Moonset - Scott Tracey

“Like what?”

Quinn stared at me impassively. “Just yell if something happens.”

I peered across the street, shielding my eyes with my hand. The sun was out and shining off of all the storefront windows, making it almost impossible to see. It took a few minutes for my eyes to adjust and for the traffic to break up so that I could cross the street without getting hit by a car. I was pretty sure that wasn’t the kind of “anything” that Quinn was referring to. While I was waiting, I saw the curio shop owner leaving the coffee shop with a cup in hand. Ethan,I remembered, more because I could still hear the gruff rasp of his father shouting throughout the store.

I looked between the coffee and curio shops, debating. His dad talked about Sherrod. He’s the only one who has since we came here. It was like the thoughts were sparks and my brain the tinder—as soon as I started wondering about Sherrod before Moonset, I couldn’t shake it. I squirmed in place.

I was in and out of the coffee shop—with a turtle mocha—faster than I think was humanly possible. That still gave me at least ten minutes before Quinn would be back to the car and looking for me. I charged across the street during a lull in traffic, nearly bumping into a minivan, and jogged the half block to my destination.

“Sorry, sorry, give me a minute,” the man’s voice called out as I opened the door and a chime went off. There was a ladder propped up against one wall near the back of the store, and he was pulling pictures down. I waited until he’d climbed down and moved back to the counter.

“How can I help you?” he asked as he turned, wiping his hands on the legs of his pants.

“Hey … I was in here the other day?”

There was no recognition in the man’s eyes. “Oh? See something you liked?”

“Not exactly.” This was going to be awkward. “I was in here when your dad … ”

“Oh!” The man’s eyes suddenly seemed to find mine, like he’d come out of some sort of fugue state. “Of course I remember you. I was thinking about you and your brother just the other day.”

“Really?”

He hurried behind the counter, favoring one knee as he moved. Maybe bad legs ran in the family. “Well, I mean I’m sorry my dad went and frightened you boys off, but he’s harmless most of the time. Just has his moments, y’know?”

“Well, it’s nice that you’re still taking care of him,” I replied, unsure of what to say in a situation like this.

“Oh, right, right. Can’t go turning our backs on our parents,” the man said. “It’s just unconscionable.”

I shifted in place, turning my attention to the things he was pulling off the wall. “Dusting everything? Or just putting different things up?”

“A little of both,” the man admitted. “Making some room for a new collection I picked up in an estate sale—the rest we’ll try and sell at the flea market. People around here will pay a nice bit of change for antiques.”

“Really?”

He nodded. “But that’s not why I was thinking of you boys. Well, you remember my dad was rambling on about some boogeyman?”

I nodded, feeling my heart trying to bust its way out of my rib cage. Any minute Quinn was going to throw open the door and lay into me for being here. Any second.

“I found that old book he was talking about,” he confided, leaning over the counter. “It’s a whole bunch of gibberish, but you can see that name he mentioned right inside the cover.”

“Really?” My heartbeat pounded in my ears, and an electric sort of panic was screaming up my spine. Go now. Leave now. You know this isn’t going to end well. How could I have been cold earlier? The room was an inferno and I was sweating through my clothes.

He rummaged around on the desk tucked in the corner, finally pulling out a small journal. It was ordinary enough—the kind of journal mass-produced and sold in chain stores. I expected something … more. The kind of book that implied danger by its very design. Or something hauntingly familiar, calling me to it. But it was just a notebook. It could have belonged to anyone.

“See?” He flipped the cover open, turning to a random page. Each one was lined with painstaking rows of chicken scratch. Magic was a language, and most languages had a written equivalent, but written spells were still spells. Great care had to be taken that the words were so evenly divided up that the spell was still readable, but it took some work.

It was like the drawing guides in school when kids first learn how to write their letters. Each line is taken separately, one at a time. Spellbooks did the same. The added bonus was that normal people never realized what, exactly, they held in their hands.

Right in front of me, the curio shop guy was showing me a spellbook filled with what looked like dozens of new spells. I didn’t trust myself to hold it, but I stared at the words, translating in my head.

“Crazy looking, right? But I guess I can see how Dad saw something in this book, y’know?

It’s just a bunch of doodles, but it almost looks like a real language. See? There’s spaces between the words.” He pointed to a particular page where there were indeed spaces, but I didn’t feel like explaining that those weren’t separate words, but simply beats between syllables.

“Yeah,” I said, only half-convincingly. I forced myself to look away—there was something that looked like a beacon spell—to find your way to something that wasn’t there anymore. “That’s crazy.” I turned away, forcing myself to stare at one of the paintings—one of a woman seated primly on a bench surrounded by a garden exploding into spring.

