Moonset (25 page)

There were also whole passages that read like an opus to his ego. Emily continued to elude him, and Diana made it clear she wouldn’t play second fiddle. It was hard to reconcile the teen I was reading about—who clearly wanted both girls—with the man who was technically my father.

The other part that was troubling me was that there was nothing that suggested Sherrod Daggett was drawn to the darkness. He wasn’t the outcast student, secretly thinking of how he’d get his revenge. There was only an occasional sense of his growing awareness of politics—of the Covens and their role in administrating our world. If anything, he sounded like a revolutionary. He had grand ideas, and thought outside the box.

If I didn’t know who he’d become, I could have almost admired him. At least his ideas—Sherrod as a teenager sounded like a douchebag. I might be the same age now as he was when he wrote some of these entries, and I didn’t have an ounce of his self-awareness or his activism. And I hoped I wasn’t half the douche he was.

Then, somewhere around the last third of the book, the personal entries stopped. There were no more hints about how torn he was between the girls or how everyone should be involved in their government. The last section of the book was devoted to Coven spells, spells that utilized the bond between the witches. There was no explanation for what had changed—had Moonset changed him right from the start?

The next time I looked up from the book, my room looked different. Bright. I looked out the window, and realized the sun had risen already. I was tired—not exhausted like I’d stayed up all night reading—but the kind of tired that came from studying for too many hours at once. My mind was snapping with ideas and thoughts, but my body was struggling to keep up.

I needed coffee. I tucked the book back under the mattress and put my English notebook back in my bag. A quick review of my room didn’t show anything else out of the ordinary. At least not yet.

Bailey was already in our kitchen when I walked in. She sat at the island, her arms resting on the counter and her head resting on top of her wrists. She barely looked up when I approached.

“Hey, Bay,” I said softly. “You feeling okay?”

She shrugged, and I went to make a fresh pot of coffee while she slouched there. It was too early for anyone else to be up, so it was surprising that Bailey was not only up but had already come back over from her own house.

When Quinn came in a few minutes later, followed by Mal, I reconsidered what I thought of as “too early.”

“Did anyone get any sleep last night?”

Mal studied me, his eyes thoughtful. “Did you?”

“I’m making coffee,” I said, turning back to it while avoiding the question. “If anyone wants.”

“Yes, please,” Quinn said tiredly.

Mal took up the seat next to Bailey, eyes smudged dark just like hers.

“You two look like the walking dead,” I said, trying to pry a smile out of them. Hell, I would have settled for one of them. But Bailey was sleep-deprived and grumpy, and Mal looked a step beyond grumpy. Crabby?

“I stayed on the couch at Bailey’s house,” Mal added. There was something off about his voice. It was flat. Almost robotic? “Someone had to.”

The dig knocked me sideways. Was he saying I hadn’t done enough? I’d done everything I could to keep both Bailey and I safe!

He’s probably just sleep-deprived. Give him some time, and he’ll calm down.
A weird squirming feeling in my gut said that this was more than just a rough night talking.

Were Mal and I fighting now? I knew we hadn’t talked much lately, but I had figured he was off doing his own thing. He was so against anything to do with the magic anyway. I just assumed he’d prefer it that way.

“Where’s Cole?” Quinn asked, looking down at Bailey.

It took her a minute to raise her head. “Sleeping,” she said, her expression unusually hostile.

“Hey, enough of that,” I said easily. “Don’t take it out on Quinn. Why don’t you go into the living room and curl up on the couch? Take a little nap or something.”

Without another word, Bailey got up from the kitchen island and headed into the living room. Mal shrugged and followed her. When they were both gone, I looked in Quinn’s direction. “I guess it’s been a rough night for everyone.”

“Keep an eye on them,” he said, watching the direction they’d disappeared in. “J
ust in case.”

“Just in case of what?” I could feel last night’s frustration rearing up again. Quinn kept trying to take over, to edge me out of the way. But it wasn’t his job. He wasn’t the one who’d still be here in six months, looking after Bailey and the rest. I had to do it.

