Moonset - Scott Tracey

Or asked us if we were some kind of weirdo homeschoolers.

“Is there supposed to be something else?”

He shrugged. “It just looked like there was some graffiti on the door. I was just wondering.”

“Okay, seriously, that’s enough,” I snapped. “Sorry,” I apologized to Ash, “he gets a little intense about fires. I think he wants to be a volunteer fireman or something.”

“Or a pyromaniac,” Ash said. It took me a second to realize that she was kidding. “I hadn’t heard about any graffiti, but it’s possible, I guess. My dad might know. I could ask?”

“No, that’s fine,” I replied, just as Mal chimed in with, “Would you?”

I’m going to kill you later. I don’t know if Mal could read my thoughts or not, but he avoided looking at me and focused on Ash.

“Anyway,” she said, turning to me. “You should give me your sister’s number. I figure I can introduce her to a few girls before school starts. Might make her feel better about moving in the middle of the year.”

“Jenna?” I asked, completely caught off guard. Why would Ash want to hang out with Jenna?

Jenna wouldn’t even want to hang out with Jenna.

“The other sister,” she laughed. “Bailey? She who loves the puppies?”

Oh. Of course. “I mean, yeah, that sounds nice. I’m sure Bailey would love it.” I tried not to sound too disappointed.

But Ash saw through me anyway. “Relax, big brother. No need to go into another pout.” She climbed to her feet, and I leapt up to mirror her. “It was good to see you again, boy wonder, but I have places to go and minions to pester.”

Should I walk her to the door? Or stay standing and really look like some kind of freak? What the hell was the matter with me?

Ash wagged her empty coffee cup at me, and I took it automatically. She clasped her hand around mine, so cool and amused. “You can take care of that for me, right?”

I nodded automatically, a warm rush running through my body at the touch of her hand on mine.

Mal waited until she left to laugh. “You’re so whipped.”

“And you’re a dick.” I waited long enough for Ash to get to her car or whatever, even though all I wanted to do was storm out of the coffee shop and go home. But I didn’t want her to see me all pissed off.

Mal decided not to press the issue and waited with me in silence, breaking it only after we were on our way to the door and I was in the middle of tossing our coffee cups. “You’re not seriously going to throw that out, are you?”

What the hell? “I’m not saving her cup just because she drank out of it. I’m not really the mouth breather you tried to make me out as.”

I got the annoyed older-brother look that I hated. Usually, that look was reserved for Cole and Bailey when they acted out.

“No, you idiot,” he said, pulling Ash’s cup out of my hand and twisting it around. At some point during our conversation, she’d written her name and number along the side.

“Oh,” I said.

Maybe Mal wasn’t a total buzzkill after all.

Ten

“Moonset may have been led by Sherrod, but each member had their strengths.

They were smart. They collaborated.

And their bond was unbreakable.

They wanted to change the world.

They succeeded.”

Moonset: A Dark Legacy

Quinn was downstairs by himself when Mal and I walked in a little later.

“Where’s Jenna?” I asked, crossing into the kitchen.

Quinn stood by the back door, staring out at only God knew what. Maybe the neighbor’s swing set was some kind of latent threat? Or he thought the single mom a few doors away was some kind of sympathizer.

“She’ll be down in a moment.” Quinn looked over his shoulder. “You should get home, Mal.”

Quinn never cared if Mal was here. Or any of us. As far as guardians went, he was a little lax in that department. I took a seat at the table. “What’s going on?”

“Incoming,” Jenna announced as she strode into the kitchen. “It’s the Witch of Skankbird

Pond again,” she said under her breath before she began checking her reflection in one of the hanging pots.

Heavy footfalls started down the stairs as Meghan Virago swept into the kitchen. She was still wrapped up in a dark-green overcoat, her hair pulled back from her face. “The Congress has some questions for the two of you.” Her eyes skimmed over Mal. “You can see yourself out.”

“Or I can stay,” he countered.

“I thought we finished this already,” Quinn said in an icy tone. “They’ve been through enough already.”

“Is this some kind of good cop, bad dye job thing?” Jenna asked. “Because honestly, I’d rather stick my head in the oven than deal with her again.”

“The feeling’s mutual, darling.” Virago’s pinched face was a mask of smug superiority. “But does a trailer park even have ovens?”

“Hey, back off,” I snapped, moving to stand in front of Jenna. More for Virago’s protection than Jenna’s, obviously. Jenna would tear her apart with one hand.

“I’d be defensive, too,” the redhead cooed, “if I was the spitting image of a sociopath.”

“That’s enough,” Quinn said firmly. He crossed the room and stood near the two of us. “If you have questions, ask them. But you’re not waltzing in here and poking them with sticks for the hell of it.”

Jenna took one look around the room, and spun around on her heel. “Screw this,” she tossed over her shoulder.

