We’re thrilled to share an excerpt from The Whispering Night, the conclusion to Susan Dennard’s YA dark fantasy trilogy The Luminaries—out from Tor Teen on November 19th.
Winnie Wednesday’s future is looking bright. Hemlock Falls is no longer hunting the werewolf, she and Erica Thursday are tentative friends, and Winnie finally knows exactly where she stands with Jay Friday.
With everything finally on track, Winnie is looking forward to the Nightmare Masquerade, a week-long celebration of all things Luminary. But as Luminaries from across the world flock to the small town, uninvited guests also arrive. Winnie is confronted by a masked Diana and charged with an impossible task—one that threatens everything and everyone Winnie loves.
As Winnie fights to stop new enemies before time runs out, old mysteries won’t stop intruding. Her missing father is somehow entangled with her search for hidden witches, and as Winnie digs deeper into the long-standing war between the Luminaries and the Dianas, she discovers rifts within her own family she never could have imagined.
THE NIGHTMARE
The boy awakens beside a hemlock tree at sunrise. He has been here before, more times than he can count. More times than he can remember. The forest erases his human mind on the nights when it summons him. But this morning is different: a figure crouches over him. Trees drift and wave behind the man’s head, releasing gray dawn light with each gust of forest breeze. A smell like bubble gum pierces the boy’s nostrils.
“Hey,” the man says. He has a low, growly voice, but kind. “I thought I might find you here.”
The boy frowns, still groggy from the night he can’t remember. He is in one of the three places he always ends up after the forest claims him, dressed in the same clothes he went to bed in: jeans and a thick flannel button-up. He has learned in the last two years that pajamas only lead to trouble. It’s better to be fully dressed. This way, he will not freeze quite so quickly if he is unconscious for hours against a hemlock tree.
And this way, if anyone finds him, he looks less like a daywalker wandering from his bed and more like a kid who had too much to drink the night before. He has even started carrying a beat-up pack of cigarettes in his back pocket, just to complete the effect.
“How are you here?” the boy asks, his voice as rough as the broken soil digging beneath his boots.
“I’ve been watching you,” the man replies, and he has the decency to look embarrassed as he says this. His teeth smack twice at bubble gum. “I had a feeling something wasn’t right, and… well…” He waves to the forest around them.
The boy nods. A strange feeling wefts through him that can’t decide what it wants to be. Is it fear this man will turn him over to the Tuesdays? Or is it relief because now, finally, this misery will end?
He is so tired all the time.
He wonders if it will hurt when they kill him. It must have hurt that werewolf fifteen years ago. He thinks about that daywalker often, whoever they were.
The man blows a bubble, bright pink in a world of frosted gray. It pops. The boy flinches. Then the man offers him a hand. “Let’s get you out of here before corpse duty finds us.”
The boy stares at the man’s hand, with its dried, seamed skin from constant sanitizer and latex gloves. Right now, the hand is simply pale, bare, and waiting for the boy to clasp it.
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The Whispering Night
“Hurry.” The man’s fingers flex. He blows another bubble. It crackles with a triple pop-pop-pop! at the end.
“You… won’t turn me in?” The man shakes his head. “But I’m a daywalker.”
“No.” The man glances to his left, into a stand of oak trees. “As far as I can tell, you’re just a kid who got unlucky.”
Oh. The boy doesn’t know what to say to this. The relief his curse might finally end is replaced by relief that someone might be able to help him, to cure him, to give him back everything he had to give up two years ago. The bear and the bell he misses every single day. The aunt he can’t confess to. The life he used to have.
He swallows, his throat dry from a night on the prowl that he will never remember. Then he nods and takes the man’s hand. The grasp is strong, steady, true.
“Come, Jay Friday,” the man says as he helps the boy rise. “Let’s get you somewhere warm.”
THE WITCH
The girl goes to the edge of the forest at twilight. She has avoided the call of the Dianas for three years, but she can avoid it no longer. She has failed, failed, failed to cast the spell from her sister. So if she wants to finish what her sister began—and finally learn why her sister died—she will need training.
Thus, when another summons comes, a small note that materializes inside her sister’s old locket with coordinates in red ink, the girl decides to answer. The witches have been sending her these messages for the last three years, oddly unwilling to give up on her.
She is glad they’ve kept trying. After she failed for the thousandth time to do even the most basic of spells—a mundanus that creates a flickering flame—she has accepted she cannot do this on her own.
