Page 55 of The Hunting Moon
“I’m not high,” she insists as he pushes all the way into sitting. It brings their faces close. “I feel amazing, Jay. Like… like I could run all the way around the forest again.Twice.Like I could go face that sadhuzag’s seventy-four prongs—”
“Is that how many there were?”
“—and slash it withmyseventy-four prongs.” She demonstrates this by head butting Jay in the chest.
“Oh my god,” he says, laughing now. “You are so very, very high.”
“I know you are, but what am I?”
Another laugh, and a shake of his head. “I hope your mom isn’t home when I get you there.”
“Mom.” Winnie blinks. Then sinks onto her haunches. “She must be so worried. Oh crap, Jay, we need to get home and let her know where I am and that I’m safe and that the venom didn’t get me—venomwhich,by the way, is not mentioned in the Compendium, meaning we discovered a new species of sadhuzag last night. Do you think they’ll let me name it? Winnie’s Sadhuzag. Ooh, or justThe Winnie.Much better to have a nightmare named after me than a coffee…” Winnie trails off. Then cringes. “Maybe Iamhigh.”
“Can I see your leg?” Jay motions to her calf, and Winnie obliges by shifting her position from kneeling into sitting. She drapes her leg over Jay’s lap and in the dim light of morning through his curtain, he removes the bandage. When at last the skin is exposed, other than some dried blood, there is nothing to see. All that remains from the antler wound is a faint, faint,almost invisibleline. More like she scratched herself too hard than a nightmare swiped her and injected her with venom.
“Whoa,” Winnie breathes.
“Whoa indeed,” Jay murmurs. He pokes gently at the line, glancing at Winnie’s face as he does so. “Any pain or numbness?”
She shakes her head. “It feels good as new.” As she says this, a memory prickles in the back of her skull. The sense that she has felt this way previously… that this isn’tactuallyher first time healing quickly and feeling invincible.
She chews her lip. “Have we done this before?”
His eyebrows rise questioningly. “Done what before? Sat so close together that if my aunt walks in here right now she’s going to think we are, ah…”
He doesn’t finish that sentence, and he doesn’t need to. Yet rather than yank in her leg and scuttle away, Winnie only laughs. Then claps her hands. “It does look bad, doesn’t it, Jay? Especially since”—she slants toward him, her voice dropping low—“everyone already thinks we’re dating.”
He doesn’t look impressed by this secret, suggesting he was already quite aware of the gossip. “I think it’s time we get you home and into your own bed, Winnie Wednesday. Without your mom noticing.” He pushes to his feet with the languid ease of a wild animal, then offers both his hands down to her.
Winnie takes them and lets him haul her up. “That doesn’t bother you? That people think I’m your girlfriend?”
“No.” He pulls away and sidles to his nightstand, where he snags her glasses. The neoprene cord still dangles off them. “Why would it bother me?”
“Well, it bothersme.”
“Ah.” His grip tightens on the glasses. “Because dating me would be such a terrible thing?”
“Yes. I mean,no.” Winnie’s forehead scrunches. Then she shakes her head and snatches the glasses from him. “I mean,yes.It would be.”
His nostrils flare. “And why is that?”
“Because…” Now Winnie’s lips pucker to one side. Jay isn’t reacting like she thought he would, and for some reason, it appears she has hurt his feelings. “Well, because you don’t like me.”
“Of course I like you, Winnie.”
“Not likethat.” Winnie yanks the neoprene cord off her glasses, then deposits the lenses onto her face. Jay’s face crystallizes before her, surprisingly refreshed given everything he had to do for her last night.
He also looks surprisingly serious, and Winnie has the sudden sense she has stepped into dangerous territory. Like a non meandering into the forest after dark.
Her heart starts pounding. “You don’t like me likethat,Jay, do you? Not like everyone thinks?”
“Or maybe,” he counters, “it’syouwho doesn’t like me like that, which is not like everyone thinks.”
Winnie’s eyes thin behind her lenses. The effects of the melusine blood must be muddling her brain, because she can’t seem to parse what Jay just said. There were too many negatives that might have ultimately turned into a positive…? Maybe?
And the longer she squints at Jay, the less she seems to see.
He, however, just continues staring back at Winnie, his gray eyes cool in the dim, curtained light. “Winnie.”
