Chapter 12
CHAPTER 12
Both carnivores and herbivores are essential for a healthy ecosystem, and this author posits that so too are our disparate societies of Dianas and Luminaries. The question however is: Which society is the predator? And which society is the prey?
—Understanding Sources: A Brief History and Guide by Theodosia Monday
When Winnie was a toddler, her dad taught her a very important lesson: if there was ever something she couldn’t do, then she should simply turn to the nearest grown-up and say: I need an adult! Apparently Winnie took this lesson so deeply to heart that she went on the warpath. She demanded adult intervention for literally everything, ranging from picking up a stuffed octopus that she had thrown across the room to insisting Grandpa Frank put spoonfuls of strawberry ice cream into her mouth so she wouldn’t have to lift a finger. I NEED AN ADULT!!!
Dad thought it was hilarious; Mom did not; and Darian can’t remember these alleged misconducts.
Right now, as Winnie is herded toward the Wednesday table, that old lesson is all she can think about. I need an adult! I need an adult!
Distantly, Winnie knows this is a panic response. That her brain is actually trying to protect her from mental overwhelm. Because of course she is with adults. Tens upon tens of them, none of whom she can actually speak to about what just happened at the Tuesday table.
It doesn’t help that Winnie can feel Signora Martedì’s eyes, boring into her with the strength of two high-powered drills. It takes all of Winnie’s self-control not to look in the woman’s direction. Not to see if Jeremiah Tuesday is watching her too. Not to simply crawl under the nearest table and wait for this whole breakfast to end.
On and on Winnie moves, drifting like a dinghy at sea. At the Wednesday table, with its ferocious ice bear, Leila tries too hard to be smiley! and bright!, as if she’s overcompensating for Winnie—who is emoting about as much as an actual dinghy at sea. Next is the Friday clan with its sparrow sculpture. Jay’s aunt Lizzy looks pained as she introduces Winnie to nearby visitors, and she gives Winnie a squeeze on the shoulder that is probably meant to be supportive… except Winnie has dissociated so far from her body, she hardly feels it.
She continues onward. Drift, tip, float. She shakes more hands and forces more smiles and blesses more (figurative) babies with the Saturday clan, where Dryden handles the whole situation as if he were the winner of the Midnight Crown who survived a werewolf attack and jumped off the waterfall. Then Winnie is led to the Thursday table, its ice bell melting so artfully, it somehow looks more like a bell now than it probably did four hours ago. Don’t piss off Marcia, it seems to warn. Do what she commands, little bear.
Yeah, except Marcia is the least of Winnie’s concerns right now, thanks. And if Winnie had any doubts remaining that she was incapable of compartmentalizing—or of exorcising her ghosts—then this breakfast has shattered that illusion. She’s terrible at it. Time compresses and expands, feeling interminable and also too fast.
Until there are suddenly no more hands left to shake or names to forget. Winnie is finally finished with this breakfast, and she is left with only Darian at her side.
Yet if she expected safe quarter from her brother, she instead finds only a frazzled young man with powdered sugar smudged on his lip. “I’m sorry, Win. I did try to call this morning to warn you, but no one answered the house phone.”
“And you couldn’t call a second time?” Winnie’s voice sounds like it’s coming through two tin cans and a string. “I was home all morning, Darian. So was Mom.”
“Well, it’s not my fault if you…” His lips purse. He shakes his head. “No, you’re right. I should have called more than once. But I was busy and distracted, so I didn’t.”
Bingo, Winnie thinks, but she doesn’t have the energy to say it out loud. Her mind is still shouting for an adult, and in the end, Darian was just looking out for Mom. Which is exactly what she’s doing too.
Darian withdraws a stack of blue papers from his pocket. They are folded vertically but otherwise smooth—as if he only just printed them off to deliver to her. “This is your schedule for the week. I’ve divided everything by day. So here’s where we start. Today is Saturday the twentieth.” He taps at the words on the first page: Welcome Breakfast at Saturday Estate—Winnie does speech. Dress is elevated business.
Elevated business? Is that what this suit is?
“After this, you’ve got the day free. Tomorrow, though, you’ll need to attend training at the Sunday estate. The Sundays are moving the hours around to accommodate Masquerade events, so only a few days this week will conflict with your schedule. If I may make a suggestion about your wardrobe—”
No, you cannot.
