Page 33 of The Luminaries
No,Winnie thinks as she watches Erica stalk away.No way in hell.Winnie isn’t going out of her way to help Erica with anything. Or to talk to Erica, for that matter, ever again.
Winnie twists back to the sink to finish washing her hands. In the mirror, she spots two flags of color on her cheeks and a crystalline edge to her eyes that hadn’t been there when she’d first walked into the bathroom. It’s what she looked like on Thursday night, she bets, when she’d walked right into that forest so certain she could slay a nightmare.
Suddenly, training with Coach Rosa doesn’t sound so daunting, because even if nothing went according to plan on Thursday night, even if Winnie found herself horribly outmatched, shehadsurvived an encounter with a banshee. Erica, the Luminaries, Marcus with his awful grin—they were nothing compared to that. Winnie can face all of them.
CHAPTER19
Physical training goes better than Winnie could have hoped for. A million billion times better because Marcus gets a nosebleed, forcing Coach Rosa to leave with him—and forcing Rosa to command the class to run laps on the obstacle course while she’s away.
Winnie discovers very quickly that despite her four years on a homemade obstacle course, she is excruciatingly not equipped for this one. Tire jumps? Rope climbs? By the time the seventh and eighth graders are back to the starting line, Winnie is only halfway around the track, panting like a hellion and regretting ever wanting to be back in the Luminaries again.
She can’t even enjoy the scenery of the Sunday estate as the track loops through trees and past the hot room with its mausoleum-like entrance, then past the lake where a lonely mallard watches her mournfully. She just wants to be done and for this searing heat in her chest to recede.
By the time she does get back to the starting line, the day is basically over and the final bell is about to toll.
“That wasn’ttoobad,” Rosa tells her. “You just need to do it a few more times.”
Unlikely,Winnie thinks. Out loud she heaves, “I… hurt my ankle… in the trial.”
Rosa pops a skeptical eyebrow. “Of course,” she murmurs politely as the bell rings.
Winnie flees for her bike. She doesn’t even care that she’s still wearing her training clothes; she needs to escape before everyone swarms her like they did at Gunther’s.
Or that’s the reason she tells herself. Deep down, though, she knows she just doesn’t want to see Erica again. It was hard enough having her raptor eyes ignore Winnie for four years. It’s a lot harder having them trained on her directly. There is nothing left of the Erica from before. She has painted that person away with expertly applied eyeliner and blush.
Winnie hops on her bike and aims for a trail that connects the Sunday and Monday estates. The paved and perfect lines of Sunday melt into the natural orderliness of Monday with burgeoning trees and daffodil shoots just thrusting up from the ground.
She passes faces she vaguely knows and waves to. This time, they all wave back or at least nod. And when she asks one older woman with turquoise hair where to find Mario, the woman smiles and offers detailed directions.
His office, it turns out, is on the top floor of the main mansion. Winnie parks her bike out front, beside a tendril of ivy that looks like it might be interested in turning green soon. With legs that have turned to rubber bands, she hauls herself into the building.
No one interferes when Winnie pants upstairs and through the halls. They don’t even seem to notice her, and it occurs to her that she probably could have been doing this at any time over the past four years.
But then she remembers that Mario hasn’t exactly invited her until now. He might have been her “friend,” but he wasn’t herfriend.Like everyone else, he followed the rules on outcasts.
Winnie kind of wishes she hadn’t considered this, and her spine droops a bit by the time she reaches Mario’s door. Someone is already inside when she arrives—she hears a man speaking in authoritative tones: “I want tests ready to go, Mario. I don’t care what supplies you’re lacking. I don’t care what crackpot theories you’re developing. Get this done. We can’t have a daywalker on the loose in the city. Do you understand?”
A pause. Then: “Yep. Got it.”
“The Masquerade is soon, and I won’t have anything interfering. This werewolfwillbe dealt with by then.”
“Yeah, Dryden. I get the picture.”
“Good.” Footsteps clatter. “Don’t screw this up.”
Winnie scoots away from the door just in time to avoid being caught as an eavesdropper. A moment later, Dryden Saturday—head of the Saturdays, head of the Council, and Darian’s boss—emerges. He wears navy slacks and a tawny tweed jacket with a red bow tie over a white button-up (always the white, always the bow tie), and his gray hair encircles his head like a wispy crown. Round pince-nez perch on his nose.
Winnie waits until he has vanished down the hall before slinking to Mario’s door. “Hey,” she calls, poking her head inside. The room is exactly what she would have expected: books everywhere, paper everywhere, shelves with bones and vertebrae and skulls, all laced with a slightly overpowering scent of bubblegum.
Mario sits at his desk, his focus on a sleek monitor that’s thin as paper and curved like a droll rib. His fingers fly over a keyboard. “I was wondering when you’d come,” he says absently as Winnie creeps into the room. “Guess you found me okay?”
Winnie doesn’t answer. Her eyes have caught on a podium that was hidden by the open door. On it is a book as thick as her forearm is long. It’s open, Post-its and papers poking out from a thousand different spots.
“The Compendium,” Winnie breathes reverently. She stumbles toward it like a revenant toward blood. “And the newest edition too. Can I look?” She glances at Mario.
He grunts, fingers still rattling away.Pop-pop-pop!
She leans over the open page, the text small and sharp. Nothing like the xeroxed pages and sketchbook sheets stuffed in her closet at home. This is the Real Deal, complete with all the latest research from Luminaries around the globe.
