Moonset tlom-1

by Scott Tracey

  “This one,” Cole said, knocking on the door right next to us.

  “Come in,” Bailey called out from inside.

  I let Cole go in first, and then I followed, shutting the door behind me. Bailey was on her bed, leaning against the wall with her feet tucked underneath her. Jenna, on the other hand, sat in the window seat, body flush against the glass. She favored us with a momentary look of irritation before she went back to her cloud gazing.

  “We have a problem,” I said quietly.

  There were only two years that separated Jenna and I from Cole and Bailey, but those two years were the difference between childhood and adult. Mal was older than us, and by unspoken agreement the three of us looked after the other two like they were our kids. We let them be kids, even though we didn’t have the luxury ourselves.

  So in a situation like this, normally I wouldn’t go to all of them at once. The three of us would discuss it (or Mal and I would discuss it first before bringing in Jenna) before we told them.

  When we were younger, and we didn’t know who Moonset was or what terrorism meant, we’d tried to keep the truth from Bailey and Cole almost as soon as we found out. But the problem with being infamous is that if we didn’t tell them, someone else would.

  And did.

  “Text Mal,” I said, looking to Bailey, the only one with her phone out. “Ask him to grab me a sports drink on his way back.”

  Bailey’s eyebrows lifted, but she did as she was told.

  Cole sat at Bailey’s desk, and I stood by the door. By unspoken agreement, none of us said a word. Less than five minutes went by before Mal’s heavy footsteps thudded up the stairs. I opened the door for him, and closed it again after he passed through.

  The lock hadn’t even engaged when Jenna started whispering spells under her breath. Of the five of us, she had the best memory, and the litany of muffling spells rolled off her tongue. It didn’t escape my attention that the last time we’d used these spells, we’d been under attack.

  And now, it seemed like we were again.

  “Grab me a sports drink” was code. Utterly innocent, it had been Cole’s idea. In the event that we needed to get together, but we didn’t want to raise suspicion, we would ask the others to pick up a sports drink. Cole liked all those spy movies about double agents and infiltrations.

  Maybe it wasn’t much of a surprise that he thought of something so paranoid.

  “What’s wrong?” Mal asked, kicking off his shoes and sitting next to Bailey on the bed. Either he was too tall, or her bed was too short, because his legs hung off the end.

  Once Jenna gave me the nod that she was finished, I repeated what I knew. Cole tried to jump in a few times to embellish—“And then he got all snarly talking about how we deserved it!”—before I got through the whole, brief piece.

  “That’s it?” Mal asked, once I dropped my hands.

  “That’s it,” I confirmed. “But if there’s a specific reason why we’re here, we should probably know what it is, right? Especially if it’s going to be dangerous for us.”

  “Maybe they’re not thrilled with security?” Jenna mused. “The wraith found us somehow.

  Could be that they’ll find us again just as easily. It’s not like people make any real effort to hide us. Social media’s a bitch.”

  “That’s why we’re supposed to fly under the radar,” Mal said tightly. “Stay away from things that are going to draw a lot of unwanted attention.”

  On a certain level, no one made much of an effort to conceal us. In every town we moved to, all the witches knew who we were. Our names never changed, and the fact that there were five of us moving together was always a rather obvious sign.

  But the truth was that magic had a lot to do with it. I didn’t know the particulars—none of us did—but there were wards and bindings in place to keep us hidden. The spells weren’t on us because no one knew if that kind of magic would stir up the curse or not. It targeted the attempts to find us. When someone set out to look for the children of Moonset, they triggered the spells, which worked like viruses. Information was corrupted, spells were deflected to the wrong hemisphere. So far, until Kentucky, no one had ever managed to find us.

  The truth was that we’d never had to worry about it before. But now we did. I did. “They brought us here for a reason, and it’s not just to give us a place to start over. And then that guy that Mal and I saw at the diner, the crazy one?”

  “The Harbinger,” Mal nodded.

  “So what are you thinking?” Jenna asked. She didn’t look like she was taking any of this very seriously, her attention more on her nails than any of us, but that was just the way she was.

  “We figure out what’s really going on. Why they brought us here. What they want.”

  Cole scribbled on a piece of paper, having been still for too long. “Why don’t we just ask him?”

  “He’d just lie to us,” Jenna responded with a snort. “And then he’d know that we know.”

  “Are you sure we can’t trust them?” Bailey asked, with a weary attempt at hope. We all knew that there were only a small number of people we could trust, and they were in this room right now. Adults lied. Adults held grudges. They held you back and treated you like garbage, and taught other people to treat you like garbage.

  “Quinn said he agreed that we should be able to defend ourselves,” I admitted, “but it didn’t sound like who he was talking to did. I think it’s stupid if we don’t confront him, though. He seems at least a little sympathetic.”

  “I agree,” Jenna said casually. “And I think Justin’s the person for the job.”

  Four sets of eyes turned on me.

  Well, eff. “Fine, I’ll go,” I said, succumbing to peer pressure. “But we still need to keep an eye out. There’s a reason why they brought us here, and I think it has more to do with Carrow

  Mill than with us.”

  “I heard you on the phone earlier.”

