Page 37 of The Hunting Moon
CHAPTER21
The rest of Tuesday passes at the tedious slog of fly larvae growing in a vampira corpse—except the larvae are more interesting. Which is why, during Luminary history with Professor Samuel, Winnie starts drawing actual fly larvae in the margins of her notes.
Chrysomya megacephala.They’re so squirmy, so pale. Able to smell a dead body from ten miles away, they’re usually the first fly species to arrive on a dead thing. And while most people don’t care about them at all, according to the Compendium they can teach you a lot about the forest.
Forensic entomology of forest cadavers provides a reliable means of assessing when a nightmare or human died. Although various arthropod species will eventually grow into adults on a human corpse, they will never make it past the first larval stage on a nightmare. Studies of dead maggots have revealed magic in their systems; it is believed that the concentration of such magic is deadly, much like a Diana who steals too much power from the spirit—
“Winnie Wednesday, answer the question.”
Winnie’s head whips up; her pencil stills against her notebook where she just finished sketching the pointed tail of a third-stageChrysomya megacephalamaggot. She finds Professor Samuel staring at her from behind his auto-tinting glasses that have decided today was the day for staying creepily shaded. He loves tormenting her with questions he knows shecan’t answer; she loves imagining what it would be like ifheencountered a basilisk in the forest andhisglasses turned instantly to stone like hers had.
“Uh,” she answers honestly, and Marcus sniggers a few desks away.
“Who founded the Nightmare Masquerade?” Samuel barks, and he swipes his hand toward the whiteboard, his laser pointer homing in on a single name.
Gianna Sabato.
Okay, that name is actually familiar to Winnie. She might give zero craps about the history of the Luminaries—it’s too abstract, tooold—but she does know a few key basics.
Like how Gianna was the first Saturday in Hemlock Falls and famous for marrying a prince from some tiny nation in the Mediterranean, which is basically the most on-brand thing a Saturday could ever do. In fact, Winnie is pretty sure 90 percent of Dryden’s general nastiness is because he knows he can never live up to his great-great-great-grandmother. The other 10 percent is just bitter old man.
Winnie did not know, however, until this exact moment that Gianna had also founded the Nightmare Masquerade, and she wishes she could go back in time and have a word.Excuse me, but can you please draft a document that says, “Do not hold Masquerade if entire town is in danger”?
Winnie of course says none of these things aloud. She simply recites the name on the whiteboard and slumps into her seat. Her face is warm, partly from embarrassment, mostly from annoyance. When Professor Samuel pushes his glasses up his nose in a move that Winnie knows she herself is prone to making, her annoyance only swells wider.
The Venn diagram circles for herself and Samuel should have absolutely zero overlap, thank you.
“And,” Samuel continues, dragging his shaded gaze over the classroom, “can anyone else here tell me what events comprised the original Masquerade?”
Marcus’s hand shoots up.
Because of course it does.
“It was just a fancy ball with masks and stuff. It wasn’t until the 1950s that Augustus Saturday added the Floating Carnival and the famed Ferris wheel.”
Winnie half expects him to turn around and stick out his tongue at her. She’s almost sad when he doesn’t.
Samuel returns to the board and pops off the cap of a black marker. Professor Il-Hwa loves to get colorful with her notations—especially when she’s drawing nightmare anatomical diagrams—but not Samuel. Black markers always, and thethinkind so it’s hard to read from the back of the room.
“Each clan opens their estate during the Masquerade, allowing everyone to enter for tours and parties of their own. One party for each night of the week.” His marker squeaks as he adds another name to the board. “And this tradition was introduced in the 1970s by Tessa Tuesday, who—after visiting the World’s Fair in Osaka—wanted to establish something similar here. She was the first to invite foreign Luminaries, and that is why each Luminary outpost around the world now hosts their own variation of the Masquerade. Ours, however, is the largest.” He smirks here, as if this fact somehow makes Hemlock Falls better than the other Luminaries outposts.
As far as Winnie can tell, it’s just more people for the Whisperer to kill… or the werewolf. Or hell, maybe even a Diana.Pick your nightmare! Spin the wheel! Get ripped apart as a forest meal!
Oh god. Winnie is really losing it.
It’s funny because the Winnie of two weeks ago wouldn’t have been allowed to participate in the Masquerade, and she would have passed all the setup on her bike, frustrated and furious that yet again, she was outside looking in. Then during the week of the parties, she would have holed up in her house and pretended it didn’t bother her that literallyeveryone elsein Hemlock Falls was out celebrating the return of spring.
It’s also funny because the Winnie of two weeks ago had no idea that a nightmare like the Whisperer could exist or that it might rip apart innocent hunters like Grayson Friday. That Winnie hadno ideaa werewolf would get blamed for it all—and actually bite her along the way.
She also had no idea her dad might never have been guilty four years ago.
Too bad Winnie doesn’t feel like laughing.
When the bell finally rings to release the history prisoners into the hall, Professor Samuel calls, “Winnie?”
Her face crumples. Her insides too. She was so close to the exit.So close.
“Yes, sir?” she asks when she trudges up to the whiteboard, where he now erases with Karate Kid enthusiasm, waxing on and off until the board is nearly clean. All while Winnie gets to watch because there is no second eraser for her to grab and assist him with.
