Moonset (21 page)

The air still felt warm where Quinn’s spell hung. I stayed close to it, trying to ward off the chill.

I changed my mind. Quinn was such an asshole.

Just before dinner, he came downstairs with a trio of very old, very dusty books. “Tomorrow’s project—I want a thousand-word essay on the Coven Wars at the turn of the last century and how that impacted modern coven policies.”

“You’re kidding.” I stared at him, and the books he dropped down onto the table, with nothing short of shock. I sneezed, then kept on sneezing. Homework … while I was home? This was absurd.

“Definitely not kidding,” he said.

“I don’t even know anything about the Coven Wars,” I argued, already knowing how this was going to end.

He flashed a smile. “Lucky for you I’ve got all these books. They’ll tell you everything you need to know.”

“What is it you expect me to write about?”

“There’s a wealth of information,” Quinn said. “Talk about how women weren’t allowed to lead a coven for two hundred years. How magical law grew around the coven bond and took it into consideration. How due process was affected by coven-on-coven violence. The Coven Wars are a fascinating part of our history.”

I looked at just how much history was dusted over the covers of the books. “Obviously.”

Quinn left the room as Jenna appeared, looking from the stack of books to the pasta I was cooking on the stove. “How’s it feel to be incarcerated at such a young age?” she asked. “Thinking about getting a prison tat? Maybe a butterfly on your shoulder?”

“You’re enjoying this way too much,” I said, for about the thousandth time.

“You could put flames around it,” she grinned. “Make it look a little more badass.”

“I think that’s too much detail for a prison tattoo.”

Jenna shrugged. “Sure, ruin my fun. What are you cooking?”

“Spaghetti and meat sauce.” I pointed to the package of ground beef on the counter.

She squinted. “Shouldn’t you have cooked that first? Noodles will be done before it.”

I grunted. Cooking was hard. And annoying. But Quinn was the proactive sort, and he kept insisting on teaching us how to cook. Neither Jenna or I had any right to be in the kitchen. I was just lucky that I hadn’t caught the pot of water on fire.

“Saw your girlfriend today,” Jenna added a few minutes later, when I was stirring the meat waiting for it to cook.

“I don’t have a girlfriend,” I said automatically.

Jenna shrugged. “Fine. Then I saw the pretentious little rich bitch who’s not good enough for my brother today.” She didn’t miss a beat.

Curiosity won out over playing it cool. Jenna already knew what I thought about Ash. Pretending otherwise was pointless. “Where was that?”

“She went into that shop with all the weird stuff. You know, across from the coffee shop? It has
costume jewelry
hanging in the window.” She tinged the word with an appropriate amount of disgust.

“So maybe she was looking for something retro.”
Ash had gone to the curio shop? Why?

I looked away, knowing full well Jenna would be turning her glare on me any moment. “Besides,” I added, “you don’t even know her well enough to say that she’s got money.”

“I know I don’t trust her.”

“You don’t trust anyone,” I countered. “That’s not saying much.”

“That’s why I’m never disappointed,” she replied in satisfaction. At this point, we both knew the conversation would just start going in circles, with Jenna inevitably claiming victory. I’d point out that she was always disappointed about
something;
she would counter that she was never disappointed in people, unlike the rest of us who kept getting hurt.

After dinner, I took Quinn’s homework up to my room and tried to start making headway on tomorrow’s project. I wasn’t even a chapter in before the technical jargon started, and I had to read each page three times before it started to make sense. Falling asleep was a relief.

I didn’t remember dreaming, but I remembered a lot of thrashing. When I woke up, the covers had come off the bed, and I was all tangled in them. And I was abnormally hot—I could feel the dampness of sweat all over my body, soaking into the sheets.

“You remember this?” Jenna leaned against my dresser, barely visible against the dark. I squinted, trying to figure out what she was talking about. Night had started to fall sometime while I slept. The only thing I kept on my dresser was a picture of the five of us that we’d taken the summer before. It had been tucked up into the side of the mirror, but now it was in her hands.

We’d been in a resort town, the kind that was mostly invisible from fall to spring. Cole had found a shopping cart about two miles from any stores that even
had
shopping carts. Mal and I had picked him up and stuffed him in the basket. For some reason, we all crowded around and took a picture, laughing around Cole’s flailing indignation.

It was the closest thing to a vacation we’d ever had. Cole had to go to summer school that year after skipping two straight months of English. The rest of us had walked around on eggshells the whole time—he thought every comment was about him. There could have been a book written about it.
Summer of My Emo Brother
.

