Moonset 01: Moonset

by Scott Tracey

  But Malcolm wasn’t buying it. “You can’t just throw out a half-assed apology and think that makes everything all right again!”

  “Hey, come on,” I jumped in, turning on Mal. “Calm down.”

  But Jenna didn’t need anyone to take her side. “Then what do you want from me? Sorry I’m not perfect like you, afraid to learn any magic because, God forbid, you find a spell to grow a personality!”

  Within thirty seconds, Jenna and Mal were shouting over one another, and even Bailey and Cole were jumping into the fray. I couldn’t even hear what one of them was saying, let alone all four of them.

  “ENOUGH!” I shouted at the top of my lungs.

  Four pairs of eyes turned on me, instantly quiet.

  “This isn’t getting us anywhere,” I pointed out, “and I don’t want to spend the rest of the day with a headache.”

  “You can’t keep letting her off the hook, Justin,” Mal chided. “It’s getting out of hand.”

  “I know that. There’s no one in this room who doesn’t know that.” I took a deep breath, exhaling slowly before I continued. “But ganging up on her isn’t helping.”

  “So what?” he challenged, “We all back away and stick our heads in the sand? We did that the last time, and the time before that.”

  “I didn’t notice an intervention the time Malcolm got us thrown out,” Jenna chimed in spitefully. “But I suppose the golden boy gets a pass, right?”

  That started the furor up all over again. Mal started to go red in the face, and even Bailey and Cole were jumping in, getting angry and animated in turn. Jenna was the only one who looked composed, but then again, she was used to this.

  “Hey! Hey!” But no matter how loud I yelled, I couldn’t make a dent in the chaos. I’d have to do something else.

  “Cen fal la,” I whispered, eyeing the wall sconce on the far side of the room. It wasn’t a sanctioned spell, but a hodgepodge of words I’d glued together when I was still in grade school. It had only one real effect.

  The light bulbs in the sconce popped—loud enough to cut through the noise—one after another, a tiny fizzle of sparks accompanying each tiny explosion.

  “Jesus, Justin,” Mal cried, swatting at the back of his head. He wasn’t close enough to actually get burned, but that didn’t stop him from overreacting. “What the hell?”

  “Mal, can you guys give us a minute?” I asked. Maybe I would have a better chance at getting through to Jenna if it was just one on one.

  There was some grumbling, and some dirty looks, but eventually Mal and the kids went outside. Either to one of the other motel rooms the Witchers had rented—because they could shove three of us into one room, but god forbid any of them have to share—or to go harass the vending machines.

  “I’m not the only one you should be mad at,” Jenna started immediately. “We almost died there. That thing started wagging his chains all over the place, and I thought for sure that we … ”

  “But we didn’t,” I pointed out as gently as I could. “Quinn was there.”

  “But he didn’t have to be,” she insisted, looking me full in the face. “We don’t know how to protect ourselves. We can’t protect ourselves. And you saw the way Virago was. She was basically useless. The other one died before he could even do anything. If Quinn didn’t have half a brain, that thing would have taken us.”

  There was something she wasn’t saying. Her words cut off too quickly, and I could feel the unfinished thought in the air. “And … ?” I asked, pushing her.

  Jenna looked back up at the ceiling. “And maybe it should have. If it was really working for Bridger, maybe he would have taught us. Showed us the things we need to know.”

  I came close to throwing my hand over her mouth. As it was, my eyes flew to the closed door, even as I was whispering every anti-eavesdropping spell we knew.

  They taught us simple magic like that in spades. Spells that would never really be useful except in random situations. Nothing that would ever save our lives. Jenna was right in that regard.

  “You can’t say things like that,” I whispered furiously. “What if someone was listening?” Any minute, I expected the Witchers to come rushing through the door and haul us off to wherever they took warlocks and warlock sympathizers.

  “What if they were? I’m not saying we follow the family business, Justin, I’m just saying … maybe it’s the smart move. Maybe he knows why we’re like this,” she said, gesturing around her in a circular motion. “And what they did to us.”

  “And then what? He teaches us and tells us things and bakes us cookies? He’s a terrorist, Jen. Come on.”

  No one had seen Bridger since the fall of Moonset, but his name kept coming up, like a cockroach burrowed into the foundation. He, or someone using his name, claimed credit for a variety of terroristic acts. Like the mass hysteria unleashed at a Paris art gallery, when a secret spell had become an airborne virus that spread from person to person, compelling each one to tell every secret they knew they shouldn’t. Not devastating in the small scale, but within a day, government secrets were at risk, as were secrets of the Parisian covens.

  It was said that he’d inspired even more horrific acts of violence, like being a muse for the Spokane Ridge killer, who’d killed seven teenagers in the last four years until being caught last summer. The stories we heard said that the killer had thought of his spree as an audition, trying to make Bridger take notice.

  There was one thing we had in common with him, though. Bridger, like us, was a reminder of a war that most wanted to forget.

  “What if we’re just like them?” Jenna asked.

  “We’re not.”

  “We could be.”

  “No, we couldn’t.” I could be just as stubborn as Jenna when the mood struck me.