  If I thought my announcement would disrupt the flurry of chopping going on in the kitchen, I was mistaken. Quinn had a variety of vegetables spread out in front of him, and an oversized kitchen knife in his hand. I kept a healthy distance, even though I was pretty sure he could still kill me at a distance.

  “I’m not new at this,” Quinn responded after a moment, his movements continuing to be precise and even. “I know when someone walks into the house.”

  That caught me off guard a little. I expected him to lie, to deny it. “You knew I was there?”

  Quinn didn’t reply. He moved to the next pile, a pile of green peppers. With one hand on the handle and the other on the dull end of the blade, he rocked his arms back and forth, dicing through them confidently.

  “If you knew, then why were you saying all that stuff? Why didn’t you just tell us what’s going on?”

  It was like talking to a brick wall. Quinn continued slicing and dicing, and with every thwack against the cutting board, I got more and more angry.

  “Do you think this is funny? What’s going on, Quinn? Why are we really here? What aren’t you guys telling us? I know it’s got to be something big.”

  “I’ve seen a wraith before. I probably wasn’t much older than you,” he looked up, waving the knife in my direction for a moment before he went back to what he was doing. “Took two full covens to take it down. Wraiths are nasty creatures. You can’t kill something that’s already dead.”

  What the hell was with story time? “What’s your point?”

  “That wraith was nothing. I was nearly a match for it all by my lonesome,” he said, without any hint of arrogance. Just another fact. “What’d it do? Destroy a few walls? Knock us around a bit?”

  “Killed two people,” I pointed out.

  “Two,” Quinn agreed. “Not two hundred. It destroyed a building, not a village. Wraiths can control the dead, summon up an army of spirits, and kill you just as soon as breathe on you.

  This one didn’t. It was only interested in one thing.”


  “Collecting us. We know this already.”

  “Collecting you. But did you ever think about the big picture? How did the wraith know where to find you? How did it know when, exactly, it should strike? There were a dozen Witchers in town that day, and all but three of them were busy trying to clean up your messes. There wasn’t a better time to move.”

  I tried to see what he was saying, putting the pieces together in my head. “Someone told?” I knew we weren’t the most popular kids in the world, but the idea that someone would turn us in like that? For as much as the Congress acted like we were this huge burden, they were always protecting us, keeping us safe. If that wasn’t the case anymore, then what were we supposed to do? If there was a mole in the Congress, and they were feeding information to Cullen

  Bridger, then how would we be safe anywhere?

  “Someone told,” he confirmed. “And now there are more eyes on you. Some concerned, some afraid. But all of them are going to want something from you. Do you know what kind of weapon you could be, Justin? A warlock like Bridger could bring you along and use you like a shield, and everything in his path would be decimated. The same goes for any of you. Even the members of the Congress that fear you recognize that.”

  “But why are we here? You made it sound like there was something more specific than a mole, or the fact that we can be weaponized.”

  Quinn swore suddenly, and the brisk-necked chopping came to a stop as he dropped the knife. A thick line of red ran along the pad of his thumb. The knife clattered towards the edge of the counter and dropped to the ground just as Quinn jumped back a step, narrowly missing toe damage as well.

  “Are you okay?” A lifetime of bandaging wounds kicked into gear as I went to the sink and grabbed a handful of paper towels and a wet cloth. I handed him a stack of towels and used the rest to wipe off the counter while he cleaned himself. Then, after handing him the wet cloth to hold over the cut, I went looking for everything else I’d need.

  It took awhile to find what I was looking for—the cleaning supplies were in the basement, for some reason, and the bandages in a first-aid kit under the bathroom sink.

  I handed him one while I used the other on the counter. We didn’t speak until the only traces of red left were the diced tomatoes. “You have people watching out for you,” Quinn finally interjected. “I know it may not always seem like that, but there are. You’re in good hands.”

  I scrubbed even harder at the counter, wondering if the finish would last. I didn’t respond until

  I was done, and the damp paper towels were in the garbage. “Is he going to be coming after us again? Do we need to be on our guard?”

  The smile on Quinn’s face didn’t cross into his eyes. “You should always be on your guard, Justin.”

  I started putting everything away, then looked at the bottle in one hand, and the box in the other. It was disturbing how many of my nights ended in bandages and bleach.

  Nine

  “I knew they were trouble from the very first day. None of that ‘they were quiet children; good children’ namby-pamby nonsense.

  Those kids were spoiled, powerful, and reckless. Someone shoulda seen Moonset coming a mile away. But people are idiots.”

  Jack Wyatt (S)

  Carrow Mill, New York:

  From Moonset: A Dark Legacy

  “I saw something the other day when I went to the gym,” Mal said a few days later. I was waiting in his kitchen for the coffee to brew when he dropped this little bomb on me. “The kind of thing you were talking about, remember?”

  The problem with the coffee maker at home was that it hated me. Every time I tried to use it, the thing grunted and hissed at me like it was some kind of demonic creature. Possessed, no doubt. But Mal had no trouble with his, and so nearly every morning I made the frigid walk across the street for coffee.