“—you’ll want to wear something jewel-toned for the parade. There will probably be a lot of cameras, and jewel tones show up best on film. If you need to do more shopping, Dryden actually put in a line of credit for you at Falls’ Finest, in addition to Leila’s. Since I guess Fatima didn’t do a good job—”
“Do not bring her into this.”
“Right. Forget I mentioned her.” Darian shakes the papers. “I tried to be as clear as I could in my event descriptions, about what you’ll be doing and how long you have to do them. But, of course, feel free to reach out if you have any questions.”
“‘Feel free to reach out’?” Winnie’s voice sounds less echo-y now. “Are you my brother or my publicist?”
Darian blanches. Then bristles. “Honestly, Winnie, I’m both. And I don’t know how many times I can tell you ‘I’m sorry.’”
It’s rare to behold Darian lose his temper. He and Dad are two calm peas in the same calm pod. Snaps of temper and flares of annoyance—those are more Winnie’s and Mom’s speed. And sure, Winnie has some sympathy for Darian’s predicament right now. She just got walked around by Marcia and Dryden like a marionette with wood for brains.
And sure, Winnie can also acknowledge she is using this moment to express her frustration from a different situation—one regarding a certain Martedì fifty feet to her left. But hey, this is why she needs an adult: because right now, she’s flailing and lost and really, really alone.
“I see there’s no Saturday Spaghetti Night on the schedule,” she says as she takes the blue schedule from Darian’s grasp and shoves it in her blazer pocket. Shove, shove, shove. The papers crunch and the pocket bulges. “I guess our usual dinner is canceled? Again? ”
Darian looks like she just kicked his puppy. And honestly, it was kind of low for her to bring up their usual Saturday-night dinners—the ones he has repeatedly canceled as of late. His rib cage deflates. His shoulders sag. Winnie would almost pity him if she weren’t so startlingly mad. “I’m leaving, Darian. Don’t try to stop me.”
His mouth works like a fish’s. The publicist side of him visibly wants to keep arguing—to retrieve the schedule from Winnie’s pocket and smooth each page. But the brother part of him…
“Fine, Winnie. Fine. I’ll cover for you if Dryden or Marcia notice you’re gone.”
“Thanks,” Winnie grudges out before spinning on her sneaker heel and aiming for the garden exit. She barely makes it ten steps before she feels a buzz at her collarbone.
Her locket is warming in a familiar way she desperately wishes weren’t familiar. Then there’s Signora Martedì, coalescing like a nightmare from the mist. The woman’s eyes are hooded, but in a smug way. In a way that says, You can’t hide from me, so be a good girl and follow.
Nearby, Dryden and Marcia wear smiles so forced, Winnie thinks their eyeballs might pop out from the pressure.
“I wish to try this famed espresso, Signorina Wednesday. Escort me?”
The Crow’s right hand comes to Winnie’s back. Her left hand sweeps toward the doors leading onto the patio. And Winnie’s blood curdles, her skin crawls. She feels like she’s being attacked by a changeling all over again, except now there are all these witnesses… yet no one able to help her.
A scent like lavender tickles her nose. Pleasant and sickening at the same time. The signora is a small woman, and morning light reveals the faint glitter in makeup that has settled into the lines around her eyes. Her arms are bare, save for a golden shawl she has elegantly draped across her shoulders.
Dryden all but thrusts Winnie toward the doors. “Enjoy!” he half shouts, half snarls, and his eyes bore into Winnie’s face as if to demand she go get that espresso and enjoy it right away.
Winnie does move her bear feet, although not for Dryden’s sake. Not for Mom’s either. And certainly not for this repulsive woman’s, whose pumps click on ballroom tiles. No, Winnie shuffles along like a dog to heel, because while her body is rebelling and her brain is telling her YOU NEED AN ADULT!, the Agent Wednesday part of her senses she’s faced with an opportunity.
The heat in Winnie’s locket recedes as she nears the patio doors. Spring wind purrs against her. She smells beignets and coffee and wet grass.
“Due espressi,” the signora declares once they are beside the food tables. The tuxedoed barista nervously leaps to work. Winnie pities her. If these espressi aren’t the best things ever tasted, she is going to hear about it.
The signora inhales with audible self-congratulation, opening her arms to the view of the Saturday gardens. “What a beautiful estate, Winnie. Almost as lovely as the Martedì estate in Torrente di Cipresso. That is where our branch of the Luminaries is located.”
“I know.” Winnie is amazed words can exit her mouth.