  They say the blood of warlocks is black as pitch. I’ve grown up staring at the veins in my arms and the ones trapped beneath my wrist, tapping them at times in restless fear, waiting for the day they changed. But they never did.

  That wasn’t to say they never would, no matter what lies I told.

  Four

  “Our government is overseen by the Congress.

  The leaders of the seven Great Covens—so named because of their contributions to magical society—and five Solitaires chosen by general election

  act as the stewards of our future.”

  Coventry in the 21st Century

  Just as quickly as we were reunited, they split us up again. The vans that had brought us to the motel were gone, replaced by a trio of hybrid SUVs.

  “The environment, really?” Jenna asked, quirking a brow at Quinn.

  “It’s our planet, too,” he replied with a grin.

  There was no sign of Virago—Meghan—anymore. Instead, a clean-cut pair of college kids had showed up, looking like the poster children for the Greek system.

  “Malcolm, you’ll be going with Nick,” Quinn said, pointing to the frat boy. “Cole and Bailey, you guys are going to be with Kelly.”

  Cole didn’t hesitate for a second. “We’re good with that,” he said, speaking for the both of them. Bailey gave him a cross look, but she didn’t argue.

  I did the math. “So that means we’re—”

  “With me,” Quinn confirmed.

  Jenna perked up. “So you’re our permanent guardian now?”

  “That’s the plan,” Quinn said absently, barely paying attention to her. “For now.”

  I looked between the two of them, considering my next move. Jenna had never thought one of our guardians was hot before. They changed with every new city we moved to, as if a change in babysitters would somehow change the behavior that led to us being kicked out of school.

  I tried to predict all the ways that this could turn out badly. The disasters that would come if something did happen between them. The disasters that would c
ome if something didn’t happen. The disasters that could come along the way.

  Malcolm edged his way towards me. “So?”

  When he wasn’t angry and running on emotion, Mal would and could boil down his every thought into as few words as possible. Right now, his “so” contained so many different questions and demands that I could barely handle them all at once.

  “I don’t know,” I said honestly. It covered as many of them as I could. I didn’t know how to get through to Jenna, I didn’t know if I even could. I looked around, desperate to change the subject. “Do you even know where we are? I was asleep when we pulled in a few days ago, and we haven’t left the room since.”

  “No television? They make these things called news channels that could narrow it down for you.” Mal smirked.

  “Tried that,” I said automatically, “but they all keep referring to the tri-state area. Nothing that narrows it down.”

  He shrugged. “We’re in New York, I know that much. Upstate somewhere, I think.”

  “Any idea where they’re taking us?”

  “No clue,” he said. “Maine, maybe? Canada?”

  Either was a possibility. I overheard Cole and Bailey’s excited chatter, discussing the exact same thing. Bailey was hoping for New York City (which would never happen), and Cole was hoping for a ski lodge, even though he’d never skied a day in his life. As it turned out, Mal was right, and we were closer to our destination that any of us expected.

  Half an hour in the car with Jenna and Quinn played out in relative silence. We were definitely in New York: signs heading back the way we came promised arrival in Syracuse, Buffalo, and even New York City.

  We alternated between highways that skirted Lake Ontario and back roads that probably hadn’t seen real traffic in a year or more. But eventually, the back roads led to an actual city, and ten minutes after that, a sign appeared, welcoming us to Carrow Mill.

  The town doubled as a Hallmark movie set. Small town, lots of churches. Even a Main Street with an ancient green-tinged light pole in the center of a roundabout. Everything moved at a snail’s pace, but at least it could properly be called a town. Byron was a whole lot of farmland with a few houses in between. Carrow Mill was what they meant when they said “small town America.”

  “So this must be a nice change of pace,” I said to Quinn while we waited at one of the traffic lights. “Big change from D.C.”

  The supernatural America, much like the natural one, had headquartered itself in the capital. When it came time for the Witchers to be trained, programs had been quietly set up right in the political world’s backyard. The political covens wanted to prevent another Moonset, and many of them oversaw the training personally.

  Normally, our guardians were a little older—rarely old enough to pass as our parents, but still old enough that they weren’t so immature themselves. But we’d never had a Witcher for a guardian.

  I wanted to get him talking, maybe get some insight on what we could expect. But all Quinn did was give a little half-shrug.

  “Did we ever thank you for saving us?” I tried. Jenna, who was checking her makeup in the passenger mirror, met my glance and pointedly rolled her eyes.

  “That’s the job,” Quinn said noncommittally. “See the world, fight monsters.”

  “Throw your charge into the line of fire?” I supplied.

  “I figured better you than Jenna or Cole,” he said. “Your psych profile made you the best option. Plus, chivalry and all that.”

  “I don’t think chivalry covers the undead,” Jenna interjected frostily. “I wouldn’t have pegged you for a Neanderthal.”

  I could hear the smirk in Quinn’s voice, even if I couldn’t see it. “You don’t really know enough about anything to pin me down.”

  “Wait, there’s a psych profile on me? I want to know what it says.” The idea that they’d been studying me, taking notes about my behavior without my knowledge ran across my skin like a steady stream of spiders.

