Fortunately, the twins don’t seem upset, and Emma continues: “This issoexciting, Winnie. The three of us taking it together! And Fatima too!”
Before Winnie can agree that yes, itisvery exciting, a voice cuts over the twins’ enthusiastic giggles: “What do you think you’re doing here?”
Aunt Rachel.
Winnie knew this moment was coming. Every Lead Hunter attends the trials, so Winnie has been imagining this moment for a long time.
“Nightmare alert,” Emma whisper-hisses nearby, and Bretta replies, “Eek.” Then the twins twist away and scamper off at top speed.
Winnie’s teeth start clicking. If she weren’t so desperately wishing she could chase after the twins, she might have giggled. Unfortunately, the “nightmare” in question has now reached Winnie, and Winnie’s tongue is tying itself in knots.Click, click, click.
“I repeat,” Aunt Rachel says, “what do you think you’re doing here?”
“I’m taking the first trial.”
A snort. “Right.” Rachel looks away as if the conversation is over. Then she stops. Frowns. And her gaze shoots back to Winnie, taking in the Kevlar vest and thigh plates. “Holy crap. You’re serious.”
“Yes.”Click, click, click.Winnie pulls her backpack around and unzips it. Her fingers shake; the zipper is not smooth like her jacket’s. It gets caught and she has to yank, yank,ripthe damned thing sideways a few times before it finally opens. All while Rachel watches with increasing horror.
Horror and something that might be rage.
Winnie yanks out the copied pages and shoves them at her. “These-are-the-pages-from-the-Rulebook-and-nowhere-in-them-does-it-say-I-can’t-take-the-trials.” Her memorized words erupt forth like pus from a manticore sting. “I-have-been-training-on-my-own-for-the-past-four-years, so-I’m-ready-to-do-this-and-if-you-look-at-page-seven-you’ll-see-that-because-I-have-arrived-on-time-and-it’s-the-birth-month-of-my-sixteenth-birthday, you-have-to-let-me-participate.”
Rachel doesn’t take the pages. Her mouth is hanging open, and the tic at the edge of her left eye is definitely from rage. It is the sort of face that would normally cow Winnie. The face that everyone in the Luminaries gave her after Dad got caught. The face that she herself wants to give her dad if he should ever show up here again.
She wishes Aunt Rachel would look away. She wishes other people weren’t gathering nearby, whispering and pointing. She wishes she hadn’t just heard Casey Tuesday say,Witch spawn gonna be bait or something?And then Astrid Söndag laughing.
At last, Rachel does break eye contact, and Winnie has to fight the instantaneous reaction her body has to wilt on the spot. Instead, she holds her stance with the copied pages offered and the backpack dangling off her shoulder.
Rachel swipes the pages from the air. She doesn’t look at them, just rips them in two. “Get out of here,” she says. “Before you embarrass me any more.”
Winnie does get out of there.
Sort of.
To her surprise, she is just as furious as Rachel is. She is so furious that as she stalks back down the driveway toward the main road—laughter following behind her—she is imagining all the various ways she can break her aunt’s nose. Winnie is not a violent person, even by a long stretch, but she suddenly feels like punching something.
It’s a delicious feeling. It makes her spine stretch long and her blood pump hot. She’s invincible.Dangerous,and she imagines this must bewhat it feels like to drink melusine blood. No wonder the rare substance is classified as addictive; she could get used to this feeling.
She reaches the main road leading north with only an occasional streetlight to mark the way. The Thursday estate is one of three on the east side of the river. It’s a long walk from here to the forest. Fortunately, there’s a closer alternative: a narrow swath of forest that stretches down to the edge of the Wednesday estate grounds like a finger beckoning you in.
