Moonset - Scott Tracey

They were going to make us disappear. Take every trace of us and make it vanish: yearbook photos, our houses and things, everything. This wasn’t the first time. This was just a little more thorough, and that made me wonder. How bad was it really?

“Someone’s coming after us?” Cole whispered, looking even smaller than normal. “Again?”

“We don’t know what’s going on,” I said, patting him on the back. “Maybe that’s just what they’re telling people. Y’know, like a cover story.”

The three of us jumped when the door swung open again. The redhead, Miss Virago, came in alone. As usual, Jenna beat me to the punch. “What’s going on? And who the hell are you?”

Virago ignored the questions. She pointed at us with the first two fingers, then pointed to the door. “Take your things. There’s a van waiting on the south side of the building. Don’t stop to talk to anyone, don’t leave anything behind.”

Jenna stood up. Even though the woman was in heels, Jenna’s Amazonian height gave her the advantage. She looked down on the adult. “We’re not going anywhere until you tell us what’s going on.”

“Get your things, Moonset,” the woman spat, making the word into a curse. “And go to the van. You’re being evacuated.”

If the woman knew anything about us, and she knew enough to call us by that name, she should have known not to engage Jenna’s stubbornness. The two of them engaged in a stare-

off that lasted almost a minute before the woman rolled her eyes. “You were listening just now.

Which part was unclear?”

“The part where something’s on its way to Farmville? And all you care about is pulling us out of town? What about the people here?”

“Your concern for your fellow man is touching,” the woman said dryly. “Especially the half-

dozen already en route to the hospital because of your little riot.”

“Better the hospital than the morgue,” Jenna retorted, refusing to give an inch.

The woman’s expression toward us was cool. Maybe a bit mocking. “All the more reason to get your unworthy asses out of town as quickly as possible.”

This would go on for hours unless I did something. “What about the others? Where are they?”

Malcolm and Bailey weren’t with us, and that made me nervous. I didn’t like not knowing where the two of them were. Rule number one: always take care of each other.

There were five of us altogether. Jenna and I were the only two actually related, but I considered all of them my family. My brothers and sisters. Bailey was the youngest, a freshman this year, pixie haired and as light and blonde as Jenna and I were dark-eyed and serious. Then came Cole, almost a year older but still a freshman, who tried too hard and was far too earnest for his own good. Jenna and I were both seventeen, though she was just a few hours older even if she never acted like it. And finally there was Malcolm, the pretty boy who would have left by now, if it had been possible.

“Already evacuated,” Virago said, eyes flicking to me.

“Let’s go, Jen,” I said quietly. She blinked at me, caught by surprise. I shook my head and shot a meaningful glance at Cole, who was watching the goings on with a rapt expression. Fire flashed behind Jenna’s dark eyes for a moment, but eventually she nodded.

We walked out of the office, trapped somewhere between the kind of privilege that required an armed escort and the kind of infamy that required armed guards.

Miss Virago had called us by name. Moonset. The name we’d inherited from our parents, now a slur as bad as any other four-letter word. Even fifteen years after their death, people didn’t use the word Moonset lightly.

Because of it, we had people like Miss Virago following us around. Waiting for the mistake that would push us over the edge from “innocent” to “dangerous.”

Waiting for the day they could kill us, too.

Two

“Before magic, we were victims before the wraiths and princes, the fallen and the blighted.”

The Book of Hours

I was nine years old when I learned what it meant when someone called me Moonset. Malcolm had to be the one to tell me. He was only a year older than Jenna and me, but he told us about our parents the same way he’d broken the news about Santa and the Easter Bunny.

Witches were supposed to work in secret. Secrecy was the first lesson any of us ever learned. There were thousands of us spread out across the world, enough that we even had our own shadow government, a ruling council made up of the most powerful covens and solitary witches.

All of that was threatened, nearly destroyed, because of Moonset.

They’d been an ordinary coven, nothing special. But something set them on the path to dark magic, and soon there was nothing dark enough, no power too forbidden.

Moonset’s first strike was the most brutal—the equivalent of a nuclear assault that decimated the heart of the Congress, the ruling body that kept order. The papers called the Manchester bombing an accident, citing a gas leak that stank of a cover-up. Even with the threat of war on the horizon, keeping magic secret was still the first priority.

Hundreds died—specifically, the hundreds who were strong enough and smart enough to end the Moonset threat. Weeks went by, with no one stepping forward—until our parents did. Even as the acts of terrorism continued, they released statements and appeals. A cult began to form, worshiping the charismatic leader of Moonset, drawn to the movement that fought back for the disenfranchised and the ignored.

