Sneak Peek of The Whispering Night!
Read the first prologue...
Warning before you read! If you haven’t read Book 2, The Hunting Moon, and definitely if you haven’t read Book 1, The Luminaries, then you’re probably not going to want to read what follows.
SLIGHT SPOILERS AHEAD!
You have been warned. 😌
Now continue on to read the first prologue in The Whispering Night!
P.S. Thank you, THANK YOU for all the love and support and sharing of the new cover! I am so, so grateful to all of you! It really made that cover reveal day feel special, and I know it helped spread the cover far and wide.
THANK YOU.
Oh, and of course, don’t forget to pre-order! Links here.
Or you can always order signed, personalized copies from Schuler Books!!
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 is 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 bubblegum. “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, all of this 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.
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.
“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 strand 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.”
Stay tuned for the next prologue from a certain witchy perspective! I’ll try to share that next week.
I AM SO CLOSE TO FINISHED WITH THIS BOOK, YOU ALL. WISH ME LUCK AND SEND ME SPEEDY VIBES!!
💚 - Sooz
Sooz I absolutely love it and can’t wait to get the final copy!!! 🤗❤️
Ahhhhhhhh!!! I so looooveeeee this!!! Thank you for sharing!! ♥️♥️
Also, sending you all the positive vibes and many gentle hugs!!