“Yeah,” I said, my throat feeling raw, like I’d been screaming.

“I tried talking to Cole today,” she said.

“How’d that go?” The inside of my mouth tasted funny. Like gravel and something sour.

“Not so good. He blew me off.” I saw the flash of pain, but I don’t think Jenna realized she’d let it show. She could be heartless and relentless, but she could be hurt just like the rest of us. “Has he talked to you lately?”

“Should he?”

Jenna squirmed. “It’s just … he’s been acting weird lately. Funny, y’know? But he won’t talk to me about it. And he talks about
everything.
” She was pointedly quiet for a few seconds before she switched gears. “C’mon,” she said, holding out her hand to me. “Something’s going on.”

I took her hand, confused, as she helped me up and out of bed. “What kind of something?” I followed her out of my room and down the stairs.

“Not sure. But Quinn just got a call and flew out the front door. Told me not to leave the house, that it was life or death.”

“Was there another attack?” I was having a hard time pulling myself out of the sleep fog I’d been in. There was something I was missing.
Something with teeth.

My stomach sank and I didn’t know why. Jenna went to the front door, peering out one of the windows on either side of it. The porch lights were on at Mal’s house, and at Bailey and Cole’s.

Farther down the street, standing in the street itself and positioned perfectly under one of the streetlights, Quinn and the other two guardians were huddled together. Mal’s guardian Nick, and Kelly, the sorority guardian.

All three of them were clutching their athames, prepared to use them at a moment’s notice. A car turned onto our street and slowed as it approached the trio. Nick opened the driver’s door and Meghan stepped out.

“What’s she doing here?” I don’t know why I was whispering.

Jenna looked at me, an eyebrow raised. “If we knew we wouldn’t be spying, would we?”

Nick was getting in the car now, and he closed the door once he was behind the wheel. Then, like nothing had happened, he continued driving, turning towards down-town.

“You feel that?” I looked over at Jenna, and saw the most peculiar look on her face. Like she could almost make something out, but it still didn’t make any sense.

“Feel what?”

She shook her head, and focused back on the adults in the street. “Nothing. Never mind. Just one of those ‘someone walking over your grave’ feelings.”

Maybe they know about the book.
The thought struck me at all once. Maybe. It looked serious enough.

My coat was still tossed over the railing post at the bottom of the stairs. I grabbed it, figuring I could be outside and back in just a minute or two. Sneak into the garage and see if the book was still there. If it was, I’d grab it and hide it somewhere else.

Two minutes, tops.
If they find it, they might punish one of the others. It’s no one’s fault but mine. If anyone should take the blame, it should be me.

“Where are you going?” Jenna’s voice rose.

“I’ll be right back,” I said, opening the door before I could give her a chance to respond. Everything was fine as I first stepped off the landing and down onto the concrete porch. It was when my second leg left the safety of the house that something went wrong.

It was like that moment when you’re somewhere between being awake and asleep, but you’re still kind of dreaming. Everything is fine until you trip in the dream, and then you’re suddenly awake as your body jerks itself in compensation.

That was what this was like, except it was almost exactly opposite. I stepped down onto the porch, but some dream-part of me missed the step. I kept falling, like there were two of me. One on the porch, and one that was hurtling somewhere else.

There were a thousand pairs of hands, and they were all grabbing for me, each pulling me further and further down. There was a glimmer of light so far in the distance I thought I must be imagining it.

The farther they dragged me, the worse the pain. At first it was like every muscle in my body was clenching at the same time. But every few feet, it was like more and more of those muscles were being torn off my body, ripped from where they were supposed to be.

I was there, but I was also on the porch. Jenna had been standing next to me, but now she was towering over me like some sort of wild and terrified Amazon. She hadn’t stepped down onto the porch yet. I don’t know why I noticed that, but I did.

I tried to say something to calm her, but there was a tunnel between my mouth and my voice. It was like looking at a slide from the bottom up. Such a long way back.

They’re here. Now they’re here. Finally.
Whispers chittering against my skin. Their voices were legion; hot and icy against my skin, fetid and honey against all the things on the inside.

Part of me could still see Jenna, framed by the porch light. I was sinking faster, or she was floating higher. Either way, the distances kept growing.

