Page 36 of The Hunting Moon
Winnie gives it only a cursory glance before she locks her glare on Jay again. “They’ll say it’s a fake. That I made that in Photoshop.”
“And they can also just as easily accuse you of drawing the map, Winnie. The fact is”—closer, closer he leans until their noses are only inches apart and his eyes are very,verygray—“if the Tuesdays catch you with adampener,then no evidence of any kind is going to protect you. At least now, with the map gone, no one will accidentally stumble onto it.”
Winnie swallows. The urge to adjust her glasses or yell something childish at Jay’s entirely too-near face—something likeI know you are but what am I!—burns inside her chest. She refrains. Particularly because there’s a tickling at the back of her skull… A swirl of gas and dust that is spinning so fast it will collapse very soon…
Then there it is.
Kaboom.A star is born; the first in a new constellation.
Winnie grabs for Jay’s phone. The screen has only just winked off, andafter a frazzled “Open it back up, please, open it back up,” Jay indeed opens it back up.
The map brightens before Winnie’s eyes, exactly as she remembers it. Exactly as she drew it on a piece of paper still hiding inside her bedroom.
However, she gotone thing very wrong.She hadn’t noticed it before because she was so flustered, so rushed with Erica arriving on the scene—plus, with the fluorescent lights on as they are now, shadows land differently on the bookcase. On Jay’s phone, though, the map is cast in natural sunlight and much easier to see.
“One,” Winnie says, pointing to the big X that she already visited in the forest, where the locket led to a dampener and where Grayson died. “Two.” She slides her fingers sideways to the very edge of the map, where a second, teensy tiny X awaits.
“Well, shit,” Jay murmurs beside her.
“Well, shit,” Winnie agrees. “There’s another place in the forest I have to go.”
CHAPTER20
“I can’t get into the forest,” Winnie says once she and Jay are outside of the library. They walk with long strides toward the parking lot, Jay’s hands in his pockets and Winnie clutching a book entitledUnderstanding Sources: A Brief History and Guide.
Brisk, sunny air gusts against them.
“Unless I do another corpse duty,” Winnie continues, “I can’t avoid the Tuesdays like you do, Jay. I don’t know where all the sensors are, so there’s no way I can get to that second X.”
“I guess that means…” Jay slows to a stop before the parking lot’s curb. The Volvo is another thirty feet away. Jay’s bike—which Winniereallyshould have noticed when she got here—is parked twenty feet more beyond that.
“Means what?” Winnie doesn’t like the half frown now gathering over Jay’s eyes.
“I guess that means you need my help.”
“Ah.” Winnie feels her own frown forming, but rather than a surge of geologic heat to light up her veins or even grief for that girl of four years ago, she feels only…
Empty.
Resigned.
She does need Jay’s help, because there is no way she can get into theforest without detection unless she has him to lead the way. On top of that, loath as she is to admit it, hewasright to erase that stupid map.
He was also right to check out this book on sources (by Theodosia Monday, of course) instead of letting Winnie do it. It is far less incriminating for him to show an interest in Dianas. Winnie, though?Now that’s weird,they’ll think.Why is that girl whose dad was a witch now reading about witches?
“Yes,” Winnie says as a fresh burst of morning wind sweeps over her. It knocks hair in her face and rattles through the ivy now turning green on the building. “I need your help, Jay. Please.” She offers this with no emotion, no inflection. She is tired, and she cannot deal with any kind of gloating.
He doesn’t gloat, though. He simply nods, hands still in his pockets, and squints vaguely toward downtown. After several silent seconds, he offers: “Best time to go will be in the hour before the mist rises tonight. The Alphas leave the forest then, but the Tuesday-night hunters won’t be on shift yet.”
“Okay.” Winnie’s teeth click as she tries to remember if Mom has work tonight. “Where do I meet you?”
“I’ll pick you up at eight.”
“Okay,” she says again—and apparently that acknowledgment is the end of their conversation, since Jay nods once at Winnie, a wordless goodbye, and then strides off the curb into the parking lot.
He is already past the Volvo before it occurs to Winnie that maybe she should have thanked him. That maybe she shouldstillthank him, lifting her voice over the morning birdsong and breeze.
She doesn’t, though, and Jay never looks back.
