Not all monsters can be slain, and not all nightmares are confined to the dark…
We’re thrilled to share an excerpt from The Luminaries by Susan Dennard, a haunting, high-octane contemporary fantasy about the magic it takes to face your fears in a nightmare-filled forest and the mettle required to face the secrets hiding in the dark corners of your own family—publishing in trade paperback with Tor Teen on October 17.
Hemlock Falls isn’t like other towns. You won’t find it on a map, your phone won’t work here, and the forest outside town might just kill you.
Winnie Wednesday wants nothing more than to join the Luminaries, the ancient order that protects Winnie’s town—and the rest of humanity—from the monsters and nightmares that rise in the forest of Hemlock Falls every night.
Ever since her father was exposed as a witch and a traitor, Winnie and her family have been shunned. But on her sixteenth birthday, she can take the deadly Luminary hunter trials and prove herself true and loyal—and restore her family’s good name. Or die trying.
But in order to survive, Winnie enlists the help of the one person who can help her train: Jay Friday, resident bad boy and Winnie’s ex-best friend. While Jay might be the most promising new hunter in Hemlock Falls, he also seems to know more about the nightmares of the forest than he should. Together, he and Winnie will discover a danger lurking in the forest no one in Hemlock Falls is prepared for.
Not all monsters can be slain, and not all nightmares are confined to the dark.
The Nightmare
The forest comes for the boy on his thirteenth birthday. He is not the first to catch the forest’s notice. He will, however, be one of the last. Others have received bits of woven twine from a banshee or a shiny snail from a melusine, but he finds a wolf’s jawbone on his pillow when he opens his eyes at dawn.
He was having the nightmare again. The one where his father has a face and his mother is still alive. It always begins a happy dream, until the shadows arrive. First they claim his father. Then they claim him too while his mother weeps and screams and begs the forest to change its mind.
But the forest never changes its mind. Not in the dream and not in real life either. Which is why, when the forest calls for the boy, he enters. And when the forest is done with him, he leaves. No longer a boy. No longer entirely human, but rather a ticking time bomb waiting for the forest to one day spark his fuse.
Chapter 1
They say that spring never comes to the forest by Hemlock Falls.
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It isn’t true, of course. Spring comes right after winter like it’s supposed to. What is true is how different the spring is in Hemlock Falls from the rest of the world. It’s quiet and lethal. Lonely and inevitable. It sneaks up on you, shaded by winter gray that doesn’t like to let go.
Even now, a month into the season, frost still clings to the north side of trees. And though the sun might rise momentarily, it won’t reach this dirt road. It won’t reach Winnie Wednesday as she muscles a clunky four-wheeler with no assisted steering toward the Wednesday clan meeting point.
Mist exhales from the forest like smoke from a censer. The four-wheeler lights flash and reflect, making shapes where Winnie knows there are none. It’s only the maple and fir saplings of last year’s spring, skeletal in the predawn darkness.
Her front teeth click together as she drives. Today is her sixteenth birthday. And today, everything is going to change.
When her headlights beam over six black SUVs, Winnie rumbles the four-wheeler to a hemlock—the tree, not the poisonous plant, although those grow here too and no one knows for which the town is named.
She flips off the lights, pulls up the hood of her sweatshirt, and waits. Fog coils around her, an octopus embrace. She imagines what tonight’s trial will be like. How it will feel to hunt a nightmare instead of just read about it.
Her mom won’t talk to her about hunting—at least not anymore. Not since the incident. But Winnie has read the Nightmare Compendium a thousand times. A thousand thousand times. She has sketched every creature in the forest, every nightmare the American Luminaries must face. And she has pretended to face them herself, stabbing a droll in the fleshy part at the base of its neck or a manticore where the cephalothorax and abdomen meet. She has jumped and rolled and jumped and rolled so many times her body does it without thinking.
She’ll be ready.
She has to be ready.
Minutes tick past. A wolf howls. A real one, she thinks, although she can’t be too sure. The Compendium does describe a few nightmares that look like wolves or sound like wolves or briefly become wolves entirely. Winnie shoves her glasses up her nose and keeps waiting. And waiting. Her stomach grumbles; she wishes she’d eaten breakfast. She also wishes she’d slept more, although she ought to be used to the insomnia after three weeks of it. Ever since her birthday month began and the reality of what she has been planning these past four years settled in, sleep has been elusive.
