Moonset (12 page)

Twelve

“The Covens are not gods, and the Solitaires
are not the working class. We are all fragile,
simple creatures. When faced with tyrants,
what can we do but tear them down?”

Sherrod Daggett (C: Moonset)
Unknown Date

I came downstairs the next morning to some sort of weird, Opposite World version of the Brady Bunch. Mal and Cole were at the table, already half hidden behind huge towers of breakfast foods. Quinn was behind the stove and he was putting together something that could only be qualified as a feast.

There was a tray of cut-up fruit, scrambled eggs, French toast, sausage, and an entire pot of coffee set on a warmer.

“Uhm … someone should go check on me,” I said, pointing back the way I came. “Because I must have cracked my head open in the shower. And this is my coma dream.”

“No coma,” Mal said.

Cole nodded vigorously. “Quinn’s my new god,” he said, shoving another sausage link in his mouth, “except not in a gay way.”

Mal lifted a hand to smack him, but Cole jumped out of his chair first and bounded out of reach. “Okay, okay. Maybe in a gay way, too. Whatever. All I know is that his French toast is kick ass, Jay.”

“Jay?” Mal and I spoke as one.

Cole shrugged. “Whatever. It’s part of your name, right?”

“My name’s
Justin
,” I said, settling down at the table across from Mal. Quinn was even wearing one of those dorky aprons with a slogan on it. My eyebrows raised. “‘May the forks be with you?’” I read.

He pointed with the spatula. “Shut up and eat.”

“Where’s Bailey?” Jenna half asked, half demanded as she breezed into the kitchen.

“She changed her outfit, so then she said her makeup had to be redone.” Cole sounded mystified, but Jenna took it in stride, and sat down next to me with one leg propped on the chair. Last night’s argument hadn’t been forgotten though, which I realized as she angled her body away from me and towards the kitchen. She plucked out a cube of melon and popped it in her mouth. “Breakfast is yummy, Quinn,” she announced after swallowing.

“So explain this to me again,” Cole said. “They’ve already got schedules and everything for us?”

Quinn turned around, still half watching the things on the griddle. “They’re adjusting your schedules based on what you took in Kentucky. Since midterms are coming up in a few weeks, the school is coordinating your tests with what you were studying down south. So you’re not totally screwed for your exams.”

Groans from around the table. There wasn’t any getting out of test-taking, which sucked but wasn’t surprising.

“Don’t all thank me at once,” Quinn commented. “It took a lot of effort to get your old school to agree to this.”

“Thanks, Quinn,” Jenna said sweetly.

Cole followed it up with, “What about magic lessons? Are they in-school here, or do we have to go somewhere afterwards?” He looked to my left, and I saw the look he exchanged with Jenna. She’d prompted him to ask, I was sure. But why?

“They’ll be last period, but there’s some adjustments that have to be made. So for now you’ll go to a last period study hall.” When there were enough witches in the school, our lessons were factored into a kind of independent study class, right down the hall from where kids were learning about Napoleon and Pythagoras.

What kind of adjustments had to be made?
“Maybe they listened to you after all,” I said under my breath, carrying just enough for Jenna to hear me. It was meant to be a conciliatory gesture, to make up for the argument last night, but she ignored me.

Bailey came in a few minutes later, still tugging one of her boots off. She and Jenna both had gone for trendy rather than practical. I couldn’t understand why boots needed heels in the first place, but it was their choice.

“Pass me a yogurt,” Jenna added, as Bailey pulled up a spot at the table. She leaned over the table and tossed one at her, and then sat down next to Cole and studied the table. The meal passed in relative silence, except for the frequent comments about how amazing everything was and demands for things to be passed one way or the other. For just a few minutes, it was like we were some sort of normal family.

I could almost relax and enjoy it. Except I knew that school was going to be its own kind of hell. It always was.

Eventually, everyone started packing it in, rummaging around to find coats, shoes, and book bags. By the time all five of us were out the door and into the SUV, we had less than twenty minutes until the school day started.

“You know how to get there?” I asked. As the one riding shotgun, I had to play navigator if Malcolm got lost. It didn’t happen that often, but I didn’t want today to be one of those rare days.

“Relax, Justin,” he said absently.

The high school wasn’t in the immediate downtown like most of the schools we went to. We drove through the center of Carrow Mill and down to the far side of town, where the school was located. Mal knew exactly where he was going.

Even eight schools later, there’s some stress about starting somewhere new.
What’s everyone wearing in New York? Are they going to treat us like freaks? How long until I get called into the principal’s office? Is my sister going to protest animal dissection for the hell of it?

Nervous energy was responsible for the way Cole kept tapping out a rhythm on his knees, and the way Bailey kept squirming in her seat.