He held up his hands. “Just … in case. Let me know if anything’s off.”

“We’re. Fine.” I said, and that was the end of that.

Cole trudged over about an hour later, around the same time that Jenna graced us with her presence. Jenna and I were the only ones in any semblance of a good mood, although mine was more coffee based than anything else.

The five of us watched television in the living room for a few hours, Mal dozing in one of the recliners. Jenna tried on several occasions to start up a conversation with Bailey, but Bay was having none of it.

“So we’re just supposed to stay in the house all day?” Jenna asked, turning towards me after the latest attempt to talk to Bailey failed.
What’s with her
? she mouthed.

I had no idea what to tell her about Bailey, so I just looked away. “Yeah, for a couple days maybe. They’ve got extra Witchers coming into the city I guess, and they want us to stay out of the way.”

“I’ve left the house lots of times,” she said thoughtfully. “And I haven’t had half the problems you have. Why’s he so focused on you?”

Ash had summed it up perfectly earlier.
If you want to get to the others, you go through Justin.
Maybe that meant he’d read our files. Or he’d been closer than we thought all along.
Someone
had brought that spellbook into the house, and with the amount of Witchers in the neighborhood, someone would have noticed a stranger.

Was Bridger hiding in plain sight?

“I’m just extra annoying,” I offered, and Jenna made a noise of agreement.

No one seemed very active. We all just kind of dozed in front of the television. I curled up in one of the arm chairs, Cole sprawled around my feet. It was late afternoon by the time my yawning became uncontrollable, and I went for a coffee refill.
Just need more caffeine.
I don’t know
why
I was so insistent on staying up, but I wasn’t going down without a fight.

Jenna followed me into the kitchen. “You should get some sleep. Just an hour or two. You look terrible.”

“I’ll be fine,” I said. “I’m not even tired.” I think I was a step beyond tired. Exhaustion had passed me by entirely and now I was running on nothing but coffee and stubbornness.

Bailey craned around in her seat. “You should sleep, Justin.”

“I don’t need to sleep,” I insisted.

There was a weird tension in the room. Jenna watched me, looking like she was trying to make up her mind about something. Finally she nodded, then shifted her weight from one foot to the other. “At least take a shower. Five minutes. You look like hell.” She grabbed down a bowl, a box of cereal, and the milk out of the fridge, setting it up on the counter like some sort of self-serve station.

“Would you guys just stop? Seriously.” Part of me was worried about leaving them in the house with Sherrod’s book in my room. Did I give it away somehow? Did they know?

“You stink,” Cole said flatly, from his spot spread out on the floor. A chorus of agreements (or grunts in Mal’s case) followed.

“Fine, I’ll take a shower,” I snapped.

Once I was under the spray, and I could feel the tension of the last twenty-four hours draining out of me, I had to admit that maybe it was a good idea. I was still only in there for about ten minutes, but it was enough time to pull myself together, and figure out what to do next.

I came out of the bathroom, dried and dressed even if I was still a little damp. I got as far as my room before I realized just how quiet the house had gotten.

“Jenna? Bay? What are you guys doing?” I called down the stairs. The house was silent. Still.

Oh no. Oh no oh no oh no.
I dropped my towel and dirty clothes and flew down the stairs.
No no no no no.
I went through the living room, the dining room, and finally the kitchen. The chairs were still pulled out, but each of them was empty. “Quinn!”

The milk was on the countertop, turned on its side. Most of it had already spilled out, and trickled down onto the floor, but there was still a steady
plop plop plop.
“Quinn!” I shouted, as my eyes fixed on the edge of the table. Lined up like toy soldiers or a stack of dominoes were four cell phones.
Their
four cell phones.

Quinn came thundering down the stairs. “What’s wrong?”

I turned in a circle. “I–I just left for a minute. I just went to take a shower. Five minutes, max.”

“Justin?”

The others were gone. And it was all my fault.