The wolf howls again, though it’s farther away this time. It sounds lonely, lost. Winnie hates that she understands the feeling.
She hasn’t told anyone she’s going to attempt the first hunter trial tonight. If they find out, they won’t let her. Aunt Rachel will lose her mind; Mom will lose her mind; the Council will lose their collective minds; and they’ll find a way to intervene. But what they don’t know, they can’t stop. Plus, nowhere in the rules does it say an outcast can’t enter. Nons are forbidden, sure, but there’s definitely no mention of outcasts.
All Winnie has to do is show up with the other hunter applicants tonight, and the Thursdays in charge of the trial will let her in.
They have to. Winnie really doesn’t know what she’ll do if they don’t.
Eventually, she can’t hear the wolf anymore, and eventually, the sky begins to lighten. The night is over. The forest’s slumber is complete.
Wednesday hunters emerge from the trees on silent feet. A few hunters from other clans mingle within the ranks, replacements for anyone who’s hurt or sick or just has a kid in the Hemlock Falls drama troupe. Ever since a Saturday hunter died two months ago and a Tuesday hunter died three weeks ago, the Council has beefed up hunter numbers each night.
All around the world, the Luminaries live near fourteen sleeping spirits. Each night, when the spirits dream, their nightmares come to life. And each night, the Luminary hunters guard the world against those nightmares, one clan for every day of the week. Last night belonged to the Wednesdays—Winnie’s clan.
Or it was Winnie’s clan until the incident, when her family was sentenced to be outcasts.
There are forty-eight hunters right now, several of whom are second cousins or cousins of cousins. They’ve definitely forgotten it’s Winnie’s birthday and wouldn’t have cared even if they’d remembered. Dressed in matching black Kevlar and matching frowns, some are now bloodied, some have broken bows, a few limp.
Only Aunt Rachel speaks to Winnie, leaving the rest of the hunters to approach with a map in hand. SUV headlights beam over her like a stage light. She is gruff and perfunctory in her movements, as is Winnie’s mom. But where Mom’s hair is fully gray, Rachel’s is still glossy and black.
They have the same hooked nose, though. So does Winnie.
“Here.” Rachel holds out a map, a bad copy of a copy of a copy. “The nightmare bodies are marked, and we’ve got two nons this time too. Though fair warning: this one near the high school is just a halfer.”
Halfer. Half a human corpse. Not common, but not uncommon in the forest either. Rachel hands the map off to Winnie, already glancing toward the SUVs and forgetting her niece is standing there.
This is how it usually goes. Aunt Rachel says a handful of words and then, like every other Wednesday and every other Luminary, she goes back to pretending Winnie doesn’t exist. She even walks away before Winnie has fully grasped the map, leaving Winnie to swipe it from the air as it falls.
Once Rachel joins the other hunters, they all cram into their SUVs. Electric engines hum to life. A slurp of tires on fresh mud marks their exit.
Winnie doesn’t watch them go. She has been doing corpse duty for three years now and even if today is her birthday, even if her stomach is as knotted as a harpy’s braid, the familiarity of routine soothes her.
Corpse duty might be a job no one else likes—cleaning up the nightmare bodies left behind in the forest each morning, as well as any human bodies—but Winnie has always enjoyed it. Her brother calls her morbid; she calls him boring.
Sure, it’s a grim job, but someone has to do it. Otherwise, the corpses that don’t magically vanish at dawn will reawaken as revenants, and that’s always nasty. Besides, corpse duty is the only time Winnie gets to flex her knowledge of the Nightmare Compendium, and each new body is a riddle to be solved.
She studies the map, her front teeth clicking. There’s the halfer, not far from the Friday estate. And then a second human is marked about a mile away from the first, by the lake. Two is a lot for one night. There’s been a definite uptick lately.
Click, click, click. Click, click, click.
“Winnie?” comes a voice, and Marcus, Aunt Rachel’s son, steps out from under the hemlock. An eighth grader who has only just started corpse duty, he is nice to Winnie when no one else is around. But get him outside of the forest, and he—like everyone else in the Luminaries— delights in calling her witch spawn.