“Everyone knows not to use magic in public, right? And if you slip up, find an adult that can clean up the mess.” Slips always happened—the wrong spell at the wrong time. The witches who worked at the school were trained to cover up those issues—either by altering memories, undoing whatever effects were still ongoing, or providing a good cover story. It was even rougher being a magical teacher than a regular one.

I shifted around, trying to catch all of their eyes while the seatbelt strap cut into my neck. “Cole?”

The tapping stopped. “I’m not going to do anything.” He sounded guilty already. Force of habit.

“We’re all going to be on our best behavior, little brother,” Jenna said, with absolute syrup in her voice. “No need to go turning anyone in to the authorities.”

I looked at the console’s clock. We still had about ten minutes. Plenty of time, I figured, as we pulled into the parking lot of … the most elaborate high school I’d ever seen.

“Wow,” Bailey breathed from behind me.

Carrow Mill High wasn’t some thirty-year-old structure built with only function in mind. This was a building that someone had taken great care to design. The curving walls of the buildings were sand-colored bricks, and everywhere I looked it seemed like there was something moving. Buildings sloped to one side, towered up into a clock tower, or circled around. It looked more like the kind of building you’d see in a movie, not a high school.

Malcolm finally found a spot in the side lot, where it looked like a lot of other students were parking as well. That made it a bit of a hike to get into the school, since we had to walk all the way back down alongside the buildings and then around to the front.

“We ready to do this?” I looked around, at the four other members of my family. Eighth school in three years. This was getting so old. But by this point I’d done it so many times I was used to being the new kid.

“Last school we went to got blown up,” Jenna mused.

I looked at the school and wondered. How would this one fare? Would we walk away in six months, no harm done? Or would the school year end more actively: in fire or flood?

Thirteen

“Carrow Mill is holy. A true sacred space. It’s where they came together. Where they left their hearts. Where they sacrificed themselves.”

Lucinda Dale (S)
Former disciple of Moonset, interview

Once we walked into the school, it was like a whirlwind. Someone must have held a drill to practice because as soon as we stepped into the office, a trio of counselors appeared to shoo us back into the hallway. Malcolm and I were together, Jenna and Bailey were together, and Cole was off by himself.

They hustled us down the hallways, giving a rapid-fire summary of what we could expect as new students at Carrow Mill High. I gripped my orientation folder, and tried to make sense of the school map. Our first classes were helpfully marked with a big red X, but everything else was horribly smudged.

I tried asking questions, but the woman was on a mission. The hallways and everything in them had an entirely “new” look to them, and they were all decorated in shades of silver and blue, which must have been the school colors. The school was pristine, looking none the worse for wear despite housing almost a thousand kids a day—nine hundred of whom stared at us like we were the new sideshow freaks in town.

The bell rang, and the halls emptied out as everyone who knew where they were going slipped into their classrooms.

“The science building is through the walkway there,” the guidance counselor pointed to the rear of the building. “Mr. Daggett, you’ll be in SC 201. Mr. Denton, you’re in 114. Show the teacher your copy of your schedules and you should be fine.”

Even though the woman had barely introduced herself before hustling us off, and hadn’t bothered to really greet us at all, I still smiled at her. “Thanks.”

She turned to go, but then hesitated and turned back, looking concerned. “Try and stay out of trouble, boys.”

Our reputation preceded us.

We compared our schedules as we headed out the doors and into the science building. Both of us were on a “B Schedule,” whatever that was. It was also confusing since we didn’t start the day with homeroom like most of the other schools I’d been to. We started out with our science labs, then homeroom, another couple of classes and then lunch together. That’s as far as we compared before Malcolm found his classroom.

“Catch you later,” he said, setting off with a wave.

I headed up the stairs and through a curtain of blue and silver streamers that hung down from the second floor. Another school with too much spirit. I sighed.
Fantastic.
Jenna hated spirit. My morning passed quickly, each class just as awkward and uncomfortable as I remember. The first days were almost always the worst. Almost, because with Jenna around, the last days were
also
the worst.

I sat through the forty-two minutes of Anatomy and Physiology relieved to realize they’d picked up where my A&P class at Byron had left off. I also tried to familiarize myself with the school and my schedule. Independent Study was the official name for our magic lessons. It was hardly independent, since they gathered up all the magical kids in one room. But they had to call it
something
so the regular people didn’t get suspicious.

On my way to try to find my locker, I passed a poster of a yellow brick road with a green-faced woman in the background. “AUDITIONS SOON” was scrawled in white along the bottom. Of course, the school play was
The Wizard of Oz
. Everyone loved dead witches.

My locker number, along with the combination to the actual lock, was printed at the top of my schedule. I followed the line of lockers down, getting lost twice before I found my locker.

“You’ve got to be kidding me,” I said under my breath.

I looked back the way I’d come, and then further up ahead in the hallway. Every locker I could see was the same blue color, and there were bits of paper and things taped to a few here or there, but none of them were
defaced.
Only mine.

