Page 19 of The Hunting Moon
“Right. Because the Whisperer itself is so patient.” Winnie’s arms drop. “Well, thanks for talking to me, at least. Let me know if you learn anything, okay?”
“Of course,” he replies. “You know I always do. And hey…” He fumbles at his pockets again, but this time, he retrieves a crumpled paper. “This has log-in info for testing results. It’s available via the usual hunter website, if you want to track our progress.”
Winnie glances at the page, creased from Mario’s folding it. It shows the Monday scroll at the top, then numbered instructions for how to access the citywide werewolf results.Updated daily,it reads,at midnight!
“Thanks,” Winnie murmurs, refolding the paper and shoving it into her pocket.
“No problem.”Pop!
After a muttered goodbye, Winnie sets off to retrieve her bike. Surprisingly, her mission hasn’t made her feel much better. Sure, she might not be going crazy, and that is one thousand percent a relief. But if finding the Whisperer hinges on first finding the werewolf, then that isn’t a great development.
For one, it could take ages to catch the werewolf.
For two, there’s a tiny, secret part of Winnie that is worried maybe the werewolf isn’t evenbad.She knows it makes zero sense; she knows it’s anathema to what the Compendium teaches and what Luminaries believe about the relationship between nightmares and humans…
Yet her heart can’t seem to let that little hunch go. It’s almost like she identifies with the creature—like shepitieshim because she too has been blamed for something she never actually did. But while her punishment was to be cast out of the society, his will most certainly be death.
If only Winnie could remember the werewolf bite. If only she could recall what happened beneath those sledgehammer waves.
Cold wind sweeps off the Little Lake by the time Winnie kicks onto her bike again. She smells a coming rain.
CHAPTER10
That evening, as rain breaks over Hemlock Falls, Winnie boots up her family’s computer in the living room. It’s loud as an airplane on the runway—or what Winnie imagines an airplane might sound like given that she’s never actually been on one.
It makes her think of something else that hums and whispers too.
Once the welcome screen appears, Winnie clicks open a browser and navigates to a website used only in Hemlock Falls. If anyone outside ever lands here, it will look like an innocent page for a florist that went out of business six years ago.
Shopping cart,the site says in the top corner, and with a few clicks and a few more taps at the keyboard, Winnie opens up the true site she’s looking for.Hunter Updates,it declares at the top. No frills, just a black screen and text pale as vampira skin beneath the moon. To scroll down is to move backward in time, revealing all the nightmare locations reported by the clans each night. First the dates, then the hunters attending, then a rough map of the forest with different spots marked in different symbols.
There’s a new addition, though, above all the kill coordinates. Now a bright red link declaresMonday Test Results.
Winnie clicks it. A page appears, white background with basic black text.
HEMLOCK FALLS TESTING PORTAL
SUNDAY, APRIL 7
TEST RESULTS for PREVIOUS DAY:
Tests Administered: 17
Positive Results: 0
AVAILABLE TESTING LOCATIONS:
Monday hospital,by appointment only
Sunday estate auditorium,coming soon
Floating Carnival,coming soon
DO YOUR CIVIC DUTY AND GET TESTED AS SOON AS A SITE IS AVAILABLE NEAR YOU!
Well, it ain’t fancy, but like the hunter site, it gets the job done.
Winnie hits the back button to return to the kill coordinates. As Aunt Rachel said yesterday at the funeral, more hunters means more nightmares slain… and that means more symbols upon the maps.Somany symbols. Winnie has never seen anything like this, not even during her four years of exile when she used to obsessively check the hunter site just so she could feel connected.