Her mouth moved, but the words were unintelligible. All I could hear was the Others.
Here now. Finally here. They’ve come. Everything you’ve ever clawed for in nightmares. Here for you, crackling open your bones and biting down on your rage.
You know what we need.
A thousand voices, all talking in the same tongue. Something that wasn’t English, and wasn’t the language of magic. Something else.

Blood rushed to my skin, but it bounced down the tunnel all the way down to me before I felt the slap. Jenna’s face, blocking my vision. She’d grabbed me. Dragged me back towards the door. Slapped me.

She did it again, and I floated between two worlds. The hands released, though they struggled to regain their grip.

A third and final slap. Long enough for a single moment of clarity. This was not my sister. Jenna’s makeup never smeared, her eyes were never that wild. Her skin never flushed like that. Her breathing was never so erratic.

This was not my sister. She would never ask for help.

Jenna had never in her life screamed the way she did. “Quinn!” It was a howl, fearful and breaking apart at the seams. If I kept watching, I was sure I would see things spilling out the side of her as she came undone.

One of the voices crept close, a whisper-burn against my spirit.
You know what we need. We only need one. We only need one. We only need one.

That was the last thing I remembered, before the hands pulled me back down. It was almost like sleep. Almost exactly opposite.

Twenty-Two

“People thought it was a sick joke at first.
Moonset hadn’t even graduated from college yet. How could they be behind this? The reports said that their magic had been amplified by the Abyss—they’d willingly become warlocks and turned their black arts on the rest of us.”

Elizabeth Holden-Carmichael (C: Risenleaf)
Personal Interview

There were snatches of conversation as I floated back towards my body. Fearful words, some accusations, and the sound of tears. Whatever had happened, it wasn’t pretty.

“ … fixing … ”

“ … never so quick … ”

“ … damnit, tell me … ”

“He’s awake.”

Everything was blurry. My eyes burned at the harsh light. There was a bulb hanging from the open ceiling, the long chain swaying back and forth. Everything smelled musty and sour.

Basement. This was our basement. Why had they taken me down here?

Jenna’s face swallowed my vision. She’d wiped off her makeup and tied her hair back. Then she was pulling away, and Quinn was there, looking concerned. Standing on the stairs, looking over his shoulder, Meghan tapped away on her computer.

“Can you talk?” Quinn crouched down on his haunches, watching me.

Meghan looked up “He wasn’t in a coma, Quinn. Of course he can talk.”

“He had some sort of seizure,” Jenna snapped.

I had?

My throat was on fire, like something had reached inside and left huge gouges on its way back out. “Why the basement?” Even my voice sounded burned out.

“Best place for you,” Quinn said, stepping back. “Closest to the warding spells.” He looked over his shoulder, “Shouldn’t you be hovering over my grandmother, Meghan? There’s no one’s ass to kiss down here.”

I tried to sit up, but there was a problem. I could feel all my limbs, but I wasn’t having much luck moving them. My head wouldn’t even lift off the pillow. The next thing I knew, there were footsteps coming down the stairs. Even though I couldn’t see who it was that descended, I saw the way the new person’s arrival stiffened Quinn’s spine and caused Meghan to suck in a nervous breath. It had to be Illana.

“How is he?” Illana asked.

“The boy is stable,” Meghan said crisply. “He doesn’t seem to have a concussion, and there aren’t any lingering side effects from his episode. Psychological deviations have yet to be determined.”

“Deviations?” Jenna said, making it sound like something vulgar. “You’re the last person to talk about being deviated.”

I could hear it in her voice—she was getting close to losing it. I tried to force my arms to move again, to prop me up. I could barely twitch on command.

“Relax, young one,” Illana murmured, sweeping down next to me. She dabbed a towel against my forehead. “The darkness can act like a paralytic.”

“What?”

“She means it can paralyze you,” Quinn said. “Like getting hit with a taser. So don’t panic.”

“Someone … used Maleficia?”

“Yes,” Meghan said, her voice heavy and dramatic. “A warlock right under our noses.
Quelle surprise.
”

“You’re not helping,” Quinn said under his breath.

“Meghan.” Quinn’s grandmother called out her name and waited. The room grew silent as everyone waited to see what she’d say. “Next time let’s try for an evaluation that is actually comprehensive. The boy can’t move. I’d qualify that as a side effect.”

“Yes, Mrs. Bryer.”

I opened my eyes to see Meghan hovering on the stairs, her eyes wide. She kept doing some sort of twitch, like she couldn’t decide if she was going up the stairs or coming down them.

“That will be all,” Illana said coolly. A moment later, the girl vanished up the stairway. “Honestly,” the older woman exhaled.

