Scott Tracey - Moonset

“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 l e t 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 l ot. 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.

I stayed on the couch, because half the time I could barely keep my eyes open and I didn’t think sleeping at the kitchen table would end well. Gravity was a bitch, and the floors were hardwood.

I finished the first paper about the Coven Wars by the skin of my teeth, but as soon as I emailed the document to him, he came downstairs with another stack of books and my next assignment. If possible, these books were even dustier than the first ones. “I want you to write a report on how a warlock is brought to trial. How is a charge of invoking the black arts proven?

Talk about the trial, the investigations, and everything up until a guilty verdict. And then you can talk about how the process has changed in the last twenty years.”

I was waiting for a word count, but Quinn didn’t say anything further. “How long?” I’d max out on a thousand words before even covering half of what he was asking for.

“As long as it takes,” he said. “Be succinct. You should be able to wrap it up in … five or six thousand words.”

Quinn wanted the Never-ending Paper. Five thousand words was huge—that would take me at least a month! But I was too drained to argue. But surprisingly, the books he’d given me weren’t nearly as dry as the ones for the first assignment. Maybe the writing style was more modern, or maybe it was because the subject matter hit closer to home.