Moonset - Scott Tracey

“I’m an enigma,” she admitted. “I don’t like being predictable.”

“See, I prefer predictable. I just don’t get too much of it.”

Ash grinned, but there was a moment where the smile faded, where something else floated to the surface. It was only a moment, then the smile was back in full force. “You never did tell me what you did that pissed your sister off.”

I shrugged. What I’d done to Jenna was too wrapped up in Moonset and magic. “We … had a disagreement,” I said carefully. “A very big one. Jenna wanted me to side with her, and I agreed with Malcolm instead.”

“Wow. And you’re still breathing?” Ash looked impressed.

“It doesn’t happen very often,” I admitted. “But Jenna’s had a hard time letting it go.”

“Still making excuses,” she chided. “Tell me how you really feel. Doesn’t it suck, sometimes, having to pick up after her? Don’t you wish you could just do your own thing and let her handle her own messes?”

Before I could answer, there was a commotion outside. Several people hurried past the window, at least one of them shouting. A few seconds later, several more people did the same.

They were all heading towards the town square.

“Is there something going on tonight?”

Ash had half risen out of her chair, her forehead wrinkled. “I didn’t think so,” she said slowly.

We both stood awkwardly around our table as yet another group of people hurried past the coffee shop, their eyes locked on something in the distance. When the police car, sirens blaring, flew past a few seconds later, we both went for the door. Even the barista trailed behind us, unable to escape the curiosity of the moment.

A crowd was forming in the square, surrounding and beneath the picturesque clock tower that defined the city square. Streetlights designed like lanterns lit the streets, and strings of lights in the trees brought the quaint and homey vibe. But there was nothing quaint or homey about the gathering crowd.

“What do you think it is?” I asked, as we approached.

Ash’s expression was grim. “Nothing good.”

“Can’t you hear them! They’re screaming,” a man shouted from somewhere beyond the crowd. I followed the eyes and craned necks of the crowd, and found the man somewhere near the top of the clock tower. Though it’s only a few stories high—four if I had to guess—he’s still a tiny figure in comparison. But his voice carries throughout the square, and cuts through the buzzing voices of the fascinated townsfolk.

“I saw him once. The sun! He fizzled and faltered, and then they locked the door on his cage of blood.”

“Come on,” Ash said, wrapping her hand around my arm. “They’ll talk him down. But we shouldn’t watch. It’s not right. He’s obviously sick.”

I would have left right then, except that the man shifted on his ledge, leaned forward like he was teasing the sky’s edge, and I recognized him. It was the man from the diner. The

Harbinger.

“I know him,” I said without thinking.

Ash looked surprised. “You do?”

“Well, not know him exactly. He got drunk and harassed Mal and I when we first came to town.”

Now was no different. “I see you,” he called, and I could swear he was staring right at me.

“Come on, Justin,” Ash said, a little more urgently.

One of the lantern lights on the street corner exploded with a paff, releasing a sprinkling of sparks. Like a collective unit, the crowd shrieked and panted and screamed. But they were used to it when a second pop followed, and then the third. Three streetlamps in as many seconds.

I felt something in the air. Like a current of air that I couldn’t quite feel, but I knew was there somehow. It sailed over us, and I was reminded of the wraith. Of the way I’d felt moments before the wall had exploded inwards, and innocent men had died because of me.

I suddenly didn’t feel so good.

“Can you hear them yet? They bite and they whisper, and it never ends.” His body spasmed, his left arm jerking suddenly behind his back. The crowd gasped, fearing that this would be the last moments before he tumbled forth.

My body grew cold.

“Traitor, caller of spirits, warlock! Following you down, laying out the signs.” the man howled.

“They want you to know. They need you to know.”

Any witch who turned to the black arts was considered a warlock. There was truth to the legends that some witches made pacts with the Devil. Warlocks were the common term, but I’d heard the others before, too. Warlock supposedly meant traitor, once, and before that, it had meant a caller of the dark spirits.

Ash tugged on my arm again, but I took a step forward. Then another. My eyes never left his.

“Can’t you hear it? The dark things are coming, and they only need one. ” The man’s arm straightened, his posture smoothed. “They only need one.” Once the words crossed his lips, he couldn’t stop them. He was like a skipping CD. “They only need one. Only need one. Need one.”

“Oh god,” Ash said, a moment before the man let go of the ledge.

By now the man’s voice was hoarse and starting to falter, but he still continued to proclaim his strange message. “I can hear the litany. They’re here.”