Winnie dreams often of punching out his front teeth. They’re just the perfect size for smashing and would add some much-needed color to his olive-pale skin.
Behind him are two other teenagers: the pretty Wednesday twins, Black girls with rich umber skin and dark tourmaline eyes. The dimples in their cheeks are the envy of everyone in town.
Their family moved to Hemlock Falls the year before, transplants from the world outside because their parents are networkers—that special variety of Luminary who live in the non world, working to ensure no one ever learns of the Luminaries or the forest.
Like most people in the Wednesday clan of the American Luminaries, the twins have no blood connection to Winnie or Marcus, and as sophomores like Winnie, they’re easily the most popular girls at school. Which of course means that Marcus has it bad for them. Like, real bad. He doesn’t seem to understand that they’re only nice to him because they’re nice to everyone. Including Winnie, no matter how much she frowns.
She wants to be nice back—she really does. But if she lowers her guard for even one minute, there’s a risk someone might slip in. Witch spawn, witch spawn.
“Happy birthday!” they sing in unison.
“We got you a present.” Emma offers a box with perfectly wrapped edges and a perfectly curled bow.
“Uh, thanks.” Winnie takes the box; it’s heavy. “I’ll open it later.”
A flash of disappointment crosses their faces. Their smile dimples smooth away, and Bretta, who currently wears corkscrew curls (while Emma has long braids), says, “Oh, but we want to see your reaction.”
Winnie tenses at those words. Fear spikes up her arms, as if the box is made of banshee tears. They’ve pranked her. It’s probably dog poop inside, and when she opens the box, they’ll snap a video with their phones to show everyone at school.
Except no. Winnie shakes her head. The twins aren’t like that. Besides, contrary to the rest of Hemlock Falls, they have always been genuinely nice to Winnie. The Luminary rules are pretty clear on how to treat outcasts: ignore them. Yet the twins never have.
Winnie pushes her glasses up her nose, inhales a steeling breath, and finally tears into the wrapping paper. It rips loudly across the silent dawn, and in less than a second the name Falls’ Finest peers up at her in the same swirly gold lettering as the store windows wear downtown.
She gulps, hating that she’s suddenly excited. Hating that the twins have probably gotten her something expensive, judging by the box’s heft, and that she’s probably going to like it. She almost prefers the dog poop. But she can’t stop now. Emma and Bretta are bouncing with excitement.
She pries off the box’s lid and discovers a leather jacket. The sort of item that Winnie will never be able to afford unless it’s very used. And the sort of style that will look good no matter its age, no matter the decade.
She gulps a second time. It’s the perfect shade of cinnamon brown to complement her auburn hair.
“Because you’re always cold on corpse duty,” Emma explains. “This will keep you warm!”
Though she doesn’t say it and definitely doesn’t mean it maliciously, the subtextual reality is inescapable: You’re always cold and will continue to be cold because while we will stop doing corpse duty soon, you, Winnie Wednesday, will keep doing it forever.
“Try it on!” Bretta urges, dimples returning. “We’ll exchange it if it doesn’t fit.”
Winnie obeys, and of course the jacket fits perfectly. Even over her green hoodie that says save the whales. She bends her elbows. The new leather squeaks. She tries the zipper. It slides up and down like a scalpel through vampira viscera.
She should refuse this. Yes, she should refuse this. Thank the twins politely, but say it’s too nice a gift for her to ever accept.
Winnie doesn’t refuse it. She feels too badass, like a photo her mom has of Grandma Winona, bow in hand, nightmare viscera splattered across her body, and a wide, vicious grin bright as the sun rising behind her.
Winnie summons a similar smile, one with actual teeth, and says: “Thanks. This is really… well, nice of you. Thanks.”
Emma beams, Bretta claps, and not for the first time Winnie wishes they were the stereotypical mean girls they’re supposed to be. She knows where she stands with the rest of the town—with brats like Marcus. With the twins, though, who are almost her friends, but not quite…
That uncertain “between” makes her gut twist uncomfortably.
She clears her throat, unzipping the jacket. Then zipping it again. And again and again, because for some reason her fingers won’t stop. It just moves so easily.
“When’s your birthday?” Marcus asks the twins with an eagerness that suggests there might be awkward flowers in their future.
