Page 71 of The Hunting Moon
Her heart surges into her throat. She drops down flat against the floor, where sure enough the box of summer clothes under her bed has been shoved aside to reveal nothing else there. The plastic bag is gone, the dampener is gone. There is nothingat allbeneath her bed beyond dust bunnies, recently disturbed and scattered about.
Winnie scrabbles back to her desk, to the sketchbook where she kept all her notes, all her ideas, all hercluesabout Dad and his secret scavenger hunt… But it’s empty. Of course it’s empty—she could sense that as soon as she lifted it and found the weight too feathery. Pages have been ripped out. No map, no Venn diagrams, no scrawled-down messages from the birthday cards Dad sent to Winnie, no maps taken from the library.
Winnie’s first thought is that Mom must have found everything. Winnie’s second thought is that this makes no sense because Mom was with Winnie at dinner, and if shehadfound something, she would have confronted Winnie directly—not searched through her room and stolen everything.
Winnie’s third thought—frantic and skittery and propelling her to her feet—is that maybe Tuesday Lambdas were in here. That they discovered some of Dad’s clues and followed them straight under her bed.
But this also makes no sense. The Lambdas would have swarmed Winnie at clan dinner or at Joe Squared. They would never have snuck in, swiped key information, and then snuck back out again.
Winnie’s vision is crossing as she stumbles toward her bedroom door. Her heart is pounding as hard as it did the night the Whisperer chased her. The Wednesday bear gapes at her as she pushes into the hall. Her bare feet slap on uneven wooden floors, sluggish to start… then practically sprinting by the time she reaches the attic hatch. She yanks it down, the ladder unfolding too slow.
Up, up, she climbs.Yank,goes the light switch.Flash,goes the bulb. Winnie doesn’t even care if Mom comes home and sees the light on. She doesn’t care if she gets caught. Someone was in the house, someone was in her room, and that person knew exactly what to look for when they got here.Exactlywhat to take.
Winnie finds the old box filled with photographs. She rifles through, passing picture after picture of a family that hasn’t been hers in years, despite what Darian’s cards might have shown. No nuclear family happily intact, no Grandma Harriet to visit every summer. Winnie gets all the way to the bottom of the box without hitting a single one of the red envelopes that hold the birthday cards Dad sent to her.
Her hands are shaking as she returns everything the way she found it. Her fingers are numb, her toes and face and brain. There’s even a ringing in her ears, like her Pompeii finally detonated and oh, Winnie! You were standingmuchtoo close!
Winnie does not return to her bedroom right away. Instead, she walks past it to pause at the top of the stairs and gaze down at the front door that her family never locks. The one Jay scolded her about only three weeks ago—a long-running exchange between them that began even when they were children.
Why don’t you ever lock your front door?he would ask.
Why do you always lock yours?she would counter.No one is going to break into the Friday estate.
You don’t know that. There are bad people, even in the Luminaries.
Yes,Winnie thinks as she finally returns to her bedroom. As one plodding step after the other carries her into a room where someone unknown recently invaded.
Although they aren’t unknown any longer. Notentirely,at least. For there’s only one someone that makes any sense. A circle on her Venn diagram, aWon her ever-growing list of problems: a witch who is loose in Hemlock Falls.
A witch with a source in their possession and who might have created the Whisperer.
CHAPTER37
There is one thing, at least, that the Diana didn’t find: the photograph on Jay’s phone of the map in the library. It is presumably still saved, and without that photograph, the witch can’t know about the second little X.
Although, this fact isn’t much help for Winnie. Not at this precise moment while she stands ineffectually at the center of her room, the ceiling light illuminating her like the Joe Squared stage light. Her mouth is dry. Her heart is somehow thudding harder… yet alsoslower,like it has been shoved beneath a pile of cinder blocks and left to fend for itself.
Danger,her brain suggests.You might be in danger.Without another thought, Winnie strips out of her pj’s, shoves on her clothes from before—trading her Converse for combat boots this time—then grabs her school bag and shoves Darian’s birthday cards inside. Maybe, just maybe they have some secret meaning. Either way, she isn’t about to stay here to mull it all over or leave them behind for the Diana to find if they come back again.
There is only one place Winnie knows to flee to, both for her own general safetyandto ensure the map photograph is protected. Admittedly, the Friday estate is the last place on earth she wants to go, and Jay is the last person she wants to talk to—yes, yes, yes—but she sees no other option. She can hardly go to Darian right now and say,Hey, I know you’re tipsy onchampagne and triumph, but d’you think we could talk about how Dad was framed?
And Dad was definitely framed.
If there’s one thing Winnie can now say without a doubt—can now move into herWhat I Knowcolumn—it is that Dad was most definitely, unequivocally framed. She might have no idea where his clues ultimately lead, she might have no idea why he ran off four years ago instead of staying, she mighthatehow much hope burns inside her that she’ll see him again…
But the man was innocent. He was not a Diana, he was never a Diana, and someone in Hemlock Falls got away with not only ruining his life, but ruining all his family’s lives too.
Herfamily’s lives.Herlife.
It is a strange thought—that there is a single person to blame for everything that Winnie, Mom, and Darian have endured for the past four years… and that that person is not Dad.
Yet there it is: a key-shaped truth meant for a lockbox she never knew existed. One that has been crammed inside her organs somewhere between her stomach and her spleen. And now, as Winnie leaves her house by the way she came in (the unlocked front door), the lockbox is opening wide.
It is a fury she has never felt before. It is not explosive. It is not choking with its dust and ash. And it is nothing like the pent-up rage she has nursed for her father these last agonizing years. Instead this rage is as sharp as vampira claws. It’s as focused as a shot of adrenaline straight to her heart.
Someone fucked over her family.
They fucked over her life, Mom’s life, Darian’s life, and Dad’s life too.