  Having a Witcher down the hall made me uncomfortable. Having a Witcher down the hall who had been studying our psyches made it even worse. What did he know about us? Did they know something we don’t?

  “I’m sure you do,” Quinn said, “but now’s not the time.”

  “Why not?”

  “Because we’re here,” he said cheerfully.

  We turned down onto a closed street, pulling into a driveway just short of a cul-de-sac.

  “Welcome to student housing,” Quinn continued, getting an odd level of enjoyment out of this. “The Congress owns all the houses on the street, so we’re splitting you all up like normal. We’re on this side of the street, and the other three on the other.”

  Keeping five kids in the same house stopped being healthy back before all of us had reached double digits. Cole was too hyper, Mal too easily annoyed, Bailey too needy. No one ever really questioned it, because aside from our guardians and the witches who knew who we were, we never talked about it. Didn’t invite people over to our houses, never brought it up. It was one of the many things about our lives that was just too hard for normal kids to understand.

  “They own the whole street?” Jenna asked, her nose wrinkling up. “How many kids do they have here?”

  “Doesn’t matter to me. I’m just in charge of you two.”

  I eyed Quinn, who was still all smiley. “You don’t like answering questions, do you?”

  “Don’t I?”

  Before I could reply, I got a look at our house.

  “There’s been some sort of mistake,” Jenna said faintly. We couldn’t look away. Our house was basically the flaming wreckage of a freeway pileup. Well, it wasn’t on fire, but it probably should have been.

  “No mistake,” Quinn said, hopping out of the driver’s seat. “Welcome home.”

  “It’s some sort of practical joke,” I said weakly. “Right?”

  Christmas had come to Carrow Mill, and it had vomited all over our house. I’d seen outside decorations for the holidays before, but never this many. And I definitely hadn’t seen them all in one place.

  Not one, but two giant pine trees were decked out with strings of lights stretched taller than the house itself. I counted five different Santas perched around the property, competing with two nativity scenes (although the scene itself was life-sized with its own fully decorated stables), reindeer, wreaths, and a giant sleigh on the roof. And about fifteen miles of Christmas lights decking out every surface they could find.

  “Do you think it all lights up?” she whispered.

  I could only stare. “Bright enough to be seen from space.”

  Quinn unlocked the front door. “Nice, right?” His enthusiasm didn’t hide the mockery underneath. The bastard was enjoying this.

  “This is a joke, right?” Jenna asked as we walked up to the front door.

  “Just think of it as a little welcome gift,” Quinn said. “In honor of all the hard work that landed you here.” Without another word, or any more mockery, he vanished inside the house, leaving the door open.

  “Oh,” Jenna said.

  The part of me that wanted to snicker was strangled by the overwhelming embarrassment at having to live in a house that looked like a Christmas village.

  She covered her mouth with a hand. “We’re being punished.”

  “You’re being punished. I’m being punished by proxy.”

  Jenna took a moment, studying the street we were now calling home. “We’re the only house with decorations,” she pointed out.

  Most people didn’t know how to deal with Jenna. Sure she was stubborn, occasionally hostile, and had a sixth sense for finding trouble, but she didn’t deal well with embarrassment.

  I was pretty sure that Quinn had already picked up on that. And that he was the one responsible for the holiday decorations.

  At least the inside of
the house was Christmas free. For now, I figured. The furnishings were sparse but livable—all of our homes and apartments over the years had a certain “long-term housing” quality. All the basics were there—tables, chairs, couches, TVs. But there weren’t any personal touches anywhere. No pictures, no collectible figurines, no wacky color palettes.

  The house could be filled and vacated with a minimum of effort, ready for the next inhabitant. That was how it worked for most of us.

  Witch children weren’t like most kids. Minor enchantments are taught to kids who aren’t even old enough to attend school. It isn’t until later, in the early teen years, that aptitudes and talents start to emerge. At that point, most witches are moved from their homes to places where they can hone their particular gifts. Thus the need for temporary housing like this.

  It wasn’t an entirely infallible system, though. The five of us were the exception—grouped together in one backwoods town after another, trying to keep us out of sight and out of mind.

  If we went strictly based on skills, Cole would be down South learning illusions, Bailey would be in the Midwest learning evocations, and Jenna and I would be in D.C. Supposedly, we both had the kind of qualities that would have made us logical choices to join the Witchers. And Malcolm … well if he had his way, he’d be going to a normal high school, dealing with normal teen stuff.

  “I’m taking the master bedroom,” Jenna’s voice floated down from the second floor. We were claiming bedrooms already? I tore up the stairs, only to find that Quinn had beat me, too. He was standing in front of what I assumed was the back bedroom, shaking his head at Jenna.

  “You can fight over one of the others,” he said. “I don’t care who goes where.” He cocked his head to the side. “But you might prefer the one down the hall.”

  She rolled her eyes, a hand on her hip. “And why would I want that one?”

  I worked it out faster than she did and started to laugh, remembering the two giant trees outside the house. Both of them turned to look at me. “The trees,” I said to her. “He heard about Birmingham.” Jenna had managed to make two of the trees grow enough that she could sneak in and out easily, climbing the limbs almost like a ladder.