Page 24 of The Hunting Moon
She glances around her; there’s still no one, so she thrusts both hands into the pool. Her fingers dig into slimy detritus and silt gathered over substrate. Her dexterity vanishes by the second, her legs already icy and toes long lost to numbness.
Butsomethingwas glinting, and thatsomethingmight be what Dad wanted her to find.
Her fingers scrape a box, metal and cold. Unlike the stones around it, there’s no algae to string across it or dead leaves to cling and coat. Not even silt has gathered here.
It’s almost as if someone has recently handled it.
Water sloughs off Winnie as she rises, lifting the box into the stormy light. It’s a simple silver tin like for storing cookies, and the longer she squints at it, the more she realizes ithasmost definitely been tampered with.
There are scratch marks around the edges, and it’s dented. This used to be sealed and airtight. It isn’t anymore.
Winnie’s heart booms faster as she pries her frozen fingers under the lid and pulls, pulls… Then it is open and Winnie can see inside.
Except she doesn’t know what she’s staring at. Scrunched-up moss is tucked within, and pounded into the center is a spherical indentation. It reminds her of a nest, except the bird is missing and it’s all soaking wet.
What the actual hell?she thinks. Then out loud, “What the actual hell?” Is this what Dad wanted her to find four years ago? Winnie is so confused, she has no space to be angry at him. Nor space to be relieved this hasn’t been found by Mondays or Tuesdays yet. It’s all just a giant, glowing question mark hovering above her head.
One thingisclear, though: Winnie can’t leave this here and risk it being found now. Even if it wasn’t left here by Dad, it’s safer for her to assume itwasuntil she figures out what the heck it is and what she ought to do with it. She returns the lid to the tin and spins around to retrace her steps to shore…
When her eyes meet someone standing there. She has no idea how long he has been watching her, no idea what he saw her do, but it’s too late now to hide the cookie tin.
And judging by the stoop in his posture and the spark in his gray eyes, Jay is not pleased to see her.
CHAPTER12
“What are you doing?” Jay calls as Winnie sloshes toward shore. His jaw is clenching and his fingers are flexing and fisting at his sides. Behind him, birch trees creak and sway. He is almost as pale as they are, and with his red buffalo flannel, he melts right into the stripes and splatters of blood.
Winnie has all of ten seconds to find an answer for his question, and those ten seconds fly by fast as a charging hellion. She reaches the shore; water pours off her; and vaguely, it occurs to her that her toes are numb and she is shivering.
The tin filled with moss is clutched against her chest. It too is freezing, and Jay’s attention is very clearly locked upon it. “What are you doing?” he repeats. His gray eyes rise to meet hers—and his hands lift slightly too. “And why, Winnie, are you holding a dampener?”
Winnie blinks at him while her hastily assembled lie about corpse duty (that he would never have believed anyway) evaporates in a heartbeat. “A… what?”
“That.” He points at the cookie tin. “A Diana dampener, Winnie. Why are you holding one?”
Winnie’s gaze lurches down, her jaw slackening while gas and dust collapse into a very cohesive baby star inside her brain that says,Oh yeah, this is without a doubt what Dad wanted me to find.Diana dampeners are meant to hide sources from Luminary detection, and if Winnie had everbothered to study the Dianas as enthusiastically as she studied nightmares, she would have remembered that way sooner.
Dampeners are always metal cases with moss inside, and if she looks more closely, she’ll probably find a paper clip or an old key tucked into the moss—something metal that can occasionally discharge stolen spirit power without detonating the entire thing.
“Oh no,” Winnie whispers at the tin. Then at Jay. “Oh no.”
“Yeah,” he agrees. “Jesus, Winnie, why do you have that?”
“I… don’t know.” This is definitely not true. Shedefinitelyknows why she has it, and the reason starts with the letterDand ends with -ad.
“Winnie.” Jay walks toward her, a warning in the slant of his shoulders. “I want you to hand that to me, and then we’re going to put it right back where you found it, okay?”
Winnie gulps. Then clutches the cookie tin… no, thedampenermore tightly to her chest. “I can’t give it to you, Jay.”
He comes to a stop before her, a frown pinching onto his papery, exhausted brow. “Okay, thenyoureturn it. One way or another, it needs to get back into that river. The Tuesdays are almost here.”
Winnie feels all the blood drain from her face. “What do you mean the Tuesdays are almost here?”
“Exactly what I said.” His eyes briefly shutter. “Because of… well, because of the werewolf testing, today was the earliest they could get equipment together for site containment. So now it’s Monday, and I have to guide them through everything I remember.”
“Oh,” Winnie breathes.
“So please, can we hurry up and put that back? Then the Tuesdays can find it on their routine sweep, and you can get the hell away from here before anyone other than me wonders how you found it in the first place.”