The inked coordinates lead her far from her clan’s estate, and though the mist has not yet risen for the night, and she is outside the red-staked boundaries of nightmare danger, she still constantly checks her surroundings. She has crafted a plan, of course, in case a Luminary finds her here. A story about hunting mistcap mushrooms, and she has even brought a small sack with her for the filling.
But she encounters no one, and soon, she reaches the secret meeting place. Six minutes early because she is always six minutes early. She squints into the shadows. To her left, golden-leaf maples have turned to gray shadows in the darkness. To her right, underbrush and saplings are surrounded by fallen leaves.
Before her, the final grains of daylight vanish into gloaming. And behind her, a crow’s face zooms in.
The girl jumps, a yelp escaping her as she lurches away from the head. It is not a true crow, but a person in a charcoal-colored mask marked with feathers and a metal beak, glittery and gold. The person wears black, almost scalelike armor. Then the person laughs, a wheezing sound that isn’t quite human. And when she speaks, it is with an older woman’s voice. “So you are ready to join us, are you? Why now?”
The girl swallows. Her heart is trapped somewhere beside her tonsils. She was expecting a question like this, of course—why now?—and she rehearsed several answers while wiping off eyeliner in her bathroom. But suddenly her various stories and excuses sound exactly like that: stories and excuses. And although she can see nothing beyond a glittering darkness where the Crow’s eyes should be, she senses those eyes will see through any lies.
“Because,” the girl finally replies, “I want to know what my sister was. What she did. What… what all of this meant to her.”
“You mean you want to know why she turned on the Luminaries and chose their enemy?”
The girl nods. She does want to know why her sister would trade one controlling society for another—and what the Dianas have to offer that was worth giving up everything for, including her life.
The Crow laughs again, a round, hearty laugh that is fully human now. As if a switch has been flipped inside her throat. “I think there is more to your answer.”
There is, but the girl will not say it out loud. Cannot say it. The spell her sister left behind—she doesn’t know if it was a secret or if this witch before her was ever aware of its existence.
So instead, she says: “This is all I have. Please.” Her voice is weaker than she wants it to be. “It’s all I have, and so I have to try.”
The Crow sighs, a sound that is neither amused nor mocking. It is simply the sound of someone who has heard what they needed to hear. “Yes,” she agrees. Then she offers a black mask to the girl. It is wobbly without a human head inside and vaguely canid in shape. “This is yours now. Whenever you are summoned, you will wear it. Whenever you enter the forest, you will wear it. And whenever you work magic, you will wear it.”
Work magic. The girl’s heart finally releases from her throat. She reaches for the mask.
But the Crow skips it out of reach, wagging a finger. “This is for our protection as much as yours, child. Do you understand? Should the Lambda hunters ever find you, then you cannot betray us. You do not know who we are, you do not know our faces.”
“You’ve seen my face, though. That means you can betray me.”
“Yes, it does, Erica Thursday.” The Crow bobs her head. “Now take the mask, child, and we will begin our first lesson.”
To: [email protected]
From: [email protected]
Subject: Home from the hospitalWinnie,
I’ve been home from the hospital for a week now, and I’ve been running training sessions every day since. You haven’t been there though. Any particular reason why? Coach Rosa is great, but you’ve got to get in more movement than just Sunday estate training. At least if you ever plan to join the hunt.
I’ve said it before and I’ll repeat it: you don’t have to join the hunt. When, if—that’s up to you. But I do think we need to catch up on some things. So I’ll see you in the Armory tonight. I have gear for you, in case you do decide to train.
As for next week, we start at dawn every day to accommodate the Masquerade.
See you soon.
Rachel
Chapter 1
The old cabin is neither old nor is it really a cabin.
Sure, it has four walls, a roof, and a general vibe that speaks of wolves eating little girls in red hoods, but if you step inside, you won’t find grandmothers with big ears or big teeth. You’ll find two lawnmowers, a compost bin that no one uses anymore, some canisters of gasoline, and an assortment of gardening tools that span the powering spectrum from completely handheld (a shovel) to fully battery powered (a leaf blower).
This is the landscaping shed for the Thursday clan, tucked against the northwestern edge of their estate, between the weeping willow on one side and the copse of dogwoods that will soon blossom on the other. The grounds appear deceptively untended here. As if the Thursdays don’t want to be too conspicuously Thursday in a place where almost no one ever visits, but still they can’t resist imposing order on nature’s chaotic ways.
The grass is shorn. There are no weeds.
A large front door on the shed will release the lawnmowers from their pen like bulls at a rodeo, but it’s to the smaller, human-sized door that Winnie Wednesday now tiptoes. The grounds are empty this early on a Friday, but she checks her surroundings anyway. And to be fair, with all that’s happened to her in the last few weeks, she has good reason to never relax again.
