Page 13 of The Hunting Moon
“No.” Winnie says this too harshly. But she doesn’t want company. Shereallydoesn’t. “I’ll find you soon.”
Then Winnie pushes away from her friends, from their warmth and their light, and sets off in search of the shadows she knows are always lingering nearby.
Although years might have passed since Winnie visited the museum, she remembers how to get to the bathroom on the second floor. She just prays it is empty and still operational. She wants to splash her face with cold water. She wants to calm her chattering teeth.
She finds an emergency exit stairwell. It shuts loudly behind her. The boom of the party briefly quiets. There are people in the stairwell, trudging up and down or making out against the wall like this is a perfectly acceptable place to do such a thing.
And against Winnie’s very best judgment and verydeepestwishes, her brain reminds her of something Jay said almost two weeks ago:There are better places than the forest to make out.She hopes he didn’t mean here.
Then she scolds herself for caring.
On the second floor, she pushes into a long hall filled with beer pong tables and board games—all crowded with people, none of whom seem tobe talking about or even thinking about Grayson Friday. Would he have loved knowing so many people turned up? Or would he have felt like Winnie, grating and scratchy and light-headed because none of it feels right?
Aroo, aroo! Show us your scar!
Was it fun to jump?
No, it wasn’t fun. It wasn’t like a Marvel movie or an Assassin’s Creed game. In fact, it was allso awfulthat Winnie’s brain erased most of it from her memory.
She is practically jogging through the room now, keeping her head down and hugging her leather jacket in a tight ball against her stomach. No one notices her, and she soon escapes onto the top of the main stairs in the rotunda. Here the noise is so intense, it’s like the waterfall all over again, but this time with the sledgehammer and the pain and the sense that she will drown.
Worst of all, Winnie feels static scraping at the back of her neck. A little charged feather warning of thunder this way.The Whisperer,her body thinks, locking up so tight she can’t breathe.The Whisperer is here.
Fortunately, Winnie’s brain is smarter than her body. The Whisperer is not here; the Whisperer might not even berealif everyone else is to be believed; and it’s just the noise and heat and chaos playing tricks on her.
“Breathe,” she whispers to herself, pushing across the rotunda and into the next room. It’s smaller, an antechamber that used to have statues of the first councilors in Hemlock Falls. Now it’s empty, save for a single easel set up in the middle. On it, in crude permanent marker, are the wordsWe will miss you, Grayson Friday!As if he just retired after forty years at the local bank.
All that’s missing are some store-bought cupcakes.
Winnie stalks close to the easel. Taped below the words is a photograph, clearly printed from someone’s inkjet. Despite the crap quality of the image, the energy of Grayson still exudes. His hair is thick and wavy in the photo, his green eyes bright even in this dark room. And his grin is that of a guy who gives zero craps about anything.
Winnie swallows. Her teeth are still clicking, but slower now. The spiders are less intense.I’m sorry,she thinks at Grayson’s handsome face.I’m so, so sorry.
If only she had pulled her lanyard sooner during her second trial, then maybe someone else would have seen the Whisperer in real life too. Or maybe if she’d been more aggressive with Dryden Saturday in the auditorium eleven days ago…
She has gone over that encounter a hundred times, a thousand. Maybe at the end of the conversation, if she had shouted more or pushed harder at Mario and Darian to back her up, thenmaybeDryden would have listened.
Or maybe if she’d just held on to Lizzy’s camera a little bit longer during her third trial, then she could have captured actual footage of this dimension-warping chain saw of a nightmare. Then Johnny Saturday could be playingthatevery night instead of talking about how Winnie survived a werewolf bite.
And god, as screwed up as it is, Winnie almost wishes she could somehow lure the Whisperer out of the forest and right into downtown Hemlock Falls.
Then everyone would see.
Then everyone would believe.
Instead, here she is at a party while Saturday hunters and Tuesday scorpions risk their lives in the forestat this exact momentthat people dance and laugh and booze themselves into oblivion. Even Emma, who almost died ten days ago at the claws of a harpy and spent a week in the hospital…
It’s like nothing happened. Like Emma isn’t wearing a cast and using crutches. Like Winnie didn’t inject her with banshee venom and leave her in a bloodied coma on the forest floor.
That’s why we’re called the Luminaries, Winnie: we are lanterns the forest can never snuff out.
Are they really lanterns though, Grandpa Frank? Or is this just denial? Just numbing and pretending and wearing virtues like shields against nightmares that definitely do not care?
“Hey.”
Winnie whips sideways to find Erica Thursday standing beside her. She hadn’t heard the other girl approach. Erica’s sharp heels were lost to the thrum of music and crush of voices.
Her black hair is pulled into a bun so tight, it tugs at the skin around her russet-brown eyes. In the poor light, her amber skin has lost its warmundertones, while her ever-perfect makeup appears unusually minimalist tonight—no fake lashes or sharp contouring. In fact, it looks as if she might be wearing only black eyeliner and lip gloss. Even her outfit is minimalist: a black turtleneck and black jeans.
