Page 37 of The Luminaries
“May I?” He motions to them, and Winnie nods. Now that the vest is on, itiseasier for him to do it. Even if it’s really weird having him stand this near. Even if her chest starts doing this uncomfortable clenching thing as he crooks down to carefully, delicately remove each syringe-like claw.
“They have barbs,” he says, wriggling the claw. “But you can spin them counterclockwise to remove them without too much damage to the Kevlar.”
“I… didn’t know that.” But she thinks this should really be in the Compendium. She also thinks how Jay’s hair is thicker than she remembers. Darker too, no longer the downy blond he’d had as a boy, but a coarse field of wheat.
He smells of his usual lime and bergamot. No smoke or weed or booze. Her glasses slide down her nose as she stares at the top of his head.
Once the first claw is out, he sets it on the table with the bow and glances at Winnie for approval before grasping at the others. Winnie nods, contemplating his face now.
The skin under his eyes is haggard; small capillaries are visible through weary skin. It’s like he never sees the sun, except Winnie knows he does. His hands are just as pale too, but callused in a way that they weren’t four years ago.
As he wriggles and works at the second claw, Winnie spots a bandage peeking out from under his watchband. Without thinking, she touches it, her fingers sliding onto his wrist.
He goes very still.
“What happened?” she asks.
He takes a beat to answer. “Harpy.”
“Oh.” She wets her lips. Her glasses perch on the end of her nose, but she doesn’t push them up. “Did you kill it?”
“Her,” he corrects. His eyes are only inches away from Winnie’s, wintery and cold, mournful and lost. She feels like she is staring at the banshee all over again. “Yes,” he answers eventually. “I killed her.” Then he pulls his wrist from Winnie’s grasp.
CHAPTER21
Winnie keeps the three claws. She wants to look at these barbs under a microscope—and now that she can walk onto the Monday estate whenever she wants, she bets Mario will let her use his lab.
She and Jay don’t stay at the training grounds. “It’ll get crowded soon,” Jay explains, motioning toward the house, where Winnie can hear the sounds of car engines and doors slamming. Friday hunters arriving to train. Jay takes the compound bow, and though Winnie itches to get her hands on it, she forces herself to patiently follow him into the woods.
They pass cedars and aspens, maples and oaks. Birds sing and green shines. But soon, they leave the rough path Jay had followed and cut off into the spirit’s realm.
Winnie doesn’t need the red stakes to know when they’ve entered the forest. Sunbeams lose their edge; silence muffles everything, damp and intractable. After another five minutes of tromping, Jay leads Winnie over a small stream—ephemeral, barely a trickle now—and into a clearing. A sugar maple and red pine have fallen recently here, their trunks akimbo on the floor. Already, branches from the surrounding trees have laced together to block the sky. Without sun, there is no secondary growth. Only soft pine needles.
Jay turns to face Winnie beside one of the trunks. He offers her the bow, and her mouth practically waters as she yanks it from him.
“You still remember how to use it?”
“Yes.” She tries for a glare, but her body is too pleased to glower. It recalls the shape of the grip in her hand, the way the bow limbs and riser fill her vision while her eyes naturally look past. Yes, there is an awkwardness in holding it—especially since Jay hasn’t offered her a trigger release, so it’s just her fingers. But the memory is written on her muscles; four years couldn’t erase that.
Jay pulls a waterproof quiver from under the nearest trunk, and Winnie realizes he must have prepared for their meeting. He offers her a training bolt with a foam tip, and her muscles take over again.Gimme, gimme, gimme.She needs two tries to nock the bolt, her fingers stiff with cold, but once she gets it in, she turns a wide grin onto Jay.
He swallows. Clears his throat. Then quickly spins away to hop up the maple trunk in four loping bounds. Winnie is both impressed by and jealous of how easily he moves.
“Ready?” he calls, twirling to face her. He’s forty feet away and fifteen feet off the ground.
“For what?” she calls back.
“Target practice.”
“What am I shooting at?”
“Me.” The word barks out. Winnie’s eyes widen behind her glasses. Then Jay is on the move.
She doesn’t know how he reaches her so fast. She doesn’t know anything at all beyond that word—Me—before a blur of wheat hair and black cotton hits her with the same speed Jay had in the living room, the same force. Except this time, there’s no wall to land against. Only the forest floor.
She drops the bow. Her back slams against the ground, lungs compressing. Vision darkening. And a Jay-shaped weight bearing down.
“Oh… god.” The words barely rasp out as she opens her eyes and meets Jay’s. If she thought he was close before, this is a thousand times closer—and a thousand times more intimate. Except that she’s way too startled and too… broken to feel uncomfortable.