Like ever.
Basically, if Winnie’s life were a seesaw with “good stuff” on one side and “bad stuff” on the other, then it would definitely be tipped toward bad. In fact, the bad side would be so weighed down it would be underground. For one, there are Dianas in Hemlock Falls. For two, those Dianas framed her dad four years ago, which in turn caused the ruin of Winnie’s family. For three, those Dianas also have a self-feeding spell loose in the forest that’s killing people, aka the Whisperer.
For four, her ex–best friends are determined to stay ex, and it’s getting to be exhausting.
Yet despite the imbalance of Winnie’s seesaw, she still feels happier than she has in weeks. Maybe part of that is because she can calculate pretty measurably just how far she has come since her first trial:
Number of friends a month ago? Zero. Number of friends now? At least six and counting.
Number of nightmare species fought a month ago? Zero. Number fought now? Eight, if you include werewolves as one of them—which Winnie does. Nine, if you include will-o’-wisps, which she doesn’t.
Dianas faced a month ago? Zero. Dianas faced now? Three.
But perhaps more important than the empirical evidence that Winnie can track on a spreadsheet is the emotional evidence. Because for the first time in four years, she feels hopeful.
Hope is the thing with feathers
That perches in the soul,
And sings the tune without the words,
And never stops at all.
Winnie had to memorize that poem by Emily Dickinson for Ms. Morgan two years ago. Lately, the poem keeps surfacing like artifacts of data you can never quite scrub from a hard drive. And every time Winnie thinks of the poem, she imagines a will-o’-wisp in the forest.
And hope is why she has come here this morning, to the edge of the Thursday estate where a cluster of white flowers can watch her from beside the back door with judgment in their petals like pointing fingers. Tsk, tsk, Winnie Wednesday. You really shouldn’t be here.
Trillium flexipes. The nodding wakerobin. They were Dad’s favorite native flower in Hemlock Falls. No—they are his favorite flower because Winnie is going to find him. She is going to bring him home.
She shoulders into the shed. The smell of old grass wafts against her as she fumbles for a switch. Fluorescent lights wink on, revealing that nothing has changed since she last visited two days ago: an electric lamp still hangs on a hook in the corner with a folding chair and tiny bookshelf to stand solemnly beside it.
Winnie swipes the light back off again. It’s too bright for what she needs to do. Then she hurries to the corner and drops into the folding chair. In seconds, she’s yanking books off the shelf. Gone are the graphic novels and Percy Jacksons of four years ago. In their place are a varied assortment of bodice rippers with bent spines, historical Luminary textbooks with less-bent spines, and some philosophy and self-help books in Spanish that Erica’s dad keeps giving her for her birthdays (these spines are not cracked at all; sorry, Antonio).
After she removes eight titles, a small line appears on the shelf’s backing. It’s where a false panel has been placed, shortening the depth by two inches. Since Erica did the same on all three shelves, it’s not visible unless you know what to look for. Even now, knowing what to look for, Winnie has to squint behind her glasses and dig her fingers in. There should be a little divot. A little space to get leverage—
There.
She pulls. The false back peels away to reveal the latest findings from Erica Thursday—although, the two pages Winnie withdraws appear totally blank. And the honey smell that Winnie knows coats them is too weak to compete against the grass and gasoline.
From her back pocket, Winnie slides out a sheet of sketch paper—also deceptively blank—and presses it into the hidden compartment before returning the false panel along with each book in the exact order she removed it. And to make sure there’s no difference in dust, she quickly tugs off, then replaces every other book on every other shelf as well.
Her top and bottom teeth click together, a physical manifestation of the nerves churning in her spine—until she shoves her tongue between. She has no reason to be nervous. She has done this three times now, her speed and finesse improving with each visit so that by now, she is basically a full-blown spy.
Agent Wednesday. Dad used to call her that sometimes when they played their secret code and cipher games. She had no idea then how much those games would save her. And maybe save him too.
On her way back out of the cabin, as Winnie folds the pages from Erica into her back pocket, her eyes catch on the old red vampira she and Jay painted five years ago. It has faded, so now only fangs and a single eye remain. Somehow the anatomical inaccuracy makes it more horrifying. Like a corpse left to rot until the forest has transformed it into a revenant.
Tsk, tsk, the trilliums scold as Winnie gently shuts the back door behind her and locks it with the key from Erica. You really shouldn’t be here.
Excerpted from The Whispering Night, copyright © 2024 by Susan Dennard.