“Next week,” Emma replies—at the exact same moment as Bretta. They laugh, a bubbly sound that erupts whenever they speak in unison.
Winnie’s fingers freeze on the zipper. Next week doesn’t give her much time to find them a gift in return.
“We’re hoping to have a party,” Emma continues. “You’ll both be invited.” Marcus looks like he might swoon with joy. Winnie just feels faintly nauseated. Outcasts aren’t exactly welcome at the various Luminary parties.
So she changes the subject. As the oldest of their group, Winnie is in charge of corpse duty. “We’ve, uh,” she begins. Zip, zip, zip. “We’ve got a halfer near the Friday estate. Let’s start there?”
“Aye, aye, Captain.” Bretta pops a little salute. Then she, Emma, and Marcus pile into the flatbed. Winnie cranks the engine. Exhaust puffs, melting into the fog.
Dawn has arrived, pearly gray above the trees. Winnie flips on the headlights for good measure. Forest shadows scatter. The winter gray does not.
Chapter 2
Winnie’s plan is a simple one: pass the three hunter trials, restore her family’s status in the Luminaries, and become a nightmare hunter like she has always been destined to be.
Her mom was a hunter.
Grandma Winona was a hunter.
Great-Grandma Maria was a hunter.
And if not for the incident, Winnie would be fully trained and welcomed to the first trial tonight with open arms. But as she knows in all-too-intimate detail, it turns out that having your dad be a spy for the Dianas, the Luminaries’ ancient enemy, doesn’t go over well—even if you, your mom, and your brother had no idea what was going on.
You should have known, the Council said four years ago. A true Luminary would have known. A true Wednesday would have known. Then they laid down a punishment of ten years as outcasts for Winnie, Mom, and Darian.
And that had been that. Dad was gone, having fled as a spy, and the old life as respected Luminaries was finished. Ten years as outcasts. The end.
Winnie hadn’t thought it could possibly get any worse… until she realized that her sixteenth birthday would arrive during her ten-year sentence—the hunter trials would arrive, and she would miss her one shot at taking them.
Which meant that if Winnie wanted to do this—and oh god, she wanted it then and she wants it now—then she couldn’t let her sixteenth birthday slip by. She was going to have to attempt the first trial. She is going to have to attempt it.
It’s her only chance to make everything right again and her only chance to go after the thing Dad tried to take away.
She just prays this new leather jacket will bring her luck.
Chapter 3
Winnie parks the four-wheeler on a trail thirty feet from the halfer. The headlights beam through mist, turning the forest to a pixelated haze. In under a minute, Winnie has found the human remains. Three years of corpse duty, and she knows where nightmares usually deposit their prey. This particular clearing, surrounded by blue spruce and maples, is a regular feeding ground for vampira.
At the sight of the halfer’s exposed spine above the shredded remains of a waistline, Marcus gags. And at the sight of the exposed anklebones where the feet used to be, he turns and flees for the trees.
Which amuses Winnie. “Welcome to the forest,” she calls after him, and Bretta gratifies her with a giggle. Emma, however, takes pity on Marcus, and moments later her dulcet tones drift over a rebellious throat and the spray of vomit on pine needles.
Winnie and Bretta don’t wait for them. They pull on disposable gloves that are as blue as the cornflowers just appearing in Winnie’s front yard, and Bretta withdraws a body bag from the teal backpack she always carries. A chip package rustles. Probably salt and vinegar, knowing her. Or maybe it’s Emma’s preferred sour cream and onion.
“Nothing on him,” Bretta says after checking for ID. Her gloves are already brown with blood. The guy’s jeans are even worse. “Should we search for the other half of his body?”
“Nah.” Winnie unfolds the body bag, which is really just an enormous ziplock. It’s even transparent like a ziplock too, with comparably poor seal quality that requires careful, patient unzipping. Nothing like Winnie’s new jacket.
Whenever a non is allowed into the Luminaries’ world, they’re always horrified that corpse duty goes to the thirteen-, fourteen-, and fifteen- year-olds. The children! they say. Their impressionable minds! To which Luminaries snort and reply, Exactly.
