Page 17 of The Whispering Night
WHISPERER.
This diagram, which she first made nine days ago, hasn’t changed at all. But now, she knows who one of the witches is (Erica) and she knows there’s at least one more witch in Hemlock Falls, hiding behind a crow mask. She also knows Dad was wrapped up with that Crow… but not guilty. He was simply in the Crow’s way, so she took him out.
Winnie doesn’t mean to fall asleep this way. She is just going to lay her head on her arms for a few minutes and rest her eyes. Then she’ll get back to drawing. Sheneedsto find more clues.
She startles when a knock sounds at the window. She has no idea what time it is or how long she has been draped here. Her muscles groan; her mouth tastes like dry-erase particles.
Another knock. Winnie snaps toward the curtain, but no shapes are visible. No hints of light to tell her the time outside. She flips off her desk lamp. Darkness falls—a pallid, blue darkness that sings of clouded dawn. One heartbeat passes. Two.
She knows who shewantsto find at the window… and she knows who she fears might actually be there.
Another knock. Winnie’s lens-less eyes are slowly adjusting to the shadows; a figure waits. And it’s Jay—ithasto be Jay. That athletic slant, that limber crouch.
Her breath whooshes out. She dives for the window, and in under a second, her curtain is drawn back…
And there he is, rain misting over him as he huddles beside the glass. Winnie hauls open the window and reels Jay inside. If he is surprised by the ferocity of her movements, he doesn’t show it. He simply climbs in, as quietly and gracefully as a sparrow. He wears his usual buffalo flannel and jeans. Motorcycle boots too, with his hair wet from rain. And perhaps from a shower as well, since bergamot and lime radiate off him.
“The hunt,” Winnie begins.
Jay shakes his head. “No.” He doesn’t want to talk about it.
So she replies: “Okay.” Jay might keep all his secrets tucked away, he might live inside his head, quiet as the forest at midnight, but now she understands why. Now she sees the broken heart of him.
So Winnie slides her arms around Jay’s waist instead of speaking. Here are the planes of his back, the muscled shape of his shoulder blades—his latissimus, his trapezius. Her fingers want to confirm he is intact. No injuries, no pain points, no scars.He survived the hunt. He survived the hunt.
As she touches him, his eyes rove over her face. His pupils swallow up the lambent gray. “Winnie,” he murmurs. “May I—”
“Yes,” she answers before he can finish.
His lips press to hers. Or maybe her lips press to his. Either way, all thoughts of the hunt fling out the window. Jay tastes like toothpaste and rain. Like spring and early mornings. His flannel is wet from the storm. His damp jeans rub against her sweatpants. His fingers twine in her hair.
He survived the hunt. He survived the hunt.
They kiss harder, an urgency taking hold. Jay’s adrenaline from a night in the forest—it has to go somewhere, and Winnie is more than happy to receive it. She digs her fingers into his back and feels as he pushes, pushes until she has reached her desk. Until he has lifted her up so she can sit on the edge and wrap her legs around him.
Vaguely Winnie wonders if she’s smearing all her marker sketches with her butt… Then she decides she doesn’t really care. Venn diagrams are so deeply unimportant compared to this boy with his teeth and his lips and his need.
Until abruptly Jay pulls away. “Jesus, Winnie.” His chest is heaving, as if he just emerged from a dive beneath the falls. “Jesus.”
“Yeah,” she agrees, also panting. Her heart hammers at double speed. Her vision spins, and dawn shadows swirl through her room like mist. Her legs release Jay, though not her fingers. She keeps her hands on his hips, her grip curled into his flannel.
He glances down and notices the marker board under her butt. “Oh crap. I messed up your drawings.”
“It’s fine.” She lifts upward and slides out the marker board. “There’s nothing new on here.” She flips it forward so Jay can see, and he takes it in with eyes that now match the morning.
An uncanny stillness settles over him, murmuring of something not quite human. His lips are swollen. His face is flushed. Then he taps at the half-smeared wordWitches. “Anything new from Erica?”
“Is that your casual way of asking if I still trust her?”
A faint wince. “Am I that obvious?”
“No, you’re smart. One of us needs to not let Wednesday glasses turn their vision loyalty green.”
Now Jay smiles, and he pulls Winnie to him so he can rest his chin on her head. “For the record, Winnie, I like your loyalty. And everything else about you too.”
“But?” she asks.
“No buts.” He laughs. “At least not with regards to you. But Erica… You’re right I’m still worried about her.”