  I did my best imitation of a Mal morning grunt, one that said, “Really, I’m fascinated. Please, tell me more, and take as long as you need. Use big words.”

  He chuckled quietly, then looked pointedly at the T- shirt I’d come over in. “Go grab a jacket or something. We can stop and get coffee after.”

  Well, he did use the magic word. I went upstairs, grabbing one of the hooded sweaters that was fitted on Mal, but loose and roomy on me. I didn’t need a jacket to run across the street, and none of us ever really locked the door, so there was never any fear of getting stuck outside. Until Mal decided on a field trip.

  I figured wherever we were going would be near either the gym or the coffee shop, since those were the only two places that Mal went with any regularity. “One of the guys at the gym was talking the other day, telling me about this house,” Mal confided as we got into the car. He was behind the wheel, of course, because he was the only one that the adults trusted to drive, and because I was still barely conscious.

  “What house?”

  “Well, it’s not a house. It was some kind of city building. Like a rec center or something?

  Anyway, there was a fire a few weeks ago.”

  Mal started taking side streets at random, first zigging then zagging in a vaguely nauseating manner. I kept getting jostled around the passenger seat, and while it helped wake me up a bit more, it did nothing for my mood.

  “And why do we care?”

  “You’ll see,” he said, glancing at me from the other side of the car. “It’s hard to explain.”

  A few blocks later, Mal pulled over to the side of the road. We weren’t that far from the downtown area—I could see the big clock tower that was Carrow Mill’s pride and joy in the distance. I had no idea where we were other than that, though. There were almost as many side streets as houses in this town, making it a veritable maze of suburbia.

  “I was curious, so I went looking for it,” Mal continued as he got out. I did the same. “It’s one more creepy thing to add to this town’s résumé, though.”

  The building had been gutted by fire, a white finish that in the best spots was now a sooty gray, but the entire second floor had been consumed by flames. It looked like a house, but it was more of a duplex or triplex.

  It wasn’t just that there’d been a fire that had basically destroyed the house, though. I saw now why Mal was so interested in it. There was something in the air, a sense of foulness that made the house and everything around it seem a hundred degrees colder.

  Mal crossed into the front yard, and I followed, feeling a pressure bearing down on me like we’d crossed an altitude threshold. My ears twinged, threatening to pop at any second.

  But there was more. Mal vaulted up the porch steps, stopping at the center unit’s front door.

  “I know I’ve seen this before somewhere,” he said. “Do you know what it is?”

  There was fire and smoke damage everywhere I looked, but the burns on the door were … different. There was a pattern in the char. It looked like there had been two fires. The one that had swept over the entire building, and caused serious damage to the door, and one even older than that, one that had gouged a pattern into the wood.

  At first I couldn’t see it for what it was, but after a moment it snapped together, like eyesight suddenly going from blurry to clear. There was a circle, almost completely shaded in, and waves trailing off of the side, like when Cole was really young and drew his suns with wavy rays instead of straight and all his teachers kept trying to correct him.

  It did kind of look like a strange sun, but the rays coming out from the sides were more like tentacles, writhing away from the center. The entire image was scarred deep into the wood, except for the sliver at the center that still hadn’t been touched. Originally, the front door had been painted white, and there was a strip that still gleamed against the darkness next to it—a strip that was shaped like a crescent moon.

  I reached out and brushed my fingers against it. The wood was still hot, burning against my fingers. As the feelings of heat and damp registered in my brain, my eyes saw the impossible.

  The tentacle mo
ved. It strained forward, shifting clockwise as if it could somehow break free.

  The wood was still hot, burning, against my fingers. “What the hell!” I snatched my hand away, backing up several feet. “Did you see that?”

  I understood what Mal was talking about now. There was a weird vibe to the building. Almost like déjà vu. But this was something else. There was a memory of words in my head, a memory that I was sure hadn’t been there before. A voice, broken and tattered, that was pressed against the side of my mind from the outside. Like a stamp, or a scar.

  “We only need one. ”

  “You heard it, right?” Mal wasn’t looking at the door at all, in fact he had his back to it entirely.

  “I heard … something.”

  “What do you think it is?”

  I shook my head. More mysteries. “Who’d you say told you about this?”

  “Some guy at the gym,” he shrugged. “He looked like a gym teacher or something. You know, sweats and stained T-shirts, hair that tries to convince everyone isn’t thinning, and all that.”

  Was the house haunted? Was that what this was? Maybe some kind of psychic imprint or something? I didn’t know much about ghosts or residual energy, but there was definitely something going on here.

  Mal interrupted my reverie. “You sure you haven’t seen this before? I know I’ve seen it somewhere.”

  I might have seen the symbol somewhere before, but it didn’t ring any bells. “I’m more concerned with the voice. And why did someone tell you about it in the first place?” We only need one? One what? And who needed it?

  “I don’t think he was a witch. They always give you that ‘yeah, I know who you are’ creepy look, and then they move as far away as they can,” Mal said darkly.

  “Next time you go, see if you can find that guy again. Find out if he knows anything else about the house.”

  “And the symbol?” Mal asked, as we walked back to the car. I turned back to the front door, remembering the way the tentacle had shifted like it was alive.