Twenty-Six

“We knew it was coming. They made us promise not to avenge them. To lay down our arms.
Even on the last day, knowing they were embracing death, they were so tragically
beautiful. I wish I could have gone with them.”

Lucinda Dale
Interview about the day Moonset surrendered

After that, the house was a whirlwind of activity.

“Someone disabled the guards,” Quinn said when he came back inside. There’d been two Witchers sitting out in front of the house, unconscious when he’d gone to check. No one had seen anything, coming or going.

“He got into the house somehow,” I said. “He made them go with him.”

Quinn didn’t immediately agree with me, and the expression on his face suggested he thought the answer was something else.

“They wouldn’t have gone with him,” I insisted. “Not by choice.”

“I didn’t say anything.”

“I know what you all think. That we’re just like Moonset, just waiting to turn evil and bring down the establishment. But we’re not! Jenna and the others wouldn’t do that!”

“Okay,” Quinn said, his voice calming. “Relax. We’re going to find them.”

There was a sick feeling in my stomach, and it was only getting worse by the moment. Something was wrong.
Really
wrong. It was more than a hunch; it was like there was an intangible part of me inside, and it was all knotted up. Like my spirit was cramping.

I spent two hours pacing the downstairs waiting for news. Quinn left with one of the search groups, but each one came back later without news. Finally, I couldn’t stand it anymore.

Last night I was half convinced that I would never talk to Ash again. But now she was my only option.

“Justin?”

“I need your help,” I said, trying to push down the hurt I still felt at the sound of her voice. “I need to break out of my house.”

She laughed, sharp and brief, immediately followed by a long pause. “You’re serious?” It wasn’t a question.

“You owe me,” I said, and hung up the phone.

After that, I was very busy. The sun was setting, and night would be here before long. My earlier exhaustion was a distant memory. Now my body was wired, running on fear and a weird kind of anticipation.
This is what we’ve been waiting on.
I didn’t know where the thought came from, but I knew it was right.
This
was the warlock’s plan. Finally.

If Bridger thinks we’re going down without a fight, he’s an idiot.
I don’t know how he managed to get the others out of the house—and I refused to think about any other alternative—but I would find them. Somehow.

I emptied my school bag of all but two of my notebooks, and then I tucked Sherrod’s spellbook in between them. Moving very carefully, I crept through the halls, pausing at every minor creak and groan of the floorboards. The downstairs was full of Witchers, but none of them was up here.

I didn’t turn on the lights in Quinn’s room, just in case someone downstairs noticed. He kept his tools in the cedar chest at the foot of his bed. I needed one of his athames. Just in case. I misjudged the distance right off the bat, slamming my toe into the side of the chest, and making a sound I was sure could be heard all the way downstairs.

I froze in place, and started counting to fifty. Any minute, someone was going to slip up the stairs and find me in Quinn’s room, rummaging through his stuff.

But no one came. I got to fifty, waited a few extra seconds, and then found the chest. With the spare knife in hand, I slipped back out of the room, and dropped it in my book bag. I wasn’t sure if we were going to need it, but better safe than sorry.

“It’s getting pretty rough down there,” Ash said, materializing in my doorway. “What happened?”

“Everyone disappeared. Witchers think they’ve all gone rogue. Trying to convince them it’s the warlock is pointless. They’ll just keep letting Bridger do whatever he wants until he collects all of us.”

“Whoa,” Ash said, eyes widening. “Slow down. Reverse. Start over. Bridger? As in
Bridger
?”

Crap. I looked at her helplessly. Begging her to forget what she heard wouldn’t work. I might have been running on nerves, but my brain was still a little slow. I sighed. “He came after us at our last school.”

“I thought you got attacked by a wraith?”

“A wraith working for Bridger,” I said. “And now he’s here. He left me a note yesterday. And it makes sense. The warlock’s been doing stupid little attacks, trying to get the Congress to bring us here. Why would someone like Cullen Bridger care about burning down a building? He’d burn the whole town.”

