Page 28 of The Luminaries
Which is probably why Winnie finds herself sneaking up on him like she would have all those lifetimes ago. Then bending over, vertebra by vertebra, and reaching for his nose. “Boop!”
She doesn’t actually make contact before he has her pinned to the opposite wall.
It happens so fast, she doesn’t feel the movements. Doesn’t see him leap to his feet or have time to feel fear or the physical crack of her skullon plaster. She just goes from hovering over Jay to her back slammed beside the TV.
He has one arm under her throat, the other around her wrist, and his right thigh is pressed up against her legs, trapping her in place. Vaguely, Winnie thinks this must be how insects feel when collectors pin them.
“Ugh,” she coughs against his arm. “Jay!”
He blinks. His pewter eyes have turned to gunmetal. His pupils throb and expand.
“What the hell!” she continues, and this time she shoves her left arm against him. But it’s like hitting an oak tree. He doesn’t move.
His pupils do constrict, though, and a confused frown hatch-marks over his brow. Then color ignites on his cheeks. At first she thinks it’s another flush, but when she shoves against him a second time, his nostrils flare.
He’s angry.
“What the hell?” she repeats as he finally drops his arm. “What the hell was that, Jay?”
He shakes his head. The hunted energy from before has returned. His gaze darts around the room. Up, down, sideways—he looks at anything that isn’t Winnie. “That was your first lesson,” he says eventually, voice raspy. As if he has just slept a lot longer than ten minutes. Like he has been sleeping his whole life and these are the first words he’s ever needed to say. “Never surprise a nightmare.” He dips toward her until his face is only inches from hers and she can smell bergamot and lime. “Never,” he repeats, “surprise a nightmare.” Then he stalks for the door and leaves.
Winnie shouts at his back—to return, to explain, to actually train her, dammit—but Jay doesn’t look her way again. He simply crosses the yard to Mathilda and awakens the car’s smoker’s cough with a scowl.
Seconds later, he is gone.
CHAPTER17
Winnie is stranded. She can’t believe it. Jay bailed and he took her only form of transportation. Like, he just drove off with her bike in the trunk after the most cryptic nonlesson of all time.
No kidding, she shouldn’t startle a nightmare.
If she had his cell phone number, she’d call him right now and scream into his ear. Or, because (let’s be real) she has total phonephobia, she’d at least text him in all caps ABOUT WHAT A JERK HE IS AND CAN I HAVE MY BIKE BACK? But she doesn’t have his number, and for all she knows, he doesn’t even have a phone. He’s a Friday clan ward, meaning both his parents died and he relies on the clan for necessities, so money is even tighter for him than it is for Winnie.
She debates calling Darian for a ride to the Friday estate so she can fetch her bike, but decides against it. She doesn’t know if that’s where Jay has gone; she suspects he goes to other people’s houses a lot to party when he’s not at the old museum, and she has no desire to track him down.
Ultimately, she decides to go upstairs and try on clothes. Luminary training, unlike regular school, happens seven days a week—meaning tomorrow, Saturday, will be her first day back at the Sunday estate in four years.
She needs to look her best.
When she sees her reflection in the mirror beside her desk and taped-up nightmare sketches, she winces. She had dressed so quickly in preparation for training with Jay, she hadn’t fully seen the damage the rain had wrought: her hair has quadrupled in size, and curls she doesn’t normally have are springing up in strange locations atop her head. She also has a brown fuzzball on her jaw from the turtleneck she’d so hastily dragged on, and now that she’s looking, did she put the shirt on inside out?
Winnie yanks off her glasses, suddenly glad Jay left before he could have noticed any of this. Then again, with his hunter instincts, he probably saw.
Not that she cares. Of course she doesn’t care. It’s just Jay.
After trying on an assortment of clothes that still fit and squeezing into a few that don’t, Winnie settles on her favorite corduroys, a loose white peasant top Darian got her for Christmas that she’s been too afraid to wear in case she ruins it, and finally the new leather jacket.
She looks whimsical, she decides. Almost as cool as Ms. Morgan, and the new locket from Darian makes her collarbone look nice.
At the thought of Ms. Morgan, Winnie’s eyes drop to the desk. To all those unlabeled and lately untouched sketchbooks. Her teeth start clicking. She fiddles with her locket. She should try to draw the banshee—sheknowsshe should, while the skin and the claws and that wretched, slippery hair are still fresh in her memory…
“Winnie!” Darian’s howl pierces the house.
Her heart lurches into her throat. She barrels into the hall right as Darian comes hammering up the steps. “What is it? What’s wrong—”
He tackles her in a hug. Then he starts whooping and hauling her around the narrow hall in an awkward square dance. He is speaking a mile a minute, but Winnie manages to tease out “I got promoted, I got promoted, thanks to you, I got promoted!”
He stops abruptly at her bedroom door and thrusts her in front of him, hands on her biceps and face aglow. “Holy crap, Win, I can’t believe you’re still alive.”