Death is a part of life in Hemlock Falls. It’s a part of life beside the forest. You lose your family, you lose your friends, you lose yourself. The sooner “the children” learn what the forest can do to them, the safer and happier they’ll be.
Winnie learned that the hard way.
“This is a vampira kill,” she tells Bretta, draping the bag beside the corpse. “You can tell from what’s left behind. See how all the parts with organs are missing? The torso and head have the most nutrients, and vampira hordes need those to survive. They like pieces with high-iron content.”
“Oh.” Bretta frowns at the body while Winnie hangs her leather jacket on a black walnut branch. Then, with a grunt, they grab the body, lift it, deposit it. Plastic squishes. Congealed blood squirts like toothpaste. The girls each grab a corner of the ziplocking mechanism and start sealing.
“Why are the feet missing too, then?” Bretta asks.
“Well, the story goes that vampira like feet because they don’t have any. But then again, melusine and harpies don’t have feet either.” Winnie shrugs. She once asked Professor Anders about that, back when she was still allowed at the Luminary school, but he’d only glared at her and said in his Swedish accent, If it’s not in the Compendium, it’s not important.
So Winnie had checked the Nightmare Compendium—and not the short field guide that hunters use, but the full, massive tome as big as her torso that resides in the Monday library. She hadn’t found an answer, though.
“So why do you think they take the feet?” Bretta asks.
And Winnie flushes.
It’s a weird heat. Part delight that Bretta would ask about her theories. Part shame, because she knows what will happen when she shares them. Even if Bretta won’t laugh, she’ll probably tell someone else who will tell someone else, and soon enough the Luminaries will TP Winnie’s house again. Or spray-paint her mom’s ancient Volvo, on which the last smear of red still hasn’t fully faded. Then Winnie will hate her dad even more than she already does, and she’ll hate her mom for ever loving her dad…
And yeah, she just doesn’t want to go there. Not on her birthday.
So she shrugs and mumbles, “Dunno.”
Footsteps clomp through underbrush. She twists, expecting Emma to reappear with Marcus on her arm. Instead, a boy with flaxen hair that blends into ashen skin emerges from between two saplings.
“Ugh.” Winnie scowls at him. “Jay.”
He draws up short at the sight of her. For once, he doesn’t look stoned so much as tired, like he was out all night with a beer in one hand and a joint in the other. His broad shoulders hunch inside buffalo flannel, his hands are stuffed into faded jean pockets, and his black motorcycle boots are streaked with red soil.
He is a burst of color in this forest made of gray, and Winnie suddenly wishes she still had on her leather jacket. Something about Jay requires armor.
Beside her, Bretta has gone very still. Like a ghost-deer spotting a human.
“Why are you here?” Winnie asks, but Jay ignores her, scrubbing a hand over his already mussed hair and taking in the scene before him. Not the people, not the body, but the forest. Its leaves and moss and mud. The subtle markings left behind by monsters in the night.
Winnie can’t help but wonder what he sees. He passed the three hunter trials over a year ago.
“I was getting ready for school,” Jay says eventually. His voice, like everything else about him, is threadbare and tired. “I saw tracks and wanted to make sure nothing had escaped the boundaries.” The Friday clan estate, where Jay lives, is one of only two estates that directly abut the forest—the other being the martial Tuesday clan’s. “Vampira?” he asks.
“Yes,” Bretta rushes to say. “We know from the missing torso.”
Winnie side-eyes her. While she supposes she ought to be annoyed that Bretta has just claimed knowledge Winnie gave her, she’s more startled by the breathlessness in Bretta’s voice. And the intensity of her smile.
Not that Jay notices, and when he speaks again, it’s directed at Winnie. “Any ID?”
“No,” Bretta answers.
“Huh.” Jay shoves his fists deeper into his pockets, spine stooping as if the forest canopy is too low. And though Winnie hates to admit it, there is something strangely small about the clearing now that he’s in it.
“I can ask if my aunt saw anything,” he offers. “She might have had her cameras set up—”
“Don’t,” Winnie interrupts at the same time Bretta sighs, “Yes, please.” Winnie glares at her. Then at Jay. “I don’t need your help, Jay. I know exactly what happened here. Vampira.” She points at the body. “Horde.”
His pewter eyes thin at this declaration, but he doesn’t contradict her.
