Page 10 of The Hunting Moon
At eleven thirty, Winnie creeps from her freshly washed covers to getdressed. She has no idea what to wear to an event like this, so she decides her usual daily fashion is sufficient: jeans, a T-shirt, sneakers. She does at least forgo her Save the Whales hoodie for her still-so-new-it-smells-like-heaven leather jacket that Emma and Bretta gifted her on her birthday.
At ten to midnight, Winnie slips through Darian’s room, squeezes from his window, climbs down the roof onto the shed, and finally descends to solid earth. The same crow cackles at her; it sounds like it’s on the front porch.Careful, human, or I’ll wake your mama!
Winnie keeps glancing toward the window that belongs to Mom… but no face ever appears and no lights ever wink on. She reaches the sidewalk undetected, her heart pounding far harder than the exertion calls for. It doesn’t slow when she hunkers to a seat on the curb either, to await the twins.
Cold air twines over her.
She is shivering by the time the twins do arrive a few minutes later in their dad’s minivan. A window rolls down, and Bretta’s curls gleam; she has added blue streaks. “Hey,” she whisper-shouts. “Get in!”
Winnie shoots a furtive glance at Mom’s window. Nothing. Silence and shadow and that darn crow over the window’s eave. So Winnie slings into the back seat. It’s delightfully cozy inside; it smells like the lilac perfume Emma usually wears.
Winnie yanks on her seat belt. “Your parents just let you take the van and go?”
“Nah,” Bretta says as she accelerates with the buttery smoothness of an automatic vehicle. “Mom is out of town training a new networker, and Dad sleeps like a droll.”
Winnie laughs at that. She has met the twins’ dad, Kevin, once before, and she can easily imagine him draped over his bed, snoring like a droll—not that Winnie has ever actuallyhearda droll snoring. But it’s a detail noteworthy enough to make it into the Compendium:Vibrations from droll sleep exhalations can be felt up to two hundred feet away.
As Bretta guides the car through neighborhoods and intersections, past stop signs and darkened houses, Winnie’s heart doesn’t calm like she thought it would once she’d finally Houdini’ed from her bedroom. Instead, it beats harder. Faster. A little fist that wants to punch right through her throat.
Bretta talks about when her third trial might be—how much it sucks that she and Fatima can’t do it now because of the werewolf. Emma tells her to be patient; Bretta retorts she isn’t a Sunday, thank goodness.
“If Icouldbe any other clan, though,” she adds, “I would one hundred percent choose Saturday. They have all the fanciest stuff.”
“Not me,” declares Emma. “I like being a Wednesday. We’ve always got each other’s backs. Winnie—what about you?”
“Huh?” Winnie grunts from the back seat. She was only half listening.
“Winnie would chooseFriday,” Bretta says with a mischievous giggle. “To be with herman.”
“Oh stop.” Emma pokes her sister in the biceps before twisting around toward Winnie. “Unless…ishe your man, Winnie? That was a very insistent ‘no’ you gave us in anatomy today.”
“I plead the Fifth,” Winnie replies because she has no idea what else to say. It is physically impossible to insist any more strongly than she did a few hours ago. “Now ifIhad to choose a clan, I would go for Monday—”
“I knew it,” Bretta cries. She bangs the steering wheel. “I knew it! Didn’t I say ‘Backlit’ was about her, Em?”Bang!“Also ‘pleading the Fifth’ is a non thing, Winnie, so it won’t work here. More details, please!”
Winnie’s seat belt suddenly feels tight. The heat suddenly feels less cozy, more cloying. Because here it is again—that juxtaposition of darkness grating up against the light. The three of them are literally on their way to a party honoring a guy Jay watched get ripped apart by… well, probably the Whisperer.
Yet right now, Bretta is more fixated on the possibility that Winnie and Jay are hooking up.
Winnie rubs at her forehead. She would be squealing and sighing and pestering Emma or Bretta if they were in her shoes, wouldn’t she? Certainly, old Winnie would have—the Winnie of four years ago. Maybe even the Winnie of two weeks ago.
And the Winnie of two weeks ago would have also been really excited to have a coffee named after her, and really,reallyexcited for the coming Nightmare Masquerade.
“Hey,” Emma says, piercing into Winnie’s thoughts with a tentative smile in the rearview. Unlike her sister, she seems to sense Winnie isn’tloving this new conversation. “There should be a bag in the back seat. Do you see it? Because it’s for you.”
“For me?” Winnie pokes around in the dark until, sure enough, she finds a duffel bag propped against the opposite door. Outside, streetlamps flash past. The only light there is on the southernmost edge of town. It feels like they’re moving at warp speed in a spaceship.
“What’s in it?” Winnie asks, hauling the bag toward her—and genuinely grateful for the change in subject.
“Better clothes,” Bretta says at the same time Emma offers, more politely, “A different outfit.”
“Aw, come on,” Winnie groans, unzipping the bag. “My wardrobe isn’t that bad.”
“Your wardrobe issothat bad,” Bretta replies. “And ten bucks says Fatima will have brought you an outfit too.”
“Har-dee-har.” Winnie rolls her eyes. “Glad to know you all hate my clothes so much.”
“But we don’t hateyou,” Emma replies.