I laughed weakly. “She’s
that girl.
”

“What girl?” Quinn asked. Even Illana was looking down at me with curiosity. Only Jenna knew what I meant. We shared a private grin.

“The girl whose father has to make a phone call to get her into college,” Jenna explained. “Never quite measures up, and has to kiss ass and beg favors to get ahead.”

“Meghan was top of her class,” Illana chided, although she did so absently, proving how little she cared about the girl.

“Meghan was
second
,” Quinn corrected smugly. He came down quite clearly on the “Meghan is a raving beyotch” side of the argument.

“Yes, yes,” Illana murmured. “We all know you were precocious. Don’t gloat; it’s a sign of poor breeding. Now then. Justin? What do you remember?”

Even blinking my eyes felt like it was some sort of process. “There were voices,” I rasped.

“Yes,” Illana drawled, sounding like she was humoring me and nothing more. “I’m sure there were.”

“They said, ‘They’re here.’” I looked to Quinn, who grimaced but didn’t immediately reply. “What’s here? Is something coming?”

“
You’re here, Justin,” he said, his tone growing softer. “The five children of Moonset.”

“Do you remember anything else?” Quinn asked, staring down at me.

“They were talking to someone,” I said slowly, thinking back to the voices and the cold that had slipped inside me. Just remembering it was enough to make me start shivering again. “It was a conversation.”

“Did you get a name?” Quinn pushed. “Hear his voice? Anything?”

“Hey, lay off him. He’s not-—” Jenna said, before cutting off abruptly. “Did you
let
this happen? Did you know something was going to happen to Justin?”

“Oh, do be serious,” Illana muttered with irritation. “How would Quinn have known that Justin would leave the house? Don’t be foolish. He thought the two of you smarter than you obviously were.”

“Why did you leave, Justin?” Quinn asked, leaning in. “I told Jenna you needed to stay inside. This is exactly the kind of thing we’ve been trying to protect you from.”

“Great job there,” Jenna said. “A rousing success.”

We only need one.
“I thought the warlock wanted us here?”

“He does.” Quinn narrowed his eyes. “Why?”

Because they don’t need all of us.
I looked over his shoulder, at the woman who’d moved us here like a bold chess move. I couldn’t speak freely in front of Illana. Even if I
really
trusted Quinn, I still didn’t trust his grandmother. She looked like she could garrote any one of us and not lose a night’s sleep over it.

“Because I’m still alive. I thought you said Maleficia liked to destroy things.” I looked down at my body. “It looks like I’m still in one piece.”

Quinn shifted, a guilty look in his eyes. “That’s be-cause—”

“Quinn!” I couldn’t see Illana anymore, but the whip crack demand in her voice left no doubt. She didn’t want him answering.

“The warlock tried to kill him tonight,” Quinn said, getting heated. “They need to know.”

“I’m not so certain that they did,” Illana replied. “It’s entirely possible that they wanted something else from him.”

I couldn’t feel a lot, but there was a sudden pressure on my leg. Right by where Jenna was standing. “I don’t like what you’re implying about my brother,” she said tightly.

Implying? It took my brain a second to put things in perspective. What else would a warlock want from me?
Recruitment. Moonset 2.0. A new generation of darkness.
But had Illana implied it? Or was Jenna jumping ahead like she always did, reading people too well and determining the undercurrent?

Illana huffed out a breath. “Relax, child. It isn’t like this is a formal accusation.”

“Then there’s no reason to continue keeping secrets from them,” Quinn announced. “If you’re convinced they’re not part of the problem, then they need to know.”

I heard a sigh, and then caught a glimpse of Illana and her flowing skirt heading for the stairs. “Then do as you think is best, Quinn,” she said. “I’m going to look in on the other children. I dare to hope they are better mannered.”

“Everyone’s okay?” I asked, my voice still a groan. Quinn nodded.

Tingles started running up my hands. Just little bursts, running down my fingers, then up the wrist, and then again at the elbow. Everything in between was still numb and senseless.

Once Illana was gone, the front door slamming ominously behind her, Quinn started helping me back upstairs. Except when he tried to sit me up, my body was still foreign and wasted.
I can still feel shame at least,
as the rash of heat crept up my body. My face was about a thousand degrees.

Quinn had to carry me up the stairs, and even though he tried to make light of the situation, no one laughed. I kept my eyes closed, not wanting to see either of their looks of pity. I was supposed to take care of
them.
Not the other way around.