At first, it wasn’t even a war. It was slaughter. Moonset engaged in terrorist acts all over the globe, destroying covens, libraries, anything and everything that could have risen up as a threat to them. The magical world had to fight a war on two fronts—fighting against Moonset while also fighting to keep the rest of the world ignorant of what was really going on behind the scenes.

Moonset was winning, but then they surrendered. No one really knew why. Theorists suggested they had a moment of clarity, momentarily freed from the dark powers that had overtaken them. But no one knew for sure, because though they were tried and executed quickly, they never spoke a word about the war and no record of their plans was ever recovered.

We were the only things they left behind.

“I don’t like this,” Jenna said under her breath at my side.

“You’re crazy!” The principal’s strident, nasal voice carried all the way down the hall. “I’m not just going to go off with you. In case you haven’t been paying attention, there is a riot going on.

I don’t have time for this.”

“Sir,” his escort tried. And then again. “Sir.” But the principal kept going on in a rant that devolved into references to tailgating and a lack of school pride. The principal’s escort glanced back, as if looking for aid, but Virago ignored him.

She sighed, shaking her head in irritation. Then she froze, staring straight ahead at a man who I would have sworn wasn’t there a moment ago. With his arms folded and head down, he could have been sleeping. “I’ve got this,” Virago snapped, eyes narrowing to little slits.

“You should have had this a week ago when you first heard something was coming,” the man said, lifting only his eyes, “instead of waiting until one of them broke the rules. Your boss still denying everything, huh?”

They’d known there was a threat, and they’d been waiting? Unbelievable.

Virago’s gaze swept over the three of us, hardening like this was somehow our fault. Even if we didn’t know what this was. I decided to hang back to wait and see how things were going to proceed. Virago wasn’t acting like we were in danger, but the man before us definitely gave off a vibe of dangerous.

“Who are you?” Cole asked, suddenly belligerent with his chest puffed out. I gestured to

Jenna, and she grabbed him by the back of the shirt. He tried to squirm away, but she kept a hand on his shoulder, her fingers digging into the shirt’s fabric.

“I’m Quinn,” the man offered, pushing himself up off the wall. Quinn was like a black-and-

white film brought to life: dark black hair and pale white skin. Bela Lugosi with a Bowflex, and he moved like someone who had been in the military.

“Hello, hotness,” Jenna muttered under her breath, eyes alight and mouth curved. Oh, fantastic, I thought to myself.

Because Cole never met a situation he didn’t like to make more awkward, he looked away from Jenna and Quinn, and decided to bark. Even worse, he barked like one those tiny dogs, the ones that yiff instead of ruff.

Jenna increased the pressure on his shoulder until Cole started to drop. “Ow, ow, sorry, ow!”

She held him for a few seconds longer, then released her grip. Cole rotated his shoulder, glaring up at her. “Bully.”

“Enough,” I said quietly. I took over Cole duty from Jenna, coming up behind him and resting one hand on his shoulder close to the neck. Prime strangling position, if I needed it.

“I know, kids,” Quinn said sympathetically. “It’s awkward when Mom and Dad fight in front of you. Don’t worry, it’ll be over soon.” He probably wasn’t much older than Virago, but I instantly liked him better, even though my instincts were still on edge.

“You’re here to evacuate us?” I asked.

Quinn gave me a brief once-over. “Justin, right?” I nodded, and he smiled in a way that was probably supposed to be charming. Rule number two: never trust adults. And never, never trust anyone from the government.

“I’m here to make sure everything goes off without a hitch,” he continued. “Malcolm and

Bailey are already secure; now we just need to get the three of you.”

Hearing it from Quinn put me a little more at ease. I wasn’t so much worried about Mal—he could take care of himself—but Bailey was the youngest. Leaving would already be hard enough on her.

“We don’t have time for this,” Virago said with a roll of her eyes. “Move,” she huffed at us, setting a brisk pace down the hall towards where the principal was still arguing with the other government mook.

The principal’s office wasn’t far from the front of the building, and that was the way that

Virago decided to take us. The school was a hodgepodge of new additions tacked onto a side and renovations to make it look seamless on the outside. The only way to the south side of the building was to walk all the way down the length of the building and turn at the end. Otherwise, the school was a mess of aborted hallways and layouts that folded in on themselves.

I shook off the twinge running up and down my back, like there were strings sunk into my skin and someone was pulling them for the first time I could remember. I looked at Jenna, then

Cole, but neither of them seemed to notice anything.

At first.

Jenna slowed, touching my arm. “Do you hear that?”

Nothing jumped out at me right away, so after a few more steps I stopped entirely, pulling