But she didn’t get more than one or two steps before Meghan’s voice clearly rang out. “Diana

Bellamont.” Jenna’s mother’s name was like a talisman. Once invoked, Jenna’s feet were leaden on the floor.

“Doesn’t it bother you?” Meghan asked, pulling open one of the cutlery drawers and letting her fingers drift over the tools inside. “You act like twins. Tell people you are. But you’re not.

Not really.” Her lips quirked up into another insolent smile.

Even though I knew exactly what was coming, I didn’t interrupt. None of us did. There were a thousand different ways to wrap up Moonset’s crimes—a hundred different sins to tie up in a bow. We’d heard them all. Yet every time, it was as shameful as the first. Loathing held our tongues, kept our eyes lowered, and our shoulders stooped.

As if a world full of crimes and horrors hadn’t been enough, there was the story of Jenna and me. She’d been born first, only a few hours before me. Both of us the children of Sherrod

Daggett, the leader of Moonset. But only I, the legitimate child, bore his name.

Jenna’s mother had been Sherrod’s mistress. He might have loved my mother—every account confirmed this as fact—but Diana Bellamont had been his dark soul mate. She matched him, sin for sin—the co-conspirator for all of Moonset’s darkest acts. In the end, I guess he couldn’t resist the temptation.

“How galling do you think it was,” Meghan followed up, “when Diana gave birth before his wife?”

Most people looked down on us because we were the children of Moonset. But some took special care to demean Jenna and me in particular. As if it mattered to any of them that my father had cheated on my mother. That we cared when they called us the “white trash twins” as if that was somehow worse than our bloodline.

We bore the worst of it. Jenna and I were cut from the same cloth—thick dark hair, eyes so brown they were nearly black, and each the spitting image of our parents. In my case, Sherrod, and in hers a mix of the two. When we stood side by side, the resemblance was too strong to deny. It was obvious we were related.

There’d been confusion back when we were first recovered. We looked too similar, and we were so close, that they assumed we really were twins. My mother had been tall and pale, blond-haired and green-eyed. I didn’t look a thing like her.

As we got older, the resemblances grew more pronounced. It wasn’t as though I was

Sherrod’s mirror image, but the resemblance was so strong it made people nervous. Another thing about my past I couldn’t help.

“Is that everything?” Jenna said, emphasizing the boredom in her tone. “Everyone’s heard about Moonset’s dirty laundry.” But the words bothered her, I knew they did. They always bothered us.

It was hard, knowing what my parents had been capable of. What they’d done. The legacy that had been left for the others and me. But still, on some level, I wanted to separate them. To split the Moonset side from the side that would have been Mom and Dad. Monsters can’t love, and everyone was agreed that the members of Moonset were monsters.

At least that’s how I felt sometimes.

“And then my mom was a terrible person who did lots of terrible things,” Jenna continued, exhaling. “She was weak, and she got killed. Gosh, doesn’t it bother me to know my mom was a weakling?” She straightened, and her voice turned harsh. “You can’t push my buttons, you twit.”

Meghan raised an eyebrow. No matter what we did, or how we reacted, she always seemed pleased. Like we were giving her exactly what she wanted.

“How has no one shoved a stake through your heart by now?” Jenna wondered.

Quinn’s lips twitched, betraying his feelings on the matter. “Ask your questions. Then politely get back on your broom and get the hell out of my house.”

Meghan tsked. “Language, darling.” She looked down at her tablet, and her pen started tapping out a rhythm all over again. “The pair of you need to be debriefed about what happened in Kentucky.”

I exhaled. “You’re kidding, right? You waited like two weeks to find out what happened?”

“Be fair, Justin,” Jenna said, “she spent most of that afternoon flat on her back. She probably needed all the time she could get to recover.”

Jenna was just as good at baiting as Meghan seemed to be. Maybe even better. Meghan’s hand clenched into a fist and disappeared under the sleeve of her coat. “Was that the first time you’ve come across a wraith?”

“Have you read our files?” Mal countered calmly.

“I’m the one asking the questions.”

“A question you already know the answer to.” Mal’s eyebrow rose slightly in challenge.

“Next.”

Surprisingly, she moved on. “Did the wraith tell you why he’d come after you? What he wanted? Where he was planning to take you?”

Mal looked pointedly at me. Oh, right. I should probably answer since he hadn’t been there.

“He didn’t say a whole lot. Called us Moonset, said Bridger sent—”

“—We have no proof that Cullen Bridger is even still alive, let alone plotting kidnappings or assassinations,” Meghan broke in immediately, talking over me. “At best, it’s hearsay. At worst, suggesting it is dangerously close to treason.”

My jaw dropped. “You’re kidding me, right?”

Meghan’s mask of indifference said that no, she wasn’t kidding. “The Congress is investigating the wraith as an isolated incident. One most likely engineered, accidentally of course, by someone on the scene.”