“So how can you be sure it’s him?”

I showed her the postcard of the Golden Gate bridge, and the note on the back.

“Okay … ” Ash took a moment, then nodded. “Okay. Why doesn’t Quinn know about this? They still think the warlock is a local.”

“Because I can’t tell them how I got it.”

“How did you—no, never mind. I don’t think I want to know.” She looked around the room, her eyes considering. She looked up, and met my gaze. “It’s a lot tamer than I would have thought. I expected a poster of Carissa the underwear model over your bed or something.”

“Sorry,” I said, zipping up my bag. “Any idea how to get us out of here?”

Ash very carefully closed the door behind her. “Start walking around.”

“What?”

She twisted the little lock on the side of the handle and spun around. “Walk around.”

I paced out of surprise, walked to the side of the bed and then back to the closet. Meanwhile, she sauntered over towards my bed, whispering words under her breath. And then she fell back, bouncing off my mattress with a laugh.

“Come here,” she murmured, eyes full of mischief.

Was she kidding? “Ash, I can’t. We need to focus.”

“Come. Here.” She even crooked her finger at me, a challenging smile on her face.

I crossed to the bed, set one knee on it, and hesitated. But that wasn’t good enough for Ash. She leaned forward, grabbed me by the shirt, and pulled me forward. On top of her.

“There,” she said breathlessly once we were nose to nose. Her eyes were dark. Fathomless. There was a moment where my breath caught hers, where we were staring into each other. Where I started to lean forward.

Then she pushed me back off. “That should do it,” she said brusquely, leaping to her feet.

I sat back, dazed. “Do what?”

“
Araic infious
,” she murmured. Suddenly I heard the sounds of movement on the floor, despite the fact that neither of us were moving. Bedsprings groaned, there was laughter. Every sound that had happened over the last thirty seconds. As the sounds and the shuffling repeated over again, I got it. It was an illusion, but a realistic one. As far as anyone else in the house was concerned, we were still just hanging out in my room. And they’d be too busy to worry about the girl in my room.

“It’ll buy us some time,” she said, heading for the window. “But they’re going to find out you’re gone quick.” She pulled the window open and had one leg out onto the roof when she looked back at me still on the bed. “Well?”

I followed her onto the roof, moving carefully while Ash seemed to bounce from step to step. We crossed the front of the house and over the garage towards the backyard. “Hope you’re not scared of heights, Ace,” she grinned. She whispered “
aerous
í
” and leapt down into the backyard.

“Come on,” she called up, the sound of her voice muted by the storm. I looked down. At least a ten-foot drop. But Ash seemed to be fine.
Ash was also trained by Witchers
, I reminded myself. But I jumped anyway.

I knew enough about physics to know that when you jump from the roof it’s supposed to hurt. But landing on the ground was about as painful as jumping off the last step of a staircase.

Ash saw the look on my face and waggled her fingers. “Magic.” Then she turned around and started cutting through the backyard. I rushed to follow. “I parked on Carnegie Street. I figured there’s no way they’d notice my car over there.”

“You’re good at this,” I said in surprise.

“Of course,” Ash said, her face going serious. “Now tell me what’s going on. Where did you get that postcard?”

“I found one of Sherrod’s spellbooks from when he was in high school,” I said. “But I got rid of it,” I said hurriedly, “after I had some time to think. Bridger dropped it off at the house for me last night. He was
in
our house.”

“Are you sure it was him?” she asked.

“You don’t have to go with me,” I said. “This isn’t your fight.”

“Yeah, but if we save the day, maybe you’ll forgive me,” she said, offering me a weak grin.

She might have been right. The fact that she’d come when I called and still helped me sneak out went a long way. “Come on,” I said, hurrying towards her car.

“You don’t even know where we’re going yet,” Ash said.

We cut through one of my neighbor’s backyards, slipping around a covered up above-ground pool. As we crossed the house and into the front yard, the so-far silent night was interrupted.