“Signora,” the barista says, and Martedì swirls around gracefully to accept the espresso cup upon its little saucer. She then nods for Winnie to take the second drink—and Winnie wants to. She really does. It’s right there, promising a jolt of caffeine to her veins that she desperately needs.
But she doesn’t take it because listen: even Team Petty needs a win sometimes.
Winnie does feel bad for the barista though as she pointedly turns away, her chin held high. I reject your espresso, witch .
The signora laughs. A sound that is almost impressed, but mostly just amused. “Follow me,” she declares, and she doesn’t wait to see if Winnie does.
Within seconds, it’s clear where the signora is aiming: the famed Saturday maze. It’s a place Winnie hasn’t visited in years, but that she likely knows better than most Saturdays.
Because Dad designed it.
For months, Winnie would see the sketches of it on his desk by the family computer. A hundred different shapes and layouts he crafted for Dryden, none of which were up to muster. In fact, it was working with Dryden that pushed Dad into abandoning his passion for landscape architecture and shifting to just… well, landscaping. Gardening. Tending the plants someone else designed. Because although people might be the worst, plants never let him down.
Besides, he would say whenever Winnie would ask him about why he gave it all up, I didn’t move to Hemlock Falls for my degrees, Win-Ben. She always thought that was the most romantic thing she’d ever heard.
Now here Winnie is, walking into that maze with the woman who ruined Dad and ruined the wife he came to Hemlock Falls for.
The yew hedges swallow them. The sun’s rays, vicious acute angles on the horizon, vanish. Shadows and cold lay claim. Brick pavers give way to tumbled gravel. The Saturdays have added purple streamers with heavy golden keys for the Masquerade. It gives the maze an almost circus-like feel, as if Winnie isn’t merely stepping into a hedge labyrinth, but a magician’s secret tent. Or a witch’s.
Winnie wishes she’d grabbed the espresso. Her mouth is dry. Her brain is scrambled. Team Petty has now become Team Thirst. She keeps sizing up the woman beside her. She’s so tiny without a crow mask. She’s so fragile. Winnie could take her, if it came down to it… right?
“You can’t,” the signora says, and suddenly her accent is gone. No more Italian flair, no more gracious smiles of a Luminary in power. She is a Diana again. The Diana cornīx from the forest. “You’re wondering if you can beat me, aren’t you?” She glances at Winnie, her earlier smirk now spreading into a Cheshire cat smile. “It’s what I would be thinking, and the answer is no. You can’t.”
Winnie swallows. Her heart hurts because it skipped at least two beats while she frantically worried the woman had read her mind. But no. Of course not. There are limits even to what Diana magic can do. Or at least Winnie sure hopes there are.
They have taken four turns into the towering hedges. Noises from the breakfast have faded. There is only Winnie and the Diana and the design Dad conjured almost a decade ago. He would be delighted to see how well it has grown, how dense the yew branches have become.
It is quiet as the forest when the mist rises.
A bench waits here for weary Luminaries, and beside it is a rolling ball water fountain that should be soothing, but is instead really ugly because Dryden insisted it be made from purple granite. Winnie keenly remembers Dad’s disgust. Purple granite? Is he serious?
“Where’s my dad?” These are the only words Winnie wants to make sure she gets out, and she’s pleased by how level her voice is. How calm her gaze.
Annoyingly, the Crow is just as calm and level back. “I don’t know, Winnie. If I knew that, then I wouldn’t be here right now trying to conduct a private conversation where no one will walk in.” She gives a flick of her wrist, and though Winnie doesn’t see it, she hears the word obvolvō coast against her eardrums.
Somehow, the space around them becomes even quieter.
“You told me you ‘dealt with him.’” Winnie sets her jaw. “In the forest, you said those exact words to me. Now you’re telling me you don’t know where he is?”
“I don’t.” The signora shrugs, boredom hanging off her like her shawl. “He was clever four years ago. He got away before I could subdue him. And now, believe it or not, Winnie Wednesday, we want the same thing. You wish to stop the spell in the forest, right? Jeremiah told me you call it the Whisperer?”
“You don’t want to stop it.”
“Oh, but I do . It’s only a matter of time before people realize what it is, and I can’t have that happening. It’s a nuisance, and I need it eliminated.”
Winnie’s head pitches back. “You made it.”
“No, Jenna Thursday made it.”
Somehow Winnie pitches back even more. “You’re lying.”