The man’s lips kept moving, but the sound finally died. Even at this distance, I could see that one little detail. He looked scared and resigned—like an addict who was helpless in the face of his habit. The words continued to crawl out of his mouth as if invisible hands pulled them forth, even though there was no sound. They only need one. They only need one.

Then the man tumbled forward, suddenly so relaxed that his fall from the roof was graceful and smooth. There was silence around me, and I wondered if I was the only one who saw this sudden change. But then the gasps started, and I realized I wasn’t alone. I turned away, wincing even before the impact. Ash buried her head against my chest, and that moment of comfort sparked a lifetime of habits.

I stroked her head, whispered comforting things, even as there were screams and tears in the crowd. People surged forth around us, either out of some misguided attempt to help, or because they wanted to be the first to see the body.

When Ash pulled away, I expected to see tears, or at least the effects of the man’s suicide.

But her face was eerily calm, slack of any emotion at all. Over the top of her head, across the open space between the crests of the crowd, there was a woman staring at me. She had the kind of stern, hard gaze as Illana Bryer, and for a second I thought it was her, but the two women couldn’t have looked any different.

Her hair was long and dark, her expression pinched and plucked like it was the victim of an overzealous surgeon. She glared at me with the kind of recognition that made it clear she knew who I was—knew whose child I was.

I went to say, “Who is that?” to Ash, to see if she knew the woman, but when I looked down and then back up, the woman was already gone, absorbed into the crowd. I caught a momentary glimpse of almost-familiar green eyes brushing past us, but there was a gasp in the crowd and my eyes went towards the body.

The last thing I wanted to do was to see the Harbinger now. It was something I’d never be able to unsee. I could still picture the way the Witcher had looked, ravaged and bloody after the wraith had torn through him.

Seeing the Harbinger would be another.

But something made me look anyway, and it was another sucker punch.

His body had cracked the sidewalk in a single line, arcing from his right shoulder down past his left hip. The police officer on the scene was crouched in front of the body, his posture slumped. Dead then. The officer got up, and started herding people back away from the scene.

Ash and I took a step back, and something in the way the light reflected off the concrete made me stop. Blood began spreading out from the body like a water balloon with a tiny leak.

It pooled out from some hidden wound beneath the body, sliding forward like it was the concrete that was bleeding, and not the man. The blood trailed out in several directions at once, one at the crown of his head, one along the lines of each of his shoulders, one from either hip. The lines bent and curved, and it wasn’t until I saw them all at once, saw the pattern that I realized.

Ash sucked in a breath.

A circle of blood spread underneath his chest, and tentacles stretched away from his limbs.

I’d seen this symbol before. If we pulled him up, I knew what we’d see. A dry spot in the shape of a crescent moon, a circle, and six wavy rays. The same symbol Mal and I had seen on the burnt-out house and on my locker.

Moonset’s symbol.

Sixteen

“Reports from the scene suggest that the explosions started just before noon, when the

Invisible Congress would have adjourned for lunch. At this time, we don’t know if there are any survivors. Feared dead are the Covens of Devon, the Sisters of Air, Iron Rose, Moonset, and Calmingbrook.”

Released Reports

On the Dark Monday attack

There wasn’t much time to put my thoughts together, or mourn, or whatever it was you did in situations like this. The adults took over almost immediately. Reinforcement police, two of them, appeared from either end of the crowd, herding people back. I pulled Ash out of the street and away from the body. As we walked away, the officers were putting up police tape and had brought out a sheet to cover over the man.

“All right people, move along. It’s time to go home,” a strident voice called out. My heart sunk. I knew that voice. I hated that voice. Miss Virago appeared on the scene and took control. There was a small group with her—men and women no older than her. The Witchers were on the scene. The coffee I’d drunk started burning a hole through my stomach lining. It shouldn’t be possible, but the situation just got worse and worse.

Was she pretending to be an actual government official, now? As far as I knew, working for the Congress was not the same as working for the FBI. Witches continued to survive by living a life of secrecy—all our laws, our crimes, our prosecutions had to happen under the radar. We didn’t have any actual authority to the rest of the world.

But never underestimate the power of a bitchy woman in a business suit and heels. It helped to have magic, of course, to stop people from asking questions.

At my side, Ash looked nauseous. “I need to call my dad,” she said. She untangled herself from my arm, leaving me only with phantom pain as she dipped and ducked through the crowd.

“Time to get off the street, Mr. Daggett,” Meghan said, taking her place on my other side, and grabbing the arm that Ash hadn’t just been clinging to. She dragged me back the way we’d come, towards the coffee shop, and all I could do was panic. What if Ash saw something?

What if she heard something?