Page 68 of The Hunting Moon
Snow on your lips
It’s feast or it’s full famine.
The chorus picks up, and now Trevor and L.A. sing along with Jay—no longer ghostly humming, but with a harmony that hovers over and below.
I miss you more now
Now that it’s been so long
Winnie’s heart is thumping harder and harder by the second. She feels sick. Not like she did at the Wednesday estate, where eyes and howls clashed against her, inescapable and hungry… but sick in a way that makes her whole body numb. Like she is a revenant. Like she is a ghost.
Then comes the second verse, and it is too much.
To kiss across shadows into a bright fever
The dawn mist rises inside me like a wildfire
With heat on your skin I spin until I can’t see us
I find no relief, inside I’m still a hopeless curse.
Jay’s voice cracks on that last word, as L.A. and Trevor move in for another chorus. Somehow, it doesn’t ruin the song. If anything, the vocal quaver enhances it. As if the hopeless curse is real and he truly will never find relief.
And Winnie feels that pain as if it were her own. The whole coffee shop does. He is the siren, and they are captured by his song.
And Winnie now understands why Erica flashed that mischievous grin before she departed. She knew darn well that this song was about Winnie.
Exhibit A: The cabin is where the old WTF triangle used to meet, though it’s really just a garden shed on the edge of the Thursday estate where one afternoon Winnie and Jay drew a vampira in red paint on the wall—then he pretended to bite her with his “fangs” until they were both laughing so hard they were crying on the cabin floor.
Exhibit B: The ten-dollar bet happened on a snowy night right before Winnie’s world ended. Erica bet that Jay and Winnie wouldn’t kiss for ten dollars… so Winnie and Jay totally kissed for ten dollars.
It was only a pop kiss, but Winniestillremembers how warm Jay’s lips were when all around them the night was cold.
And Jay apparently remembers it too.
At some point, Winnie leaves Joe Squared. She isn’t upset, although she knows she has every right to be. Instead, she is determined. Everything has been stripped away—everything she thought she knew about her, about Jay, about what they shared four years ago. It’s a photograph that has hung crooked for too long, yet now has been arranged upright again.
The chorus builds and builds, chasing after Winnie.I miss you more now. Now that it’s been so long.It’s like the sadhuzag is behind her, or even the Whisperer, hunting her down without reprieve.
She has to deal with this.
She deserves an answer.
It takes her under a minute to find Mathilda parked outside. The ancient Wagoneer is an elephant in a herd of sleek gazelle, and Winnie perches on the back bumper to wait. Cold air snakes against her, carrying with it the final strains of the night’s show.
There’s one song in particular. You’ll have to let me know what you think when you hear it.
How very like Erica. TheoldErica. The one who thought it was funny to bet ten dollars and watch her best friends awkwardly touch lips while snow fell around them. That Erica laughed and clapped with trickster joy, her scarlet-red mittens slapping together in a downythwap!Winnie will never forget the sound of.
She bets Erica is laughing now too, wherever she is.
And Winnie also bets she herself will never forget this rapturous applause currently unspooling in Joe Squared. The Forgotten have finished their show. “Backlit” was their last song.
Three weeks ago, Bretta mentioned that Jay never stayed after a show. At the time, Winnie replied,He doesn’t perform for attention.Winnie was wrong, though. Or at least, attention avoidance is only part of the reason why he never hangs around when the performance is done. The main reason, she now understands, is that Jay is tapped dry. He is a lantern with no fuel left, shattered and empty.
He will need to hide back inside himself to refuel, regrow, restore.
Winnie zips up her leather jacket. She was hot in Joe Squared from all the bodies and the dancing, but now her sweat has dried and the cold of early spring has latched on to her likeChrysomya megacephalaon dead flesh.