He set me down on the living room couch. Jenna hovered at the edge of the room. I looked around Quinn and listened. “Are we the only ones here?”

He looked curious, but nodded.

I settled my hands into my lap. I still couldn’t bend my fingers properly, but at least I could move my arms around. “Is anyone listening?”

Quinn stared at me for a moment, chewing on his lower lip.

“What’s going on, Justin?”

“One second, Jenna,” Quinn said. He pulled the athame out of a holster that I hadn’t noticed before, tucked against the side of his jeans. As quickly as he had earlier, he slashed at the air. But this time, it wasn’t the simple astral ward he’d showed me. It was spell after spell, almost a dozen of them. He waited until the blue fire burned white before turning back to me.

“’We only need one,’” I said shakily. “You wanted to know what the Harbinger said to me that night.”

“Justin!” Jenna’s alarm was more shocked than acerbic, which only proved how traumatized she’d been tonight.

“We have to tell someone,” I said, slumping down in my seat. “And we need answers.”

“And you think
he’s
going to give them?”

I would have nodded, but I wasn’t sure I would be able to lift my head back up if it dropped. “Check his wards. He’s not making this conversation private for his health.” I didn’t have to see the symbols burning in the air to know what they were. I thought I had some understanding of what drove Quinn now. If we could help him stop the warlock, he might not break faith with the Congress, but he would skirt the line as much as possible.

“Why do you think the warlock doesn’t want you here?” Quinn asked. “Downstairs, you sounded confused.”

“Not the warlock,” I said, “something else. There weren’t just two voices I heard. There were a
lot.
I knew they were talking to someone, but he didn’t say anything back. It wasn’t a conversation.”

Jenna’s eyes widened. “They were instructions.”

I would have nodded if I could. “They’ve kept saying, ‘They only need one.’ One of us. One of Moonset’s children.” I turned my head as much as I could and looked at Quinn. “Why only one? Everyone knows we’re a package deal. We can’t be split up. It doesn’t make any sense.”

The curse that was bound up between all of us meant we couldn’t be ripped away from one another, but the voices sounded like that was exactly what they wanted.
It can’t be that easy. If it was, all we would have to do is wait, and the curse would eliminate the warlock and whoever was pulling his strings.

“The Coven bond protects you,” Quinn said slowly, “but that protection comes with a cost.”

Jenna crossed her arms in front of her. “What kind of cost?”

He held up one finger. “It’s easier for the Abyss to gain a foothold into a solitary witch because there’s only one mind to contend with.” He then held up both hands, and linked his fingers together. “A coven, on the other hand, has a bond that links them. It’s harder to infect a Coven witch, because a group is stronger than just one.”

Jenna and I looked at each other.

“But there are weaknesses, too,” he continued. “If the Abyss can single out just one witch, and overcome him even despite the Coven bond, it gains an advantage in taking the rest of the Coven. With each member it claims, that control gets stronger until the Coven succumbs entirely.”

“So you think that’s what happened tonight? The warlock sent some Maleficia out to try and take control of one of us?” Jenna asked.

“It would certainly fit,” he said. “But we still don’t know what, exactly, the warlock wants. The Congress hoped that bringing you here would at least make that much clear. If we knew what he wanted, we could plan to stop him. But ever since you arrived, he’s been erratic. Confused. We think the Maleficia may have broken him. And now it seeks a new host.”

“One of us,” I whispered.

“
All
of us,” Jenna clarified.

I meant to ask more, to find out more about what the Congress had in store for us, but I could barely keep my eyes open.

“Sleep,” Quinn said. “We’ll wait, and figure this out in the morning.”

Only there wasn’t anything to figure out in the morning. In fact, the rest of my suspension was a blur of books and boredom. Quinn warned me that I’d be sore for a day or two, lethargic and worn down because of the Maleficia attack. But he still expected his stupid essays.

Last night’s attack led to some changes, one of which was that while the other four were still allowed to go to school (there’d been some debate on whether or not it was safe), they had to arrive and leave together. In addition, all of us had to be home and indoors before nightfall, when the Maleficia was believed to be strongest. In the event of another attack, the Witchers wanted to make sure we were as protected as well as possible.

Which meant that my day was filled with constant interruptions as groups of Witchers in twos and threes walked through the house, examining weak points and bolstering the house wards. Maleficia wasn’t supposed to be able to cross a house’s threshold, but they didn’t want to take any chances.