Sherrod Daggett’s spellbook. Just the idea of it was crazy. If the Congress had known something like this existed, they would have snatched it up and destroyed it in a heartbeat. If they knew I had seen it—and hadn’t reported it—there was no telling what they’d do. If they found me with it, that might be enough to force their hands. A fatal move to be sure.

He was a traitor—a warlock and a terrorist. All true. Sherrod Daggett was everything the books said and worse. But people who met him—even those who hated him with a passion—

still spoke of him with reverence. Like even in Hell, he still knew who was talking behind his back.

But was he evil in high school? Or was he like me? The thought soothed as much as it terrified. I remembered that night in the hotel room on our way to Carrow Mill, telling Jenna with certainty, “We could never be like them.”

If it was just a normal grimoire, it wasn’t illegal to have. But it was where the spellbook came from that was the problem. Just because they wouldn’t teach us anything but the most basic magic didn’t mean we weren’t allowed to learn it. They got to decide what scraps to teach us, because we didn’t have any other alternative.

This might be one. Jenna was right when she said we needed to defend ourselves better.

Our protection was up to us because there was no guarantee Quinn or anyone else was going to be around.

There was a clatter further on in the building. “Oh Dad,” the man muttered. “I’ll be right back.”

He left, and I glanced at the book. Really stared at it. Do it. Take it. My hand trembled. It was the first spellbook I’d ever actually seen—live and in person. The owner didn’t have a clue what it was. All I knew was that I had to have the book. It belonged to me, or it would have, in a different world.

But this wasn’t something the man had out on the shelves—it was his father’s. The irony wasn’t lost on me. Just take it. It was like a growing compulsion in me, something hot and hungry that needed to be satiated.

“Oh Dad, what did you do?” I heard faintly over the sound of a television talking head discussing POWs.

You wouldn’t be starving for knowledge anymore. If there’s anything bad, you can just get rid of the book. If Sherrod really was bad from the beginning, it’ll be obvious. The call to darkness will be there.

Almost before realizing I was doing anything, I was heading for the door. The book slid perfectly into my jacket’s inside pocket. I threw a twenty-dollar bill on the counter, and ran out into the cold winter morning and crossed the street, trying to duck down and stay out of sight.

I stayed slunk down in the passenger seat, my eyes glued to the side mirror and the door of the curio shop (which never opened) when Quinn threw open the driver’s side door and scared the crap out of me. My head nearly hit the roof.

“You look guilty,” he said.

My blood froze in my veins, and I could feel the book burning against my chest. I’d checked my reflection once I’d gotten into the car, but you couldn’t even tell it was there.

“No, I don’t,” I said automatically, speaking almost too fast. Which only made me sound more guilty.

Quinn just looked at me. He tossed a bag over the back of his seat and climbed into the car.

“Okay, then.”

Whatever weird thing I was on today, he clearly didn’t want any part. “Yeah. Okay.”

“How about no more caffeine for you? What’d you get, extra shots of espresso?”

The tension drained out of my body. I mustered up a fake smile. “Two.”

As we pulled off Main Street, I glanced in the mirror and instantly froze. Meghan Virago was crossing the street, arms linked with Mrs. Crawford. What were they doing together? I knew

Meghan hated us, but was she really friends with the teacher? Or had they bonded over my outburst? They were coming from the same direction Quinn had gone. I couldn’t tell for sure, but it looked like they were smiling.

“So how was the bank?” I asked lightly, while my thoughts ran and tried to come up with explanations. I had to keep it together, to show that everything was okay.

“Fine,” he said, his words clipped. “Long line.”

“Ahh,” I said, although I had no idea what I was ahh’ing over. He took the long way back to the house, driving through one residential neighborhood after another. I didn’t enjoy the drive much, barely listening to Quinn chatter about small towns—he’d been born and raised in the big city—and how it was a nice change of pace.

Now that I’d actually done it—actually stolen the book—I couldn’t believe myself. I wasn’t a thief. You left money, I reasoned, but it still didn’t change the fact. The worst part was that, underneath it all, I felt a rush of satisfaction. For once, I’d been the one to break the rules and get away with it.

“I said, what do you think about a magic lesson today?” Quinn’s voice was louder, interrupting my train of thought as we passed yet another church, Saint Anna’s, which had a giant steeple poised over the church building.

“What? Seriously?”

“Yeah,” Quinn said, leaning back in his seat and resting his head against the back of his seat.

“Besides, maybe it’ll do you some good to have something new to focus on for a while.”

The icy knot in my stomach was only getting stronger. It was like Quinn knew something—like he was just stringing me along and messing with my head. He probably knew everything—the old man in the shop must have called him as soon as I’d left.