“Unfortunately, I am not. And it gets more complicated, for you see, Jenna bound the spell to her source, so until I find that, I can’t stop the… the Whisperer, was it?” She opens her hands in a ballet-smooth shrug. “And thus, Winnie, we are not enemies at all.”
Winnie forces herself to exhale through her nose. That was a lot of bombshells in the span of twenty seconds. “You… tried to kill me.”
“After you killed two of my witches, so I think we’re even.” The Crow smiles, but it doesn’t reach her eyes.
And Winnie really wishes she’d taken that espresso. “It was self-defense.” Her words sound weak. Like a lie, even though she knows they’re true. For some reason, a taste like Hi EnerG! cherry fills her mouth.
The Crow splays a hand to her chest. “And I was simply defending myself against you .”
Winnie’s first instinct is to snap, No, you were hunting Jay! But her jaw is smarter than her throat; her teeth grind together so no mention of Jay can break free. She doesn’t want to draw attention to him. She doesn’t want to remind this Diana of what her target was.
The woman remembers anyway. “I don’t care about your boyfriend—he is your boyfriend, right?” She draws her shawl more tightly to her shoulders. “I can find other daywalkers to absorb magic from, Winnie.”
Surely it’s not that simple, Winnie thinks. Surely you didn’t go to all that trouble just to get Jay’s daywalking magic. But she has no time to call the Crow’s bluff—not before Martedì says: “What I want is the same thing Erica Thursday wants.”
“Erica?” Winnie forces out instead. “What does Erica have to do with anything?”
“You really are bad at lying.” The Crow slopes away, sliding farther into the maze. Her heels somehow do not get eaten by gravel. “I want what Erica wants and what you want, Winnie: to find out where your father’s clues lead.”
The witch’s voice cuts off here—and the muted quality that had ensnared Winnie vanishes. Whatever spell the Crow is using, Winnie is no longer inside it. And though Winnie hates herself for it, she stomps after the woman and her magical dome of silence.
Static brushes over Winnie. Words resume: “He was clever. He got away from us that night four years ago, before we could get answers. And he took Jenna’s source with him.”
More bombshells. More white noise in Winnie’s brain. “I… don’t believe you.”
“Smart. Because, unlike you, I’m an excellent liar.” The signora claps her hands to her cheeks. Her face visibly blanches. “ Winnie Wednesday is a Diana like her father! Lock her away. And her brother and mother too. Such disloyal bears! ”
This is the largest bombshell of them all. A flash grenade going off in the forest, so that Winnie suddenly understands how nightmares feel. She suddenly understands how you can be abruptly blinded and deafened, scrambling to regain the sensory control you had only moments before.
She feels like she’s twelve years old again, watching as Tuesday scorpions overrun her home. Watching Erica and Jay walk away from her. She’d felt so helpless then—and she feels just as helpless now.
Winnie wets her lips. Then shakes her numb, senseless head.
“Here is what will happen, Winnie: you and Erica and—what is his name? The Friday boy? You will continue exactly as you have been, trying to track your father’s clues. Except now, when you find Jenna’s source, you will bring it to me.”
“No.” It is incredible that any word ejects from Winnie’s lips.
“Then I’ll simply take it from you.”
“And we’ll… simply… turn the Whisperer onto you.”
The Crow laughs, startled. “You do have gumption. I’ll give you that. But this is a fight you can’t win. We are allies here, Winnie. And we want the same thing—I promise.”
Never.
“So be a good Wednesday and figure out where your father hid that source. Then my witches and I can get the famēs under control and leave this wretched place.” Her nose curls up. If Winnie didn’t already hate her, she’d definitely hate her for glaring at Dad’s maze like that.
“How many of you are there? How many witches are in Hemlock Falls?”
“ So many, my dear. And we’ll be watching you and your friends and your family.” She reaches out a single arm, almost as if she wants Winnie to kiss her hand. But then she pats Winnie on the head instead. “Now I really must get back.” Her Italian accent has suddenly returned. “Jeremiah will be wondering where I have gone. Oh, and in case you’re wondering: no one can know about our little bargain here.” She makes a gesture that is almost like a parting wave. Words Winnie can’t hear skate from her lips.
There is the static again.
And there is the locket, heating up—cranking so hot, so fast that Winnie gasps and doubles over.
“Ciao ciao!” the Crow calls, and for a full two seconds, a maniacal cackle bounces around Winnie like she’s trapped on cartoon railroad tracks while the villain twirls his mustache. Until at last the Crow departs, her laughter chasing away as she vanishes into the yew hedges.