Moonset

Moonset The Legacy of Moonset 1 by Scott Tracey

One

“Moonset, a coven of such promise. Until they turned to the darkness. Their acts of terrorism fueled by dark magic nearly destroyed us.

But we fought back. And we won.”

Illana Bryer (C: Fallingbrook)

From a speech given the night Moonset was captured

There were two hundred forty-five students involved in the riot. What had started as a minor altercation between the basketball and track teams had devolved into a literal kind of class warfare. Freshmen against juniors, girls against boys, art kids versus burnouts, 4Hers against everyone.

The town’s entire full-time police force, all three of them, had been trying for the better part of an hour to reestablish control. Reinforcements had been called, the rest of the school had been evacuated, and I found myself in the principal’s office with my sister, only two days shy of winter break. We’d been so close this time.

We sat in silence: Jenna examining her nails and touching up her makeup and me leaning against the window, afraid to peek between the blinds. The view overlooked the front quad, and today it offered a glimpse of madness. I don’t know how she’d managed it, but the entire school had lost it an hour ago.

These things tended to happen when Jenna got bored.

She favored me with a sullen, annoyed look. I didn’t have to say anything, didn’t have to sift through old frustrations and new accusations until I knew the words I wanted to use. One look, and Jenna saw it all on my face. She always did.

“Calm down, Justin,” she said after I’d closed my eyes. “It’s no big deal.”

“Getting kicked out of school is a big deal, Jen.”

“The first time, maybe,” she mused, “but you’ve had enough practice by now. You’re a pro.”

This was school number seven, and I definitely should have seen this coming.

Jenna and I were unaffectionately known as “the twins.” It was how people introduced us, talked about us, traded stories about us. Like we were really a single person split between two bodies. It never failed that the minute Jenna crossed the line and got hauled in to a principal’s office, I was right behind her. Our fates had been super-glued together for our entire lives.

Especially in situations that involved buzzwords like “vandalism of school property,”

“suspicious fires,” and “criminal charges.”

Seven schools in three years. We’d almost made it through an entire semester, and I’d gotten lazy. I forgot what Jenna could do with just a few whispered words. Riots were the tip of the iceberg. Fitting, since Jenna’s rap sheet was the size of Antarctica.

To be fair, not all of the expulsions were her fault. One of them was our brother Malcolm’s, and a few others were for reasons we didn’t fully understand.

Our lives were just a tad complicated.

I looked around the room, but the precarious stacks of paperwork on the desk were definitely a theme in this office. Every available surface had something on it. Even the lampshade was littered with blue Post-its.

“Bailey’s going to be crushed,” I pointed out absently. How does anyone find anything in here? There’s too much paperwork—and too much bureaucracy—for one small-town principal.

I couldn’t even think of his name. It wasn’t Reynolds, that was the last school. Jeffries, maybe?

“She’ll get over it,” Jenna said, keeping her words light. Bailey always got her heart crushed when we moved. She threw herself into every new school as if it would be the last. It never was.

“Don’t you think we’re running out of schools?” I said wearily. This was an argument we’d had a thousand times.

“We haven’t even tried Europe,” she fired back. Her fingers tapped restlessly against the wooden arm of the chair. “I hate waiting. Where is he?”

“I apologize if cleaning up your mess has inconvenienced you in any way,” the principal said from behind us. I turned just in time to see him pushing a wiry blonde boy into the room and then closing the door. “I can only imagine the kinds of delinquency I’m keeping you from, Miss

Bellamont,” he continued.

The blond boy was the last of our siblings, Cole, and his arrival with the principal meant nothing good. Cole tried to saunter in, only to nearly trip over himself. He ended up lunging for the back of my chair, trying to keep himself upright.

Somewhere after Seattle, he’d finally grown into his ears. When we were kids, Cole was the kid with giant Dumbo ears dwarfing the sides of his head. Now they were barely notable.

Although he still hadn’t hit a decent growth spurt. He was the shortest boy in the school.

What’d he do now? was quickly followed by how could he possibly make a riot any worse?

“What’d you do, Cole?” I asked, already wishing I didn’t have to ask. Things went from bad to worse so quickly around us I should have been expecting it.

Jenna was more acerbic. “You got caught?”

Cole had the decency to look ashamed. I pretended it was because he’d helped start a riot and not because he’d gotten caught. “I just wanted a good seat.” A few seconds of silence went by, and he continued. “And maybe I was egging some of the football jerks on.”

“You were shouting out quotes from Gladiator and trying to tear your shirt off,” the principal said dryly. He was a red-haired, mustached man who I hadn’t talked to since we’d enrolled four months ago.

“I just wanted to know if they were entertained,” Cole said, blushing a little, before he caught a glimpse of Jenna’s waspish look and his voice died.

She and I traded a look. “Can we get on with this? I’d like to deface my locker before the last bell,” she said, as though she were on a schedule.

The principal sucked in a deep breath, and held it. I wondered who he was praying to.

Buddha? Jesus? St. Jude, the patron saint of lost causes? Whatever god he was praying to, it wouldn’t help. Jenna defied the power of prayer.

“I have put up with enough from you and your lot,” he said.

Your lot. I could practically hear Jenna preening next to me. There was nothing she liked better than someone who tried to put her in her place. Especially when it was an adult.

I could see it all laid out in front of me, even before it happened. It wouldn’t be enough for

Jenna to embarrass the principal by making him look like an incompetent, she’d want a hand in embarrassing him personally. I chanced a look to my left. The anticipation was nearly killing her. There was more to come. What did she have on him? Alcoholism? Mistress?

“Now then,” the principal said, exhaling. I could almost see The Speech building up strength, rising from his gut as he worked through the preliminaries. The part about not quite understanding how things had gone so wrong. A whole subconversation about how we clearly needed things that Byron High could not provide. Principals, no surprise, rather enjoyed The

Speech. The one that ended with the word “expelled.”

But his joy was to be short-lived. An insistent knock cut off what he was about to say. “I told you I wasn’t to be disturbed,” he shouted.

There was silence on the other side. And then a slower, insolent series of raps on the door.