Notably, he doesn’t confirm her assessment either, and Winnie finds her ire rising. She used to know everything Jay was thinking. Now she can’t tell a thing. “I don’t need your help,” she repeats. “I can handle corpse duty on my own.”
“I know,” he says, and Winnie hates that he actually sounds like he does. “I was just trying to help, Win.” He turns to go. At the tree line, though, he pauses long enough to call back, “Happy birthday,” before the forest swallows him whole.
“See you at school!” Bretta shrieks into the pines, but no answer returns.
She deflates; Winnie’s front teeth start clicking. She’s glad Jay is gone and annoyed he remembered her birthday. Most of all, though, she’s annoyed that in the five seconds he was here, he managed to poke a hole in her vampira theory. He said he had followed tracks to the body, but vampira don’t leave tracks. Their stilt-like legs end in needle-sharp points that barely graze the ground.
She scans the forest floor, eyes squinting behind her glasses. What did Jay see that she missed? Did a sylphid do this? Or maybe a kelpie? She supposes she could chase after him and ask. She supposes she should chase after him and ask. After all, it would be the responsible thing to do as corpse-duty leader—and what a future hunter would do too.
But she isn’t going to. Not in a million years.
“He never notices me,” Bretta says mournfully. Then almost as an afterthought, she adds, “Or anyone else, really.”
“Huh?” Winnie shoves her glasses up her nose and blinks at the other girl.
“Jay Friday,” Bretta explains. “Me and Emma might as well be invisible whenever he’s around. He’s, like, so in his own head.” The way she says this makes it sound like an appealing trait. “We go to every one of his shows at Joe Squared, you know, but he always leaves right after performing.”
Winnie doesn’t know. She avoids the local coffee shop like a nightmare avoids running water. She has heard that Jay’s band plays there on Saturday nights, though. And she has noticed that half of Hemlock Falls seems to be in love with him.
It makes no sense, really, since Jay seems to have absolutely no interest in—or even awareness of—anyone in town.
Then again, maybe that’s part of the appeal.
Against her better judgment, Winnie takes pity on Bretta. “He doesn’t perform for attention, so I’m not surprised he leaves after the show. If you want to talk to him, try going to Gunther’s after school.”
“The non gas station? Outside Hemlock Falls?”
Winnie nods. “He’s there pretty much every day working on his motorcycle.” Or his aunt’s motorcycle, but Winnie doesn’t see the point in specifying.
Bretta’s eyes widen, her dimples crease inward, and Winnie can practically see her connecting thoughts one by one. Gunther’s gas station leads to motorcycle leads to Jay leads to time with Jay leads to getting noticed…
She claps her bloodied cornflower hands. “Oh, thank you, Winnie! I we will definitely do that today. But how do you know so much about him? Are you two friends or something?”
“No.” Winnie tugs off her gloves. They thwack! like gunshots across the forest. “Jay is not my friend.”
Chapter 4
He used to be, though.
That’s why Winnie knows about him. That’s why Winnie hates him. Because the truth about Jay Friday is that he and Winnie used to be friends, along with Erica Thursday. They were an inseparable trio. A triad. A triangle. Anything with “tri” in it, they had declared themselves to be at some point or another over their seven years of friendship.
Wednesday, Thursday, Friday. A perfect arrangement of clans that made the initials WTF, which never failed to make them laugh.
Jay was a year older when they all met, but their respective parents (or in Jay’s case, his aunt) were all buddies, so a carpool had been born. Every afternoon, they had ridden together to the sprawling Sunday estate, where all the Luminary classrooms and training halls are housed. After enough time spent debating Pokémon, then debating nightmares, and finally debating which professors were the scariest, they forged a bond that they truly believed could never be broken.
But that’s the thing about the forest: it can break just about anything.
And it did. When Winnie’s family became toxic because of her dad, Jay and Erica ditched her like everyone else in Hemlock Falls. Hard. Jay fell in with a bad crowd; Erica fell in with the most popular.
Just like that, the inseparable trio, triad, triangle was split in two: A right angle on one side, still welcome in the world of the Luminaries. A lost hypotenuse on the other, cast adrift, floating and alone.
Excerpted from The Luminaries, copyright © 2023 by Susan Dennard.