“Do you hear that?” Ash asked, stopping and cocking her head to one side.

I didn’t at first, but a few seconds later, I picked up on it. “Sirens,” I whispered. They grew louder and louder until they were nearly deafening. Half a block away, two fire trucks and I don’t know how many other flashing vehicles started surging past, heading towards downtown.

“What do you think’s going on?” I asked, my voice hushed.

Ash looked severe. “Distractions,” she said. “Now, how are you planning to find the others?”

I patted my bag and explained about one of the spells I’d read that morning. Ash didn’t turn on the radio when we got into the car. We drove away from the direction all the emergency crews were heading. If she was right, and it was a distraction, Bridger wouldn’t be setting up anywhere near there. So we drove to the parking lot of a Walgreens and parked near the back. Ash put the car in park but left the engine running.

“You’re sure this is going to work?”

I pulled my father’s spellbook into my lap. “I don’t have the slightest.”

I kept flipping, searching for one of the first spells I’d managed to translate. I studied it for almost a full minute, piecing together the words that were so carefully lettered in the book and trying to form the cadence of the spell.

To cast the spell wrong might not do anything. Or it might make my brain explode. At this point, brain-explodey Justin was still looking like he’d have a better future.

“
Igneus terrous itie,”
I said, the words sounding thick on my tongue.

Just like that, and it felt like my vision was clearing. Like I could see in a way that people rarely did, and if they understood, they would want to be like this all the time. I continued flipping through the book, careful not to spend too long on any one page.

“And this spell just lets you … memorize anything you read?”

I nodded, my focus still on the words on the page.

“Your dad was wicked smart,” she said, and it almost sounded like a compliment.

It took time to translate the shorthand-like writing into words, and then to figure out what they meant, but eventually I found the section I was looking for—the one with every spell relating to the Coven bond that Sherrod Daggett had known in high school.

It took five minutes for me to read, comprehend, and store away every spell in that section, and half the spells in the beginning of the book. I sensed Ash moving around while I studied, blocking out the streetlights for moments here or there as she shifted, but my focus was totally on the book.

Each spell I translated and remembered felt like it was being slotted into my brain. It would have been better to know what they all were meant to do, because “Raven in the noontime” wasn’t exactly the kind of name I would have given to a spell. It didn’t take nearly as long as I thought, and I went back and looked over several of the spells I’d already translated. The more practice I got, the faster I could figure out the next spell.

Once I was done, I closed my eyes and took a deep breath. As soon as I thought about the book, I remembered the spells perfectly, like I was still reading them from the page. Instant memories. They’d fade eventually, but maybe they would help tonight.

“You okay?”

I had to blink a few times to clear my eyes. “I think so, yeah.”

“Good,” she said, sliding a much thicker journal out of her bag. “Now this.”

“Your spellbook?” I reached out a hand, but then held back. That wasn’t what I was using Sherrod’s book for—to randomly learn as much magic as possible. The desire was there, definitely so, but this wasn’t the way to do it.

“No,” I said, pulling back and turning towards my window.

“Justin, you’re planning to go find your family. And odds are, they’re in the middle of a black magic war zone. If he’s summoning more Maleficia, you need to be prepared.”

I pulled Quinn’s knife out of my pocket. “I’m prepared.”

“Beautiful,” she said, her tone dry, “you’re bringing a knife to an Apocalypse. Do you even know how to use that thing?”

“It’s a knife.”

“It’s an athame,” she corrected. “Have you ever used an athame in a fight?”

“Have you?”

“Well, no. You’re supposed to be eighteen before they’ll teach you.” She shifted the car into drive and started pulling out of the parking lot. “Do we have a general direction to go on, or are we just going to guess?”
The spell I’d been thinking of—the one that prompted the entire night’s insanity—didn’t have a flashy name like all of the others. Maybe Sherrod had been sick that day. Or maybe it didn’t do what I thought it did. But a spell called The Beacon seemed rather appropriate for tracking down lost Coven mates.