They’d assigned me a locker with a hideous tan splotch over the front, where the blue paint had been scratched off and revealed the color underneath.
This almost looks familiar,
I thought, and then I twitched. A circle, almost completely shaded in, with rays wavering around the sides. I’d seen this symbol before, at the house Mal and I had gone to. The symbol had been scratched into the door.

“I figured that was yours,” Mal said, nodding to the front of my locker. “I met one of the other kids in our independent study group. Someone here has a sick sense of humor.”

I cleared my throat, nervous and unsure why. “What?”

He tapped the graffiti design. “It’s not random. It’s
theirs.
It’s how you knew Moonset took credit for something. Like their signature.”

“And someone scratched it on my locker. Why?”

“I’m not the one with the devious mind,” Mal said nonchalantly. “But if I had to guess, I’d say one of the other kids here isn’t happy to see us.”

I found my homeroom with an extra thirty seconds to spare before the bell rang. Once again, I had to do an awkward pause at the door until I could find out where there were open seats. In homeroom, though, the teacher barely seemed interested in what was going on. She was flipping through a ledger when I handed her my class schedule.

“Over there, all the way in the back,” she said, waving me away after looking at my schedule. “Over there” was probably the least helpful direction she could have given me, but I just went to the row closest to the windows and sat in the seat furthest back.

Several minutes passed, and then the announcements began over the loudspeaker at the head of the room. It was basically permission to zone out for the next fifteen minutes, as nobody else in the class seemed to be paying much attention.

Then she walked into the room, and suddenly my day wasn’t quite so bad anymore.

Ash swept into the room like every eye was on her, and once people started to realize she was there, it was. She wore a skirt over leggings, heels that clacked with every confident step, and a mauve long-sleeved shirt. In essence, she looked amazing. She waggled her fingers at the teacher as she passed the desk and headed down the aisle next to mine until she could take the free seat across from me.

“
You
are an overly ambitious boy,” she said, leaning across the aisle towards me. Her fingers tangled into the chain she wore around her neck, that ended with a cross at the bottom.

She thought we were getting close? That almost made my brain sputter into to a halt. “I’m what?”

She ran a hand through her hair, watching me with a teasing smile. “You’re the talk of the school, didn’t you know?” Ash waved a hand. “My own little celebrity.”

I squirmed in my chair. “I’m not,” I muttered. It was bad enough when I was around witches who
did
know who I was. I didn’t want to be a celebrity among the regular kids.

Her smile widened. “Don’t worry, I’ll protect you from the paparazzi.”

“Ashen Farrer, you aren’t even
in
this homeroom,” the teacher announced, looking up from her bookkeeping.

“I’m Justin’s student advisor, Miss G. I’m supposed to make sure he gets to his classes all day.”

They had student advisors? And Ash and I were spending the day together?
Suddenly my day, and my life, were looking up. Maybe this school wouldn’t be so bad after all.

Someone further up in my row started giggling. Miss G, or whatever her name really was, was frowning in our direction. “You know we don’t have student advisors, Ashen. Now don’t you have a homeroom full of classmates that miss you terribly?”

“Ashen?” I asked.

She grinned. “If you knew the alternative, you’d be pleasantly surprised with Ashen. Why do you think I go by Ash? Ashen sounds so morbid, don’t you think?” She made no move to get up and leave the room, and the teacher didn’t seem to want to push the issue.

The voices over the loudspeaker were still going strong. Every few minutes they changed, as the next person stepped up to deliver their announcements. “ … for the spring play will be held in the auditorium Monday and Tuesday after school … ”

“Being the new kid doesn’t bother me so much.” I don’t know why I was confiding in her, but maybe the revelation of her real first name was a sign. “I’m more of the ‘stay quiet and keep my head down’ type, though.”

Her perfectly sculpted eyebrow lifted. “A few more days, and girls will be lining up to date you,” she said, brushing off any concern about what her friend was doing. “Secrets make you more interesting.”

I don’t want to date other girls.
“I guess,” I said noncommittally. The bell rang and we both climbed to our feet. Ash followed me into the hall. She plucked the map out of my hands the moment I had tugged it free from my bag. “Hey!” I grabbed for it, but she darted out of the way.

“Come on, you don’t want to be late for your class,” she announced before sprinting down the hall.

Somehow in a matter of seconds, Ash had managed to worm her way through the crowd, leaving me a half-dozen heads behind her. Every time I tried to move around someone, or gain some ground, I got more dirty looks.

I finally caught up with her at the end of the hallway. “You’re heading down this way,” Ash said, turning to her left and starting off again.

“What are you doing?” I followed her. What choice did I have?

Once we were in front of my next class, she stopped and handed me back the map. “I told you, I’m your student advisor. Now go be brilliant!” As she started to walk away, she reached up and ruffled her hand in my hair, totally messing it up. Just like that, she wandered back the way she’d come like nothing had happened.